Despite this, Easter itself had been particularly rich. He had kept the vigil for Easter Eve, and at midnight, alone in the chapel, he had lit the paschal candle and sung the Exultet, the anthem of joy for the moment when all the dark inevitability of age, death, and the ruin of innocence was overturned, and the forces of evil worked backward to their own destruction. When the sun rose in the morning, he had gone out and stood in the clearing: the primroses were in flower, with the wood anemone, celandine, and sweet violet; the trees were just breaking into leaf, and the birds sang to one another. Then he had peace. Whatever happened to him, however wrong he had been, still he could trust in God.
A number of the people who had come to him during the year turned up for the service of Easter morning, as they always did, and he celebrated Mass with them happily. Many of the worshipers had brought food, and when the service was over they all sat together on the grass outside the church and ate and drank and talked, laughing because Lent was over and they had eggs and meat to eat once more. Judicaël provided goat’s milk and cheese and the last jar of last summer’s honey. It was sweet.
On Easter evening he was happily tired from the vigil and the day and looking forward to his bed. When the bell tinkled, he assumed it was simply another worshiper, come to pay his respects, and he turned from the altar with a smile of greeting. But if it was a worshiper, it was not one who’d come before: a tired and anxious-looking peasant woman, carrying a young baby wrapped in a blanket.
“God be with you, daughter,” said Judicaël. “What do you wish?”
She knelt down in front of him and touched her face to the floor. “You are Judicaël the hermit?” she asked. When he nodded, she said, “There is a man dying in the forest not far from here, Father. I beg you, for the sake of Christ’s mercy, come and do what you can for him.”
Judicaël fetched a lantern from his hut, and a bag for the bread, wine, and consecrated oil; when it emerged that the woman had not eaten that day, he gave her the remains of the worshipers’ picnic, and they set out together into the forest.
“Is this man known to you, daughter?” asked Judicaël. “Or did you find him by chance?”
“I was looking for him,” she replied. “He is … a friend. I once meant to marry him.”
“But you didn’t.” He glanced at the baby she carried. Only a part of its face was showing, but from its size it was not much above three months old.
“No,” she said. “I … was prevented. I married someone else.” The baby gave a snuffling cry, and she rocked it against her shoulder and crooned to it. It seemed to Judicaël that she was relieved not to have to answer any more questions about her dying friend. That probably meant that he was some kind of runaway serf or criminal.
The man was in the deep forest about two miles southwest of St. Mailon’s. He was lying in a lean-to built of brush and sticks upon a flea-infested deerskin rug, with another tattered skin for a blanket. He was filthy, hairy, and dressed only in a patched hemp shirt. There was a fire in front of the shelter and fresh water in a cup beside him; some hemp hose, still damp from washing, were hanging from a bush. Judicaël guessed that all this care had been bestowed on him only recently, by the woman. Before that the man must have been lying ill alone for some time. His face was gaunt and wasted, with sores around the mouth from sickness and malnutrition, and his stomach was bloated with starvation. He was asleep when they arrived, but when the light of the lantern fell on his eyes, he opened them. They burned darkly in the tangle of his hair. “What’s this?” he asked the woman.
She set the baby down carefully in the warmth of the fire and went over to kneel by the man. “This is a priest,” she told him. “I fetched him from St. Mailon’s. Please talk to him.”
The man turned his hot eyes on Judicaël. “Go away,” he ordered.
Judicaël knelt down opposite the woman and touched the man’s forehead. It was, as he’d expected, burning with fever. “Are you hungry?” he asked quietly.
“No,” said the man. “I’m too far gone for that. I don’t want you: go away.”
“I think your name is Éon,” said Judicaël. “How long have you been ill?”
“Too long,” replied Éon triumphantly. “Even if you go running to the lords’ manors and say you’ve caught the robber at long last, I’ll still be gone by the time they come to fetch me. I’m dying and I’m going to hell, but I’ll go in my own time, not the duke’s.”
“I’m not running anywhere,” said Judicaël. “That I’ve seen you here is between you, me, and God. But you have a friend here, who has gone to some trouble to fetch me; out of courtesy to her, you ought at least to talk to me before you send me off.”
Éon hesitated and looked toward the woman. She nodded earnestly, and he sighed. “It won’t make any difference,” he told her. “But to please you …”
She smiled and kissed his forehead, then went back to the fire and picked up the baby, which was snuffling unhappily again and beginning to cry. She sat down a short distance away and put it to her breast. Éon followed her with his eyes.
“The child isn’t mine,” he said abruptly. “She hasn’t let me touch her since she was married to that fellow in Plèmy. She told him she was going on a pilgrimage this Easter, and came to look for me because she was worried about me — but she hasn’t deceived him otherwise. That’s true, as God hears me.”
“I believe you,” said Judicaël. “I pray God rewards her for her fidelity, to him and to you.”
“Yes,” said Éon, with a hint of a smile.
“As for yourself …” Judicaël paused, praying silently for guidance, then went on. “I believe you have consigned yourself to hell far more readily than God would.”
Éon glared. “Now comes the sermon,” he said bitterly. “Wicked man, repent! Robber, murderer, rebel against your lord, runaway serf, werewolf — crawl on your belly like a worm and cry for mercy, and maybe you’ll be let off with beatings and Purgatory. I’d rather die like a man.”
“You’re no werewolf,” said Judicaël.
“I’ll tell you who is, though!” snapped Éon. “That lord of Talensac I’ve been accused of murdering. But because he’s a lord, he’s held in high honor. I was born a serf, and any filth flung at me sticks.”
“How do you know he’s a werewolf?” asked Judicaël, curious.
“Saw him,” replied Éon. “Near Carhaix, autumn before last. I saw him riding along the road and thought he’d be worth robbing. I didn’t know who he was, but he had a fine horse, and I had three men with me, in those days. I could think of robbing armed men, then. We followed him, looking for a good place to take him. He left his horse on a farm and went into the forest on foot, as though he were going hunting. Better and better, we thought. He stopped. We went ahead to fix an ambush for him, and waited. But he never came into it. After a while we went back and followed his tracks. A man’s tracks led up to a hollow tree in a dell, but only a wolf’s tracks led away. The clothes were inside the tree. We didn’t touch them. We were afraid to. The next time I saw him, he killed two of my men — poor men who’d been wronged by their lords and forced from their lands, like me. But the story the world heard was that a noble knight of Talensac had met a wicked robber and got the better of him. The nobles can do anything they like, anything, but if a poor man raises his hand to defend himself, he’s condemned.”
“God has exacted his own penance of Tiarnán of Talensac,” said Judicaël evenly. “And your responsibility is for your own soul, not for his. Do you think God is ignorant of what you’ve suffered? I’ve heard the story of how you came to be a robber. It was a great injustice, and in the final judgment of it, there will be no rich or poor, no noble or serf, and all things will be made plain and equal. Answer to God for yourself, Éon, and he will listen to you. Christ is your friend and defender, and he will plead for you. But you must repent and accept his help. When your two fellows were killed, you and they were not sitting innocently in the forest: you were assaulting a you
ng woman.”
“And I wish we’d all finished with her!” returned Éon savagely. “She was a fine lady, a kinswoman of my lord of Moncontour. I wish I’d known that at the time, and I wish I’d had a chance to enjoy the bitch!”
“As Ritgen mab Encar enjoyed your friend there?” asked Judicaël.
It was a low blow, and Éon was shocked into silence.
“There’s no noble or ignoble with God,” said Judicaël, following the thrust quickly. “If it’s good to rape a young noblewoman you happen to meet in the forest, it’s good for a lord’s bailiff to rape a serf in her sweetheart’s hut. There are no distinctions: the women both suffer. Oh, as I said, it is my belief that God will even the balance, that he will say to the lord’s bailiff, ‘You were entrusted with power, and you abused it,’ and to the runaway serf, ‘You were brutalized by others.’ But you know, Éon, that most of the people you have terrorized were as poor as yourself: peasants working in the forest; poor tenants on pilgrimage; parish priests with a handful of tithes from their flocks. Peasant women, perhaps, who had the misfortune to cross your path.”
“No,” said Éon sullenly. “Just whores, or willing ones. A man needs women. I thought the Penthièvre girl was a whore.”
“Did you? When she struggled with you?”
“No, but she had no business being there alone if she wasn’t! She deserved it.”
“Did she? And the man you and your friends robbed and beat outside Paimpont two years ago, who was going to offer his life’s savings to Saint Main for the recovery of his sick son, whom you left blind, penniless, and broken-ribbed — did he deserve it?”
“We didn’t know what the money was! We got angry when he tried to stop us from taking it! We had to rob: there wasn’t any other way for us to live.”
“Did you ever try any other way of living? You could have slipped into a town, somewhere you weren’t known, and apprenticed yourself to a trade. You were a strong man: you could have found work. You could have found a place on a ship, gone to another country. There are always other ways to live than off the flesh of others.”
“That’s right! I’m condemned, whatever I do. Push a man out into the wilds like an animal, and then despise him as one. Leave me alone, and let me go to hell!”
“Éon, why would I have walked all this way tonight if all I wanted was to condemn you? I could do that sitting at home in my cell. I came to offer you absolution. That is my function and God’s urgent wish. All you need to do to receive it is hold out your hand. We are all sinners: I have certainly done things that I regret most bitterly, and all I can do is beg God to have mercy on me. Do you regret crippling the man at Paimpont?”
Éon was silent for a long minute, then put one weak hand against his burning eyes. “Yes,” he mumbled into it, and began to cry. “I was sick with myself when I heard the story.”
“Then, God forgive you, my son. As by his death and resurrection, which we celebrated today, he is able to. Are there others you regret?”
He regretted all of them, in the end, even Ritgen mab Encar, strangled as he slept beside his wife. He threw off the whole blanket of degradation and violence which had covered him, and Judicaël gave him absolution and extreme unction. Then he consecrated the bread and wine, and gave both the man and the woman their Easter Communion. When that was finished, Éon went to sleep, smiling as contentedly as the baby.
“What will you do now?” Judicaël asked the woman as he packed the oil and wine back into his bag.
“I will stay here until he is gone,” she replied simply. “Then I’ll go home.”
“Come to me if you need food,” he told her. “With the little one, you need to keep your strength up. And when the man has gone, tell me, and I’ll help you bury him.”
“I think it won’t be long now,” she said, looking at Éon. “He is very weak. He was here by himself for a long time. And he’s stopped fighting it now. He was afraid of hell, but now he will have a good end.” She looked back at Judicaël, her eyes bright with tears, then took his hand and bowed her head to it. “Thank you, Father,” she said quietly. “May God reward you!”
“What I have been allowed to do for your friend is reward enough,” replied Judicaël quietly. “But, daughter, may I ask one favor of you? He has told you, I think, about the knight of Talensac?” She nodded in surprise, and Judicaël went on, “I beg you, then, not to repeat what he told you. I was that knight’s confessor.”
She believed instantly, as he’d meant her to, that he feared that the story about Tiarnán would harm his own reputation. She would have repeated the story otherwise: if a rumor of viciousness clung to the reputation of a nobleman who had harmed her friend, so much the better! But to protect Judicaël she would let the story lie buried with Éon under the forest floor. It was a small deception, and Judicaël almost regretted it — and yet, what good would it do anyone if Tiarnán’s memory were spat upon?
“Of course, Father,” said the woman. “And again, thank you. Some priests wouldn’t have come at all, and most would have turned around again when they discovered who they’d come for. All his life he’s been treated like a beast, but you accepted him as a man. You saved him.”
“No,” he replied, “you did.”
On the way back home he walked quietly, feeling the forest breathe around him in the darkness. What had just happened appeared to him as a gift from God, justification enough for any hermit’s existence, and he was deeply happy. But he had time to wonder what he would do if he were stripped of his priesthood. Bereft of that, and the chapel, and the forest with all its infinite variety, shut up copying manuscripts in a monastery or episcopal office, disgraced, suspected — what would he do?
There is always something one can do, he told himself. I said it to Éon, and it’s true. And God’s ways are wonderful and mysterious beyond my imagining. My trust, O Lord of my life, is in you.
He went back to his cell, blew out the lantern, and went to sleep in peace.
Duke Hoel left Rennes on the twenty-sixth of April, and arrived in Paris on the tenth of May. It was a leisurely journey, not pressing the horses, stopping in monastery guest houses or the castles of his friends, seeing the sights and joining in any offered entertainments. To Marie, it was all new and all delight. The world was in the last spring of an old century, and it was sparkling with life, and beautiful. Everywhere they passed, the fields were being tended, or were shooting green with new grain. Horses strained at the plough, sheep grazed the fields, pigs foraged in the greening woods, and men and women stopped their work and children ran out into the road to watch the Duke of Brittany riding by. Everywhere they stopped, the masons were busy: new castles were going up; monasteries were building new chapels, new guest houses, or new refectories; new churches sprouted in what seemed to be every town. The whole world was bursting with life like the leaves.
Hoel was determined to make a good impression at the court, and was bringing all his household knights, together with another twenty who owed him service, as well as trumpeters, musicians, his herald, his priest, his doctor, and his clerk. Rather to Marie’s disappointment, the other court officials, including Tiher, had been left behind. Havoise brought a dozen ladies besides Marie, and the ducal retinue was followed by some sixty servants, together with baggage mules, horses, hunting dogs, and hawks. Mirre and most of the serious hunting dogs were left behind: it wasn’t the season for hunting with hounds. But Isengrim came along, in a new silver-studded collar, together with a few favored alaunts and greyhounds, for the sake of the show they made. It took a large monastery to accommodate them all.
Isengrim was intensely relieved that they had left the hunting dogs behind. Mirre had been coming into heat, and he had found the rank, erotic smell of her almost unendurable. The thought of coupling with a dog, and perhaps begetting puppies gifted with some part of a human soul, was unspeakably monstrous. The smell was so arousing, though, that he was afraid to have Mirre near him. She was used to following him, and the wa
y he suddenly turned on her snarling and drove her off hurt and confused her. It made it worse that Hoel and the duchess simply found it funny to see a wolf chasing off an amorous bitch. It was much, much better to be on the road to Paris.
Paris itself, when they finally reached it on the afternoon of the tenth, was not very much bigger than Nantes. They passed the great abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés, and rode down through its green vineyards to the left bank of the Seine. Beyond the wide brown stream lay the Ile de la Cité, the clear spring air above its ancient walls stained with the smoke of its many cooking fires. They clattered over the Pont St. Michel and through the city gates, into a stink of sewage and rotting vegetables. Most of the people of Paris lived on the island, though some had moved across to the less crowded river port on the right bank. Here, in the heart of the old city, the houses were jammed one on top of the other, and their noise and filth far surpassed that of Rennes. The street was the city’s main market. Street vendors were crying their wares, shoppers bargained with them, and everyone cursed when the duke’s knights rode up to clear their lord’s way. The duke’s dogs barked at the cats slinking about the narrow alleys, and the town dogs barked at the duke’s wolf. They hurried through it all, turning left through the marketplace, and arrived at last at the palace of King Philippe of France, where they were expected and made welcome.
The Bretons had worked hard to make the most splendid impression possible. The dogs and the wolf had been washed and brushed that morning until their fur stood out in soft ruffs about their necks. The horses had been groomed until every hair gleamed, and their hooves had been blackened with a mixture of oil and charcoal — most of which came off in the filthy streets. All of Hoel’s fifty knights had polished and oiled their armor until, as their lord said, they glistened like fresh sardines. The duke himself wore a new tunic of scarlet trimmed with ermine and fastened with a belt embroidered with gold; the duchess was even more magnificent in dark burgundy silk glittering with jewels. Marie’s green and gold looked plain by comparison. They rode through the gates of the palace into the cobbled courtyard to a flourish of trumpets, and the fifty knights fanned out across the yard with a ringing of hooves on cobbles, then dismounted all at once with a clash of armor and knelt down as the duke descended from his white charger. Marie thought it the most magnificent sight she had ever seen.
The Wolf Hunt Page 30