The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  At this there was an abrupt hush among the audience. Talensac’s machtiern was indeed away that often, and the village had many theories about what he did while he was gone, of which the notion that he simply went hunting was by far the least interesting. It was, however, insolent and improper in the extreme for a peasant to mention it to the lord’s face, and even Justin felt that he had gone too far. He raked up his defiance, though, and made no attempt to retract his words.

  Tiarnán stepped up to the stocks and leaned over them, looking at Justin ironically. He tapped the wooden frame with the end of his switch of willow. “It is you who are here, Justin Braz,” he said gently, and everyone relaxed again.

  Tiarnán’s brown and white tracking dog, Mirre, came bounding across the bridge from the lis, and ran, tail wagging, to press her nose into her master’s hand. The bailiff Kenmarcoc was hurrying down the hill after her, along with Justin’s sister and a crowd of people from the manor house. Kenmarcoc was a dark, horse-faced man with bad teeth. He was a priest, and held the office of chaplain as well as that of bailiff, though he had no pretensions to holiness. He had originally come to Talensac to manage the estate for the duke when Tiarnán’s father died, but he had married a local girl — in those days no one dreamed of imposing clerical celibacy on the Breton secular clergy. When Tiarnán succeeded to the estate, he had invited Kenmarcoc to remain as bailiff. He liked and trusted the clerk.

  “Greetings, my lord!” Kenmarcoc called, before he’d even crossed the bridge. Without waiting to be greeted in return, he panted out the history of Justin Braz, the alehouse, and the girl from Montfort, adding the information that the man with the broken collarbone wouldn’t be able to work for a month, and that the ale and window shutter had been worth two sous.

  “So five sous would cover the cost of the damage, and pay the man’s wages till he’s better?” asked Tiarnán.

  “Yes, my lord,” said Kenmarcoc disapprovingly, “but the bailiff of Montfort — bad luck to him! — is asking for ten. Also, he says that Justin must be punished.”

  “I’ve been punished!” complained Justin loudly. “I’ve a crick in my back like a dagger, my legs have gone numb, my hair’s full of muck, and I had no sleep last night, sitting here locked up in my own stink. Let me out, Kenmarcoc!”

  “The stocks can punish you for the window shutter,” snapped Kenmarcoc, “but not for the man’s collarbone, or his sister’s honor.”

  “She never had any of that, that I could find,” muttered Justin, “and she gave me every opportunity to look.” A woman in the crowd called out, “Shameless!”

  Tiarnán caught Kenmarcoc’s eye and jerked his head at the stocks. The bailiff sighed, took the key to the stocks from the ring at his belt, and unlocked them, top and bottom. Justin rose unsteadily to his feet, helped by his brother-in-law the blacksmith and his good friend and drinking companion Rinan. He stamped his numbed feet against the mud of the brookside, shook his arms, stretched his aching back, and looked warily at Tiarnán. He suspected that his punishment wasn’t over yet — and he was right.

  “Take your tunic off,” Tiarnán ordered, tapping the willow switch significantly against his palm.

  Justin groaned, but heaved off his muck-smeared hemp tunic and turned to face his lord, with a look half-indignant and half-imploring. His bare chest was impressively muscled, burned pink across the shoulders from fieldwork in the first heat of the year. He stood a head taller than Tiarnán.

  Tiarnán put his switch down, pulled off his own green tunic — he had a linen shirt beneath it — then picked up the switch again and pointed with it to the gates of the churchyard twenty feet away. “There’s sanctuary,” he said. Justin looked, began to turn — and Tiarnán fell on him like a hawk on a rabbit. The whip of willow came down with a hiss and landed with a crack and a gasp. Then Justin was running, with Tiarnán beside him, whipping savagely.

  A minute later it was over, and Justin was on the other side of the churchyard gate, clinging to it with both hands and breathing in great sobbing gasps. His back and shoulders were covered with bloody welts. Tiarnán brought the reddened switch down for the last time, harmlessly on the fence, then snapped it deliberately in two and walked back to the stocks. His breath was coming fast, and the hand that had done the whipping stung: he knew, without pride or shame, that he had done a proper job. “You may tell the bailiff of my lord of Montfort,” he told Kenmarcoc, “that Justin has been whipped.”

  He did not glance round, but he felt something go through the assembly, like a ruffling of feathers among a flock of birds settling after an alarm. The contentment which the whipping had disturbed in him flowed back. He’d got the balance right. Montfort would accept the whipping, but Talensac knew that a switch of willow, however fiercely wielded, was not the same as a whip of metal-tipped leather, and a running victim different from one chained ignominiously to a post. Justin had got neither more nor less than the village thought he deserved, and what the village thought mattered enormously to Tiarnán. He would never admit as much — after all, he was a lord, and needed to consult no one about what he did on his own estate — but without Talensac’s approval he would have felt stripped of all authority. He tossed the bits of willow into the brook and continued, “Justin will pay for the ale and the window, but I will pay the rest of the fine myself.”

  Justin lifted his battered head. “I don’t need charity from you, Machtiern!” he declared proudly.

  “You don’t deserve it, either,” answered Tiarnán, “but I will pay it anyway, so that the manor can be quit of all debts when I come to marry, as I soon shall.”

  The crowd went “Ahhh!” and “God’s blessing on your wedding, Machtiern! May it bring you joy!” Nobody asked whom he was marrying; they’d been waiting for the announcement for weeks. Tiarnán nodded curtly to the congratulations, picked up his tunic and slung it over his shoulder, and went off across the bridge and up the hill to his own house with his dog trotting happily at his heels.

  Justin let go of the churchyard gate, staggered over to the brook, and began to wash the blood off himself as the crowd dispersed. His sister came over to help him. “That was a cruel beating,” she said sympathetically, dipping a corner of her apron in the brook and wiping at the weals with it.

  “Be quiet!” snarled her brother, wincing. “Find my tunic, if you want to be helpful.” He plunged his muddy head into the running water.

  Judith fetched the tunic and began rinsing it out in the brook. Justin leaned back on his heels and held his arms out in front of himself: the outraged muscles were trembling. “I take Christ to witness, the man has an arm on him like iron,” he said. “Christ, that hurt!”

  “I didn’t think he’d do it,” said his friend Rinan. “Not for the bailiff of Montfort.”

  Justin gave him a look of deep contempt. “You think our machtiern would do that for a black-dog-shit bailiff of Montfort?” he demanded. “What do you think he cares for the bailiff of Montfort — or the lord of Montfort, for that matter? Isn’t he the finest fighting man in Brittany? Haven’t I seen him sink a sword through a man’s helmet a hand’s breadth into his skull? A man like that’s not scared of some bare-faced jackass from Montfort. He whipped me because he wanted to, and he’s the only one with any rights in the matter.”

  Rinan was taken aback. “I only meant …” he began.

  “You don’t know what you mean,” scoffed Justin. “Montfort couldn’t tell our machtiern to catch fleas.”

  He would not say more than that, because he was ashamed to feel grateful to a man who’d just beaten him. Yet he did feel grateful. Justin had all his life had a horror of being helpless. His recurrent nightmare was of being tangled in a net, or pinned to the ground, and watching impotently as some deadly thing advanced on him. When he’d heard what the bailiff of Montfort was demanding, he’d been sick with a fear he was too proud to show. It wasn’t the prospect of pain that frightened him — fights hurt, too, and he liked those — but the thought of hav
ing to endure it helplessly. Faced with a whipping post, he might even have broken and begged for mercy, God forbid. “There’s sanctuary,” Tiarnán had said, and then the pain was in his power: he could end it by reaching the gate.

  Judith snorted and tossed her brother his soaking tunic. “Do you only think well of men who can beat you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think well of men I can beat myself,” Justin answered with joyfully intact pride.

  On that same sunny morning, Eline of Comper was sitting on her bed and looking at herself in her silver mirror. It was a big mirror, all of eight inches across, and she could see her shoulders as well as her face in it. She was checking whether her new wimple was straight. How beautiful it was! She turned her head from side to side, admiring the effect from all angles, then set down the mirror and took the wimple off to admire it some more. It was forget-me-not blue, embroidered with tiny golden flowers along the edges, and it was pure silk. Tiarnán had given it to her, a present for their betrothal.

  Eline clutched the wimple in both hands and dropped backward onto the bed, pressing the silken scrap against her heart and beaming at the ceiling. She was seventeen years old, and she was going to be married. She closed her eyes to relish it better: it still seemed too wonderful to be true. She couldn’t bring her husband much property, but that didn’t matter: he loved her, and she would be his lady. Lady of a manor, and wife to the finest knight in Brittany!

  Eline was Hervé of Comper’s youngest child, the cherished baby of a large family. Her two elder sisters had married years before; her brothers both had wives who were busily filling Comper manor house with children. Her father made a pet of her, his last and loveliest chick. She loved him dearly, but she’d sometimes feared that he’d never let her marry, that she’d go on sharing this tiny room with her cousin and her nieces, attending her father, helping to look after the house, until she was an old woman of twenty and had to be married off quickly out of very shame. And now she was betrothed to Tiarnán.

  It was a better match than anyone else in the family had made. Hervé came from an undistinguished knightly line, and his modest estate labored to support all his offspring and relatives in a fashion fitting to nobles. Tiarnán not only had Talensac — a profitable manor, and only an afternoon’s ride from Comper — but he had Duke Hoel’s favor, too. Everyone had heard how the duke had once declared he would rather have one other knight like Tiarnán than a whole troop of common soldiers. Those who had an overlord’s favor could expect to see their holdings grow. How wonderful, how glorious, that such a man should want to marry her!

  Eline sat up again and kissed the wimple, then set it down on the bed beside her and looked back in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t straight: that was why she’d felt that the wimple was crooked. She’d been practicing pinning it up like a married woman, instead of leaving it loose or in braids like a girl. She’d have to learn to do it! She smiled at the thought, and her face, reflected in the polished silver, smiled radiantly back. The sight of it made her even happier. It was a beautiful face. Was it sinful to be proud of that? Surely not. It couldn’t be sinful to be glad that you could please people. Her father said it made him smile just to look at her, and Tiarnán watched her with a delight in his eyes that made her want to sing. Beauty was the gift she had for him, the real return for Talensac, and she was glad that she had it to give. She smiled again at her reflection: pink lips, fair skin, small straight nose, vivid blue-violet, black-lashed eyes, high forehead — a husband would be proud of that, certainly ? She would swish about the duke’s court in a blue silk gown, and all the courtiers would whisper to one another, “That’s Lord Tiarnán’s wife!”; she’d do him credit. She’d shaved her forehead to make it look even higher, and plucked her eyebrows because they were too straight, but there was nothing wrong with that. Her hair, normally out of sight under the veil, was beautiful, too, white blond and shining. She untied the ends of her braids and began to undo them. When she was lady of Talensac, she’d have a maid to do her hair for her. She’d choose one of her husband’s serfs, a pretty girl, of course, younger than her, thirteen maybe, and she’d bring her into the household and teach her how she liked things done. Aunt Godildis said that was the way to do it, to train them young; if they’d had another mistress they always thought the way she’d done things was better.

  Eline fetched her comb from the box on the shared dressing table, and, as she combed her hair out, she imagined that she was talking to the maid. “That’s right,” she’d say. “Part it in the middle, and comb it all out straight first.” “Oh, my lady, how fine it is! Like gossamer!” “Careful, clumsy!” (as the comb stuck in a tangle) “You’re pulling it.” “I’m sorry, my lady; is that better? How beautiful you are! And how lovely it is here in the manor house. I’m so glad you chose me as your maid.”

  Eline beamed at her reflection again, surrounded now by her shining hair. She was sure she would love her maid. She would treat her like a younger sister, and when they went to court …

  There was a noise at the window, and she turned to see Alain de Fougères sitting astride the frame.

  Eline’s jaw dropped and she sat frozen for a moment. She decided afterward that she should have screamed, but it didn’t occur to her to scream for Alain. She’d known him since she was fifteen, when they’d met in the cathedral of Rennes at the Feast of Saint Peter. He’d come to Comper often, after that, and her father hadn’t actually discouraged him — not until Tiarnán turned suitor, too. She’d never before been alone with him, of course; no unmarried girl of quality would ever be private with a man.

  Alain put his finger to his lips and dropped into the room. He looked haggard and exhausted and he had several days’ growth of stubble on his chin. The sleeves of his fine red tunic were thick with dirt, and over it he had one of the padded jerkins customarily worn under armor.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Eline in an undignified squeak.

  “I came to see you,” said Alain. “I had to. I’ve just heard that you’re going to marry Tiarnán. Sweet Eline, you can’t want to.”

  Eline got off the bed on the opposite side and stared across it. “How did you get in?” she asked. “Does Father know you’re here?”

  He shook his head. He had, in fact, told Hervé’s gatekeeper — a simple old man who tended to trust anyone he knew — that he wanted to see the lord of the manor. Then he had slipped round the back of the house and climbed a trellis to reach Eline’s room. But all this sounded undignified, and he didn’t mention it. “Eline,” he said instead, “I had to see you. I’m supposed to be in Rennes now. I was on a mission for the duke. But when I heard that you were going to marry Tiarnán, I couldn’t bear it. I left my followers and the girl I was supposed to be escorting, left them on the road, and came straight here. Why should we let them separate us? You know how I adore you. If I have you, I don’t care what else happens to me. Come away with me now!”

  He moved toward her, and Eline backed away rapidly. “You stay away from me!” she hissed at him. “Go away now, or I’ll scream.”

  He stopped and stared in bewilderment. She couldn’t help thinking how handsome he was, even in this state, so fair and wide-shouldered and blue-eyed, better-looking than Tiarnán — but she suppressed the disloyal thought at once. “What made you think I’d go away with you?” she asked him angrily.

  “I love you,” he replied, speaking straight from the heart. “I want to marry you.”

  “So does Tiarnán. What made you think I’d prefer you to him?”

  He looked at her in stunned disbelief. His passion had possessed him so completely that he couldn’t believe that it wasn’t returned. “Eline!” he cried in distress.

  “Oh, I like you, Alain,” she admitted, relenting a little, remembering how a year before he’d ridden with her family to church, and on the way sung one of the troubadour songs the Duke of Aquitaine had written for his lady, a new kind of song, hot from the forge of a new kind of feeling. She’d kno
wn he’d sung it for her. “If it weren’t for Tiarnán, I’d be happy to marry you,” she conceded. “But he’s a better man than you are, and everybody knows it.”

  “Because he owns land!” Alain exclaimed in a whisper strangled by contempt. “Worshipful land! You sound like my cousin Tiher! What do we care about land? Doesn’t love matter more?” He’d held this conversation many times in his head, and she’d agreed with him there so often that he’d almost forgotten it was something he’d never dared to say in front of her father.

  “Why shouldn’t I be the lady of a manor?” demanded Eline, then blushed, because it sounded mercenary. “And everybody knows how brave Tiarnán is, and how skilled at arms. He killed Robert of Bellême’s brother Geoffroy in single combat: everyone’s heard that. And he’s wealthy and young and handsome, and he loves me dearly. How could you believe I’d be willing to run off with you?”

  “He will never love you as much as I do,” Alain said flatly, falling back on the basic axiom from which all his imaginary arguments had depended. “Nobody could love you as much as I do, least of all Tiarnán. He’s a cold, dark devil. All he really cares about is killing. I’ve seen him fight: he’s a madman. People think well of him because all the men he’s killed so far have been the duke’s enemies, but he spills blood like a weasel in a henhouse. If there are no men for him to kill, he kills animals. I met him while I was going to Rennes; that’s how I learned he was going to marry you. He’d been hunting — on foot, in that old green peasanty tunic and hood, all by himself without even a dog! Like a serf! He arranged to marry you, and then he went hunting! Didn’t stay with you, didn’t go straight to court to tell everyone the good news, just walked off into the forest alone.” Alain caught his breath, then rushed on inconsistently, “But he goes off by himself a lot; everyone knows that. Three days out of a week, sometimes more. Hunting, he says. Alone, always alone. No one can come with him. He leaves his horse. He never takes a hawk. When I saw him, he’d left his dog. How could he hunt without a dog? Where is he really going, do you think? Hunting? Or to some woman’s bed?”