The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  His tired horse butted him with its nose, and he realized that he would have to find somewhere to leave it, or it would betray his presence to any chapel visitor. He led the animal around the church, and found that the path continued away from the chapel. He followed it through the woods along the ridge of the hill, then down to a small stream. There was grass by the stream, and he tethered his horse there, tended it, and left it to graze, praying that no thieving peasant would come that way and make off with it.

  He remembered that the hermit Judicaël was supposed to have a hut nearby, and he looked for it as he walked back up the path to the chapel but saw no sign. It was dark now, though, and the forest was thick and black. A whole village could be yards away, and he’d see nothing of it. He anticipated no trouble from the hermit, though, even if they met. All he had to do was say that he was keeping a vigil in honor of the saint, and the priest would probably offer him breakfast. The thought reassured him. The moon was higher now, and cast a cold gray light on the center of the path before him, and the leaves of the forest rustled strangely. He did not like the thought of being entirely alone.

  The church was unlocked and empty, and he went inside, sat down by the open door, and ate the bread he’d brought for his supper. An owl hooted repeatedly outside, and the sense of being watched did not fade. He went farther into the church and closed the door, but the sense did not ease. Sitting there in the black interior of the church, he grew steadily more and more afraid. He began to feel that if he opened the door he might see anything: devils dancing about the church, black and hideous with red tongues, waving the bones of men; or the fairy hunt riding by, magnificent and fair upon white horses, their bridles decked with bells, but death to anyone who saw them. He became terrified that for some reason he would open the door; that his very fear would force him to open it, and then he would die. In the end, he drew his sword, went up to the altar, and knelt, gripping the crosspieces of the blade and repeating all the prayers he knew. He told himself that his fear was irrational, that he was kneeling in a small church not three miles from a manor he knew well, and that there was a hermit, a holy man, sleeping in a hut just down the hill. After a while, and after nothing had happened, the fear ebbed. He lay down on the rushes before the altar and went to sleep, his hand still clasping the hilt of his sword for comfort.

  He woke before the dawn, cold and stiff; rolled over and tried to go back to sleep; failed; and got up. The fear he had felt the previous evening now seemed ridiculous. He went boldly to the door of the church and flung it open: the clearing lay before him, gray and still in the light of the setting moon. It was the middle of October now, and the grass sparkled here and there with an edge of frost. Judging by the moon it was already after cockcrow. Alain strode round the church a few times, stamping his feet and stretching his arms to take away the stiffness of sleeping in armor, then went back in and drowsed for another hour. The morning chorus of the forest birds awakened him once more.

  Eline had said that Tiarnán, if he was coming, should arrive about an hour after dawn. Reluctantly — because he again believed that his presence at the chapel was pointless — Alain looked for the entrance to the bell tower. He found it to the right of the altar, and almost decided not to use it. The tower itself was solid enough — stone-built and squat, like the chapel — but inside there was nothing but a ladder leading up to the single bell, and a rope hanging down from it. No comfortable platform to sit on while he waited — not even a stair. Eventually, however, he climbed reluctantly up the ladder and propped himself against the wall at the top, looking out through the wicker surround of the bell. By changing position and turning his neck he could see the whole circuit of the clearing. He ate some more of his journey bread and had a drink of watered wine from his flask.

  He’d only been watching for half an hour when there was a sudden flash of movement in the path that led to the road, and then Tiarnán walked quickly into the clearing. He was dressed in his plain green hunting clothes, hooded against the chill of the autumn morning, but his light, rapid step was instantly recognizable. Alain caught his breath at the unexpectedness of it. Tiarnán started to go around the side of the chapel, then paused and turned back toward the church door, disappearing from view in the shadow of the wall. There was a small bell hanging by the door as well as the larger one next to Alain’s head, and it rang sweet and high for a moment, then stopped. Alain, waiting for his rival to appear again in the clearing, suddenly heard his footsteps in the church behind him. Tiarnán had come to consult the hermit, his confessor. Alain clutched his sword, not daring to move. He tried to remember where he’d left his helmet — was it behind the door, or right up by the altar in plain sight? He tried to think of ways to explain what he was doing up the bell tower of St. Mailon’s. The worst thing was, if Tiarnán found him, he would probably think it was funny. “Are you as much afraid of me as that, Alain de Fougères?” he would say with that superior smile, and Alain would be ridiculous again, the man who hid up a ladder when he saw his rival. He set his teeth and prayed frantically to Saint Mailon that nobody would try to ring the big bell.

  A minute later, a tall man in a plain brown robe came out of the trees along the same path; from his viewpoint, Alain could clearly see the neat clerical tonsure in the graying black hair. Judicaël the hermit — a younger man than Alain had expected. He went into the church, and a moment later Alain heard his voice, very close in the chapel below.

  “I thought it would be you,” said the hermit.

  “God be with you, Father,” replied Tiarnán’s low voice. “Have you time for me?”

  There was a sigh, and the sound of a man settling himself on his knees. “You know I have. Well, Dominus tecum, my son.”

  “Et cum spiritu tuo, Father. Bless me, for I have sinned …”

  Alain writhed and bit his knuckles. He had not the least desire to intrude on the privacy of the confessional, but he didn’t dare come down. He pressed his hands against his ears and tried not to listen, but the voices were only a few feet away, and some base but irresistible curiosity ensured that he heard everything, despite himself.

  Tiarnán solemnly confessed a number of venial sins: harshness to a servant; anger over some lawsuit; eating a pottage made with meat broth on a fish day. The priest listened patiently, assigned him a penance of prayers, and absolved him. There was a long silence, and then the hermit said, “Your wife has not come back to you, then?”

  “No,” said Tiarnán. The low, light voice was unexpectedly wretched.

  “And will she be coming here to talk to me?”

  “She said she might. But I don’t think she will.”

  “You’ve seen her, then, the past week?”

  “I went to Iffendic last Tuesday. She looked at me as though I were a monster. Even her sister has finally noticed that all is not well between us. When it was time to go to bed, Eline … she would not even sleep in the same room as me. I lay down to rest on the floor, but she still huddled awake in the bed, and every time I stirred, she gasped. I couldn’t bear it; I went home in the middle of the night.”

  There was another silence.

  “I should not have told her, I know!” Tiarnán exclaimed vehemently. “I certainly shouldn’t have told her so soon. She did love me. If we’d had even a year together, she wouldn’t be able to reject me like this. But she promised it would make no difference!”

  “What you told her would make a difference to most people, I think,” said the priest drily. “Tiarnán my son, God has given you an atonement for what you are. If you can bear it with humility and courage, it will lead you to his mercy.”

  “I have borne it humbly! I’ve given her what she wanted — time, freedom to think among her own kin, money. Everything she’s asked me for. I go to visit her at her sister’s like a penitent with bowed head. In response she seems to loathe me even more than she did at first. I thought when she went to Iffendic that it would be for a week, a fortnight, but it’s been over a month, an
d there’s no sign of her coming home! What am I to do, Judicaël?”

  There was a pause, and then the hermit said slowly, “Am I right in thinking that your mother was cousin to her grandfather?”

  “You think,” said Tiarnán in a harsh voice, “I should get the marriage annulled on the grounds of consanguinity?”

  “You could get it so annulled, then?”

  “She has not asked me to.”

  “Have you offered it?”

  “She has not asked it! And I do not want it. I married her because she had the best part of my heart, and she has that still. She hasn’t asked for that, Judicaël, and she must be aware of it.”

  “She is a woman and barred from the courts. It may not have entered her mind as something she could ask for.”

  There was a pause, and then Tiarnán said, “She keeps saying, ‘Give me time; I’m trying to understand; give me time.’ She must want to understand, and come home. And it’s such a harmless thing!”

  “No,” the hermit answered sharply. “It isn’t that. It’s done harm now, to her and to you. It takes a rough man to say ‘I told you so’ to a bleeding victim, but, child, I wish you’d stopped years ago.”

  “I can’t. I need it. I hate the smell of my own skin after a few weeks without it, and I make all the household miserable with my temper.”

  “That could have been dealt with — but the damage is done. Well, if neither you nor she wants the marriage annulled, perhaps you should bring her home. You say her sister realizes now that something’s wrong; it would probably be easier for everyone if she went back to Talensac. If she’s trying to understand, she’ll understand more easily where she can see you, even if you sleep in another room. The imagination can shape devils more freely in darkness than when it has real forms to feed upon in daylight.”

  “Yes!” said Tiarnán, eagerly now. “Yes, I’ll bring her home. She’ll have to see then that I’m no monster.”

  “You’ll go fetch her … tomorrow?” said the priest, and there was an edged significance to the word.

  There was a silence.

  “You never come here so early just to see me,” the hermit said wearily. “I know that. I know what you’ve come for. You should have stopped years ago, but you should certainly stop now.”

  “I need it,” replied Tiarnán defensively. “Now especially.”

  “You should look to God for support in your troubles, not to the forest of Broceliande! You come here in those clothes with that look in your eyes, and I know what you’re thinking of, even when you’re confessing your sins before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know it! I’ve been drunk on the beauty of creation myself, many times, though never so deep as you. But drunkenness of any sort is a sin, and more trap than escape in the end. Go home, Tiarnán. Bad luck will come of it if you go hunting today. I can sense it; you came into my prayers suddenly last night, and I was troubled for you. Please, pray here, and then go home.”

  Silence.

  “Well, then!” said the priest, grunting as he got up. “I’ll be off to my vegetable patch and my prayers, and stay well away from the whole business.”

  “God be with you, Father,” said Tiarnán.

  “Oh, child!” cried the hermit with anguish. “Of all men on earth, you are the one closest to my own heart — and because of that, I’ve advised you most badly. I know well enough what the world and the Church would say about it, and I should have been harsher on you years ago. God and his saints preserve you.”

  The priest came out of the chapel and walked out of the clearing with long strides, not looking back. Alain chewed his knuckles, trying to grasp what he’d heard, and growing increasingly afraid as he did. It seemed a long time before Tiarnán, too, left the church.

  Alain watched, scarcely daring to breathe, as the figure in the green hunting clothes walked slowly into the churchyard. It looked back at the path to the road — then turned and went the other way, toward the forest behind the church. At the edge of the trees, where the undergrowth was thick, it stopped. It knelt and heaved up one of the boundary stones, a large, rounded stone partially hidden by a bush. Carefully, it propped the stone up on one edge with a stick. Then it pulled off its tunic, folded it, and set it in the hollow under the stone.

  Alain let out his breath in a hiss of shock. Almost as though he’d heard, Tiarnán lifted his head and looked around; Alain had to stop himself from ducking his head. He reminded himself that the wicker screen that protected the bell from the rain would look solid from a distance. Tiarnán stood still for a moment, his shirt showing white against the gold-splashed brown of the October trees. Then he edged deeper into the undergrowth and continued to undress. Alain’s heart seemed to beat harder and harder, sounding hollow in his ears and making him dizzy. He felt that he was witnessing something which should never be seen, a violation of nature — and he stared so fixedly that his dry eyes burned.

  Tiarnán sat down to remove his boots and his hose, then stood, his nakedness half-concealed by the bushes. He turned toward the church and bowed his head for a moment, his hands crossed on his chest. Alain wondered incredulously if he were praying — then noticed the movement of the hands, as though they were pulling something away from the heart. Tiarnán held the whatever-it-was out for a moment, then bent over and set it down on top of his clothes beneath the stone.

  There was no slow transformation. One moment a man stood among the bushes; the next, there was a wolf. It was as though the eye, sweeping the clearing, had misinterpreted the shapes it saw and imagined a man where there was only an animal. The wolf lifted its nose, scenting the air. It seemed uneasy. It took a few steps out into the clearing, its ears flat against its head — then shook itself, and turned back. With its forepaw, it knocked away the stick which propped up the hollow stone, and the stone fell back into place with a soft thud. The wolf sniffed it, then slid off among the trees and was gone.

  Alain stayed at the top of the ladder for a long time. His legs were trembling, and he could not trust himself to come down. He began to cry, but he couldn’t have said whether the tears sprang from horror, terror, or shocked amazement.

  At last, he slid unsteadily down the ladder and stumbled back into the main body of the church. His helmet was on the floor, only partly concealed by the half-open door; he was lucky the others hadn’t noticed it. He put it on and fastened the strap, then went to the door. The churchyard was peaceful and deserted, and it was still only the middle of the morning, though it seemed to Alain to have been days since he woke. He drew his sword, took a deep breath, and strode toward the boundary stone, his legs stiff with terror.

  When he heaved the stone up, the clothes lay beneath it in a hollow lined with dry leaves. The other thing Tiarnán had left there, the thing he had drawn out of himself on crossed hands, was not to be seen. But Eline had said it was probably invisible, and something set the hair upright on Alain’s forearms as he looked, so that he had no doubt that it was there. He knelt and propped the stone up with the same stick Tiarnán had used. He had to put his sword down to do so, and he glanced about fearfully, listening for any rustling warning that the wolf had come back. There were only the usual noises of the forest, the chirruping of birds and the shifting of the leaves. With fumbling hands, Alain rolled the clothes up into a bundle and took them out from beneath the stone. He tried to fit them into his food wallet, but they were bulky, thick weaves for the cold nights of early autumn and far too big. He didn’t dare walk off with Tiarnán’s clothes visible in his hands. Anyone who saw would be able to call him a murderer. Fumbling with haste, he cut the wallet open and wrapped the leather around the outside of the clothes, tying it in a roll with the cord. Then he jumped up, picked up his sword, and hurried along the path to the stream where he’d left his horse. Halfway there he realized he’d forgotten to let the stone down again — but he was afraid to go back.

  His bay stallion was grazing peacefully beside the stream. He saddled and bridled it hurriedly, and shoved the leat
her package into the saddlebag. It was too big to fit properly, but he pulled at the buckles on the bag and got it in. He mounted, started along the path — and had to dismount again for the branches. Leading the horse, stumbling over his sword’s scabbard, with the blade itself wavering in his free hand, he at last got back to the church, past the church, onto the path that would bring him to the road. He was almost there when he saw a flash of brown through the undergrowth and stopped, heart thundering, holding his sword before him.

  Judicaël appeared from a side path which, in the dusk of the evening before, Alain had not noticed. Seen on a level, the hermit had a long, narrow face dominated by a pair of intense dark eyes; he looked to be in his mid-forties. He was carrying a bucket of water, which he dropped when he saw Alain.

  “Lord have mercy!” he exclaimed, looking from Alain’s face to the sword in his hand. “What have you come here for?”

  Alain sheathed the sword. “I came to pray in the church,” he said. “I’m sorry I startled you, Father. I had my sword out because I saw a wolf in the forest.” He was amazed at his own coolness.

  Judicaël bent slowly to retrieve his bucket. “I didn’t hear you come. I am the priest in charge of this place. Did you wish to speak with me?”

  “I only stopped to pay my respects to the saint,” returned Alain. “I was just leaving.”