by Myers, Karen
Surely Gwyn wouldn’t expose his foster-daughter Rhian to real danger without a more explicit warning. Would he? His back between his shoulder blades felt suddenly exposed.
At the conclusion of the next morning’s hunt, George led the pack back through the manor gates with his hunt staff, and the tired field chatted contentedly behind them.
It had been good sport for the middle of January, the ground mostly free of snow but not frozen hard. Brynach and Rhian each sported a white-tailed buck tied on behind the saddle. The fixture included a mix of pasture for dairy cattle and surrounding coverts, good open land for pursuit once the quarry was dislodged from the woods.
As they came up the slope and through the protective curtain wall abutting the manor itself, George bore left toward the kennels while most of the field made its way to the main stables on the right. Before he reached the kennel gates, he found his way blocked by Ifor Moel, the steward, and two strangers on horseback, each leading a spare horse with bundles attached. One of them was smiling openly at the spectacle bearing down upon them.
These must be the new men, George thought. “Rhian,” he called, “Would you please bring the pack in and get Ives started on the deer?”
“Yes, huntsman,” she said, and swung around him on her horse, leading the pack on to the kennel gates which Ives had already opened for them. She glanced sideways at the newcomers but kept on with her duties. Brynach and Benitoe following on either side of the pack, trying not to stare. Maelgwn on his pony looked as if he wanted to linger but at a glance from George, he brought up the rear of the pack and vanished inside the gates.
George sat his heavy gray horse, half-Percheron, the one he’d been riding when he left his human world. Mosby was comfortable with his weight, if not the speediest possible mount. The horses of these two men were rather different.
The smiling one had brought two showy animals, a chestnut and a blood bay, beautiful horses with expressive heads. They looked well-bred, though too delicate for someone of George’s size.
The other man, tall, lean, and sober-faced, was mounted on a sturdier black that reminded George of an Irish hunter, and the dark bay he was leading was of a similar conformation.
Ifor had waited for the commotion of the pack going by to die down before performing introductions. “Huntsman,” he said, “allow me to present Gwion,” gesturing to the smiling man, “and Dyfnallt. They arrived just before you returned and I thought it best for them to wait for you here. Gentlemen,” he turned to them, “this is George Talbot Traherne, our lord Gwyn’s huntsman, and his great-grandson.”
Funny, they don’t look much like spies, George thought. “You’re welcome here, gentlemen. Was your journey long?”
Gwion said, “We met together for the first time last night and took the Travelers’ Way this morning. It was just a few miles and the weather was pleasant enough.”
Dyfnallt nodded in silent agreement.
“Ifor, what are your plans for housing?” George said.
“Since your place can’t take them both, I thought it better to give them guest housing further out on your lane.”
“Alright, then, let’s get them settled there and their horses stabled. We’ll have to send them to town to visit Mostyn for livery, too, in the next few days.” All the hunt staff wore simple dark green frock coats, long weskits, and knee breeches as part of their professional attire. And tricorns—George still chuckled every time he noticed the tricorns, but he had to admit they were effective in the rain.
“Will you gentlemen join me in the great hall for the mid-day meal in an hour or so? Ifor or one of his men can show you the way.” He bowed to them from his saddle, and they nodded back in turn.
George went on through the kennel gates, where Ives was standing by to admit him, a question on his face. “Later,” George said to him, “I’ll bring them by, later.”
George checked his pocket watch as he waited for the new trainees to appear in the great hall. He ran his thumb over the engraving of St. George and the Dragon on the case before returning it to his vest pocket. About an hour had passed.
He caught sight of the tall one first, Dyfnallt, and saw that the other man was with him, logically enough, fellow strangers banding together. George left his seat with his family on the raised dais and joined them down on the main floor.
“Let’s take this table, away from everyone else,” he said, leading them to the far end of one of the long line of tables radiating the length of the three-story hall, its fireplace roaring on the January day. They looked around them curiously but George saw no great surprise on their faces. I imagine their own courts are more ornate—it’s always that way in the old world, isn’t it, he thought.
“How are your quarters?” he asked, as the servants laid platters before them and they began filling their plates.
“Oh, they’re quite comfortable, they are,” Gwion volunteered. There seemed to be a constant smile on his face, as if everything he saw was a subject of amusement. It was hard not to just smile back automatically.
George looked at Dyfnallt, who said, “Handy to the kennels and the stable, and quiet enough.”
A practical man, George thought, but not very forthcoming.
“What’s it like where you’re from?” he asked Dyfnallt.
To his surprise, Dyfnallt gave a small smile. “It’s the high fells and tarns of the northwest, the lakes and moors. We have the broad views and the long valleys. It’s glorious, it is, when the clouds scud across the sky and break the sunlight. Everything’s made of rock, we have so much of it. A hard land for horses in the hunt, though, too steep. Some of the farmer folk follow on foot, they do, and quite a scramble they have of it.”
He seemed surprised at his own display of enthusiasm and came to an abrupt stop.
George realized this had to be the Lake District he was describing. “I’ve seen your country, and it is indeed beautiful. A man must have strong legs to carry him across it.” Dyfnallt looked pleased at the friendly words.
“And your home?” George asked Gwion, as they made short work of their meal, cold ham and hot cabbage. There was a perceptible pause, as if Gwion was deciding what to say.
“Forested land in the west, most of it is. Ancient trees and still ponds, and a line of low hills always toward the sunset. The farmers keep their sheep, and the woods harbor red deer.”
“It sounds very fine indeed,” George said. “I hope you’ll both enjoy the country here, the wall of the Blue Ridge to the west, the well-watered fields and woods. The game is different, of course.”
“What sort of deer were those that you brought in today?” Dyfnallt asked.
“White-tailed deer. Medium-sized. The uplifted tail flashes white when they’re alarmed. Good quarry, and tasty.” He paused to finish the beer in his mug. “We’ll go to the kennels after our meal and have a long talk.”
“You know, we’ve heard about you at our court,” Gwion said, a bit slyly.
“Have you, now?”
“There’s a song been going around the last couple of weeks. I think the korrigans have been spreading it from town to town.”
Oh, no, George thought. Not Cydifor’s praise ballad about the defeat of Madog. With an effort he held his expression still. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said, dryly. “You know how things get exaggerated.”
Gwion dropped the subject but George took note of the speculative look he sent his way.
George shut the kennel gates behind them and explained the setup of the building with its two wings and stone-flagged courtyard to Gwion and Dyfnallt. “On the left of the yard we start with the pen for the dog hounds and then for the bitches, with an empty draw pen between them.”
Each of the large pens had an open front with stone flooring that sloped slightly to aid in drainage, and an enclosed back room with wide elevated wooden benches and a door that could be shut in bad weather. An inside corridor ran down the back of the wing and provided access to the hound ex
ercise yards on each side of the building.
“On the right it’s a similar setup for the young entry, the hounds that aren’t part of the pack yet, but we use the pen between them for hounds that need isolation for injuries, and there’s a small pen at the end for whelping dams.”
At this point in the season, the young entry pens were empty, all their former dwellers having graduated to their appropriate places in the pack. George planned to convert all four pens on that side temporarily to whelping pens to fill Gwyn’s request for four litters this year, two for gifts, from lines furthest from Cernunnos’s outsider hounds, and two to keep, for the pack.
“On the right beyond the pens we have the huntsman’s office and on the left the kennel-master’s rooms. Let me introduce you.”
George led them past the pens and into the building on the left, stopping at the empty first room, usually busy with the kennel-men cooking down meat and mush in great cauldrons for the hounds. In the adjacent fleshing room, the two deer carcasses were dressed and hanging so that they could finish draining and cooling.
He went on through to Ives’s office, and found him there with both the kennel-men, Tanguy and Huon.
“Sorry to intrude, kennel-master,” George said. “Do you all have a moment?”
Rather than meet the three lutins in the main part of the building. George was pleased to have things work out this way, hoping it might keep the men off balance so that he could learn more about them. The ceilings were high enough to be comfortable even for him, but almost all the furniture was suited to the much smaller lutins, folk about four and a half feet tall, typically dressed in outer garments of red. He wasn’t sure whether lutins were common in other kennels, and he wanted to see the reaction of his new recruits.
Gwion had stiffened up a bit, though he was still smiling. Dyfnallt looked around, curious.
“This is our kennel-master, Ives,” George said, introducing the older man behind his desk. Ives stood and bowed. “And these are Tanguy and Huon, our kennel-men.” Both the young lutins bowed politely.
“Please make our visitors welcome. They’ll be with us for one or more seasons and I’ll be showing them how we do things here.” He introduced Dyfnallt and Gwion, and each nodded to the lutins.
Let’s see how they do with the hounds, he thought.
“I know you two aren’t dressed for it, but if you don’t mind borrowed kennel coats for now, would you like to meet the hounds?”
Dyfnallt gave his rare smile again. “That would be grand.”
He ushered the two of them back into the main corridor of the building wing and snatched his usual kennel coat and a spare for Dyfnallt, then grabbed one of Brynach’s for the shorter Gwion. They buttoned the long light coats over their clothing and headed down the corridor.
“Dog hounds first,” George said, and he opened the door to the back of the dog hound pen. The hounds hopped off their benches to greet the visitors. George forgot his duties for a moment in the pleasure of the pack welcome. He bespoke the hounds silently with his private greeting before dismissing them to investigate the newcomers.
When he finished, he found Dyfnallt looking at him oddly. “Fond of you, they are,” he said.
“The feeling’s mutual,” George said, sheepishly. “We have some lovely hounds.” He fondled the one closest to him. “This one here is Dando, one of my favorites. The captain of the team, for now. We’re breeding from him this season.”
Gwion asked about one of the restless hounds circling around him. “And this one?”
“That’s Cythraul. He’s a handful, and then some. Good strike hound, though.”
George tried to look at them with a stranger’s eye. White hounds, all of them, with red ear-tips and some red-ticking in a few spots. Most were shaggy, like the large Welsh hounds George remembered from several of the foxhunts in his human world.
“Let’s take a quick look in at the bitches, and then sit down in my office for a long talk,” he suggested.
He watched them with the bitch hounds and tried to get a sense of how the hounds saw them, but came to no conclusions. They hung up their borrowed kennel coats and walked with him across the back end of the courtyard to the entry beyond the empty pens in the right wing, and he ushered them into the huntsman’s office.
The day was bright but he lit the lamps for more light and let them find comfortable seats in front of his desk and look around. The bookcases held hunt logs that went back, as he knew, more than 1700 years and predated Gwyn’s relocation of his realm of Annwn to the new world. The earliest were not even in codex form, like books, but scrolls. Breeding records went back just as far. A locked cupboard held the oliphant, the carved ivory horn used in the great hunt. That was said to be as old as the pack itself, and preserved with some sort of spell that kept the ivory from cracking.
Gwion commented, after surveying the bookcases, “The setting may be rustic but the history is impressive.”
“Fine hounds,” Dyfnallt offered, and George flashed him an involuntary look of fellow feeling. The hounds were more important to him, too, though he appreciated the records. He’d started going through them, but he knew the language of the older ones would require help.
“Maybe now would be a good time to talk about experience and goals.” George said. “Why have you come, and what do you hope to gain?”
Gwion deferred to Dyfnallt as the elder. “I’ve been huntsman for my lord Cuhelyn for twenty years now, but we mostly hunt on foot, and the sport is not for the infirm or the elderly. The fells are too steep for horses and the choice of quarry is limited.” He waited for their nods of understanding.
“Cuhelyn’s thought is to set my junior in my place and add a new hunt to his lowland territories, green country like this that can support mounted hunts. He’ll need a kennel, a pack, and an entire establishment, and has given me this year at least to present him with recommendations and a plan.”
He looked directly at George. “I’ll be frank. My hope is that my parting gift might include some of these hounds as part of our foundation. I intend to earn them.”
Should I believe this is the whole tale, George thought.
“Did you choose this hunt, or did your lord make the pick?” he asked.
“My choice,” Dyfnallt said. “I know our lords are not friends, but I wanted to see the great hunt and the hounds that do it. Hounds that are good enough for Cernunnos.”
“And you, huntsman?” Gwion asked with a smile. “No one knows much about you, aside from that amusing ballad, and some wild stories from the most recent great hunt.”
George knew a question like this would come but he hadn’t counted on Cydifor’s praise ballad to reveal more than he wanted known.
“Well, as you’ve no doubt heard, I’m mostly human. Gwyn fathered my grandmother in the human world and I found my way here a few months ago just as Gwyn’s huntsman, Iolo ap Huw, was murdered. I was a whipper-in to a foxhunt in the human world and, in the absence of any other candidate, I took on the task of huntsman for the great hunt here.”
“And all went well, I gather,” Gwion said. “I even heard that Cernunnos himself put in an appearance. It must have been great sport.”
Dyfnallt gave Gwion an unreadable look.
“We judged a murderer,” George said shortly, “the killer of Iolo and of Isolda, the daughter of Ives, our kennel-master.”
“And Cernunnos was there?” Gwion persisted.
“After a fashion.” They could get the story from someone else, he wasn’t going to give them too many details.
“So you’ve been huntsman but a short time, then?” Gwion asked.
“Yes. And you?” George said, turning the conversation..
“I’ve been huntsman to my lady Glesni for thirty years or more,” he said. “We hunt mainly the red deer in the forest and meadows, and keep the lady’s guests and following amused.”
“And what brings you here?”
Gwion said, “Why, my lady is an old frien
d of your lord. I think she believed I could make myself useful, perhaps share some of our methods with his new huntsman, in case his practices were somewhat… different.”
Well, that’s a pretty bold statement, George thought. Fancies himself in my job, does he?
“I’m sure we all have a lot to learn from each other,” he said blandly.
“I, myself,” Gwion said, “hope to find out more about Cernunnos and his relationship with the great hunt.”
George thought he heard the unstated “and you” at the end of that declaration. Damn that ballad of Cydifor’s, there was no way to keep that quiet in the long run.
Still, he wanted genuine trainees for his own hunt, since his staff was too thin. He’d swallow what he had to if it would improve the situation.
He leaned back in his chair. “Here’s how we’re staffed. We have two whippers-in at present—Brynach and Benitoe. Both are rather young but coming along nicely. You saw them today.”
“Benitoe is the lutin you had with you?” Gwion asked.
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t know any of them hunted. Or even rode, for that matter. You must have been truly short-staffed.”
“On the contrary,” George said, “he’s very able indeed. Since you’ll be pairing up with the whippers-in as you learn the territory and the hounds, I think he’s just the partner for you, to show you the ropes.” Out of the corner of his eye he caught Dyfnallt covering a smile with his hand.
“Dyfnallt, I’ll pair you with Brynach. He would benefit from hearing about other practices to round out his own knowledge.”
“As you wish, huntsman,” Dyfnallt nodded.
“We’ll hunt doubled up like this for the first several hunts, and for the hound walking, too.”
Dyfnallt asked, “And who were the other two youngsters you had with you this morning?”
“Rhian is Gwyn’s foster-daughter. She’s the junior huntsman.” Both his guests were taken aback by that.
