Most of Willem’s regular patrons had snuffed their torches and left them outside the door. Fletcher added his to the others and stepped inside for a drink. He had known most of these men since childhood; they were lifetime neighbors and frequent comrades in arms. Willem’s sister Sarabeth the serving woman had tended to his child when she was born, and sometimes when she was sick with fever. She brought his ale before he asked, and he tossed the proper coins across the table without a word. The ale was thick and bitter, but it eased the pain he felt as he thought of Alysse, and it always stiffened his resolve to do right by her daughter despite what she had done to her mother. Ale—a good thing given to men, a gift of God and the barley fields. Calmed his nerves to do right by the girl.
But she has a stubborn streak in her, thought Fletcher, and the streak was made worse since Alcera had taught her to read. The girl went into the king’s forest, she talked back to him, she came and went as she pleased, she refused to do her duty with that Welsh boy Meurig, with whom he had made what any sane person would agree was a good match. She walked about the village like she was somebody, better than their neighbors, better than him. Once she had even looked Sheriff Ranulf in the eye and told him to take his hand off her arm. It was an arrogance unbecoming a girl of her station, and it left Fletcher speechless and ashamed in the presence of his friends.
“Another flagon, Sarabeth,” he said as he placed a stack of coins on the table.
Fletcher tossed it back in a single swallow, rose, lit his torch at Willem’s fire, retrieved the crossbow, and made his way down the path that led to the village where he and his daughter shared a hut and a lean-to shed, but little else beyond the common bond they both had with Alysse.
The hut was a typical peasant’s affair—a single room under a thatched roof, built on a slightly excavated pit about four feet in depth. No castle, but good enough for a working man and a girl. It got them through the cold Warwickshire winters. There was a small lean-to attached at the side, and then behind that an enclosed pen for what few animals they possessed. A chicken coop and a privy marked the far corners of the property. Like many of the huts in the village, this one had a grape arbor on the south side; he had planted it there to provide a gentle shade of the mixed and brilliant layers of green that cut the summer sun.
Everything seemed to be in order. Tools and farm implements were stacked against one wall. A bag of un-ground wheat rested against another. Candles were already lit. The girl had made a small fire against the evening chill. On the wall near the door was a series of small pegs, on one of which hung the girl’s coat, retrieved from the bivouac, just where it had hung that morning.
Fletcher said nothing as he sat down to the supper of grouse and some gruel the girl had prepared. Finally, his belly full of food and ale, and his limbs tired and aching from the hunt, he readied himself for bed.
Elspeth sat at a rough bench he had made for her mother, brushing her long hair with her mother’s combs. Lately, she had taken to wearing her mother’s dresses, too, and tonight she wore her mother’s nightclothes. He had saved these in a trunk beneath the bed because parting with Alysse’s clothing was more than he could bear, but the girl had found them and had asked permission, but even so when she wore them he found it disturbing. Who did she think she was?
But he said nothing about that. He was no good with words, and there was little place in his house for talk. Women talked. Men said what needed to be said with their tools and weapons. Hunters bided their time and waited. Farmers plowed and planted, and then bided their time and waited. It was the women who filled the air with talk. But there were serious matters to discuss and so at last he broke the silence: “The sheriff says there’s a poacher in the king’s forest. Told me to keep a lookout.” His voice was gruff, and still laced with traces of the Wales he had left behind when he was a boy. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and pulled it off over his head, replacing it with a woolen nightshirt.
Elspeth set down the brush and turned to him. “You were in the forest today?” she asked, but she turned her eyes aside and Fletcher thought she probably knew the answer already. She stood and came to him, placing her hand on his shoulder.
“There was a poacher in there. Maybe more.”
“Any idea who that might be?” said the girl, quietly evading the potential accusation. She picked up the brush again, ran it casually through her hair.
“Certain of one of them.” He looked at her hard. “The sheriff catches a commoner in the king’s forest, and he’s got to make an example of him. Won’t have a choice.”
“What kind of example?”
“An eye or a hand is hard to replace.”
“So you think there may be more than one?”
“At least one.” He looked at her coat hanging on its peg.
“What kind of fool poaches the king’s game?”
“I’m going to try to warn him off first. He’s got too much to lose; a warning’ll give him time to reform before it’s too late.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll do my duty.” Fletcher felt his forehead cloud over, and the look he gave was intended to send a shudder down the girl’s back. If his eyes had been crossbows, they would have dropped her in her tracks. He jutted out his chin and nearly growled out his final remark: “Remember, girl. You don’t want to challenge me, understand? You’ll learn the hard way, you will.”
Elspeth stepped back and curtsied to her father. “It doesn’t do to threaten me, sir,” she said, smiling. She ran the brush through her loose hair again and smiled at him, her teeth an even white row of gems, like the string of pearls the sheriff’s wife sometimes wore. “My father works for the sheriff, sir.”
“Not for long if you’re caught in the king’s forest.”
She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. “If I hear about anybody poaching in the forest, I’ll bring you word. I promise.”
I promise, she says! I’ll bring you word, she says. Answers like that infuriated Fletcher because they were so patently dishonest. “And keep clear of the forest yourself,” he had said to her to reinforce the warning. “Understand me?” Even as he said it, he thought the girl was developing the same hard, distant look he had seen in her mother, but he did not ask what was troubling her. Was it dissatisfaction? Was it fear? Let her be afraid, he thought, if fear keeps her out of the forest. But he knew it wasn’t fear he had seen. That was what he thought about as he pounded his straw pillow into a tight ball, pulled the rough cover up around his chin and snuffed the candle. There was something brewing in the girl, something unrelated to the bivouac and the girl’s presence in the forest that day, something perhaps only Alysse could have understood.
Ah! Alysse. The very thought of her name flooded his mind, drowning out his worries about the girl. As Fletcher drifted off to sleep he thought only of Alysse.
❧
There was a presence in the hut, but Elspeth could not quite make out what it was. The air had grown stale and heavy, and dim with sleep her memory was more of an obstacle than a help as she tried to locate the presence and figure out what it was. She smelled something hard. Tar maybe. But it was somehow exhaled, the breathing discernable as a faint rhythm in the air. The feeling of alarm grew within her until she slowly began to feel trapped, enclosed, smothered. After a time she realized that her heart was beating hard and erratic, then almost wildly. Whatever it was, it breathed, and
