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 she had taken in the smell of it in her sleep, had taken part of it into herself, and for a moment she thought she would be sick. She swallowed hard against that. She felt flushed and sweaty in her bedclothes.
Then there was a movement in the corner of her eye—a subtle, undulating movement in the thin sliver of moonlight that leaked in through a crack in the window. What was that? A tail? Did she see a tail? Or the outline of a tail? It was too large for a lizard. It slipped silently out of sight around the corner of her father’s canopy bed. There was an animal in the hut, and she knew instinctively that it was dangerous. She pulled the covers closer around her, and groped in the dark for a knife or something she might use as a club, but there was nothing at hand. She squinted into the dark corners of the hut to see if she could gain some sort of clue about what it was.
It had been the hard smell of tar that had awakened her; she now knew it for certain. What was it? How did it get in? Where was her father?
What she said next she said very quietly. “Father.” That was all, just the one word. Father.
He emerged from behind the canopy.
She said—again, very quietly—“There’s something in the hut.” If she closed her eyes she could see it again. She described it to her father—the smell of tar, the shimmering, the tail slipping around behind the bed. “It’s some kind of animal. It’s got a lizard’s tail, I think. No, it’s too big for that. Too big to be a lizard. I think it’s in the corner. On the other side of your bed.”
Her father stood up in the dark, moved quietly to the doorway to retrieve his crossbow. He could not load it there in the dark and instead hefted it above his head like a club. Then he moved to the bed, calmly pulling it around to expose the space between the bed and the wall.
Nothing.
The space was empty.
He opened the door to gather a little more moonlight, and then used his flint kit to light a small lamp. When he left the door open, she thought perhaps it was because a trapped animal is more dangerous than a free one. She thought about the pup in the box outside.
“Nothing, Els. There’s nothing there.” He held the lamp low and looked under the bed, waving his arm in the small space to show her there was nothing there. “Look for yourself. Nothing. No lizard, no creature. You’ve had a bad dream.”
A small breeze came in through the open door, chilling the sweat against her skin. “It was here. I know it was here. Right there, behind your bed.” She went, knelt, looked hard beneath the bed. Nothing. She took the lamp and made a careful inspection of the hut. Nothing. Beneath the two beds. Behind