The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Huntsman pulled the wolf-skin cloak off his head and sat up. He shouted something after his adversary, something angry and contemptuous. He got to his feet, bunched the cloak up, and hurled it at the ground. Then he stood staring in the direction Wolfskin had gone with an expression of grim consideration.

  “Are you hurt?” Marie asked him, then remembered that he probably wouldn’t understand.

  He glanced at her in surprise. “You speak French?” he asked.

  She didn’t know what to say. After the monstrous things that had happened, the simple question seemed unanswerable. How could she say what language she spoke, when she felt that she had become foreign to herself? She shoved the bent index finger of her left hand sideways into her mouth and bit it, a habit from her early childhood, broken many years before. She started to shake again.

  Huntsman looked at her with concern. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  She shook her head and sat down, still biting her finger. Agonizingly wrenched shoulders, bruised face, bruised stomach and thighs: no, she wasn’t hurt. Not as much as she could have been, not nearly.

  Huntsman glanced about, then went to where her gown lay on the grass beside the pond and picked it up. “Here,” he said, bringing it over to her. “You have nothing to fear from me, sister. I won’t harm you. Put this on, and we will go.” His French had a strong, soft Breton lilt: otherwise it was faultless. He was quite young, no older than twenty-five, and the air of danger that had come with him out of the trees was gone now. “You should not have been here on your own,” he told her seriously.

  She burst into tears.

  Huntsman stood over her awkwardly for a moment, then knelt down beside her. He draped the gown over her shoulders like a cape. “Sshh,” he said gently. “I know you are a brave girl. Be brave for a little longer. We must get away from here. Éon has run off, but he will think it his duty to kill me, to revenge his companions. He may have another friend nearby, with a bow; we cannot stay here.”

  Marie wiped her eyes, still biting her finger. She wiped her nose and stood up. Huntsman nodded approvingly. Marie pulled the gown off her shoulders with trembling hands. Her hair had come loose in the struggle and hung in thick brown tangles over her shoulders. Again she felt as though she’d been transformed into somebody else — a fairy, maybe, standing here in a forest glade in the fading gold light, dressed only in her white shift, barefoot, her hair loose about her shoulders. She fumbled the black woolen gown over her head and looked around for the wimple.

  “We … we should hurry?” she asked Huntsman.

  He nodded.

  She saw the wimple, lying on the grass beside Joker’s body, and went over to pick it up. Joker’s face stared up at her sightlessly, one eye glazed, one bloody ruin. Numbly she bent and picked up the wimple. It was damp from its use as a gag and stained with blood: it slipped from her trembling fingers. She picked it up again, took it over to the pond, and rinsed it in the cool water. She knew that she must hurry — but she couldn’t. She knelt, looking down at her reflection. The face was still her own, though it was blotched with bruises and there was blood on her chin. From her cut lip, or from Money-man’s tongue? She started to shake uncontrollably again. She closed her eyes and said a Paternoster. Then she drank some of the water, splashed her hot face, wiped it with the scrap of linen, rinsed the wimple again, wrung it out, and pulled it over her head. Underneath it, her hair was still loose, but even if there had been time to braid it, she doubted that her hands were steady enough. When she tried to climb back to her feet, she found that her legs were unsteady, too.

  “I … I don’t know that I can hurry,” she told Huntsman. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and I’m not used to walking …”

  This did not seem to worry Huntsman. While Marie was washing he’d dragged the two corpses to the very edge of the clearing and arranged them on their backs; her information merely made him take a wallet of supplies from one of the dead men. He picked up Money-man’s purse as well, but didn’t loot the bodies more than that, except to select some arrows from the quivers. Then he took the rest of the arrows, together with the three bows, propped them against a fallen tree, and broke them with a few smashing blows of his heel. With the same rapid deliberation he picked up the twist of oak leaves he’d worn when he first came into the clearing. He went over to the spring and dropped it in the water, muttering something, then tossed the purse in after it.

  Marie swallowed. Even in her shocked state, she understood the gesture. It was that sort of spring. This place was sacred to the Fair Ones, and Huntsman was apologizing to them for staining it with blood. It occurred to her that most of the money in the purse must be hers — but after what the Huntsman had just done for her, she had no intention of asking him to fish it out.

  Huntsman took the selected arrows back to his own quiver, still in its place under the oak tree, and slid them in. He picked up bow and quiver, and nodded his head in the direction he’d come from. “We will go this way,” he told Marie, handing her the wallet of supplies. “You can eat as we walk.” She nodded, though she no longer had any idea what direction it was.

  Huntsman hesitated another moment, glancing back at the clearing. Then he turned to Marie again. “I … do not wish to pry,” he said. “But … would the person you were meeting in the forest still be anywhere nearby? Because if so, he may be in danger.”

  Marie stared in confusion, then realized that Huntsman had made the same assumption as Wolfskin: that she’d come to the forest to meet a lover. “I wasn’t meeting anyone in the forest!” she declared angrily, her face going hot. “I was lost.”

  “Oh,” said Huntsman, surprised. “Forgive me.” He set out into the shadows under the trees.

  There was bread in the wallet, a coarse black bread full of grit and bran; it had a strange bitter edge to it that made her teeth ache, and she suspected that its baker had eked out his flour with acorns, but she ate it hungrily. Huntsman didn’t share the bread with her, but walked with his bow in his hands and an arrow on the string, glancing from side to side. It was dusk now, and the forest was dim and mysterious, gray tree trunks melting into the gray light, leaves whispering to one another. After a little while they reached a grass-covered track, and Huntsman turned onto it. An owl hooted, and Marie jumped.

  “Do you really think that Wolfskin is following us?” she asked nervously.

  “Wolfskin?” repeated Huntsman. “Do you mean Éon?”

  “Was that his name?”

  “Yes,” said Huntsman seriously. “I suppose he would not have told it to you.”

  Marie wanted to giggle hysterically. She bit her finger again. “We weren’t introduced, no. You seem to know him.”

  Huntsman shrugged. “I have encountered him before. But I would have guessed his name even if I hadn’t. He is a very notorious robber.”

  “What!”

  “Haven’t you heard of him? Éon of Moncontour?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. Well, he has been a terror to the people for a year and a half now, but he moves about from place to place, and those the duke sends to catch him can never find him. I am sorry, by Saint Main, that he got away. I should have shot him from the trees.”

  “And … and you do think he’s found some more of his followers, and is coming after us?”

  “No,” said Huntsman confidently. “I think he’s run off. I wounded him in the fight and I broke his bow. He is afraid of me anyway: most likely he’ll be far away by now. But he had three men, not two, in his company last autumn. Probably the third died during the winter, but perhaps he was simply somewhere else when the others attacked you. If that was so, he could have armed himself again, and they could be tracking us. He will feel obliged to kill me if he can.”

  Marie was quiet for a moment. She remembered his considering look when the robber ran off, and she suspected that if she hadn’t been there, he would have followed at once. And if she wasn’t here now, battered and exhausted and needing h
elp, he would follow still. It wasn’t wise to leave a wounded wolf alive, free to attack you another day. “Thank you for saving me,” she said at last. “I … that is, I come from a good family. We can reward you richly for what you’ve done for me.”

  He glanced at her sideways. “You are from a good family?” he asked, surprised again. “What …” He stopped.

  What were you doing alone in the forest? Marie finished for him silently. That was a question she didn’t want to answer, not before she was safely back at St. Michael’s. Huntsman’s French was very good, surprisingly good, but it was still plain that it was his second language. A Breton-speaking Breton was almost certainly a servant of the duke of Brittany, either directly or through one of his vassals. From Huntsman’s reference to the duke a moment before, Marie suspected he was one of the duke’s own foresters. He certainly seemed skilled and brave enough for it. At any rate, if he knew that she was escaping from Duke Hoel, he’d turn from rescuer to captor in an instant. She wondered why he hadn’t asked his question aloud. Probably because he still believed she’d gone to meet a lover and didn’t want to pry.

  “I am of good family,” she repeated instead. “The Penthièvres of Chalandrey. My name is Marie.”

  He stopped short at that and stared at her hard.

  “We’re only a cadet branch of the clan,” she told him, unsettled by the look of disbelief. “I’m a novice at St. Michael’s priory. That’s in the town of Mont St. Michel, under the protection of the abbey. I … I was on my way back there, but I stupidly left the road to … to avoid meeting someone, and I got lost in the forest. If you can bring me back there I’ll pay you whatever you like.”

  He stared a moment longer, then seemed to decide that she was telling the truth. Even in the dusk she noticed his smile, a quick lift of one side of the mouth while the other side remained serious, and a tilt of the angled eyebrows. She found that she knew that his eyes were a light brown; she must have seen that at the spring, but been too shocked still to register it.

  “So I have rescued a Penthièvre, a kinswoman of the duchess!” he exclaimed. “Indeed! I have done better than I knew. But you should not make such promises to strange men.”

  “You said I had nothing to fear from you,” she replied.

  “Nor have you. Well, I can bring you to a lodge belonging to a daughter house of the abbey of Mont St. Michel. There will be brothers there who can escort you home.”

  Marie bit her lip. “I’d prefer … not to go back to the convent by the public road. Couldn’t you … ?”

  “I am sure the brothers at the lodge know ways to reach Mont St. Michel that don’t follow the public road.” He began walking again.

  Marie hurried to catch up with him. It was growing very dark now, and she tripped over a grass tussock and fell. Huntsman turned back and helped her up.

  “Hold onto my belt, Lady Marie,” he told her. “The ground is uneven.

  She slipped her fingers over the belt and walked behind him. Through the loop of leather she could feel the muscles of his back shifting. He picked his way through the night so surefootedly that she wondered if he could see in the dark. If she echoed his movements, she walked without stumbling. A dreamlike peace slipped over her. She had been caught in the forest by night, and she had met the thing that lay in wait for her, but it was tamed, and there was no more fear. The darkness and the trees had no power to terrify her, for she was joined to them, linked by the strap of leather over her fingertips. Body and soul, which for her had always been at odds, moved together through the night: two ends of the same yoke; two fish turning as one in the silk current of a stream. She realized suddenly that she didn’t want to go back to St. Michael’s with any anonymous brother from a lodge. Without Huntsman, her shocked mind whispered to her, everything will dissolve into horror and chaos once again.

  “You couldn’t go to St. Michael’s with me yourself?” she asked. “I’d reward you well.”

  “I am sorry, Lady Marie. I have important business in Rennes.”

  She bit her lip. Her eyes stung. She told herself severely that this was nothing more than shock and exhaustion, and in the morning, everything would seem different. She found her own severity carried no conviction. She wanted Huntsman to stay beside her.

  He would not. “Well,” she said, after another long silence, “come to Mont St. Michel when you can then, and I’ll reward you.”

  He made a small noise of amusement. “I am not a man that needs to be paid,” he told her. “I, too, am of good family, Lady Marie. I hold the manor of Talensac, and some lands near Comper and Paimpont. My name is Tiarnán.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Marie. “You’re a knight?”

  He nodded; she could feel the movement down his back, though the darkness made it invisible.

  “Oh!” she said again, feeling her face grow hot. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “I … I thought you were a forester. I offered you money.”

  “So you did. And had I been a forester, I would have been pleased to take it. What else were you to think, meeting a man on foot and dressed in a plain green tunic? Everyone looks the same in hunting clothes. Just as a lay sister or servant, which I took you for, looks the same as a lady nun … . Here. We have reached our destination.”

  There was a stink of pigs and a smell of wood smoke. A dog began barking madly. Huntsman — Tiarnán — stopped and stood still. “Salud!” he shouted and, after a moment, there was an answering shout, and then a light ahead, coming from an open door.

  “Where are we?” Marie asked.

  “At the lodge of some pig keepers, near the crossroads of Dol,” said Tiarnán, beginning to walk forward again. A man was standing in the door, holding a branch of kindling for a torch in one hand, and a dog’s collar in the other. Tiarnán’s face appeared again from the darkness as they moved toward him; he gave her the sideways glance and the half-smile. “They are lay brothers of Bonne Fontaine abbey, Lady Marie,” he told her. “A night spent here will do no damage to your reputation.”

  II

  Alain de Fougères pulled his helmet off, ran his fingers through his sweat-damp yellow hair, and turned in the saddle to scan the land around them. The fields lay flat and open under the noonday sun; Mont St. Michel at their backs stood out as a blue silhouette, twelve miles away and showing clearer than the nearest church tower. The hills in front of them were dark, however, already shadowed by the fringe of the forest. They’d reached the end of the coastal plain and were nearly halfway back to the abbey of Bonne Fontaine — and they had found no trace of the woman they were searching for.

  Alain turned an imploring gaze on his cousin Tiher. “Where is she?” he demanded, in a voice far more tearful than suited a noble knight.

  Tiher shrugged. Alain had asked that question at least thirty times in the past day and a half, and Tiher was tired of it.

  Alain groaned. “She must have left the road,” he said. “We would have caught up with her by now if she were on the road.”

  Tiher shrugged again. This phrase, too, had been repeated — not so often as the first, but that was only because Alain hadn’t used it until the previous afternoon. Until they’d galloped all the way back to Mont St. Michel and been thrown out of St. Michael’s convent by a shocked and outraged prioress, he’d clung to the belief that Marie was just in front of them. To Tiher it had been obvious before they were halfway that she couldn’t be. She didn’t have a horse, and no noblewoman would have the stamina to stay ahead of them on foot. Obviously she’d left the road — and if she’d gone into the forest, God knew what might have happened to her. If Tiher had been in charge of this party, he would have …

  It was no use thinking of that. Alain or his elder brother would always be in charge of any party Tiher was in. Lord Juhel of Fougères would be affronted if a mere child of his sister commanded his sons.

  “Perhaps the brothers of Bonne Fontaine have some news of her,” Guyomard put in earnestly. When Marie’s
disappearance was discovered, the abbot had sent men to search for her throughout the countryside. “They may even have found her already!”

  Alain looked at him eagerly. “I pray God they have!” he said passionately, and crossed himself.

  Tiher snorted — not at the sentiment, but at Alain’s acceptance of it from Guyomard. It had been Guyomard who locked the door of Marie’s room at Bonne Fontaine, and Alain had blamed him for the escape. Alain never liked to blame himself, and it was easier to blame Guyomard than Tiher: Guyomard was not a relative. Lord Juhel could dismiss him from his service, and if he were dismissed, where would he go? All the way to Mont St. Michel and halfway back again, in and out of every hut and village along the way, Guyomard had humbly told Alain what Alain wanted to hear. Now, at last, it seemed that Alain wanted that comfort so badly that he was willing to forgive his dependent to get it. He’d had no sympathy whatever from his cousin. It was plain to Tiher that the girl would have found a way to get free of them whoever turned the key. If she could vanish from a locked room, then clearly a locked room wasn’t enough to hold her. They should have kept watch, slept before her door, shackled her, even — but they hadn’t thought it necessary. They were all to blame — but Alain most of all. He was in charge. Juhel de Fougères might take it out on Guyomard, but Duke Hoel would hold Alain responsible. And rightly so!

  Tiher stirred and said spitefully, “If the brothers of Bonne Fontaine have found Lady Marie, how will they have found her? Alive or dead?”

  Alain winced and wiped his face. He fumbled his helmet back over his head and did up the chin strap. They rode on in silence, and Tiher regretted his words — not because they’d hurt Alain, but because he’d voiced a thought they’d all had which had previously remained unspoken, and which he now wished were unspoken still. The first news the abbot had given them after Marie disappeared was that the robber Éon of Moncontour was known to be in the area: a poor cleric had been robbed near the crossroads of Dol not three days before. Marie Penthièvre might indeed be found dead in the forest, and that would be a disgrace for all of them. If it was deplorable to have tricked a novice away from her convent with the connivance of her abbess, it was far, far worse to lose her along the way, so that she ended up robbed, raped, and murdered in the forest. There was nobody who would not blame them for that. The prioress of St. Michael’s had blamed them already. Of course, Lady Constance was just as eager to escape blame as anyone; she’d pretended that she hadn’t known who they were before, that she’d believed they’d come from Duke Robert, that she, at any rate, had acted entirely as she should. But blame would stick to her, nevertheless. Credit is slippery, and hard for even one man to hold onto, but blame, sticky as honey, goes everywhere: it would stick to all of them.