This chest, which had evidently been long unopened, contained the complete disguise of a wer-wolf,—a dyed sheepskin, with gloves in the form of paws; a tail; a mask with an elongated muzzle, furnished with formidable rows of yellow horse-teeth.
Hugues started backwards, terrified at his discovery—so opportune that it seemed to him the work of sorcery. Then, on recovering from his surprise, he drew forth, one by one, the several pieces of this strange disguise, which had evidently seen some service, but from long neglect had become somewhat damaged. Then recurred confusedly to his mind the marvellous recitals made him by his grandfather, as he nursed him upon his knees during earliest childhood,—tales during the narration of which his mother wept silently, as he had laughed heartily. In his mind there was a mingled strife of feelings and purposes alike indefinable. He continued his examination of this criminal heritage, and by degrees his imagination grew bewildered with vague and extravagant projects.
Hunger and despair together hurried him on. He saw objects no longer save through an ensanguined prism. He felt his very teeth on edge with an avidity for biting. He experienced an inconceivable impulse to run. He set himself to howl, as though he had practised wer-wolfery all his life, and next began to invest himself completely with the guise and external attributes of his novel vocation. A more startling change could scarcely have been wrought in him had that horribly grotesque metamorphosis really been the effect of enchantment; aided too, as it was, by the fever which worked a temporary insanity in his frenzied brain.
Scarcely did he thus find himself travestied into a wer-wolf through the influence of his shaggy vesture, ere he darted forth from the hut, through the forest and into the open country—white with hoar-frost, and across which the bitter north-east wind swept—howling in a frightful manner, and traversing the meadows, fallows, plains, and marshes, like a phantom. But at that hour, and during such a season, not a single belated wayfarer was there to encounter Hugues, whom the keenness of the air and the excitation of his run had worked up to the highest pitch of extravagance and audacity. He howled the louder in proportion as his hunger waxed sharper.
Suddenly the heavy rumbling of an approaching vehicle arrested his attention. At first with indecision, next with a stolid fixity of purpose, he struggled with two suggestions counseling him at one and the same moment—to flee and to advance. The carriage, or whatever it might be, continued rolling towards him. The night was not so obscure but that he was able to descry the tower of Ashford Church at a short distance off, and hard by which stood a pile of unhewn stone, destined either for the execution of some repair, or addition to the sacred edifice, into the deep shadow of which he ran furtively to crouch down, and so await the coming up of his prey.
It proved to be the covered cart of Willieblud, the Ashford flesher, who was wont twice a week to carry meat to Canterbury, and travelled by night in order that he might be among the first at market opening. Of this Hugues was fully aware, and the departure of the flesher naturally suggested to him the inference that his niece must be keeping house by herself—for our lusty flesher had been long a widower. For an instant he hesitated whether he should introduce himself, thus strangely accoutered, to the maiden—favourable as the opportunity seemed,—or whether he should first attack the uncle and seize upon his viands. Hunger, for the nonce, got the better of love; and the monotonous whistle with which the driver was, as usual, urging forward his sorry jade, warning him to be in readiness for his onset, he suddenly howled in a loud and unearthly tone, at the same moment that he rushed forwards and seized the horse by the bit. “ Willieblud, flesher!” growled Hugues, disguising his voice, and speaking to him in the lingua Franca of that period, “I hunger; throw me two pounds of meat if thou wouldst live and have me live.”
“St. Winifred have mercy upon me!” cried the terrified flesher; “is it thou, Hugues Wulfric, of Weald Marsh, the born wer-wolf?”
“Thou sayest sooth; it is I,” replied Hugues, who had the ready address to avail himself of the credulous superstition of Willieblud. “I would rather have raw beef than eat of thy flesh, plump as thou art. Throw me, therefore, what I crave, and forget not to be ready with a like portion each time thou settest out for Canterbury market; or, failing thereof, I’ll tear thee limb from limb.”
Hugues, to display his attributes of a wer-wolf before the gaze of the terrified flesher, had sprung upon the spokes of the wheel, and placed his fore-paw upon the edge of the cart, over which he made a semblance of snuffing with his false snout. Willieblud, who believed in wolves as devoutly as he did in his patron saint, had no sooner perceived this monstrous paw than, uttering a fervent invocation to the latter, he seized upon his daintiest joint of meat, let it fall to the ground, and whilst Hugues sprung eagerly down to pick it up, the flesher at the same instant dealt a sudden and sharp blow on his beast’s flank, on which the latter set off at a sharp gallop without waiting for any reiterated invitation from the lash.
Hugues, satiated with a repast which had cost him far less trouble to procure than any he had long remembered, readily promised himself the renewal of an expedient the execution of which was at once so easy and diverting; for, though smitten with the charms of the fair-haired Branda, he not the less found a malicious pleasure in augmenting the terror of her uncle Willieblud. The latter, for a long while, revealed not to living being the tale of his late encounter and strange compact with Hugues, but submitted unmurmuringly to the impost levied each time the wer-wolf crossed his path, without being very nice about either weight or quality of the meat. He no longer even waited to be asked for it;—anything rather than encounter that fiend-like form clinging to the side of his cart, or being brought into close contact with that hideous, misshapen paw, stretched forth, as it were, to strangle him,—that paw, too, which once had been a human hand. The flesher, moreover, had become moody and morose of late; he set out to market reluctantly, and seemed to dread the hour of departure as it drew nigh, and no longer beguiled the dullness of his nocturnal journey by whistling to his horse, or by trolling snatches of ballads, as he was wont formerly. Willieblud now invariably returned home in a gloomy and restless mood.
Branda, at a loss to conceive what had given rise to this new and permanent depression that had taken hold of her uncle’s mind, after in vain exhausting conjecture, proceeded to interrogate, importune, and supplicate him by turns; until the unhappy flesher, no longer proof against such continuous appeals, at last disburdened himself of the load which he had at heart, by recounting the history of his nocturnal adventures with the wer-wolf.
The quick-witted Branda listened demurely and patiently to the entire story without offering either comment or query. At its close,—
“Hugues is no more a wer-wolf than thou art!” exclaimed she, hurt that such an injurious suspicion should be entertained against one for whom she had long felt something more than interest. “‘Tis an idle tale, or some juggling device. I fear me thou must of a verity dream these sorceries, uncle Willieblud; for Hugues, of the Weald Marsh, or Wulfric, as the silly fools call him, is worth far more, I trow, than his reputation goes.”
“Girl, it boots not saying me nay in this matter,” replied Willieblud, pertinaciously urging the truth of his story. “The family of Hugues, as everybody knows, were wer-wolves born; and since they are all of late, by the blessing of Heaven, defunct, save one,—Hugues himself now, of a verity, inherits the wolfs paw.”
“I tell thee, and will avouch it openly, uncle, that Hugues is of too gentle and seemly a nature to serve Satan, and turn himself into a wild beast, and that will I never believe until I have seen the same.”
“Mass! and that thou shalt right speedily, if thou wilt but along with me. In very sooth, ‘tis he. Besides, when he made confession of his name, did I not recognize his voice? and am I not ever bethinking me of his knavish paw, with which he grasps the cart shaft while he stays the horse? Girl, mark me, he is in league with the foul fiend.”
Branda had to a certain degree
imbibed the lycanthropic superstition in the abstract, as well as her uncle; saving, so far as it concerned the hitherto, as she believed, traduced being on whom her affections, as though in feminine perversity, had so strangely lighted: Her womanish curiosity, in this instance, less determined her resolution to accompany the flesher on his next journey, than the desire to exculpate her lover,—fully believing the strange tale of her kinsman’s encounter with and spoliation by the latter to be the effect of some strange illusion, and of which to find Hugues guilty was the sole dread she experienced on mounting the rude vehicle laden with its customary viands.
It was just midnight when they started from Ashford, the hour alike dear to wer-wolves as to goblins of every other denomination. Hugues was punctual at the appointed spot. His howlings, as they drew nigh, though horrible enough, had still something human in them, and disconcerted not a little the confidence of Branda. Willieblud, however, trembled even more than she did, and sought for the wolf’s portion; the latter raised himself upon his hind legs, and extended one of his forepaws to receive the mulctuary dole as soon as the cart stopped at the heap of stones.
“Uncle, I shall swoon with affright,” exclaimed Branda, clinging closely to the flesher, and tremblingly pulling the coverchief over her eyes; “loose rein and smite thy beast, or evil will surely betide us.”
“Thou art not alone, gossip,” cried Hugues, fearful of a snare; “if thou essay’st to play me false, certes thou’rt at once undone.”
“Harm us not, friend Hugues, thou know’st I weigh not my pounds of meat with thee; I shall take heed to keep my troth. It is Branda, my niece, who goes with me to-night to buy wares at Canterbury.”
“Branda with thee? By the mass ‘tis she indeed, more buxom and rosy, too, than ever; come, pretty one, descend and tarry awhile, that I may have speech with thee.”
“I conjure thee, good Hugues, terrify not so cruelly my poor wench, who is well-nigh dead already with fear; suffer us to hold our way, for we have far to go, and to-morrow is early market-day.”
“Go thy ways then alone, Uncle Willieblud; ‘tis thy niece I would have speech with, in all courtesy and honour; the which, if thou permittest not readily and of a good grace, I will rend thee both to death.”
All in vain was it that Willieblud exhausted himself in prayers and lamentation, in hopes of softening the bloodthirsty wer-wolf, as he believed him to be,—refusing as the latter did every sort of compromise in avoidance of his demand, and at last replying only by horrible threats, which froze the hearts of both. Branda, although especially interested in the debate, neither stirred foot nor opened her mouth, so greatly had terror and surprise overwhelmed her. She kept her eyes fixed upon the wer-wolf, who peered at her likewise through his mask, and felt incapable of offering resistance, when she found herself forcibly dragged out of the cart, and deposited, as it seemed to her, by an invisible power, beside the heap of stones. She swooned without uttering a single scream.
The flesher was no less dumbfounded at the turn the adventure had taken; and he too fell back among his meat, as though stricken by a blinding blow. He fancied that the wolf had swept his bushy tail violently across his eyes, and on recovering the use of his senses, found himself alone in the cart, which was rolling along joltingly at a rapid pace towards Canterbury. At first he listened, but in vain, for the wind to bring him either the shrieks of his niece, or the howlings of the wolf; but stop his beast he could not, which, panic-stricken, kept tearing on as though bewitched, or that she felt the spur of some fiend pricking her flanks.
Willieblud, however, reached his journey’s end in safety, sold his meat, and returned to Ashford; reckoning full sure upon having to say a miserere for his niece, whose fate he had not ceased to bemoan during the whole way. But how great was his astonishment to find her safe at home, a little pale from her recent fright and want of sleep, but without even a scratch. Still more was he astonished to hear that the wer-wolf had done her no injury whatever; contenting himself, after she had recovered from her swoon, with conducting her back to their dwelling, and acting in every respect like a loyal suitor, rather than a sanguinary wer-wolf. Willieblud knew not what to think of it.
This nocturnal gallantry towards his niece had additionally irritated the burly Saxon against the wer-wolf; and although the fear of reprisals kept him from making a direct and public attack upon Hugues, he ruminated not the less upon taking some sure and secret revenge. But previous to putting his design into execution, it struck him that he could not do better than relate his misadventure to the ancient sacristan and parish gravedigger of St. Michael’s—a worthy of profound sagacity in those matters, who being, moreover, endowed with a clerk-like erudition, was consulted as an oracle in glamour by all the old crones and lovelorn maidens throughout the township of Ashford and its vicinity.
“Slay a wer-wolf thou canst not,” was the repeated rejoinder of the wiseacre to the earnest inquiries of the tormented flesher; “for his hide is proof against spear or arrow, though vulnerable to the edge of a cutting weapon of steel. I counsel thee to deal him a slight flesh wound, or cut him over the paw, in order to know of a surety whether it be Hugues or no. Thou’lt run no danger, save thou strikest him a blow from which blood flows not therefrom; for so soon as his skin is severed he taketh flight.”
Resolving to follow implicitly the sacristan’s advice, Willieblud that same evening determined to know with what sort of wer-wolf he had to do; and with that view hid his cleaver, newly sharpened for the occasion, under the meat in his cart; and held himself ready to make good use of it, as a preparatory step towards identifying Hugues as the audacious spoliator of his meat, and eke his peace. The wolf-man on this occasion presented himself as usual, and anxiously inquired after Branda, which stimulated the flesher the more firmly to follow out his design.
“Here, wolf,” said Willieblud, stooping over the cart as if to choose a piece of meat; “I give thee double portion to-night. Up with thy paw, take toll, and be mindful of my frank alms.”
“In sooth I will remember thee, gossip,” rejoined our wer-wolf; “but when shall the marriage be solemnized for certain ‘twixt me and the pretty Branda?”.
Hugues believing he had nothing to fear from the flesher, whose meats it was his wont so illicitly to appropriate to himself, and of whose fair niece he hoped also to take shortly lawful possession—both that he really loved her, and viewed his union with her as the surest means of replacing him within the pale of that sociality from which he had been so long and so unjustly exiled, could he but succeed in making intercession with the holy fathers of the church so far as to obtain a removal of their interdict,—Hugues, as usual, placed his expectant paw upon the edge of the cart; whereupon, instead of handing him his joint of beef or mutton, Willieblud raised his cleaver, and, at a single blow, lopped off the member laid there as fittingly for the purpose as though upon a block. Having dealt the blow, the flesher flung down his weapon and belaboured his beast; at the same time the maimed wer-wolf howled aloud with agony, and then disappeared like a phantom amongst the dark shades of the forest, in which, aided by the wind, his howls and moans were soon lost to the ear.
The flesher, on his return home next day, chuckling and laughing, deposited a gory cloth upon the table among the trenchers with which his niece was busied in preparation of their noontide meal, and which wrapper, on being unfolded, displayed to her terrified gaze a freshly severed human hand, enveloped in a wolfskin glove. Branda, intuitively guessing what had happened, shrieked aloud, shed a flood of tears, and then hurriedly threw her mantle around her, whilst her uncle was amusing himself by turning and twitching about the lopped hand with a ferocious delight, exclaiming, as he wiped up the blood which still flowed from it,—
“The sacristan said sooth; the wer-wolf hath his meed, I trow, at last. And now I wot of his nature, I fear no further his witchcraft.”
Although the day was far advanced, Hugues lay writhing in torture upon his wretched couch, his habiliments drench
ed with gore, as was also the floor of his hut. His visage, of a ghastly pallor, expressed as much moral as physical suffering. Tears gushed at intervals from beneath his red and swollen eyelids, and he listened to every sound without doors with an increasing inquietude, painfully visible upon his distorted features. At last he distinguished footsteps rapidly approaching his dismal abode; the door was hastily flung open, and, to his surprise, a female knelt beside his couch, and with mingled sobs and imprecations sought tenderly for his mutilated wrist, which, rudely swathed in hempen wrappings, no longer strove to conceal the absence of its hand, and from which a crimson stream still trickled. At so piteous a sight the tender-hearted maiden grew loud in her denunciations of the sanguinary flesher, and sympathetically mingled her lamentations with those of his victim.
These effusions of love and grief, however, were doomed to sudden interruption. Some one knocked at the shattered door of the wretched abode. Branda sprang to the loophole which served for a window, in order that she might see who the visitor might be that had dared to penetrate to the lair of a wer-wolf, and on recognizing him, raised her hands and eyes towards heaven in silent token of the extremity of her despair, while the knocking momentarily grew louder and louder.
“‘Tis my uncle,” she whispered, in faltering accents. “Ah! woe’s me! how shall I escape hence without his seeing me?—whither hide? Oh, here, here, nigh to-thee, Hugues, and we will die together;” and she crouched herself down in a dark recess behind his couch. “Should Willieblud raise his cleaver to slay thee, he shall first strike through thy Branda’s body.”
So saying, she hastily hid her pretty little form amongst a pile of undressed hemp, at the same time whispering Hugues to summon all his courage; who, poor fellow, scarce found strength enough to raise himself to a sitting posture, whilst his languid gaze vainly sought around for some weapon of defence.
The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 Page 3
