Joanna Bourne: The Forbidden Rose

The rabbit did not flinch when she laid hands upon it, but inside its fur, it shivered. The knife in her pocket was sharper than it had been four days ago when it lived the placid life of a letter opener. She worked a finger into the snare of silk that held the rabbit. “Instead of being sensible, I will chew on parched grains that do not agree with me and let you go free.” She cut the red thread. “You will not be grateful. I know. You will come back tonight with a hundred rabbits and burn down the bridge and me underneath.”

It did not move.

“Go. Go. You annoy me, lying there. Go, before I change my mind and eat you with wild onions and watercress.”

The rabbit shook from end to end and wobbled to its feet. It lurched off into the drab grass of the drainage ditch. The waves of terror departed with it.

It was a relief to be free of that. “It would have made me sick, I think, to eat something so afraid.”

SHE WAS A LITTLE DIZZY, SO SHE SAT A MOMENT longer, looking down the parting in the grass where the rabbit had disappeared, wondering whether it would live to a ripe old age and become a patriarch with grandchildren at its knee or be eaten, almost immediately, by a fox.

Then, from beneath the rustle of rain, voices slid like snakes. Men’s voices.

She grabbed up her skirts and ran.

There was no time to get to the woods. She ran toward the chateau. Down the long path of the flower garden, lavender and foxglove and marigold caught at her. Pebbles scattered under her clogs. She was making noise. Too much noise.

It wasn’t men from the village walking up the back lane. Men from Voisemont wouldn’t come this late in the day, in the rain. They could pick better weather to loot the chateau. They’d roll up in squeaking carts she could hear a hundred yards away. Crow’s messenger, when he came to find her—if he came—would be silent.

She ran across the courtyard to where the stable door hung open and ducked inside. Her sabots clicked down the rank of stalls where each window stood open to the gray outside. No whicker came. No click of a hoof. Only the dry commentary of barn swallows, nesting in the eaves. The stable was empty and desolate under the high roof. The heart had gone out of here with the horses.

The villagers had come, thrifty and sharp-eyed and acquisitive. There was not one small valuable object left in place. Not a blanket. Not a jingling bit or rein or a braided rope. Not a scrap of worked leather. They’d even emptied the feed bins into sacks and carted the oats away, all but a handful in the bottom of the bin. The chickens of Voisemont would eat well this summer.

At the last stall, she stopped below the hayloft where the ladder slanted down. She stood ankle deep in straw, well back in the shadow. The shutters were open everywhere, creaking in the light wind, dripping with the damp congealed on the boards. It would have taken three minutes to close them, but no one had bothered. Perhaps it was a revolutionary principle that good straw should spoil in the rain.

There was a clear view of the courtyard. She would make certain this was not the messenger from Crow. Then she would slip away out the back door and leave them to occupy themselves with looting.

In the courtyard, voices separated into a deep, heavy rumble and answers, lighter and higher. Two men, at least.

They could be chance travelers, looking for a dry spot to spend the night. They could be philosophers or scholars, knights-errant, pilgrims, heroes in disguise, wandering minstrels. They might be veritable princes among men, bent upon good works, full of benevolence.

She had become skeptical of benevolence.

The high bushes of the lane were hazy under the desultory scatter of raindrops. They emerged. A tall man, dressed like a prosperous tradesman but brown as a farmer, strode ahead. His servant boy lagged behind, struggling with a pair of donkeys.

The big man stopped in the center of the courtyard and stood with his back to her, his head tilted to look up at the streaked black and gray facade of the chateau. He was not a man of fashion, certainly, but he was no shabby vagabond. He dressed substantially and practically, outfitted for hard travel with a plain coat and high boots. His hands, heavy and motionless, hooked into the waist of his trousers. His wide-legged stance was calm and meditative.

He could have been a soldier, surveying a captured city, preparing to raze it and salt the earth, or a builder, inspecting the blocks of a fallen Roman villa, calculating tonnage, planning to buy and transport the marble. As she watched, he pulled his hat off and slapped it against his thigh. There was decision in that motion. The whisper of great force, held easily in check.

I do not like this at all.

He carried no sign to say he was Crow’s messenger. A red ribbon with a knot in it, any bit of red cloth, knotted, would be enough. He was only a stranger in her domain, pointless and useless to her.

You have no business here. Go away.

He did not, of course. He set his hat back, low over his forehead, and flipped the collar of his coat up. He turned slowly, taking in the dairy house and the coach house, working his way around. At this distance, she couldn’t make out his features. Weak, gray light slid across his face, drawing a suggestion of high, flat cheekbones, a jaw dark with stubble, a jutting nose. His hair was brown and hung raggedly on his neck.

If he had inhabited a fairy tale he would have been the giant, not the prince. Giants are more chancy to deal with than princes.

This was what came of clinging to the stones of the chateau like damp moss. She had not gone to seek danger on the Paris road, so danger had come to her, stalking her right to her own doorstep. She was like the man who ran away from Death, all the way from Baghdad to Samarkand. Death found him anyway, because it was his fate.

The stranger surveyed his way around the outbuildings. When he came to the stable, for an instant he seemed to look directly at her. The force of his concentration grabbed her breath and twisted it in her lungs. Knowing she was invisible, knowing she was wrapped in shadow, she froze.

His attention moved on. To the stone wall that hid the fishpond garden. To the tall iron grille of that garden, standing open. To the kitchen plantings beyond, with that gate left open as well. Perhaps there was some unwritten rule that mobs and looters did not close doors after themselves.

The servant boy tied the donkeys to a post, swearing a staccato chain of annoyance. A trick of wind blew the words to her. “Donkey feet in butter . Donkey en croûte. Donkey soup. You just wait.”

He spoke with a Gascon accent. He looked Gascon also, dark haired, with the smooth, dark skin of the south of France. He was a servant many miles from home.

Master and servant were occupied with their own business. She could slip out the back door of the stable and crawl in the direction of the garden shed, pretending to be something unnoticeable. A hedgehog perhaps. Or she could wait. This pair might gawk at the chateau for a dozen moments, then leave for a warm fire and dry, comfortable beds in the village. She could climb to the stable loft and watch from there. There was always the chance they might call out and identify themselves with one of the passwords.

Or she could stand here like an idiot. She was a battlefield of possibilities.

The big man said, “There’s broken glass all over. Watch your feet. And don’t bring the donkeys in.” A Breton voice. This was a man from the oldest, the least civilized, province of France.

He didn’t start poking through the ruins. He stood and thought a great deal about what he was seeing. She did not wish to deal with a man who came here with more in his mind than straightforward looting.