Wolf at the Door

by Sarah Hawkswood

  William played the game well, sometimes letting Walkelin lose him, and then making enough noise for the sheriff’s man to feel pleased with himself that he had found the trail once more. It was certainly a winding trail, but Walkelin was dogged, and, even when he needed to relieve himself against a tree, he managed to resume the hunt, and at a distance he felt could not reveal him. It seemed that he walked for hours, which he did, and it was only, with aching feet and in lowering temperature and light, when he found himself back at a great oak tree that he remembered from earlier, that Walkelin knew just how swicollic William Swicol had been. He stopped in his tracks, and his shoulders sagged. He was cold, tired and lost. He swore. If he wandered further there was no reason that he should find the Salt Way, or indeed any trackway, and it was getting dark rapidly. He sat in the soft swathe of leaves at the tree’s roots. He was also hungry, but even the acorns had been taken by the squirrels for winter. He closed his eyes, but did not feel very safe. He felt even less safe a while later when a wolf howled, clear and far too close for comfort. He scrambled up, heart racing. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the faceless face of Durand Wuduweard. A wolf could not climb trees, he thought. He had not done much tree climbing in his childhood, though he had cousins who lived outside the walls of Worcester and so had occasionally fallen from boughs. The oak was gnarled enough for him to feel his way up in the near dark until he reached a fork where he could wedge himself, some ten feet from the ground. If he slept, the way he was squeezed in ought to prevent him falling, but then it was not conducive to sleeping either.

  Walkelin was going to have a very bad night.

  The Ridge Way was an ancient trackway, worn over centuries by those heading northwards when the forest was even larger, and the ridge an easy feature to follow and avoid getting lost. It was also on the boundary of the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of Worcester, for on the eastern side lay Warwickshire. As Bradecote and Catchpoll joined it, Hugh Bradecote looked to the right and thought of Cookhill and his Christina, for the manor lay beside this very road. She was not there, of course, but for a moment he recalled their inauspicious first encounter, and how quickly things had changed. He smiled to himself, but then banished his wife from his thoughts.

  Had they not been making at least a token search for any sign of Frewin of Alcester, Bradecote and Catchpoll would have travelled at a pace that kept their horses warm and guaranteed them arriving in Beoley by noontide, but as it was they barely broke into a trot, and Catchpoll was casting his eyes to left and right, assessing where a likely place of ambush presented itself. As Catchpoll morosely commented, any minor signs of struggle would no longer be visible in the undergrowth, and if the body had been stripped and left in view it would have been found by now. He was cold, and this was a distraction from his thinking that he did not want. With his focus upon the track and its borders he was caught by surprise when Bradecote uttered an exclamation which made his horse jib.

  ‘Catchpoll, do you see what I see, coming towards us?’

  Catchpoll looked up. An old man was walking towards them, a thick woollen cap pulled down over his ears and almost his eyes as well, and he was giving himself support with a stout stick of blackthorn. An old man with a stick was not noteworthy, but this old man’s blackthorn had a natural shaping that had been turned into a very fair representation of a damson with the slight cleft running down it, just as described by the sub-prior of St Mary’s. It was a simple shape and probably not unique, but to see it upon this road could surely not be a coincidence. The old man, seeing horsemen approaching, and one well garbed and upon a good horse, made to step to the side of the track and bow in deference. It was always wise to treat power with respect. He was horrified when the man on the steel grey horse halted and hailed him.

  ‘Good morrow. I would ask you about your staff. Have you had it long?’

  ‘My lord, it is not stolen.’ The man’s voice wavered a little, and Bradecote could not decide whether that was fear or his years.

  ‘I do not say that it is. Answer me truthfully. That is all I want.’

  ‘I came by it alongaways, my lord, three days past as I went to see my brother as is ailing bad and not like to live long.’

  ‘Do you mean in the direction you are coming from, or where we have already passed?’

  ‘Backaways, my lord.’ The old man indicated with a thumb emerging from wrapped sacking, over his shoulder.

  ‘How far? We would not delay you on this cold day, but if it is close by, would ask you to show us. I am the Undersheriff of Worcestershire, and seek news of a man who carried such a staff upon this road about a week ago.’

  ‘No more’n three furlongs, my lord, as best I can judge. I will show you, but no sign was there of a man.’ The old man turned about to retrace his steps. Bradecote dismounted, and Catchpoll followed suit.

  ‘If you found it only three days ago, I wonder at it, for if it had been dropped a week past, well a good staff would have been picked up quicker’n that,’ commented Catchpoll, as if perplexed.

  ‘Ah no, for it was not upon the open ground but sticking out of a bramble patch. I walks slow, and my bones ache of a winter’s night, but I knows how to use me eyes still. Many a man is looking only to get on at pace and be where he would be. Me, I have done goin’ about fast, and in what time I have left I likes to see and hear all the good things God in His grace has put upon the earth. There was a redbreast singing upon a bough just afore I heard your horses, and the trees now they are naked as babes at birthing are wondrous shapes.’

  ‘And since you uses your eyes, would you say the staff was hidden in the brambles by intent, or chance?’ Catchpoll might not to be able to use his own eyes to see into the past, but their new companion seemed to do what Catchpoll himself tried to do, which was to look and not just see.

  ‘Aha, I gets what you means. Well now, let me think. Mmm, I would say as it was thrown, but not to turn through the air but thrown like a spear. It had pierced the brambles a good long way, and just the last handspan and the knob of it stuck out. It was the nice smoothness of the knob that caught my eye. A man made it that smooth, not nature itself.’ The old man smiled, and Catchpoll smiled back, appreciating another’s ability for detail.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, but for the mud-deadened sound of the horses’ hooves, with Bradecote having to curtail his long stride. Then the old man slowed to a more turgid pace and finally halted, pointing to a patch of bramble set a few feet off the trackway.

  ‘There’s the place. Yes, I would swear to it. See, there is a holly just beyond that has rooted from a low hanging branch and sent up a line of shoots as straight as a wall.’ The old man pointed, and Catchpoll stepped from the trackway, his eyes screwed up so that the crow’s feet at their corners became a knot of creased skin.

  Bradecote knew that at this moment neither he nor the old man existed to the veteran serjeant. Catchpoll was focused completely on reading the slightest sign that remained. He crouched with a groan that earned a sympathetic nod from the old man. A robin, though probably not the one the old man had heard previously, sang its crystal-clear song into the grey forest from one of the upper branches of the holly tree. After a few minutes Catchpoll straightened, winced, and went to the other side of the track. He did not say a word. Eventually he sucked his teeth and looked at Bradecote.

  ‘A man would not have carried that staff some way and then cast it into the brambles. That means the missing man was attacked within yards of here, and had his body been left upon the road, he would be buried by now, and the lord Sheriff clear that a murder-killing had taken place. But there has been no corpse and no burial, and if it was hidden close the foxes and brocks would have sniffed it out and done as beasts do with carrion, which means there would be signs as to where he was concealed, and we would find him. Frewin of Alcester must be dead, my lord, because if he had been attacked and only injured, he would have returned home or had word sent to end alarm, but where is what is left of
him?’

  ‘I agree that he must be dead, Catchpoll, but could he have not been buried by whoever killed him, to avoid the discovery you speak of?’ Bradecote’s brow furrowed.

  ‘But why, my lord? What would a man on a similar journey as our friend here, to ailing kin, have worth stealing?’

  ‘His clothes?’ Bradecote did not sound as if he thought this likely, and Catchpoll curled his lip derisively. ‘Oh, I know it sounds unlikely, Catchpoll, but remember Alnoth the Handless. He was honest, and found the discarded clothing in innocence, but if a beggar, cold and desperate, came across a lone traveller, might he not rob him for the cloak and cotte from his back and the shoes from his feet?’

  ‘Mmm, he might, my lord, but I doubts he would have a shovel with him to bury the naked corpse afterwards, if’n he could dig in the earth as hard as it has been, and even if a band of outlaws was responsible and killed Frewin because he had seen them, they would not bury him. The only people who buries their victims, and I means buries not hides the body under branches and such, knew the corpse when alive. It makes sense. If you comes across a man you never saw before, all alone, and kills him for no reason, who will ever link you to him when the body is found? But if he is your neighbour, or a rival for a maid, there will be those who say “If Ulf is dead, why then, Egbert hated his guts. He would do it.” No, my lord, something is wrong, and I do not know what, and Frewin is dead.’

  Bradecote turned and looked at the old man. ‘You head southwards. How close to Alcester are you going to reach your home?’

  ‘Within two mile, my lord.’

  ‘Then would you go to the abbey tomorrow and give that staff to the abbot with a message from me, Hugh Bradecote, Undersheriff of Worcestershire? That message is that nothing but the staff has been found, but that it can only be proof that Frewin, the abbey’s tenant, is dead and his wife a widow.’

  ‘I will, my lord.’ The old man crossed himself. ‘At least if the staff was thrown away he was not killed by the wolf.’

  ‘The wolf?’ Bradecote and Catchpoll responded almost in unison.

  ‘My brother’s wife said as a wolf was heard a week or so past. She feared for me returning today, but I said as the wolf avoids man just as man avoids the wolf, and I was not scared.’ He chuckled. ‘Not quite true, but since I reached her house safe enough, I reckoned I had a fair chance to get home unbitten. I still think it, even if a poor soul has met with robbers, for this staff is the most useful thing I carry, and if it was discarded once, there would be no reason to attack me for it.’

  ‘Very true. Thank you for your aid, friend.’ Catchpoll nodded at the old man.

  The old man nodded back at Catchpoll, made an obeisance to the undersheriff, and went upon his way southwards.

  ‘Well, my lord, a week on it was never likely we would find many answers about the man Frewin, but it is hard for a widow who is unsure if she really is a widow to grieve, and without grievin’ she would be left neither one thing nor t’other,’ remarked Catchpoll, philosophically.

  ‘That is true, Catchpoll, and we have information that this wolf, or whatever, has been in the area longer than we knew. At least we can now travel a little faster and be warm the sooner. Come on. There is nothing more we can find out about Frewin and I have a strong desire to reach Beoley and feel my toes in my boots again.’

  William Swicol, though he himself only ever used fitzDurand or son of Durand, smiled to himself as he wove his way confidently through the trees. For all his sporadic falling out with his father, he had learnt this forest as a boy, and remembered it well enough that he could always find where he was within a few minutes, from a particular tree or trickling brook. This route was as well known a pathway to him as it was to the deer and boar. The sheriff’s man would be totally confused by now, and William gave thanks that it had been the red-haired apprentice rather than the grey-beard Catchpoll who had trailed him. Eluding that crafty bastard, he admitted to himself, might have been a lot harder.

  He came after another half-mile to a clearing, a clearing made much larger by the work of man in the last months. A wooden palisade ringed it, and smoke rose from buildings in its centre. The one entrance had open gates, but with a horse-faced man guarding it in a half-hearted way and warming his hands over a charcoal brazier. The casual guard looked up at the last minute, for William moved quietly in the forest.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Fair surprised me, you did.’ The man’s Welsh mountains’ origin was obvious in his voice.

  ‘You are not meant to be surprised, Morfran. That is what being on watch means – not being surprised.’

  ‘I would not be surprised, look you, by normal folk as does not creep about like roebuck.’ The guard sounded offended, but William ignored him and carried on into the stockade. The buildings were all wooden, but then that was the material to hand. A small lean-to provided cover to a fire on which a cooking pot simmered, and the smell of stewing meat that emanated from it made William’s mouth water. There were two shaggy-coated ponies in a larger lean-to that acted as the stable, and finally there was a low wooden cabin, rather longer than a common cott, from which the sound of voices could be heard. He went to the door and entered as one with right, and was greeted with a few ribald comments about his woman in Feckenham, and interest in the news that he brought. There were four men present, three William’s age or a little older, and one older man who sat very still a little apart at the end, his face impassive. His hand was pressed upon the head of a young she-wolf. Its tail thumped upon the earth floor enthusiastically as William came to it and held out his hand to be licked.

  ‘Miss me?’ He seemed to be addressing the animal rather than the man. ‘Yes, enough, Anda.’ He withdrew his hand and wiped it on his cotte, but the wolf still sought to nuzzle him. He pushed the muzzle away half-heartedly and smiled. It had been he who named her Anda – malice. The other younger men were circumspect with her, for she would snap and bare her fangs to those lower in the ‘pack’, but she knew those who led it, and abased herself in acknowledgement.

  ‘So, what news?’ The older man, the wolf-keeper, did not waste words, and looked at the wolf, not William.

  ‘William de Beauchamp was out “wolf hunting” about Bradleigh yesterday, for what good it would do him, and his “law-hounds” arrived as expected, and are casting about for a scent they will not find. Anda’s howling was perfect. The bastard of a serjeant clearly has me marked as a father-killer, and had his apprentice follow me from Feckenham. I believe the undersheriff and Catchpoll are heading north to Tutnall.’

  ‘Where is the apprentice now?’ Wolf-keeper demanded.

  ‘Very lost, not far from the Trinity Oak. I would have Anda howl just for him, to add to his concerns.’ William grinned.

  ‘Mmm. We shall see. Tutnall. That is interesting. No doubt they will wish to speak with the wuduweard there. I wish them joy of him.’ Wolf-keeper paused, and patted Anda’s head. ‘Since de Beauchamp has paid his visit to Bradleigh, I think this is the time we also do so, and ensure that Hubert de Bradleigh pays his debt.’ The man’s eyes came alive, even as he screwed them up, and a grim smile creased his face.

  ‘But Feckenham is—’ William began, but halted when the other man raised a hand, and held himself in check. The time was not right, and it might suit his purpose.

  ‘Feckenham is the last and greatest prize. There are old scores to pay off before that. Be patient, though I know you strain at the leash more than she does. I am the wolf-keeper, and remember that I hold your leash also.’ The man rubbed the wolf’s ear. ‘We begin tonight.’

  Hubert de Bradleigh was a man who knew his own worth, though that was marginally higher than reality. William de Beauchamp’s overnight sojourn had taught him, succinctly, that he needed to tread carefully with those further up the social hierarchy. His lady, more than a little flustered at having to provide luxurious fare for the lord Sheriff as well as filling the bellies of his men, had chided her spouse at every opportunity once the shrieval
‘horde’ had departed and was in the sort of huff that presaged frosty relations for some time. In order to stress this, she was being especially fond with their progeny, and effectively banishing him from the solar. He felt hard done by, and spent a day he would rather forget. Nor did it improve come the evening. Having been shown a very cold shoulder in the manorial bed, he was finally drifting off to sleep when there came loud hammering at the solar door, and cries of alarm.

  He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, reaching for his fur-collared robe to cover his undershirt, the warmth of which he had sought in the absence of a warm wife.

  ‘What is it?’ He yelled, and the door opened. His steward, taking the cry for permission to enter, almost fell into the chamber, wide-eyed and himself not fully dressed. He did not even apologise for the intrusion.

  ‘My lord, Edwin’s house and two others are on fire, and it is spreading towards the granary. The plough-oxen are bellowing fearful.’

  ‘Get every man out and form a chain from the well.’ Hubert dragged on his boots and was hopping towards the door before they were fully on. ‘And get Aelfric to calm the beasts and get them out and far from the flames.’