The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Eline gaped at him stupidly. She could not read and she was not good at sums, but she knew that fifty marks was more money than Talensac brought in in a year. Fifty marks was … two years’ rents from Talensac? More than that? And there was interest to pay on that enormous sum? “But …” she stammered helplessly, “but — why did you need to borrow so much?”

  Alain grinned at her. He went to his clothes chest and dug into the bottom of it to bring out a small box of polished rosewood. He brought it over to her, sat down on the bed beside her, and put it in her lap. “Open it!” he ordered.

  Breathlessly, she obeyed. The box was lined with white silk, and on the silk lay a necklace, a large sapphire set on a chain of silver and pearls.

  “Oh, Alain!” she breathed, lifting it from the box. “Oh, how beautiful! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

  Alain took it gently from her hands and fastened it about her neck. The sapphire gleamed against her sky-blue gown, less vivid and less brilliant than her eyes. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered. He straightened the stone, then let his hand slip from it to her breast. “I wanted to get you a present worthy of you.”

  “Oh, dearest!” She had always loved getting presents, and this one transported her to the innocence of her girlhood again. She flung her arms around him and kissed him. “Oh, I adore you!”

  No more was said about the debt of fifty marks, not even later, after it emerged that the necklace had cost only six marks, and that Alain had disposed of the other twenty-nine on a new warhorse, a pacing palfrey for Eline, a gyrfalcon, his new red velvet tunic, and an assortment of wines to stock his new cellars. How could she complain at anything he did, when he loved her so much?

  She agreed to go back to Talensac for the new year, as well. Alain found a clerk to replace Kenmarcoc as bailiff, and the party set out for their estate on the thirtieth of December, arriving in Talensac on the first of January.

  Talensac’s new bailiff was the son of one of Lord Juhel’s bailiffs, a small, morose, clever man by the name of Gilbert. He was glad to leave Fougères, where he had no prospects, but he was impatient with Talensac people even before he arrived at the manor. He spoke no Breton, and only two of the four servants Eline had brought in her escort spoke French.

  They arrived in the middle of the afternoon on a day of clammy fog. They saw no one as they rode into the village, but that was natural enough given the weather. In the manor hall the fire was burning brightly and everything was in order. The servants bowed correctly, and the duke’s bailiff greeted them warmly and congratulated them on their marriage. He welcomed Gilbert as well — then had to welcome him again, in French. Eline left the bailiffs to talk, and showed Talensac manor to its new lord: the horses in the stable, the hounds in the kennels, Tiarnán’s goshawk and merlin in the small mews; the house and the kitchens and storerooms and the servants who looked after it all. Alain was as thrilled and delighted with it as she had been when Tiarnán first showed it to her. It was possible for a few hours to believe that they could be happy in the manor.

  Dinner dampened the enthusiasm. “The wolf seems to have left us,” Grallon told Eline as they all sat down.

  “Wolf?” asked Alain sharply. Eline had not told him about the wolf while she was at Fougères. She’d been too busy being happy.

  “Didn’t your lady tell you?” asked Grallon, smiling. “You must have kept her occupied! We had a big wolf coming into the village when she was here last. He scorned all our traps and put all our dogs off his trail. We couldn’t catch the beast, but it seems we frightened him off.”

  “Where did he go?” asked Alain.

  “Thinking of having a try for him yourself, Lord Alain? The stable lad Donoal tracked him into the forest west of here, toward Tremelin.”

  “That’s my land, isn’t it?” said Alain. “And Tiarnán had a good pack of hounds, didn’t he?” Once again, he was astonished at his own coolness. “Yes, I think I will have a try for him.”

  “Don’t,” said Eline. She was sitting very white and still, and she felt as though something inside of her had fainted at the very mention of the wolf. She wanted nothing to do with the creature.

  Alain looked across at her angrily. “Why not?”

  She looked down. “I’m afraid of the beast. He might hurt you.”

  Alain smiled. For a moment he’d thought she might be afraid for the beast. “Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. “It’s only an animal.”

  Later that night, when they were lying together in the bed she had once shared with Tiarnán, she whispered, “You mustn’t go near the wolf, Alain! You know what he really is. He’s dangerous!”

  “It’s an animal,” Alain repeated firmly. “And you’re right; it is a dangerous one. Too dangerous to be left alive.” He understood now why she’d been so reluctant to return to Talensac. What woman wouldn’t be afraid with that eerie creature roaming about? He should have killed the wolf before: he should have run after it into the woods at St. Mailon’s and ended it then. Only when the monster was dead would she be wholly safe and entirely his.

  Eline lay still, staring up into the blackness. The air of the bedroom was damp and chill, heavy with the fog outside. No light came through the wicker shutters tonight, and sound and feeling alike seemed curiously deadened. “Alain,” she whispered, “I had the most horrible thought. What if they kill him and skin him — and find Tiarnán inside?”

  Alain was silent for a long time. The memory of Tiarnán’s transformation appeared in his mind with a strange, remote vividness, like something glimpsed in a dream. It had been complete in an instant: there was no man inside that wolf skin. “It isn’t like that,” he said at last. “He left that part of himself under the stone at St. Mailon’s. And anyway, if I catch him with the hounds, he won’t be skinned: there won’t be enough hide left intact to make it worthwhile.” That thought cheered him.

  Eline shuddered: the horrible image simply transformed itself to Tiarnán’s dogs howling in terror as they found that the body they were tearing was their master’s. She felt no pity for the wolf — she was far too frightened of it for that — but she was afraid of discovery, of the peasants turning on her: I don’t care what the secret was! You weren’t fit …

  “Maybe we should burn his things,” she whispered.

  When they were at Fougères, Alain had secretly showed her the bundle of Tiarnán’s hunting clothes, wrapped in the slashed leather wallet. He had not unwrapped them since he first fumbled up the knot at St. Mailon’s, but he’d shrouded the leather bundle in an old altar cloth bought from a church and sprinkled it with holy water as a safeguard. The whole package was now buried in his clothes chest, under a false bottom to keep it from the servants’ eyes. They’d discussed burning it before. When they first snatched a meeting after St. Mailon’s, Alain had been eager to burn the clothes, afraid of being accused of murder if they were found in his possession. Eline had dissuaded him. If the clothes were burned, who could say what would happen to the other, invisible thing that had been left with them? It might fly back to its owner. Fire was unlikely to destroy something without weight or form.

  “You said before that we shouldn’t,” Alain told her now impatiently. “After all, we know that it works, that he can’t turn back with them as they are. We don’t know what would happen if we changed things.”

  “Yes,” she whispered unhappily. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Alain promised. “I’ll hunt him down, wherever he goes. Don’t be afraid. He’s no match for me now.”

  She turned and suddenly clung to him passionately. “Be careful, then, dearest. Oh, please, please be careful!”

  Talensac, watching warily to see what its new lord was like, was reassured at first to find that he was interested in nothing but wolf hunting. The bleak expectations of the night Kenmarcoc was put in the stocks showed no sign of being fulfilled: Alain didn’t even learn the villagers’ names, let
alone care what they did. The new foreign bailiff, though, soon proved himself to be a foul person. He insisted on being spoken to in French, and gave anyone who addressed him in Breton a box on the ears or a cut from the little riding whip he always carried. He was greedy, too. He would wait until a villager had a cousin’s wedding to attend, or a trip to a fair planned, and then he would demand one of the day’s labor owed on the domain lands, and smirk as he was bribed to be excused. Even Justin Braz trod carefully with Gilbert, because it was clear that if a man put a foot wrong, the bailiff would fix on the most brutal punishment he could find, and then take money for lessening it: a foul person. Still, it could have been worse. Talensac approved of wolf hunting.

  “Though Lord Alain’s no huntsman, mind,” Donoal told Justin over a mug of ale. The night of unity at the stocks had carried over into a prickly friendship, and the responsible stable lad had taken to recounting events at the manor house to the village terror and his friends. “He can barely tell a wolf’s tracks from a hound’s when they’re printed side by side in mud. And he loses his temper if anything goes wrong.” Patience was a cardinal virtue among huntsmen. Things invariably go wrong on hunts. Donoal loved hunting himself, and had no respect for lapses of temper — which was why he had previously looked down on Justin.

  “Lord Goldilocks doesn’t know how to shit in the woods” was Justin’s reply. Donoal thought it very witty, and laughed into his ale.

  Alain killed several wolves over the next couple of months. First he tried the usual wolf hunter’s tactic. An animal carcass was left in a small wood which stood separate from the main body of the forest. Once wolves had found and eaten it, it was replaced with fresh, for three nights in succession. Then, on the fourth night, the carcass was hung up in a tree, with only a few bones scattered about on the ground beneath. The wolves were tempted to wait in the wood during the hours of darkness, hungrily crunching the bones and hoping for the meal they could smell above them. Shortly before morning, Donoal, whom Alain took to employing as his huntsman, went into the wood and cut down the carcass: the wolves gathered to feed on it, then stayed in the copse, afraid to return across the open fields to the main forest in daylight. Each time this was done, Alain found a number of animals to hunt when he came with the dogs in the morning. But he was certain they were no more than animals.

  “It’s not the king wolf,” Donoal told him, examining a body after a chase. “Not the one that came into Talensac. He came the nights we left the meat, though. I’ve seen his tracks — a big dog-wolf that comes in from a different direction from the others. He snatches meat from the rest and runs off with it. He doesn’t stay and feed with the pack, and when he sees the bones, he goes off at once, and leaves the others to be caught. He’s a crafty creature.”

  Alain looked at the servant critically. “You’re good at tracking, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Donoal shrugged. Taken you a while to notice, hasn’t it? he thought. You don’t know how to shit in a wood. “I like it,” he said noncommittally.

  He’d always liked it. Tiarnán had given him permission to hunt rabbits anywhere on the manor lands, and had assigned any forestry work on the estate to Donoal, or to Sulmin the swineherd, because he knew they enjoyed it. Donoal’s most prized possession was a lymer, one of Mirre’s pups, which the machtiern had given him. He’d gone after the noblemen’s game of deer or boar with Tiarnán, too, and sat about the manor house fire afterward, talking over the chase. Tiarnán had been born a nobleman, Donoal a peasant, but that difference was less important than being the same age in the same village and sharing the same interests. They had grown up together. They shared memories of swimming in the fish ponds in hot summers before they were eight years old, of wrestling matches, daring raids on orchards, illicit bonfires by standing stones.

  Donoal knew that to the new lord of Talensac, he himself would never be anything more than an obedient pair of hands. Well, that was the world: the good died, and change was always for the worse. He looked at Alain expressionlessly.

  “I want you to find that wolf for me,” said Alain. “You can have leave from your work to track him, and I’ll give you three sous if you can find him.”

  Donoal was impressed and suspicious. Three sous was nearly two months’ wages, a great deal of money to offer for one wolf, however crafty. The new master was a careless, impatient man, too, liable to make promises and then forget about them — not like the machtiern. There was greedy Gilbert, too: if the master promised three sous, you could be sure that the bailiff would keep one of them for himself when he took them from the strongbox. And the master wouldn’t want to know about that, but the bailiff would make a man’s life wretched if he mentioned it. Still, hunting in the forest was better than mucking out the stables, and even two sous was a lot of money — if it came.

  “I’ll do my best to find him for you, my lord,” Donoal told Alain.

  He searched for the king wolf through the freezing end of January and the wet February snow. He found the trail several times — the wolf seemed to inhabit the forest to the west of Talensac, sometimes near Montfort, sometimes near Comper and St. Mailon’s, but never too far away — and his master came and hunted it with the hounds. Each time the crafty animal slipped away, and the dogs were left chilled and discouraged, usually on someone else’s land. The third time, it was the lord of Montfort’s land. Lord Raoul de Montfort, when he found out, was furious, and accused Alain of poaching. He was the most powerful baron in the district, and it was not good to offend him. Alain was forced to make a humiliating apology.

  When Donoal next found the trail, it lay on the edge of the ducal forest of Treffendel. Alain did not dare follow the wolf onto the duke’s land. He was not eager to be accused of poaching again, and by Hoel. But he remembered that there was another thing he could try.

  At Christmas Tiher had been appointed the duke’s Master of the Hunt. Alain had felt aggrieved when he learned this: the position was a salaried office in the ducal household, an administrative post of some influence in the hunt-loving court. It was a much better place than he himself had ever been offered. Still, it might now prove itself useful. What could be more natural than for him to write Tiher a letter inviting the duke to come and hunt the wolf? And that, thought Alain with satisfaction, would finish the beast. The monster would not find it so easy to slip away from a court hunting party. The duke had hundreds of hounds at his disposal and he had the finest huntsmen in Brittany. He had the lymer Mirre, too. Whenever Alain’s hounds had lost the wolf’s trail, Donoal’s response had been, “Mirre might have found it.” Alain had had to check himself from cursing Eline for giving the dog away.

  By this time, the ducal court had moved back to Rennes. So it was in the Great Hall at Rennes, on a Sunday after lunch, that Tiher read Hoel a letter he had received from his cousin.

  “‘My dear cousin,’” he read, “‘do you think our lord the duke would care to hunt the wolf? There is a most marvelously crafty animal near here, which has crossed onto his land. I hunted it myself while it was on my land, and once followed it into my lord de Montfort’s forest — and I was not after boar, despite what he says — but it’s always given me the slip. The people here call it the king wolf. It’s a big animal, in its prime, and would give our lord good sport if he came to chase it.’”

  Hoel took the letter and frowned at it with interest. “In which forest is this animal to be found?” he asked.

  “From what he says, I imagine it’s Treffendel,” Tiher replied. “That’s the only forest of yours that borders on Talensac.”

  Hoel nodded thoughtfully. He had a large hunting lodge in the forest of Treffendel. He had not used it for some years, but the resident forester and his family would have kept the place in order. It would not hold the entire court, but it was big enough to take a hunting party and had kennels for all the dogs.

  “You really want to go wolf hunting?” asked the duchess resignedly. She could never see the point of hunting an animal one c
ouldn’t eat. If a wolf or a fox or an otter was making a nuisance of itself, it was much easier to set traps for it than to go after it with a hundred or so dogs and a couple score of riders.

  Duke Hoel grinned. “But it’s great sport, my dear! There’s no beast of the chase as full of tricks as a crafty old wolf! It’s been a gray, grim month, and next month is Lent and we’ll all be repenting of our sins, miserere nobis Domine! Why don’t we go to Treffendel for a week of pleasure first?”

  “I don’t see the pleasure in galloping after wolves through a soaking-wet forest at the tail end of winter, thank you!” Havoise exclaimed. “But it’s true it’s been a gray, grim month, and I’m heartily sick of this gray, grim castle. Yes, let’s go to Treffendel! I’ll sit by the fire and toast my toes, and see that you have hot wine to drink when you come back frozen and empty-handed after a day spent chasing this marvelously crafty wolf. Why is Alain de Fougères being so generous with his quarry, do you suppose?”

  “Self-righteousness,” replied the duke at once. “Lord de Montfort accused him of poaching boar: if I catch his wolf, he’s vindicated.”

  Havoise chuckled.

  The high table soon hummed with arrangements for the hunting party: who was coming and who wasn’t; who among the noblemen of the region would like to be invited and who would be glad not to be. Alain had to be asked, since he had provided the quarry, but he would not be invited to stay at the lodge. “He can ride over from Talensac on the morning,” said Hoel. “Treffendel isn’t big enough to hold every knight in the region.” Which was true, though no one doubted that Tiarnán would have been invited, had he still been lord of Talensac.

  Marie now took it for granted that she would come in attendance on the duchess, and she was not disappointed.

  “But you don’t need to sit by the fire at Treffendel; you must come hunt the wolf,” said Tiher, grinning at her. “You’ll bring me luck.”