The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Havoise, who’d abandoned her own half-serious fears when she realized that two of her companions needed comforting, laughed. “I’m sure you’re right, Lord Tiher,” she said. “You don’t need to fret, Lady Eline. Your bridegroom will arrive tomorrow, perfectly safe.”

  Eline did not obviously fret during the evening meal, but when the household was going to bed, Marie found her leaning against the wall of the solar, looking out the narrow window toward the forest. The late midsummer dusk was slowly smothering the last dim gray light, and the rain was still pouring down.

  “Shall I show you our bed, Lady Eline?” asked Marie.

  Eline sniffed and wiped her nose. Marie came and stood beside her. The room was dark, since at this time of year no one bothered with a candle. But the faint light from the window was enough to show that Eline was crying.

  After a moment’s awkward hesitation, Marie put her hand on the other’s shoulder. “What is the matter?” she asked gently, knowing the answer.

  Eline sniffed again. “I don’t like to think of Tiarnán out there now, all alone. Sitting there in some shelter with the rain pouring down — and maybe that horrible creature Éon roaming about in the darkness. It would be so terrible if he didn’t come tomorrow, if I was here, waiting for him, and waiting, and he never came. I wish he wouldn’t go hunting so much!”

  “Has he always done it?” asked Marie, not knowing what else to say.

  Eline rubbed her eyes. “I suppose so.”

  She’d heard of Tiarnán’s reputation as a huntsman even before she met him. One of Talensac’s forests lay near Comper’s, and whenever her father and brothers had discussed setting up a hunt, someone would always say, “Lord Tiarnán of Talensac says that there’s a fine stag” — or a boar, or so many fine hinds — “in such-and-such a place.” And then everyone else would say, “Oh? We’ll look for it, then.” When she did meet Tiarnán, it was because a boar he was hunting had gone onto her father’s land. It had been just after Christmas: a single horseman had come galloping up to Comper in the snow, and the rider had leapt down before the door and come into the hall in a swirl of white, greeting her father and telling him there was a great boar to be had if he’d come hunt it now. Hervé had been up on his horse in a minute, with all the other men in the household after him, and they joined up with the hunting party from Talensac, chased the boar until dusk, and killed it. Then they’d all come back to Comper together, to sit by the fire and drink and talk the hunt over. She had noticed Tiarnán even before someone told her which one he was: the rider who’d come first and alone, he sat among the others, lean and dark, smiling occasionally but saying very little. But when she sang for the company, a song about hunting in the forest, he’d looked at her and a light had come into his eyes. Yes, she knew that he’d always gone hunting.

  “Oh, I suppose I don’t mind hunting,” she said now to Marie. “But I wish he wouldn’t go hunting alone! It’s … it’s ignoble and undignified. People say stupid things about it.” What Alain had said had lain uneasily in her mind for some time.

  “I think he loves it most alone,” said Marie.

  Eline stared in surprise. “Why do you say that?” she asked suspiciously.

  Marie wasn’t sure, and didn’t answer at once. She remembered, vividly, how Tiarnán had walked in the darkness of the forest, confidently, like a man in his own house; she remembered the sense of being linked to something vast and alive.

  “He wouldn’t go alone so often if he didn’t love it,” she said at last.

  “I wish he wouldn’t do it now,” said Eline. “Do you think that horrible creature Éon really might kill him? You’ve seen him.”

  Marie hesitated again. She was afraid of “that horrible creature” herself, but she felt that Eline needed comfort. “I’m sure Tiher was telling the truth about the wolf skin,” she replied. “That story of Ducocan’s was just something somebody invented to explain how a serf could kill a lord’s bailiff and escape. And Tiarnán wasn’t afraid of Éon when they met, but Éon was afraid of him. Frightened as I was myself, I could see that. Tiarnán was concerned to get out of the clearing, where we could have been shot from cover, but he wasn’t worried about meeting Éon on his own. If Éon shouted some threats, then or later, it may have been because he hoped it would make Tiarnán stay away from him. It can’t be easy for a runaway serf to face a knight.”

  “Especially a knight like Tiarnán.” Eline was cheering up a little. Then she frowned. “How did he know who Tiarnán was?”

  “He recognized him. Tiarnán said they’d encountered each other before.”

  “Did he? He never told me that. But I suppose there are many things he’s never told me. He doesn’t talk a lot.”

  “Then I wish you joy in learning over many years all the many things he’s never told you.”

  Eline smiled. “That’s a sweet wish, Lady Marie. Thank you.” She sighed and straightened her wimple. “I’m tired.”

  “Then let me show you to your bed.”

  The bed was in the room next to the ducal bedchamber, a large room separated into smaller ones by the too-short partitions. They felt their way in the dark. The space next to their own was occupied by some of the pages, and they could hear the soft, quick breathing of the sleeping children, and, further and fainter, the endless drumming of rain upon the roof. They stripped down to their shifts, and lay down together on the low pallet.

  “You’re very kind, Marie,” Eline said, smoothing the sheets in the darkness. “May I ask you something?”

  “If you wish.”

  “They say that all the knights in the duke’s garrison want to marry you. Do you know which one you’ll choose?”

  Marie sighed, and resignedly repeated her standard defense. “I’m not going to marry anyone without my father’s blessing. And my father, I’m sure, won’t bless any servant of Duke Hoel.”

  “But I thought … that is, I’d heard you tried to escape on the way to Rennes, of course, but you seem so much at home here I thought you must have been won over by our duke.”

  Marie was silent for a moment. “I swore an oath to the duchess that I wouldn’t try to escape unless I were being forced into a marriage, she admitted.”And everyone here has been very kind, and treated me like a guest … or better“— she felt her face growing hot —”so I suppose I do feel at home. But my loyalties haven’t changed.”

  She wondered as she said it if it were completely true. Her resolve not to betray her family’s loyalties hadn’t changed, but it was hard to prevent new loyalties growing up beside them. She liked Duke Hoel — a noble terrier indeed, bounding, boisterous, straightforward, fond of laughter and hunting. She liked the sly, sentimental duchess, who made her and all the world welcome. And she liked the young knights of the garrison who treated her “better” than a guest: she liked their praise and their jokes and their attention. It shamed her, how much she liked it. The girl she’d been at Chalandrey, the would-be saint of St. Michael’s, seemed a heavy, dull creature beside the woman that Rennes had made of her.

  “I was brought here because of Chalandrey,” she reminded herself aloud. “Not because of anything I am, except its heiress.” She could almost feel it about her in the darkness, as though she were lying alone in her own bed in the room where her mother had died. The house; the step that creaked on the stair; the hedge of hyssop in the kitchen garden; the weathered posts in the palisade that secured the manor house; the village and the fields running down to the river. Chalandrey’s river was the Couesnon. That, she thought, was why the duke was taking so much trouble over it. It lay on the border, in the middle of the path along which the Normans would ride to attack Brittany. If the duke had it, he might build a castle there, to complete the line that protected the March: Chateaubriant, La Guerche, Vitré, Fougères — Chalandrey. The lord of a castle, a castellan, was superior to a knight who governed a mere manor, even a fortified one. Naturally the young knights of the garrison were eager for it. “But Chalandrey’s
overlord is Duke Robert of Normandy,” Marie finished resolutely, “and to steal it from him would be base treachery on my part.”

  “But Chalandrey is a Penthièvre manor,” said Eline, just as everyone else had.

  “I’ve argued this with everyone in Rennes,” said Marie impatiently. “I can’t help what other people did in the past. Maybe my grandfather was wrong to turn to the Normans, but that doesn’t mean I can turn back without dishonor. Loyalty begins where you find yourself. No. I’ll simply keep refusing to marry, and eventually people will believe that I mean it. And one day my father and Duke Robert will return from the crusade, and then, I think, Duke Hoel will let me go back to the convent — particularly if I promise to stay there, and give all my father’s lands to St. Michael.”

  “You really want to be a nun?” Eline asked in surprise. “Why?”

  Marie was glad of the darkness that hid her face. She had wanted to be a nun once. That wish was now a thing of the past.

  “I wanted to be a nun,” she said instead, hoping that Eline wouldn’t notice the change of tense. “I … I wanted to take up arms against the devil, and defend the world by the power of prayer.”

  That wish now seemed nothing but arrogance, folly, and hypocrisy. She had flattered herself that she was one of a spiritual elite, that it didn’t matter that she wasn’t beautiful or accomplished, or that her father and brother scarcely knew she was alive. Now that she had praise and attention, she’d found that she was not so spiritual after all, and the world did look nearly as worthless and evil as it had.

  “That’s very noble,” said Eline, much impressed. “I’ve never wanted to do anything but marry a lord and have children.”

  “I’m not very noble,” returned Marie guiltily. “I think I’d want exactly what you do, if I could have it honestly.”

  Eline suddenly put her arms around Marie, as she would have done to one of her own sisters, and hugged her. “I pray you can!” she exclaimed. “When I go to pray before my wedding, I’ll ask Saint Agnes and the blessed Mother of God to find you a husband that both your father and the duke will accept. I think everyone should be as happy as I am now.”

  V

  The rain slackened the next morning and stopped altogether in the afternoon. The whole court went out into the bailey of the castle to enjoy the watery sunlight. The duke and duchess strolled out hand in hand, with the lords and ladies after them, and the castle servants, stopping their work, came out with their masters and breathed the fresh air. Marie found herself walking beside Eline. Everything shone with wetness; the sleek stone walls flung back gold reflections of the afternoon sun, and the grass seemed to be lit up from within like the horn shield of a lantern.

  To escape the mud, the party of nobles climbed up onto the battlements of the great curtain wall and looked out over the city of Rennes. The cathedral, its front gleaming in the light, towered over the damp huddle of thatched houses beside the brown stream of the Vilaine. A few evening cooking fires had been built up, and clouds of smoke, thick and blue with moisture, colored the clean air in patches, dark against the brighter blue of the sky. A party of about a dozen horsemen was circling the moat toward the castle gate. Their horses, and their own cloaks and boots, were spattered with mud, but they’d thrown back their hoods to drink in the sun.

  Marie noticed Eline tensing with hope at the sight of riders. As they drew nearer, it was possible to make out that the leader was dark-haired and bearded, and rode a chestnut warhorse. Eline relaxed, and her face lit with a smile as radiant as the afternoon. Her bridegroom had arrived on time. Marie felt the sting twist in her own heart.

  When the knight was almost at the gate, Duke Hoel shouted a greeting in Breton, and Tiarnán looked up, smiled, and shouted back.

  Tiarnán was termed Duke Hoel’s man. The description was a commonplace one, and could mean merely that he held his lands directly from the duke, without owing homage to any intermediate count or baron. In Tiarnán’s case, however, the phrase carried its full weight: it was to Hoel that he gave his full loyalty and his unhesitating obedience. This was by no means inevitable. Tiarnán’s feelings toward the previous duke of Brittany, Duchess Havoise’s brother Conan II, could never have been so warm. Duke Conan had still been in his teens when Tiarnán first arrived at court, and had had friends among the young squires and pages who were Tiarnán’s tormentors; he had been, like the worst of them, an exuberantly elegant French-speaking Breton of the March. Tiarnán had known that as a vassal he must be loyal to his overlord, but he had regarded their respective positions with nothing more than a detached acquiescence. The one Breton baron he’d really liked had been Duke Conan’s brother-in-law Hoel. Hoel had no pretensions to courtly sophistication. He said what he meant, and the meaning was usually good-natured and the saying done in Breton. In war he was fierce and tenacious, and in peace he loved hunting. When he realized that the young squire Tiarnán shared this passion, he’d taken him along on a number of expeditions to the forest, and listened to his opinion on the beasts of the chase. Those were the only pleasant memories Tiarnan had from his time at Conan’s court: the days hunting, with the dogs baying and Hoel blowing his horn, and the nights after, with the company sitting under the trees by a campfire, laughing over tall stories. Everything else from that time was grief and violence.

  Duke Conan had died in battle, shockingly young and still unmarried. The title passed to Hoel, and Tiarnán’s official loyalties were no longer at odds with his private ones. It was said that a knight should love his liege lord as a son loves his father; Tiarnán had never known his father, but he loved Duke Hoel.

  As soon as his horse had trotted over the drawbridge he jumped down, leaving his attendants to catch the reins, and ran up the gatehouse steps two at a time. He knelt in front of the duke and kissed his hand, and when he rose again Hoel embraced him and slapped him on the back. “So you’re here,” said Hoel in Breton. “Finished your penances and ready to be wed?”

  “Indeed, my lord,” replied Tiarnán, smiling. When the duke had offered him the cathedral at Rennes for the wedding, he had secretly wanted to refuse. He was aware that Hoel was doing him honor, but he would have preferred to be in Talensac, among his own people. Now, however, he was reconciled to the distinction, and pleased at least that the duke would be present.

  They spoke together for a few minutes very cheerfully, about the journey, the weather, the prospect for a hunt; then Hoel slapped his liege man on the shoulder and sent him off to greet the duchess.

  “God bless you, Tiarnán!” exclaimed Havoise in French, holding her own hand out. Tiarnán bowed low over it and kissed it; he’d always had the same liking for the duchess as for her husband. “You’re late arriving. The lady Eline was afraid you’d miss your wedding!”

  His eyes skimmed for a moment to the crowd of ladies beyond the duchess, and found there the blue silk wimple they’d looked for. He had expected it, but his heart lifted with a rush, and he turned back to the duchess smiling. “Never while I live,” he replied. “If the roads had been better I would have been here earlier.” Again his eyes searched eagerly among the ladies, and this time found Eline’s radiant face, and there rested.

  She’s sweeter than the blackbird’s song

  or the nightingale on the willow tree,

  sweeter than the dew on the flowering rose,

  and sweetest of all is her kiss for me.

  “Ah, it’s been foul weather,” agreed the duchess. “But you seem to have brought the sun with you. Have you brought that brindled lymer bitch of yours as well? Hoel has great plans for a stag hunt the day after the wedding, and he swears by that dog of yours.”

  Tiarnán tore his eyes away from Eline and glanced down at the party of his attendants, just inside the castle gate. “There is Mirre,” he said, and pointed. The dog was waiting at the foot of the stone stairs that led to the battlements. She would never climb steps anywhere, because she wasn’t allowed to at Talensac.

  Noble hunting parti
es did not simply go out into the forest and chase whatever they could find. A suitably grand quarry was always located for them beforehand by a professional huntsman with a good tracking dog, or lymer. Tiarnán, however, generally played the huntsman’s part himself, with Mirre, though it meant getting up before dawn. “The duke’s huntsman will have to take her out this time, though,” he told the duchess.

  “A fine bridegroom you’d be if you did it yourself!” exclaimed Havoise, and wheezed with laughter. “You have other game on your mind than deer. You’ll be lucky to be up by Terce!”

  Tiarnán expected a good deal of this sort of raillery at court. It was one reason why he had not been eager to marry there. He smiled politely. The duchess grinned back at him, then all at once embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks. “I’m glad for you, my dear, very glad,” she said with a tenderness that took him aback. “But you shouldn’t be standing there, staring at your bride the day before the wedding! Off with you, eom de’i! Go stable your horse.”

  Tiarnán saluted the rest of the company with a wave and a lopsided smile, and went back down the steps to collect his horse. Mirre fell in at his heel, her brown and white tail wagging. Havoise looked after him affectionately, then turned to Eline.

  “My dear,” she said, “you’re as lucky as you’re lovely. I’m sure you and he will be very happy.”

  Eline was pale with excitement for the rest of the evening, and at supper in the Great Hall she ate almost nothing. The rest of the court seemed to catch her restlessness. The hall had a bright, breathless feeling, as though the next day would be a major feast, and not just a lesser nobleman’s wedding. Hervé of Comper joined his prospective son-in-law at the table set apart for the young knights, and soon the roars of laughter from that group interrupted the quieter conversations of the other tables. Tiarnán sat composed in the middle of it, enduring the sallies good-humoredly, but doing nothing to encourage them. Marie found her eyes drawn to him again and again. It seemed to her that in the middle of the swirl of noise he had a private stillness. She had been wrong to think that he would be different at court than he had been in the forest.