The Wolf Hunt Read online

  Tiarnán shook his head. “He will keep you at his court and hope that you change your mind.”

  “But he won’t force me to marry against my will? You’ll stand surety for that?”

  “My hand on it,” he said solemnly, offering the hand to her.

  Marie took it in both of hers, sealing the compact before witnesses. It was a narrow sinewy hand, stained with grass, and she could feel the strength in it. It pressed her fingers lightly and her face went hot. She could feel the tears stinging her eyes. Something else was stinging in her heart. “Thank you,” she said unsteadily. “I’ll call on you if you’re wrong.”

  “You won’t need to.” Tiarnán withdrew his hand and glanced round at the company again. His eyes hesitated a moment on Alain, and his self-possession wavered. “Alain de Fougères …” he began, and paused awkwardly.

  “You expect me to trumpet your part in this to the duke?” asked Alain sourly.

  Tiarnán shook his head. “No. But my business in Rennes is to inform my liege lord that I am to marry the daughter of Hervé of Comper.”

  Alain went white and stared wordlessly. He clutched his horse’s reins so hard that the animal snorted and laid its ears back, fidgeting unhappily with the bit. Tiarnán looked back impassively; only his eyes glinted again. Triumph? wondered Tiher. No — pity.

  “A pleasant journey then, all,” said Tiarnán, starting off across the verge of the road in the direction of the forest. “I will see you in Rennes in a few days.”

  “I wish you joy!” said Tiher, remembering his manners this time.

  Tiarnán paused, and when he glanced back his whole face was transfigured with one of his rare full smiles. “I think I have it,” he replied, and strode on.

  Alain, and Marie, sat quite still, watching him until he was out of sight. Then Alain clapped his heels to his horse’s sides and set off down the road at full gallop, head bowed, not looking back.

  Tiher watched him go with sincere pity. Alain had loved Eline of Comper for years, and for a few months it had seemed that he might even succeed in sweeping away every obstacle between them by the simple force of his passion: he’d even wrung a grudging permission to marry from his father. Then Tiarnán had taken an interest in the girl. The outcome had been inevitable from that moment — but Alain had gone on hoping against hope, until now. Tiher sighed, leaned over, and took Marie’s reins. “We’d better get back to Bonne Fontaine, Lady Marie,” he said. “It’s late in the afternoon, and I’m sure you need rest.”

  Marie nodded and twisted her fingers in the farm horse’s mane. She had not been able to react to what had just been said; there had been too many things she had not known for her to grasp it all at once. They rode in silence while she tried to piece it together. Tiarnán was going to marry a daughter of a lord of Comper. That was a sting which she felt even through everything else. But why shouldn’t he marry? She couldn’t marry him; he was Duke Hoel’s loyal liege man, and an enemy of her house. Treacherous! she told the sting in her heart. Wanton ! What about your family’s honor? And you know almost nothing about him. The reason you’ve fallen in love is because he rescued you. You can’t.

  She wrestled with the hurt, which resisted, like an angry dog trying to cling to a disputed bone. Tiarnán is going to marry the daughter of the lord of Comper, she repeated to herself firmly. It’s already arranged. He barely noticed you. Why should he, when he’s just betrothed himself to someone else? And when Alain de Fougères heard it, he went white, and rode off in a rage.

  She looked up at Tiher, riding beside her with her reins looped over his wrist. “Did Lord Alain wish to marry this woman who’s betrothed to Lord Tiarnán?” she asked, too tired to care if her curiosity was blatant.

  Tiher looked back at her approvingly. “You have the meat of it,” he said. “And I’m afraid he’s going to make the rest of this journey a perfect purgatory. He never can suffer in silence, and suffer he most undoubtedly will.” One of the rewards he gave himself for his role as Alain’s advisor and confidant was the right to make cutting remarks about his cousin.

  Marie studied her companion a moment. He still looked like a frog, but there was something likeable about that sardonic grin. He was being pleasant to her, as well. She hadn’t really noticed him when they first rode from Mont St. Michel; Alain had done most of the talking, and was more noticeable anyway, with his good looks and his expensive and fashionable clothes. “Is she very beautiful?” she asked.

  “Of course,” replied Tiher. He noticed the curiosity, but was not surprised by it. If a similar drama had been played out before him, he would have been full of questions, too — and he welcomed the chance to get Marie talking. “Alain wouldn’t be in love with her otherwise. He wouldn’t love a girl for her wits, not being overly well endowed with the commodity himself. Eline of Comper; incomparable Eline. She sings very sweetly, can play the lute and the viol, and dances as lightly as a leaf on the wind. She and Alain make a very pretty couple. But she has two elder brothers and a pair of sisters, so she’s not going to bring her husband enough dowry for a noble to live on. My Uncle Juhel, Alain’s father, isn’t breaking up the estate for Alain’s sake: he has an allowance for life, but that’s all. They didn’t really have anything to marry on. Talensac may not be as big or as grand as Fougères, but it’s a very pretty manor and Tiarnán’s been sole lord of it since he came of age. Poor Alain never had a chance.”

  Marie rode in silence for a minute, mulling that over. She’d heard similar stories all her life, and thought nothing of them. All marriage had been a foreign country to her. Now the private sting in her heart had showed her the unsuspected valley of pain that Alain would have to plod through. “What did … Lady Eline … think of it?” she asked at last.

  “I imagine she agreed with her father,” said Tiher. “She’d be a fool to do anything else. One can’t ask a maiden about such matters, of course — saving your presence, Lady.” Tiher grinned.

  She scanned his face intently. “And what do you think? That your cousin was a fool to hope for anything else, because land matters more than love?”

  He shrugged. It was impossible to explain how he respected Alain most when Alain was at his most perverse. “I think that love’s a plant that likes rich soil,” he said instead. “And if it still survives on poor sandy heathland, who’d want their loved one to scratch for a living? No, get good soil first, and if you cultivate it properly, you can grow what you like on it.” He grinned again. “I’ve no land at all myself, incidentally.”

  “Lord Tiarnán, though, from what you say, is marrying for love.”

  “So he is, lucky man. But he can afford it. Not many young men are their own masters and free to choose. The rest of us make do with what scrapings of happiness we can find.”

  She bit her curled finger, and he felt suddenly weightless with gladness. Lord, I’d like to kiss her, he thought. But it’s a whole slice of happiness even without. A beautiful May evening, the hedgerows white, my horse under me, and a pretty girl listening to me talk about love.

  “You’re lucky yourself now,” he told Marie. “If what Tiarnán said is true — and I’m sure it is — the duke will let you pick your own husband, and you, too, will have the luxury of marrying for love.”

  “I won’t marry any of the duke’s men,” said Marie flatly. “My father owes fealty to Duke Robert, and only to him. I won’t betray my family’s honor.” Repeating it aloud was a relief: it seemed to confirm that she still was what she’d always thought herself, and not fundamentally altered by this sting in the heart.

  Tiher’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t see how you can think that. Your grandfather served Brittany until he decided that it would be more profitable to follow the Normans. You’d be restoring your family’s honor, not betraying it.”

  “I’m not responsible for what my grandfather did,” replied Marie. “If everyone went back to their ancestors’ original loyalties, we’d all pay fealty to the emperor of the Greeks. My father is Du
ke Robert’s man, so for me to take any other overlord is treachery. I won’t do it.”

  Tiher only laughed. He didn’t want to argue. “I wish your grandfather had felt the same way. Tell me, how did you manage to escape from Bonne Fontaine through a locked door? We couldn’t work it out.”

  Marie looked at him severely. But she knew already that she was not going to try to escape again. She was too drained — and Tiarnán had stood surety for her safety. “I jammed the door with my wimple so that it wouldn’t shut properly,” she told Tiher.

  He laughed again. “I swear by all the saints, I’m grateful to Tiarnán, despite what he’s done to my cousin, and even though it’s cost me sixteen silver pennies.”

  She stared at him, frowning. He relished the way her forehead crinkled. Before we reach Rennes castle, he promised silently, I will make you laugh. If that’s all the happiness I can scrape from this journey, it will satisfy me.

  “I vowed a hundred candles to Saint Michael if you were found safe,” he explained. “Well, it’s sixteen silver pennies well spent.”

  “Saint Michael is a very great saint, and very powerful against evil,” replied Marie seriously, and crossed herself.

  “Amen,” said Tiher happily. “And being an archangel, he moves fast.”

  When they arrived at Bonne Fontaine a little while later, they discovered that the party had lost its leader. Alain de Fougères, having galloped off, was not to be found in the monastery. Tiher was torn between exasperation and alarm. He had a very good idea where Alain had gone, and he thought it an expedition fit for a lunatic. If Alain failed in his probable aim, he’d have to come back to the duke’s court disgraced by abandoning his mission, and he’d have enraged his father for nothing. But if he succeeded, he’d be even worse off: he’d have to go and seek his fortune outside Brittany, living on whatever he could get as a mercenary and supporting his wife on the scrapings of his lord’s table — if, that is, he didn’t get himself killed during the elopement. For elopement was almost certainly what Alain had in mind, and Eline’s approved lover was unlikely to accept it quietly. Tiarnán of Talensac was not the man Tiher would choose for an enemy. He might be peaceable enough off the battlefield, but Tiher had watched him practice arms: an onslaught of appalling ferocity, concentrated to the precision of an embroiderer’s needle, that left a trail of splintered spears and smashed shields in its wake. Tiher was not surprised that hardened robbers turned and ran when confronted with it; Alain was certainly no match for it. Any friend of Alain could only hope that his expedition would fail.

  Tiher reassured himself that failure did seem the most likely outcome. Hervé of Comper would hardly welcome Alain to his manor house, and it was to be hoped that Lady Eline had more sense than to defy her father’s wishes and run off with a man who couldn’t support her — even if she did prefer him to Tiarnan, which was by no means as clear to Tiher as it seemed to be to Alain. And whatever had happened or would happen to Alain, there was nothing Tiher could do about it. The most he could do would be to make excuses for his cousin when the party arrived in Rennes without him. In the meantime, Tiher meant to scrape what happiness he could from the remainder of the journey.

  It was an easy day’s ride from Bonne Fontaine to Rennes, a pleasant trip through field and woodland on another golden spring day. Even the mare Dahut was forced to go quietly, for Tiher tied her on short reins between his horse and Guyomard’s. They arrived at the city at evening. Rennes had been given a wall in ancient times, and the Roman stones enclosed it still, held up here and there by a more recent tower or gate. For long centuries the medieval city had huddled within a fraction of the space enclosed by its ancient walls, but now it had filled them again — filled them to overflowing, for the first few inns and bake houses had spread beyond the city gates and onto the road. The evening fires had been lit, and the haze of wood smoke that rose above the thatched roofs was illumined by the setting sun, so that the city seemed to float in a golden cloud. Marie had never visited a city, and for all her dread of captivity and determination to yield nothing to her captors, she found her heart beating hard with excitement. An unknown world lay before her, waiting to be explored.

  The city gate had not yet been closed for the night, and the three riders clopped through. The street beyond was far removed from the golden illusion that had cloaked it: unpaved, deeply rutted, stinking of raw sewage, it meandered between rows of mud-and-wattle houses. Chickens pecked among the rubbish in the street, bobbing casually out of the way as the horses went by, and pigs penned between the houses looked over the fences and grunted. A furze bush hung above one door showed that that particular hovel was an inn; a few shops advertised their status by samples of their merchandise dangling from posts: here a pair of shoes, there a broom, over there a set of spoons carved from horn. Then the main street swung right — and there, far sooner than Marie had expected, towered the castle of Rennes.

  It was a new castle, and its walls were of stone, rather than old-fashioned wood — though it was plain at a glance that it followed the traditional pattern, with a tall keep upon an artificial mound, or motte, and an enclosure, or bailey, surrounded by a curtain wall. Tiher turned left and began riding about the outside of the dry ditch that ringed the curtain wall. Marie turned in the saddle, watching the walls of the keep which showed clear above, hazed in the golden smoke. A great red banner flapped in the last of the sunset at the very height of the tower to declare that the duke was in residence.

  “What’s the duke like?” she asked Tiher. They had been talking easily all day, and she was beginning to forget he was an enemy.

  Tiher gave her question some thought. “Do you like dogs?” he asked as they rounded a bend and came within sight of the castle gate.

  “I like some dogs,” said Marie, wondering if there was a connection.

  “And that’s well said, for there are as many different sorts of dogs as there are of men, and one might find correspondences between the two. Greyhounds, for example, are noble and swift and lovely — like yourself, my lady! Alaunts and brachets and lymers, which must be brave and wise to hunt a lord’s quarry and to pull it down, might be compared to knights. And then there are fawning spaniels and mastiffs, to attend on a lord and to guard him.”

  “And the lord in this allegory of yours, the duke — he is a tion?” asked Marie, smiling at the conceit.

  “No,” said Tiher with satisfaction. “Duke Hoel is a terrier. But a very noble one.”

  Marie laughed, and Tiher grinned widely. He’d made her laugh before Rennes castle, just — even if it was partly from nervousness. A beautiful laugh, too, soft and gurgling. He did like a woman who laughed.

  They clopped up to the castle drawbridge, and Tiher hailed the guard to let them through.

  Inside the bailey, the horses were taken off to the stables by servants. The cooking fires were smoking in the kitchens built against the inside of the stone wall, and there was a smell of roasting meat. Tiher and Guyomard escorted Marie up the stone stairway into the keep; even before they’d passed the great double doors, a wave of noise rolled out over them, and a redoubled scent of food. It was dusk now, and in the guardroom torches were being lit and put into brackets on the wall. The guards greeted Tiher cheerfully and asked where Alain was; “Take too long to explain!” Tiher replied, and, with his spurs clinking oddly on the stone floor, he swept Marie on up another short stairway and into the Great Hall.

  The hall filled the whole first floor of the keep. Its wooden floor was strewn with rushes, and it, too, had been lit by torches. Tables were spread out in the torchlight, and a great company was sitting down to supper. The crowd talking noisily along the benches was overwhelmingly masculine. Only at the high table at the far end of the hall were there any women: the lower hall held knights of the duke’s household and garrison, priests, monks, visiting officials — all men. All wealthy, too: everywhere the red light fell it gleamed, here on a silver dish, there on the hilt of a sword, there on a jeweled fi
nger or throat. Rich silks and brilliantly dyed woolens filled the shadows with gold, midnight blue, and deep crimson. Even the dogs that sprawled beneath the tables had collars that glittered when they stirred. Marie felt herself plainer, humbler, and dirtier with each step she took.

  Tiher threaded his way through the tables toward the far end of the hall, where the high table sat raised up on a dais of wood. The people on the benches stopped their conversations as he passed, and by the time he had reached the high table, the hall was silent. Marie, following behind him, had to force herself to keep her head up. Under the weight of those curious male stares she wanted to sink through the floor.

  Tiher stopped just before the middle of the dais and dropped to one knee with a jingle of armor. “God prosper you, my lord!” he said. “Here is the lady Marie Penthièvre de Chalandrey, whose company you requested.”

  Marie made herself lift her eyes to the man seated in the middle of the high table. Hoel, Count of Cornouaille, Count of Nantes, and, by virtue of his marriage, Count of Rennes and Duke of Brittany, was short, balding, and somewhere between fifty and sixty. Above his elaborate fur-trimmed tunic his face was round and red, and his eyes bulged slightly. His brow was furrowed in anger.

  “What happened to your cousin?” he demanded in a high-pitched yap.

  Good Lord, thought Marie, he is like a terrier.

  “Hoel!” exclaimed the lady who sat beside the duke. She was a stout woman of about forty-five, dressed with extreme elegance and wearing a great quantity of jewels. “The poor girl is standing there like a lost lamb. Greet her before you sort out the de Fougères.” She smiled at Marie. The smile and the hard clear lines of her face were peculiarly familiar to Marie, but she couldn’t immediately think where from. Then she realized that this must be Havoise, Duchess of Brittany, half-sister of Prioress Constance — and a Penthièvre of the old stock that had continued to rule Brittany, though its branches ramified among the nobility of Normandy and England. Marie had seen the same long bones in her own mirror.