The Wolf Hunt

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Hoel’s magnificence, however, made no impression at all on the king’s court. Philippe might be just a fat old man who didn’t count for much, but all the great nobles of France nonetheless occasionally found it expedient to visit him. What was Hoel compared with the fabulously wealthy count of Flanders, or the mighty dukes of Anjou and Normandy, or the cultured Duke William of Aquitaine? Brittany was one of the poorer and more isolated parts of the kingdom, and of no great interest to the Parisians. The king’s seneschal, Lord Guy de Rochefort, who had come into the courtyard to greet the visitors, merely smiled politely at the display and waved to the servants to stable the Bretons’ horses.

  What did make an impression, however, was Isengrim: a tame wolf was a much rarer animal than a mere duke. When Hoel strode into the king’s Great Hall with the wolf on a leash of crimson silk, the courtiers along the benches nudged one another and whispered. Even King Philippe, a crafty and indolent man not often stirred by anything, sat up at his place at the high table, twitched his ermine robe straight, and belched.

  Hoel knelt and did homage to his overlord. The king drew him to his feet, kissed him on both cheeks in a rather perfunctory fashion, and asked, “Is that really a wolf?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Hoel with great satisfaction and patted Isengrim on the shoulder. Isengrim licked his hand.

  “Eh!” said Philippe doubtfully. “It seems very tame.”

  “He’s a very well behaved beast, my lord, and much more intelligent than a dog. Isengrim! Bow to your king!”

  Isengrim had been taught this trick on the journey. He stepped forward and dropped his head and forequarters to the ground, tail held out straight behind him, and touched his nose to the king’s shoe. Philippe pulled the shoe back hastily, then smiled. The courtiers applauded. Isengrim stood up again and went back to his place at Hoel’s side.

  “A most respectful animal,” said the king. “I’d always believed that wolves were incapable of honoring anyone. Well, well. Be welcome, my lord of Brittany, to Paris.”

  The women and higher-ranking men of the Breton party had been given a suite of rooms in the north wing of the palace. The knights had to share the hall with King Philippe’s own men, and with their counterparts among the Norman delegation, which had already arrived. The hall was large enough to hold them all. It was comparatively new, and had been rebuilt, like the rest of the palace, by King Philippe’s grandfather Robert the Pious. There was a banquet in it that evening to welcome both the Normans and the Bretons to the court.

  Even before she entered the huge room that evening, Marie was struck by the sweet overpowering scent of flowering may, and when she followed the duchess through the low door, it was to see the hall spread with dazzling white. Fresh-cut may had been scattered in thick drifts over the rushes of the floor, and the tables were covered with cloths of bleached linen, and set with silver salt cellars and dishes. Candles blazed in racks along every wall, casting a pure soft glow over the scene. The magnificent clothing of courtiers and visitors alike blazed against the whiteness in a rainbow of rich colors, as though they had walked from the fabulous tapestries which decorated the palace walls. Once again, Marie had the sense that this journey was part of some fairy tale, or a dream from which she would awaken to the drabness of St. Michael’s convent.

  The king’s seneschal had been involved in some anxious reckoning of dignities before the places were assigned at the banquet tables. The king’s son, Prince Louis, was absent, chastising a rebellious baron — a piece of luck Lord de Rochefort thanked God for, because the king’s wife was unfortunately present, and she and the prince loathed each other. (Queen Bertrada was the king’s second wife. The king’s first wife, Bertha of Frisia, Prince Louis’s mother, was still living. So was Bertrada’s first husband. Her elopement with the king was the scandal of the age, and had provoked a papal excommunication for Philippe which everyone quietly ignored.) Also fortunate from the seneschal’s point of view was the fact that Duke Robert of Normandy was not present, which meant that there was no one to contest Hoel’s position on the king’s right, while Duke Robert’s steward, Count Ranulf of Bayeux, who headed the Norman delegation, could take the place on the queen’s left unquestioned. But farther down the tables there were hot disputes.

  Marie was escorted to the high table — partly because she was a kinswoman of the duchess, but largely, she suspected, because the few women at the feast provided convenient blanks to shuffle about the contested seats. She found herself wedged between the king’s constable and a Norman she knew, Hoel’s old adversary Robert of Bellême, who’d once visited her father at Chalandrey. Robert was a tall, powerfully built man with a cruel face, sleekly gray and magnificently dressed. He tapped his fingers impatiently against the table as the company stood waiting for the king. There was a fanfare of trumpets, and Philippe and his queen entered the hall in a blaze of cloth of gold and jewels. They took their places at the center of the table, and the rest of the company could finally sit down. Then there was another blare of trumpets, and the first course of roast lamb and gravy-soaked pasties was borne into the hall upon a dish of silver so heavy it took two men to carry it.

  Robert snorted and began to tap his fingers again. Before the company could be served, the royal seneschal had to ceremoniously carve for the king, taste the meat himself, and at last hand it over with more bows and flourishes of trumpets. Then the same ceremony had to be repeated with the wine. But at last the ritual was completed, and the servants began to carry the food about to the guests. The meal was superb: Philippe was a connoisseur of the pleasures of the table, and had come by his bulk honestly.

  Robert of Bellême turned to Marie with a leer. “God prosper you, Lady,” he said. “I must’ve done something right, to be seated next to a beautiful woman. You’re with the Breton party, aren’t you? But you’re too pretty to be a daughter of Hoel’s. What’s your name?”

  “You know me, Lord Robert,” she said. “Marie, Guillaume Penthièvre’s daughter.”

  He blinked. “By God and Saint James!” he exclaimed. “So it is. I never would have believed it. Fat, bookish little Marie, turned into a vision like this! Captivity must agree with you.”

  Marie was very grateful to the duchess’s dressmaker, and grateful, too, for the jewels loaned by the duchess herself. “Not exactly captivity, Lord Robert,” she said without thinking.

  “But I’d heard that Hoel had you abducted from a convent and kept at his court by force, imprisoned until you agreed to marry one of his men.”

  “I haven’t been imprisoned,” she said, smiling. “As you can see. I swore an oath to Duchess Havoise that I wouldn’t try to escape unless I were forced into a marriage, and she made me one of her attendants. She and Duke Hoel have treated me with nothing but kindness.”

  Robert was frowning. “Kindness? To abduct you and keep you by force?”

  “I’ve refused to do what they wanted, but they still treat me as their friend and cousin. Yes, kindness.”

  Robert continued to frown, and she suddenly remembered comments from her first days at the ducal court: What you expect, from us, shows what the Normams are. She could see now that it was true. Robert would not have allowed her liberty and freedom if she’d resisted his plans. Robert would have had one of his men rape her. He found it difficult to understand why Hoel hadn’t.

  “But you’ve refused their choices of a husband for you?” he asked.

  She nodded, no longer trusting herself to speak to him, and Robert gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I’d heard of your loyalty,” he said. “I hope it counts for something with the king when the manor’s fate is decided.”

  Marie bit her lip, not knowing how to admit that she hoped it wouldn’t.

  She was saved replying by an extraordinary noise from the center of the table, where Hoel was sitting beside the king. She looked up to see the duke bending over his wolf and imitating a howl. Isengrim looked embarrassed.

  “What on earth is he doing?” said Robert t
o the king’s constable.

  The constable had just asked his own neighbor the same question, and he turned back and said, “It seems the king wants to hear the wolf howl.”

  The king’s chancellor and several peers of the realm began howling as well, pausing, like the duke, to encourage Isengrim to do the same. Isengrim flicked his ears back and forth and looked the other way, pretending he didn’t understand. Marie caught Duchess Havoise’s eyes and had to cover her mouth to stop herself from giggling. The king tapped his heel impatiently against the ground and his courtiers bayed harder. Finally Isengrim, with a put-upon air, lifted his head and howled.

  The sound rose from its half-sob beginning to its high, trailing finish, lonely, chilling, achingly sad, and completely unlike the noise made by its imitators. The rest of the banqueters turned from their food and stared, and for a moment the whole hall was absolutely still. Then every dog there — and there were many of them, from the king’s white greyhounds to the ladies’ lapdogs — began to bark. Isengrim lowered his head and flopped down on the bed of may behind the duke’s chair.

  “Wherever did Duke Hoel get that wolf?” Robert asked Marie admiringly. “I’d pay a pound of gold for a beast like that.”

  It emerged, after the banquet, that the king had offered three pounds of gold for Isengrim, and, when Hoel refused, increased the offer to five pounds. Hoel was exultant.

  “I said I wouldn’t sell him for a hundred pounds in gold!” he said, roughing the fur of the wolf’s neck with both hands. “Nor would I. Nobody in this place has ever given a damn about anything I owned before. You’ve brought honor to your master, eh, Isengrim? I’m the envy of the court. There’s a good wolf!”

  The wolf grinned at him and gave his face a lick.

  “You know he only howled to stop you from doing it,” said Havoise. “Really, Hoël, I thought I would burst trying not to laugh at you.”

  “The king’s men howled, too,” responded Hoel, and imitated them, howling in a Parisian accent. Havoise doubled up with laughter.

  “But what are you going to do about the other thing the king wants to see?” she asked her husband when she’d collected herself and wiped her face.

  This, it seemed, was a fight between the wolf and some hounds. The Norman leader Ranulf of Bayeux had offered to set his two best hounds against the wolf, and the king was very taken with the notion.

  Hoel shrugged. “If we can possibly avoid that, we will. As I said to the king, Ranulf can get more hounds easily, but where would I get another wolf? Though I’d wager anything you’d beat those Norman dogs, wouldn’t you, Isengrim?”

  Marie didn’t like the sound of that. It made a wolf fight seem rather probable, and she’d grown fond of Isengrim. Havoise obviously shared her apprehensions. “Hoel,” the duchess said, “you don’t even know that he can fight. He’s such a gentle creature. He won’t even snap back at a dog.”

  “I’m certain he can fight if he wants to,” replied Hoel. “The only time I ever saw him try to attack someone, he was properly terrifying. It was the day after I caught him, and I brought that de Fougères fellow out to look at him. If he hadn’t been chained, I believe he would have killed the man. Lord Alain went white in the face and told me I ought to have him killed.”

  “Really?” said Havoise. “I’ve never seen him misbehave at all.”

  “Nor have I since. But he’s an intelligent beast. I think he recognized Lord Alain as the one who’d been hunting him. I’m sure he could fight like a devil if he had cause.”

  This, too, was not reassuring.

  The king was in no hurry to try the dispute over Chalandrey. Royal dignity demanded that he entertain his tenants-in-chief when they visited his court, so over the next few days the two parties, Breton and Norman, were taken hawking in the royal forest of Rouvre, separately, and amused with dances and music in Paris, separately. The duchess went shopping and purchased, with great satisfaction, items ranging from cloth of Flanders to spices and dye stuffs for the castle stores. Marie continued to attend her, though she was uncomfortably aware that the Norman party regarded this as improper, and had complained to the king. On the morning of the second day of entertainments, King Philippe had her called over to him and asked her whether she’d prefer to stay with the Normans, the Bretons, or his own servants. She stammered that she preferred to stay with her kinswoman the duchess of Brittany. The king raised one eyebrow quizzically and sent her back to Havoise. She was glad to get away, but she could feel Robert of Bellême glaring at her as she went.

  That evening there was another formal banquet, and she was once again seated beside him. He launched into a complaint at once. “What do you mean, saying you’d prefer to stay with the duchess?” he demanded. “We all heard back in Normandy that you refused to go along with Hoel, and we all admired your loyalty. But ever since you arrived here in Paris, you’ve acted like a member of the Breton party.”

  “I am,” she replied quietly. “I came here with them, as their guest. Duchess Havoise is my kinswoman. My lord of Bellême, apart from any other considerations, neither you nor Lord Ranulf have brought your wives along. It wouldn’t be fitting for me, as an unmarried woman, to be alone in your company.”

  Robert snorted impatiently. “We can find you a chaperone. We were hoping to take you back with us as soon as the king’s heard the case and find you a husband. You’re old to be still unmarried.”

  All these months of postponing the inevitable, and it had finally arrived — not in Brittany, but here; not with Hoel or Havoise, but with this brutal ally of her father’s. Marie looked down at her trencher of bread, then looked up again resolutely. At least it was not Hoel she disappointed first. “My lord Robert,” she said calmly and clearly, “I do not intend to marry.”

  His black brows pulled down over his cold eyes. “What?” he brayed incredulously.

  “I will not marry. I’ve been loyal to my father and his overlord, and refused to marry one of Hoel’s knights. But I owe the duke and duchess a debt for all their kindness to me. The least I can do to repay it is to refuse to marry any of Robert of Normandy’s men. My firm intention is to take vows as a nun, and give all my father’s lands to St. Michael. The best owner for Chalandrey is God.”

  Robert stared at her for a long minute, his expression slowly changing from stupefaction to rage. Absolute master in his own territory, he wasn’t used to controlling his temper when he was crossed, and he lost it now. “You little bitch!” he exclaimed. “Hoel’s given you far too much liberty, and it’s given you the idea that you can please yourself! You will marry who you’re told, when you’re told!”

  “Your opinion is contrary to canon law, Lord Robert,” Marie said coldly. “I am allowed to refuse marriage.”

  “Then canon law’s flat against the laws of nature!” Robert’s voice was rising to a strangled roar, and the other diners began to look at him. “A woman does what her lord tells her, and if she doesn’t, she should be beaten like the rebellious donkey she is. You little traitress!”

  It was the one word Marie had done most to avoid. She felt her cheeks going hot. She lifted her chin and looked Robert proudly in the eye. “I have betrayed no one!” she cried in a clear, ringing voice that could be heard down to the far end of the table. “Never in my life! Nor will I, not for Normandy or Brittany or the whole world! I would sooner be dead than guilty of such dishonor!”

  Robert struck her violently across the face with the back of his hand. The blow sent her flying from her seat to land heavily on her side in the rushes, cracking her head against the floor. There was a shout of protest from someone up the table, and then Marie heard a snarl just above her, and dragged a blurred gaze into focus to find Isengrim crouching protectively over her, his teeth bared at Robert of Bellême. Robert was on his feet, glaring down. At the wolf’s snarl he drew his sword with a hiss of oiled metal. Marie felt the wolf shift his weight above her, and saw the animal’s eyes flicker to the man’s left with a lethal concentration tha
t was not animal, and that was somehow familiar.

  “My lord Robert!” exclaimed King Philippe, heaving his bulk up from the table and hurrying over. “Stop!” Behind him came Hoel, red with anger, and Robert of Normandy’s steward, scowling with annoyance, and behind them Havoise and half the king’s courtiers. Panting, the king faced Robert over the wolf, and Robert’s raised sword sank down again. Marie could feel the wolf relaxing, too, though he remained crouched above her head.

  King Philippe belched painfully and rubbed his stomach. “What does this mean, eh?” he demanded.

  “The little bitch says she won’t marry a Norman, no matter what you decide in the case, my lord!” said Robert hotly.

  “You had no right to strike her, whatever she said!” shouted Hoel. “Marie, my dear, are you all right?” He held out his hand, and Marie took it. Isengrim moved reluctantly aside, and Marie pulled herself slowly to her feet. Havoise pushed past the king’s steward and came over to put an arm around her. Marie’s head ached savagely where she’d hit it against the floor, her mouth was full of blood, and her cheek stung outside where Robert had struck her, and inside where she’d bitten it. She swallowed several times. Isengrim licked her hand, then looked at Robert and made a low singing growl in the depths of his throat.

  “You had no right to strike her,” agreed Count Ranulf, glaring at Robert of Belleme. “Apologize. And put that damned sword away.”

  “The sword was for the wolf!” protested Robert, shoving it back in its sheath.

  “The wolf ran to protect what’s mine!” yelled Hoel.