Chapter One #2
“A rabbit, Lucy!” I cried. Peregrines hunt other birds—pigeons and partridges and teal. A coney was a coup for a falcon of her size. “See?” I said to her, gesturing at the stream. “You only needed a bit more space.”
I went to her side. Plenty has been said about the dignity of a hunt, but it’s what comes after the kill that you must make peace with.
Lucy had her talons buried in the bloody bowels of the mammal.
It was not feminine. It was not pristine.
But we needed the animal for supper—the very world in its essence.
A hungry raptor cannot resist blood, but there is a trick that will part a bird from its quarry.
I removed a gizzard from the twist of cloth in my pocket and, kneeling, offered it to Lucy.
Her eyes followed my fingers, distracted by the giblets.
With my other hand, I gathered great fistfuls of wet leaves and piled them over the dead coney.
When Lucy glanced back down to her kill, she saw only mulch from the forest floor.
Up again, and there was the gizzard. She willingly went to my glove to eat it.
And, after tying her jesses, I fastened the rabbit to my belt where she would not see it.
Back on the right side of the stream, I found the uneven path once more.
“I’d wager the girls are still asleep,” I told Lucy, who ignored me, per her custom.
As we moved forward, the trees began to thin, and the rutted road was visible in the distance.
“Snug in their warm beds.” And I could see it: Rosamund’s and Mathilde’s dark hair fanned around their heads, in separate side-by-side rooms. Elin, upstairs.
Wenthelen and Alice in the kitchens down below.
Our small collection of bodies a last stand against nature’s takeover of the house.
Sleeping or awake made no difference: Time was marching us forward, every day a new mishap, a brick that loosened or a wall that cracked.
Slender wrists trying to uphold a falling roof.
Wrists that would have lace.
Alice might fuss and Wenthelen might stamp, but lace and sugar—and the maintenance of a proper carriage and a good set of gloves and so many other details—were necessities.
One had to have a shell, or at least the projection of one, for protection.
For the sake of presentability, all our lives were a performance.
Our dresses as pleated and heavy as the curtains on a grand stage.
Respectability was a lifeboat that would float the girls along the gentle tides of stability, straight onto the secure banks of marriage.
A leaking roof would not be a bother if they lived beneath a new one.
Lucy blinked and then rapidly straightened, swiveling her head, leaning forward, the quick movement a warning to me.
Her weight shifted on my fist. She knew just before it would happen and then it did: A crack—the sound you look out for, unmistakable, the snap of a twig, a boot in the brittle brush—came from ahead.
I stilled, hoping for cover in the shadows. In front of us on the path, alongside the stream, a dark-haired man stood, facing the road.
There was a reason I hunted at dawn. The hour was typically one of solitude.
While the road ahead was used by many, few had any purpose to come down to the stream when the sky had not yet rid itself of night.
There were never witnesses to connect the bedraggled huntress to the lady of the nearby estate.
I was less alarmed by the bodily threat of a strange man than I was by his capability to identify me.
My circumstances—mud-spattered with a petulant bird on my arm and a dead rabbit tied to my belt—were not only ill fitting for a woman of my station; it would reflect poorly on everyone in my household.
He had not yet seen me. To my side, there was the stream, which, surely, I could no longer cross.
To the other, a steep rise covered in thick vegetation.
I could go forward along the path, or backward in the opposite direction, trapped between the imaginary dividing line of royal land and a briar-covered embankment.
Real thorns, royal thorns, a stranger, or the wrong direction.
But Lucy destroyed any chance of stealth.
Attuned to my fear, she bated—leaping off the glove, a motion of fury and panic—molting into an explosion of feathers.
The jesses kept her tethered and her bells rang.
Peregrine falcons are ruthless birds. Athletic and fast. Black heads and orange-ringed eyes and a body the color of armor.
With Lucy on my arm, an unfamiliar person might have thought I had a weapon, or at least an ally.
I had certainly encountered people who thought I could command her to attack, to dive for their throats, and the soft bits of their bodies.
But, while Lucy was indeed designed to kill, her violence was only a steppingstone to her survival.
If someone were to think she might have helped me when I was in danger, I would have to correct them: Lucy would eat my eyeballs if she needed to.
Carefully, I withdrew her hood from my pocket and slipped it over her head, touching, ever so briefly, her tiny skull. Unable to see, she quieted. When I looked up again, the stranger was watching us.
“Good morrow.” I nodded.
“Good morrow,” he replied, though his tone did not suggest it. My concern dissipated a little; he had an accent, which was not common in our small kingdom. He was unlikely to recognize me.
I looked at him: black hair, dark eyes. He wore the rough hand-spun cloth of a peasant and had a longsword—indistinct, with little markings—at his waist. The clothing of a commoner.
Still, I steeled myself: His boots were fine enough that he might have stolen them and his undecorated sword, though not fashionable, looked to be well used and worn.
He took us in, in turn: the woman with the bird and the cottontail. “You caught a rabbit here.” He paused, extending a finger toward Lucy. “With that?”
“She caught the rabbit,” I corrected. On my arm, in her plumed hood, Lucy looked like a decorated warrior in miniature.
“You trained her?”
I nodded, but was suddenly wary that he might want the bird. “She answers only to me.”
“Rabbits are plentiful here?”
I said: “Rabbits are plentiful by their nature.” But game was not plentiful in these woods and certainly not on the wrong side of the stream.
He glanced down at my skirts, which were still tied in a knot. “You’re familiar with these woods.” A statement intended as a question.
I was not accustomed to being interrogated. “Nature is free for any to explore.”
“Not when it’s not your land.”
I lifted my chin to stare at him. His eyes were unreadable. “This isn’t anyone’s land. And I did not know that there was anyone appointed as guardian of the woods.”
The man scowled. “If you caught that rabbit on that side of the river”—he pointed—“it’s king’s land.”
“Well, quite fortunate for me the rabbit was on this side of the stream.”
“This side,” he repeated, looking down pointedly at my hem, which was wet.
But I didn’t respond because I had caught sight of what was happening on the road far behind him.
Ahead through the trees, a carriage was stuck in the mud. Four horses strained to pull the rig forward. My heart quickened and gut tightened, for though its body was small, the coach’s windows were glass, and the doors had a golden coat of arms. The equipage was unmistakably royal.
The byway that passes my home is well traveled.
But I had heard the whispers in recent weeks and knew the carriage was not likely to move past our gate.
When it reached our iron arches, it would turn off the well-worn path and head up our overgrown drive, stopping in the gravel at the front entrance.
And I—Lady of the Dead Rabbit, Lady of the Mud—was meant to throw open the door and welcome its passengers.
(Surely I was not a quarter of a mile away from my hall, covered in sludge, trading insults with a stranger.) But more than keeping up with expectations, it was, if the rumors were true, of the utmost importance that I be home to receive the carriage and welcome the message it bore.
Our futures—the women of the slender wrists and the heavy roof—might depend on it.
“I must be going.” I tried to keep the urgency from my voice.
“You’re unaccompanied,” the man observed. “What are you doing out here alone?”
In the distance, a footman had gotten out of the carriage and was inspecting the wheel.
I gathered myself, returning my gaze to the stranger’s.
“I would think that’s self-evident.” I needed to hurry and if the man was going to rob me, or worse, he would have done it already.
“I’ve been alone in the woods plenty of times without incident. ”
“Arrogance is a dangerous companion.”
I ran out of patience. “Sir, the candidate for dangerous companion is yourself. If you’d step aside, I must be along.”
He cocked his head and stared at me. “Don’t let me get in your way.”
When I was a few paces along, he called out again: “You shouldn’t be alone in the woods.”
I couldn’t tell if the words were a threat or a warning.
The world loved a woman alone in the woods.
Whatever happened to these women—outcomes we lamented—there was also a sense of relief.
They had ignored the warnings. The path they chose, neither well trodden nor well lit, allowed us to emotionally divest. These women broke the rules.
Issued an invitation. Created an opening for unkindness.
Our own daughters, sisters, mothers—studious rule-followers, virtuous listeners—would be fine.
Up ahead, the footman was sliding branches beneath the wheel.
Despite the golden insignias on the side of the carriage, there was no retinue, no guards surrounding the rig—an indication that only a messenger would be riding inside.
But messages could be life-changing. Especially if they bore an invitation to a royal ball.
I crept along the hillside, further muddying myself, until I was far enough along to stay out of sight. Climbing up through the vines, I slipped across the road and through a concealed hole in the laurel hedge, the rabbit knocking against my hip bone.
It went without saying: My daughters were never allowed in the woods.