The Wolf Hunt Page 5

  He thought of her by candlelight, sitting on the bed in the room at Bonne Fontaine before they locked her in: pale with exhaustion but resolute, her disheveled hair in shadowy wisps about her face. A pretty girl, and brave, too. He felt a strange pang at heart, a mixture of pity and guilt.

  “I pray their news is better,” he said, suddenly as earnest as Guyomard. “I will buy Saint Michael a hundred candles for his church at Dol if the girl is found alive.” And he crossed himself.

  He was to comment afterward that Saint Michael, being an archangel, moved fast. A rider appeared in the distance; when he saw them, he spurred his horse to a canter, and as he drew nearer they saw that he was a monk. They all stopped together, instinctively trying to prolong the moment of hope. The monk cantered on until he drew his mount to a stop in front of them. “Lord Alain de Fougères?” he said expectantly, for his eyes had already scanned and recognized the white hart emblem on the shield slung behind Alain’s saddle.

  Alain nodded. “Have you come from the abbey of Bonne Fontaine?” he asked, his voice pitched high with anxiety.

  “Indeed, my lord. I’m Brother Samson; the lord abbot sent me to find you. My lord, the lady you were searching for has been found safe and well!”

  Alain clapped his hands. “Thank God!” he cried passionately. “Thank God and all his saints!”

  “Thank God and Saint Michael!” whispered Tiher, with a sense of release huger even than he had expected. He would not have to carry about with him for the rest of his life the knowledge that he had helped kill Marie Penthièvre.

  “She was brought to a lodge belonging to our own house last night,” Brother Samson went on happily. “There are two lay brothers there every summer, keeping pigs in the forest. The brothers didn’t know that the lady had been lost, but this morning when the lord abbot’s messenger came to tell them to search for her, he found her there eating her breakfast!”

  “Thank God!” Alain repeated, beaming.

  Guyomard crossed himself and thanked his patron saints.

  “Where is she now?” asked Tiher, grinning, though mentally he was wincing at the cost of a hundred candles.

  “On her way to Bonne Fontaine. The pig keepers were told to bring her there as soon as the horse for her arrived. The lady is exhausted from wandering in the forest, you see, and can’t walk any distance, so the lord abbot’s messenger ordered one of our tenant farmers to send a horse from his farm, which is not far from the lodge.”

  “I hope the pig keepers keep tight hold on the horse’s reins, then,” said Tiher. “Otherwise, the lady will gallop off to St. Michael’s with the beast, and they’ll look as foolish as we did.”

  “The knight who found her can manage the horse,” said Brother Samson.

  “A knight?” asked Alain sharply, his smile vanishing. “A knight found her? Who?”

  “I don’t know, my lord,” Brother Samson replied, cheerfully oblivious to the devastation just wreaked upon Alain’s career. “What the lord abbot asked me to tell you was that the lady was safe and well: a knight who was hunting in the forest found her and brought her to our pig keepers last night for safe keeping, and she is on her way to Bonne Fontaine. If we ride back to the abbey now, we may meet them on the road.”

  Alain was scowling as they started on. If another knight had rescued their charge, it would be impossible for Alain to present Marie’s escape as a minor complication in an otherwise successful mission. The other knight would point up their failures just by being there, and claim a share of credit from the duke — credit which Alain could ill afford to share. He badly wanted to ingratiate himself with Duke Hoel, and this had seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. The duke had resented the loss of Chalandrey for years, and had leapt at the chance to get it back without fighting a war. The actual business of extracting the heiress from her convent in an impregnable Norman fortress, however, had threatened to be difficult. Alain had been the ideal person to lead the delicate mission. The de Fougères clan had several members in the service of Normandy: Alain could appear as Robert’s envoy without arousing suspicion. He had done his part at the priory faultlessly. And now it had all gone wrong.

  Tiher gave a sigh that mingled exasperation and pity, and his irritation with his cousin melted away. He knew well enough why Alain wanted to please the duke. Alain had hoped that the duke’s good influence might help him win over the father of the girl with whom he was passionately and hopelessly in love.

  Tiher watched Alain’s back ahead of him, the gilding on the fine armor dusty from the past few days’ hard riding, the head in its conical helmet bowed. You poor fool, he thought. Your father barely tolerates the thought of you taking a wife. Hervé of Comper is never going to let you marry his daughter just because the duke says a few good words for you, not when your rival has a rich manor. As for the duke, no matter how pleased he is with you over this, he’ll never like you as well as he does your rival. Stop fighting your fate, Alain: the horse that kicks over the traces gets whipped.

  But Tiher could never bring himself to say such things out loud. At times it seemed to him craven to trot quietly in the harness like a good cart horse, and he admired his cousin’s ability to go on hoping for the impossible. Besides, Eline of Comper was beautiful enough to turn any man’s head.

  Alain apparently found his own reflections too painful to endure alone: he slowed his horse until it walked beside Tiher’s, and fixed his cousin with his wide blue eyes. He had done it a thousand times as they grew up together: “Tiher, help me with this; Tiher, did you know? Oh, Tiher, what shall I do!” It had always been Tiher he turned to, never his own elder brother, and certainly never that harsh and fearsome man, his father. Tiher had always listened patiently, given advice, tried to sort out whatever muddle Alain had gotten himself into this time. There were only a few months between them, but Tiher felt himself much older, with the elder brother’s privilege of wisdom. As they grew to adulthood, Alain’s appeals had become less frequent and Tiher’s advice more ironic: in the world’s eyes, Alain had to be the superior. The underlying relationship between them, though, never changed. “Tiher,” Alain whispered anxiously now, “when Brother Samson said a knight who was hunting in the forest found the Penthièvre girl — do you think he really meant one knight, hunting alone?”

  “Alain, Brother Samson doesn’t know anything about it!” Tiher replied. “You heard him! He’s just a messenger. You ought to be glad. Think what the duke would have said if we’d arrived in Rennes without the girl — or worse, with her body!”

  Alain chewed his upper lip wretchedly.

  “What difference does it make, anyway?” demanded Tiher.

  “If it was only one knight, hunting alone, and on foot …”

  “Why would he be on foot?”

  “Well, he was, wasn’t he? They wouldn’t have had to send a horse from a farm for the girl if he wasn’t. She could have used his.”

  Tiher’s heart sank on Alain’s behalf as he realized it was true. For a knight to go about alone on foot was rare in the extreme. Tiher knew of only one knight in Brittany who regularly did so. If Alain was right, the horse that had kicked the traces was indeed about to get a whipping from Fate. “You’re being ridiculous!” he declared loudly. “For all we or Brother Samson knows, a whole hunting party with thirty couple of hounds found the girl, carried her to the pig keepers, and rode off again sounding the rechace!”

  “I’ll wager my best hawk against yours that it was one knight,” snapped Alain. “One who goes hunting alone on foot. My rival.”

  They were both silent a moment. “Tiarnán can’t beat you in a game where he isn’t even playing,” said Tiher.

  “Are you taking the bet?”

  “I don’t bet. I certainly don’t bet my one and only hawk. Oh, cheer up! Whatever happens, the girl’s safe, and so are we. If it is Tiarnán who found her, perhaps he’ll fall in love with her and leave Eline free for you.”

  Alain brightened visibly. “Do you think he
might?”

  Tiher shrugged. “Put it this way: she’s the heiress to Chalandrey, and Eline has a dowry of fifty marks and a few acres. I would’ve thought anyone could fall in love with Lady Marie. I certainly could.”

  “Could you?” Alain asked, looking at his ugly cousin in surprise.

  “Most certainly,” replied Tiher. Resignedly, he admitted to himself that he already had, a little. A hundred candles to Saint Michael! Sheer stupidity: gray-eyed heiresses were not for landless knights. A hundred candles at a silver penny the pound!

  They did meet up with Lady Marie Penthièvre of Chalandrey on the road to Bonne Fontaine. About three miles from the abbey they saw a party traveling slowly along the road ahead of them. When they urged their tired horses faster, the group ahead resolved itself into a woman in a white wimple and black gown on a horse, flanked by three men: two brown monks and one in the stained green of a huntsman. Even before they’d caught up, Tiher saw that the man in green was indeed Tiarnán of Talensac. He knew him from court, and even from the back the clothes and the light step were distinctive. He glanced at his cousin, and saw that the scowl was back.

  His amusement vanished when they drew level with the party, and Marie turned in the saddle to fix them with her cool gray eyes. Her face was purple with bruises, and she was holding one arm against her side as though she’d injured it. The look on her face was one of profound sadness.

  “Mother of God, Lady Marie!” he exclaimed, for once forgetting both his subordinate position and his manners and bursting in before Alain. “What happened to you?”

  Marie looked at him wearily and didn’t answer. She couldn’t trust her voice. After everything, to be handed back to her abductors like a runaway serf! There they were, the same wall of metal she’d faced two days before. Heavy, round-faced, anxious Guyomard; ugly Tiher; and Alain, with his polished good looks changed only by a two-day growth of stubble on his previously smooth chin. He was scowling furiously, though the other two simply looked shocked. She was sick of them, sick of inheritance and captivity and escapes. She wished she were someone else, a simple peasant whom nobody would bother about. She let her eyes drop away from them to Tiarnán, who was holding the bridle of the farm horse she’d been loaned. He held it so that she couldn’t escape, she knew: from the moment the abbot’s messenger had told him what she’d really been doing in the forest, his one aim had been to return her to her captors. But for her he still seemed apart from the whole sordid business. He was standing back on his heels, looking at the knights with a blank, wary expression, as though he was no more pleased to see them than she was.

  “She was attacked by robbers,” one of the brown-robed lay brothers said excitedly. He’d confided this piece of drama to everyone they met. “By God’s mercy, Lord Tiarnán heard her screams, and arrived in time to save her from great dishonor.”

  Marie wished she could fall off the horse and sink under the earth. Everything she’d tried to do had gone wrong. She’d botched her escape, and now she’d become a thing to gawp at, a distressed maiden saved from the unspeakable. She tugged her wimple forward angrily to try to hide some of the bruises.

  Alain, predictably, gave Tiarnán a look of thunderous resentment.

  “God prosper you, Alain de Fougères,” said Tiarnán politely. “And you, Tiher. And Guyomard.”

  Tiher shook his head admiringly. He liked the straight-faced subtlety of the other’s rebuke, typical of the man. “God prosper you, Tiarnán of Talensac,” he replied. “And thank you. We’ve been at our wits’ end worrying over Lady Marie, and, it seems, worrying with good cause. We were in charge of her, and we’d have been disgraced if any harm came to her. What happened?”

  Tiarnán glanced at Marie, who now stared with bowed head at her saddle. “The lady went into the forest to avoid being caught on the road. Éon of Moncontour found her at Lady Nimuë’s Well, about two and a half miles due south of Châtellier, and behaved as one might expect. But she fought him off with great spirit, screaming for help, and I happened to be in the area and heard her. She has bruises and a twisted shoulder, no worse.”

  “What happened to Éon?” asked Alain.

  “Got away,” said Tiarnán impassively.

  “Lord Tiarnán shot two of his companions,” Marie put in, lifting her head again suddenly. He had no business making it sound as though the robbers had simply run off without a struggle. What he had done had been heroic, and he should have the credit for it. Perhaps he was trying to spare her reputation, but he had no business paying for hers with his own. “I think he would have shot Éon, too, but Éon put a knife at my throat, and threatened to kill me, so Lord Tiarnán agreed to fight him with a knife. While they were fighting the robber threw his cloak over Tiarnán’s head and ran away, the coward.” She looked at Tiarnán angrily.

  Tiarnán’s eyes were amused. “I agreed to fight him because he called me a coward,” he corrected her gently. “Perhaps you did not understand us, as we spoke in Breton. He threatened you because he thought I must be a lover you’d come to meet, and when I told him I was no such thing, he let you go.”

  Marie bowed her head again, blinking rapidly. No, he was no such thing. The wish that he were could not yet form in her, but the resentment because he was not bubbled up within, hurting by its very unaccountability. “Oh,” she said quietly. “No, I didn’t understand what you were saying.”

  Alain was blinking, too. Not only had he lost the girl he was supposed to be guarding, but his rival had found her in deadly danger and saved her. He had hoped to please the duke, and instead his rival was going to be exalted at his own expense. It was so unfair as to be grotesque. In a tone of childish spite he demanded, “What were you doing near Nimuë’s Well? It’s in one of the duke’s forests. Did he give you permission to hunt it?”

  Mistake, thought Tiher. Petty accusations of poaching only make you look a bad loser. And everyone knows Tiarnán’s a great favorite at court, and probably has permission to hunt wherever he likes. Poor Alain!

  “I was looking for that big stag we lost last Holy Rood Day,” Tiarnán replied. He was, as usual, perfectly straight-faced and serious, but Tiher had caught the gleam of those quick eyes: Tiarnán knew why Alain had spoken as he had. “I thought I’d see if he was still in the same part of the forest. The duke could have good sport with him when the season opens.”

  At this Tiher stared in concern. To track game a man needed a dog. Tiarnán owned a very famous tracking dog which, as everyone at court knew, he’d once refused to sell to the duke himself for fifteen marks of silver. “What happened to your dog?” Tiher asked. “I hope the robbers didn’t kill that brindled lymer bitch of yours?”

  “Left her at home,” said Tiarnán tersely. “In heat.” He let go of the horse’s bridle and wiped his hands on his stained green tunic. “My lords, since you’re here to take charge of Lady Marie’s escort, I’ll leave you. I meant to go home to Talensac this morning.”

  At this both Alain and Marie suddenly sat up straight, Alain in hope and Marie in dismay.

  “You’re not coming with us to Rennes?” asked Alain, with unseemly eagerness.

  “No. Why should I stand in your light?”

  “You said you had business in Rennes,” Marie said accusingly.

  “And I have,” replied Tiarnán. “But I am not going to court dressed like this. I need to go home and change first. I will see you in Rennes, Lady Marie.”

  She put her hand to her mouth and bit the side of her finger, pulled it away again. She tried to imagine Tiarnán at court, dressed in scarlet and ermine. It was like losing her last foothold on a steep cliff. He was part of the sordid business after all: she had no allies, and nothing could prevent her from being engulfed. There were scores of ways to force a woman into marriage, beginning with stern lectures and continuing through starvation to beating and rape. She was tired already. She did not know how much she could endure. “Why did you bother to help me?” she cried bitterly to Tiarnán. “Why save me fro
m Éon, and then betray me? If Éon had raped me at least he would have left me alone afterward. God have mercy! I’d be better off dead than married to my father’s enemy!”

  Tiarnán caught her stirrup. “No one is going to harm you, Lady,” he promised her, entirely serious. “I will stand surety for that myself.”

  “I will not consent to marry any servant of Brittany!” declared Marie fiercely. Her father had declared that their honor depended on never changing their allegiance again. Marie would not lose the family’s honor. No, never. “Are you saying that Hoel will accept that? After all the trouble he’s gone to, to fetch me?”

  “Yes,” said Tiarnán evenly. When she stared in disbelief, he went on, “Duke Hoel is a better man than Duke Robert. He will suggest husbands suited to you, but if you refuse them, no one will force you. That would be contrary to the laws of the Church, which the duke honors. Besides, you are his wife’s kinswoman, and sacrosanct. I am his liege man, and I know him.”

  She looked into his reserved dark face and believed him. In offering to stand surety, he was promising to guarantee her safety personally — if need be by fighting anyone who threatened her. He would not make that offer unless he was certain it wouldn’t set him against his own liege lord. A large part of her sick weariness fell away, and she realized how deeply she had dreaded the struggle. “If I tell Duke Hoel that I won’t marry any of his men, will he let me go home?” Marie asked hesitantly, hoarse with relief and flushing under the bruises.