Odette was sure that the voice belonged to Jorgen.
A cry rang out above the crashing sounds she and the boys were making as they ran through the forest. Had one of the boys been caught? Would he tell Jorgen the truth about who was doing the poaching and why?
As she continued to run through the trees and undergrowth, her head throbbed with every footfall. She emerged from the trees at full speed. The boys were nowhere to be seen, but they had run in different directions. They would find hiding places somewhere.
Odette found the hole in the town wall, just big enough for her to squeeze through, where she always came and went after dark. She moved the loose stones and squirmed her way through, then put them back in place before hurrying through the back alleys of the town. She climbed over the garden fence and went in the back door.
She leaned against it, trying to calm her breathing. O Father God, please do not let Jorgen find out what I have been doing. Thinking of how her poaching would look through Jorgen’s eyes, a stab of pain went through her stomach. She was stealing. Those deer belonged to the king and the margrave, not to her, even if she was doing it for good reason.
But perhaps the boy would not tell Jorgen about her. Perhaps he even got away, slipping out of the forester’s grasp before he could take him back to the margrave’s dungeon.
Odette’s skin felt cold and clammy around the collar of her leather cotehardie. Her sweat had chilled as she ran, and her head was as light as a cloud, as if it might float away. Her stomach roiled, and she placed her hand on her midsection. “Do not get sick. Do not get sick,” she told her stomach.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about Jorgen or the poor boy he had caught. There was naught she could do about it now. She would breathe evenly, in and out, and concentrate on getting to bed without anyone hearing her.
She crept up the steps to her chamber door, which she had left ajar. The door creaked when she pushed on it. Once inside, she moved as quietly as she could to the other end of the room. She opened the trunk and placed her bow and arrows inside, then started to remove her hunting clothes.
“Where have you been?”
Odette spun around. “Anna.” She clutched her hands over her chest to keep her heart from leaping out. “You frightened the life from me. What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you when you left my house in the middle of the night. And what are you wearing? Odette, this is strange. Where did you go? What did you do?”
“Anna, I . . .” How could she lie to Anna? At the thought of telling her the truth, her heart started pounding again, thundering in her head, so hard it made her feel weak. But was that fear making her sick? Or was it the exhaustion of keeping her secret? She had never told a soul, but it would feel good to be able to share it. She could trust Anna, couldn’t she? “If I tell you, do you vow not to tell anyone?”
Anna, who was lying in Odette’s bed, sat up and threw off the covers. “I won’t tell a living soul.” She scrambled out of the bed and went to help Odette undo the lacings on her leather stockings and her leather cotehardie, which protected her from thorns and tree limbs.
“I do not quite remember how it started,” Odette said.
“How what started?” Anna worked at a knot in the lacings on her left stocking.
How should she word this? “I am . . . I have been poaching deer from Thornbeck Forest. At night. Every night for the past year.” She felt weak, so weak her knees nearly buckled.
“Odette!” Anna gasped. “Poaching! This is unaccountably strange. But . . . But . . . Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
Her stomach twisted at Anna’s tone. “I am feeding dozens of orphans and poor families.” That justified her actions, did it not? “Why should the animals live and die in the forest and be no good to anyone?” But it sounded like a pitiful excuse, now that she was saying it out loud.
Anna covered her open mouth with her hand. The moonlight through the window showed how big her eyes were as she stared at Odette. “You . . . you are so . . . brave.” She let out a strangled laugh. “You go out every night and kill deer in the margrave’s forest? I have never heard of anything so exciting!” She laughed again.
“Shh. Someone will hear you.” Odette allowed herself a tiny smile at Anna’s enthusiastic reaction.
“I wish I could see you out there, stalking through the trees, hunting down your prey, and killing the margrave’s deer to feed the poor. It is romantic.”
Odette sank down on the bed. “It’s hardly romantic, but I am relieved you aren’t scolding me.” She sighed as she lay back on her pillow. “It is exhausting.”