The Wolf Hunt

Home > Other > The Wolf Hunt > Page 15
The Wolf Hunt Page 15

by Gillian Bradshaw


  Why else would the servants pity her?

  By the third night of Tiarnán’s absence, she was too tense and wretched even to sleep, and sat on the stairs in her shift, braiding and unbraiding her hair, with Mirre at her feet. It was almost midnight when Mirre picked her head up, whined, and ran to the door; there was a quick rap from outside, one of the servants unbolted the door, and Tiarnán strode in, dusty, happy, and relaxed. He patted the dog, slapped the servant on the shoulder, and crossed the hall to the stairs — then stopped in astonishment.

  “Eline!” he said, running up the stairs and catching her hands. “What are you doing up at this time of night? Aren’t you well?”

  “I was worried about you,” she told him, and burst into tears.

  But it was no use. He was gentle with her, kissing her hands and face, carrying her up to bed and making love very tenderly, but he could not understand why she’d been worried. References to Éon of Moncontour simply annoyed him, and now that he was back she was ashamed to mention her other worry. He told her that he saw no reason to be afraid of a robber; it was silly for her to fret over that.

  “He might shoot you from hiding!” Eline protested tearfully.

  “He won’t go about shooting every huntsman he meets,” Tiarnán replied, growing exasperated, “and if he got close enough to recognize me, I’d see him. He’s not worth one tear from you, my heart, let alone these floods.”

  No, he wouldn’t stop his solitary hunting expeditions for fear of Éon, nor, it seemed, because they worried his new wife. A couple of weeks later he was gone again — and a couple of weeks after that he was off once more.

  By the afternoon of the third day of this third absence, Eline felt that she couldn’t bear it anymore. She walked out of Talensac manor house and slammed the main door behind her. Outside, the courtyard within its encircling wall was almost empty, dry and baking in the heat of August. Mailon the carpenter, who was planing a rafter for one of the barn repairs, glanced up at the door’s hollow boom, then hurriedly concentrated again on his work. Eline noticed the hurry, and it made her even more angry. He knew, all the servants knew, that she was angry — but they would ignore it as much as they could. Pity the new mistress is so upset, they’d say among themselves; but leave her be, she’ll get over it. She’ll get used to it. But she hadn’t got over it, and she wasn’t used to it now.

  Angrily, Eline looked about the empty yard. The manor house was a square wooden tower, raised above the yard on an artificial mound that was not quite a castle motte, and surrounded by a wooden palisade and ditch that were not quite a bailey. A number of outbuildings ran around the inside of the palisade — stables, kennels, workshop, storehouse, dairy, kitchens. There was a garden behind the manor house, as there had been at Comper, and the whole enclosure was guarded by the gatehouse lodge. The gate was open most of the time, and in the morning and evening the yard was busy, peasants from the village mingling with the servants of the house. Now there was only Mailon the carpenter, pretending he hadn’t seen her.

  Eline hesitated, then marched across the yard. She was going to ask questions until she made someone answer her. She couldn’t stand the sore place in her thoughts any longer; it made her whole mind limp. “Mailon,” she demanded, “where’s my husband?”

  Reluctantly, Mailon set down his plane and straightened his back. He had stripped to the waist for the work, and had been working so hard, in his attempt to ignore her, that his brown torso glistened with sweat. “Hunting, my lady,” he said without meeting her eyes.

  “Then why hasn’t he taken Mirre?” cried Eline furiously. “How can he hunt without a dog?”

  “I don’t know, my lady,” mumbled Mailon, still without meeting her eyes. “He’ll be back soon, though.”

  Eline crossed her arms and hugged herself with rage. “Where’s Kenmarcoc?” she demanded.

  “Oh, he’s at the old barn,” said Mailon, relieved at finding a question he could answer. “Seeing about the clay for the new threshing floor.” After a moment, he added, more reluctantly, “Can I be of help to you, my lady?”

  Eline bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “Take a horse and go fetch Kenmarcoc. I want to talk to him.”

  “Eh, Lady. Is it so urgent?” asked Mailon with a glance at his interrupted work.

  “Don’t argue with me!” snapped Eline. “Just do as I say!” She turned on her heel and stalked back to the house. Without looking back, she was aware of Mailon shaking his head, then shrugging and picking up his tunic. (“A pity the new mistress is so upset. But she’ll get over it.”) Again Eline slammed the manor house door behind her.

  The manor hall took up the whole of the ground floor of the house, an immense room, dimly lit by narrow windows near its high ceiling. It was the main room of the house in more than just size: the household ate there, did much of its work there, and most of the servants slept there. Kenmarcoc and his family had partitioned off the far end for their private quarters. The floor was of packed clay, strewn with rushes. A stone fireplace filled the center of the room; the floors above it were pierced to allow passage for the smoke, and a single shaft of light fell from the smoke hole in the roof down onto the morning’s ashes. Three long tables of dark oak were arranged around it in a horseshoe facing the door, flanked by oak benches, with the chair reserved for the master of the house standing proud at the center of the middle table. The walls were hung with tapestry hunting scenes of dogs pursuing and baying a stag, and a wooden stairway to the upper floors climbed past them on one side of the room. Driken and Lanthildis were sitting beneath this, working at their looms.

  Eline slammed herself down at her own loom and grabbed the shuttle like a dagger. The two others exchanged pitying looks, and her temper snapped completely: she screamed at them shrilly to get out and leave her alone. Driken flushed angrily, but her mother simply slid her shuttle into the loom, gathered up her daughter, and went off to do something else.

  Eline tried to weave, but she was so tense that she kept moving the heddles in the wrong order and making mistakes. By the time Kenmarcoc arrived, more than an hour later, she was in tears from frustration.

  The bailiff knocked politely on the manor door but let himself in without waiting for a response. “You wanted to see me, my lady?” he asked, coming into the hall. Privately he was cursing the girl for dragging him away from his work. It was understandable that she was upset by her husband’s absences, but did she need to proclaim the fact to the whole manor?

  Eline shoved the shuttle into the loom’s web and turned away from it with relief. She reminded herself that she was the lady of the manor and had the right to give orders to her husband’s bailiff. “Kenmarcoc,” she said hotly, “where’s my husband?”

  “Out hunting, my lady,” replied Kenmarcoc patiently. He sat down at the nearest table and picked an early apple from a bowl.

  “Out hunting?” asked Eline. “Without Mirre?” Kenmarcoc took a bite of the apple. Eline looked away distastefully : she’d been brought up to believe that apples eaten raw caused wind. “He often goes out without the dog,” the clerk said with his mouth full.

  “I know he does! I’ve seen him do it three times now. But why? He never brings back any game. Where does he really go?”

  “He says he goes hunting, my lady,” Kenmarcoc replied through a mouthful of apple. “Why would he lie?”

  Eline bit her lip again. “Because he’s seeing another woman,” she said in a trembling voice. She forgot that she was supposed to be behaving like the lady of the manor, and she gazed at Kenmarcoc pleadingly, her immense blue-violet eyes brimming over with tears. “Please, Kenmarcoc, tell me the truth!”

  Kenmarcoc’s resentment vanished. The girl was so young, after all — not much older than his own daughter. Tiarnán’s absences were peculiar, and his explanation for them inadequate: any wife would be worried by them. He dropped his apple and went to pat her on the back. “Put that thought out of your pretty head!” he told her. “He’s had no eyes for
any woman but you since first he met you. Why else would he have married you? You mustn’t let anyone worry you. Nobody in Talensac knows where he goes when he’s away, but there’s no reason to think he isn’t just hunting. And he’s gone off to the forest less in the past two months than in all the time I’ve known him. For my part, I think the hunting is just an excuse. He’s simply a man who needs time on his own. If he had the dog he’d have to feed her and look after her, and he doesn’t want the bother of it.”

  “What do you mean, nobody knows where he goes?” Eline asked in confusion. She scanned the bailiff’s face suspiciously: for once there was no evasion, no look of superior knowledge. Kenmarcoc saw that he’d said more than he meant to. He was uncomfortably quiet for a moment. “Well,” he admitted finally, “the truth is, he never tells anyone where he’s going or lets anyone come with him, so busybodies invent nonsense about it.”

  “I don’t believe you. Somebody must know. He must tell you.”

  “He doesn’t,” replied Kenmarcoc even more reluctantly, “and I have asked.”

  “But what if you need to reach him about something?”

  “My lady, I take Christ to witness, I don’t know where he is. I did press him once just as he was going, when there was some business coming up that I knew I’d need to consult him on, but he didn’t reply. I pressed harder, and maybe got a bit too familiar, and he whipped round and hit me across the face, and told me he wouldn’t be questioned by his own servants. There’s no point in asking; he won’t answer.”

  Eline stared. At the heart of her anger had been the sense that everybody knew where Tiarnán really was — everybody except her. But there was no doubting that Kenmarcoc was telling the truth. Talensac had been living with a mystery for years, and the knowing looks were founded on nothing more than surmise.

  “You don’t need to worry, my lady,” Kenmarcoc told her with a patently false heartiness. “I’m sure he does nothing but look for game. As for never bringing it back — why, he’d be poaching if he did. He walks miles, and not just on his own land: he’ll say he saw such-and-such a boar near Carhaix, and such-and-such a stag by Redon. You must know yourself that anyone who wants to organize a hunt consults him. He wouldn’t know as much as he does about the beasts of the chase if he spent all that time with some woman, now, would he? Don’t pay any attention to the silly stories they tell in the village.”

  “What silly stories?” asked Eline, more and more horrified.

  Kenmarcoc again hesitated uncomfortably, then nerved himself and said, “Well, I suppose it’s better you hear from me than from someone who believes in the nonsense. Some of the villagers say he goes into the hollow hills, some that he meets with the lady of a well or standing stone. You know peasants: they’re fond of marvelous tales.”

  Eline remembered, with the same constriction of the stomach, the look in Tiarnán’s eyes the night before he went hunting. A fey, wild look; a look of enchantment. She believed absolutely in the Fair Ones. They were as much a part of the land she lived in as the forest itself. Most Breton peasants could claim to have heard their music, and every village had a tale of an encounter with them that had happened in living memory.

  Kenmarcoc rumbled on, trying to reassure her. Eventually he patted her on the shoulder and went off again to see to the threshing floor, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  Eline went to bed early that night and lay sleepless. The moon, just past full, shone crisscross through the wicker shutters of the window, dappling the room with gray and black. In the garden the crickets sang, and the scent of the roses filled the night air. It was like Comper — but it wasn’t Comper, and suddenly Eline wished desperately that it were, that she were home, where everything was simple and familiar and she knew what to believe about people. The man she’d married had a secret, and any attempt to probe it was met with silence or anger.

  She could not believe that he was only hunting. If he were doing no more than that, why not tell Kenmarcoc? Why not bring the dog? No, either Alain was right and he had a mistress somewhere — or something even worse had snared him, something bird-voiced and inhuman. She remembered stories of the Fair Ones, who dwelt in the shadow country within the hollow hills. A girl once had loved a man who was on his way to meet her, when he came upon the Fair Ones dancing in the moonlight. She waited for him on the hill, but he did not come. Year after year, she went up the hill to their trysting place, until she grew old, and died, and was buried there. And then, long after she was gone, he did come back, thinking that he had danced for just a single night. But instead of his sweetheart waiting, he found her grave, grown over with the long grass. Then he lay down upon it weeping, and when he touched the earth, he crumbled away to dust. Eline rolled over on her side and chewed the pillowcase, crying.

  When Tiarnán came back, again about midnight, she was still awake. She lay still, listening, as he came quietly into the room. He stood over the bed a minute, looking down at her, then sat down and began taking off his clothes. When he was naked he slid under the covers beside her. His body was still cold from the night, and he smelled of trees. He kissed her cheek, and stroked her hair so lightly that she knew he thought she was still asleep and didn’t want to wake her. At that gentleness, she began to cry again.

  “Eline!” he said in surprise. “You’re awake?”

  “Yes,” she sniffed.

  Tiarnán had returned from the forest feeling clean and light and happily tired. He had walked through the sleeping village with a sense of enormous contentment: he was coming home, not just to the place he loved, but to a beautiful young wife. When he’d reached the manor house and found it asleep, with no pale, unhappy girl waiting for him on the stairs, his contentment had grown. She was starting to get used to his absences; soon they wouldn’t worry her at all, and she’d accept them as quietly as everyone else did. When he’d gone into the bedroom and saw her lying there crisscrossed with the moonlight, something inside him opened like clouds after the rain. He had all that a man could wish for: the shadows he had just left, and this lovely shining creature before him. For a moment he had been unable to move for joy.

  And now it seemed she was awake, and still unhappy. He was very sorry for her distress, though he could not see the point of it. He put his arms around her and kissed her, tasting the salt of her tears. “What’s the matter, my heart?” he asked tenderly. “You’re not still fretting over Éon of Moncontour?”

  “I want to ask you something,” she said, “but they told me that it’s no use, you won’t answer, you’ll just get angry. So I don’t dare ask. I’m all alone here, and I couldn’t bear it if you were angry with me.”

  “My dearest love! I could never be angry with you. There’s nothing you could ask me that I wouldn’t give. Ask away.”

  She put her arms around him. The muscles in his back and shoulders were smooth under her hands, and when she touched his hair she felt the twist it made just above the nape of the neck, the drake’s tail that never would lie flat. He was real and solid and no less loving than the night he had married her. There was no reason to be afraid. He loved her, and he would tell her what the secret was, and then they would both laugh over all her silly fears. “Tiarnán!” She sighed, relaxing and kissing the edge of his collarbone. “Then tell me, where have you been the last three days?”

  At once he went still. He should have foreseen that she would ask him about that. It had been a mistake, he realized too late, to make such a sweeping promise. “I’ve been in the forest, hunting,” he told her, hoping that this would do.

  The repetition of the same empty phrase she’d heard from everyone else, when she’d hoped he’d make everything simple again, was a bitter disappointment. She turned away from him, curled up on her side, and burst into tears.

  “Eline!” he protested helplessly. “Don’t cry. There’s no reason to cry.”

  “But you’re not telling me the truth!” she sobbed. “You go away, and you won’t tell anybody where. And you don’t
take Mirre. If all you’re doing is hunting, why don’t you take Mirre?”

  “What else would I be doing except hunting?” he asked.

  The feeble evasion failed as miserably as it deserved. “Alain de Fougères said you go to see a woman,” wept Eline.

  He was utterly lost for what to say. Anger with Alain de Fougères, indignation at the slander, and pity for Eline’s distress all struggled to his tongue, but stopped there. Servants and villagers had had no choice but to accept whatever answer he gave them. Servants and villagers weren’t married to him. At last he pulled Eline’s heaving shoulders against himself, kissed her ear, and swore to her that there was no woman in the world for him but her.

  It was effective enough to turn her around into his arms. But the tears didn’t stop: she merely wept onto his shoulder instead of the pillowcase. “Then why do you go?” she demanded brokenly. “You’re away so much! And Kenmarcoc says you used to go away even more. And he says that the only time he pressed you on it, you hit him. I’ve never seen you hit any of the servants, let alone Kenmarcoc. And you know I fret over that robber, and I’m frightened, but you still go away and leave me all alone … .”

  He tried to soothe her with gentle touches and soft words, but she only cried harder. The intensity of her unhappiness distressed him: he had never wanted to cause her grief. It crossed his mind to tell her some reassuring lie, but lying was foreign to his nature.

  “Eline, Eline,” he pleaded instead. “Why should you cry like this? Whatever do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve told you, there’s no other woman.”

 

‹ Prev