The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “I would have found Kenmarcoc another place if he’d let me,” Eline said bitterly.

  The bailiff grunted noncommittally. “He’ll find one himself without too much trouble,” he said. “He’s planning to go to court. He worked for the ducal chancellery originally, you know. And he has a letter of recommendation which would get him a place with most men. I’m sure the duke will find a place for him.” He hesitated, then went on, “He said there was a wolf in the village last night.”

  Eline felt the old constriction of her stomach. “A wolf?” she whispered.

  “Yes. He told me just before he went. He said that when the moon was setting, a wolf came onto the green. He thought at first it was just a dog, but it came close to him and he couldn’t mistake it. He shouted for help and it ran off. The servants who put him in the stocks and some of the villagers had stayed with him. They woke up when he shouted, and they saw it, too.” The bailiff looked at Marie questioningly.

  “I’ve never heard of a wolf coming right into the village before,” she said, so as to say something. She felt queasy and faint.

  “No,” said the bailiff. “Nor had Kenmarcoc. He took it for an omen.” He crossed himself. “I pray it doesn’t mean famine and a hard winter.”

  Eline thought of the wolf walking deliberately up the narrow street of the village. It was looking for her; she was sure of it. Could it get into the manor house? She shuddered. She thought of Alain, and how she’d said good-bye to him in Ploërmel. It was still a long time until Christmas.

  “We should set wolf traps,” she said.

  Grallon nodded at once. “I’ll give orders about it today,” he said. The prospect of traps made the wolf less ominous and more ordinary. He’d heard of lone wolves causing trouble. It was said that when the king wolf of a pack was supplanted by a younger animal, he lost all his normal caution in his rage, and might take sheep from the byre or even snatch children from gardens. “We’ll set the traps until we catch the beast,” he told Eline. “It will cheer the villagers up, too, when they kill it.” That, he thought, was very necessary: a more sullen and gloomy set of peasants he had never seen.

  A sudden horrifying image leapt into Eline’s mind: the body of a wolf, caught and killed by the villagers, being skinned to reveal Tiarnán’s body inside. She pressed her hand against her mouth, trying to swallow down the sickness that choked her. He left what made him human under the stone, she told herself; he won’t turn back into a man even if he’s dead. He won’t. And he can’t get into the manor house. The palisade is tall and has good, deep, foundations, and the gate and the house door are both bolted at night.

  “What’s the matter, Lady?” asked Grallon.

  “I’m afraid of wolves,” Eline whispered.

  “Never fear,” he replied, his own anxiety over omens forgotten now. “We’ll trap it. I’ll have the villagers dig a pit trap as well, and bait it. They all hate wolves, and they’ll enjoy that. It’s really a piece of luck that the beast turned up, Lady Eline. They’ll forget their worries in the excitement of killing a wolf.”

  “I’m … I’m glad,” Eline whispered. “Tell them I’ll pay a reward to the man who kills it. I … I don’t feel well, and I’m going to lie down. Have Driken bring me something in my room.”

  “Driken’s gone with her father, Lady.”

  Eline bit her lip, remembering that this was true. She didn’t regret Driken, but she couldn’t face trying to pick another serving girl from the village. The villagers’ sullen stares seemed suddenly to be part of the same horror as the prowling wolf. She knew all at once that she wasn’t going to stay in Talensac, not just now: she’d go home to Comper, whatever her father thought, and, at Christmastime, ride to Fougères and marry Alain there. She hated Talensac. She couldn’t stay here at all, not without Alain.

  Like a rock amid the tumbling water of her thoughts, she remembered Judicaël’s voice: Everything you get by your lies will turn to bitterness, and the fear of what you have done will poison everything you touch.

  But she told herself that all would be well again, once she was married to Alain.

  X

  The wolf left the forest cautiously and paused, nervously sniffing the air. He was still a couple of miles from the village of Talensac, but he didn’t like the open, exposed stretch of farmland, even now, at night. The scent on the wind, of wood smoke and human dirt, was one which his instincts flagged with danger. His instincts were strong, and had always governed most of what he did. The self beneath them was struggling now to override them, but the struggle was made brutally hard by that self’s own confusion. It knew that it was human, but it was drunken and dazed, swimming in a sea of alien perceptions and desires. Reasoning was difficult, and words came to it only slowly, dragged from within as though pulled up by a diver from deep water. Images and memories came more easily, but they, too, were confusing. It was hard to map the world recalled onto the world apparent. Sounds and scents were different; colored memories bewildered eyes that saw only shades of gray.

  The wolf whined and glanced back at the shelter of the trees. Then he lowered his head and dashed quickly across the corner of a field to a boundary ditch. The ditch was better: it smelled of wet and rotting vegetation, with a trace of rabbit. The wolf’s instincts forced a momentary pause, tracking the rabbit smell toward its burrow, and the self had to wrench him back again. Hunger wasn’t as fierce as the gnawing sense of loss. The wolf ran quickly along the ditch, splashed through a stream, and found another ditch to take him onward.

  About a mile from the village he came to the mill. He circled downwind of it, then crept slowly back toward it, shaking from the violent conflict between his decision to approach and his instinct to run away. The choking smell of flour struck him first, then the smells of pigs, cows, and smoke, of humans and dogs. Then came a sound: voices. They frightened him, but he crept closer still, then crouched, trembling, to listen. The effort of trying to drag up the drowned words inside and match them to the distorted din from the mill house was painful and exhausting. Then the wind shifted slightly, and a dog inside the house scented him and began barking loudly.

  One of the distorted voices shrilled whiningly in response. The dog barked even more furiously. A door opened and the dog shot out, then stopped short, barking frenziedly. A man followed it, holding a stick of firewood for a torch. The man’s presence made the dog bolder; it jumped two steps toward the wolf and leapt up and down, baying madly. The wolf snarled, and the man saw him. He shrieked and swung his torch back and forth through the air so that the fire blazed up. The hot crackle terrified the wolf, and he turned and ran. Neither man nor dog followed, but the wolf could hear other voices from the house joining in the wild gabble.

  He ran into the stream below the millpond, cold though it was, and splashed along it for a short distance, then climbed out of it on the same bank, ran downstream, doubled back in his tracks, went back into the water and ran upstream a few paces, and climbed out on the opposite bank. He shook himself and crawled under a bush. There was still no sign of pursuit. He rested his head on his paws, and struggled again to match the words he’d heard to their drowned meanings. The shout “wolf” emerged from the depths easily. But the man had said “wolf” before, too, while he was in the house. “Is it the wolf?” he’d asked the dog. The people here knew he’d come before. They expected him. And they would attack him without hesitation. Danger! screamed his instincts. Run!

  But the image of Eline’s face in the blue silk wimple perplexed his mind; then the image of Eline in bed, smiling up at him. The desire to weep at the memory was a torment: tears were as alien to his shape as wings. Surely, if she could see him, realize what she’d done to him — surely then she’d relent and give back what she’d stolen? She had loved him. He was sure she’d loved him once. Even if she now wanted to be free of him, she couldn’t mean to deprive him of everything forever? He slid out from under the bush on the far side of it, ran up the bank, and found another boundary ditch t
hat led toward the village.

  He was still afraid, though, and because of that he saw the first wolf trap before he was caught in it. It was lying in the narrow path that led up from the fields to the village’s muddy main street, and it looked like nothing more than a wooden plank scattered with leaves and dung. He almost walked over it — but he was nervous, and stopped. He noticed the three small box shapes along the plank’s surface, and the pattern connected suddenly with an image. A wooden box, part buried, its lid set with three small trapdoors that gave way if they were pressed. Inside the lips of the doors were angled spikes, ready to catch any foot that dropped past them, and hold and tear it when it tried to pull free again. There was a memory of Mailon the carpenter building one, and another man, himself, saying … his own words were drowned. He hadn’t wanted one, but Mailon had made it anyway: wolves were bad; it was good to be able to catch them.

  He backed away from the trap and tried another way into the village. Every pathway he tried had been prepared for him. At last he was forced to enter the village by the main street, with the wind on his side. A dog began to bark inside a house as he went by, and he broke into a run, bristling with fear — but still anxiously watching the ground. Then he caught another smell: fresh meat. His instincts again drew him toward it before he could stop himself. There was a pig’s head hanging from the branch of a tree, freshly killed and dripping blood. He stopped, staring at it hungrily. But another memory stirred: a pit covered over with branches, and bait hung above. He looked at the ground beneath the dripping head, and, sure enough, saw there the branchy covering of the pit. Heart pounding, he hurried away and loped into the square before the church.

  The stocks were empty tonight, which was a relief. The night before, it had taken him a few minutes to recognize Kenmarcoc, and then the slow understanding of where the man was had been painful, and his shout of terror more painful still. It had made him run off before reaching his goal. Now he ran on, through the stream and up the hill toward the manor house. Another dog had started barking. He had to hurry.

  There was a bridge over the dry ditch defense outside the gate. His instincts disliked it, and when he reached it, he stopped short. He struggled with himself, forced himself to set foot on it, then dashed across — and nearly ran into the closed gate. He laid his ears back, cowering against the door. This was all wrong. He couldn’t get in this way. He had been following his human memories of how to come back to Talensac, forcing them against his wolf’s instincts, but they’d misled him. The gate that had always opened to welcome him as a man was barred to him as a wolf, and he couldn’t get in. He wasn’t even downwind of the house here.

  Even as he realized that, he heard the dogs begin to bay. Hunting hounds that had once belonged to him shouted now for his blood. Answering sounds came from the lodge beside the gate. Voices creaked and shrilled distortedly. He crouched, whining as he tried to make sense of it. “Catch,” he managed, “Lady,” “sou reward.” Catch the wolf, and the lady will pay you a sou as a reward.

  Mercy, he thought, the word shaping itself slowly. Mercy, Lady. Oh God.

  But he realized that there would be no mercy. It wasn’t enough to take away his house, his lands, his humanity: she wanted his life as well. For a moment he was so wrenched by agony that he couldn’t move.

  But the speakers inside would come out soon. They would loose that baying mob from the kennels. He had memories of dogs. Their colored images poured across his mind: running after a quarry, pulling it down, tearing it to bloody scraps with their heavy jaws. He turned and tore back across the bridge, raced with the wind down the hillside, and ran desperately for the shelter of the forest.

  The baying of the hounds in the night woke Eline, and she lay awake for a long time after the dogs were quiet. She imagined the wolf prowling about outside the enclosure of the manor house. It was waiting for her, she was certain. In her mind it loomed big as a horse, black, fiery-eyed, and savage with hatred. It was waiting to kill her. She cried quietly from misery and terror.

  She ached for the wolf to be dead, but she was afraid of what might happen if it were. The image of the wolf skin peeling off Tiarnán’s body refused to be banished. What would the villagers do if they discovered what she’d done? She imagined the sullen contempt on their faces turning to bestial rage.

  She told herself that if they knew what Tiarnán was, they would have to admit that she’d been right to reject him — but her heart remained unconvinced. I don’t care what the secret was! Kenmarcoc had shouted. You weren’t’t fit to clean his boots.

  In the morning when she learned that the traps had caught nothing, she didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

  She set off for Comper that same day, taking along an escort of four servants, armed with bows for fear of the wolf. She stayed there until the last Sunday in Advent. The quarrel with her father happened exactly as she’d foreseen, and hurt just as much as she’d expected — but at least there were no wolves.

  The week before Christmas, though, it seemed that the long night of misery would finally end. She rode with her escort to Fougères, and her father patched up the quarrel enough to come with her. Lord Juhel de Fougères received them both very graciously. He was perfectly willing to forget that he’d once called Eline a “fancy white-haired child slut” now that she was bringing his younger son land — “a very pretty manor, too, with some of the best hunting in Brittany.” This warmth from the grand Lord Juhel thawed the rest of Lord Hervé’s resentment. As for Alain, he greeted Eline with such tender joy that it brought tears to her eyes.

  Fougères was a very grand place, much larger and finer than either Comper or Talensac. It was a stone-built castle, not just a fortified manor house, and its estates covered forty square miles of the Breton March. At Fougères they celebrated both Christmas and the wedding with a splendor that was not inferior to that of the ducal court. In fact, Eline thought happily, it was better than the court. There her marriage celebration had been only a minor occasion, while here at Fougères it was a major feast. And here she was marrying her true love — marrying him at long last, and bringing as her dowry not just the few acres she’d brought Tiarnán, but the whole of Talensac. She looked across the table, spread with the Christmas feast of boar’s head and marrow-fat pie, and there he was, looking lovingly back. He seemed impossibly handsome: golden-haired, blue-eyed, his wide shoulders set off to perfection by a new tunic of crimson velvet trimmed with lynx fur. She felt a tingling in her groin, and touched his foot with her own under the table. He smiled back at her eagerly and kissed her hand.

  Lord Juhel noticed the hand-kissing and laughed. “Christmas is a better time to marry than midsummer, isn’t it, Lady Eline?” he joked. “The last thing newlyweds want is a short night.”

  Eline glanced at him unhappily. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of her first wedding. But Alain only kissed her hand again. “Any night would seem short,” he whispered, “with you.”

  When that long night was still beginning, though, she remembered the midsummer night, and Tiarnán’s tenderness. The girl she had been then seemed so remote that it was as though the memory belonged to another person, and for a moment she forgot what Tiarnán was, remembering only the sweet delight in which she had lost her virginity. For a moment it even seemed to be part of this present sweetness. It was all love.

  Then she remembered, and the memory was contaminated with sick disgust. She froze in her new husband’s arms. It was a long time before Alain could coax her into warmth again.

  Alain was eager to leave for Talensac after Christmas; Eline was reluctant. They discussed it on the morning of the Feast of the Innocents while they were getting up. “I’ve never even visited the place!” he told her. “And it’s mine now. I want to look it over and set it in order at once.”

  “It’s in perfect order now!” protested Eline. “And the duke’s man Grallon is still there, collecting the relief.”

  Alain grimaced. The “re
lief” was the large sum which the new lord of a fief paid to his feudal overlord on his succession. It usually amounted to about a year’s income from the estate. An overlord with an urgent need for money might ask for more, and a bad overlord might refuse to accept the homage of his vassal indefinitely, and strip the estate while it was under his control. Hoel was a good overlord, and Grallon was carefully collecting no more than what was customarily due. Tiarnán had kept a reasonable surplus in his coffers, and even though the wedding and the flurry of repairs on the estate had dented this, there’d been enough left to pay off most of the relief at once. Grallon only needed to collect the rents for the Christmas quarter to get the rest. But even that seemed a lot to Alain. He had never had money of his own before, just an allowance from his father, and his father had always disapproved of the way he spent it.

  “Do you suppose,” he said to Eline, “that the duke might agree to reduce the relief if —”

  “Alain!” she exclaimed in alarm. “Duke Hoel only let me keep Talensac because he was so fond of Tiarnán. He’s angry with us for marrying so soon: we can’t ask him to reduce the relief.”

  Alain grimaced again. “Very well. So, no money from the estate until after Easter. Oh well, I still have fifteen marks of what I borrowed: that will last us till then.”

  “Borrowed?” repeated Eline in surprise. Then she bit her tongue: of course, she and Alain would need some money in hand to set up house together. Silly of her not to have seen that. Fifteen marks, though, sounded like a lot.

  “I borrowed fifty marks from a Jew in Nantes,” Alain told her casually. “He was happy to lend it to me on the strength of Talensac. But he does charge a ruinous usury, and I was hoping to be able to pay him back this year. But never mind, next year will do.”