“I think you are . . . a very complimentary gentleman.” She laughed a little, hoping to lighten the moment and break away from him to say farewell to Jorgen. “I shall be back in a moment.”
She pulled out of Mathis’s grasp and reached Jorgen just before he passed through the small entryway between the main room and the front door. Others were standing nearby, including Rutger, and she felt his eyes on her.
As she rushed forward, Jorgen turned. She found herself face-to-face with him. “Don’t forget. The children and . . . the verses.” She hoped she had kept her words vague enough that she had not revealed their rendezvous to Rutger.
He gazed intently into her eyes. “I won’t forget.” His crooked smile stole her breath.
Rutger gave her a weighty look, but Anna and Peter were also waiting to say farewell. She embraced her friend, who whispered in her ear, “I shall come tomorrow. I want to know where you and Jorgen went.”
Odette ignored Rutger’s look of suspicion and went back to Mathis. “Forgive me, but I am so exhausted. I do not wish to dance anymore.”
He did not protest, probably because the minstrels were playing their last song and everyone was leaving.
“Good night, my fair Odette.” Mathis kissed her hand.
“Gute Nacht,” Odette answered, trying to look kind but not flirtatious. Thankfully, Rutger was standing nearby. She had a nervous feeling that Mathis might have told her he wished to marry her if her uncle had not been there.
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.