Page 35 of The Last Kingdom

Big-time.

Pilgrim seemed comfortable at his table. He decided to follow his father’s advice and start asking questions, zeroing in on one of the servers whose majestic natural endowment was something to be admired. Definitely a looker. He’d noticed that when the other two guys left, she’d talked with both for a few moments. Time for some of that country boy charm.

He rose from his bench and headed for her. She was busy taking orders from rowdy patrons. He waited until she headed back toward the kitchen and approached her.

“Excuse me,” he said over the revelry.

The woman stopped and turned around.

She was pretty and knew it with golden hair and hazel eyes. Perfect teeth and creamy skin further testified to a healthy life.

“I’m afraid my German is really bad,” he said. “I hope your English is better.”

She tossed him a smile. “My English is quite good. And who are you?”

He handed her a hundred-euro note. “Someone who needs a little education. I was hopin’ you could help me.”

She swept the money from his fingers. “What do you want to know?”

“The two guys you talked to earlier. The ones who were sittin’ with that older guy, there, with the beard.”

“That’s Frederick,” she said. “He comes here all the time.”

“And who might Frederick be?”

“You with the police?”

“How many policemen offer you a hundred euros?”

And he tossed her one of his trademarked million-dollar smiles, which rarely let him down.

“I’d still like to know who you are.”

“Jonathan Smith.”

She glared at him with suspicious eyes. “All right, Herr Smith. Frederick is one of the black robes. The other two who were there with him are black robers too.”

“What are black robers?”

“They’re a strange lot. The Guglmänner.”

A new word. “Can you translate that for me?”

She seemed to enjoy his ignorance. But a hundred euros had to buy him a full explanation.

“Guglis an old word for ‘hood.’ They wear black robes with pointy hoods. Men bitter about everything.”

She motioned for him to follow her across the hall. He’d not paid much attention to the pictures on the walls that lined the hall. Large black-and-white images of German life. He’d thought them just innocuous prints, there for show, but now he saw them to be enlarged photographs. Blondie led him to one on the far side, near the alcove for the restrooms. An image of black-robed men, in pointed hoods, marching down a street, carrying torches.

Like the damn Ku Klux Klan.

Chapter 20

COTTON WORKED HIS WAY THROUGH THE DARK UNDERBRUSH,weaving a path across patchy snow and around thick tree trunks, careful with his steps as the hard earth was seamed with slabs of slippery rock. He snaked his way clear of the snatching brambles and began a leopard crawl up a slight rise. A near-winter wind whipped through the naked branches with a lonely primordial moan. A shrouded moon offered no useful light. His breath came in puffy blue clouds and he kept his attention ahead on what he now saw was a blazing fire, the flames licking high into the night air.

He approached closer and spotted silhouettes near the flames, off to one side. Shadows? No. Six people wearing black robes with pointed hoods. His mind floated back to images from the early twentieth century and other men gathered around burning crosses. But their robes and hoods had been white.

What was this?