Suddenly she tripped. She fell on her hands and chin, and her teeth snapped together. She covered her head with her arms, but the stag slammed his antlers into her back.
Odette awoke with a gasp, pushing herself up with her hands. It was only a dream . . . only a dream.
It had seemed so real. Her jaw ached as if her teeth really had slammed together. But it was not real. The stag she had injured—and which Jorgen had been forced to put out of his misery—he was not still alive. He was not goring her in the back. It was only a dream.
“O Father God,” Odette whispered, “I do not want to do this anymore.” It was getting harder and harder to find deer to kill, and she simply was tired of it. “God, what am I to do? Help me.”
She saw the pinched face of Hanns and the rest of the children, hungry and unsmiling. She couldn’t let them down, could she?
She forced herself to get out of bed and put on her hunting clothes. She had wanted to stay awake and talk to Rutger, to confront him about what was happening to the deer she had been killing and also about the missing vase and tapestry, but he had not come home at his usual time, and she had fallen asleep. But it was dark now, and she had to go see if she could find a deer. For Hanns.
Half an hour later, she was stalking through the trees. She kept an arrow nocked and ready, for she had seen a deer only a moment before, barely visible between the leaves of a tree. She wanted to get a good shot at it since she couldn’t afford to lose any more arrows and didn’t want to wound any more deer.
She crept quite close, her feet soundless as she moved carefully. The deer also moved forward, bending toward the ground, then lifting its slender head. It stood motionless while Odette took careful aim. She was so close she aimed for the spot on its head that would kill it instantly. She let the arrow fly, and it found its mark. The deer fell to the ground.
As the boys swarmed to prepare it to be taken out of the forest, she heard one of them murmur, “Amazing shot,” and shake his head.
Few people would ever know of her skill with a bow and arrow. But the food she was providing for the poor was what she was most proud of, and now she wasn’t sure if the deer she had been killing were even going to feed the poor. What was happening to her kills? She would make sure part of this meat went to Hanns. She had the boys wrap up a big share of it and help her sling it over her shoulder as she trudged toward the little hovel Hanns shared with his mother.
“What did you discover?” Jorgen approached Dieter at the fountain the next day.
“Rutger is an interesting person.” Dieter’s lips twisted in a wry frown as he remained standing. “He went to the corner of Roemer and Butcher’s Guild Strasse and waited for several minutes, as if he was looking for someone. Mathis Papendorp walked up and they talked for a few minutes. Then they went their separate ways.”
“Mathis Papendorp?” Now that he thought about it, Mathis had been at the ball as well, lurking in the shadows with Rutger. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Maybe they had schemed together to have another woman trick him into kissing her, and they made sure Odette was there to see it. Of course Rutger would rather his niece marry Mathis, who was wealthy and influential, than marry Jorgen, who was merely a forester. But even though he had never thought of Rutger as the sort of man to do something so underhanded, Jorgen could easily imagine Mathis working to persuade Rutger to help him undermine Jorgen’s character in Odette’s eyes.
“Did he go anywhere else?”
“Yes. It was still very early in the morning, and he went to The Red House.”
Jorgen blinked. “The Red House?”
“He went in the back door by way of the alley. I was afraid to try to follow him in. He would see me if I did. So I waited outside.”
“Did he leave with anything, like a bundle?”
“No. He stayed for several minutes, then came back out.”
“But today was not a black-market day,” Jorgen said. “Where did he go after that?”
“He went to the storehouse near the north gate. Everyone there was bowing and showing deference to him so I assumed he owned it.”
“Yes, I believe he does.”
“But he also met three young men, just boys around thirteen or fourteen, and spoke to them for several minutes. He gave them each some money.”
“Did you hear anything he said to them?”
“I tried to get close enough, but he was speaking too quietly.”
“What did the boys look like?”
“Ordinary, their clothing rather poor, and they were all rather thin. After he gave them money, they left and Rutger went inside the storehouse. When I left to come here, he was still there.”