“I’m here to get out of the rain,” she says flatly.
The man steps down from his overturned crate. “You seek an answer. A salve for the sickness in your soul. And I have just the remedy.” He offers her the bottle.
Beatrix folds her arms across her chest. “You’re lying.”
The man flashes her a slick grin. “Am I?”
He must be. But that spark of hope has grown into a flame that refuses to be extinguished by logic, awhat-ifthat has sunk its claws deep and won’t let her go. “How much?”
The man looks into her mismatched eyes, weighs her means against her desperation. “For sixpence, it’s yours.”
Beatrix scoffs. “That’s outrageous. You’ll be drinking your glorified river water yourself if you expect that much.”
The man isn’t deterred. “It’s not outrageous if you’ll pay. It’s business.”
“And what makes you think I’ll pay?” Beatrix asks.
The man smiles. “Because you haven’t left yet.”
He’s right. She has to know. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out all but one of her coins. She hands the man her money. He gives her the tiny green bottle that has dared to make her heart hope.
August 10, 1501Lancaut, England
Fat drops of rain fall in the clearing. Beatrix reaches out to catch them, inhales the metallic scent. It has always given her hope, that scent. It is a promise of a world washed clean, a whisper of something new in the air. But there is no hope today, only the miserable truth. It is the last time she will sit on this log, smell this air, call somewhere home.
It has been nearly four months since William carried her from this place. Four months without setting foot in the forest, without giving in to its pull. Four months of holding her tongue as dutifully as Alice, of doing as she is told, like Isabella. Four months of pretending not to see William staring at her every Sunday as she stands between her parents at St. James’s, bowing her head.
None of it mattered. Her father told her over breakfast: She will be leaving for the abbey at dawn.
The underbrush behind her rustles, but this time Beatrix knows better than to expect a wolf. William steps out from the trees. He walks slowly toward her, his hands jammed deep into his trouser pockets.
“You look well,” he says, sitting next to her, as if they are merely continuing a conversation they began four months ago. As if it is perfectly reasonable for him to be wandering the forest in his Sunday best.
“Thanks to you.” She should have thanked him months ago, but it has never occurred to her to speak to him beyond this place. Whatever it is they share, it belongs to the woods.
“Why aren’t you at the church?” she asks. All of Lancaut is there to celebrate Isabella’s marriage to the miller’s boy. Someone is bound to notice his absence.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “I think the more obvious question is why aren’t you?”
She smooths down the skirt of her beige wool dress and avoids his questioning gaze. “I thought it best if I didn’t attend,” she says, though it wasn’t her thought at all.
Isabella didn’t say it outright. She didn’t have to. Beatrix saw it, in the way her sister bit her lip whenever she mentioned the church, in the way her mother stiffened when she spoke of dresses, in the way her father brushed her questions aside when she asked him to show her the proper way to follow in a dance. She saw it, but she pretended she didn’t. In the end, Alice was the only one brave enough to tell her. Alice, who acts older than Beatrix, even though she isn’t. Alice, who never minces words.
Your absence is the best wedding gift you can give Isabella.
Alice would know. Beatrix hadn’t been allowed to attend her wedding, either.
William looks into her mismatched eyes. His gaze doesn’t falter, doesn’t flick away, doesn’t flinch. Her heart skips a beat. No one has ever looked at her that way.
“Is that why you’re wearing a crown of flowers in your hair?”
Beatrix reaches for the braid of papery white flowers and lavender, now resting on top of her head instead of Isabella’s. She had spent the morning collecting the herbs from their garden and the flowers from the edge of the woods, had woven the stems together with all the love and joy she could hope for her sister. Isabella told her it was beautiful, and she had meant it. Her little sister couldn’t lie to save her life. But she wouldn’t accept the gift. When Beatrix asked her why, she wouldn’t look at her as she admitted the truth.
Mama had told her not to wear flowers in her hair, had called them wild and improper. Probably because Beatrix loved to wear flowers in her hair, and Mama thought she was wild and improper, too. Sweet Isabella always did as she was told.
“Why don’t you wear it?” she offered, trying to keep the peace. “It suits you best, anyway.”
So Beatrix perched the crown of flowers on her head, her chest tight, her throat aching, and swore only the trees would see her cry today.
