The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  He forced himself to answer quietly. “Yes. If you give it back now, he can still come home without scandal. People will say his hunting trip this time was a little longer than usual, no more. But each day you wait will make it harder to explain where he’s been, harder to restore him. Harder for you to repent.”

  “What do I have to repent of?” demanded Eline angrily. “I was tricked into marriage with a monster. I’ve escaped in the only way I could.”

  Judicaël’s patience snapped. “Don’t you see what you are doing, Lady?” he asked furiously. “You didn’t want the shame of a public trial, so you betrayed your husband secretly. You are pretending to be his loving wife — and soon, I think, his grieving widow — so that you can inherit all his lands and possessions. I think you mean to take a new husband with the old one still living. What good do you think will come of so many sins and lies? Everything you get by them will turn to bitterness, and the fear of what you have done will poison everything you touch. You said just now that you were tricked into marriage, and got out in the only way you could — but there are three other ways you could have chosen, all better than the one you took. The first was to bring the whole matter before the judgment of the Church. We neither of us want that judgment, but at least we would all have had to submit to it. The second was to take your dowry and a settlement from your husband and retire to a convent. I think that does not appeal to you. But the third is this. When your husband last came to me for counsel, I suggested that he offer you an annulment of your marriage. It would be possible, and I am ready to promise you that Tiarnán will now agree to it. Give back what your lover took from St. Mailon’s, leave your husband honestly, and marry your lover truthfully. Otherwise, I am afraid for all of you.”

  Eline was silent for a minute, her head bowed. “You churchmen are always telling women that they must be loyal to their husbands,” she said at last. “If he is harsh to you and neglects you, bear it patiently. If he beats you, be humble. If he goes with other women, try to be cheerful and uncomplaining. Your husband, say all the lords of the Church and all the lords of the land, your husband, woman, is your lord and master, and you should fawn upon him like a spaniel. But one thing I’ve never heard them say, and that is that a wife is obliged to accept damnation for the sake of a husband who is damned.” She looked up and met the hermit’s eyes. “I know about these annulments. Every husband who gets tired of his wife suddenly discovers that he’s related to her, and calls in witnesses to prove it. There are always plenty of men to laugh at the wife, and say, ‘I’d be tired of her, too.’ And I know what they say about me already. ‘Silly woman,’ they say, ‘making such a fuss about her husband going hunting!’ If Tiarnán got this annulment, I’d be ridiculed. I probably couldn’t get the whole of my dowry back. As for my maidenhead, no one can ever restore that. And if Alain is brave enough to stay faithful to me and marry me despite all that, the whole court will whisper that that’s why Tiarnán suddenly discovered that we were related: because I was unfaithful to him. It’s always the woman’s fault, isn’t it? Alain and I would be left impoverished, ridiculous, and disgraced, eking out a living on whatever Alain’s father would spare us — and I know Juhel de Fougères; he’s a hard man. Tiarnán, meanwhile, would have Talensac, and he’d be perfectly free to remarry, probably to an heiress — that pious Penthièvre woman, perhaps — and if he did, you may be sure he would keep his mouth shut about what he does when he goes hunting. And his new wife, like me, would be married to an animal, a filthy, savage brute,” her voice rose hysterically, “but unlike me, she’d never find out. Not until it was too late. Then on the Day of Judgment, when she went before the throne of God, the recording angel would say to her, ‘We gave you a lovely body to be a temple of the Holy Spirit; but you have given it to wolves, and slept with wild beasts. Depart from here, you wicked one, and be forever accursed.’” Eline drew in her breath sharply, and cried, in a much louder voice, “No! No, I won’t agree to be the humble, submissive wife, and I won’t let him drag anyone else to damnation! I was an innocent virgin when I married Tiarnán and he wronged me. I will not take an annulment and go quietly away to poverty and disgrace, leaving him in wealth and honor! I will keep Talensac. He owes it to me, after what I suffered from him!”

  Judicaël stared at her, stunned. “But it isn’t that way,” he said. “You didn’t marry an animal! No recording angel would ever say otherwise, or punish you for an abomination of which you were never guilty.”

  “You have no right to advise me!” Eline said vehemently. “You’ve admitted yourself that you advised him badly. You can’t come here and preach me a sermon. The bishop of Rennes has already had complaints about you. Without Tiarnán’s protection, you would probably have been called to account long ago. Well, don’t expect any protection from the lords of Talensac now! If you’re stripped of your priesthood it’s less than you deserve. As for Tiarnán, he chose to be what he is now. Let him stay that way. I’m not giving anything back.” Eline got proudly to her feet and snatched up one of the candlesticks. She blew the other out and marched to the door, then paused with her hand on the latch. “And if you say anything about this to anyone else, I will simply deny it. It won’t hurt me, and it won’t help Tiarnán. But it will certainly make trouble for you.” She flung open the door and strode back toward the hall.

  Judicaël stood for a moment in the door of the empty chapel. Failure, total and irredeemable, weighed on him so heavily that he could barely see. He had not comprehended the depth of the girl’s bitterness, her hysterical sense of defilement. He had hurt her when he should have healed, and she would not hear him again. He would have to go back to his hermitage, and the wolf … the wolf would remain until its death a prison for the soul of the man he loved as a son. It seemed for an agonized moment too much to bear. He turned back toward the chapel’s dark interior. The cross gleamed faintly on the lightless altar. That had once seemed too much to bear, too: Father, if it be thy will, take this cup away from me. Judicaël knelt painfully in silence and bowed his head.

  Kenmarcoc and his wife hurried in a few minutes later, looking apprehensive. Eline had stormed into the manor house, slammed down her candlestick, and gone upstairs in tears: it was painfully obvious that Judicaël’s counsel had not pleased her. Lanthildis smiled nervously. “Will you be staying to supper, Father Judicaël?” she asked.

  “No,” said Judicaël, and climbed heavily to his feet. “I’ll go down to my old house in the village and stay with Father Corentin. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in Talensac, and who knows if I will ever come here again?”

  When Tiarnán had been missing for a week, Eline sent villagers from Talensac to all the neighboring manors to ask for news of him. When he’d been gone ten days, a message was sent to the duke, and a wider search was instituted, a search that grew less and less hopeful as the days went by. Everyone knew of Tiarnán’s habit of disappearing into the forest for days at a time, and the forest was huge, full of dark peat bogs and dangerous animals. It was impossible to search thoroughly for a man who might be anywhere within its boundaries. The peasants of Talensac whispered in dismay that the machtiern, grieving over his quarrel with his wife, had ridden off into the hollow hills and would never come back. In Moncontour and in several other manors, they said that he’d been murdered by Éon, the werewolf. More prosaic communities shook their heads over the dangers of hunting alone. Duke Hoel waited for a month with gradually decreasing hope, and at last declared that his favorite was dead, and sent one of his own officials to take charge of Talensac and set the estate in order while its lord’s widow went to court to do homage for her husband’s lands.

  The ducal court had by then moved to the castle of Ploërmel, which lay in the forest a day’s ride southwest of Rennes, and only half a day’s from Talensac. Ploërmel was only a village, and the old-fashioned wooden castle sprawled comfortably within it, more hunting lodge than fortress. The gardens were large and very fine. Marie was sitting in them whe
n Eline arrived. It was a chill, damp day at the end of November and really too cold to sit outside, but she’d wanted to be alone. It was an empty gray afternoon; she had a book, but after reading three pages and realizing that she hadn’t taken in a word, she put it down and simply sat, looking at the sparrows hopping among the branches of the rose arbor above her. After a while, she heard laughter and greeting from the Great Hall of the castle behind her, and she guessed who had just come in. But she didn’t go inside. The thought of having to smile at the company and offer condolences appalled her.

  A little later, a man began to sing. The sound carried out through the heavy air, clear and sweet.

  “The leaves are falling from the trees:

  now all that’s green has died.

  All heat has slipped from everything

  the sun has turned aside.

  “No river now that’s not in flood,

  no meadow flowers catch the light.

  Our golden sun has taken flight,

  and snowy day follows freezing night.

  “Now everything that is, is chilled —

  but I alone am filled with heat.

  My heart within me’s set alight:

  the fire? a girl, for whom it beats.

  “On kisses the fire is fed within

  and on the girl’s soft touch.

  Light’s light shines in her eye; this age

  contains no other such.

  “Greek fire, sad thing, can be put out

  if splashed with sour wine.

  But my fire yields to no sour thing:

  a richer drink I need for mine.”

  Marie remembered Tiarnán in his huntsman’s green that spring, leading her confidently through the whispering darkness of the forest. She remembered him standing in the Great Hall at Rennes, looking into his bride’s face with solemn joy.

  The leaves are falling from the trees

  now all that’s green has died.

  Suddenly she found that she was crying. Leaves would return to the forest, but Tiarnán was gone, and earth’s new season would not match or renew what she had lost. Marie leaned forward, cradling the pain, and whispered a prayer for the dead.

  There was a crunch of feet on the gravel path, and she looked up to see Tiher standing over her. She wiped her eyes hurriedly.

  Tiher tried to look at her critically. Shapelessly swathed in a plain gray cloak trimmed with rabbit fur, and huddled on the bench with her nose and cheeks red from cold and her eyes from crying, why should she stir a man’s heart? It was no use: his heart picked out the odd detail — the way one arm in its tight sleeve braced gracefully against the bench; the clear, unashamed sweep of her beautiful eyes as they lifted to him — and it was stirred anyway. It stirred too much these days. He would have to do something about that. “You’re crying for Tiarnán?” he asked, sitting down on the bench beside her.

  There was no point in lying about it now. Marie nodded. “I have a right to grieve for him,” she said defensively. “He saved me from Éon of Moncontour.”

  Tiher scuffed the gravel with his foot. He had been in the hall when Eline came in, but he’d walked out when Alain started singing love songs to her. He disliked his cousin’s feverish excitement about the young widow, and wished Alain would be less blatant about his hopes. The way Eline encouraged her old suitor disgusted him. It was true that he, too, had been hoping that Alain might now be able to marry the woman he adored, but this was too soon, too crude, too convenient. Perhaps Alain was right, and Eline really had preferred him all along, and only taken Tiarnán for the sake of Talensac. But to listen so greedily to the man she wanted, when she’d just acquired the land she wanted through tragedy, seemed discourteous to the dead. Here was Marie, with less cause, paying Tiarnán the tribute of her tears. Tiher looked again at her reddened eyes and sighed. Alain’s precious swan was a cheap creature compared with this one.

  “If I saved you,” he said to Marie, “would that make you change your mind and accept me? Should I hire a party of ruffians and give them instructions to carry you off and stand over you with threatening gestures until I arrived to rescue you?”

  She had recovered her poise by now and gave him a wide-eyed look of mock alarm. “Not real ruffians, please. Why don’t you hire some peasants from your uncle’s estate and get them to dress down a little? Oh yes, and borrow a pacing palfrey for the carrying part. I might as well be carried off in comfort.”

  “I’m not sure that would be convincing. I can just see Paul from my uncle’s estate being ruffianly: ‘I’ll throttle ‘ee then, if it please your ladyship. Oo, mind the ho-orse; mind the ho-orse! Fifteen marks he cost my lord last Michaelmas!’”

  Marie laughed the soft gurgling laugh that always made Tiher grin in answer. “It wouldn’t work with real ruffians, either,” she said.

  “No, I don’t think it would,” he said, the grin fading. “What was Tiarnán’s secret? I’ve felt all along that if he’d wanted to, he could have taken your castle by storm.”

  Marie stared for a moment, surprised. Tiher was usually too sensitive to spoil his wit by touching on real pain. But he was looking at her with an unusually serious expression on his ugly face.

  “I don’t know,” she said, answering the seriousness. “But even if he had been free, and had asked me to marry him, and I’d said yes — even then it would have been a mistake. I’d have had to betray my father to accept him.”

  “Your father, from all I’ve heard, never gave a moment’s thought to your happiness from the minute you were born. He couldn’t be bothered to arrange a marriage for you before he went off on crusade. He dumped you in a convent but refused you permission to take vows, in case later on he needed to toss you into the bargain of some alliance. Your father’s overlord, Robert, is a perjured, violent, profane man little better than a bandit — no, worse than one! What has either of them ever done to deserve your loyalty?”

  Marie was stung. She glared at Tiher with the proud lift of the head that always made his disobligingly susceptible heart skip a beat. “All the world knows that my father is a brave and honorable knight!” she said angrily. “And anyway, people don’t have to deserve loyalty to get it. If Duke Hoel fulfills his obligations to you, then you’re bound to be his liege man, whether he worries about your happiness or not. I can’t just break off a loyalty I was born into. And I’d be stupid to choose two contradictory loyalties at once.”

  “You’re really not going to marry any of us, are you?” said Tiber thoughtfully.

  She met his eyes and found that they were sad. “No,” she replied levelly, her anger fading. “I really am not going to marry any servant of Duke Hoel. It’s what I’ve said all along.”

  “They ought to carve your image over the doors of convents,” Tiher said. “An allegory of the Triumph of Virtue and Honor over Love. They can put me in as one of the poor lost souls crushed under your chariot.” The words were light but the tone was bitter.

  “Oh, Tiher!” Marie exclaimed with great tenderness. “You know perfectly well that you and I and all the court have had a delicious game with love all summer! We’ve all enjoyed it. You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you, of all people, are going to die of a broken heart now you realize I meant what I said. You told me once yourself that if you have good soil and cultivate it properly, you can grow what you like in it. Even poor soil will produce something if you work it well. As you said, we can make do with such scrapings of happiness as we can find.”

  Tiher caught her hand. She had small, soft hands like a child’s: there was no hint in them of the strength inside her. He ran his thumb along the index finger she always bit when she was distracted. “I think I could have been very happy with you,” he told her, “even if you didn’t have Chalandrey.” Then he folded her into his arms, all billowing cloak, awkward elbows, and surprise, and kissed her.

  When he let go, Marie slid away sideways along the bench and stared at him, flushed and gasping. Kiss still tingling on his lip
s, Tiher grinned. “I’ve been longing to do that ever since we caught up with you on the road to Bonne Fontaine,” he told her. “Don’t worry; I won’t do it again. But I had to do it once. My sweet white hind, you unattainable animal, I’m giving up the chase. My heart’s come into it too much, and there’s no pleasure in it anymore. Since I can’t have you, I must give you up. But let me say that, since you’ve lost one champion, I’ll be your surety against a forced marriage. Of course, the duke doesn’t want to force you into anything, and the duchess wouldn’t let him if he did — but some of the Marcher lords have been pressing him to secure Chalandrey to the duchy, and if you have a champion at court it’s a convenient excuse to do nothing.”

  Marie went even redder. She stifled a sharp cry of protest and tried to do the same with the even sharper pang of regret. “Thank you, Tiher,” she whispered, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  “Mind you, I’m no Tiarnán when it comes to fighting,” he said with all his old lightness. “The thought of facing him on the field put the rest of us in a cold sweat. The thought of facing me will only bring out ordinary hot ones, from practicing sword swipes. But I should do as an excuse for the duke.” He grinned again. “Better than Tiarnán, in fact. It’s my uncle Juhel who’s been pressing Hoel hardest.” He got up.

  “Tiher …” she said.

  He paused, looking down at her with immense affection.

  “I think I could have been very happy with you, too,” she said quietly. “If I’d really been free to marry any of the knights at this court, it would have been you. I made up my mind on that a long time ago.”

  It took him a moment to take it in. Then he leaned over her, beaming, one hand against the rose arbor. “Really? So I’m a fool to back off now?”