The Forest Queen Read online

  Neither of us had left the estate grounds before. It was only after he was gone that I wondered how he’d known himself.

  But John must have been right, because he came back even crueller than he’d been before. The highborn thugs who started visiting him here were meaner than the village bullies he’d once corralled, too.

  So I’d been happy enough to stay tucked away in Loughsley, our beautiful home perched between rock and water, the great forest wrapped around us like so many green blankets. I’d always been a quiet child, and I spent my time plunging into my lessons, practicing the music of my lap harp or the steps of my dances. I would read or embroider or walk in the garden, reciting the names of all the herbs and flowers there, and their uses, when I knew them. That last I might not have been expected to know, but the tutor who’d introduced me to botany thought that ladies should not just know enough about plants to arrange them into lovely bouquets, but to understand their more practical uses, too. More than once I’d gone to the gardens to chew peppermint for an aching stomach, when something John had done or Father had forgotten to do had made my insides churn with worry. And when that was not enough, there was always, always Bird: always the healing kindness we both found inside our friendship. Climbing trees together, surveying the infinite green of the canopy and talking softly as leaves and breezes murmured around us, felt grander than any court life I could imagine.

  I’d have no solitude for picking peppermint, no quiet greenery, no private garden, no Bird at all, if I went to the palace.

  So I was half lying when I told Clara I wished I could come to court. The idea still frightened me.

  Still, part of me did wish to be part of, if not the city and the palace, some kind of greater, brighter world . . .

  “Silviana!”

  I shook myself. “Yes?” I asked Clara.

  She shook her head. Her expression had changed, gone closed off. It wasn’t she who had spoken.

  I turned to see what she was staring at, for she would not look at me.

  My brother stood with Lord Danton, beckoning me forward.

  * * *

  My heart was breaking.

  I collapsed onto Bird’s secret chair and buried my face in my hands, until the weight of all the hair piled atop my head threatened to pull me forward and out of my seat entirely. I should never have chosen such an elaborate style, even if the pain of the pulling and weaving of all those tight braids had distracted me from bigger problems.

  I forced my hands down from my face.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Forget.

  I focused on what I could see: there were dark suggestions of brambles and flowers in front of me, interlocking branches of the pine and chestnut trees beyond, and bright spangles of stars, fractured through the tears in my eyes, overhead.

  With my next deep breath I could taste the greenery that surrounded me: the grass, the roses and lilies and morning glories climbing the more dignified part of my father’s overgrown, once-beloved gardens. The patch of peppermint that I ate from nearly every day.

  I leaned back, and cool stone caught me. It had been years and years since Bird built this little hideaway, and months and months since I’d come here, but I’d never felt more grateful for it. It was like a little wild fort, just beyond the borders of Loughsley Abbey’s vast gardens. I didn’t think John knew about it, or even the gardeners; they never bothered to come out this far anymore. No one did. Just Bird and me.

  I tucked my feet up under my legs. They’d already gone cold in my thin, soft dancing shoes; even though summer was barely over, the night air was cool.

  I pulled a handkerchief out of my bodice and mopped my face, then forcefully blew my nose.

  John always said doing that made me sound like a man.

  But then, he said the same thing when I talked too much, or walked too quickly—​stomped, he said—​or, really, when I did anything that differentiated me from one of the singing wind-up dolls Father used to give me. John liked to think of himself as the man of the house, and strangely enough, he seemed to believe I could infringe on that.

  John was the one who ordered the servants around, who decided how much to tax our estate’s tenants, and who sent those taxes on to the king. It had been a few years since Father had been well enough to do such things himself. John was the one, these days, whom people called simply Loughsley . . . although they’d have to start calling him Sheriff now.

  I shivered.

  I could still picture him in the ballroom I’d just left, resplendent in his red velvet half cape, smiling in just the right way to set off his wide, square jawline. A cloud of noblewomen floated around him, waiting, wanting. He’d beckoned me with such assurance, the way a hero from a storybook might. My brother looked more like a prince than Rioch did.

  I could already see that he was going to tell me something I wouldn’t like, and he was going to tell me in a loud voice, with plenty of important people nearby who would expect me to give the answer John wanted me to give. He was going to say it in a way that would keep me from saying no.

  I felt sick. I always felt sick when I had to be anywhere near my brother. He hadn’t hit me in years, hadn’t hurt me at all since I was twelve, and yet the feeling had grown worse and worse.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Forget.

  I made myself walk toward him.

  John went back to talking with his friends as I approached. He was boasting about what he’d be able to do now that he was sheriff: his first project, he was saying loudly, would be to reopen the parts of Esting City’s prison that had been unused for over a century. “We’ve been too lenient with our criminals, and especially with our debtors,” he was saying. “Stricter enforcement is the first order of business, of course. We need to make people really afraid of not paying their taxes. The local jails are serviceable, but they don’t engender enough fear. Do you know they have iron maidens in the old prison? Those would make you hand over some coins, I’d imagine.” His friends laughed. “A few oubliettes, too. It’s about time we put our country’s resources to use.”

  I stared at him. I’d known, understood in some bone-deep part of me for all my life how cruel he was, but . . . iron maidens and oubliettes were torture, old methods of dealing out slow, horrible deaths that I’d only read about in books. The first was a metal coffin lined with spikes, the second a bottle-shaped prison cell dug into the ground, where men were thrown and left until they starved or went mad. Our country had abandoned such barbaric practices centuries earlier. I could not quite believe that even my bully brother would want to bring them back.

  I heard derisive giggling from behind me, near the staircase.

  John froze; his broad smile vanished.

  I turned to where he was looking, and I saw our father.

  The real Lord Loughsley was blinking in the entrance to the ballroom. He stood tall and straight, wearing the beautiful old silvery military coat from his campaigns of fifty years before. His color was good; looking at his face, one would have thought he was in perfect health. His eyes were perhaps slightly less focused than they’d been a year or so earlier, when I’d still managed to tell myself that there was nothing wrong with him.

  His feet were bare. His beautiful coat almost covered the nightshirt that brushed against his naked knees.

  My father smiled. “Welcome, honored guests,” he intoned. He bowed, first straight ahead and then to each side of the room, showing the backs of his thighs to the assembled crowd. He wobbled on the last bow and nearly fell, but straightened himself again.

  Not everyone laughed, but I hated every single person who did.

  I rushed toward him across the polished floor.

  John whistled, the way he’d call for the hounds. Two footmen stepped out of the shadows and grabbed my father by the arms before I could reach him.

  He frowned. “Let me go!” he said, but John was there already. He shook his head at the footmen, and there was no question w
hom the two men would obey.

  “Don’t worry, friends,” John said. He turned toward our father. “Come now, you need to follow the dress code for occasions such as these. The prince is here.” He spun gracefully around and made a flourishing bow to our young, mousy monarch, in whose honor John had given this Hunt Ball. When the courtiers’ laughter started again, John laughed with them.

  I saw the shame on my once-fastidious father’s face as his servants hustled him out of the ballroom. My own face flamed with anger, and I felt my heartbeat quicken. I hurried after them.

  But John caught me by the arm, just as roughly as his lackeys had done to my father.

  “How could you embarrass him like that?” I hissed as he turned me forcibly around, his grin firmly back in place.

  John glared. “Embarrass him?”

  I tried to pull my arm away, but John was always boxing and wrestling with his friends, or with whichever servant happened to be nearby if his friends were unavailable; he was stronger than probably anyone else I knew, save Bird. My tree-climbing and archery practice didn’t give me the strength to match him. I could either let him lead me toward the center of the ballroom, or sink onto the floor and make a spectacle of myself, as John would say. And I knew what the result of that would be: more footmen, dragging me out of the room like a pet that had forgotten its housetraining, just like they’d done to my father.

  So I let John pull me forward. I saw Clara out of the corner of my eye, watching me pityingly, but she said nothing. And I couldn’t blame her, either; no courtier’s kindness, however genuine, could extend far enough to free me from my brother’s grasp.

  Was he taking me back to Rioch to apologize? I wondered.

  No. Not to Rioch, and not to apologize.

  He led me to Lord Danton instead.

  And in that loud, proclamatory voice he said:

  “My friend has made me an offer for you, Silviana, and I have accepted.”

  Don’t think about it.

  “What’re you crying for, Silvie?”

  A voice from above pulled me back to the garden.

  Tears still spangled my vision, but when I looked up, the long, broad-shouldered form crouched on the branches was as familiar as ever. Even broken by teardrops; even in darkness.

  A laugh leapt out of my throat. “No business of yours, dolt,” I croaked. There were traces of crying still in my voice, too, but repeating the first words Bird and I had ever said to each other helped clear them away.

  Just as he’d intended. I swiped at my eyes once more.

  Bird landed on the ground as lightly as if he had wings after all. His light brown hair glinted with rain from the shower that had come down during the ball, while I was safe, or stuck, inside.

  He shook his head, drops flying, and smiled at me. When I didn’t respond, he bent down so our eyes were almost level.

  “Go on, then, box my ears,” he said, turning his head to offer them. “That’s how this goes.”

  Another laugh came out of me all on its own. “I don’t think I could take you on anymore, Bird. You’re not so weak as you once were.”

  He snorted. “Weak, nothing! I was a fine young lad.”

  I was starting to smile back now; I couldn’t help it. “The first time I saw you, you were the smallest, skinniest, most knobby-jointed little boy in the world. Staring at me with your big round eyes and asking me why I was crying and knowing my name, even though I didn’t know yours.”

  “Ah, sure but that was only natural. You were the daughter of the house, and big and bright and beautiful besides, and I was merely the not-at-all-weak son of the new huntswoman. How could I have hoped that you’d know who I was?” He sighed dramatically, leaning against the nearest tree.

  I tumbled smiling into the memory, just as he’d meant me to.

  Of course I hadn’t known his name. I was only five, I had never left the estate, and my big brother and his friends were always the foremost threats in my mind. I thought this stripling must surely be a new member of John’s bully gang. I thought he must know my name because they’d sent him.

  I was a sturdy type, even at five, and I saw an opportunity I hadn’t had before: to ensure I was no longer the runt of the Loughsley litter.

  An ounce of prevention, I lectured myself.

  Then I boxed his ears.

  He really had resembled a baby bird then—​not the fluffy speckled chicks in the henhouse, but the ugly, scrawny, just-hatched blackbirds without their feathers that John and the boys had knocked out of their nest a few days before—​and he squeaked when I boxed his ears, just the way the birds had when John had crushed them under his feet.

  I suddenly saw the fragile, naked, bloody chicks as if it were they between my hands, and not this boy.

  I stepped back. My fists had become John’s, and not my own.

  The skinny bird-boy was giving me such a look, too—​it made me know at once that he was no ally of my brother’s. He looked at me as if I had betrayed him. As if I were a fallen angel.

  Only, I had never met him before, so that was impossible. How can you betray someone you don’t even know? How can you fall from grace you never had?

  And yet I wanted to make it up to him. I wanted my hands to be my own again, and not my brother’s. I hated my brother’s hands.

  Don’t think about it.

  I reached out to the boy again, slowly, carefully. I hoped my face showed how I felt as clearly as his did.

  I had only enough time to watch him flinch away from me, and to hate myself for it, before John and his friends came rollicking into the yard and descended upon us both.

  Afterward, when the big boys had left, we patched each other up.

  “How did you know my name, anyway?” I made sure to keep my voice gentle. John’s beating had made it clear whose side we were both on.

  He looked at me cautiously with his huge hazel eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you angry, Silvie.” He scrunched up his face, then corrected himself. “Mistress. I know your name because all of us do. My ma pointed you out the day we got here. She’s the new huntswoman, and I’m going to learn to be her falconer. Only because of that and I’m so small, she calls me Bird. But it’s Robert, really. Robert Falconer.” He wrinkled up his face again. “Just in case you want to know. Which you probably don’t.”

  “I do,” I said. “And I wasn’t angry . . .” I took a deep breath, feeling more foolish than ever. “I was scared.”

  He looked me up and down. Whatever eighteen-year-old Bird thought now, seven-year-old Bird had known how small he was. “Scared of me?”

  I was at least a hand taller than Bird, and a stone heavier. It was fairly obvious who had more reason to be scared of whom.

  He laughed, just a little unbelieving trill at first, but his laugh called mine to come out, too, and before I knew it we were both clutching our bellies and gasping for air and rolling around in the dust, mussing ourselves up again and not minding one bit.

  We were seldom apart after that. If John and his cronies still found us all-too-easy targets for beating senseless, at least we could huddle together on the ground and protect each other’s bellies from the worst of the blows.

  It had been years since John had hit either of us, though. He left Bird well alone these days—​as did most people—​and he’d rarely even touched me since I was about twelve. When he did, it was with a kind of trembling gentleness, an extreme restraint that belied the violence, the . . . longing . . . that I so often saw in his eyes.

  Don’t think about it.

  A cold breeze hissed over the garden, over Bird’s secret chair, over my skin. I remembered Lord Danton’s hand, reaching out to take mine. John’s beatific smile behind him.

  Thinking of that made the tears start again. I hiccupped and snorted, feeling ridiculous.

  “Come now, Silvie,” Bird said. “Tell me why you’re crying, really. You do it so rarely anymore that I know it must be something serious.”

  He took my ha
nd and pulled me out of the secret chair and up to my feet.

  Our faces were very close. I could feel the warmth of his body, of his callused hand over mine. His nearness, his heat, was a balm. I leaned into him, and there was a calm, quieting feeling in my chest, like a bird touching down on the branch of a tree. I felt a pull like gravity tilting my face toward his.

  He pulled away at once. “So,” he said, eyes on the ground, “what was it?” And then, more gently, and looking at me: “What did he do this time?”

  I flexed my now-empty hand and pulled my bell sleeve over it. When we were young enough to find boys or girls respectively disgusting, Bird and I had made one of the silly vows children make that we’d never kiss each other. The promise had irked me more than once since I’d noticed that I didn’t find boys so horrible any longer . . . It bothered me more than it did him, I knew. But it had also kept us friends, and I valued that more than I did the lush warmth that rose in me when he was too near. So I kept our promise and never kissed him.

  And I was grateful, I reminded myself, every time he pulled away when we got too close. Not disappointed, not frustrated. Grateful.

  I took as deep a breath as I could between hiccups, and I told him the story of the Hunt Ball. Bird nodded in recognition when I mentioned this noble or that. When I told him about John whistling for the footmen as if they were dogs, he hissed softly. When I described how he had mocked our father, I saw him flinch.

  “Lady and Lord!” Bird exclaimed. “If I were you, I’d have throttled him. Right then and there. In the ballroom, for everyone to see. Best if they did see!”

  I knew he meant it. What was more, I knew that in a way, he thought less of me for not strangling my brother in the middle of the Hunt Ball. Bird was always so visceral about everything. Even when he was small—​and up until a few years earlier he’d been very small—​he was scrappy, determined, ruthless when he had to be. A true hunter.

  He wasn’t small anymore, but tall and broad, and those big hazel eyes could flash with menace when they needed to. It was no wonder most people let him alone.