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 toward 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.