“I’ve known him many years and I’ve never seen the look in his eyes I see when he looks at you.”
I wanted to believe her, but these feelings were so new and overwhelming that the twist of doubt still lingered. I sat down across from her, took a sprig of dried sage from the pile, and began plucking the tiny leaves off the stem. I was lost in my thoughts, drawn back in time to the long summer afternoons when my sister Eden’s now-husband was courting her, and she spent hours plucking daisy petals one by one.
He loves me, he loves me not…
A noise from the garden caused us to startle, our eyes catching each other’s. The crash of what sounded like an overturning grain bucket was followed by the nervous clucks and warbles of Angelica’s hens outside.
She raised her eyes to mine. “Maybe a racoon. They have gotten into the grain before.” Her voice was barely a whisper as she looked to the door, putting down the sage, her fingers curling into fists.
I nodded my head and swallowed hard hoping she was right.
Angelica rose from her chair in a careful, slow motion, easing out so there was no noise in her movements as she craned her neck to see out the front window.
We both flinched at the sound of flat-handed thumping on the door that made my heart leap into my throat the racoon theory washed away in an instant.
In that second, somehow I already knew, before I heard his voice, that it was my father.
“Open this door, whore! You’ve no right to keep my daughter. She’s my property!” His voice sounded enraged with drink and I was terrified of what he might do, to myself or my new friend.
Other voices joined in. Chattering and mumbling obscenities in muffled threats. If it was just my father, we could maybe hide, maybe run, but there were too many and I felt like a cornered rat, eyes darting, skin twitching, looking for escape.
There was a motion outside the opposite window, a quickly-moving shadowy figure. A moment later, a fist-sized stone crashed through the window over the wash basin and landed with an ominous thud on the floor, rolling under the table.
“Open the fuck up!” my father roared. “I’ve come to take back what’s mine, you wizened old crone. I won’t let you defile her with your morals or your dark magic!”
Angelica rolled her eyes, muttering, “Morals and dark magic, indeed,” as she pushed aside the rough woolen rug on the floor. She crouched low and wiggled two of the old pine floorboards free, making a space just large enough for a person to pass through. She pointed at the opening and I nodded.
As I lowered myself down into the crawl space below the house, I reached up and extended a hand for her to join me. But instead, within seconds she’d secured the floorboards back in place, blocking the light from the knot holes with the rug.
I crouched low on the cold, damp soil, listening to her footsteps and then the creak of the front door.
“Afternoon, lads,” she said. “So, the fresh mead at the tavern has gotten your blood up, has it? It’ll be six schillings each. But ten for you, Milo. Even a woman with no morals has her standards.” A pause. “And you’ll each have to wait your turn, I’m not as young as I once was.”
Her offering was sarcastic. She was toying with them, her skills from years long past still sharp as she knew how to handle men.
I heard a throaty laugh, then my father snarled: “Shut up with your wanton mouth. You know why we’re here and it’s not for your used-up wares.”
Hard thumping of boots marched on the wood above my head. Not exactly an army, but far too many for even a woman like Angelica to handle on her own.
I suddenly wondered about her offer. Would she really defile herself to be rid of them? Could I really hide and let that happen?
For years, I’d been nothing but a servant, but now that I’d taken something for myself, here was my father trying to take me back as though he cared.
“You better start talking, whore.” Another voice, deep, familiar—one of my father’s drinking mates, I was sure.
“Twenty, then!” Angelica strained, her voice strangled and hoarse. “Thirty if you insist on choking.”
I felt the knife that Bors had given me, heavy and cold in my pocket, its bone handle solid and reassuring. Could I use it? Could I hurt my own father? I would, I decided, if I had to, but Angelica wouldn’t thank me for revealing her only hiding place unless it was absolutely necessary.
For now, that time hadn’t come.
Instead I listened and waited.
“Where’s my daughter?”
“She’s not here,” Angelica croaked. “She left at daybreak.”