Summer succumbed to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring. Still, Jael had not seen him again, and in that time her faith had waned. She’d ceased watching for him on the road or listening for his name in conversations after church. She hardly prayed for her stranger anymore, nor did she dare mention him to anyone but God. She didn’t need more torture from her peers for falling for a farm boy.
As if he’d want an ox like me, thought Leonhardt one early spring morning. It was Lunday, and Jael was late for Gavin’s sermon. The previous night’s rain made mud of the road and had yet to let up. And she was stuck—Troy’s hoof had broken on a rock jutting through the dirt. She looked around: gray skies, bare hills, and a horse who refused to budge. Then the wind kicked up, and there was a flash in the distance. God, get me out of this storm, she’d prayed without a thought of Him actually coming to save her. She wasn’t Camilla, after all, no matter how much she wanted to be. So when an angel came trudging from between the hills, she thanked God and promised never to doubt Him again.
Zach was hauling that same roughhewn cart piled high with salt-packed chevron and a waxed tarp to keep off the rain. He had no wax for himself, though. The man was covered with mud up to his waist, his hairy chest sandy-blonde through the white of his linens as he shivered. The wind howled, and in the distance, the drum of thunder drove Troy wild. The old hackney whinnied and bucked as much as he could on three good legs with Jael beside him, tugging at his reins. But there was too much pain and fear in the animal, and she too was afraid—that he might bolt or turn and trample her if her hands cramped in the cold and she lost the reins. Then suddenly there was Zach standing next to her, Troy’s harness in hand, gently dispensing his strength as he tamed the horse with whispers. He spoke to Jael as well, though what he said she could not hear over the wind and thunder. She only remembered following him, dumbfounded as he coaxed stubborn Troy between waterlogged hills and through a maze of streams and forest.
They didn’t venture long before the canopy thickened, and the sun and rain waned into misty twilight. Zach tread swiftly despite the dim, like he’d travelled this path a thousand times. He had, he explained to Jael. It was the valley pass his folks had always taken between their knoll and the market road. He pointed to a fallen alder, branches bare and roots torn from the hillside. It had been cleaved in two, and each half was pushed apart wide enough for four men abreast—or for a cart.
“That way,” Zach told Leonhardt, “goes up the hill to the house. This way,” he nodded toward the stream they’d been following, “this way goes to some place special.”
The meadow: the weeper, the pond, the chamomile—though none had bloomed that stormy morning. Still, it was beautiful in Jael’s memory. They tied Troy to a looming branch and sat on the huge roots stuck up above the soil—just to wait out the rain, they’d told themselves—then Jael would go home with her injured horse and he’d return to his cart and depart for the market. But the storm lasted for hours, and with nothing else, they went to talking—about their homes, their families, their dreams. They didn’t seem to notice that the rain gave way till the late afternoon, and even then, they made excuses to stay and to meet again next Lunday morning.
Since then, all those months ago, neither Zach nor Jael missed a single day. Their first planned reunion, they spent hours after Gavin’s sermon lying on the grass and chamomile, sitting by the by the pond discussing everything they could think of. She learned that Zach took care of his siblings and mother, that he was made man of the house when his father died of winter fever two years before, and that since then he’d spent almost every second of God’s gift of life tending to goats, hauling meat off to market, or working the harvest for other farms. She also learned that though he loved his family, he knew his mother would be gone soon—taken by consumption—and that he hoped to save up for some land of his own once his youngest brother was grown enough. A peasant’s cup dream, yet after hearing it, Leonhardt was embarrassed to tell her part. She hadn’t the tragedy he had. Her father was still alive and well, pulling a plow at almost fifty years old; nor was her mother close to death. And Jael was an only child—a rare thing, and blessed to have been born to a holy, lettered knight. She’d been gifted with reading and writing and fighting with a sword. She told Zach that she was the son her father never had and that she was happy to be. He laughed back then—not mockingly. He understood what it meant to pursue an impossible dream.
But that very evening was like waking from a dream. When Jael arrived home, her parents greeted her with a vicious interrogation that let on into the night. It was rare that she fought with her father and rarer that he’d be on her mother’s side. In the end, she confessed as to where she’d been, as to what she’d been doing, and with whom. The words were like a witches incantation, conjuring Hell itself inside the Leonhardt house until the sun rose again and she could escape into field work. After that, she and Zach were limited to the time she had—time stolen
