The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest

by Melanie Dickerson

  When all the guests were gone, Odette squeezed her uncle’s arm. “Thank you for the party.”

  “Did you have a pleasant birthday?”

  “Oh ja, very pleasant.”

  “It gives me joy to hear it.”

  Perhaps she didn’t thank him enough. Her conversation with Jorgen tonight had reminded her how her uncle had saved her from crushing lack, loneliness, and mistreatment at the hands of people who did not love her. She owed him so much.

  Tomorrow she would tell him about the arrow and about Jorgen’s realization that there was a poacher about, killing stags. For now she had to prepare herself for the hunt. She didn’t want anyone to go hungry tomorrow because she had danced too much and was too tired.

  And she had tomorrow afternoon with Jorgen and the children to look forward to.

  8

  ODETTE YAWNED AS she walked to the place outside the town wall on the south side where she taught the poorest children to read and write. Most of them lived in rickety shacks propped against the brick wall of the town. The little hovels were made of cast-off materials—wood, tree limbs, blankets, and whatever else they could find to keep out the wind and rain. Some of them were orphans and lived with older siblings, and some lived with parents who couldn’t work due to sickness or infirmity and couldn’t provide a better place to live.

  These children were too embarrassed by their shabby clothing to attend the town school. The other children would tease them mercilessly. She suspected that if it were not for her, the children would not care enough to learn their letters and numbers, or how to read and write, add and subtract, which she also planned to teach them.

  As she drew nearer the patch of bare ground where the children played and where they practiced making letters by drawing them with sticks in the dirt, she heard Jorgen’s voice.

  He was standing, and the children were sitting in a semicircle in front of him. They were gazing up at him in rapt attention.

  “. . . and when the rabbit hopped, the wolf leapt and landed on the grass. But there was no hare beneath his paws. His dinner had disappeared.”

  The children began to ask questions in hushed tones, and he answered them patiently, glancing at Odette every so often as she was standing behind the children. Finally he announced, “Your teacher is here, so listen to her now.”

  Odette came forward while he took a step back. “You are not leaving yet,” she warned him before turning and facing the children.

  She spoke to them for a moment before asking, “Wouldn’t you like to hear some more of Forester Jorgen’s verses and tales?”

  The children cheered and shouted their assent.

  Jorgen half smiled before pulling some folded sheets of parchment from the pocket inside his hip-length leather tunic. Although up to now she had seen him wearing the style of dress of a middle-class burgher, today he wore the type of clothing one might expect of a forester going about his duties in the woods: A brown linen shirt covered his neck and arms, and over it was a green, sleeveless, leather cotehardie that buttoned down the front. A dagger hung from the belt around his waist.

  He looked just as handsome as he had the night before, only more rugged and more sure of himself—a combination that made her heart beat like the Minnesingers’ drums at the Midsummer festival.

  He first recited a poem about a magpie and a grasshopper that made the children laugh. Then he read them a tale about a baker and a starving raven that stole one of his pies. By the end of the story, the baker had made two pies for the bird and her baby birds. Of course, it was a children’s story in which the bird could talk, but it made tears come into Odette’s eyes. When he finished, she applauded along with the children.

  After each poem or rhyme or story, the children all begged him to read another. He spread his hands wide. “There are no more. I have read them all.”

  “Read them again!” the children shouted.

  Odette and Jorgen both laughed. He shook his head. “Not today.”

  Odette gave a short lesson, then dismissed the children to play. Jorgen walked her back toward the town gate.

  “Your tales and poems were delightful.” She probably sounded like the children as they had hopped up and down, squealing at him when he was done. But she didn’t care. He deserved the praise.

  He gazed down at her. Could he tell that she had slept very little the night before?

  She had been out hunting all night but only managed to shoot one pheasant. Anna woke her up early and called her “lazy head” for still being in bed. They had talked for hours about her party the night before.

  “It is true Jorgen is not rich.” Anna had frowned. “It is a pity because he is very handsome, and he seems to like you. But what man wouldn’t adore you? You are beautiful and will make someone a very good wife. Odette, why don’t you marry?”

  “And whom do you suggest?” Odette feigned a flippancy she did not feel.

  Anna sighed and shook her head. “That is the trouble. There is no one worthy of you.”

  Odette snorted.

  “Truly, if I had to pick someone, I do not know anyone I think is good enough for you. They are all either too old or too ugly or too . . . something.”

  Would Anna have felt the same way if she knew the secret Odette was keeping from her? She hated hiding things from Anna. Now she was even hiding something from her uncle, for when Rutger had confronted her about spending so much time with Jorgen at her party, she had not had the courage to tell him that Jorgen knew there was a poacher killing the deer in the forest, and that the reason he knew was he had found one of her arrows.

  She and Jorgen reached the gate, and he halted. “I must get back to my duties, but I want to thank you for asking me to come and read my writings to the children.”

  “They loved it so much. Your tales and verses were wonderful. I could see on the boys’ faces that you are now their model of a perfect man, and they will be talking about you and your stories for a long time. I do hope you will come again soon.”

  “I will.” He grew almost somber as he said softly, “You are their model of a perfect woman, and I can see why. Thank you for being so kind to them. You are probably the only kind person in most of their lives. They adore you.”

  Her heart did another strange leap inside her chest. “I adore them too.” Dirty, often reeking, sometimes crying, and sometimes cursing at one another—she dearly loved them.

  “Will you come again in two days? I teach them every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”

  He stared at her a moment, as if his eyes were seeking something in hers. He seemed to find what he was looking for and nodded.

  Odette’s heart beat quick and her hands shook that night as she clutched her bow and arrows to her chest underneath the black cloak she used to conceal them. She would never be able to keep her aim steady if she didn’t control her nervousness. Why was she so afraid?

  It was that foolish dream. She had dozed off after the evening meal, so tired after sleeping so little the last day and night, and dreamed once again that Jorgen was dragging her off to Thornbeck Castle’s dungeon and locking her inside. His reproachful stare had sent a physical pain through her chest. How he would despise her for deceiving him, for making him think she was a merchant’s daughter instead of a law-breaking poacher. How he would hate her for letting him tell her about the stags going missing, and all the while she was the one who had stolen them.

  But it was only a dream. Only a dream, she chanted to herself.

  Besides, who would help the starving children if she didn’t? The margrave sat inside his majestic castle enjoying every luxury, while not far from his castle, beside the wall of the very city he proposed to protect, children were going hungry. Was he trying to feed them? No.

  But Jorgen might not see this with the same view that she did. In fact, he seemed quite loyal to the margrave. Foolish men were always loyal to the wealthy and powerful, but was Jorgen foolish?

  She and the young men made their way tow
ard the cover of the trees. She would feel better when she was in the dense darkness of the forest. Jorgen would be asleep in his bed right now, not looking for poachers. But what if he was not in bed? What if he was indeed out looking for poachers—looking for her?

  She had to cease this kind of thinking. It was making her hands shake.

  They made it to the cover of the trees. Odette hid her old cloak in a bush and slung her quiver of arrows over her shoulder. She moved with stealth through the leaves toward one of her favored hunting sites. Squatting and peering through the leaves, she nocked an arrow to her bowstring and waited. Several deep breaths later, her hands were steady when a large stag with enormous antlers moved into view.

  She wasted no time but raised the bow, pulled back on the string, and sent the arrow flying toward the buck. But as soon as the arrow left her fingers, the hart moved. Then it jerked sideways and leapt away, disappearing as the normally silent creature crashed through the bushes.

  Odette gasped and almost dropped her bow. Had the animal been wounded? Or had she missed him?

  She ran forward, still hearing the animal crashing through the undergrowth. She tried to follow him, but the sound was growing faint. He was gone.

  She arrived at the place where the hart had been when she shot her arrow. There was no sign of it. She walked farther away, searching the ground, inside and under the bushes, kicking the leaves, but she still did not see the arrow.

  Getting down on her hands and knees, with the three young men also searching near her, she combed through the thick layer of cool, loamy, decomposing leaves.

  God, help me. I have to find that arrow. Her hands were shaking again. She couldn’t give Jorgen more evidence of her poaching.

  She went on searching until her hand touched something warm and wet and sticky on the leaves. She raised it to her face and sniffed. The coppery smell of blood. Her arrow must have wounded him.

  Her stomach churned. Bad enough to injure the animal without killing it, but now he would be carrying the evidence of her poaching with him.

  Feeling sick, her stomach threatening to throw up her dinner on the forest floor, she sucked in one deep breath after another. I must stay calm. She was sorry for the deer, but there was naught she could do for him. She must not think about his suffering.

  Odette forced her mind to conjure up the faces of the children she fed with her poached meat. Most of them did not know the meat came from her, or because of her, but they were the same children who attended her reading lessons, who gazed up at her with gratitude. How could she let them down? Would she now become squeamish and weak because she had injured the deer instead of killing him and let the children starve?

  And then there was the evidence of her arrow that was possibly still in the deer, more evidence of her crime. But no one would ever know the arrow was hers.

  One of the young men held out his hand to her. She grasped it and let him help her to her feet. She motioned for them to follow her and headed in the opposite direction the big buck had gone.

  “My dear.” Rutger found Odette in the kitchen the next day gathering some bread, cheese, and dried fruit to break her fast after waking from sleep. “Young Mathis Papendorp is proving to be a valuable acquaintance. It seems his father has invited us to his home for a dinner three days hence. Are you not happy to be invited to the home of Thornbeck’s Burgomeister?”

  Odette tried to muster a smile. She had dreamed of Jorgen again, and this time he had clamped her in the pillory in the town center and marketplace. He had lifted the wooden board, made her put her head and hands inside, and secured it. She was trapped, unable to move. People came to laugh and point at her. They threw rotten fruit at her face. They even approached and smeared mud and filth in her hair.

  Her stomach clenched. The dream had seemed so real. Not only could she smell the rotten fruit and feel it hitting her face, she had felt the hard wooden pillory around her neck, choking her if she didn’t hold her head a certain way, the wood biting into her wrists. Jorgen seemed to have vanished after placing her there. And Rutger had stood nearby, his arms folded across his chest as he refused to help her.

  She had woken herself up, thrashing her head to the side to avoid getting hit with a rotten egg. After that, she had another dream, no better than the first. A large stag with red eyes tried to gore her with his antlers out of revenge for what she had done to his brothers.

  “Odette, are you unwell? You look pale.”

  “Only a little tired. I am well.” She needed to put the ghastly dreams out of her thoughts. She would ask her uncle about something else that had been bothering her. “I have been thinking about what Mathis said about the margrave at my birthday feast.”

  “Oh? What did he say?”

  “He said there were rumors that the margrave set the fire in Thornbeck Castle deliberately and that he had wanted his brother to die so he could be margrave.” And if it was true, if the man could do something so ruthless to his own brother, what might he do to her if she was caught poaching?

  “It is only a rumor.”

  “Do you think the rumor is true?”

  Rutger shrugged. “No one knows, I suppose. Although it does seem likely. With his brother out of the way, with no heir and no wife, his younger brother would inherit everything. Otherwise, the younger brother would never be anything more than the captain of his brother’s guard.”

  When thinking about it like that, it did seem likely.

  “But I was speaking to you about the Burgomeister inviting us to his home for dinner. I thought you would be excited about seeing Mathis again. You seemed to enjoy dancing with him at your birthday dinner.”

  “I do enjoy dancing.”

  “I could imagine him asking you to marry him soon.”

  Odette shook her head. “I do not believe I would ever marry Mathis.”

  A look of disappointment flickered across his face. “I suspected as much.”

  “I am sorry, Uncle Rutger. You have been so good to me, and I’m sure my marriage to Mathis could advance your interests.” She waited for him to confirm or deny the truth of her statement.

  He shrugged. “While it is true that Mathis and his father could help my interests a great deal, I would not have you marry against your will.”

  She felt a tinge of guilt. Was she being selfish? Some people would say she was—selfish, foolish, and oblivious to her own interests.

  “I cannot marry anyway. Neither Mathis Papendorp nor any other man in Thornbeck would allow his wife to poach deer to feed the poor.”

  Rutger smiled, but there was a solemnity in his eyes that belied his amusement. Then he shifted his head as he seemed to have a new thought. “Of course you would not poach deer.” He turned partially away from her and fingered a beautiful vase from the Orient that sat on a small table. “You could influence the mayor and others of the wealthiest people in Thornbeck to form a special society to help the poor. You would no longer be forced to go out hunting every night.”

  It did sound appealing. She might stop dreaming these horrible dreams and finally be able to sleep.

  “You don’t want to hunt deer every night for the rest of your life, do you?”

  “No.” As she was realizing more and more. She couldn’t do it forever, and she was bound to get caught sooner or later.

  “Then why not marry Mathis?”

  Odette was silent for a few moments. “It is something to think about.” And another reason why she could never, ever marry Jorgen. He was not rich enough to help feed the poor. She might ask her uncle to help feed them, but because of his recent setbacks in losing his last three shipments of goods, she knew he was unable.

  “You look sad, my dear.”

  “I am not sad.” She shook her head, but even as she did, she had to blink away tears. How foolish. It was only because she was so tired, and exhaustion made her susceptible to tears.

  “There is a reason why I am mentioning all of this.” He stared at the colorful vase. “
I am worried about the forester discovering that you are the one poaching the margrave’s deer.”

  “Why do you say that?” A fist squeezed her stomach.

  “The men told me how you lost an arrow a few nights ago.”

  “I know. Both very careless mistakes.” Her breath shallowed.

  “These sorts of things will happen, no matter how careful you try to be.”

  She supposed that was true. It did seem as though her only choice was to marry someone rich who would not mind helping the poor.

  He said nothing for a moment. “Mathis Papendorp adores you. I think he would be easy to persuade. He would hardly miss the amount of money it would take to feed those children you teach. Unlike Jorgen Hartman.”

  “I have not decided to marry either man. Nor have they asked me.”

  “Forgive me. I have upset you with all this talk of marriage. You do not have to marry anyone, not as long as I am alive.” Uncle Rutger did not speak again for several moments while Odette’s thoughts churned. “But that is another thing to consider. I will not live forever, my dear. And if something unexpected were to happen to me, you could not go on as you have been. You would need to marry.”

  Rutger glanced down at the food she still clutched in her hands. “Go on and eat. I will leave you in peace.” He touched her cheek affectionately before leaving the room.

  Odette nibbled her bread as she sat at the kitchen table. Cook came bustling in from the cellar carrying potatoes and carrots.

  “Your uncle wants what is best for you,” Cook said in her usual grumbling tone of voice.

  “Did you hear our conversation?”

  “I may have heard some of it.” Her tone dared Odette to complain. “He has been so good, giving you everything a father might have given his own child. And then, when he should have made you see your duty was to marry, he never forced you, and you rejected every good and wealthy man he paraded in front of you. Well, it is not my place to criticize, but I have an opinion, I have. If Herr Menkels wants you to marry Mathis Papendorp, then I am sure it is the best thing for you, and if you were the dutiful niece you should be, you would not tell him no.”