“Martin.”
“Martin, do not lose this.” He handed him some coins. “Buy some food for yourself and your sister.”
The whites of the boy’s eyes flashed, as did his teeth, as he finally smiled. “Thank you.” He grabbed his sister’s hand and ran away.
Jorgen turned back in the direction of the town center and Marktplatz, blinking to try to erase the memory that the boy and his little sister had brought to the surface. The sounds of lute, hurdy-gurdy, and a Minnesinger’s voice singing a familiar ballad lured him on toward the music and dancing, where he might forget that he was ever as poor, hungry, and desperate as the two children he had just seen.
2
ODETTE’S FRIEND ANNA held up a braided wildflower circlet and placed it on Odette’s head. “Now you are ready for the Midsummer festival.”
“Do you not think I’m getting too old to dress like the other unmarried maidens on Midsummer?”
“Of course not. You are unmarried, are you not? You’ll be the fairest maiden in the town square.”
Odette embraced her friend. “And you’ll be the fairest married woman there.”
Anna laughed. “And the sleepiest. The baby woke me up three times last night.”
They stood admiring each other in the large ground-floor room of the half-timber house where Odette lived with her uncle. Odette wore the lightweight, white linen overdress that all the maidens wore on Midsummer’s Eve, while Anna wore a beautiful blue cotehardie with cutaway sides and a decorative belt.
One of the maidservants came down the stairs with the cloths, brushes, and bucket she used for cleaning the upper floors.
Had Odette hidden her bow and arrows before going to bed just before dawn? The sick feeling in her stomach told her she had forgotten.
Trying to hold on to her smile, Odette squeezed her friend’s arm. “Wait here while I go do something.”
Odette rushed up the stairs to her bedchamber on the third floor and nearly ran into her uncle in the stairwell. “Uncle Rutger. I didn’t see you. Did Heinke clean my chamber?”
He shrugged. “She may have. Did you need her to do something for you?”
“It’s nothing. I just need to . . .” Odette hastened away without finishing her sentence. Inside her chamber, the flagstone floor was swept clean and the bedclothes were straightened. But the old cloak she used to cover her longbow and arrows was lying folded across her bed.
Odette scurried to her trunk against the wall. She yanked off the bear fur that lay over it and raised the lid. Her longbow and arrows were not inside.
Glancing around frantically, she caught sight of them leaning against the wall in the corner. How could she have left them in plain sight?
“Is that what I think it is?”
Odette spun around. Rutger stood in the doorway. Her uncle was only a bit taller than she was, and he was thin, with thinning brown hair.
“Oh. I didn’t hear you there.” Her heart thumped against her chest, and she hurried to grab the cloak off her bed, then to the corner where her weapons were resting against the wall. She wrapped the bow and arrows in the cloak.
“Did you not think it would be a good idea to hide that from view?” Rutger quirked up one side of his mouth.
“Of course. I never leave them out where anyone can see them. Last night I must have forgotten.” She cringed as she placed them into the trunk and closed the lid, then drew the bearskin over it.
Odette closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath. Heinke would not tell anyone that Odette owned a longbow and arrows, would she? And even if she did, they would never suspect the niece of a respectable merchant of poaching . . . would they?
“People will wonder what Odette Menkels is doing with a bow and arrows in her bedchamber. You could say you were hunting for a husband.”
Odette rolled her eyes at him.
His dark eyebrows drew together. “But to be serious, if the margrave’s forester were to discover . . .”
“I know,” Odette said softly. She was in constant fear of the forester, whose job it was to capture poachers and bring them to the margrave to be punished.
She did not tell him she had lost an arrow in the margrave’s forest last night.
Anna called to her from downstairs, and Rutger asked, “Do you need me to go to the festival to approve or disapprove of any young men wishing to dance with you?”
“Anna and Peter will be with me. Their mothers are staying home with the children.”
“Very well.”
“Perhaps you should come and find yourself a pretty wife.” Odette raised her brows at him.