The Forest Queen Read online

  “I understand!” I cried. “If I surrender to my so-obvious lusts I’ll be sure to take caution!”

  I hadn’t intended to speak quite so loudly. The two women looked startled, and then all at once, together, we began to laugh.

  * * *

  Little Jane, Bird, and I took our raptors out hunting together whenever we could, on the rare days that none of us had a more pressing duty to our growing forest family. Each of the birds was capable of bringing home kills on its own, but it was still good for Scarlet and Much to learn from Seraph’s example, and Bird said following a peregrine’s lead was one of the best ways to train them.

  So we found ourselves, one evening at the dusky hour when the owlets had woken and the falcon had not yet gone to roost, in a part of the forest where we’d never been before. There was a fast-running stretch of river here, and Bird was sure that at this time of year, we would find salmon swimming upstream to spawn: perfect practice catches for Scarlet and Much. We watched through the delicate filigree of spring leaves as the three birds circled in the sky, waiting to spot their prey.

  I heard a rustle and looked earthwards again. There, ahead of us, lumbering out of the gloom, so solid and massive that it could have been a great, living stone: a bear.

  I felt myself change from hunter to prey in an instant. My heartbeat sped like a frightened rabbit’s in my chest. I didn’t let myself move; I knew well that the bear would chase us if we tried to run.

  “Stay still,” I whispered, trying to keep even my lips from moving too much. Bird was a hunter too, and he’d know; and surely Little Jane, growing up in a village so close to the forest, understood about bears, too.

  But Anna Robin, only half-sleeping, grizzled in the wrap that kept her close to her mother’s chest.

  I ached. I pleaded. I was ready to pray to the Lord or the Lady or anyone else who might listen. Not the baby.

  The bear rose onto its huge hind legs, sniffing the air. It looked at us. It looked at the river.

  The bear called softly, lowering itself to earth again. Two smaller bulky shadows joined it, and the three made their way to the riverbank.

  The larger bear cub tumbled into the water, splashing playfully. The other regarded the river with caution, but the mother nudged her small cub forward with her black velvet nose. Soon all three were cavorting in the stream. The mother made a sudden dive and came up with a glistening fish between her teeth; but she laid it on the riverbank carefully, and with infinite gentleness she nudged her children over to take part in the first catch.

  “Come on,” Little Jane said, backing smoothly away. “She’ll let us go.” She kissed Anna Robin’s forehead. The baby gave a cry in earnest, and the mother bear’s head rose sharply; I felt close to panic again, but she only watched us from the river, and turned back to her cubs as we four humans retreated.

  * * *

  When we returned home, a new member of our forest family had arrived: a shy, small woman named Fay Carpenter.

  Little Jane’s mother.

  She held Mae Tuck’s arm as she walked towards us. She was trembling, and so pale I thought she was likely to faint. When she looked up into Little Jane’s impassive face, and then at the bundle of Anna Robin on her chest, she began to weep.

  “Jane I, I . . . I’m so sorry,” she managed to say. “I . . . your father . . .”

  “He lied,” Little Jane said, her voice cool.

  “I know, I . . .” Fay’s eyes fluttered closed, and Mae Tuck pressed her arm. “I’ve left him, Jane. I’ve come here to . . . to find you, to help you, if you’ll let me. Though I’ll—​understand if you don’t want me here. It’s so hard to become a mother when you don’t have a . . . a mother yourself.” Her eyes watered. “As soon as the Mae, here, told me what had happened to you, I wanted to come to you. But I didn’t know where you’d gone; no one did. I never really believed your father about what you’d done, not in my heart. But even if it were true . . .” She shuddered. “I should have let nothing stop me from finding you. I’m your mother, Jane. I’m your mother. How I’ve failed you.”

  Little Jane closed her eyes, and I saw a few teardrops escape them. I put my arm around my friend as she crossed hers over her chest, cradling her own, now-sleeping baby. I wanted to despise the woman in front of us, and for my friend’s sake I would turn her away if I had to. But I would wait for Little Jane’s word, for her decision.

  “You told her what happened?” Little Jane spoke to Mae Tuck, not to her mother.

  “Not just her,” Mae Tuck said. “Why do you think John locked me up?” She looked at Little Jane compassionately, sadly. “I would never have broken our confidence, my child, if you had not vanished from the village,” she continued, “but once you were gone, I felt I had to tell the truth about our young lord, our new sheriff. To be truthful I—​I wanted to shame him. And shame your father, for disbelieving you.”

  “It’s all right.” Little Jane brushed off the tears that had scattered over her cheeks. “I’m . . . Mother, you really believe me?” Her voice was quiet, soft; a child’s voice.

  Fay nodded. She pulled away from Mae Tuck’s support and began to reach out for her daughter, but hesitated. “I believe you, love,” she said.

  Little Jane began to smile. “Then I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and she gathered up her small mother in her great arms, the sleeping Anna Robin pressed between them.

  FOURTEEN

  Dancing in the May

  The rogues had been trying to persuade me out to a spring festival in Esting City, to see the Marian and dance the coming of the May. They were going to dress as women, Will Stutely told me.

  “Is that part of the festival?” I asked—​I’d never been to one before.

  Arthur Tailor laughed. “Hardly,” he said. “But we’ll need some kind of disguise to avoid your brother’s gaze, or that of any who would take his rewards.”

  Stutely grunted, already rummaging through one of the stacks of clothes that we kept for any who needed them. “Disguises are grand, but mostly I just fancied myself in that red petticoat, the night Little Jane’s babe was born.”

  “Everyone fancied you in that petticoat,” I said with a grin. “Red’s your color, Stutely.”

  But he settled on a long, simple black dress and a veil drawn across his mouth and nose, in the manner of Su noblewomen, to hide his beard. He wore the disguise surprisingly well, moving elegantly, his eyes strikingly bright above the veil. In fact, many of the rogues made quite attractive women, it turned out.

  I enjoyed watching them, but still I wanted to stay home with Little Jane and the baby.

  Even that excuse, however, failed me.

  “I’ve been wanting to get out of the forest again,” Little Jane said, stroking Anna Robin’s cheek as the baby nursed, but looking up at me with an expression that was more than a little haggard. “I’ve been feeling a little . . .”

  “Cloistered?” Mae Tuck suggested. “Every new mother does. You’re well healed now, Little Jane, and that baby would be content in the middle of an earthquake, I’d imagine. There’s no reason you shouldn’t go if you want to, and plenty of reason you should. It’s always good to feel part of the world again.” She smiled. “Besides, I’d like a chance to dance in the coming of the May myself, and to kiss the Marian.”

  I grinned at her slyly. “I thought the Brethren didn’t approve of May festivals. My governesses always told me that we shouldn’t celebrate the change of the seasons, only the grace of the Lord.”

  “The Brethren don’t approve,” Mae Tuck said, drawing herself up, “for the same reason they don’t approve of my kind anymore. Too much earth and honesty and lusty abandon in a May festival. Too much human grace, which they don’t think divine.” She narrowed her gleaming eyes at me. “Always drawing sermons out of me, you are, Silvie.”

  I shrugged. “Can I help it if I like to learn?”

  But it seemed there would be no way out of going to the May Festival after all.
/>   * * *

  I had forgotten there were so many colors in the world. Streamers and ribbons of every hue decorated the streets of Esting City and the stalls that crowded them. Flowers, too: white, pink, yellow, red, purple—​so many that the city air was almost as thick with glorious fresh smells as the forest had been. Not only the city wore flowers and ribbons; the people did, too, from infants to ancients.

  In the center of the city was the main square. I’d thought it would be more crowded than anywhere else, but it was completely clear, the people staying off to the side streets. At its center a tall, intricately carved Maypole stretched thirty feet into the air, multitudes of ribbons tied around its top and fluttering in the breeze.

  I took a big bite of the kidney pie I’d bought at a nearby stall, on Little Jane’s recommendation. Its filling was tender and savory, with a gravy so delicious that I could hardly bear to swallow each bite.

  Beside me Little Jane munched happily on an identical pie. Like Mae Tuck and myself, she had disguised herself as a man for the festival; but she was less convincingly male than either of us, in spite of her size. The lines of her big body were emphatically feminine. Anna Robin was tucked securely in her wrap under the shirt Little Jane had borrowed from Stutely; her bulk could have been simply the belly of a man who ate and drank too much, to a stranger, but to me she simply radiated motherhood.

  Still, at least the baby was quiet. “I think Mae Tuck was right,” I told Little Jane through a mouthful. “That baby would sleep through anything.”

  “I’m lucky with her, that’s for certain,” she said, worship in her voice.

  I looked toward the Maypole and saw a troubadour standing by it with a lute, a slim woman with long black hair and a spray of pink flowers tucked behind each ear. She bowed elaborately for the crowd, and one or two blossoms drifted to the ground.

  I’d never seen Alana Dale before, but I knew her immediately: the most celebrated lady troubadour in Esting, but known even more for her legendary romantic adventures—​with both men and women. A few weeks ago, Will Stutely had told a fireside story of the time a lady she loved had been imprisoned in a cloister by her disapproving parents. Alana had taken Sistren vows just to get into the convent and wrest her sweetheart from captivity. It was a delightful story, and Mae Tuck had laughed and sighed over it more than any of us.

  Alana Dale was excommunicated after that, of course, but that had only increased her fame. She seemed right at home at the center of the May festivities.

  “Make way for the Marian!” she cried, her strong voice carrying over the square, and quite possibly through the whole city.

  The people around me began to back away toward the sides of the street. I moved with them, unsure of myself, but I found Little Jane and stood in front of her, protecting Anna Robin from being pressed too closely should the crowd grow too dense.

  There was a path cleared now, along our street and toward the square. It was so crowded that I did not see the Marian until she was almost right in front of me.

  A beautiful, wise-eyed young woman, clear of mind and clear of heart, Mae Tuck had said: the Marian was an embodiment of May itself.

  I had imagined someone small and lithe, not unlike Alana. But the girl who walked before me with her crown of flowers had a plump and sturdy frame, as stocky as Little Jane, though not nearly so tall. She stood with her head held high and her shoulders back, and she smiled, it seemed, at every person in the crowd. In the moment when her eyes met mine, I saw indeed what Mae Tuck had meant about their being wise, and I knew that whoever had selected the Marian had chosen well. I saw depth and kindness in her gaze, a kind of beauty that could never be pretended, or even imitated.

  She was beautiful in other ways, too: red hair streamed down her back in waves, her creamy skin was starred with amber freckles, and those wise eyes were the clear color of melting river water. Every plump limb and generous curve was perfect. Her white dress and crown of flowers made her seem indeed the embodiment of springtime.

  She broke eye contact with me almost instantly, but it was impossible not to keep watching her as she walked into the center of the square.

  She picked up the flowers the troubadour had lost and offered them back to her, making a simple curtsey. Alana Dale took the blossoms and tucked them in her hair, kissed the Marian’s hand, and performed her low bow again, losing three more flowers in the process.

  The crowd laughed, not unkindly.

  The Marian picked up the three flowers, and after a brief smiling, questioning glance to the troubadour, tossed them into the crowd.

  I didn’t see who caught them, for Alana began to play her lute, and the Marian to dance.

  She chose a pink ribbon from the mass that were tied at the top of the pole, held it overhead, and began to sway back and forth in time to the music. She lifted one foot and then the other; it was only then that I noticed she wasn’t wearing shoes.

  The Marian swept around the square, lifting her ribbon high, until she had wrapped it three times around the pole. The music had grown faster, jubilant, and I found it hard not to move my own feet. The Marian made a beckoning motion with one hand, and several people stepped forward. Each of them took up a ribbon and they joined her in delicate, leaping circles, in a dance they all clearly knew.

  “Are you all right?” I looked back at Little Jane, still worried that someone would push against her or Anna.

  She smiled. “I’m fine. I think someone wants to dance with you.”

  “Thanks, Little Jane,” a voice behind me said, “but I can ask her myself.”

  I turned and Bird was there, one hand outstretched. The cotton dress and kerchief he was wearing disguised him, but there was no mistaking the broad hand he held out to me, or the hazel eyes I knew so well; the green he wore brought out their color. “Well, Silvie?” he asked, giving a wry, half-joking curtsey. “Will you dance in the May with me?”

  I returned his curtsey with a gallant bow, and we laughed. But there was no point ignoring the fast beating of my heart when I nodded and put my hand in his, or the way I couldn’t quite catch my breath when we ran lightly toward the square together. Although I’d danced plenty of times before, even with Bird, when we were young, I’d never danced in the May, nor weaved my way through such a crowd before. But I knew well that wasn’t why my pulse had sped up.

  There was no point ignoring it, but I didn’t have to dwell on it, either. So we took our portion of the joy that flowed through every dancer in the square; I could feel it like a spark in my fingers when I took up the end of a red ribbon. Next to me Bird caught up a pale green one.

  I knew what to do from the moments I’d spent watching; the dance was a simple one, and it had always come easy to me, dancing. Bird and I rushed off in opposite directions, weaving our ribbons over and under the others. We made wide circles that nearly reached the buildings at the edge of the square on our first round, and it was two or three minutes before I caught even a glimpse of my so-called partner again. When I did, it was only to touch hands with him briefly as we crossed paths, the way I did with every dancer who moved widdershins, opposite me.

  But each time we circled each other the ribbons shortened, weaving together in a tight plaited pattern around the pole, so that the two circles of dancers were drawn inexorably closer and closer together, having to duck increasingly low or even leap right over each other. At last the pole was covered in tightly woven ribbons almost down to the height of our heads, and the dancers’ arms stretched out to keep hold of their ends.

  With a last burst of music, every hand that held a ribbon touched the pole almost at once, and the dancers found themselves on top of each other, torsos and arms and legs tangled together.

  And I was face to face with Bird.

  The chaos of overlapping ribbons had been perfectly arranged all along; we each were reunited with the partner with whom we had entered the dance.

  Bird was warm against me, always so warm, and the spring day was cool even
in this frolicking crowd.

  I was the man now; the dance was mine to lead. I touched Bird’s waist and he put his hand on my shoulder; we clasped our other hands and were off.

  He was a good dancer, too, and our feet followed each other with ease. I had to keep one eye on the couples around us, to make sure we followed their pattern. It helped me keep from looking too long into Bird’s eyes. Through the fall and winter, I had pretended that the heat between us was only what we needed to keep warm. It wasn’t so easy to pretend now, in the pulse of spring, dancing in the May with a hundred other smiling couples.

  No. Easier to watch those others, and smile, and know that my time for that kind of warmth hadn’t yet come, that I still wanted freedom more than warmth.

  Steeling my heart with that new determination, I was able to look into his face at last—​and I found that he was angry. His eyes were hard, and in the next moment he dropped my hand and began to walk away through the weave of the other dancers.

  Only half a beat later the music ended, and all the couples parted. I didn’t think anyone else could have noticed. Yet I felt as suddenly cold as if someone had ripped a cloak from my shoulders, a blanket from my bed while I slept.

  Still, if he wanted to go, I couldn’t ask him to stay. That had always been important to me. I found the side of the square where I’d stood with Little Jane and Mae Tuck and walked back toward them, trying to feel the sun on my skin and smell the flowers in the air, trying to pretend I didn’t feel so cold.

  Little Jane wasn’t there.

  I lectured myself not to worry, reminded myself of all the times I’d witnessed her remarkable strength and resilience in the past months, but all my protective instincts toward her leapt up in my heart in spite of myself. I looked around, my pulse rising, my wide-brimmed hat whipping against my cheeks as I turned—​it would be hard to miss someone as tall as Little Jane, even in this big a crowd . . .