The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Thirty days for each man,” said Tiarnán. “I gave alms, and made two pilgrimages, and reduced it.”

  “A very strict confessor!” exclaimed the bishop approvingly. “That’s the proper old way, indeed. As my father always said, if you make the penance light, men will think the sin slight. He used to hand out forty days’ penance for each man that was killed in a battle, even if he himself had blessed the standard.”

  “I’m glad all churchmen aren’t so severe,” Hoel smiled, “or I’d be hard put to get men to fight for me.”

  The bishop shook his head solemnly. “My lord duke, you know very well that our mother the Church has struggled to check the bloodthirstiness of knights and failed. Whatever bans or immunities we urge mean nothing to a nobleman with a sword in his hand. And now the Holy Church herself has started a very dangerous trend, I think, with this new fashion of giving a nobleman an indulgence to go fight, and saying that not only does he commit no sin in killing, but even the penances he might have earned before are all remitted. I don’t think the Holy Father should ever have begun it, even though it was for the holy cause of the crusade. These new movements in the Church, this turning against all the old ways … I don’t know where it will lead.”

  Marie found she could anticipate Sybille’s whisper. “It will lead to no more de la Guerche bishops of Rennes.” The family had passed the episcopacy of Rennes down from father to son for almost a century, and Guillaume was known to deplore the specific “turning against old ways” of the new strictness in canon law that enforced a ban on clerical marriage. She met the duchess’s eyes, and Havoise grinned.

  “So, who is this strict confessor of yours?” the bishop asked Tiarnán, catching his breath after his sermon.

  “Judicaël the Hermit,” said Tiarnán, his eyes glinting with a suppressed triumph.

  He was glad to have caught the bishop expressing admiration for the hermit. The authorities of the Church were uncomfortable with such individual, unregulated sanctity. It implied criticism of the Church: it smelled of heresy. Tiarnán was sensitive to his confessor’s reputation, and eager to defend it.

  Bishop Guillaume became less approving as he understood whose strictness he’d just praised. “What?” he asked sharply. “The one that lives at St. Mailon’s Chapel? I’ve had complaints about him. It’s said he blesses bonfires.”

  Bonfires might be an innocent way to dispose of garden rubbish, but they were also lit by standing stones and ancient trees to honor the Fair Ones. The church called the practice demon worship and a grave danger to the souls of those that engaged in it, and a churchman who condoned it could find himself before an episcopal court, charged with heresy. Tiarnán rushed instantly to his confessor’s defense. “Father Judicaël is a very holy man,” he said indignantly. “If he does bless bonfires, it is only innocent ones, and only to show that they are innocent. If priests have complained, they will not have been neighbors of his, but people from villages farther away who have heard a tale distorted in the telling. All his neighbors honor him.”

  “That’s so,” put in Hervé of Comper, nodding vigorously, and Eline added, “He’s a very holy man, my lord bishop.” Comper was one of the parishes which Judicaël’s fame had reached. The authorities of the Church might not like hermits, but laypeople admired them immensely. Their presence in the forest was like a reassuring light in a frightening expanse of darkness; the mysterious and dangerous things that dwelt in the wilderness would be held back by their prayers.

  Guillaume relented and picked up his blackbird again. “I hope that’s so!” he said. “Tales do become distorted in the telling.”

  But he was clearly still unhappy about Judicaël the hermit. Marie, who’d listened intently to everything, was surprised to find that she could have guessed that Tiarnán would choose a hermit for his confessor. Of course he would walk miles through the forest to some tiny chapel among the trees, and sit at the feet of the old man who lived there, humbly accepting his strict penances. Strange that she knew things like that, when she knew so little of him. It was as though in that walk from Nimuë’s Well, the stuff he was made of had seeped into her through the touch of her fingers on his back.

  Fanciful nonsense, she told herself irritably, rinsing roast swan off her fingers in the silver dish of rosewater provided for the purpose. No one could learn another’s mind that way.

  But she could not check the feeling that she did know him, down at some level where the mind didn’t reach. It was as though what she had undergone at the well had stripped the skin off her own soul and left it tender to the lightest of impressions, and now Tiarnán’s nature was printed on it more accurately than she could consciously grasp.

  The feast went on for the rest of the day, and Marie did her best to enjoy it. The tables were pushed to the wall after the meal, and the duke called in minstrels and jugglers to amuse the company. Then there were musicians who played on the shawm, the viole, and the tambourine, and there was dancing. Marie was surrounded by young men offering to dance with her, and she accepted each of them in turn. She danced until she was flushed, sweating, and out of breath, and then she sat down between two of her suitors and had a drink of water. Midsummer dusk at last began to shadow the room, and the servants went about setting rushlights in the iron braces on the walls. Marie watched the light spreading slowly about the hall, and suddenly found herself staring at the bride and groom. They were standing under one of the lights, their hands joined before them. Eline’s hair fell in a shining cloud about a face flushed and smiling. Her crown of roses was slipping from her head, and she looked up at her new husband with brilliant eyes. Tiarnán’s dark face, looking back, was solemn with joy, and his hands held hers as though she were a swallow that might fly away. At that sight, the sting in Marie’s heart slid out at last, leaving only an ache of relief. O God, she prayed silently, let them keep forever the happiness that they have now.

  Then she remembered how her mother had died — the first time that tormenting image had inflicted itself on her since she came to Rennes. For once the memory brought with it no horror, no passionate disgust — only grief, and a still resignation. That was the risk women ran when they married. Perhaps Eline would never know that suffering — but even if it came to her in the end, it could not infect her now. The light might cast shadows, but in itself shone clear.

  Marie suddenly felt in full the happiness she had pretended all day. In the cave at the back of her mind, her mother lay buried at last, resting quietly after the haunting years. Requiem aeternam dona ea Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ea. Marie was free to turn from the grave and love.

  A little while later it was time for the ladies to leave the hall and escort the bride up the stairs to the bedroom which had been allotted to the newlyweds for the night. Eline was pink and giggling, from the excitement and the dancing more than the wine, and when she reached the room she went back and forth across the rushes in a capriole step, then collapsed on the bed, laughing. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh, nobody ever had a better wedding! Oh, what a wonderful day!”

  “I’m sure it will be nothing compared to the night,” said Havoise, and kissed her on the forehead before leaving her to await the perfection of her joy.

  VI

  Talensac, like its lord, was sensible of the honor of the cathedral wedding in Rennes, and, like its lord, would have preferred the marriage to be celebrated at home. Cheated of the ceremonies, however, the village still managed celebrations. The day after the duke’s stag hunt, Tiarnán took his bride home, and found another feast prepared for him.

  When the wedding party rode through the gates of Talensac manor house, it was to see trestle tables, laden with food, set up all around the enclosure between the house itself and the lodge, with planks arranged on shocks of straw for seating. An ox was roasting over the fire that burned merrily in the middle of the yard, and the front wall of the house was almost obscured by the kegs of ale and barrels of cider waiting there. The manor house servants had been sw
eating in the kitchens to prepare everything from the moment Tiarnán set off for Rennes, and when the newlyweds started back to Talensac one of their attendants had ridden ahead to tell those at home to light the fire.

  Though nothing had been said, Tiarnán had been expecting it — which was just as well, as it was being done at his expense. Any peasant would provide food, drink, and dancing to all the villagers at his wedding, so naturally the lord had to provide more of them. He swept Eline off her horse and whisked her up to the manor house, where Kenmarcoc presented her with the keys to the manor, then whisked her back down to the manor gates. The villagers had by then assembled outside the lodge, dressed in their best and ready for dancing, some clutching pipes and tabors and drums. Tiarnán let them in and he and Eline led the first dance.

  The party went on for three days, to the great satisfaction of the villagers. Mountains of food and rivers of drink were poured out, and the dancing went on each night until the moon was high.

  Justin Braz missed most of the third day. He got into a fight with the father and uncle of a girl he’d been pestering, and ended up in the stocks. His friend Rinan came and sat with him in the evening, and gave him swigs of wine from a flask he’d filled from one of the barrels up the hill. The sun went down and the moon came up, half-shrouded in cloud; from the manor house the music floated down to them, slow now, the pipes faint but the drums carrying low and steady like the heartbeat of the world.

  “What do you think of the machtiern’s lady?” Rinan asked his friend.

  Justin swilled his mouthful of wine thoughtfully about his tongue, then swallowed. “Well, she’s a fair lady,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t mind keeping a lady like that, if I were a lord.”

  “Nor I,” agreed Rinan warmly. “She’s whiter than the lily, and sweeter than the song of the harp.”

  “She’s a fair lady,” Justin repeated approvingly. “Mind you, she’s lucky to be lady of Talensac. Comper’s no very fine place, for all I’ve seen or heard tell of it.”

  “And that’s true, too,” said Rinan, and put the wine flask to his friend’s lips before taking another drink himself.

  They were both silent for a few minutes, listening to the music and watching a cloud drift across the face of the moon, and then Justin said very quietly, “I wonder what she will do when the machtiern goes off alone to the forest.”

  Rinan stirred uneasily in the cloudy moonlight, glancing around as though the forest might be listening. “Will he, do you think?” he asked, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Now that he has a wife?”

  “I think he will,” replied Justin. “A man like the machtiern will never let a woman govern him. I think he will, and I wonder what she’ll do then.”

  Rinan considered for a minute, then shrugged. “Get used to it, I suppose,” he said.

  Eline enjoyed being a married woman — at first. She had loved the grand court feast at Rennes; she loved the country celebrations at Talensac even more. She liked the Talensac people — honest, good-hearted, simple people, she thought, basking in their goodwill; how devoted they were to Tiarnán! She was disappointed only in her maid. Kenmarcoc offered his eldest daughter for the position, and of course the offer could not be refused without offending him. Driken was a sad substitute for the pretty, admiring young serf Eline had daydreamed about: she had an outspoken mind of her own, and she was fourteen, thin, dark, and horse-faced like her father. If her teeth were better than his, her spots were much worse. But Eline did her best to like the girl anyway. There was no need to waste time regretting one thing when she had so much else to delight her. Her husband, for instance: she came to revel in the sheer tender worshipfulness with which he touched her every night, and the ardor, and the joy. Her aunt Godildis had told her that a woman never went to the marriage bed except with shame and suffering: she decided very quickly that Uncle Marrec must be even more of a boor than she’d thought.

  When the feasting was over, Eline joyfully set out to fulfill her new role as lady of the manor. This was a complicated task. The manor house brewed its own ale and made its own wine for everyday use; it baked bread, made butter and cheese, smoked and salted the meat and fish produced by the estates, and stored the produce of field and orchard. Woolen cloth was produced from the fleeces of the manor’s sheep, linen and hempen from flax and hemp grown on the domain lands. Dyes were manufactured from any readily available source — broom, woad, oak galls, mulberries. Hides from all the animals slaughtered on the estate were scraped and soaked to get them ready for the tanner in Montfort; hooves and horns, and sometimes bones as well, were cleaned and sold to the craftsmen who used them. Wood from the forest was seasoned, either for the fire or for the use of the manor carpenter. Candles of tallow and beeswax were made, and simple medicines prepared from herbs grown in the kitchen garden. All of this was done in addition to the usual business of feeding and clothing a household that, with servants, numbered more than thirty people — to say nothing of dogs, cows, sheep, horses, and pigs. The management of the lands and stock was principally the concern of the bailiff, Kenmarcoc, but it was the task of the lady of the manor to provision the household and allot “housework” to the servants. Eline rushed into her new position with glee, tripped headlong over a raft of unforeseen details, and was gently picked up and set on her feet again by Kenmarcoc’s wife, Lanthildis, who’d managed the manor house for so many years that she was able to continue her job unruffled, even when “assisted” by the ignorant enthusiasm of her new mistress.

  When Eline had been in Talensac a week or two, and had had time to get to know the house and the servants, Tiarnán agreed to invite her family and some of the neighboring lords and ladies to the manor. For her that was the best time of all. It was intoxicating to be able to greet all her friends and family as the lady of Talensac, to assign them their places in the manor hall, and tell the servants to bring food and drink. On the evening after the last guests left, Eline still glowed with sleepy delight at the wonder of it, until Tiarnán tousled her hair and took her up to bed to give her something more to wonder at.

  The uneasiness began a little after that. When the guests were gone and the first novelty of marriage had worn off, Tiarnán grew restless. He had no business at the court that summer, there were no wars to call him from home — but he seemed unable to settle at the manor. He threw himself into work on his estate: he went through all the accounts with Kenmarcoc; called the village elders together and settled two or three old boundary disputes; arranged for all the outstanding repairs to his mill, manor house, barns, and sheepfolds. He set up a quintain and targets, and practiced with his weapons, splintering wooden swords and practice spears by the dozen, teaching his warhorse new moves until he and it both were sweating and weary. But despite this furious activity, two or three times a day he would go out of the house and down to the manor gate, then return empty-handed, as though he’d forgotten what he’d set out to do. Each day’s end found him more tense and dissatisfied. He went hunting a couple of times, leaving at cockcrow with Mirre and returning in the afternoon. But even when he’d been lucky with the catch it didn’t seem to please him. He suggested once to Eline that she come with him, but she was afraid to leave the manor house in the dark, and hated the thought of wandering about the forest on foot. She suggested instead another hunting party with a neighbor, but he said — though with a smile — that they’d had a lot of company recently and needed peace.

  None of this really worried Eline. She was sorry to see her husband so unsettled, but she supposed it was just the aftermath of the wedding. She’d heard that married men sometimes regretted the freedom of their bachelor days, and she did her best to make it up to him.

  Then one evening near the end of July she found him standing in the doorway of the manor house, looking up at the waxing moon. He was so still and silent that it seemed unnatural, and she felt a stab of fear that he was hurt or ill. She hurried up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. He started violently and whirled about
, and his eyes were so strange that she jumped back. Afterward it gave her a peculiar constriction in the stomach to think of them. They stood a moment, each looking at the other as though they’d never met — and then Tiarnán announced abruptly, “I’m going hunting tomorrow.” After a moment, he added in a more normal tone, with his one-sided smile, “I need time to myself, my heart.” And the next day he was up before dawn and away.

  He was gone for three days.

  Eline was unconcerned the first day, anxious the second, and desperate the third. She thought of the robber lurking in the woods, and couldn’t help the worry that choked her. There was another thing that tormented her, too, a thing that seemed small at first but gradually loomed larger and larger in her mind, until it almost blotted out even the worry: he hadn’t taken his dog. The dog had wanted to go with her master: she padded unhappily about the house, pricking her ears up every time the door opened, waiting each hour for his return. Why? Why not take her? The senselessness of it wore a sore place in Eline’s thoughts, like a pebble in a shoe eating the foot with blisters.

  The servants were no help. They assured her calmly that the master was often away for this long, it was nothing unusual, she might be certain he’d be back. “You’ll get used to it, my lady,” they told her placidly. But they spoke, she thought, with a peculiarly knowing air, and she caught glances exchanged between them when they thought she wasn’t looking. Pitying glances. Why pity her? When she demanded to know where Tiarnán had gone, the answer was always the same, “Hunting, my lady,” but the knowing eyes met over her head.

  She began to feel, for the first time since arriving in Talensac, how much she was an outsider. The servants and villagers were pleased with her, because she was young and pretty, but Tiarnán was the machtiern — their machtiern, Talensac born and heir to generations of Talensac’s rulers. His prestige at court gratified them, but at heart they believed it was only his due, and natural enough for the lord of the finest of all villages. They loved and valued him as they loved and valued themselves. She was nothing. They wouldn’t even tell her the truth. She remembered again and again what Alain had asked her at Comper: How could he hunt without a dog? Where is he really going, do you think? Hunting? Or to some woman’s bed?