“Be gone by the morning, you hear me?”
“I will,” he said. “But I’ll meet you again, some other time, Judith of the Black Hair.”
The stranger had finished eating his apple and threw the core into the fire, leaning back placidly against his chair. She stepped outside.
Nathaniel cornered her in the kitchen that night. He looked bitterly unhappy and spoke in a low voice. His handsome face was racked with grief.
“What have I done? What is it?”
“You know what we’ve done,” she said and looked down at her hands, which shook a little.
“You don’t love me, Judy?”
Love! What a simple word that could not encompass her feelings, so deep and turbulent she feared she’d drown just by looking at him. Her every waking hour was yearning; the nights were sleepless sorrow. From the first moment he’d spoken to her, she’d loved him, then had to endure the agony of his loss. Now she knew a new agony, both the pleasure of his embrace and the weight of sin.
Judith could hear her sister coming down the stairs, the boards creaking with a familiar rhythm.
“We cannot speak now,” she said.
“Meet me tomorrow, at the hut.”
She agreed to meet him, partially because she was curious to find out if the stranger would still be there. She didn’t wish for a confrontation between the two men, but she wanted to see if the outsider would keep his promise and exit the hut upon the morning. It seemed that was the case, and he had not left a trace of himself behind. The book on the table was gone, and the fire was out.
No sooner had she walked in than Nathaniel opened the door. He immediately had her on the bed, tugging at her skirts.
“It’s wickedness,” she told him while he kissed her neck. “We should stop. You’re married to my sister.”
“I should not have married Alice. I had not felt like I had a home in such a long time, and you were all so kind, I did not wish to lose that. She made it clear if I didn’t wed her, I must leave. By God, Judith, I made a mistake, but I love you, not her. Alice and I are scarcely together, you know that.”
There was truth to that statement. Nathaniel was polite to his wife, but not particularly affectionate, and they had separate rooms. Alice and her first husband had also kept separate rooms, but it was because he snored. Nathaniel and Alice had not even honeymooned together, even though Alice had grumbled about this: she’d wanted to travel, to buy pretty trinkets at a seaside town.
Oh, Nathaniel was happy enough to sit at Alice’s table and to help in the shop. He seemed to enjoy his higher position in the village, where he was now a merchant instead of a common hunter. But he had never seemed enamored of Alice as Judith would have imagined a new husband would be. The townspeople said Alice had bought him. Perhaps she had.
“If I could pick again, I’d marry you,” he said.
The thought of Judith being preferred over her sister made her feel a little proud, even if she shouldn’t, just as she shouldn’t desire Nathaniel.
“It’s still a misdeed,” she muttered.
“We ought to run away together,” he said. “Alice will find another man, she’s young enough. She’ll do fine and we can begin anew, where no one knows us.”
“You’d do that?”
“Yes,” he said as his fingers skimmed her thighs and she arched her back, even as she tried to mumble about iniquity and depravity. But she’d loved him so much in secret and silence, and now he was there. “We’ll go, in the spring, with the thaw.”
A wolf was howling, braving the bitter cold outside. But it was not cold, not in her heart, her body aflame and her head filled with thoughts of all the places they might venture to. The city, south of the town, where they built great cathedrals and palaces, where the cold did not snap the bones. He slipped into her body, and she thought maybe there really were curses, and her curse was to want him like this, against all reason and decency.
“That’s that big wolf again,” Nathaniel said afterward as he put on his shirt. “When I catch it, I’m going to make a cape for you from its fur.”
“Is a wolf pelt worth anything?”
“It’ll have to be. The winter is bad, there are few foxes around, and everything else is scarce. I’ve hardly caught a thing. Then again, you’re a mighty big distraction.”
“I don’t need a pelt, just you.”
“That you have already,” he said.
“Must you rush out?” she asked. She wished to explore the naked expanse of his back, to whisper secrets in his ear, and to listen to the murmur of his pulse as she fell asleep.
“They’ll be expecting me back at the house,” he said.
Alice would be expecting him. Judith chewed on a nail and watched him as he adjusted his coat.
“I dreamt of you once, before you came to this town,” she said. “It can’t be wrong if I dreamt of you, can it?”
He laughed. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. Kiss me,” Judith said, clutching him with desperate hands, hoping he might remain a few minutes longer, but he smiled and said he must depart before he was missed. When he stepped out, she fell back on the bed, her hands stretched above her head, her heart still beating madly to the rhythm of their lovemaking.
Heavy white flakes cloaked the roofs of the village, and the tops of the pine trees leaned a little toward the rising sun. Inside the store, Nathaniel was going through the sums while Judith rearranged preserve jars. The shop boy had stepped out, complaining of a toothache, and promised to be back in an hour, so she was assisting Nathaniel with his chores.
The bell above the door jingled as someone walked in, and she heard the telltale humming of a man as he approached the counter.
“You have tobacco, do you?” he asked.
Judith, her back to the entrance, stood rigidly with a jar in her hands while Nathaniel helped the customer. The man left quickly, and a few minutes later, someone else came looking for soap. Judith stepped out of the shop.
She found the stranger a few paces from the shop’s entrance, leaning against a wall. He was carrying a long string of onions over his shoulder and smiled at her.
“What were you doing in there?” she asked.
“Getting myself a pinch of tobacco. It’ll make these onions go down better if I can smoke a pipe. This is my supper, you see, and rather meager it is.”
“You should have spent your money on meat instead of tobacco, then.”
“One must nurse a few vices,” he said. “You wouldn’t have a crust of bread, would you?”
“Leave town. Go beg in a big village.”
“Beggars are arrested in big villages.”
“In small ones too,” she said.
He looked thinner than when they’d first met, his high cheekbones straining against his skin. She imagined that underneath his clothes he was more bone than flesh.
“Come back after dark,” she said. “I’ll give you your crust of bread then.”
The shop boy returned, and Nathaniel headed back to the guesthouse. Before dusk, Judith told the shop boy that she’d close by herself. The boy was so grateful he practically skipped home. The stranger appeared a little afterward, and she locked the door, guiding him to the storage room, where she grabbed a jar of pickles and another with jam. She tossed them in a burlap sack, along with a loaf of bread she’d pilfered from the kitchen. She supposed he wouldn’t complain about its quality, like her sister did.