The Wolf Hunt Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  ALSO BY GILLIAN BRADSHAW

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Copyright Page

  I

  Afterward it seemed to Marie that she was born on the May afternoon when they told her that her brother was dead. Before that she had been cocooned in her own pretensions, a shapeless grub of a girl earnestly straining to be someone she was not. It was only when the fatal news destroyed all her dreams that she first emerged blinking into the real world.

  She spent most of the day just as she’d spent a hundred others since her arrival at the priory, now nearly three years before — in copywork and in prayers. It was only after Nones, the midafternoon office, that she had the first hint of how everything would change. The prioress’s serving girl hurried up to her as she was leaving the church and told her that the prioress wanted to see her.

  “Me?” asked Marie with a mixture of puzzlement and dread. “Why?” She tried to remember if she’d actually spoken any of her many censorious thoughts about the prioress out loud. Prioress Constance was a worldly, aristocratic widow, and Marie, a passionate idealist of nineteen, had nothing but contempt for her.

  “I wouldn’t know, my lady,” said the girl, unconcerned. “Some knights have arrived with a message, and my lady told me to tell you to go see her as soon as the office ended.”

  Marie’s throat tightened with apprehension. Knights with a message that concerned her could only have come from her father, Lord Guillaume Penthièvre de Chalandrey, who was far away fighting on the crusade. Was he ill? Had he been awarded some honor by his overlord, the duke? Or — could he possibly have arranged for her to marry? For a moment she was standing in a cave at the back of her mind, smelling the stink that had filled the room at her mother’s death: the scent of childbed fever, of sex, of marriage. She didn’t want to marry, ever; she wanted to become a holy saint instead. She crossed herself and hurried unhappily to answer the prioress’s summons.

  She did not have far to go: St. Michael’s priory consisted of a large house with a single small courtyard adjoining the church. It was not, of course, a part of the monks’ ancient abbey that crowned the hill; it was situated in the town that clung to the rock below. It enjoyed the abbey’s protection, however, and the same secure position above the waters of St. Michael’s Bay kept it safe from the constant raiding and turmoil that plagued the Breton March. The nuns were all respectable noblewomen, and they accepted only well-born girls as novices — a respectability which had always frustrated Marie’s ardent enthusiasm. The prioress’s chambers were on the ground floor of the house. Even before she reached them she could hear Lady Constance’s well-bred braying voice. It carried across the small cloister-court, punctuated by inaudible responses from the visitors. “No, no!” it exclaimed, just as Marie entered the dark porch. “She’s a dear quiet girl, very modest and obedient; it’s been a pleasure to have her here — do assure your lord of that! I’m sorry to summon her for such bad news, my lords, indeed I am, and I shall be very sorry to see her go.”

  Marie stopped dead, not listening for the still-inaudible reply. The oak door of the reception room before her was closed, while behind her the warm spring day continued smoothly in the sun. Bad news for her; so bad that she was expected to leave St. Michael’s priory. She felt as though the threads that bound her heart to her mind had just been cut: she was aware that something had happened that would alter her life irrevocably, but it was an awareness without emotion. An onlooker inside her watched dispassionately to see what she, Marie Penthièvre of Chalandrey, would do in a crisis. The only conscious thought her mind shaped was a prayer: “Oh God, don’t let my father be dead!”

  She raised her hand and rapped upon the door.

  The room was full of people. Lady Constance, a strong-featured woman of fifty, was sitting on the high-backed oak chair, dressed in one of the embroidered and bejeweled habits that drew scandalized fulminations from the abbey up the hill. Three knights were standing before her: they all turned to look at Marie as she came in, and with relief she realized that she didn’t know any of them. Bad news from home would have had a familiar messenger. The knights were all young men and they all held cups of the priory’s wine. Their conical helmets sat in a row on the prioress’s table. Two of the men wore plain hauberks — knee-length leather coats stitched all over with iron rings — white the armor of the third was finer, forged of very small interlinked rings, with a gilded cross-harness on the breast. The hauberk sleeves, as was usual, reached only to his elbows, and one could see that the tunic beneath was dyed scarlet and trimmed with marten fur. He was evidently a man of some wealth, and she guessed he was the leader of the party. He was fair-haired and clean-shaven, a handsome man with wide blue eyes and even white teeth which he started to show her in a smile, before visibly remembering that he was bringing her bad news and looking solemn.

  “Marie, my dear,” said Constance gently, “thank you for coming so promptly. Child, you must strengthen yourself and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. I’m afraid that these gentlemen have brought bad news for you.”

  Marie crossed her hands on her breast and bowed her head. Her heart was still cut off, but there was a sick taste at the back of her mouth. “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy,” she said. “My lords, what is your news?”

  It was the fair-haired man in the fine armor who told her. His name, he said, was Alain de Fougères; he and his companions had been sent by her father’s overlord, the duke, to tell her that her brother Robert had been killed at the siege of Nicaea.

  Marie had been braced for disaster, and its absence staggered her. She’d barely known her brother. He’d lived at the court of her father’s overlord, Duke Robert of Normandy, since before she was born, serving the duke first as a page, then as a squire and a knight. He’d only returned to Chalandrey to bring home a silly wife who’d disliked Marie — and then he’d spent very little time there. She was shamefully aware that she felt a bitter jealousy toward him, the child her father loved, the heir all her world united to praise. But she’d prayed for him dutifully every day. He’d been a stout, cheerful man, fond of sweets and wine; she remembered him dancing the gavotte with his wife until his face was crimson. How could he be dead? She blinked at the fair-haired knight owlishly, and he looked back with an expression of dutiful solemnity. The silence lengthened. She realized that everyone expected her to say something, and, horribly embarrassed, she couldn’t think what to say.

  Into her numbed mind came one thought far too honest to be spoken aloud: if Robert were dead, their father would have to notice her at last. He never had, never, even though she tried to make herself modest and humble and pious, everything a gentlewoman should be; even though she had mastered the extraordinary accomplishment of learning to read. Marie’s face went hot. It was wicked to be pleased at a brother’s death. She pressed her crossed hands against her chest, feeling the heart pounding under the ridges of bone. One of the knights hurried over and set a stool down for her, and, dizzy with shame and embarrassment, she collapsed onto it with a thump.

  Alain de Fougères coughed, with the air of a man who’s completed an unpleasant preliminary and reached the point where he can do the business he intended. “Because of this sad loss of that good knight your brother,” he said, “my lord the duke has sent us to escort you to his court.”

  “What?” asked Marie faintly, then, more sh
arply, “What do you mean?”

  “With your father away you are the duke’s ward,” Alain said, as though he were explaining it to a child. “Now that you’ve lost the other members of your family, it’s his business to provide for you.”

  Marie’s face went even hotter. She knew the feudal law as well as he did. A man’s overlord was always the guardian of his widow or orphans. But she was not an orphan and she didn’t see —

  Suddenly, she did see. Her brother had no children, so, under the marriage settlement he had made, his widow would not inherit from him. Marie herself was now the heiress to the manor of Chalandrey — and, as an heiress, valuable. An arranged marriage to an heiress was a fine reward for any knight a feudal overlord was pleased with. The sick taste swam back into her throat, and she felt herself begin to tremble. “My father provided for me already!” she exclaimed, too shrilly. “He sent me here.”

  “For your safety, child,” said Lady Constance gently. “Your father arranged for you to stay here while he was on crusade, but he was very emphatic that you weren’t to take vows without his permission. Now that your circumstances have changed, you should go to court.”

  Marie stared at her frantically, trapped, then whirled back to Alain de Fougères. “How could Duke Robert have sent you?” she demanded. “He’s on the crusade with my father.”

  “I’ve come on the duke’s authority,” replied Alain. After a moment he added, “Duke Robert has left a steward, you know.”

  One of the other knights grinned. Marie looked from the grin back to Alain de Fougères, trying to fight off the horror and force her stunned mind into motion. She felt as though she had just missed something, something important. But it was impossible to think clearly. She was bound to obey her father’s overlord. Bound to marry at his command some total stranger, probably a man much older than herself. Bound thereafter to regard her husband as her lord and master, to accept humbly whatever treatment he gave her — and most husbands beat their wives at least occasionally. Bound to lower her body, awkward and private and vulnerable, into the feverish, bloody filth of childbirth. Bound to lose herself utterly. Choking on a panic without outlet, she pressed her hands against her face and burst into tears.

  She left Mont St. Michel that same afternoon. Lady Constance told her that it was best to keep busy. “You know that you must obey your lord as you would obey your father himself,” she said. “And since you’re bound to go, it’s best if you go at once. It won’t do any good to brood. I’m sure you’ll be well looked after at the duke’s court, and these gentlemen will treat you kindly on the way there. You go and pack.”

  It was the prioress’s serving girl, though, who packed up the few belongings Marie had brought with her to the convent. Marie could only sit on the narrow bed, her hands folded in her lap, praying. She was still shaking, but now only partly from fear, and largely from shame. The onlooker within had watched to see how she would behave in a crisis. It had seen wicked thoughts, craven terrors, and childish bursts of tears. Of the firmness and faith that should have gone with that much-sought-after holiness, there had been no trace.

  The sun was still well above the horizon when Marie climbed, dazed, onto the rawboned gray mare that had carried her to the priory three years before, and set out with the three knights.

  Lady Constance had been right in one thing at least: the journey instantly wrested Marie’s mind from her own concerns. Her mare Dahut was what her father had approvingly termed “a good horse”: she was strong, fast, and enduring. She was also an iron-mouthed, bad-tempered bone-shaker, and for three years she had been used by a motley assortment of priory servants, which had not improved her naturally contrary disposition. Marie had learned to ride as a small child, but had not been on a horse since arriving at the priory, and Dahut kept her so busy that for some miles she had no time even to look back. She did notice, though, when they turned to cross the Couesnon River into Brittany. She could hardly fail to notice that.

  For sixty years the Couesnon had formed the boundary between the duchies of Normandy and Brittany. Though both nominally subject to the king of France, the two duchies were in fact virtually independent nations, and they were at war almost as often as they were at peace. Many Breton families, however, had a foothold on both sides of the river. Brittany was poor and Normandy was rich: What could be more natural than that poor Bretons, second and third sons with no part in the family inheritance, should seek their fortunes in the north? And if they succeeded, what prevented the lords of small estates in Brittany from getting big ones elsewhere? The many branches of the Penthièvre family were the most eminent of all these allegiance-straddlers. Partly because of the glorious duplicity of more exalted Penthièvres, Marie’s own, more modest branch of the family was absolute in its allegiance to Normandy. Guillaume Penthièvre’s father had left the service of the duke of Brittany and sworn fealty to Duke William the Conqueror, and that loyalty, Guillaume declared proudly, could not be retracted again without loss of the family’s honor. He boasted of never having crossed the Couesnon.

  Marie dragged her mare to a stop in front of the low wooden bridge. Dahut snorted and laid her ears back, jerking her head against the reins and shifting her feet in resentment. The three knights stopped, too, and turned back to fall in beside her. Behind her lay the empty expanse of salt marsh, and beyond that the pinnacle of Mont St. Michel, already four miles away but looking close enough to touch. The river before them flowed brown and smooth, the current so gentle that it seemed not to be moving at all.

  “My lady?” asked Alain de Fougères, speaking for all three, as usual. “Why have you stopped?”

  Marie looked at him in confusion. “You’re going the wrong way,” she said — and winced inwardly at how timid and unsure of herself she sounded.

  He hesitated, and one of the other knights looked at him in exasperation. Marie thought the exasperated man must be some kind of kin to his leader: they looked alike, though Alain’s wide-featured good looks were exaggerated in his follower to a peculiar resemblance to a frog — a gap-toothed frog with sandy hair. The follower’s name, she’d gathered, was Tiher. “Tell her the truth, Alain,” he urged.

  Alain hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Very well. Lady Marie, we’re going to Rennes.”

  Marie stared. Rennes was the capital of one of the three great counties of Brittany. Again her heart was cut loose from her mind, and she felt unreal, as though this were happening to someone else. “You said we were going to Duke Robert’s steward!” she protested.

  “No,” said Alain, looking enormously pleased with himself. “I said we were going to the court of the duke. Duke Hoel is presently at Rennes.”

  Duke Hoel of Brittany. Marie stared in incomprehension. Dahut seized her moment, jerked the reins out of Marie’s hands, and sidled stiff-legged toward the lush grass at the side of the road. Marie hurriedly drove her heels in to start the horse back the way they’d come — but at this the bad-tempered mare laid her ears back and balked. Tiher was right beside her: he leaned over and caught her bridle, a gesture that might have been merely helpful but suddenly was not. With a froggy grin he looped the trailing reins over his own arm. This is an abduction, Marie thought in amazement. That was why I felt I was missing something. It wasn’t that I was stupid; it was that they were deceiving me. Duke Hoel! Oh sweet Jesus, I should have thought! Of course the duke of Brittany would jump at a chance of getting hold of a fine rich manor like Chalandrey!

  “You lied to me!” she exclaimed furiously to Alain.

  “I didn’t lie,” answered Alain righteously. “I told you that I had been sent to escort you to the duke who is your rightful overlord. That’s true.”

  “My rightful overlord is Robert of Normandy!” protested Marie. “You told me you’d come on the authority of Duke Robert’s steward!”

  Alain shook his head. “I never said that,” he corrected her, smug at his own cleverness. “I said I’d come on the duke’s authority, and that Duke Rob
ert had appointed a steward — which he has. I never lied. You believed what you wanted to.”

  “You knew you were deceiving me!” Marie shouted, her face flushing with rage. “I was a fool, no doubt, to believe that you were a true and honorable knight, and to trust …”

  She stopped. The one she’d trusted had been Lady Constance: she’d assumed Alain was honest, because the prioress had urged her to go with him. It was inconceivable that the prioress, with her love of pedigrees and her knowledge of all the noble families of the Breton March, could have been deceived about the allegiance of any knight. And Constance, Marie now remembered, was a Breton Penthièvre, half-sister to the duchess of Brittany. Constance had connived at this.

  Marie had devoted herself to holiness and humility, but she came from a long line of knights famous for their ferocity in war. The discovery that she had been betrayed into the hands of her enemies jolted her into a cold rage. If her inner onlooker had still been regarding her behavior, it would have found her accepting her betrayal with far more steadiness than she had found for her difficult obedience. But her inner self was no longer playing the detached observer. It was calculating, with a fierce intensity, the best way to escape.

  She bit off her protest to Alain. Too much noise, too fierce an opposition, and the knights might decide to tie her to her horse for the rest of the journey. She drew her white novice’s wimple. forward to veil her face, as though she were overcome by emotion, bent her head, and locked her hands, which were trembling with anger, together in her lap.

  Alain protested indignantly that he was a true knight, and a loyal servant of the duke, but, getting no response, spurred his horse to clatter proudly over the bridge ahead of her. Tiher hesitated a moment, then tightened his grip on Dahut’s reins and gave the mare a sharp slap on the rump to start her across the bridge. The third knight, Guyomard, fell in behind, and they rode on into Brittany in silence.

  Tiher felt sorry for his captive. Her brother’s death had clearly hit her very hard — he had been touched by the stricken silence with which she’d received the news — and it was, no doubt, cruel to take advantage of her in her grief. It was also fairly deplorable to trick a novice nun from a priory, even though the prioress had turned a blind eye to the deceit. The cause might be just — Tiher had no doubt that the duke of Brittany had a right to the manor of Chalandrey — but it was hard on the girl. And she was a pretty girl, too, he thought judiciously, watching the downcast profile. Marie had a strong, clear-featured face whose fashionably high forehead owed nothing to the artifices of plucking and shaving, and her eyes under the straight brown brows were a dark gray. The plain monastic dress, black gown and white veil, was unbecoming, it was true, but Tiher had no objection to imagining her without them. Nice wide shoulders, nice wide hips, very nice in between.