Judith didn’t want one of the boring village lads that her friends had married. She wanted a handsome man, strong and fit. She wanted Nathaniel. And she’d bedded him.
Judith should repent.
“All you can cook is soup,” Alice said. “Once in a while, a man wants a treat from his wife. A cake or a pie.”
“Or a silver-plated pocket watch,” Judith said curtly.
Her sister blushed in anger, but everyone in town whispered that Alice had bought Nathaniel. Judith felt ashamed of herself then. Not only did she wrong her sister in secret, but she also spoke to her with malice.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Finish with that, you silly twit,” Alice said. “If it were up to you, we’d eat a lump of burnt dough.”
Perhaps, but I’ve had the man I want, she thought, and washed her hands, hoping to wash herself of her traitorous thoughts, but they were there, unsought—both the triumph she felt and the quiet shame.
The kisses he’d planted on her mouth lingered, deep as cuts upon her flesh, and their memory made her ache. Yet she muffled this pain, tried to erase his touch from her mind. She decided she’d imagined the whole encounter, possessed by a strange, feverish dream. She could be good, she could forget, she must.
Two days passed and then another.
Nathaniel went down the steps, rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Good morning, Judy,” he said.
She nodded at him but kept her eyes on her shoes, hoping she seemed dignified instead of guilty.
“I’m hunting today. Around noon I think I might rest at that abandoned hut you’re so fond of,” he said, his voice light.
Judith raised her eyes, but he was looking at the forest, not at her. She stared at him as he walked off.
Later, after she helped in the store for a bit, Judith slipped into the forest and into the hut. He was not there, and Judith found the book she’d left behind upon the floor. She picked it up and sat on the bed, looking out the window with its tiny glass panes. She did not know whether to smile or weep, and she rubbed her hands thinking she should do penance, while remembering the weight of Nathaniel’s body.
It was a sin to lay with a man who was not her own husband. She ought to have confessed to the priest. She might have run to church, too, if Nathaniel hadn’t come in then, shaking his head, snow sliding off his shoulders.
“I’m freezing. You haven’t started a fire?” he asked.
She watched as he did just that, then turned toward her and smiled. She protested vaguely—“You must not covet,” she whispered—but he smothered her words with his mouth while she helped him out of his clothes with hasty fingers.
She avoided him for a whole week.
The snow now lay like a blanket over the village, muffling all noises, and the hemlocks were bent by the weight of this whiteness.
Nathaniel, Nathaniel. Her heart was aflame, her eyes sought him at the dinner table, and yet she wanted to be virtuous. She’d be destined for Hell if she took him on as her lover.
Twice she’d sinned. Twice this folly. Twice damned.
She hadn’t truly intended any evil. Both times she’d been caught by surprise, and their coupling had been a desperate, impulsive affair.
She walked the path to the hut but strayed from it, drifting between the trees, grabbing a twig and snapping it in two. She heard humming and stopped, thinking it was Nathaniel who was following her, but the voice did not sound familiar.
“Who goes there?” she asked. “I have a knife.”
“Fine. I have a pistol,” the stranger said as he emerged from behind a tree. He carried over his shoulder a bundle and in his left hand an apple, which he bit into with a resolute crunch.
Judith frowned. “That’s not a pistol.”
“It’s tucked away. Besides, I don’t see the knife.”
Judith placed her hands behind her back. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for a place to sleep.”
“Go to the tavern.”
“They charge too much.”
“Then you are a vagrant.”
“I’m a visitor.” He tossed the apple in the air and caught it. “I heard there’s an abandoned woodsman’s hut somewhere.”
“It’s no woodsman’s hut, and you can’t stay there.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t. Head back into town and break into a stable.”
“And be chased by a man with a rifle?” He took another bite. A grin spread across his face. “Take me to the hut. I’ll give you a gift.”
“I don’t want another silly kiss from you.”
“It’s not a kiss. I’m not going to touch you,” he said, and he chewed and swallowed a bit of apple before speaking again. “I have a book.”
“I’m not showing you my breasts for it. Besides, I already have a book.”
“You have a bawdy book. How about a book about terrifying monsters and hideous ghosts?”
Judith thought it was stupid to listen to the ruffian, but on the other hand, their conversation distracted her from the matter of Nathaniel and the damnation of her soul.
“You stay one night, but then you are gone—you understand? That is my place and mine alone,” she said.
He agreed to it. When they walked in, she lit a fire and watched as he sat down in one of the chairs and took off his coat. A tiny gray cloth bag dangled from a cord around his neck.
He pulled out a book from one of his coat pockets, setting it on the table. Judith bent over it and turned the pages. There were indeed many hideous monsters jumping from behind doors and ghosts shaking their chains in the illustrations of the little book.
“What’s your favorite fiend?” he asked.
“Monsters from the lakes,” Judith said. “The kind that snatch children when they walk by the water.”
“You’re a wicked creature.”
“What’s your favorite one?”
He turned the pages and tapped a gloved finger softly against an illustration. “Lycanthrope. Shape changer.”
Judith looked at the picture. It was a man who was tearing his chest open with both hands as a wolf’s head emerged from under his skin, ready to devour a woman with long, flowing hair who lay in bed screaming.
“Bah. That’s not frightening.”
“Care for a bite?” he asked, offering her the half-eaten apple.
“No. What are you really doing around here? Are you a thief?”
“First I’m a vagrant and then I’m a thief?”
“You’re not a hunter,” she said, thinking of Nathaniel sprawled naked upon the bed in the corner. “Or any decent thing.”
“I’m a nobleman outrunning a dire curse,” he said.
“What sort of curse?”
“A curse of hunger, where one can never be satisfied. You taste the blood of a fresh kill and then you must hunt at nights. It boils through your body, the evil, because you stole a relic from a faraway land.”
“There, you see?” she said. “You are a thief.”
“If it pleases you better, I’ve been enchanted by a warlock who dwells in a cave.”
She laughed at that and stood up. She’d been out for too long. Her sister would be wondering where she was, and if not her, then perhaps Nathaniel. She did not want him to find her with the stranger.