The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest (A Medieval Fairy Tale #1)(10)

There was only one explanation: someone was poaching, or trying to poach, the animals in Thornbeck forest.

Jorgen stood and looked around, still holding the arrow. His whole body tensed as his heart beat faster.

His father had been shot by a poacher. Had it only been four years ago? It seemed like a long time, and yet he still sometimes would begin to go ask his father a question before realizing that he could never answer Jorgen’s questions again. The memory of his death would flood him for the hundredth time.

After examining the woods that day, Jorgen believed the poacher had been discovered by his father. The poacher had shot at the gamekeeper and missed, then stalked him until he was able to kill him. It had been murder, plain and simple.

And that murderer’s arrows had the same white feathers on the end.

The margrave’s guards had searched for the killer, but they never found him. Jorgen had been preoccupied with comforting his grieving mother and seeing to his father’s burial, not to mention his own grief and shock at his sudden death. He regretted being unable to hunt the poacher down himself. He hoped, with God’s favor, someday he would find him and gain justice for his father.

This new poacher might not be new at all, but the same man who killed Jorgen’s father.

He put the arrow in his own quiver for safekeeping. It was evidence and might help him find the murderer and prove him guilty. Even if this poacher was not the same one who had hunted down Jorgen’s father and killed him, he must be punished. Poaching was dangerous and a serious offense against both the margrave and the king.

Jorgen would not tell his mother someone was poaching deer again. It would cause her to worry—another incentive to capture this poacher and make sure he never drew another bowstring.



ODETTE WAS WALKING through the game park with her bow and arrows in the middle of the day. A large stag appeared and she shot it.

Suddenly, Jorgen jumped from behind a tree. She seemed rooted to the ground, as her legs refused to move. He grabbed her arms so tight her muscles ached.

“You will be sorry you crossed this margrave.” He dragged her through the forest. She lost her shoes, and her feet raked over the sticks and rocks.

He took her to the margrave’s castle, threw her into the dungeon underneath, and the metal key scraped against the lock as he trapped her inside.

She sat on the damp stone floor, and the cold wrapped around her body like icy claws. She was all alone and she was hungry, her stomach gnawing and cramping as it had after her mother and father died and she had no food. Nearly half the town of Thornbeck had perished in less than one year from the horrible sickness that ravaged its victims’ bodies and left them dead, sometimes after only one day of being sick. She had been five years old, but being in the dungeon vividly brought back her terror at being left alone with no one to care for her.

Odette shivered and wrapped her arms around her empty stomach. “Jorgen?” she called, but there was no answer.

She bolted upright in bed, a cold sweat on her brow and under her arms.

She had told Anna that she rarely had pleasant dreams, but one would have thought she could have dreamed something a bit less horrific on Midsummer night.



The next day Brother Philip came to tutor her. She usually relished her time with him and the opportunity to study, but today she could not concentrate. She could not stop thinking about Jorgen Hartman. She had not had a chance to tell Rutger who Jorgen was—that her uncle had invited the margrave’s forester to her birthday dinner.

“Odette, are you listening to me?” Brother Philip was glaring at her.

“Oh, forgive me.” Odette blinked hard and focused on Brother Philip’s leathery face. “What did you say?”

“I brought you a Book of Hours I found at the monastery library. I am risking a lot by bringing it to you, so I would think you would at least be attentive when I tell you about it.”

She would rather he just give it to her and let her read it. Must he always talk everything to death first?

He went on with his lecture on how various copies of the Book of Hours differed from each other, as well as how they differed from the breviary and the Psalter.

Brother Philip mentioned penitence, which brought once again to Odette’s mind the dream she had had about Jorgen. It was the look on Jorgen’s face she now could not get out of her mind. Anger, hurt, disappointment—she couldn’t quite define it, but it haunted her.

Perhaps her poaching was not the right thing to do. When she was eight years old, she’d fashioned a crude bow and some arrows and shot her first pheasant. She remembered the pain of guilt she had felt. But when she had shared the meat with two other orphans who were starving, her guilt vanished.

But what she was doing violated forest law.

Still, the poor people would go hungry if she did not feed them. Her heart told her it was the right thing to do, that God would reward her for her kindness to the poor. Didn’t the friars who wandered about preaching God’s Word say the same? That it was the rich rulers, like the Margrave of Thornbeck, who oppressed the poor? And did the Bible not say God would carry out his vengeance on those who ignored the needs of the poor?

It was that silly superstition. Anna had insisted she place her flower circlet under her pillow, along with a bunch of calendula and St. John’s wort, so she would dream of her future husband. But the only man she had dreamed of was Jorgen Hartman, the forester, throwing her into the dungeon. And even though his blue-green eyes made her heart thump hard against her chest, the dream had helped confirm her realization that she could never marry him.