The ladies left the hall early, when the long midsummer evening was still bright. Havoise ordered the servants to prepare a bath for the bride in her own bedroom, and to sprinkle the water with rose petals. While the great wooden tub was being filled from steaming kettles carried in from the kitchens, all the ladies crowded round to admire the new gown which Eline would wear for the wedding. It was of blue Arras cloth, with the newly fashionable long sleeves that came over the wrist clear to the middle of the hand, and the neck and cuffs were embroidered with tiny pearls. When Eline had finished bathing she put it on, not bothering with her old shift first. She danced about the duchess’s room like a child, stamping and whirling, her body showing white and supple where the blue gown tied at the sides and her wet hair flying. The ladies clapped. Laughing, Eline curtseyed to the duchess.
“Beautiful, my dear,” said Havoise affectionately. “But now you must go to bed and get some sleep.”
“Because tomorrow night you’ll get none!” supplied Sybille, and she and the duchess laughed.
The ladies began to disperse, going off to join their husbands in whatever partitioned space they’d been allotted. Marie started off with Eline, but the duchess called her back.
“The bathwater’s still hot,” said Havoise. “Why don’t you use it, Marie? One maiden’s bath will do for another, and I had a bath only the week before last; I don’t want one now.”
Marie was slightly puzzled, but it seemed a shame to waste hot water. She thanked the duchess and began to untie the fastenings of the blue-gray gown. Sybille was the last of the duchess’s ladies left in the room, and she was waiting impatiently at the door. Havoise nodded to her, and Marie and the duchess were alone.
Havoise picked up a handful of rose petals from the basket the servants had left and dropped them a few at a time into the lukewarm water. The long, slow dusk was deepening at last, and after all the noise and excitement, the castle was calm. In silence Marie stripped off her shift and stepped into the waist-high tub. She knelt on the rough bottom and began to unfasten the braids of her hair.
“So Tiarnán will be married tomorrow,” said the duchess reflectively. “Oh, it makes me feel old. I remember him coming to court for the first time, riding behind the Talensac parish priest on an old farm nag — sixteen years ago, that would be? No, seventeen. I was not so very young even then. He was a scrawny, frail little thing, innocent entirely of any noble education, and he didn’t speak a word of French. And look at him now! The finest knight in Brittany, so they say.”
“So they say?” asked Marie, smiling and running her fingers through her hair.
Havoise laughed. “Ah, I’m not to cast doubt on your champion! But they say the same thing of two or three others now, they’ve said it of others before them, and they’ll say it of others still in time to come. They even said it once of my poor brother — God give rest to his soul — though I think they wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t been duke. Tiarnán deserves it more than most. He’s a deadly fighter and a peaceful neighbor, and what more does the world ask of a knight? I always liked him. God knows why, because I was a giddy, noisy young woman, and he was a silent child and a serious young man, but I did. I feel almost like a mother to him. And now he’s to be married! Well, as I said, they should be happy. She’s a lovely girl, and good-hearted. She never will understand him, but I suppose that doesn’t matter so very much.”
Marie did not know how to respond to this. She ducked her head under the surface of the tub and shook out her hair in the soft, rose-scented water. “She loves him,” she said when she came up again. “Surely she will understand him, too, because of that?”
Havoise snorted. “Eline doesn’t love Tiarnán. She’ll do her best to be a good wife, and she may love him one day, but now … now she’s just excited at the idea of being married to a famous knight and becoming lady of a manor. She’s an uncomplicated creature. Talk to her awhile and you’ll know what she thinks of everything. Tiarnán is another matter. There’s deeper water there than I can fathom, and I’ve known him a long time. Does he love her, or is it just an excitement of the blood? I can’t say.”
Marie’s heart began its stubborn tussle with her once again. She collected a handful of the soft tallow and wood-ash soap and rubbed it over her head. “It isn’t just blood,” she said firmly. “She is all open charm like bright sunshine. That enchants him — because he has dark places, deep waters, in his own soul.”
Havoise regarded her for a long minute, then looked down and stirred the rose-sprinkled water of the bath. “Now, how do you know that?” she asked.
Marie felt her skin go hot. She could not know that. She barely knew Tiarnán. She ducked under the water to avoid answering, and rinsed the soap out of her hair. When she came up, the duchess was looking at her.
“I could wish, Marie my dear,” Havoise said softly, “that it was you he were marrying. And I think that if he were the man asking, you would not give that modest little smile of yours and refuse, as you do with all the others.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Marie, a touch more sharply than was courteous. “I’m certainly grateful to Tiarnán for saving me, but I’m not wicked or stupid enough to indulge in love for a man who’s marrying someone else tomorrow.”
Havoise gave her a look as shrewd as it was affectionate. “I was watching you while I spoke of him. You can always tell how a young girl feels about a man by watching her when he’s spoken of — particularly when she’s undressed.” The duchess wheezed, then resumed quickly, “But don’t be angry, my dear. I know you’re honest, and I’m sure you haven’t indulged anything; I’m the indulgent one. I’ve been indulging my curiosity tonight. I have lived at court all my life, and there is nothing that fascinates me so much as people. Simply watching them, simply observing the dance. I’ve known Tiarnán, and liked him better than most, ever since he was a child — and, come to that, you’re a complicated one, too. But don’t worry; I know it’s Eline he’s dancing with, and you’re determined to sit by the wall. I mean no harm. You must forgive the impertinent curiosity of those older than yourself.”
Marie climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in Eline’s damp towel. “I have no choice but to forgive the impertinent curiosity of a duchess,” she said bitterly. She had kept private the sting in her heart, and now she felt ashamed and exposed.
But Havoise only chuckled. “Yes. It’s good sport, being a duchess.”
At that, despite her anger, Marie had to smile.
Marie dreamed that she was walking down a narrow path in the forest. The birds chirruped uneasily above her head, and the leaves whispered. She came to a clearing and found a long mound there among the trees. Red poppies grew in the green grasses that covered it, with wild hemlock and the purple-flowered bush called woody nightshade or bittersweet. At the end of the mound stood two tall gray stones, fixed in the earth with a space between them — like a door frame leading only to green turf. Marie walked up to them and leaned upon one with her hand, and at its cold touch she understood suddenly that it was indeed a door, and that beyond it lay something fearful or wonderful which would have changed her life forever, but that she had come too late, or too early, and the door was shut. She cried out in protest and turned away. A wolf was sitting under the trees behind her, watching her, and she looked back into the black-rimmed eyes without fear.
She woke and found that it was morning. Beside her Eline, who’d tossed restlessly much of the night, was peacefully still. Marie rolled over and lay motionless, staring up at the apse of the ceiling. There was a strange numbness in her heart. She felt no jealousy toward Eline: to be jealous, she would have to have had a place the other woman had usurped, and she knew she had never had any place with Tiarnán at all. Instead the dream feeling of having missed something of overwhelming importance was like thick fog over everything.
She sighed, got up, crossed herself, and knelt to say the short version of the morning office. Eline woke while she was still praying, an
d at once knelt beside her and joined in the Paternoster and the amens. When they came to the last amen, she beamed at Marie.
“Thank you, Lady Marie,” she said happily. “I think that must be the best start I could make to my wedding day, don’t you?”
Marie smiled back weakly. There was no need to make any reply. Eline was already on her feet and hurrying toward the clean shift and the new blue gown hanging over the clothes chest, ready for her.
Most of the morning passed in a blur. Marie rode down from the castle to the cathedral, along with most of the rest of the court, for the celebration of the wedding, in the porch, followed by Mass in the cathedral itself. She found afterward that she could remember almost nothing of the service, not even the looks on the faces of the participants; all that stuck in her mind was Sybille whispering comments to the duchess, and the duchess laughing.
When they had returned to the castle, however, Tiher came over to hold her horse while she dismounted, and she looked down into his froggy face, which was grinning at some joke he’d made that she had not even heard, and realized that she must discipline herself or become a spectacle to the whole court. She forced herself to smile back, slide down from the saddle, and take the hand he offered to steady her. “It’s a fine day for a feast,” she said at random, because she hadn’t even noticed whether the sun was shining or not, but as soon as she had spoken, she saw that it really was a fine day.
“I pray it stays fair tomorrow for the hunt!” replied Tiher.
“I’ve never been on a stag hunt,” Marie told him.
“Haven’t you? Then you must come tomorrow. You can ride behind me.”
Morvan of Hennebont appeared at her other elbow. “You don’t want to ride on that nag of Tiher’s,” he said. “It has a backbone like a sheep hurdle and a gait like a striding cockerel. My horse is a pacing palfrey, and as smooth to ride as a boat on a millpond. You can ride with me, Lady Marie.”
“If I come, I’ll ride my own horse,” said Marie, smiling. “She needs exercise.”
They both began to urge her to come, and she walked into the Great Hall to a lively description of the joys of stag hunting, full of double meanings enough to make the duchess roar.
Duke Hoel had ordered a grand formal feast — like the cathedral wedding, a mark of respect for one of his favorite knights — and the customary order of rank in the seating was observed more strictly than usual. The important guests were at the high table with the duke and duchess, the others carefully arranged at tables graded by their distance from the lord’s dais. Marie, as a lady-in-waiting and a kinswoman of the duchess, found herself at the high table, next to the bishop of Rennes and just down from the bridegroom, who had the place of honor to the right of the duchess; Tiher and Morvan, as landless knights, were at the seventh table at the far end of the hall. Both men, however, escorted her all the way to the dais.
“Some say the stag should be hunted with nets,” Tiher was saying as they reached the high table, “but I say the poor creature’s entangled enough as it is. When he hears the music of the horns and the baying of the hounds and finds himself the chosen one — why, if it were not for the bone God has given him in his heart, he would die for fear at the very wonder of it.”
“What’s that?” asked Duke Hoel, looking over from his place at the middle of the table.
“Lady Marie was thinking of coming to hunt the stag,” said Tiher.
“Ah!” exclaimed Hoel, beaming. “Excellent! Lady Marie could hunt a unicorn, let alone a stag.”
“Maybe I will,” said Marie. “I don’t like to think of causing such terror to a poor stag.”
“Oh, but it would be a delicious terror!” protested Tiher. “With a huntswoman such as yourself.”
Havoise wheezed. “Why should a stag care who sticks a sword in it, eh?” she asked, and shooed Tiher and Morvan off. They went, now making rather obvious jokes about the probability of each other’s sticking his sword into anything, and Hoel and the duchess sat down. The rest of the company copied them, and the feast began.
There were olives of beef, and chicken stuffed with eggs and onions; there were sausages and veal pasties; there were great joints of lamb, and pork roast upon a fire of rosemary; there was marrow-bone pie and a flan of cream cheese. No game animals were served, apart from birds, because the season for boar and hind was long over and the stag season only just begun. There was a dish of pigeons stewed in cider, though, and one of young heron, and a plate of blackbirds glazed in honey, and at the end of the first course a roast swan was brought in with a blast of trumpets, draped in its own snowy feathers. The duke’s officials, splendidly dressed, with white napkins draped across their shoulders, served the high table from dishes of silver, and the butler Corentin and the pages poured out cup after cup of the white wine of the Loire and the red of Bordeaux. The sun shone in at the high windows, and the hall was full of laughter. The conversation, having begun on hunting, continued very happily on the same subject.
“I’ll have my huntsman borrow that lymer bitch of yours this evening,” Duke Hoel said to Tiarnán. “Where is she?”
Tiarnán smiled and nodded at the space under the table, and there, sure enough, Mirre’s jowly face and huge drooping ears poked up from under the cloth. She wagged her tail at being noticed, and Duke Hoel laughed.
“I didn’t see her come in! Here, Mirre!” He tossed the dog a piece of heron gristle, which she snapped up. “The finest hound in the world,” Hoel confided to the bishop, Guillaume de la Guerche. “A man might pay a pound of gold and not get one as good. We’ll see what she can sniff out for us tomorrow, eh?”
Tiarnán patted Mirre, and she licked his hand. “There’s a very fine stag of sixteen tines in the forest near Châtellier,” he told the duke. “I think it’s the same beast we lost last Holy Rood Day.”
“Too far,” replied the duke. “I shouldn’t need to say that to you! I can’t imagine you’ll want to stay out from home tomorrow night, and we don’t want to drag the ladies farther than a day’s outing. There are harts of ten tines in the forest of Rennes. We could ride out and have the meeting at Gaudrier in the middle of the morning, chase the deer, and be back home before the dusk.”
“But why couldn’t we take the ladies to Châtellier?” asked Tiarnán. “Most of this company could fit into the castle there, and we could bring pavilions for the rest. It’s fair weather.” He imagined being with Eline in a pavilion in the forest — the high-summer forest, with its thick leaves and its rich green smell; imagined lying with her, with the clear midsummer moonlight shining on her fair hair and her white skin. A shiver of delight crossed his own skin. He looked at her where she sat banded with sunlight on the duke’s right, her hair virginally loose over her shoulders and crowned with roses.
Havoise laughed. “But does Eline want to spend the first days of her marriage camping in a wood?” she asked, and Eline blushed pink as the roses in her hair.
“Don’t you?” asked Tiarnán in surprise.
Eline had once camped overnight on one of her father’s hunting expeditions. She thought of the black mysterious trees, the mosquitoes, and the strange noises in the dark. “When we leave Rennes,” she said in a small, hesitant voice, “I’d rather go straight back to Talensac with you, Tiarnán. To make it home.”
“Oh,” said Tiarnán, disappointed, and Havoise laughed again.
“She’s been fretting over your hunting trips as it is,” she told him. “Terrified that something might happen to you, her darling.”
“I was afraid of that robber Éon of Moncontour,” supplied Eline. “They say that he’s sworn to kill you. And Lord Branoc’s wife was telling us the most horrible story about him.”
“What, how he killed the lord of Moncontour’s bailiff?” asked Tiarnán with his lopsided smile. He had more or less decided to go hunting for Éon as soon as he had time to spare. But he’d seen no reason to mention this to anyone. The announcement would come more aptly when the man was dead.
“There was a story that he was a bisclavret,” said Eline. “I was frightened.”
Tiarnán’s smile vanished. “That is foolishness,” he snapped impatiently. “He is no such thing.”
“Tch!” said the duchess, while Eline blinked at this first experience of husbandly rebukes. “How could she help it?”
“You don’t need to be frightened,” Tiarnán said, instantly regretting that he’d spoken harshly to his wife on their wedding day. “I’m sure the story you heard is untrue, my white heart, but even if it wasn’t, why should it worry you? I am not afraid of Éon or of a wolf, so why should I fear the two of them together?”
The duke laughed. “Well said! But anyone would be afraid of a real werewolf.”
“Why?” insisted Tiarnán. “There’s no harm in wolves. They never kill except to eat or fight unless they’re cornered. If they see an enemy, they always prefer to run away from him. They’re gentler beasts than they’re given credit for. A boar is far more dangerous, as anyone who’s hunted knows. As for Éon, I fought him at Lady Nimuë’s Well and I had the better of him. He has no extraordinary strength. If he’s going to cause my lady wife to fret every time I’m late home hunting, I am doubly sorry that I didn’t kill him when I met him — though I might have had to postpone the wedding if I had.”
“Postpone the wedding, for killing a robber?” asked Duke Hoel. “Why on earth would you have had to do that?”
“I’ve only just completed the penances I was given for the two robbers I did kill,” replied Tiarnán seriously. “If I’d had another death on my soul, I wouldn’t have been able to get it all done in time.”
Bishop Guillaume put down his glazed blackbird, daintily wiped his fingers on his trencher bread, and looked at Tiarnán with professional interest. “How much penance did your confessor give you for killing these two robbers?” he asked.
The Wolf Hunt Page 13
