She sat on the damp stone floor, and the cold wrapped around her body like icy claws. She was all alone and she was hungry, her stomach gnawing and cramping as it had after her mother and father died and she had no food. Nearly half the town of Thornbeck had perished in less than one year from the horrible sickness that ravaged its victims’ bodies and left them dead, sometimes after only one day of being sick. She had been five years old, but being in the dungeon vividly brought back her terror at being left alone with no one to care for her.
Odette shivered and wrapped her arms around her empty stomach. “Jorgen?” she called, but there was no answer.
She bolted upright in bed, a cold sweat on her brow and under her arms.
She had told Anna that she rarely had pleasant dreams, but one would have thought she could have dreamed something a bit less horrific on Midsummer night.
The next day Brother Philip came to tutor her. She usually relished her time with him and the opportunity to study, but today she could not concentrate. She could not stop thinking about Jorgen Hartman. She had not had a chance to tell Rutger who Jorgen was—that her uncle had invited the margrave’s forester to her birthday dinner.
“Odette, are you listening to me?” Brother Philip was glaring at her.
“Oh, forgive me.” Odette blinked hard and focused on Brother Philip’s leathery face. “What did you say?”
“I brought you a Book of Hours I found at the monastery library. I am risking a lot by bringing it to you, so I would think you would at least be attentive when I tell you about it.”
She would rather he just give it to her and let her read it. Must he always talk everything to death first?
He went on with his lecture on how various copies of the Book of Hours differed from each other, as well as how they differed from the breviary and the Psalter.
Brother Philip mentioned penitence, which brought once again to Odette’s mind the dream she had had about Jorgen. It was the look on Jorgen’s face she now could not get out of her mind. Anger, hurt, disappointment—she couldn’t quite define it, but it haunted her.
Perhaps her poaching was not the right thing to do. When she was eight years old, she’d fashioned a crude bow and some arrows and shot her first pheasant. She remembered the pain of guilt she had felt. But when she had shared the meat with two other orphans who were starving, her guilt vanished.
But what she was doing violated forest law.
Still, the poor people would go hungry if she did not feed them. Her heart told her it was the right thing to do, that God would reward her for her kindness to the poor. Didn’t the friars who wandered about preaching God’s Word say the same? That it was the rich rulers, like the Margrave of Thornbeck, who oppressed the poor? And did the Bible not say God would carry out his vengeance on those who ignored the needs of the poor?
It was that silly superstition. Anna had insisted she place her flower circlet under her pillow, along with a bunch of calendula and St. John’s wort, so she would dream of her future husband. But the only man she had dreamed of was Jorgen Hartman, the forester, throwing her into the dungeon. And even though his blue-green eyes made her heart thump hard against her chest, the dream had helped confirm her realization that she could never marry him.
Finally Brother Philip produced the Book of Hours. He made her rub her hands on a clean cloth before he would allow her to turn the pages, but it was worth it when she saw the beautiful illuminations on the pages. Colorful painted pictures of scenes from the Bible shone brightly. The margins of some of the pages were decorated with elaborately intricate flowers, leaves, and vines.
Perhaps the beautiful illuminations should have inspired her to appreciate God’s creation and give thanks for it, but mostly they made her mind wander to when she was very small and her mother had kept a beautiful flower garden in their small courtyard behind their house.
Then her mind roamed to more immediate recollections. How many children would go hungry today because Odette had not been able to go hunting the night before, when there were too many people roaming the forest celebrating Midsummer? She had slept little, having awakened from her dream feeling cold, the pungent smell of calendula in her nostrils.
“Forgive me, Brother Philip, but I am too tired to study today.”
He frowned at her. “No doubt you engaged in too much frivolity last night.”
“If you are wondering if I went to the town center and danced with men I had never met before, you would be correct.” Odette couldn’t resist saying things she knew would evoke a look of shock on the monk’s face.