“There,” she said. “Count yourself lucky and don’t bother me again.”
“You are the very soul of charity,” he said, and his smile was sardonic and sharp as usual. Sharp as a blade he was, and those eyes of his were a bit like ice, bright and cool.
“Where are you sleeping? Not in the hut, I hope. You’re not allowed back there.”
“I wouldn’t go inside unless you invited me.”
“Good. Because if you break a window and try to wiggle in, you’ll be sorry. Are you sleeping in someone’s stable? Sneaking in at night?”
“Maybe I slide into the bed of a matron with a nightcap on her head and warm her better than a pelt,” he said.
“You’re silly and you must go away. Why should you remain here?”
“The winter is hard everywhere, and the local priest is more generous than the ones at other parishes,” he said. “On occasion he’ll hand a man a bowl of soup in exchange for clearing the snow from his steps. In other places, they’ll beat you with a club and give chase.”
She thought it must be a sorry existence to be wandering from village to village like that, begging for scraps and doing menial work, with the threat of the authorities dragging you to jail.
The stranger sat down and took off his coat and his leather gloves. His hands did not look roughened up, although he had dark, ugly hairs on his knuckles and his nails were long. Then again, he seemed hairy all over, with a full beard and his thick hair gathered at the nape. Nathaniel shaved his cheeks every morning, and she liked that. It made her think he was more dandy than village lad. A prince, not a pauper.
The man began gnawing at his bread, humming as he ate, and she looked at his face and at the gray bag dangling from his neck.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Is that where you keep your money or a special heirloom?”
“If you let me fill this burlap sack with a few more supplies, I’ll tell you.”
She considered the proposition. It wouldn’t be too hard to conceal the disappearance of a few items, if they were small and unimportant. She nodded. He tossed a jar filled with carrots and one with parsnips into the sack.
He knelt in front of her, lifting the cord over his head. He opened the bag and emptied its contents onto his hand. There was a feather, a tiny bone that must belong to a bird, dirt, pebbles, dried petals, and thread.
“It’s only rubbish,” she said.
“It’s a spell to turn me into a wolf in the moonlight so I can go howling through the woods. I turn back into a man come morning.”
“If you can turn into a wolf, why don’t you hunt for your supper?”
“I do, but nobody wants to be chewing on the bones of a scrawny hare every other day. The winter has been bad for hunting. And one has a fondness for certain commodities.”
“Like tobacco.” She shook her head. “I don’t see how this bag helps you become anything.”
“Shows what you know. You take the petals of the black hellebore and the fat of a wolf, boil it up into an ointment and anoint yourself with it under the moonlight once you turn fifteen, and thereafter you’ll be able to transform into a beast.”
“I see. And this little bone, that does what?” she asked, pointing at his open palm.
“Does magic, that’s what it does.”
He placed the objects back into the pouch and handed it to her. Judith held it between her hands and shook it, hearing the contents rattle.
“Is that why you became a vagrant? You coated yourself with an ointment and turned into a wolf. Then you ate the neighbor’s livestock and were found out.”
“Possibly. Maybe it’s just warmer wearing a pelt in the winter,” he said, and rubbed his hands together.
“Before you said you stole a relic, that a warlock in a cave cursed you, and now that you spread an ointment on your body and cast an impious spell. Which one is the true tale?”
“What do you think, Judith of the Black Hair?” he asked, and his deep-set eyes were full of mischief.
“You’re older than me, but not by much,” she said, carefully dissecting him. “I think you were until recently an apprentice to a tailor or a cobbler, and you ran away with money from your master’s safe.”
“Maybe with his wife, who recklessly took me on as her lover.”
“Not that. You’re not handsome. You have no muscle, no brawn. And your hair looks like a crow’s nest,” she said. She thought that Nathaniel was quite the magnificent specimen in comparison. This man’s eyebrows were too thick; his nose had been broken. Yet she still blushed when he grinned at her with his jagged smile.
“How did you find this village?” she asked, meeting his eyes despite the crimson on her cheeks.
“I followed the river. It sang to me.”
The stranger began humming again as he tossed another jar into the burlap sack.
“What’s that tune?” she asked, pressing a hand against her hair and smoothing it back.
“You haven’t heard it before? It’s popular these days. It’s a ballad about a girl who’s dragged to the bottom of the river by her demon lover. You’d like it,” he said.
“I don’t know. I’d rather have a gentleman than a demon.”
“Better a shop owner in good clothes, then?” He looked at her with those sly eyes of his. “The man in the shop is your lover, isn’t he?”
“You spied on me!”
“Not spied. I was wandering through the forest, saw you and him go into the hut. Don’t worry, I didn’t press my face against the window to see how he slips between your legs.”
She tossed the little pouch back at him and stood up, incensed. “Leave. I need to close the shop.”
He gathered his things and placed the sack over his shoulder, holding it with both hands, while she angrily arranged the jars on a shelf.
Alice came down early, when Judith was still having her breakfast, her thoughts a tangled, dark mess as she sat at the table. Her sister smelled of an expensive almond cream, and she wore a pretty violet dress. Her thoughts must have also been dark, for she gave Judith an angry glare.
“Well, you’re home for once.”
“Where else would I be?” Judith asked.
“You’ve been lazy lately. Every time I turn around, you’re nowhere to be found in the house, and you don’t help around the shop either,” she said.
“I was helping this week,” Judith said.
“Perhaps, but you’re careless with food and supplies. You use too much soap for the washing. Nathaniel is having little luck fetching pelts this winter, which means we need to economize.”
They didn’t need to economize when Alice wanted new hair combs or a pair of shoes. “Nathaniel will get his great wolf pelt,” Judith said. “Don’t you worry.”
“What if he does? That’s not the point. You’re thoughtless, that’s what I’m saying. The shop boy says you broke several preserve jars.”
That was the lie she’d told. She couldn’t inform her sister that she’d given them to a vagrant whom she’d allowed into the shop.