Judith turned around and saw Nathaniel approaching her. He had his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face. The stranger scurried away.
“Was that vagabond bothering you?” he asked.
“He was asking if he could lodge in the stable for free. I told him we can’t offer that kind of charity,” Judith said, hoping Nathaniel wouldn’t notice the fib.
The guesthouse was busy, and it took Judith longer than she expected to slip out. She rushed behind the inn, and when she arrived, she found herself alone under the branches of a crooked tree. Perhaps he had come and left. She cursed under her breath.
“You’re late,” a voice said. She was surprised to see a piece of darkness slip away from the tree. The man had been tucked rather snugly against its trunk; she had not spotted him. When his face was finally visible, she noticed his sharp grin.
Judith tipped her chin up. “I had business to attend to. Do you have it?”
The stranger patted his coat and took out the book. When she attempted to grab it, he pulled it away. “I’ll have my payment, Judith of the Black Hair. That is your name, isn’t it?”
“How much? You said I could have it for cheap, remember that.”
“Very cheap. You can have it for a kiss.”
“That’s not a decent thing to ask. You’re probably a vagrant.”
“I’m no vagrant. Besides, who’s going to see you in the dark?” he asked. “The moon is new tonight.”
There was no moon, but the glow from the inn’s windows gave her pause. Besides, it was immoral to barter kisses for trinkets. She told him so.
He shrugged. “Do you want the book or not?” he asked.
“Fine. A single kiss,” she said.
She had no sweetheart, though she’d kissed a couple of boys from the town. She’d spent too much time conjuring a dream lover to accept a commoner. She thought to allow him the same thing she’d allowed those boys: a quick peck.
The man cupped her face with both hands, and she felt the supple leather against her skin as he bent down to kiss her. Her mouth opened to his, and she let him pull her close to him by the waist, and to nip at her lower lip. But when he tried to touch her bosom, she swatted his hand away.
“You promised. Give me my book.”
“Let me see your breasts and I’ll get a second book for you. Twice the fun.”
“You’re crass,” she said, her voice almost a hiss.
He laughed, extending his arm and offering the book to her. She snatched it and rushed back to the house. But she did not dare read the volume while inside the guesthouse. She lay awake most of the night, and at one point she had a curious sensation that something soft brushed by her side in the dark, though it was only the blanket, which had fallen to the floor.
When morning broke, Judith grabbed her basket, placed the book in it under a red handkerchief, and went out into the forest.
Snow fell, the first of the season, but it was the lightest caress of white upon the ground. When she reached the hut, she lit a fire and sat on a battered chair, turning the pages.
The book was indeed bawdy and concerned a young woman who left a convent and went to have many amorous adventures in the world. Detailed illustrations depicted each of her escapades. Judith had only seen the nakedness of men on a page of the Bible showing Adam and Eve holding hands, the serpent curled around their feet. But those figures were crude imitations, while the etchings reproduced in this book were rendered in all their fleshy reality, showing the long members of men and the pubic hair of women, plus dozens and dozens of different amorous configurations.
She was so amused by the book that she did not realize someone was at the door until the cold wind ruffled her hair. She had not bothered locking herself in.
She raised her head and quickly placed the book back in the basket, the handkerchief upon it.
“Did you not hear me?” Nathaniel asked.
Judith shook her head.
“What are you doing? Is he here, with you?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play coy. They saw you behind the inn last night talking with that man,” he said irritably.
“I’m alone,” she assured him.
Nathaniel glanced around the hut, but it was small, and there was no place to hide a lover.
“Well, then let us walk back into town. I saw a great black wolf yesterday, not far from this spot. A mighty beast, that one. I’ll catch it at some point, but I don’t want it biting you.”
He grabbed her basket, probably intended to carry it for her, and in a panic Judith pulled it toward her, managing only to tip it over. The book fell upon the floor, and Nathaniel picked it up. He stared at a page, then at her.
Judith blushed.
“It’s only a story,” she muttered.
“Did he give this to you?” Nathaniel asked.
“Yes.”
“What else did he give you?”
“Nothing.”
“What else?” he demanded.
“It’s a story,” she repeated, and would have begun to make a myriad of excuses, but he pulled her toward him and kissed her, not like the stranger had done, half in jest, with a laugh on his lips, but with all the weight of the world.
He drew her toward the bed, which creaked under their bodies. She heard a wolf howling in the distance as his hand grasped her thigh through the fabric of her dress, the hem discolored from dragging it through too many puddles and the mud of the forest.
Judith ought to have shoved him away. But she’d cried the morning of Alice’s wedding, and she never had anything for herself, only the hand-me-downs her elder sister gave her. Only hands roughened by the soap and the lye. Oddly enough, she found herself thinking that since the stranger wore gloves, she had not been able to feel his hands like she might have wanted to. Were they soft, or coarse like her own?
Then Nathaniel kissed her again, and she forgot about the stranger, about her sister, about the entire world.
The fire burned low, and the wolf went away. They dressed themselves. Judith had trouble remembering how to tie her laces—her fingers were clumsy—so he helped her into her dress and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and grabbed his rifle—which was propped by the door—and left.
Judith put out the fire and found her way back to the guesthouse, more by instinct than by using the rational portion of her brain. When she walked in, Alice was fuming, trying to deal with the unruly twins and scolding the maid at the same time.
“Will you hurry and do the washing?” Alice told her sister. They could have taken the laundry to a woman in the village, but Alice had always assigned Judith this task.
Judith did not protest this time. She washed the undergarments she’d been wearing, watched the water grow pink with the blood that had leaked from her body—blood and his seed. She ought to have washed herself before leaving the cabin but had been too stunned to think. The cold and the walk had helped her regain her senses: Judith could not afford to be discovered. She scrubbed hard until all traces of color disappeared. She threw the dirty, bloodied water out, letting it soak the roots of a tree.