Wolf at the Door

by Sarah Hawkswood

‘That I could not say, my lord. It is just … something smells all wrong.’

  ‘Then best you go and sniff it close, Serjeant, and report your findings back to me. I want all the wolf talk to cease. You can be sure it is already in the alehouses of Worcester and soon at every fireside. We will be having every cur that howls of an evening being named a wolf before Advent, you may be sure.’

  ‘Aye, that is sadly true, my lord, and wasting our time chasing shadows.’

  ‘Then best get to Feckenham today.’ De Beauchamp gave a cheerless smile.

  ‘And the lord Bradecote?’

  ‘No need to have him chasing shadows as well, not yet. Report back to me and hopefully there will no need to disturb him from worrying himself witless over his lady’s swelling belly.’

  Serjeant Catchpoll wondered if the lady Bradecote might wish that her loving but overprotective lord would be called to service, and leave her to the business of breeding in peace. You could understand whence sprang the man’s worry, having been blissfully married under a year and after seeing his first wife bleed to death before his own eyes in the trial of childbirth. However, he was, in Catchpoll’s view, and evidently that of William de Beauchamp, taking his concern too far. Last time he had been called from his manor she was only just showing properly, but by now must be about seven months gone. When he had come to speak with de Beauchamp at Michaelmas he had been so eager to get back to her he had nearly leapt into the saddle to be away, and had clearly fretted during his few days’ absence. Catchpoll had offered up prayers that the lady would be safely delivered come her time, and the lord Bradecote return to his usual manner.

  ‘I will take young Walkelin, my lord, and yes, with good fortune, none of us needs be set chasing after invisible wolves.’

  William de Beauchamp gave a nod of agreement and dismissal, and as they left, Catchpoll and Walkelin heard him call for more wood for the brazier. Catchpoll growled. It was not him setting forth in the late autumn chill.

  It was beyond the gloaming and full dark when the small party forded the brook and reached Feckenham, and the priest’s teeth were chattering not just from the cold. He refused to be cheered by the assertion that no wolf would attack a group of five men on horseback by daylight or moonlight, even if there were only four mounts. William Swicol was upon the pony from his father’s stable, with the reeve up behind him, and Father Hildebert was uncomfortably astride a donkey borrowed from the bailiff, with his habit riding up and revealing bone-white, skinny calves.

  Feckenham was a good-sized village, but there were the two yoke of oxen for the ploughing and no need of horses. Durand Wuduweard’s pony had been a source of gossip for weeks when it appeared in the village. Fortunately for the party, the moon was full and lit their way, but each of them was as chilled to the bone as Father Hildebert, and Catchpoll was in no mood to talk, even to Walkelin.

  As their hoofbeats on the hard ground brought them into the middle of the village, on the north side of the Salt Way, a few shutters were cautiously set ajar, and nervous chinks of light crept out to meet them. They went to the church, and Father Hildebert gave an audible sigh of relief as the door was closed behind them with a reassuring creak of oak. The cold kept the death-scent from pervading the nave, and it was only when the priest, who knew his church so well that he had no need of the sanctuary light to tread confidently in the gloom, lit more candles at the altar and brought them from the chancel that their flickering birth illuminated the trestled board set to the north side of the nave, and the covered shape upon it. Catchpoll genuflected respectfully, crossed himself, and went without a word to lift the dark cloth that covered the corpse. He sucked his teeth as Walkelin came to stand beside him and took a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Sweet Jesu!’ Walkelin crossed himself devoutly. The reeve and William fitzDurand hung back. They had seen more than they could have wished already, and did not seek to look again.

  Catchpoll had a good memory for faces, but even had he met Durand many times before, he would have been totally unable to give this corpse his name. Not even a wife or son could have done so, for there was little of the face that still looked like features. The nose was ripped away, and half a cheek, leaving teeth in a grimace seen most usually on a skeleton. The one orbit was empty, the brow reduced to splintered bone, and there was not enough of the jaw left to bind the mouth closed, not that the hole that remained could be termed a mouth. The throat too had been ripped out. Whatever – and Catchpoll reluctantly doubted very much a man could have done such damage with any weapon and achieved the same effect – had done this to Durand Wuduweard was big and vicious. At the same time the idea of a wolf-death was all wrong. He felt it.

  ‘How did you come upon him? Exactly.’ Catchpoll glanced at the man’s son.

  ‘He was lying on his back and—’

  ‘No. Start at the beginning. You went to his house. Why?’

  ‘He was my father. Of course I went to his house.’

  ‘But you do not live in Feckenham. I ask why you came here this morning to see him.’

  ‘I … We had a falling out over something foolish and I wanted to tell him I had come to see that he had the right of it. I came to the house a little before full light and the door was open, and the place in darkness, with not even fire glow, which made me fearful. I lit a rushlight and then I saw …’ His voice trailed off, and William swallowed hard.

  ‘The door was open, you are sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I saw the poor man yesterday evening, at least as darkness was falling, Serjant.’ The priest spoke, rising from his knees before the altar, whence he had returned to avoid looking at the body and had taken strength from silent prayer. ‘I had been collecting sticks for kindling and saw him coming from his stable to the house.’

  ‘But he was not at the door?’

  ‘No, he was not. But he must have been inside for some time because we saw the fire had been lit, and was burnt out this morning.’

  ‘What concerns me is how a man, in the bone-bite cold of All Hallows’ Eve mind you, enters his house and does not set the latch, to keep out cold and stranger both, when he has done so.’ Catchpoll pulled a ‘thinking face’.

  ‘Perhaps he did?’ suggested the bailiff.

  ‘And that would mean this wolf could open doors. Now that is truly a thing to scare us all in our beds, that is.’ Catchpoll was scathing.

  ‘Then he must have forgotten to close it properly or heard a noise outside and gone to the door and opened it and …’ Edgar the Reeve’s suggestion withered on his lips at Serjeant Catchpoll’s expression.

  ‘And this wolf just happened to be there waiting to come in and sit before his fire and then attack him, yes?’

  ‘Well, I …’ The bailiff looked at the floor and gave up.

  ‘I am trying to see how a wolf, a beast not seen by a soul in this hundred for two dozen years, and then but one, appears from nowhere, and attacks not in the forest but in a man’s house. What wild animal would dare do such a thing?’

  ‘But there is no other explanation, Serjeant Catchpoll.’ Edgar the Reeve was frowning.

  ‘Unless,’ William fitzDurand crossed himself and dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper, ‘he entered as a man and killed as a wolf. What if it was a werwulf?’

  ‘A what?’ Father Hildebert looked puzzled.

  ‘A man as turns into a wolf at full moon, Father.’ Edgar shuddered.

  ‘A-a garoul? No, no, surely …’ The priest looked to Catchpoll, clearly hoping for reassurance. Catchpoll was trying to work out how he was going to get the inhabitants of Feckenham to see this as a crime, because it was, he just knew it, however much he could not prove it right now.

  ‘What you see was not the act of a man.’ William fitzDurand shook his head, but sounded slightly relieved, as though a monster was better than a murderer.

  ‘No. It was not.’ Catchpoll spoke slowly, reluctantly, drawing back the cloth from the rest of the body. He noted the burning to
the feet, and the wounds upon the torso and both arms. If this was a wolf’s work in hunger, then why was there no sign of the body being eaten? ‘Not the killing bit, but … We need to see the house.’

  ‘Well, there is no wolf there now, I can promise you.’ William sounded annoyed. Why was the sheriff’s serjeant trying so hard not to see the obvious?

  ‘I did not suggest there would be. Just show us the house.’ Catchpoll drew the cloth over the corpse so that it looked no different to any other awaiting full shrouding, and requested a lantern from Father Hildebert. The priest hurried to bring one, and suggested that he remain and pray for them, which was not as cheering as he intended, but Catchpoll wanted all three present. He had questions.

  Chapter Two

  The wuduweard’s door had been shut once the corpse had been carried out. It opened now with a preternaturally loud creaking, and Edgar the Reeve made a small whimpering noise. Catchpoll stepped within. The lantern, the little flame of which had been jealously guarded by Catchpoll’s left hand, did not do much more than enable him to see the hearth in the middle of the chamber, and the upturned stool. He cast around to see if a rushlight was there to be lit, and after prompting, William fitzDurand said he had placed one on the table by the far wall that morning. Even the combination of both lamps only made their looming shadows more grotesque upon the wall rather than giving illumination, but Catchpoll was seeing more than was present. He was mentally placing the body on its back, close enough to the hearth for the feet to have scorched, and then looking at the overturned stool, and the ash in the hearth. There was no cooking pot to be seen, so unless Durand had found another to feed him, the attack must have been some time after he settled in for the evening. There was enough ash also to prove it had been a decent enough fire. Catchpoll frowned, and glanced at Walkelin, whose expression was at first blank, but then altered subtly as he ‘saw’ what Catchpoll saw.

  ‘When you came in, which way was he lying? Which way was he a-facing?’ Catchpoll glanced at fitzDurand, but sounded as if only mildly interested.

  ‘Feet towards the fire, and they had been burnt, so he must have been sitting there.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean which wall was his head towards?’

  ‘The bed wall.’

  The lumpy palliasse lay against the north wall of the dwelling, and the door was on the south side.

  ‘Hmm.’ Serjeant Catchpoll could put many meanings in a simple ‘hmm’. Walkelin had learnt to interpret quite a few already.

  ‘What do we do to keep us safe?’ Edgar the Reeve wrung his hands as he spoke.

  ‘You acts sensible and doesn’t open your doors to any wolves, even little ’uns,’ sneered Catchpoll, who was losing patience with the man. ‘More importantly, do not open your doors to strangers of a night.’

  ‘In case they turn into a wolf,’ added William fitzDurand, nodding sagely.

  ‘No, in case they are murderous bastards with …’ he paused for a moment, ‘a very big dog with very big teeth.’

  ‘How likely is that, though?’ The wuduweard’s son snorted derisively.

  ‘Far more likely than either a wolf or a werwulf, which is a thing of tales to frighten the foolish about the hearth of a long evening.’ Thus Catchpoll dismissed the supernatural, though he was not sure the reeve would remain convinced once he was alone.

  Walkelin, resolutely rejecting the image in his head of a hairy and sharp-fanged man, focused on the immediate.

  ‘What is it that we do now, Serjeant?’

  ‘Us? We goes to Master Reeve’s house and gets ourselves warm. You will offer hospitality to the lord Sheriff’s men, Master Reeve?’ The reeve nodded, thinking not of extra mouths to feed but extra security, as Catchpoll had guessed. ‘On the morrow we returns to the lord Sheriff and reports.’

  ‘You will leave us undefended?’ Father Hildebert rolled his eyes like a jibbing horse.

  ‘Look, Father, we two are not an army, not that you needs one. What you needs is calm heads and good sense. Be watchful of anything or anyone unusual about the village, and set the bar to your door as any man with wits will do. Now, I am done here.’ As if to prove this, the serjeant blew out the lamp, leaving just Father Hildebert’s pottery lantern to light them to the door.

  ‘I would not sleep here,’ averred fitzDurand. ‘Will you give me shelter, Father?’

  The priest agreed instantly, and sounded eager for company, but Catchpoll remarked to Walkelin as they headed to the reeve’s house, a cottage near the junction of the Salt Way and the single street, that he would be wise to be wary of his guest.

  ‘What are we going to tell the lord Sheriff?’ enquired Walkelin, quietly, once they were walking alone.

  ‘We tells him as there is trouble, that’s what. For tonight, we finds out all we can from the reeve about Durand Wuduweard. Who might want him dead would be a start.’

  ‘But he was ripped by sharp teeth, not a blade of any sort.’

  ‘No, and that is where our main problem lies. Nobody here will do anything until there has been a hunt for the wolf, though no wolf would come within walls or beside a hearth fire. Fire keeps beasts at bay.’

  ‘If not a wolf then—’

  ‘A very big dog. A nasty, big dog, and either way I wants to know its master,’ growled Catchpoll.

  Serjeant Catchpoll and Walkelin rose early, in time to join Father Hildebert as he walked, a little nervously, to his church to say Prime, for it was the Feast of All Souls of the Dear Departed, and they were unsure whether they would be able to attend any other services that day. Catchpoll and Walkelin stood at the west end of the church, which gave them a view of any who also came in to pray. The service was well attended, for it seemed that with a violent death and fear in the parish, many of the villagers felt the need to observe the Holy Day to the full. Catchpoll watched them enter in silence, glance at the shrouded body in the corner of the nave and genuflect to the altar, crossing themselves with obvious commitment. Nothing like a corpse to remind folk of mortality, he thought, even on the day when everyone prayed for their dead, and even if the body was of someone none would grieve over. Catchpoll offered up his prayers, but also observed. None but curious children took a second look towards the remains of Durand Wuduweard. He thought it interesting that this included William Swicol. Would a son’s eyes not be drawn to his shrouded father, especially on such a day? At the conclusion of the service the congregation filed out in silence, solemn-faced.

  Catchpoll and Walkelin thanked the reeve for his hospitality, and collected their mounts from the stable where the plough oxen were stalled. They led their horses, taking stock of Feckenham in the daylight, though the gloomy morn gave little better than dawn light. It was a village that benefited from being a place that kings visited, however rarely. The royal hunting lodge, set a little back from the centre of the village, was imposing in scale, and was surrounded by a moat-ditch, but had the look of a place that rarely saw more than its custodian in residence. The gate was firmly shut, but the wooden bridge across the moat was not one that could be drawn up. This was a place for kings to ‘play’ and be private, but not one to be defended. King Stephen had not come to hunt since he had visited Worcester in 1138, before the Empress Maud had set foot in England, and he was hardly likely to do so now.

  ‘Have you ever seen the lord King?’ Walkelin asked.

  ‘Not to speak with.’ Catchpoll grinned. ‘Kings is like us, but better fed, better dressed and treats everyone below the level of the lord Sheriff as rushes strewn beneath their well-shod feet. I caught a sight of King Stephen when he came last, but I did see the old king properly, twice, and heard him too. Strong voice he had, King Henry, and a look to him that was not just power but command, the way you see it in the lord Sheriff. Did not see that in King Stephen.’

  ‘And how could this hall look after a king if there is nobody much here?’

  ‘Wake your wits, lad. If a messenger was to come saying the lord King was arriving, every able-bodied soul in Fecken
ham would be bustling about like ants in a nest before you could spit. Now, that lane heads westward to the mill as I recall, down by the same brook as we forded on the Salt Way. I went there once when I was like you, and we was called to take in the miller, who had hit his wife with a shackle, and cracked her skull like an egg. My serjeant sent me to look at where it happened, just in case he lacked oathswearers because he was unpopular.’

  ‘And was he guilty?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ There was nothing more Catchpoll had to say on the past, and they completed a slow walk through the village, observed, as Catchpoll knew, but without encountering anybody outside their door. After passing the empty house of the wuduweard, serjeant and serjeanting apprentice, or underserjeant, mounted, and headed back to Worcester to give William de Beauchamp the bad news.

  William de Beauchamp grimaced.

  ‘I know, my lord. If it was not for the state of the body, we could treat this like a good ordinary murder,’ Catchpoll made violent death seem day to day, which was not quite true, ‘but as it is, Feckenham is a huddle of frightened sheep, convinced the wolf is about to tear them to shreds, or worse, a werwulf, man turned wolf.’

  ‘So it was a wolf, but could not be a wolf, and it was murder although a beast did the killing. I could not explain that to the Justices in Eyre, because I do not understand it myself, Catchpoll.’

  ‘Nor me, neither, my lord, but it is so, I would swear my oath upon it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A whole list of things, my lord.’ Catchpoll held up one hand, and began to tick off his life-roughened fingers. ‘Firstly, there is no such thing as a werwulf, and no wolf opened the door to get to the victim. Second, the body was found by the hearth, and the ash showed that there had been a decent fire there. No wild animal draws close to a fire. Third, the body was discovered flat on its back, which I grant you might find if a beast attacked, but it was facing towards the door, and the feet ended up so close to the fire that they were burnt.’