Wolfs Honor

by Abigail Barnette

  Another pain gripped Ursula, and Henry watched with horror as the whole of her belly seemed to change shape beneath her linen chemise. It looked as though the babe would rip her apart just trying to be born, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. “What can I do?”

  “You have done enough, I think she would say,” the midwife chuckled. “Give her your strength to rest on, my old bones need some myself. It won’t be long now.”

  As instructed, Henry let Ursula lean on him as she shuffled across the clean rushes. Occasionally, Robin entered, shutting the door behind her less some of the insufferable heat escape, to put another log on the fire. Ursula seemed to radiate heat one moment, then shiver with uncontrollable chills the next. When her pains assailed her, she leaned her head against his shoulder, sometimes whimpering helplessly, other times groaning through clenched jaws, her hand gripping his arm so tightly he feared she would crush his bones. If this was the business of birthing a child, Henry wanted nothing to do with it ever again. He prayed silently, to the virgin on the torturous path from the window the edge of the bed, to Jesus Christ and all the saints on the path back.

  He did not know how long it had been when the midwife touched his shoulder. “Go, sit you down. Let me walk with her, and we’ll think of something else.”

  It was the gentle tone of her voice that sent the first real shudder of apprehension through him. He’d been discomfited by the whole process, feeling alien and strange in this dominion of womanhood. When he noticed, for the first time, that daylight no longer pierced the shutters, that the midwife no longer urged Ursula along with good-natured jibes but the reassuring talk of a mother to a sick child, he felt as though his very soul would perish within him.

  In battle, he had stood before death, blade drawn, challenging that black angel to best him. He had cut down men and howled triumphantly, his gore-matted jaws snapping at the heavens. Now, he felt that dark presence lurking in the very room he shared with his wife, and there was no way to protect her. Did that dark specter laugh at him now?

  Aurelia opened the door and slipped inside, smiling bravely, insincerely at Henry before turning her worried gaze to Ursula. “I have opened all the cupboards and chests in the house. Is there ought else I should do?”

  “The babe is too long in coming, and she is tired. Bring a stool she can rest on.” That the midwife, a peasant herself, would speak to the Lady of Fallow Manor with such authority made the situation seem all the worse. Ursula’s face was pale one moment, flushed the next, and she did not seem to have the strength to cry out with the pain anymore. The midwife soothed her with gentle murmurs as Ursula sobbed through another long pang. The old woman’s face was lined with exhaustion as she looked to Henry. “Ride out, get the priest. As a precaution.”

  “I will not leave her.” But he climbed to his feet, feeling oddly calm as he went to the door. His legs felt like lead; how many hours had he walked with her now? Supper was long past, but it seemed no one had eaten. Raf waited below, in a chair beside the fire. He looked up when his friend came to the top of the stairs.

  “Go and fetch the priest,” Henry said, feeling like a traitor, like he’d sentenced Ursula to death with his words. He could not bear the disbelief and pity on his friend’s face, so he returned to the hot little room, where suffering seemed to have crept into every corner. Ursula sat on a milk stool before the fire, leaning back on Aurelia for support. The midwife knelt between Ursula’s splayed legs, a hand below her belly and hand above. “God be praised, the babe is turned, at least.” Her hands, surprisingly deft for all they were gnarled with age, felt between Ursula’s legs, and Ursula’s whole body stiffened. She twisted and groaned, and the midwife murmured apologies. She pulled her hands away and wiped them on her apron, and a smear of blood showed. “The child is large, but I have seen smaller women than her pass larger ones.”

  That seemed a small comfort now, watching Ursula struggle and pant. She sagged against Aurelia’s slight frame and sobbed, “Please, Henry,” though she did not name what it was she begged him for.

  He knew, without her having to say, and he had never before felt so powerless. He went to her, and Aurelia stepped aside so that he could take up the place behind his wife. He had no sooner laid his hands upon her shoulders than she bolted straight up, gripping the edges of the stool with a desperate shout. His heart seized, thinking it her death throes, but the midwife and Aurelia both sprang to life, the former settling between Ursula’s legs, the latter pulling her chemise up and stroking her brow with murmured encouragements.

  Useless and helpless, Henry knelt behind Ursula, let her head loll back on his shoulder for a moment before another pain curled her over her heaving stomach.

  “That’s it, Ursula, push the child out,” Aurelia urged her.

  “Be strong, girl,” the midwife bade, her hands once again disappearing between Ursula’s sweat slicked thighs.

  Breathing hard, Ursula collapsed back on Henry, and he accepted her weight, grateful to have a task at this seemingly treacherous moment. It seemed ages before another pain caught her up, and the noise she made was something between a scream and a growl.

  “Come on now,” the midwife said, forcing cheerfulness that she clearly did not feel into her words. “Not much longer. Come now, you must bear down.”

  “I can’t,” Ursula sobbed. “Please, I don’t want to do this.”

  “Too late for that now,” the midwife scolded gently.

  Feeling useless and stupid, Henry bent his head to Ursula’s ear. “Listen to me. You can, and you must do this. You are stronger than any woman I have ever known, to survive all that you have. You cannot give up now.”

  “I don’t have the strength,” she protested, sobbing against his neck.

  “Then use mine.” He took her hand and wrapped it around his, and braced his other arm around her waist, above the swollen curve of her stomach. She screamed as another pain doubled her over, and her fingernails bit into his arm. With both feet planted against the rushes, she made an almost inhuman sound, and the midwife shouted encouragement.

  “Almost there, girl, almost there!” The midwife beckoned Aurelia to her side.

  “You’re doing so well,” Henry reassured Ursula. Then, without thought, he murmured, “I love you.”

  She tilted her head up to meet his eyes, for just a moment, then strained again, with a roar that ended on a whimper of relief. The midwife raised the babe, limp and wet in the firelight, and for a moment Henry was certain his son was dead. Then, the old woman thrust a gnarled finger into the child’s slack mouth, pulling some foul blackish slime out. She covered the babe’s nose and sucked, spitting the mucous into the rushes. The small, bluish body came to enraged life, lips quivering as he shouted in indignation.

  Ursula lay slack against Henry, shivering and sweaty. “It’s a son, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” A laugh of disbelief rose in his chest, at the same moment tears blurred his eyes. Ursula’s hand touched his cheek, drawing him down, and he kissed her. Morning light crept in through the shutters, and the long night seemed nothing more than a terrible dream.

  When the child was swaddled tight, the midwife helped to put him to his mother’s breast, and exhausted though she was, Ursula held the small body with wonder and reverence, gasping when his greedy mouth closed over her nipple. Henry watched, fascinated. That the child was not his in blood seemed too insignificant a detail to contemplate now.

  Ursula looked up with a weary smile. “You love me?”

  “I do,” he answered without hesitation, and reached down to stroke the baby’s fat cheek.

  Then, like something out of a dream, she looked to him, exactly as he had seen her in his premonition. The beads of perspiration on her brow and her bare shoulder, the babe suckling at her breast. She looked at him, and her eyes shone with happiness, and she said, very softly, “And I, you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The wolves in the woods around Fallow Manor were louder than usual for
a full moon night. Aurelia had barred the shutters and the door, pretending she did so for the benefit of the babe. “Little Henry does not need to catch a draft on his first full moon.”

  Ursula had dreaded the night, Henry knew, ever since he had first mused aloud at what might happen. All day she had complained that she knew not whether the child would suddenly become a wolf pup in her arms, or sprout a tail.

  He understood her apprehension. He was a wolf himself, and still, he was not sure he would like to see the child he so loved transformed into an animal.

  “It won’t happen until he comes of age,” Henry reassured her, before she could complain again. He bent to kiss his sleeping son’s head. “I was only teasing.”

  Raf came down the stairs slowly, his head cocked to the sound of the howling outside. “I fear this brings bad tidings.”

  “I think the same.” The mournful call of a wolf sounded dire, no matter the circumstances, to human ears. It was a primal fear, for those who could not understand the language older than man. Henry understood it, though he found it difficult to decipher on this night. “Should we go out?”

  Silence hung heavy in the air. Knowing Ursula’s unease over the full moon, Henry did not wish to leave her. Yet his wolf roared inside him, demanding to run free. His animal side wanted to call to the pale moon in thanks and celebration, something he knew his human wife could never understand. The howling that broke the night was troublesome, true, but he wondered if he jumped at shadows because the result would be what he wanted to do, rather than what he needed to.

  “I worry that I have not heard from Brujon in a long while,” Raf admitted. “And now, this unnatural noise, as if they are sending out signals. I cannot read their cries, not as a man.”

  “Oh, both of you go, you want to, anyway.” Aurelia threw her hands up. “Ursula and I can fend for ourselves. Besides, she must get used to it eventually.”

  Ursula nodded, but her eyes remained worried. “If the wolves are frightened, should we not also be?”

  “Bar the door behind us, and open it for no one but us, and all should be well,” Raf said easily. “We will be gone but a few hours, only long enough to ascertain what has happened to set them off so.”

  Raf limped toward the door, and Henry laid a hand on Ursula’s shoulder. “Will you be all right, in my absence?”

  “Aurelia is right,” Ursula said with a sigh. “I must get used to this, as much as I do not care for it. One day, our son will do the same and I will await both of you on full moon nights.”

  That was the confirmation he needed, the self-assured, if beleaguered, acceptance that came more and more often now. He leaned down for a kiss then stripped off his tunic as he went to join Raf at the open door. “Ladies, look away. We will not expose our tender human skin to the winter night.”

  Despite the strange tension in the air, Henry was relieved to find that they laughed at his command and did as he bid them. He was barely naked before his wolf took over, and then Raf was beside him. They padded into the snow together, and waited to be sure the door closed behind them before heading across the long expanse of sleeping field.

  The night was clear and the stars too numerous to contemplate, even in the blinding blue-white of the bright full moon. The howls still reached them, a cacophony Henry could understand now, and his fur stood on end. Something had happened at Blackens Gate to make the wolves cry out in pain and fear and anger. Henry sniffed the wind, and saw Raf beside him doing the same. There was no scent of smoke or burned flesh, which would have traveled far if Blackens Gate had burned. There was no stench of death, as after a culling, another long-range signal they would have immediately picked up.

  Against the startling black of the tree-line, two spots of bright orange flashed between the trees.

  With a warning growl, Raf raced toward the trees. Henry found himself struggling to keep up. The wolf in the forest ran, stopping to howl, giving away his position each time he did. He wanted to be found, Henry realized, and that made the chase seem all the more urgent. Still, he could lead them into an ambush. It was difficult, when one was a wolf, to plan and organize such an attack, but it was not unheard of. In the most urgent of battles, they could control their wolves and force themselves to strategize.

  They reached a small clearing, blanketed in crisp snow. No tracks broke the glittering crystal surface, and there was no sign of any other wolf nearby. The far off howling had not abated.

  The wolf shifted forms, smoothly taking the shape of Brujon, who stood naked and barefoot in the snow. The last thing Henry wanted was to join him unprotected in the freezing snow, but losing his warm fur would be the least of his troubles if the man planned to fight them.

  Without ceremony, barely waiting for the two of them to change, Brujon blurted, “Your father is dead.”

  For a moment, his head still swimming as his mind tried to adapt to humanity once more, Henry wondered why anyone would care if his father had died. Then, he looked to Raf, leaning heavily on his shoulder to balance on his one leg, and the conflicted anguish on his features realized the full import of the words.

  Brujon continued, unprompted. “Your brother killed him. They have combed the woods, but they cannot find him. The wolves of Blackens Gate howl for blood vengeance tonight.”

  “And why have you come to tell me?” Raf asked coldly. “You got what you wanted. My father no longer rules Blackens Gate, and my brother has ceded his right, fleeing like the coward he is. You may bring your Calais wolves and begin your invasion.”

  “Invasion?” Brujon looked sincerely confused. “You mistake me. I do not wish to play the political games of human men. I seek only what is right for our kind.”

  “What is right for our kind is to be culled like the deranged beasts we are!” If Raf did not need his friend for stability, he would surely have attacked the man. “If a single wolf sets foot on my land tonight, they will pay with their lives. We at Fallow Manor are no part of this.”

  “But you should be!” The Frenchman beat his breast with a closed fist. “You could change the course of our kind here in England. You could become greater than your father ever was.”

  “I am already greater than my father was,” Raf snarled back.

  Brujon turned his head, surveying the forest with dismay. “The wolves I brought to your home before, to persuade you. They turned alliances. They warned Lord Canis of the plot. We cannot find them, Lucas or Clement. Clement is your brother, Henry. He may come to you for help.”

  “He will not,” Henry said, knowing it a certainty. His brother would swallow his own tongue as a meal before he asked Henry for a crust of bread.

  Then, like the icy hand of death himself had reached out to plant the idea in his mind, Henry realized the unspoken danger he should have been on guard for. “Lucas is missing?”

  Brujon nodded. “Two days ago.”

  Henry looked to Raf, whose face was grim. “Go,” his friend urged, reaching out for Brujon’s arm to steady himself. Without wasting a moment more, Henry let loose his wolf, and ran for Fallow Manor.

  He hoped he would arrive and find there was nothing to fear, but in his guts he knew it could not be true. The night seemed more treacherous now, alive with the sound of wolves in furious mourning, and Henry could not help but add to that call. They had, foolishly, left Fallow Manor unprotected, with the greatest treasure inside. Though he prayed otherwise, he knew it would prove far too tempting to the man who wished to claim his son.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The quiet of the night was broken by a loud bang at the door. In their places beside the fire, Ursula and Aurelia both jumped. Little Henry startled in his mother’s arms and wailed, and Ursula fumbled to put him to her breast as Aurelia rose and took cautious steps across the room.

  “Is it them?” Ursula asked, knowing without doubt that the men would not return only to frighten them. Not on the night of the full moon, and not when they had been uneasy, themselves.

  Aurelia made
it only as far as the end of the trestle table when the huge oak door exploded inward, the impossibly strong wood splintering into a rain of sharp projectiles. Aurelia covered her head and stumbled aside, falling against the wall as an enormous black wolf skidded across the rushes.

  Ursula’s panicked brain urged her to run, but Henry’s words, that horrible day she had fled Blackens Gate, came back to her with a tone of calm assurance. Do not run.

  She stayed motionless as the huge beast stalked her, eyes disturbingly steady in a body that swayed sinuously, each step promising lethal power and fury. Hugging young Henry tighter to her chest, she closed her eyes and prayed. If it does kill me, spare the babe. And if it does not, then let him die quickly, without much pain.

  A cold, wet snout brushed her hand, and she gasped, trembling. A moment later, fingers stroked her arm, and she opened her eyes to a sight far more terrifying than the wolf.

  “There’s my son,” Lucas said, a cruel smile spreading over his face as he looked down at the babe suckling contentedly at his mother’s breast. “You thought you could keep him from me.”

  “He is not your son,” she spat, and before the final word had left her mouth, the back of his hand connected with her face. Her head snapped back, her lip split open. Hot blood gushed from her nose, and she fell back, trying desperately to regain her balance to keep the babe from dropping from her arms. Lucas plucked little Henry from her, as easily as picking a blackberry from a bush, and Ursula’s head struck the stones of the hearth. The babe wailed and the room blackened, only for a moment. Concentrating on the cries of her child, Ursula struggled to sit up, to ignore the pain that squeezed her skull.

  Wheezing loudly, a hand clenched at her middle, Aurelia lurched toward Lucas, her fist raised, but he swatted her back as though she were a fly. She tumbled again, and got her breath just enough to scream for help.