The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “That’s settled, then,” said the duchess with satisfaction. “You two will have the most enviable bed in the castle.”

  She didn’t have to wait long for the expected response. “Because,” Sybille said instantly, “every young nobleman in Rennes is longing to share it with one or the other of them.”

  The duchess laughed, the other ladies giggled, and Eline went pink again. Marie just smiled and sat down in her own place at the big loom, picking up the shuttle. Jokes like that had disconcerted her at first, but she was used to them now. Hoel had said that she might marry any of his loyal knights who was willing, and his loyal knights had seen it as a challenge, a glorious contest to win her heart and the manor of Chalandrey. They surrounded her constantly with a bantering, joking, exuberant celebration of a fiery new fashion from the south: courtly love. This was a new game with carefully defined rules: the beloved might have more than one lover, but the lover only one beloved; lovers should be apprehensive, and turn pale in their beloved’s presence; nothing was too much to ask for love, but anything taken against the beloved’s wishes was without relish. Brittany was enjoying a peaceful summer, and the young men, mostly landless lesser nobles, had plenty of time and energy to spare. The courtly love of their songs was usually directed to a married lady, a lord’s lady, lofty and unattainable. An unmarried lady who had a lord’s permission to choose whatever knight she pleased and confer a manor on him — that was a gift from God. The knights revelled in the sport of it. And Marie, after a few weeks of complete bewilderment, was beginning to revel, too. She had never thought that there could be so much pleasure in just living. The Marie who had arrived at Rennes a few weeks ago already seemed to her clumsy and naive.

  The door of the solar opened once more, and one of the court pages, a boy of nine, appeared with a huge flagon of steaming wine carried carefully in both hands. Behind him came a handful of knights from the household guard; Tiher was one of them. Marie smiled and began to concentrate on her weaving.

  “Greetings to the company!” said Tiher. “I thought young Howen needed some help to carry the cups. May we join you, ladies?”

  “By all means,” said the duchess. “It’s a gray, grim day, and we need to brighten it. Hand the cups round.”

  When Tiher and another knight, Morvan, both tried to give Marie a cup at the same time, her hands were busy at the loom and she was able to nod for them to set them down by her feet, which saved choosing. Morvan, disappointed, put the cup he held down beside her, doing his best to look pale and apprehensive, but Tiher grinned, sat down next to the loom, and drank from his himself. “So,” he said, surveying the room, “half the wedding party has arrived! Good health to you, Lady Eline. I’m sure my cousin Alain would be rushing to greet you, but he’s back in Fougères, cherishing a broken heart.” (Sent back by the duke, and told to sulk in private till the wedding was over, Tiher recalled — but there was no need to mention that to Eline.) “When is the bridegroom coming?” he said instead.

  Eline was flustered by the reference to Alain but recovered quickly. “Tiarnán should arrive tomorrow,” she said. “He told my father he’d be here then. But I’m not supposed to see him until the day after.” At the thought that the day after was her wedding day, she smiled. Tiher grinned back, and she stopped smiling. Odd that he was ugly when Alain was so handsome. Even odder that that was so, but they still looked so much alike.

  “I suppose that your bridegroom is still busy today, rushing about his manor, seeing everything made ready for his bride,” said Havoise, indulging her sentimental side.

  “I’d wager he’s gone hunting,” said Sybille.

  Eline looked abruptly uncomfortable and anxious, and Tiher laughed. “Your wager’s won, Lady Sybille. Tiarnán is undoubtedly tramping about the forest in the pouring rain, looking for that big stag he hunted with the duke last Holy Rood Day. The season opens on his wedding day. I wonder if he regrets the date.”

  “Tch!” said the duchess. “I’m sure the young man feels he must do something to keep himself busy. And I’m sure his servants were pushing him to go. Any normal servant would want the master out of the manor at a time like this.”

  “I wish he hadn’t gone,” Eline said plaintively. “Or, at least, I wish he’d take someone with him. I don’t like to think of him wandering about in the woods alone. They say that that robber Éon of Moncontour has sworn to kill him.”

  At this there was an uncomfortable pause, a faltering of the room’s good humor. Tiher looked quickly across to Marie.

  “I heard that Écon robbed a parish priest in Ploërmel last week,” said Morvan. “Broke into the house when the man was asleep, tied up the owner, and looted it.”

  “I am very sorry to hear that,” said Marie quietly. She stared at her hands, now motionless on the loom, thinking, again, that if it had not been for her and her need for protection, Tiarnán could have killed Éon when they met. Then the parish priest in Ploërmel would be unmolested, and Tiarnán could wander about the forest without danger.

  “This Éon is a most marvelous fellow,” said Tiher lightly, though inwardly he was cursing Eline and Morvan for reminding Marie of her ordeal. “He roams about the forest like a wolf, outcast and outlawed, with every man’s hand against him; he steals bread from houses at night and sleeps in thickets. When he last met Lord Tiarnán, he ran off in a great hurry. Yet he’s able to tell someone or other that he means to kill the lord of a manor and get the tale believed. It seems to me that he never swore vengeance at all. How could he even spread the news of his intentions, let alone carry them out? He doesn’t dare speak to anyone but his victims.”

  “Ah, that’s not true,” said Havoise. “There are peasants who help him. If there weren’t, he would have been caught by now.”

  “Why would anyone help a creature like that?” asked Eline in disgust.

  “Because he’s a serf who dares to rob priests and landowners,” replied the duchess drily. “Other serfs admire that, even when he robs them, too.”

  “He killed the bailiff of my lord of Moncontour,” put in another of the ladies suddenly. She was the wife of a vassal of the lord of Moncontour, Marie remembered. Her husband was temporarily attached to the garrison at Rennes, performing military service on behalf of his liege lord. The liege lord was called Raoul, another of the Penthièvre clan, and the knight was called Branoc, but Marie had to struggle to remember the lady’s name — Ducocan, she recalled at last.

  There were exclamations of horror and disgust from the other ladies. “I’d heard he was a runaway serf from Moncontour,” said Havoise, “but not that he’d killed the bailiff. How did he manage to do a thing like that?”

  Ducocan hesitated. Daughter of a wealthy peasant, she’d been too shy to speak in front of the duchess before. Now she had a good story to tell, though, and it seemed that no one else had heard it. Storytelling was an entertainment shared by all classes, as eagerly welcomed in a lord’s hall as in a peasant’s hut, and her ignorance of courtly manners didn’t need to impede her.

  “Listen, then,” began Ducocan, and her voice slipped into the distinctive rhythm of the storyteller, reshaping a story of recent brutal events into the pattern of the old tales. “This Éon was a serf in Tredaniel, a manor belonging to Lord Raoul, not far from his castle of Moncontour. A small village, it is, and surrounded by the forest: may God preserve it from evil! Éon fell in love with another serf in the same village, a pretty girl, and he wished to marry her. So he went to Lord Raoul’s bailiff and asked for the lord’s permission. Now, the bailiff was a man called Ritgen mab Encar, a hard man and a greedy one. He wanted a bribe before he’d agree to get the lord’s permission for the wedding. Éon of course had no money, so instead he agreed to do ten days’ worth of work on Ritgen’s own land. Since he worked all day on the lord’s land, he could not do ten days’ work in ten days’ space, for he had to do the work in the evenings, or at night when the moon shone. So he went and worked the soil late and early for Ritgen, and wh
ile he worked, Ritgen went to see the girl. Probably he’d thought to ask for extra work from her as well, but when he saw her, she was fair as the flower of the apple tree and sweet as its fruit. The black devil came into his heart and he demanded to sleep with her. Twice she refused, and a third time, but he was the lord’s bailiff, and she was a serf. He vowed to bring suffering on her, and on her family, and upon Éon, her sweetheart, and at last she gave in. Now, Ritgen was a married man already, and couldn’t bring her to his house, while her hut she shared with her parents and her brothers and sister. So he took her to Éon’s hut, which was empty while he worked on the bailiff’s land. So Éon labored in the bailiff’s fields, and the bailiff tilled Éon’s in Éon’s bed. And all the village knew of this, but nobody told Éon, because he was known to be a bold man, and they feared what he might do if he learned of it.

  “But one evening some busybody went to Éon and told him to put out the fire in his hut. He dropped his hoe and ran home, and there he found Ritgen and the girl, lying together in his own bed. He seized the man by the hair, dragged him out into the yard, and thrashed him till he howled for mercy, but no mercy did he get from Éon. He didn’t stop the beating until the neighbors came and dragged him off, and half the village it took to do it. He was a very strong man.

  “After that, of course, Ritgen took his bruises to the lord, and the lord defended his bailiff, as is only natural, though he reprimanded Ritgen privately for provoking trouble. Éon was flogged and put in the stocks for striking the bailiff, and flogged again when he came out of them, and at last sent back to the fields in leg irons. But that wasn’t enough for Ritgen. He kept finding fault with Éon, and provoking him to get him punished, and Éon was in the stocks as often as he was out of them. The other villagers hated Ritgen on Éon’s account, and did what they could to help him, especially the girl, who would creep up to the stocks at night and give her sweetheart food and drink. When Ritgen saw it, and knew how he himself was condemned by all Tredaniel, he told the lord that the girl was disturbing the village and it would be better if she were sent elsewhere. So Lord Raoul arranged a marriage for her with a serf in Plémy — my village, may God keep it well! — which lies to the north of Tredaniel, some three miles away. I know the man he chose for her, a steady, reliable young widower. It was a good match. But when Ritgen told her of the match they had made for her, she said she would not go, nor would she heed him at all, nor would she marry anyone but Éon. And she would not be moved from her denial, not for the stocks nor for all the threats Ritgen could utter. So Ritgen went to the lord and told him that a serf was refusing to obey his orders, and asked for men to shift her by force. Lord Raoul sent two men at arms, and they dragged the girl screaming and crying from her house, and bound her and put her on a horse. But when Éon heard her cries he came from the fields as fast as the irons would let him, and he struck one of the men so hard with his fist that he broke his nose and knocked him to the ground. At that Ritgen and the other man fell on him, and beat him senseless. Then they took him back to the bailiff’s house and locked him up in the shed. They meant to charge him before the lord the next day, and ask for him to be castrated. That was what Ritgen really wanted.

  “But that night, Éon escaped. The leg irons were found outside the shed, where Éon had dropped them after using them to lever open the door. He went into the bailiff’s house, and there he found Ritgen, sleeping beside his wife. He strangled the man with his bare hands. Ritgen’s wife woke while he was doing it, and tried to drag him off, but she had no more chance of moving him than of carrying off the church tower; Éon had the man by the throat and didn’t let him go until he was dead. Then he ran off. Lord Raoul sent men after him, but they never found him, and he has lived since as a robber in the woods. Because of his strength and his cunning, other runaways and criminals accept him as their leader.”

  Ducocan paused, then went on, lowering her voice, “Everyone in Moncontour can vouch for that part of the story. But there’s another story they tell about Éon, which many people believe. They say that one time after he had been flogged, he was working in a field beside the forest in his leg irons, alone just as the day was ending. A stranger in a green cloak came out of the forest and said to him, ‘Why do you disturb us, bringing iron so near to the forest? What have you done to be shackled like that?’ Éon very bitterly told the man all that had happened to him. Then the stranger gave Éon a cloak made from the skin of a wolf. ‘Wear this,’ he said, ‘and it will shelter you well.’ Éon took the cloak, and as soon as he did, the stranger vanished. And they say that the man was one of the Fair Ones, for they fear the touch of cold iron. And they say that when Éon accepted the cloak, he became a bisclavret. That was the reason why he was able to break loose from his shackles, and kill the bailiff, and escape all those who have pursued him, then and ever since.”

  Marie stirred uncomfortably. “What is a bisclavret?” she asked in a whisper, not only because Ducocan had whispered, but because she remembered the word, and with it the shadow of the shock she had been suffering when she heard it.

  Ducocan crossed herself. “A bisclavret is … I do not know the French word, Lady Marie.”

  “A werewolf,” said Havoise. She used a normal speaking voice, rather than a whisper, and everyone jumped.

  “A wolf that feeds on human flesh?” asked Marie. “I should think that’s a good description of any robber.”

  “No, no,” said Ducocan. “Not that.” She lowered her voice again. “A bisclavret is a man who can take the shape of a wolf. They say such creatures have superhuman strength and can destroy all who oppose them.”

  Marie stared. She felt something cold run along her skin, like the air stirred by an animal moving past in the darkness. “But I dreamed that!” she exclaimed. “In the forest! There was a wolf there at the spring before I met Éon, and I dreamed that it became a man. When I woke Éon was standing over me in a wolf-skin cloak.”

  Ducocan exclaimed in Breton and crossed herself again. “Christ between us and evil!” said the duchess, and she crossed herself as well.

  “You met a wolf in the forest, on top of everything else?” asked Tiher. “You never mentioned that before.”

  “I hardly thought about it, after Éon,” returned Marie. But she remembered the wolf clearly now, the black-rimmed eyes and the fangs and the lolling tongue. She shivered. “I waved a stick at it, and it ran off.”

  Tiher silently cursed Branoc’s superstitious wife and her ghost story. She should have thought how disturbing her tale might be to someone who’d been threatened by Éon. He did his best to drive the shadow away. “Naturally it ran off,” he said firmly. “Wolves are cowards at heart. When they’re hunted they won’t even turn at bay, but simply run until the dogs pull them down. They’re shyer of human company than the most timid doe — like robbers, even this Éon. Lord Branoc’s wife has told us a fine tale of him, but in the end I think it makes me pity the fellow more than fear him. Taken all in all, he’s nothing but a serf who was pushed too far, snapped, killed the man responsible, and ran. Faced by Tiarnán, he ran again. I suspect all the poor brute wants is to be left alone.”

  “But if the tale they tell is true,” said Ducocan seriously, “it’s clear why Éon would have run away at Lady Nimuë’s Well. He wouldn’t wish to offend the lady who owns it.”

  Even Marie understood that. The lady Nimuë, who gave her name to the spring, figured in many stories — and she was not a human lady. Marie had not forgotten how Tiarnán had cast his chaplet of oak leaves and Éon’s stolen money into the spring. A creature that owed a supernatural power to the Fair Ones would have to be even more cautious about offending them.

  Ordinarily, Marie would have scoffed at a story like Ducocan’s. But she could not scoff away the terror of her own dream. She had woken and found it true, and she couldn’t shake a sense that its truth ran on, like an underground river, beneath the solid ground of everyday events. Tiarnán had made a fearful enemy. She remembered Éon sho
uting something about a bisclavret, and waving toward the forest — had he been threatening Tiarnán, promising him that though he couldn’t fight there, by the well, he would hunt him down? Tiarnán had seemed very certain that the robber would try to kill him sometime. She sat at the loom without moving, still staring at the shuttle in her frozen hands.

  Tiher, looking at her, inwardly consigned Ducocan to a deeper pit in hell. He glanced at Eline, who was wide-eyed and pale with fright. He cast about for a way to reassure them, and discovered, with satisfaction, that he had the means comfortably within his grasp. He didn’t even have to lie. “If the tale they tell is true?” he asked disparagingly. “Surely that should be if it were true? Your condition is what the grammarians call contrary to fact, Lady Ducocan! But if it were true, then Éon would be a bisclavret no longer, because he left his wolf-skin cloak at Lady Nimuë’s Well.” Marie, to his relief, looked up. “I heard about it from the brothers of Bonne Fontaine,” he went on, talking directly to her now and ignoring the others. “They went to the well to collect the bodies of the robbers Lord Tiarnán killed, because he’d asked them to arrange the burial. They found the corpses lying there undisturbed under the trees and the wolf-skin cloak sitting by itself in the sunshine. One of the brothers brought it back to use as a rug, but he ended up burning it because it had so many fleas. It seems to me that Éon’s magical wolf skin was nothing more than a mangy old winter coat, so worthless he never even bothered to return to collect it. He never came back to cover his companions’ bodies, either. He was too frightened. And I doubt it was Lady Nimuë he was afraid of. He doesn’t seem to have given any thought to her when he attacked you, sweet lady. No, he was afraid that a knight would kill him if he didn’t get out of the area as fast as his feet would take him.”