Giselle left the church, blinking a little in the sunlight, and made her way through the Maifest crowds slowly, having to pause every now and then to accept the congratulations of one or another of those who had seen the shooting contest. Mittelsdorf was too big to be called a village anymore; “town” was more appropriate, so the Maifest was fairly large, and the shooting contest prizes well worth competing for. Of course she hadn’t signed up for the contest as “Giselle”; no one would ever have allowed a female to enter. She was disguised as a young man with her hair cut short, and ironically, in her typical hunter’s gear of worn loden green wool, she could have been the younger brother of the hunter “Johann Schmidt” who had attacked her six years ago.

Or perhaps not. Her attacker had been dressed in a much finer and far newer version of her own hunting gear. The shabby, bastard cousin, perhaps.

She called herself Gunther von Weber, and what brought her here to Mittelsdorf was what had brought her through a string of five towns and villages so far this month: the prize money for the shooting contest.

Right now there were a lot of stall owners trying to tempt her to part with some of that money. The town’s only inn was overwhelmed with customers, far too many to feed, and there were plenty of stall owners taking advantage of that. The scents of grilling sausage, of hot pretzels, of roasting chicken, and of fresh pastry assailed her on all sides. And if she’d been inclined to indulge herself in other ways, there were drink tents set up with Maiwein and Maiboch, and plenty of peddlers with temptingly pretty things. She could even have bought some of those pretty things without anyone blinking an eye as long as she invented a sweetheart she was buying them for! But she was determined to keep her money in her pocket . . . and she was just glad that it was tradition for the villages and towns hereabouts to stagger their Maifests all through the month so that she could take advantage of as many shooting contests as possible.

When Mother had died, suddenly, leaving her with no idea of where the money had been coming from that had kept them supplied with the things they could not grow for themselves all these years, she realized she had taken all that for granted. Mother had merely gone off with the horse and empty cart and returned with everything they needed several times a year. Nor had Pieter and Joachim any notion of where that money had come from. When they’d all sat down together to discuss Giselle’s future, both the old men had scratched their heads at the question.