The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Then there was a stir, and we all looked up and saw Tiarnán, and his men, riding across the plain toward us, leading a warhorse by the bridle. Straight up to us he rode, and when he stopped he bowed his head to me and said, ‘My lord, the fellow is out of the way.’ Then he gestured to his men to give the led horse to Robert. It was Geoffroy’s horse, and Geoffroy’s body was tied across the saddle. ‘I give you your brother’s body for burial,’ Tiarnán told Robert. ‘He was a nobleman and distinguished in battle, and I ask no ransom for it.’

  “Robert had gone gray as vomit: Geoffroy had the reputation of being the best knight in his service. ‘How did he die?’ he asked Tiarnán, and Tiarnán said, ‘Bravely, in single combat. Five of his men are dead, and the rest are bearing the bodies home.’ ‘Who killed him?’ asked Robert. He did not think, you see, that it could have been Tiarnán: Tiarnán was only twenty at the time, and he sat there looking as stiff as a nun at an alehouse. Geoffroy had been a big man, and in his prime, and we could all see that his head had been cleft open right through his helmet. God, what a blow! Then Tiarnán told Robert quietly, ‘I killed him.’

  “Robert looked at me, and I thanked God, and said, ‘This is my liege man Tiarnán of Talensac, Lord Robert: he is one of the finest knights in Brittany, and I would rather have another like him than a whole troop of foot soldiers. But I thank God that I have many brave men in my service, and they are even now hurrying to my aid. Now I want you to return the plunder you’ve taken, and surrender your arms, and go home.’ And Robert did what I asked.”

  Hoel again glared down the hall at Alain. “But even that wasn’t the sum of the reasons I had for prizing Tiarnán. It never mattered to him which table he sat at and who sat above him, or which cut of meat the servants gave him. He wasn’t offended, like some, if I gave honors to others. He never caused any grief to his neighbors, and he was courteous and easy in all dealings. When it came to hunting, he knew every beast of the forest as though it were his cousin: I have watched him entice a fox cub from its earth right to his hand. There never was a man so terrible on the field of battle who was so gentle off it. I can believe the lady Eline isn’t happy at Talensac on her own. She’d quarreled with her lord and it will be a long time before his people forgive her for it. And they won’t be any happier when she sets that beribboned juggler up in his place. Damn!” Hoel suddenly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “He adored her. She should have waited six months.”

  There was a silence. The duchess was blinking rapidly as well, and for once made no move to defend young love. Marie thought about what Eline had said the night before, and was ashamed at the way her heart had chimed its agreement with Hoel.

  “Don’t judge her too harshly, my lord,” she said aloud. “If Tiarnán had listened to her, he would still be here. She did beg him not to go hunting alone.”

  Hoel snorted. “There is that,” he said. “Yes, I suppose there is that. And he did adore her, and would want me to give her his lands and make her happy. Well … If I ever catch that brute Éon of Moncontour, I’ll have him disemboweled and burned. Hanging’s too good for the creature.” He shoved his trencher of venison aside and rinsed his fingers in the silver bowl of water, then dried his hands on the napkin his steward hurried to offer. He looked round the table. It was flanked by the officers of his household — chancellor, chamberlain, constable — and their wives, and on every face he saw reflected his own angry resentment. Hoel at once regretted his harshness: one woman’s fickleness shouldn’t cast a shadow over the whole state of Brittany. He glanced about again, looking for a way to lighten the air, and this time his eyes fixed on Marie. “You look tired, Lady Marie,” he said in a much more cheerful tone. “Were you losing sleep over the suitor who’s abandoned hope?”

  Tiher had earlier announced to the hall his intention to “give up the chase” and act as surety for Marie.

  “It wouldn’t be a wonder if I had,” Marie replied. She had understood instantly what the duke was about. “Of all my suitors, he’s the one most worth losing sleep over.”

  Hoel glanced down the hall again, this time to the table of the household knights (the fifth, in this less crowded court), where Tiher sat talking animatedly with his friends. “Do you think so?” he asked. “I’d always paired him in my mind with his cousin. The one plays the peacock with his face and clothing, the other with his cutting tongue. But there’s more to Tiher than that, is there?”

  “Yes,” Marie agreed warmly. “In fact, my lord, I think you waste opportunities in the use you make of him. He is as honest as he is clever, and his nature is considerably gentler than his tongue — which, I grant you, has an edge to it. He is loyal and faithful where he’s committed, but he always looks before he leaps. Also, he can read very well and knows Latin. He was educated at Bonne Fontaine. He’s a man who could serve you with distinction.”

  Hoel squinted thoughtfully at Tiher. It had been out of the question to promote a de Fougères nephew above a de Fougères son: to do so would have offended Lord Juhel. Hoel’s claim to his dukedom was through his wife: he was aware that many of the powerful Marcher families disliked him, and he dared not offend them for fear of losing their allegiance. But if Alain became lord of a manor, he would leave the ducal household, and a court office for Tiher would become a compliment to the family instead of an affront.

  Havoise was also looking thoughtfully down the hall toward Tiher, who joked on obliviously. “You know, my dear,” said the duchess softly, “Marie’s right. She has good judgment when it comes to lovers.”

  The duke grinned and turned the squint on Marie. “So Tiher was wrong to withdraw his suit?” he asked lightly again.

  “No, my lord,” Marie said firmly. “I would not marry him, or any man here, without my father’s blessing.”

  “The old song!”

  “I’m tired of singing it myself, my lord.”

  Hoel grunted. “So instead you sing the praises of your surety against forced marriage? Why did he swear to that, I wonder, if he’s really given up the chase? He knows you’re not threatened with any such thing. Havoise would throttle me in my sleep if I even suggested it.”

  “Tut!” said Havoise disapprovingly. “I’d never throttle a man in his sleep. I’d do it when you were awake, my dear.” He grinned at her and kissed her little finger.

  Marie leaned toward Hoel and lowered her voice to a whisper. “He said it would be a good excuse for you to do nothing when his uncle presses you about Chalandrey.”

  Hoel stared a moment, then burst out laughing. “Did he really?” he asked. “He is a witty fellow, isn’t he? By God, he deserves promotion.”

  Eline stayed in Ploërmel for three more days, and, though the court disapproved of her second betrothal just as much as she’d feared, she started back to Talensac only very reluctantly. The court at least disapproved unobtrusively, and Alain was there; at Talensac the cold dislike of the servants cut into her like a freezing wind, and there was no one to shelter her from it. She had thought of going home to Comper until her second marriage but she was afraid to. There was too great a gulf between the happy girl she’d been before and the embittered woman she was now. Her father would pamper her in a way that now seemed childish and silly, and give her orders as though she were still under his authority, and she knew she’d lose her temper and snap at him. Then he’d be hurt and angry. He was annoyed with her already for her decision to marry Alain; he’d said so many dismissive things when Alain was Tiarnán’s rival that he still felt bound to disapprove. She felt she couldn’t bear it if her loving father quarreled with her, too. So it had to be Talensac, despite the coldness of the servants and the sullen resentment of the peasants. At least Duke Hoel’s bailiff would be there, she told herself. And by the time the bailiff left, Alain would come to marry her.

  It was only an afternoon’s ride from Ploërmel to Talensac, but she didn’t set out until noon, the winter days were short, and she arrived at the manor house after dark. She dismounted
at the house door and sent the servants who’d escorted her back to the stables with the horses. The door was bolted, and she knocked on it impatiently. No one answered. She knocked again, shouted, and kicked it. After another cold minute’s wait, the bolt was finally shifted, and Kenmarcoc opened the door and stood aside for her. Eline strode angrily in, but the words of reproach at the way she’d been kept waiting froze on her lips. The hall, lit by the red embers heaped in the fireplace and by a single candle on the central table, looked as though it were in the process of being torn down. Heaps of linen were piled in corners, and chests and boxes — stacked on top of one another, falling off one another, open and half-emptied — were strewn everywhere. The floor was bare of rushes, and the packed clay was scarred and gouged. There was a smell of dirt and spilled wine. The only things on the table besides the candle were a jug and an overturned cup, and when Eline turned furiously toward Kenmarcoc, she discovered that his breath reeked of drink. “What on earth has been happening here?” she demanded.

  “I’m leaving,” replied Kenmarcoc in a loud, drunken voice.

  “Leaving? Leaving where?”

  “Home,” he declared. “Here. I know you’d send me off as soon as your new fellow arrives and finds someone prettier, and I’m not staying for that. But I wouldn’t stay if you begged me to. I’m not going to see that Fougères fellow sitting in the machtiern’s place — no, by Saint Main! We’ve been packing all day. We’ll tidy the place in the morning, before we go.”

  “You’re drunk,” said Eline in disgust. “Where are you going to go?”

  “Lots of places,” replied Kenmarcoc. “I’m a good clerk. I have a letter from the machtiern that says so.” He went over to one of the half-emptied chests, walking with the exaggerated steadiness of one who doesn’t trust his balance, and fumbled at a pile of parchments. Several of them joined the mess on the floor, but Kenmarcoc ignored them and pounced on the sheet of vellum he was looking for. He flourished it above his head, then stalked back, set it down before the candle, and read it aloud in harsh triumph. “‘Kenmarcoc son of Alfret is a man I prize highly, for no lord ever had a more estimable and honest bailiff, and any man he seeks service with should count himself fortunate.’” Kenmarcoc thrust the letter under Eline’s nose and shook it. “See?” he demanded. “It’s his seal. That’s what he said. He gave it to me once when he went off to a war, in case he never came back. He thought of things like that. And he gave me the linen for all the family’s beds, and a wooden chest full of cutlery and pans, and five bolts of good woolen cloth, and my horse and the brown mule. We’ve been sorting it out all day; we won’t take anything that’s not ours.” He sat down at the table, set the cup upright with heavy concentration, then poured himself some more wine from the jug.

  Eline glared at him wordlessly. She’d sent one of her attendant servants back to Talensac the day before to tell the manor when she was likely to arrive: this, clearly, was the result. She and Alain had indeed decided that they ought to find a new bailiff for the manor, but she hadn’t planned to dismiss Kenmarcoc suddenly. She’d meant to find him a new job first. She didn’t want to share her house with him, but she had hoped to part without too much rancor.

  “I’ve bought a cart,” Kenmarcoc told her, and gulped some wine. “We’re going tomorrow. He took another gulp.

  “There’s no reason to go so suddenly,” Eline said stiffly. “I’m happy to find you another place first.”

  “I’m not staying under the same roof as you,” he declared. His eyes, red with drink, fixed her with a glare of absolute contempt. “It’s because of you that the machtiern left. The finest knight in Brittany, and the best master. You quarreled with him and sent him off.”

  “You have no right to talk to me like this!” Eline cried. She was horrified to find her eyes brimming and a lump in her throat. She felt a wild desire to scream at Kenmarcoc, The machtiern you thought so marvelous is a monster: go fetch him from the forest if you want him! But to frame those words even in thought turned her throat to ice. “You’re nothing but a servant!” she choked instead. “I was his wife! And I didn’t send him off; I begged him not to go!”

  “I know what you did!” Kenmarcoc answered in a strangled hiss, looking at her with such knowing malice that she fell back a step. “You begged him to tell you where he went when he went hunting, and he loved you so dearly that he did. You treated him afterward as though he were filth. I don’t care what the secret was! I don’t care if he did go hunting with the people of the hills, or visit some lady of a well. A soulless creature from the hills would make him a finer wife than you!”

  “You can’t say that to me!” shrieked Eline. There was the creak of a door opening up the stairs, and the duke’s bailiff, Grallon, appeared on the landing in his shirt, looking down into the hall in bewilderment.

  “I can say what I like!” Kenmarcoc roared back. “Twenty-four years I’ve lived and worked in Talensac! The best part of my life! But I’m not staying, not now.” He began to cry. “I’m not staying here to see that swaggering minstrel take Tiarnán’s place.”

  Eline stamped her foot helplessly. “Stop it!” she shrieked. “Stop talking to me like this, or I’ll have you punished for it!”

  Kenmarcoc glared, his face red with drink and wet with tears. “You whore!” he exclaimed bitterly. “You weren’t fit to clean his boots.”

  Eline burst into tears and slapped him. He blinked at the blow and grunted, but didn’t stir. There was a stamp of feet outside, and she realized with relief that her escort had finally finished stabling the horses. “Take Kenmarcoc and put him in the stocks!” she screamed as they came in.

  The three servants who’d escorted her to court and back gaped at Kenmarcoc in consternation. The duke’s bailiff hurried down the stairs. “Lady Eline!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realize you were back.”

  “Kenmarcoc’s drunk,” she sobbed, turning to him. “I told him to stop calling me names, but he wouldn’t. He called me a whore. Put him in the stocks!”

  Grallon opened his mouth and shut it again. He nodded at the servants. They remained motionless, staring at Kenmarcoc, who glared drunkenly back.

  “He treated your lady with great disrespect,” Grallon told them. “I heard it. Put him in the stocks.”

  “I’m not putting Kenmarcoc in the stocks!” one of the servants exclaimed. He turned and walked back out the door. The remaining two looked at each other uncertainly.

  “Let her put me in the stocks!” exclaimed Kenmarcoc, staggering to his feet. “Let the whole village see me in the stocks! Warn them what to expect, now the machtiern’s gone! I’m safe; I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s the rest of you that need to worry now!”

  One of the servants caught his arm to steady him, and he stumbled toward the door. The other glanced back nervously at the duke’s bailiff, then carefully went to one of the chests and took out an armful of blankets. He collected Kenmarcoc’s cup and jug of wine and followed.

  Eline stood in the middle of the dim hall, crying in bewilderment. She had always considered herself kind and gentle — and here she had sent, not just any servant, but the bailiff, to the stocks, in the middle of the winter. Grallon looked at her in pity.

  “You should rest, Lady,” he told her. “Don’t worry about what he said: he was drunk.”

  “Yes,” said Eline, and, still crying, went upstairs past him to her bed.

  The two servants, Donoal and Yann Ruz, put Kenmarcoc in the stocks very tenderly, wrapped a couple of blankets round him, and sat down beside him to help him finish the wine. Most of the village was asleep, but after a little while Justin Braz and Rinan came staggering up the road from their own drinking session at the alehouse on the Rennes road. They roared with pleasure when they saw that the stocks were occupied, relishing the prospect of pissing upon some local enemy, but when they came closer and saw who occupied them, they fell silent. Kenmarcoc had put Justin in the stocks on innumerable occasions, and Rinan on a good number, but the bail
iff’s downfall provoked shock rather than triumph. Justin took great pleasure in the position of worst man in the village, perpetual threat to good order and the virtue of decent women. But if good order could be pinned out by the hands and feet on a cold winter night, what would become of Justin? “What’s happened here?” he asked anxiously.

  It was Donoal who answered. “He called the mistress a whore.”

  Kenmarcoc’s fury had had time to cool. He used the last of it to repeat that Eline was indeed a whore, but then he began to mourn his imminent departure from Talensac. “Twenty-four years,” he repeated dolefully. “Twenty-four years, oh God! And my children all born in that house. And to leave it like this!”

  Justin was horrified. He called Kenmarcoc “Uncle” and begged him not to go. “We’ve lost the machtiern,” he said pitifully. “Don’t you go away, too.”

  “I must; I must,” replied Kenmarcoc, now once again weeping. “If I don’t go, I’ll be sent, soon enough. And I won’t let the whore and her fancy man dismiss me.”

  At this Justin began to cry, too, and decent manor servants and the worst men in the village united round the stocks, weeping for the lost past, and the fearful expectation of the future.

  Renmarcoc was released from the stocks early the next morning, so as not to offend the villagers with the sight of him there any longer than strictly necessary. He returned to the manor house pale and subdued, and helped his wife and children to finish their packing in silence. It was afternoon by the time all their belongings were strapped onto the cart. Lanthildis and the older children were in tears as they walked away from the manor house; the younger children, riding on the cart, howled with grief. Eline heard them from her room, where she’d stayed all morning, but she didn’t come out until the sound had faded into the distance.

  When she came downstairs, the hall was swept clean and missing a quarter of its furniture, and Grallon was standing in the doorway looking out at the gray, overcast afternoon with a worried expression. She walked up behind the bailiff, and he started and looked round apprehensively.