by E. D. Walker
But how much more?
***
The girl’s restful stream of prattle flowed over the wolf in a warm haze, and he closed his eyes, leaning his head against a soft cushion. Memories prickled on the edge of his senses, unwelcome and painful.
“My sweet lord.” Unshed tears rimmed the corners of his wife Alisoun’s pale brown eyes. “My love, please, I beg you, tell me where you go. Where do you stay when you leave me at the end of every month? You are so good a knight, so honorable, so forthright and true, and yet I fear you have a lover. Tell me the truth at once, else I shall die in not knowing.” She collapsed into hysterical sobs, and he gathered her in his arms, comforting her and kissing her tears away.
Assurances that she was his only love fell on deaf ears. Alisoun would not be comforted.
“Have mercy, my love.” He feathered kisses over the soft gold of her hair. “If I tell you my secret, I shall lose your love. I shall lose all I have, even my very self…”
In the end, because he loved her, he kept nothing from her. Truth be told, she’d given him little peace. When the day of his accustomed departure had neared, she’d threatened to follow him if he would not tell her where he went. So he told her, and in so doing he lost everything because of his trust in her—
The wolf flinched, returning to the present as one of the grooms yelled that the iron was heated. As carefully and quickly as the wolf could without harming himself, he eased away from the maiden’s lap, where he had been half dozing.
The girl slid off the table, smoothing the front of her dress down and brushing away the black hairs he’d shed on her. His face heated, and for once he was grateful to have fur to hide his embarrassment.
The other grooms had returned from their previous errands, and all was ready. Except the girl’s nerves, it seemed. She straightened her shoulders, obviously bracing herself. The blood had drained from her face, and her hands shook.
I suppose I should be glad she’s not enjoying this, but I wish she looked more confident.
“Hold the wolf, please.” She leaned close to him, her voice steady. “I am sorry. It is undignified, but even humans are restrained when the iron is applied.”
Even humans, the wolf thought with distaste, but he nodded.
“I will see they do not hurt you.” She stroked his muzzle so quickly he did not have time to flinch away.
Years had passed since a human had touched him, and he shivered at the light contact, suddenly craving more. All in one day he felt more human than he had in two years. All because of this girl.
He studied her as she made her preparations. A young woman certainly, her face unlined, her body strong and supple. No more than nineteen perhaps, medium height for a woman. Slim hips and a dainty bust gave her a trim figure, pleasing enough, but not so fine as to make a man’s eyes follow the swish of her skirts as she walked past. The girl’s hair shone becomingly, but her thick braid was of that troublesome shade between brown and blond, a golden sheen that caught the light but still lacked something of the dash true blond hair has.
With skin rather tanner than the fashion, she coupled that defect with, of all the most unfortunate afflictions, freckles on her nose. But the animation of her countenance, the lively joy behind her features, made a person forget she was not—strictly speaking—beautiful. Her eyes were unarguably her best feature: pale green, lushly lashed, and lovely beyond compare.
Once an expert judge of these matters, the wolf decided the girl was pretty, pert, and certainly intriguing in her own way, but she definitely was not the beauty his wife had been.
Another face flashed across his mind’s eye, another woman, blond with brown eyes, and more attractive than any mortal maid had a right to be. He shivered at the memory of his wife’s delicate fingers running through his hair. The girl dropped another careless caress on his head, and he ducked away from her. This is too much. He averted his gaze so he would not have to see the hurt on the maiden’s face.
Grabbing a clean-looking rag, the girl gently bound his muzzle, tying the knot tight enough so he could not open his mouth. She scratched at his ears. “So you don’t bite your tongue off.” She sighed. “We’re going to tie your feet as well.”
He gazed at the low ceiling but did not struggle or flinch as she tied his feet to the table.
One of the burly grooms came forward to hold the wolf’s shoulder still so he could not move and cause the hot brand to slip. The other stable hand moved to hold his legs steady where the rope was tied. The tirewoman, who had kept herself apart from the proceedings until now, came forward with the mixture of brandy and honey that had been prepared, at the ready to slather on the burn afterward. The third stable hand pulled the iron from the brazier and addressed himself to the girl. “Here, m’lady, let me do this. S’not proper for you.”
The green-eyed girl gently lifted the hot iron from the stable hand’s grip, a wisp of hair falling over her forehead as she shook her head. “I have experience in this, I promise you.” She glanced at the wolf, gently stroking his head, her voice soft, soothing. “Ready, Sir Wolf?”
***
The wolf caught Kathryn’s eye and blinked. She understood that to be yes, and so, hand steady even as her nerves frayed to the breaking point, she applied the iron to his skin. All the while she cycled through her memories of her uncle showing her how to do this many years ago on one of their injured horses.
She could hear Uncle Flavio’s evenly measured tones as clearly as if he were in the room with her. She allowed the memory of him to wash over her, guiding her actions. “Little niece, be careful. You want to make sure when you apply the iron, like this—” he’d demonstrated, his hand as firm while he held a sizzling iron against quivering flesh as when he held his cup at dinner. “You leave the iron on long enough to create a small red spot, just so.” He had indicated the livid red mark on the horse’s creamy yellow flank. “And not just merely singe the animal’s fur, which will do nothing. Take care.” This as he handed the iron off to one of his helpers. “You do not want to leave the iron on too long and puncture the skin. Yes, good?”
Kathryn swore as she finished her operation and hurriedly pulled the iron away, passing the long rod off to someone else, she saw not who. She wiped sweat from her brow with her sleeve and held her other hand out at once for the honey salve. The wolf, who had behaved like a prince throughout the whole agonizing operation, closed his eyes, clenching them tightly in pain, panting through the gag around his mouth.
She dosed his burn liberally with the honey-and-brandy salve and left the wound open to the air. The tension in his body eased, and the wolf at last opened his uncanny blue eyes to stare at the ceiling again.
She smiled, giving a breathless, giddy laugh. There would be swelling and bruising, and the poor beast would be rather sore and miserable for days, but now, at least, he would probably recover completely. She untied his muzzle and stroked the fur there back into place. Still groggy with pain, the wolf did not avoid her hands this time.
“If that’s all, m’lady, you can leave him to us for the night and return to the queen,” one of her helpers piped up.
“No, no.” The king had given Kathryn permission to take as long as she needed, and she did not wish to leave the job only half done. She would see the night through with her patient. If he did well, then in the morning—and only then—would she surrender him to other hands. “You can return to your duties, kind sirs. My maid and I will stay here tonight and tend the wolf.” Truly, Kathryn would not miss the other ladies-in-waiting to the queen. A night away from their scheming and maneuvering for position would be a welcome respite.
With obvious reluctance, the grooms obeyed Kathryn’s orders. After carrying the wolf to the bed as she’d asked, the men filed out the door. She and the maidservant were left alone together.
“The beast gets the bed, my lady?” The tirewoman’s voice held a note of disapproval.
“I—I do not wish to face the king tomorrow if the beast dies.” It was more
complicated than that, a half-crazy feeling Kathryn barely wanted to acknowledge in herself, let alone explain to a near-stranger. She wouldn’t make a human patient sleep on the ground, and somehow she couldn’t do that to the wolf either.
Still looking dubious, the maid nodded. “I’ll fetch some extra bedding.”
Kathryn escorted the maid to the door and blinked in surprise to find a guard outside the workshop’s entrance.
“Are you here for me or the wolf?” she asked.
“For your honor and safety, my lady,” the guard replied, voice flat.
Too exhausted to argue, Kathryn went back inside, only to discover the wolf awake and stubbornly trying to pull himself off the bed.
Chapter Three
During the daytime in the woods, when the wolf slept, he would dream human dreams of torment. Nightmares, he supposed they were. The look in his wife’s eyes, eyes that he had loved so well, often filled his mind. She had only looked so for a moment. One flickering spark of…what? Revulsion? Fear? Anger? And then his wife had glanced away and spoken the same loving words of old, so he had forgotten the flicker of disgust he’d seen. He’d pushed his doubts away and pretended he still had her love. Pretended he could still trust her.
He had left his hall and rode alone to his favorite haunt that fateful day. He loved the beautiful King’s Forest because if he rode to the depths of the woods, no man would disturb him, and every farmer’s chickens would be safe from his insatiable appetite. The nearby shrine also possessed a hollow rock he found convenient for storing his clothes. Fool that he was, he had even told Alisoun about the rock.
“You stubborn beast,” the girl scolded him.
He blinked and focused on the girl as she shooed him toward the bed. Not “the girl.” Lady Kathryn. She had saved his life. Learning her name was surely the least he could do.
“Back to bed, Sir Wolf. What are you doing?”
Startled, he searched her face. Does she really think I understand her? Or is she only jesting with herself? As he had no wish to be revealed as a werewolf, her behavior worried him. He looked at her, pain fogging his vision, and shook his head.
“Oh, don’t play the dumb mutt with me either. If you’re smart enough to beg the king for mercy, you’re smart enough to know what I mean when I say get your fluffy tail back in bed.” She pointed, her delicate face set in a comically severe expression.
He did not move.
Lady Kathryn pouted, an expression oddly unsuited to the practical good sense she’d demonstrated thus far. “You will not oblige me by getting on the bed?”
The wolf gave her a stern look. I take the bed while you—what? Sleep on the floor? Unthinkable.
“All right, my Lord the Stubborn, will you share the bed with me?”
His wound stung and throbbed, and his limbs dragged with fatigue when he moved them. Still, though he was a wolf, some part of him had been and still was a man—sort of. He would no sooner jump in an honorable maiden’s bed out of wedlock than he would piss on the king’s leg. The bench seemed an acceptable compromise. He jerked his snout toward the hard, flat board.
Lady Kathryn rolled her eyes and shrugged. “You win, my lord. I, bed. You, bench.”
Satisfied, the wolf rose with difficulty, jumping off the high table and crossing the room. He pawed at the flat top of the bench for a moment before he at last managed to pull himself up. He settled his limbs as comfortably as he could on the hard wooden bench.
***
The tirewoman returned, smiling her approval when she found Kathryn snug in the bed, sans wolf. The maid deposited her own bed for the night—a hard pallet and thin blanket—on the floor next to the mattress. “I sent word to the queen you would be spending the night here.”
“Thank you.” Kathryn pillowed her head on her arms and watched the lone candle flame dance, caught by a small breeze through the open window. It has truly been a very long day. And a strange one.
The tirewoman bedded down with a small sigh to Kathryn’s side. Perhaps she had had a long day too.
Kathryn rolled over. “Shall I tell you a story, Sir Wolf?” she asked, expecting no answer and needing none. “I am said to be well versed and not entirely without skill in the telling.” She looked into the wolf’s eyes for the answer. He blinked owlishly, which she guessed to be his way of saying yes.
She settled against the pillows of the healer’s humble cot as she told the wolf tales of a clever fox and his exploits with other members of a fictional animal court. The lordly lion king, the cowardly rabbit, the poor friar-bear, and many others besides in a myriad collection of intricate and hilarious encounters.
Kathryn did leave out the bawdier tales, and the sex-crazed she-wolf, in deference to her audience. Those tales were fine among the highborn ladies, but men had funny ideas about how women should speak.
Gradually, her audience’s attention seemed to slacken, and the tirewoman began to snore softly. The wolf, too, seemed to have drifted off somewhere between the tale of the lion-king’s court and the beating of Bruin the Bear.
The poor wolf had many scars. There were various old nicks and cuts taken out of his hide, and the bite on his shoulder would leave another lasting mark on the landscape of his body. A long, deep line was cut over the side of his face, crossing just shy of his right eye. She did not think an average wolf could come by such a scar in the normal way of things. A scar from his old life, mayhap?
Was he a werewolf as she suspected? Had he perhaps been a soldier or a man-at-arms as a human? A knight, even? That would explain his familiarity with the castle and the intense fealty he displayed toward the king. Who are you, Sir Wolf?
***
He went back home when he found the clothes missing—well, no, he went back after he tore the shrine’s grounds apart to see if his clothes had been moved anywhere nearby. His lupine nose should have been a boon as he tried to scent the clothes. Yet after a week of frenzied searching, there was never a trace to be found.
Finally, defeated and afraid, he went back to his manor to see if Alisoun had, for some reason, taken his things. Maybe she had thought he would like them laundered before returning to his human state?
He arrived at his manor just as Lord Reynard, the Earl of Troumper, rode through his gate. Reynard was another knight in service to the king. Red haired, broad chested, fiery tempered, and wicked, Reynard had always greeted him with thinly veiled loathing.
In his wolf form, he paused, not wishing the fellow knight to suspect aught amiss. The wolf circled back, hiding in the line of trees to watch and learn why Reynard visited his home while the lord of the castle was away.
A servant met Reynard and led the big knight’s horse to the stable. Another servant escorted Reynard around the back of the castle to the ornamental garden the werewolf had planted for Alisoun as a wedding gift.
Alisoun sat there waiting for Reynard. Her lovely golden hair hung unbound down to her waist, and in the soft light of many torches, she seemed blessed with an angelic halo. She dismissed the servant, and Reynard and Alisoun sat alone together.
She did not rise from her stone bench, only looked up at Reynard with flushed cheeks and the glow of anticipation about her eyes. “Well?”
“I found the clothes. They are safe hid where the monster shall not unearth them.” Reynard licked his lips and stepped toward her. His gaze roamed hungrily over her figure in its tightly laced, cream-colored gown. “Your husband will plague you no more with his malignancy. I have done as you told me. Honor your oath to me.”
Alisoun smiled then. A smile that had once been for her husband alone—or so the wolf had believed. She rose from the bench and enfolded Reynard in her arms. She stared into the knight’s eyes with a sensuous smile. “I promised you my body and my love. You shall have both tonight. And when the quest for my husband has cooled, you shall have my hand.” She stroked Reynard’s dirty, travel-stained cheek with one hand and purred into his face. “And all the werewolf’s lands into the bargain.
”
Reynard stopped her mouth with a lusty kiss. He hauled her into his arms, pawing at her clothes, obviously anxious to consummate their affair before Alisoun could refuse or turn him away.
The wolf ran back to the woods. Reynard had hounded Alisoun for months, but the wolf had tolerated the knight’s lechery because Alisoun had treated the man with open disgust. Until now.
Until her husband had told her of his condition. His “malignancy.”
The wolf did not rest until he was safely back in the center of his forest. He did not leave the woods again until his king reclaimed him, taking him, however unwittingly, back into the world he had been born to.
***
A beam of moonlight fell on his eyes. He had been dreaming but could not remember of what. He scratched his nose idly with one large paw then sneezed. In his drowsiness he forgot where he was, what he was. His bed was a hard wooden bench, and his limbs moved stiffly as he unfolded his body from a curled position. Someone stirred beside him, and moonlight limned the soft lines of a woman in bed. Without thinking, he jumped from his hard bench and crossed to climb into bed next to her. When he snuggled his body into the warmth at the small of her back, she mumbled something in her sleep but then settled in, snoring softly.
She snores like a mouse. He smiled to himself, and sleep once again claimed him.
***
When he woke up some hours later alone in the bed, he stared at the rumpled bedding, appalled. I slept the better part of the night in bed with the maiden—with her…all night…in the bed—all night. He jumped down at once and sniffed about for the gi—for Lady Kathryn.
When he glanced at the tirewoman from yesterday, she inhaled sharply. He looked away just as quickly, fearful that any prolonged study of the servant would provoke her to scream.
Lady Kathryn opened the door a moment later, dressed in a clean gown and apparently having been awake for hours. Rosy cheeked and fresh faced, she seemed well rested, the trials of the day before showing only in the deep shadows under her kind green eyes.