Marie’s face was burning, and she looked at the ground and chewed her finger. She thought of telling him that he really shouldn’t have said this until after his first marriage was annulled — but she knew she wouldn’t say any such thing. Eline had injured him more deeply than she’d realized, to make all that confident self-possession of his bow into this humble apology for loving her. She couldn’t have struck him on the wound — even if she hadn’t been desperate to do nothing to discourage him. She looked up again and found him watching her anxiously.
“Lord Tiarnán,” she whispered, “I could feel many things for you, but contempt and horror aren’t among them. If I understand what Lady Eline felt, it’s only from pity. What she did to you was abominable. For my own part, I …” She stopped, not knowing how to finish her sentence.
But it seemed she didn’t need to. Tiarnán’s face had lit like a bonfire.
Judicaël got to his feet. “My garden needs tending,” he said. He picked up a hoe and went down to the far end of it.
Tiarnán looked after him in surprise, then looked back at Marie and smiled his rare full smile. “That was his blessing,” he told her. “He won’t say more than that, in case it would be interfering.” And he slipped across the space between them, took her head lightly between his hands, as he had in her dream, and kissed her. She felt as though her heart were being swept down a waterfall. When he lifted his head away, she smiled into his eyes, and then threw her arms around him, holding the shape and warmth of him close. She cradled the side of his face in her hand, and touched the white line on his chin, and it seemed to fill some deep craving that she’d lived with all her life. When his arms were around her, everything came into balance again, the soul moving with the body like the two ends of the same yoke.
“I love you,” she told him, finishing her sentence at last.
ALSO BY GILLIAN BRADSHAW
Island of Ghosts
The Sand-Reckoner
Cleopatra’s Heir
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novel is based on the Lai de Bisclavret by the twelfth-century poet Marie de France, a talented woman whose works deserve to be better known. I have set it at the end of the eleventh century, but, as befits a medieval romance, the history is not entirely exact.
The poem on page 188 is my translation of “De ramis cadunt folia,” a thirteenth-century Latin love song.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE WOLF HUNT
Copyright © 2001 by Gillian Bradshaw
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Book design by Jane Adele Regina
eISBN 9781429971188
First eBook Edition : February 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bradshaw, Gillian.
The wolf hunt / Gillian Bradshaw. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-87332-8 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-87595-9 (pbk)
1. France — History — Medieval period, 987—1515—Fiction. 2. Knights and knighthood — Fiction. 3. Brittany (France)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.R235 W6 2001
813’.54 — dc21
2001033825
First Hardcover Edition: August 2001
First Trade Paperback Edition: June 2002
The Wolf Hunt Page 41
