His clearing-out had utterly appalled the manor house servants. The house was their home, too. The oak tables in the hall had been there since the days of Tiarnán’s grandfather. They were too big for any common house, and could not be sold, so they were burned. Some of the women servants, watching the flames lick the dark wood which four generations of their kind had polished, wept — and the bailiff Gilbert cursed them, and slapped one or two with his little riding whip. Some of the men servants, like Donoal, had vivid memories of the duke’s wars, and they watched the weapons and the chestnut warhorse depart for Nantes with bitter faces. When Alain returned from Nantes with his purchases, it was to find that a dozen of his servants had left. Those who remained were all serfs, and not free to go. Some of the free-men and -women who’d gone had simply moved in with friends or relations in the village; others had left Talensac altogether. “They’ll come crawling back with their tails between their legs,” said Gilbert contemptuously. “They won’t find work or wages as good as here in the towns.” Perhaps — but in the meantime, the house was short staffed, and there was all the new furniture to arrange.
Alain went to some of the servants who’d moved down the hill and told them that he would overlook their defection if they came back. Not one would come. It astonished him: not one of them had a house or field of his own. They’d all lived by working on the domain lands and in the manor house, and now they were rootless hirelings — but they obstinately refused to return to the only place they had. Alain was particularly infuriated with the stable lad Donoal. Since the time of the wolf he’d thought of Donoal as the servant he knew best, and had favored him. But Donoal, too, had gone, down the hill and over the brook to the house of Glevian the blacksmith, where he helped his friend Justin in the fields. Alain went to Glevian’s house and offered Donoal higher wages if he returned. Donoal, like the others, refused.
“What is the matter with you?” Alain asked him furiously. “You’re upset that I sold some furniture?”
Donoal looked at him impassively. “Lord,” he said, “the lis is your house now. You may do what you want with it.”
“Then why did you leave it?” demanded Alain.
“Lord,” replied Donoal in a tone of deep stupidity, “I lived at the lis when the machtiern was there. Now it is your house.”
Alain raged at him but received no better answer than that. When the lord of Talensac had stamped off, Justin slipped in from the garden, where he’d been listening. “But why did you leave?” he asked Donoal in mincing March-accented Breton.
Donoal grinned savagely. “Lord,” he said, “I don’t care to work for a whore’s darling, a whore and a thieving bailiff. You’re not half the man your predecessor was, Lord Goldilocks, and if you think you’ll make everyone forget that by trying to scrub out every trace of him, you’re wrong!”
“May they all rot in hell!” agreed Justin. “And may they go there soon!”
The only place Alain went soon was to Fougères, where he recruited new servants from among his father’s tenants. He had to offer them high wages, though, to get them to leave their homes and come to live among the wild folk of the forest, and when they arrived and saw how the people of Talensac detested them, Alain had to offer them more again to make them stay. Therefore, he needed more money.
He still wanted to increase the rents, but after what the duke had said to him at Treffendel, he did not quite dare. So he looked to his other sources of revenue. The most obvious one was the mill. It was his, and the villagers were obliged to use it to grind all their grain. He doubled the charges.
To the villagers the coarse buckwheat bread baked from the mill’s flour was the footing of life itself. Alain could have chosen no more devastating blow. Was the village to pay double for its life because the lord wanted new furniture? The day the charges were raised, there was an impassioned meeting in the parish churchyard. Talensac assembled, united in outrage, and swore as one that it would not pay the cruel and iniquitous charge. And so that June, and the summer after it, became something that marked its people for the rest of their lives.
Marie spent the early part of June painstakingly checking whether her suspicions of Alain and Eline were justified. She questioned Kenmarcoc first. He was, as ever, very willing to talk, and found nothing odd in her questions: events at Talensac were so inherently interesting that it was only surprising more people hadn’t asked him about them. Yes, the Lady Eline had decided to be reconciled to her husband shortly after he went away for the last time. She’d returned from Iffendic two days after he left on his final hunting expedition. When was that? Oh, about the middle of October. Yes, the middle of October: Kenmarcoc remembered that they’d finished the threshing by the full harvest moon the night Lord Tiarnán left. What had the lord and lady quarreled about? Well, the lord had a habit of going hunting on his own, without even the dog, and the lady had got it into her head that he was visiting another woman. That was nonsense: he’d adored her. But she’d been offended with him, and had taken herself off to her sister’s. Why did the machtiern go hunting without the dog? At this Kenmarcoc grew suddenly awkward and reserved … well, there were foolish stories — but really, the best guess was that the machtiern had simply liked time alone in the forest, and didn’t want the trouble of caring for a dog.
Marie recognized, with resignation, that she had again come up against the blind wall of Tiarnán’s secret. She doubted that Kenmarcoc knew what it was. But it seemed likely that it had been divulged to Eline, and she had gone to Iffendic to escape from it. She had only returned in October, just after the full moon — the time when Alain had, indeed, been absent from the ducal court on his second unsuccessful trip to buy a hawk.
The second part of her investigation was, as she’d anticipated, more difficult. In fact, it proved impossible to carry out unobtrusively. Tiher was far too quick-witted to be deceived by her casual air when she asked him how Alain had known that a ship carrying hawks had arrived in St. Malo.
“Uncle Juhel has a shipping agent in the city,” he said. “Why are you interested, sweet lady? If you want to take up hawking, you don’t need to wait for a ship. I’ll buy you a merlin tomorrow.”
Marie smiled. “You don’t need to buy me a hawk. I’ll have lots of money when Chalandrey’s been consigned to the priory. Did your uncle’s agent send Alain a letter, then?”
But Tiher’s eyebrows were beginning to slide up to their angle of mockery. “Your father must have hawks at Chalandrey,” he said. “He wouldn’t have taken them to the Holy Land. You don’t need to buy hawks.” He paused and looked at her with candid curiosity. “Why this interest in my uncle’s agent in St. Malo?”
“I was just wondering how Alain knew when to go there.”
Tiher stared at her for a long minute, and then his amusement vanished. “You aren’t really interested in ships at all, are you?” he asked. “You’re interested in Alain, and whether he really went to St. Malo that time.”
Tiher had been suspicious of the expeditions at the time. Alain was quite capable of suddenly deciding that he must have a gyrfalcon and chasing a ship rumored to be carrying one right round the coast of Brittany — but it had been very unlike Alain to refuse company on his shopping trip. When he set out he had had the self-satisfied air that in Tiher’s experience usually preceded a disaster. There had not been much doubt about what sort of disaster Alain would have been courting at the time: Alain was a fool for Eline. “But he swore to me,” Tiher said out loud, “on the holy cross he swore it, that he wasn’t going to Talensac.”
Marie hesitated, then replied quietly. “I believe that Lady Eline was in Iffendic with her sister at the time.”
“Christ and Saint Michael!” The self-satisfied air, the smile after the oath. Tiher looked at Marie a moment longer, now with a strained expression. She could see him checking the dates of his cousin’s two trips in his mind, matching them against another event, and recoiling. “Have you said anything about this to the duke?” he asked
sharply.
“No,” said Marie. “I don’t want to say anything about it to anyone. Not unless there’s more reason to believe it’s true.”
“I’ll find out,” promised Tiher grimly.
There was absolutely no doubt that Alain would have gone at once to meet Eline if she had summoned him; there was no doubt that he had hated Tiarnán, and for Eline’s sake would have been willing to kill his rival. And yet … how could Alain ever have got the better of a knight like Tiarnàn — even given that Tiarnán would have been carrying only a bow and a hunting knife, while Alain wore full armor? Tiarnán had been a superb huntsman, and Alain in full armor would never have got anywhere near him, not unless he pretended to be carrying a message for him, or Tiarnán was asleep. And Alain couldn’t have killed him then. He simply couldn’t have killed a rival without making a long speech to him first. He was not the staba-man-in-the-back sort: he’d thirst for some glorious single combat, and he’d stand there under the trees waving his sword and declaiming, while Tiarnán disappeared into the bushes to shoot him dead.
The ridiculous image comforted Tiher. It was plain, though, that Marie had started a bird of suspicion from cover, and somebody was going to have to bring it down. Tiher was going to have to discover the truth, for Alain’s sake.
So Tiher made his own cautious inquiries about the court. One of the pages remembered that Alain had received a letter the previous September — but that had been nearly a year before, and a year is a long time for a ten-year-old boy whose mind and body are fully occupied learning to be a knight. The details had all been forgotten. Tiher tried another tack: he wrote to Lord Juhel’s agent in St. Malo, asking about the ship carrying hawks that was said to have docked there the previous autumn. Early in July came the puzzling response that no such ship had ever existed.
When this letter arrived, Tiher kept it to himself. Marie was away from court, and wasn’t expected back until the Feast of Saint James, on the twenty-fifth of the month. She was going to Chalandrey with Duke Hoel’s bailiff Grallon to take an inventory of the contents of the manor, then continuing to Mont St. Michel to make a formal gift of her lands to St. Michael’s priory. There was no one else at court to whom he was willing to entrust such damaging information. Alain had lied about where he was going and been absent when Tiarnán disappeared. Alain had gained a wife and a manor from Tiarnán’s death. Tiher still couldn’t believe that his cousin would have gone up to a man with a friendly greeting, then stabbed him through the heart — but he could not shake off the doubts that, to gain Eline, Alain might have been willing to do even that. The image of handsome, impulsive Alain, the young fool of a cousin whose enthusiasms Tiher had always tried to curb, secretly burying his victim’s body in the forest sickened him. Tiher didn’t want even to think about it — not until Marie returned to the court, when he knew he would have to. So he threw himself into work. The stag-hunting season had begun, and there was much to keep him busy.
The court had by then moved back to Ploërmel, and the duke was much occupied with hunting in the nearby forest. Tiher had to find suitable quarries for him, arrange hunting lodges and servants for him, and see that any guests invited were accommodated. There was besides a particularly splendid hunt to organize for the last week of July, when Bishop Quiriac of Nantes was expected to visit the court. The bishop was Hoel’s brother, and he shared the family enthusiasm for the chase. As the best quarry for him, Tiher eventually settled on a sixteentined stag reported to be in the forest at Treffendel.
Hoel was pleased with the suggestion. “I had good luck at Treffendel in March,” he said, glancing affectionately at Isengrim, who was, as usual, at his heels. “Yes, send a messenger there to tell them we’ll arrive the evening after Saint James’s Day. And make arrangements for the ladies to come as well. Quiriac is fond of the ladies, and he sees little enough of them in his palace, poor fellow.”
If the duke planned to arrive in Treffendel the evening after Saint James’s Day, then Tiher and the court servants should arrive on the feast day itself, to prepare the hunting lodge and seek out the quarry. Tiher decided, though, that the servants deserved their holy day rest, and decreed that his party set out a day early, to give them Saint James’s Day free. It was only after making this decision that he realized that the extra day would give him time to visit his cousin Alain at Talensac. He took the opportunity with a mixture of eagerness and dread. He had never had a high opinion of Alain’s good sense, but they’d grown up together from infancy, and the suspicion that his cousin was a murderer had become like a blister in his heart.
He had never been to Talensac before, but he’d always heard it described as a pretty place. Certainly it had a pretty setting: he rode from the green forest out into wide fields, gold with the harvest, green with neat rows of vines, or silver-green patched with grazing cattle and sheep. A tall wooden church tower poked from a dell ahead, and his road became the main street of a village of good-sized houses sitting in well-tended gardens. The place was not welcoming, however. The peasants working in the fields stared at him sullenly as he rode by, and when he entered the village, the street was empty, though suspicious faces peered at him from doorways. No one called out the ordinary greetings of the country. No one spoke at all. The stocks in front of the church were occupied to overflowing. One wretch who’d evidently been flogged sagged bloody-backed in the stocks themselves, while beside him sat shackled two other peasants in leg irons and yokes. They glowered at Tiher, and he noticed that one of them had been branded on the forehead. Next to them stood a pillar of raw new wood with a pair of hand shackles dangling from it. It was stained with blood, some fresh, some darkly brown. Talensac had plainly seen more than one flogging recently.
The gate of the manor house was shut and bolted. When Tiher knocked on it, an eye peered at him through a slitted window in the lodge, and then a voice called down, “What do you want?”
“My name is Tiher de Fougères!” Tiher called back. “I’ve come to visit my cousin Alain.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then the bolt was shot back and the gate cracked open. “You’d best come in, my lord,” said a nervous peasant. The peasant’s face was vaguely familiar, and he spoke in the French of the March. When Tiher had ridden through, the gate slammed shut behind him. Tiher began to wish he hadn’t come.
“I’ll tell the master you’re here, my lord,” said the gatekeeper. “Can you stable your horse yourself? Sorry to ask it of you, but we’re a bit shorthanded.”
Tiher raised his eyebrows, but took his horse off to the stables without comment. He was still seeing to the animal when Alain appeared and greeted him very warmly.
There were apologies for arriving unexpectedly, and effusive welcomes in reply, and at last Alain showed him to the house. Eline was waiting in the doorway. She, too, welcomed him very warmly, but her beautiful face was pale, thin, and lined with strain, and her eyes were red. And if the air in the village had been tense and sullen, the air of the Breton manor servants was frightened and subdued, while the large group of servants from Fougères was bullying and shrill.
The house had an air of guilty debauchery. The rushes on the floor had not been changed for some time, and everything was slightly dirty round the edges, as though it had been wiped now and then but not washed properly. The furniture was all new and fine, but there wasn’t enough of it: the servants’ bedding lay in unraveling heaps in the corners instead of being folded away in chests. One wall of the hall was partly covered by an insipid embroidery of the life of Saint Martin, but the rest were bare.
The evening meal was late. They waited for it, talking of the court, the hunting party for Bishop Quiriac, and similar irrelevancies. When the food finally appeared, the meat was burned and the rosee of rabbits underdone: the short-staffing evidently extended to the kitchen. The servants were anxious, and hurried in and out whispering. Alain ignored them and drank heavily. There was no shortage of wine.
“Are you having some kind of tro
uble here?” Tiher asked when he had been decently silent long enough for the question not to be offensive. “You’ve got three men in the stocks, and there’s a flogging pillar that’s seen some use recently.”
“I had a man flogged this morning for taking his grain to the mill at Montfort,” said Alain at once, flushing with anger at the memory. “The other two in the stocks are guilty of the same offense, but only for the first time — the first time I’ve caught them doing it, that is. Most likely they’ve done it several times before without my knowing.”
“Taking their grain to Montfort? What’s wrong with your own mill?”
“Nothing! Nothing at all! It’s been sitting idle for weeks, though, and the stubborn, greedy fools have been going to Montfort, or grinding their grain at home, or even living on pottages of unground barley. I increased the charges at the mill, and they’re refusing to pay.”
Tiher looked at his cousin for a long moment. Alain had a frantic, feverish look, not entirely due to the wine he’d been drinking. Alain’s foolishness, Tiher thought grimly, had involved him in another disaster — a worse one than ever. “Well, what do you expect, if the mill at Montfort is cheaper?” he asked harshly.
“They’re my tenants; they’re obliged to use my mill! It’s my right. And I’m entitled to increase the charges if I want to. And I do want to.”
“Why?”
Alain’s flush of anger faded, and he looked down. “I borrowed some money in Nantes last November,” he mumbled. “The usury on it is ruinous, and I’d like to pay it off as quickly as I can. Duke Hoel told me flatly that I shouldn’t increase the rents, and I don’t like to disregard him. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to increase the mill charges instead.”
He felt uncomfortable as he said it. He had, in fact, paid off half the debt already, with Tiarnán’s things, and the Jew in Nantes had never been pressing him for repayment to begin with. He had been content to collect his interest and wait patiently. Any Jew took a risk in lending to a Christian nobleman, a class always likely to default without the slightest sense of shame, and the rates of interest on such loans were correspondingly high — but the rate on his fifty marks had been standard for such a transaction. The problem was that Alain now wanted more money. He needed more furniture and tapestries. He had to pay the servants from Fougères, and the four men-at-arms he’d hired to protect the house when the trouble about the mill began, whose salaries were even higher. Things kept getting lost or broken now, too, which meant replacing them, and some of the serfs had tried to run away, which meant that men had to be sent after them and rewards offered. He would have borrowed again, only nobody was willing to lend him any more money at the same rate until he’d paid off his first debt.
The Wolf Hunt Page 34
