The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest (11 page)

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.”

Odette’s cheeks grew hotter the longer Cook talked.

“You are right.” Odette stood to her full height and smoothed her skirt. “It is not your place to criticize.” She gathered her food into a cloth and trudged up the stairs to her bedchamber on the third floor. But before she even reached her door, a coldness filled her insides.

If Cook had overheard their conversation, then she had heard what Rutger said about her poaching. Would Cook tell anyone her secret?

9

J
ORGEN HAD BEEN
busy for days helping the gamekeeper set snares for the rabbits to control their numbers. It seemed a shame that some of the ones they had caught could not be shared with the poor, particularly the children Odette had been helping. He would suggest it to the margrave at their next meeting.

As he knelt to set the snare that was big enough to catch a hare but too small to harm a deer, he heard a rustling nearby, followed by the snort of a large animal.

He stood, moving as quietly as he could in the direction of the sounds. He could tell he was getting closer, as the labored breathing was getting louder.

He paused. If the large animal was human, he might be about to interrupt a young couple from Thornbeck doing things they could not get away with in town. But no. The blowing noise sounded like a deer in distress, and not a sound any human could make.

He stepped closer, entering a dense thicket of bushes and vines and small trees. Finally he saw it: a large hart lying on its side. He wasn’t moving, except for the heaving of his sides as he struggled to breathe. An arrow stuck out from his back haunch, with both dried and fresh blood around the wound. And the feathers on the arrow were white, just like the one he had found earlier.

Heat rose from his neck to his brow. Someone
was
poaching deer in Thornbeck Forest. This could well be the same poacher who stalked Jorgen’s father and then killed him.

The deer was dying. The kindest thing would be to dispatch him and put the poor creature out of its pain. He drew an arrow from his quiver and the bow from across his back and aimed for the spot behind its skull and from the angle that would kill the animal instantly. He released the arrow, and the hart’s heaving sides stilled.

Jorgen’s own breath was coming hard as he clenched his teeth and stared down at the poor dead deer and the arrow protruding from its flesh.

Who was poaching in Thornbeck Forest? If it was only an occasional deer to feed a man’s family, Jorgen might never catch him, but with as many deer as Jorgen suspected were missing, he must be selling the meat.

Anyone caught selling deer meat in the town center on market day or any butcher selling it from his shop would be arrested. This poacher was probably selling it secretly—which meant he was operating a black market.

But this could work in Jorgen’s favor, since the black-market selling would give him another way to find this poacher.

This was Jorgen’s chance to avenge his father’s death. No matter what Jorgen had to do, he would capture this poacher. And he would make sure the margrave did not let him off easy. However, he had a hunch that he needn’t worry about that. Lord Thornbeck would be inclined to punish this poacher to the full extent of the law.

Although Jorgen’s new job as forester was not well known inside the walls of the town of Thornbeck, he needed to make sure no one would recognize him today.

Jorgen donned a long dark-blue surcoat that reached to his ankles. The air was still moist and cool from the heavy rain of the early morning, so he would not appear quite so strange as he pulled the hood over his head to partially obscure his face.

He set out from his home in the forest. Once inside the city, he headed toward the town square. As it was Tuesday, the market would be underway, with sellers and buyers crowding the circular cobblestoned area. Even the rain earlier would not stop most of the sellers. But first he went inside a shop on Butcher’s Guild Strasse, the street where nearly every shop sold meat of various kinds.

He asked the shopkeeper, a plump woman old enough to be his mother and who was probably the butcher’s wife, to tell him what kind of meat she sold.

“What kind do you want?”

“I want something that tastes of the wild.”

“Tastes of the wild?” She scrunched her face at him. “What do you mean? All our meat was raised in the meadows surrounding Thornbeck. We don’t sell wild meat here.”

“Do you know anyone who does? I would pay a lot of money for some deer meat.” He watched her for her reaction.

“I know not where you can get such meat.” She huffed and turned on her heel and went into the back room. When she returned, she laid a large goose, all plucked and ready to be cooked, across the counter. “That’s as wild as we sell here, and it was raised at the old Schindler farm north of town. They clip their wings when they’re young, so their meat is as tender and tasty as any you will find.” She fixed him with a narrowed stare. “If you find deer meat, that’ll be poached from the margrave’s own land, and we
would never sell poached meat here. The margrave would have our heads. Unless you are daft, you should know that.”

“I see you are an honest woman. That is admirable. Perhaps I will come back for the goose on my way home.”

Jorgen left the shop, joined the crowd on their way to the market, and looked around. Sellers of every description had their booths set up and their wares on display, and Jorgen saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one looked as if he was selling venison. No one even looked suspicious.