The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Something has frightened you,” said Judicaël flatly. “Your face is still white. What was it?” His searching, sceptical eyes reminded Alain suddenly and uncomfortably of Tiher.

  “The wolf startled me,” Alain replied loftily, “but you’re mistaken, Father: I wasn’t frightened. I’m a son of the lord of Fougères and not frightened of any animal, however savage. Good day to you.” He clicked his tongue to his horse and started on along the path.

  But Judicaël had stepped in front of him. “You’re Alain de Fougères? I’ve heard of you. When did you come here? And why?”

  “I came to pray at your church, Father,” said Alain proudly. “Does that offend you? If so, I shall stay away in the future. Now, get out of my way: I’m expected back at the court, and I must hurry.”

  Judicaël didn’t move. His own face had gone white. Alain realized that the priest had guessed which son of the lord of Fougères he was: he must have heard the name from Tiarnán, in connection with Eline. That had been enough to let him guess the whole plot, and know that Tiarnán had been betrayed.

  Alain realized suddenly that it didn’t matter. There was nothing Judicaël could do. He didn’t dare even admit that he knew what Tiarnán was: the bishop of Rennes was already uneasy about the hermit, and if Judicaël confessed that he’d tolerated magical practices by a member of his flock, he’d certainly lose his priesthood, and perhaps his life as well. Judicaël had no way of knowing what Alain had in his saddlebags, and even if he had known, and understood its significance, he couldn’t take Tiarnán’s things by force from an armed knight. Tiarnán’s only defender had already lost the contest.

  Abruptly, all Alain’s remaining fear was buried in a storm of joy and triumph. Tiarnán had indeed lost — lost the struggle, lost his wife, lost everything. And Alain had won. Fortune’s wheel had completed its turn. Eline, and Talensac, and all that Tiarnán had owned would find another lord now, and that lord would be Alain. It had been stupid to be afraid of the wolf. What could a wolf do to an armed knight? What use were teeth against armor and a sword? Tiarnán didn’t even have a voice to complain with: he would have to go howl his loss to the moon.

  Alain laughed out loud at the thought. He tugged at his horse’s bridle again and forced his way past the hermit. Judicaël staggered against a tree, then straightened and hurried after Alain as far as the road. Giddy with joy, Alain jumped up into the saddle and gathered up the reins.

  “Wait,” said Judicaël hoarsely. “Wait — what you’re doing is wrong. It’s the wrong way. Only grief will come of it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” shouted Alain and laughed triumphantly. He set his heels to his stallion’s sides and galloped away.

  VIII

  The wolf did not return to the chapel until the evening, three days later. He approached the building cautiously, as he always did, circling downwind of it and pausing frequently to sniff the air. There were no scents but the ones expected: leaf mold; earth; a rabbit; the recognized scents of Judicaël the hermit and the goat he kept for milk; wood smoke, hours old; other human scents, faint and unstable with age; the sweetness of the herbs in the hermit’s garden. The human scent, even a known human scent, was dangerous and to be avoided whenever possible — but it came from the hut by the stream near the road and not from the chapel itself. Reassured, the wolf trotted through the thick undergrowth toward the boundary stone behind the church.

  Even before he reached it, he realized that something was wrong. The usual sense of everything within him realigning itself as he approached, the tingling of each hair and the awakening — that was gone. He ran the last few paces toward the stone and stopped before it. It was still propped up on its edge, and the space beneath it was empty.

  The wolf’s mind was more animal than human. It took him some time to comprehend what had happened. He sniffed the empty space and pawed it, then knocked away the stick and let the stone fall. He circled back the way he had come and approached again. Only when the space remained empty, and his paw failed to drag out from under the stone the thing that was not there, did he begin to understand. He whined and began to cast about for a scent. It had rained during the time he’d been away, and there was not much trace of the intruder, but here and there — under the bush that half-concealed the stone; on the stick; at the side of the stone itself — he caught a whiff of an unfamiliar human smell, rank with fear. He cast about more widely, trying to track it, and caught it here and there, but never enough to follow. He sat down; got up again; ran back and forth beneath the trees; and at last crouched, shaking, his ears flat against his head. From a deeper and more fundamental part of him came a desire to scream in horror, and it confused him: he had neither instincts nor ability for screaming. After a time, a single human word surfaced in his mind: “Help.” He turned away from the stone and made his way slowly through the forest to the small round hut beside the stream.

  It was a long time before he could bring himself to go near. It was contrary to all his instincts to approach men: the shape and smell of them were flagged with warnings of death. He crouched outside the small garden plot, trembling, listening to the priest’s voice saying the office of Compline, distorted and unintelligible to his wolf’s ears. But at last, when the voice stopped, the deeper part of himself forced him through the garden to scratch at the door.

  Judicaël had been lying down to sleep when the scratch came. He was heavy with exhaustion: since meeting Alain he had been keeping a vigil every night from Lauds to Prime, preparing himself to face disgrace and possible death. He knew nothing about the thing that Alain had stolen: he’d never wanted to know any details of how Tiarnán transformed himself, and Tiarnán had never told him any. He had indeed guessed that Tiarnán’s wife had sent her former suitor to the chapel, but suspected only that Alain had seen the transformation and had gone to inform the authorities. Soon, he thought, men from the bishop’s court would arrive to question him about the werewolf and to set a trap for it. Then there would follow a long nightmare of courts and angry interrogations, public humiliations, and the anguished bewilderment of friends. For Tiarnán it would end inevitably in a slow and painful death, and for himself … who could say what the Church would decide? All he could do was commit himself, and Tiarnán, to the mercy of God. At the scratch on the door, his first thought was that the devil had come to tempt him with false promises of safety.

  Judicaël sat up and crossed himself. His windowless hut was completely dark: he hadn’t bothered to build up the fire during the evening, and there was only the faintest of glows from the embers in the hearth. The scratching came again. Judicaël whispered a prayer to Saint Mailon and felt for his breviary on the table beside his bed. Its leather binding, soft at the edges from use, comforted him. He clasped it firmly, went to the door, and flung it open.

  The wolf in the moonlight outside leapt backward and ran to the edge of the garden — then stopped, trembling, tail between his legs. Judicaël stared for a moment, then lowered his breviary. The wolf whined and moved back toward him, then checked and stood with his head down, watching. The moonlight gleamed greenly in his eyes. Judicaël took a step forward. The wolf didn’t move. The hermit moved closer again, and finally dropped to his knees on the path in front of the wolf. “Tiarnán?” he whispered.

  The wolf whined. His ears could not hear the low notes of most consonants, and the name that had once belonged to him was only a confusing hiatus: Iarr’a? Judicaël held his breviary out, and the wolf sniffed at the book, then whined again and licked the priest’s hand.

  From the time that Tiarnán was orphaned, Judicaël had thought of him as a foster son, the child he would never have in the flesh. He had always believed that to see the one he loved best transformed into an animal would horrify him. Faced with this cowering beast, though, he felt only an overwhelming pity. Proud, self-possessed Tiarnán reduced to this!

  He stroked the wolf’s fur and spoke gently, and the animal whined in a distress that no
animal could know. After a little while, the wolf tugged at his sleeve, led him up the hill, and showed him a hollow stone behind the chapel. Then Judicaël understood what Alain de Fougères had really done, and was appalled far more than he had been afraid.

  On the evening of the twentieth of October, there was a knock on the door of Talensac manor house, and the clerk Kenmarcoc opened it to find Judicaël standing in the dusk outside. The clerk gaped for a moment. Hermits were not supposed to leave their hermitages. Some put the world behind them so completely that they enclosed themselves in their cells with the office for the dead. Judicaël had never gone so far — but equally he had not left St. Mailon’s since he first went there, eleven years before.

  “Christ and his saints have mercy!” exclaimed Kenmarcoc, crossing himself. “Father Judicaël! I pray God it’s not bad news of the machtiern that brings you here?”

  The old word “machtiern” leapt out at Judicaël and touched him painfully with pride. That was what the people of Talensac made of the boy he’d helped to raise for them. Not “lord” or “master,” but guardian of the law. He answered the question with a misleading shake of his head. “I saw Tiarnán four days ago,” he said. “He asked me to speak to his wife for him. He said she was at Iffendic, and I went there this morning, but it seems she’s come home.”

  The explanation was natural enough — a hermit might leave his wilderness for the solemn purpose of reconciling an especially dear pupil and his wife. Even fully accounted for, however, Judicaël’s presence flabbergasted Kenmarcoc. He believed firmly that a holy hermit was far superior to a flesh-loving failed priest like himself, and to have so admirable a creature on his doorstep disconcerted him more than if it had been the duke himself. He gabbled out an agreement — yes, Eline had returned to Talensac the day before — then remembered his manners, begged Judicaël to come in, and began shouting for his wife to fetch food and drink. “You will eat and drink with us, Father, and spend the night under our roof?” he asked anxiously, as a crowd of children and servants gathered to gawk at the holy man.

  “That will depend on the lady of the house, won’t it?” replied Judicaël. But he came in and sat down at the table near the fire. It was more than fifteen miles from St. Mailon’s to Talensac by way of Iffendic, and he ached with weariness. His heart was aching, too. He had left the wolf in the forest near his hut. It had watched him go with human hope in its eyes, but he knew that there was no hope for it if this mission failed — and the signs were not encouraging.

  “I’m sure the lady will be pleased to welcome you,” said Kenmarcoc, while his wife, Lanthildis, hurried in with a jug of wine and a cup for the visitor. “As I said, she came back from her sister’s yesterday. If Tiarnán asked you to speak to her, he must have told you that they quarreled. The silly girl took exception to his hunting trips. I don’t know why she expected a husband to stay beside her every hour, adoring her, but when he didn’t she felt herself ill-used and took herself off to her sister’s, making up some excuse about needing to learn housekeeping. She did need that, but she could have learned better from my Lanthildis than from anyone at Iffendic, from all I’ve heard. My daughter Driken went with her, as serving maid, poor thing; she didn’t like Iffendic at all, and cried from pure homesickness every night. She says it was a scandal, the way the lady treated the machtiern when he came to visit her. Acted as though she was too fine to say three words to him, and made him sleep on the floor. I’d have given her a beating and dragged her home by the hair, but he was quiet and patient, and it seems to have worked. At any rate, she’s home, and says she’s determined to make him welcome when he comes back. She’s over at the dairy now. Shall I tell her you’ve come, Father?”

  “Let me catch my breath,” said Judicaël. He had refused the wine Lanthildis offered, but the woman was back with water now, and he let her fill his cup. The crowd of servants were whispering to one another that it must be because of Judicaël’s prayers that the lady’s heart had been softened. God would answer such a holy man. Judicaël drank his water slowly. The noisy admiration around him disturbed him, and he wished himself back in the forest, where the birds sang without regard to the spirituality of man.

  “The machtiern is still off hunting,” Kenmarcoc went on. “— I suppose you guessed that already.”

  “Yes,” said Judicaël, and was silent.

  Kenmarcoc felt rebuked. He was always ready to feel rebuked by Judicaël. “I’ve already said too much about the affairs of my masters,” he said penitently.

  Judicaël smiled. He had a peculiarly sweet and gentle smile, unexpected in such an intense, ascetic face. Kenmarcoc had almost forgotten it, and there was an element of surprise in his own answering smile. “You’ve talked honestly,” said the hermit. “So, your daughter Driken is the lady’s serving maid? I remember her as barely higher than my knee.”

  Driken herself pushed shyly through the crowd around the hermit and knelt to get his blessing. Judicaël made the sign of the cross above her head, then leaned forward to kiss the neat parting of her lank black hair.

  The door opened again and Eline came in, pale in the dimness and shadow-eyed. She stopped in puzzlement — then recognized Judicaël, whom she’d seen before on a visit to St. Mailon’s with her father. The puzzlement was instantly replaced by resentment and hostility.

  Judicaël rose slowly to his aching feet. “May God keep you, Lady,” he said. “Your husband asked me to speak to you on his behalf. May we speak privately?”

  Eline hesitated. She had not the least wish to speak to Tiarnán’s too-tolerant confessor and was tempted to say so — but that would scandalize his hallful of admirers. She had to pretend that she was reconciled to Tiarnán and awaiting his return to make peace with him: she and Alain had agreed on that. She forced herself to smile. “Of course, Father,” she said. “I’m honored that you’ve come so far. Can I offer you some refreshment?”

  “Let us talk first,” said Judicaël. “The chapel would be the best place.”

  The manor house’s chapel was a small wooden building, little more than a shed, on the other side of the hall from the kitchen. Judicaël had occasionally conducted services in it himself when he was parish priest of Talensac, and its familiarity was disconcerting. When his hand reached instinctively for the candles in the bronze chest by the door — kept there to protect them from the mice — and found them ready waiting, it was like reaching backward in time. He remembered saying prayers before the same altar, with Tiarnán — a small, thin, big-eyed boy — watching him solemnly. The memory was peculiarly painful, and he had to stand still for a moment. Kenmarcoc had followed Eline and the hermit with a rushlight lantern from the hall. He lit two of the candles, set them in the holders on the altar, and left the two to talk.

  Judicaël crossed himself and knelt before the altar with bowed head. Eline’s smiling, deceitful answer had filled him with a rush of anger that verged on hatred, and he struggled to surrender it. The girl was young and inexperienced, he told himself. She had been deceived in her marriage and she was very much afraid. God had created her, and Tiarnán had loved her: two reasons that Judicaël should hold her in affection. He had not come to condemn her, but to help her. He was quite certain that this thing she had done would blight her life and her immortal soul unless she acted at once to undo it. He must speak from that awareness, and from love, and not out of anger. O God, O my dear Lord Christ, Judicaël prayed, with a sudden flare of passion, soften her heart, and let her listen to me!

  Eline had also knelt before the altar, though well to one side. She watched the hermit impatiently through her eyelashes. Alain had told her how he’d met Judicaël just as he was leaving St. Mailon’s. This was hypocrisy, she thought angrily. Pretending to pray when really they both knew he’d come to ask her to tolerate Tiarnán’s abominable practices.

  After what seemed ages, Judicaël crossed himself again and turned to Eline. “May I speak freely, Lady?” he asked.

  “There’s no point i
n speaking at all if we don’t both speak freely, Father Judicaël,” she replied tartly.

  Judicaël nodded. “Yes. Lady, I know that you quarreled with your husband and why. I have not come here to argue with you the rights and wrongs of that, but to help you set fear aside and act justly. However the situation appears in the eyes of God, for you to conspire with a lover to betray your husband will only make it worse.”

  “However the situation appears to God?” repeated Eline sarcastically. “How do you think it appears, Father? Tiarnán told me that you were not sure whether he was committing a sin or not. But I would have thought,” savagely now, “that there was no question how the situation would appear to our mother the Church. The most mercy Tiarnán should have expected was the chance to repent before being burned at the stake.”

  Judicaël flinched but he answered her evenly. “Which is why I repent that I didn’t advise him better,” he said. “You don’t need to tell me that God will hold me to account for all my dealings with your husband. But you haven’t sent him to the stake, Lady. That’s why I’ve come.”

  Eline sniffed. “We were supposed to be speaking freely. Say what you want.”

  “Your de Fougères knight has taken something, something that belonged to Tiarnán. I’ve come to beg you to give it back, for your own soul’s health as much as for your husband’s sake.”

  “Has my husband been to see you, then?” asked Eline. “He came running to you, did he? Running on four legs, and scratching at your door like a dog, begging you to find the humanity he so carelessly left beneath a stone?”

  Judicaël’s face changed. It seemed to grow narrower in the candlelight, and paler, and his dark eyes became even more intense as he grew angry despite himself. He thought of the wolf cowering in the moonlight outside his door. Could this beautiful child really dismiss a man who had loved her to that forever, and in a tone of such satisfied disdain?