That the Hugues Wulfrics reckoned not a single friend among the adjacent huts and homesteads of serf or freedman was not to be wondered at, possessing, as they did, so formidable a reputation; for to them was invariably attributed even the misfortunes to which chance alone might seem to have given birth. Did midnight fire consume the grange; did the time-decayed barn, over-stored with an unusually abundant harvest, tumble into ruins; were the shocks of wheat laid prostrate over the fields by tempest; did the smut destroy the grain, or the cattle perish, decimated by murrain; a child sink under some wasting malady, or a woman give premature birth to her offspring, it was ever the Hugues Wulfrics who were openly accused, eyed aslant with mingled fear and detestation, the finger of young and old pointing them out with bitter execrations; in fine, they were almost as nearly classed feræ naturæ as their fabled prototype, and dealt with accordingly.
Terrible indeed were the tales told of them round the glowing hearth at eventide, whilst spinning the flax or plucking the geese; equally affirmed, too, in broad daylight, whilst driving the cows to pasturage; and most circumstantially discussed on Sundays, between mass and vespers, by the gossiping groups collected within Ashford church parvis, with most seasonable admixture of anathema and devout crossings. Witchcraft, larceny, murder, and sacrilege, formed prominent features in the bloody and mysterious scenes of which the Hugues Wulfrics were the alleged actors. Sometimes they were ascribed to the father, at others to the mother; and even the daughter escaped not her share of vilification. Fain would they have attributed an atrocious disposition to the unweaned babe, so great, so universal was the horror in which was held that race of Cain!
The churchyard of Ashford, and the carved stone cross, from whence diverged the several roads to London, Canterbury, and Ashford, standing midway between the two last-named places, served—so tradition avouched—as nocturnal haunts for the unhallowed deeds of the Wulfrics, who thither prowled by moonlight, it was said, to fatten on the freshly buried dead, or drain the blood of any living wight who might be rash enough to venture near those solitary spots. True it was that the wolves had, during some of the severe winters, emerged from their forest lairs, and entering the cemetery by a breach in its walls, goaded by famine, had actually disinterred the dead. True it was, also, that the Wolf’s Cross, as the hinds commonly designated it, had been stained with gore on one occasion through the fall of a drunken mendicant, who chanced to fracture his skull against a pointed angle of its basement. But these accidents, as well as a multitude of others, were attributed to the guilty intervention of the Wulfrics, under their fiendish guise of wer-wolves.
These poor people, moreover, took no pains to exonerate themselves from a prejudice so monstrous. Full well aware of what calumny they were the victims, but alike conscious of their impotence to contradict it, they tacitly suffered its infliction, and fled all contact with those to whom they knew themselves repulsive. Shunning the highways, and never venturing to pass through the town of Ashford in open day, they pursued such labour as might occupy them within-doors or in unfrequented places. They appeared not at Canterbury market, never numbered themselves among the pilgrims at Becket’s far-famed shrine, nor assisted at any sport, merry-making, hay-cutting, or harvest-home; the priest had interdicted them from all communion with the church—the ale-bibbers from the hostelry.
The rude hut which they inhabited was built of chalk and clay, with a thatch of straw, in which the high winds had made large rents; and its rotten door exhibited wide gaps, through which the wind had free ingress. As this wretched abode was situate at considerable distance from any other, if, perchance, any of the neighbouring serfs strayed within its precincts towards nightfall, their credulous fears made them shun near approach so soon as the vapours of the marsh were seen to blend their ghastly wreaths with the twilight. When that darkling time drew on which explains the diabolical sense of the old saying, “‘tween dog and wolf,” “‘twixt hawk and buzzard,” and the will-o’-the-wisps began to glimmer around the dwelling of the Wulfrics, they then patriarchally supped—whenever they had a supper,—and forthwith betook themselves to rest.
Sorrow, misery, and the putrid exhalations of the steeped hemp, from which they manufactured a rude and scanty attire, combined eventually to bring sickness and death into the bosom of this wretched family; who, in their utmost extremity, could hope for neither pity nor succour. The father was first attacked, and his corpse was scarce cold ere the mother rendered up her breath. Thus passed that fated couple to their account, unsolaced by the consolations of the confessor or the medicaments of the leech. Hugues Wulfric, their eldest son, himself dug their grave, laid their bodies within it, swathed with hempen shreds for grave clothes, and raised a few clods of earth over them, wherewith to mark their last resting-place. A hind, who chanced to see him fulfilling this pious duty in the dusk of the evening, timidly crossed himself, and fled as fast as his legs would carry him, fully believing that he had witnessed some infernal incantation. When the actual fact transpired, the neighbouring gossips congratulated one another upon the twofold mortality, which they looked upon as a tardy chastisement of Heaven. They spoke of ringing the joy bells, and offering masses of thanks for such a deed of grace.
It was All Souls’ Eve, and the wind howled along the bleak hill-side, whistling drearily through the naked branches of the forest trees, whose last leaves it had remorselessly stripped; the sun had sunk obscurely; a dense and chilling fog spread through the air like the mourning veil of the widowed, whose day of love hath early fled. No star shone in the heavy, murky sky. In that lone hut, through which death had so lately passed, the orphan survivors held their lonely vigil by the fitful blaze sent forth from the reeking logs smouldering upon the hearth. Several days had elapsed since their lips had pressed for the last time the cold hands of their parents; several dreary nights had passed since the sad hour in which their last farewell had left them desolate on earth.
Poor lone ones!—both, too, in the flower of their youth—how sad, yet how serene did they appear amid their grief! But what sudden and mysterious terror is it that seems to overcome them? It is not, alas! the first time since they were left alone upon earth, that they have found themselves at this hour of the night by their deserted hearth, once enlivened by the cheerful tales of their mother. Full often have they wept over her memory, but never yet had their solitude proved so appalling; and, pallid as very spectres, they tremblingly gazed upon one another as the flickering ray from the wood-fire played over their features.
“Brother! heard you not that loud shriek which every echo of the forest repeated? It sounds to me as if the ground were ringing with the tread of some gigantic phantom, and whose breath seems to have shaken the door of our hut. The breath of the dead they say is icy cold. A mortal shivering has come over me.”
“And I too, sister, thought I heard voices as it were at a distance, murmuring strange words. Tremble not thus! Am I not beside you?”
“Oh, brother, let us pray the holy Virgin, to the end that she may restrain the departed from haunting our dwelling.”
“But perhaps our mother is amongst them. She comes, unshrived and unshrouded, to visit her forlorn ones—her well-beloved! For knowest thou not, sister, ‘tis the eve on which the dead forsake their graves? Let us open the door, that our mother may enter and resume her wonted place by the hearthstone.”
“Oh, brother, how gloomy is all without doors! how damp and cold the gusts sweep by! Hearest thou what groans the dead are uttering round our hut? Oh, close the door, in Heaven’s name!”
“Take courage, sister; I have thrown upon the fire that holy branch, plucked as it flowered on last Palm Sunday, which thou knowest will drive away all evil spirits; and now our mother can enter atone.”
“But how will she look, brother? They say the dead are horrible to gaze upon; that their hair has fallen away, their eyes become hollow, and that in walking their bones rattle hideously. Will our mother, then, be thus?”
“No: she wil
l appear with the features we loved to behold; with the affectionate smile that welcomed us home from our perilous labours; with the voice which, in early youth, sought us when, belated, the closing night surprised us far from our dwelling.”
The poor girl busied herself awhile in arranging a few platters of scanty fare upon the tottering board which served them for a table; and this last pious offering of filial love, as she deemed it, appeared accomplished only by the greatest and last effort, so enfeebled had her frame become.
“Let our dearly loved mother enter, then,” she exclaimed, sinking exhausted upon the settle. “I have prepared her evening meal, that she may not be angry with me; and all is arranged as she was wont to have it. But what ails thee, my brother? for now thou tremblest as I did awhile agone.”
“Seest thou not, sister, those pale and lurid lights which are rising at a distance across the marsh? They are the dead, coming to seat themselves before the repast prepared for them. Hark! List to the funeral tones of the All-hallowtide bells, as they come upon the gale, blended with their hollow voices. Listen! listen!”
“Brother, this horror grows insupportable. This, I feel, of a verity, will be my last night upon earth! And is there no word of hope to cheer me, mingling with those fearful sounds? Oh, brother I brother!”
“Hush, sister, hush! Seest thou now the ghastly lights which herald the dead athwart the horizon? Hearest thou the prolonged tolling of the bell? They come! they come!”
“Eternal repose to their ashes!” exclaimed the bereaved ones, sinking upon their knees, and bowing down their heads in the extremity of their terror and lamentation; and as they uttered the words, the door was at the same moment closed with violence, as though it had been slammed to by a vigorous hand. Hugues started to his feet, for the cracking of the timber which supported the roof seemed to announce the fall of the frail tenement; the five was suddenly extinguished, and a plaintive groan mingled itself with the blast that whistled through the crevices of the door. On raising his sister, Hugues found that she too was no longer to be numbered among the living.
__________
Hugues, on becoming the head of his family, composed of two sisters younger than himself, had seen them likewise descend into the grave in the space of a fortnight; and when he had laid the last within her parent earth, he hesitated whether he should not extend himself beside them, and share their peaceful slumber. It was not by tears and sobs that grief so profound as his manifested itself, but in a mute and sullen contemplation over the rude sepulture of his kindred and his own future loneliness. During three consecutive nights he wandered, pale and haggard, from his solitary hut, to prostrate himself and kneel by turns upon the funereal turf. For three days food had not passed his lips.
Winter had interrupted the labours of the woods and fields, and Hugues had presented himself in vain among the neighbouring farms to obtain a few days’ employment to thresh grain, cut wood, or drive the plough; no one would employ him, from fear of drawing upon himself the fatality attached to all bearing the name of Wulfric. He met with brutal denials at all hands; and not only were these accompanied by taunt and menace, but dogs were let loose upon him to rend his limbs; they deprived him even of the alms accorded to beggars by profession. In short, he found himself overwhelmed with scorn, insult, and injury.
Was he, then, to expire of inanition, or deliver himself from the tortures of hunger by suicide? He would have embraced that means, as a last and only consolation, had he not been retained earthward to struggle with his dark fate by a feeling of love. Yes, that abject being—forced, in very desperation against his better self, to abhor the human species in the abstract, and to feel a savage joy in waging war against it; that pariah, who scarce longer felt confidence in the Heaven which seemed an apathetic witness of his woes; that man, so isolated from those social relations which alone compensate us for the toils and troubles of life, without other stay than that afforded by his conscience, with no other fortune in prospect than the miserable existence and bitter death of his departed kin; worn to the bone by sorrow and privation, swelling with rage and resentment, he yet consented to live, to cling to life; for, strange to say, he loved! But for that heaven-sent ray gleaming across his thorny path, he would have gladly exchanged a pilgrimage so lone and wearisome for the peaceful slumber of the grave.
Hugues Wulfric would have been the finest youth in all that part of Kent, were it not that the outrages with which he had so unceasingly to contend, and the privations he was forced to undergo, had effaced the colour from his cheeks, and sunk his eyes deep in their orbits. His brows also were habitually contracted, and his glance oblique and fierce. Yet, despite that recklessness and anguish which clouded his features, one, incredulous of his alleged atrocities, could not have failed to admire the savage beauty of his head, cast in nature’s noblest mould, crowned with a profusion of waving hair, and set upon shoulders whose robust and harmonious proportions were discoverable through the tattered attire investing them. With a carriage firm and majestic, his motions were not without a species of rustic grace, and the tone of his naturally soft voice accorded admirably with the purity in which he spoke his ancestral language—Norman French. In short, he differed so widely from people of his imputed condition, that one is constrained to believe that jealousy or prejudice must originally have been no stranger to the malicious persecution of which he was the object. The women alone ventured first to pity his forlorn condition, and next endeavoured to think of him in a more favourable light.
Branda, niece of Willieblud, the flesher of Ashford, had, among other of the town maidens, noticed Hugues with a not unfavouring eye, as she chanced to pass one day on horseback through a coppice near the outskirts of the town, into which the young man had been led by the eager chase of wild hog; and which animal, from the nature of the country, was, single-handed, exceedingly difficult of capture. The cold-hearted falsehoods which the malignant crones buzzed in her ears in no wise diminished the advantageous opinion she had conceived of this ill-treated and good-looking wer-wolf. She sometimes, indeed, went so far as to turn considerably out of her way, in order to meet and exchange his cordial greeting; for Hugues, recognizing the attention of which he had now become the object, had, in his turn, at last summoned up courage to survey more leisurely the pretty Branda; and the result was that he found her the brightest and comeliest maiden that, in his hitherto restricted rambles out of the forest, his timorous gaze had ever encountered. His gratitude increased proportionally; and at the moment when his domestic bereavements came one after another to overwhelm him, he was actually on the eve of making Branda, on the first opportunity presenting itself, an avowal of the love he bore her.
It was chill winter—holy Christmas-tide; the distant toll of the curfew had long ceased, and all the inhabitants of Ashford were safely housed in their tenements for the night. Hugues—solitary, motionless, silent, his forehead grasped between his hands, his gaze dully fixed upon the decaying brands that feebly glimmered upon his hearth—heeded not the cutting north wind, whose sweeping gusts shook the crazy roof and whistled through the clunks of the door. He started not at the harsh cries of the herons fighting for prey in the marsh, nor at the monotonous croaking of the ravens perched over his smoke vent. He thought of his departed kindred, and imagined that his hour to rejoin them would soon be at hand; for the intense cold congealed the marrow of his bones, and fell hunger gnawed and twisted his entrails. Yet at intervals would a recollection of nascent love—of Branda—suddenly appease his else intolerable anguish, and cause a faint smile to gleam across his wan features.
“O blessed Virgin! grant that my sufferings may speedily cease!” murmured he, despairingly. “Oh, would I were a wer-wolf, as they call me! I could then requite them for all the foul wrong done me. True, I could not feed upon their flesh; I would not shed their blood; but I should be able to terrify and torment those who have wrought my parents’ and sisters’ death, who have persecuted our family even to extermination! Why have I no
t the power to change my nature into that of a wolf, if of a verity my ancestors possessed it, as they avouch? I should at least find carrion to devour, and not die thus horribly of starvation. Branda is the only being in this world who cares for me; and that conviction alone reconciles me to life!”
Hugues gave free current to these gloomy reflections. The smouldering embers now gave but a feeble and vacillating light, faintly struggling with the surrounding gloom, and Hugues felt the horror of darkness coming strong upon him. Chilled with the ague fit one instant, and tormented the next by the fevered pulsation of his veins, he arose at last to seek some fuel, and threw upon the fire a heap of faggot chips, heath, and straw, which soon raised a clear and crackling flame. His stock of wood had become exhausted; and seeking wherewith to replenish his dying hearth-fire, whilst foraging under the rudely built oven, amongst a pile of rubbish placed there by his mother wherewith to bake bread,— handles of old tools, fractured joint-stools, and cracked platters,—he discovered a chest rudely bound with a dressed hide, and which he had never seen before. Rushing upon it as though he had found a treasure, he broke open the lid, strongly secured by an iron hasp.
The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 Page 2
