The Wolf Hunt Page 7

  “You’re very welcome here, my dear,” said the duchess.

  Marie took a deep breath. She would not be put off from what she meant to do because her gown was shabby or because the duchess condescended to be gracious. “I am not here of my own will,” she declared in a clear proud ringing voice that could be heard in the far corners of the hall. “I was brought away from my convent by treachery and deceit, and kept from returning to it by force. My father owes no allegiance to Brittany, and I will never betray his house and lands to any man living. By God and my immortal sout” — Marie crossed herself defiantly — “I had rather die defending my honor than live deprived of it.”

  There was a moment of thunderous silence. Marie could hear the blood ringing in her ears, and the crackle of the torches about the walls.

  Then Duke Hoel snorted. “She’s true blood of yours, all right,” he said to the duchess.

  “Of course she is,” replied Havoise placidly. “My father’s half-brother’s second son’s granddaughter. We worked it out, remember? Child,” she said to Marie, “Chalandrey is a fief pertaining to the duchy of Brittany, and not the private possession of your house. Your grandfather held it from my father. He had no right whatsoever to give it to Normandy: it wasn’t his to give. My husband is your true and rightful overlord, and was fully within his rights to bring you here.”

  “I say he is not,” Marie replied deliberately, though her breath was coming hard and her stomach was tight with fear. “And I say further that I will not marry any servant of my father’s enemies. And Tiarnán of Talensac, a knight in your service, my lord duke, has gone surety for me that no one will force me.”

  “What does Tiarnán have to do with this?” asked Hoel in confusion.

  Havoise frowned suddenly, staring hard at Marie’s face. Between the red torchlight, the white wimple, and Marie’s transcendent defiance, her bruises had not previously been noticed. “Hoel,” the duchess said urgently now, “the girl’s been beaten.”

  Then there was uproar, fury, and confusion, and Duke Hoel bounded yapping in to attack again the question of what had happened to Alain de Fougères. The whole story had to come out, and Marie was swept off by the duchess to have her bruises poulticed with borage leaves, while Tiher was given a lecture on his cousin’s stupidity. The duke informed him that it was lunacy to allow any Penthièvre anywhere on any occasion any opportunity whatever to attack or escape, because any fool knew she was sure to take it; that one does not under any circumstances permit harm to come to a kinswoman of the duchess when she is under one’s protection; and, finally, that a man entrusted with a mission from his overlord who runs off on the road leaving it half complete deserved to be pinned against the castle wall and used for jousting practice.

  “Now I know how a rat feels,” Tiher said later, “when the terrier has him by the neck.”

  III

  Tiarnán reached Talensac in the morning two days after parting from Marie on the road to Rennes. He would have been there the evening before, but he’d decided to go see his confessor first. The confessor was a hermit, and lived alone at a tiny chapel in the depths of the forest, some fifteen miles southwest of the manor. Going there added at least five hours to the journey, but Tiarnán didn’t mind. An extra five hours walking in the forest in May was not an imposition but a thing to cherish.

  He loved the forest. What to Marie was one vast shadow of mystery was to him a clear and precisely defined patchwork of places intimately known and perfectly distinct. There were peat bogs choked with alder, and mature woodlands of beech and oak; there were acres of pine scrub and there were high barren heaths which poked out of the trees like sows’ backs from their wallows. There were the wells and mounds sacred to the Fair Ones; there were little tumble-down chapels built long ago by saints; there were black squalid huts where old peasant women sold curses or love charms to visitors who crept guiltily to the door. Every area, even the wildest, had a complicated web of owners and users. The days when Broceliande covered all Brittany were already long past: there was not one forest but many, islands of wilderness in a sea of cultivated lands, some joined by tenuous strands of green that snaked across the cleared fields, others standing alone. There were ducal hunting preserves and noble hunting preserves; so-and-so had the right to collect wood in one section of the forest, while someone else’s pigs foraged there for acorns and someone else again made charcoal. Tiarnán knew each part, and would no more have confused them than a man would mistake the rooms in his own house. He loved Broceliande in all its moods, from bitter winter to balmy summer, from brutal storm to dreaming sun. It was loveliest of all, though, in May, with the air fresh and the earth sweet with flowers, and the animals in the shadows guarding their young. Tiarnán walked beneath the branches with a quick light stride, taking deep breaths of the silken air. Among all the delights, though, he remained wary. Broceliande might be lovely, but itself recognized no love, and it held among its leaves a thousand forms of death. The robber Éon was merely one more thing to watch out for, no worse than the boar’s tusk or the thousand sucking mouths of the peat, bog.

  It was still early in the morning when he arrived at the boundary of his own land. The manor of Talensac included some twenty square miles of woodland, all adjoining neighboring sections of forest, but Tiarnán knew almost to the moment when he had crossed onto his own domain. In his own woodland he relaxed his wariness enough to start singing aloud a song that had been running through his mind for some days. It was a common song that the Breton peasants sang in the field: he didn’t like court music.

  “Gladly, gladly would I go

  if I knew my love was there;

  gladly, gladly I would make

  my arm a pillow for her hair.

  “Oh, the great long road I had to walk

  and the steep, steep slope to climb … .”

  Tiarnán stopped singing: he’d been off-key, as usual. He sighed, snapped off a bramble shoot and began to chew it, then guiltily spat it out again. His confessor, Judicaël. had told him to fast in penance for killing the two robbers at Nimuë’s Well. It was a grave sin, Judicaël had said, to snatch away two lives without warning. Perhaps it was true that the two dead men were themselves murderers and had been engaged in a violent crime, perhaps it was true that to give a warning might have endangered both their victim and Tiarnán himself — but two human lives were two human lives, ended bloodily and with no chance of repentance. If Tiarnán wished to keep his own soul alive, he would fast, and reflect upon the value of human life and his own arrogance in presuming to destroy it.

  Tiarnán was fasting, but most of his reflections were upon the value of Eline of Comper. He had killed men before, fighting in the duke’s wars. The two robbers lay very lightly on his conscience, and he regretted principally that he hadn’t killed three of them. He actively hoped to meet Éon again and finish the man. He had arranged for the monks of Bonne Fontaine to bury the two dead men, and he’d paid for a funeral Mass and prayers for them, but that had been more to pacify Judicaël than out of concern for their souls. He’d known that Judicaël would be annoyed with him, and he had been resigned to the hermit’s fierce lecture and stern penances. In a way he’d even been glad to have a couple of murders to confess. It had at least distracted Judicaël’s attention from the news of his betrothal. To be sure, the hermit didn’t reckon that a sin — but he did think it a mistake.

  “Gladly, gladly would I go,

  if I knew my love was there …”

  Eline’s image danced in Tiarnán’s mind, and he walked on through the woods smiling. She was beautiful, yes, but that wasn’t the whole of why he loved her. She had an unself-conscious joy about her, as though life were a new silk gown she’d just been given. Everything delighted her; everything in her was fresh and new and at one with itself.

  “Oh, the great long road I had to walk

  and the steep, steep slope to climb.

  I could not sit to take my rest

  for the thou
ght of that love of mine.

  ”She’s sweeter than the blackbird’s song

  or the nightingale on the willow tree,

  sweeter than the dew on the flowering rose,

  and sweetest of all is her kiss for me.”

  And it was all arranged; she would marry him. Soon. It was no more than courtesy to inform Duke Hoel before he set the date.

  Hoel was the actual owner of the fief of Talensac; Tiarnán only “held” it. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had held it before him, and his sons would hold it in turn, God willing, but only after they had sworn homage to the duke. Once that oath was sworn, however, the duke could not take the fief away, unless the oath was broken. In that age the feudal contract was still a fluid thing, many of its details yet to be determined. But the principals were firmly understood. Tiarnán would fight for the duke when called upon, would obey all lawful orders, would offer counsel if required — and from courtesy would advise the duke of important events such as his marriage. In return he held the manor and everything belonging to it.

  As he came out of the forest onto the main road and into the sight of his fields, he paused for a moment, as he always did, with a small involuntary jerk of the shoulders as though he were pulling the place around them like a cloak. The fields sloped away from him down to a small brook which meandered northward; from the heart of the dell poked the rickety wooden tower of the village church. Thatched houses, tiny in the distance, straggled along the road, some of them trailing plumes of smoke from cooking fires up into the clean morning air. On the far side of the brook, tall on its mound and ringed with a protective palisade, stood Tiarnán’s manor house. The mill was out of sight upstream around a bend in the brook, but Tiarnán didn’t need to see it to know it was there. Talensac was safe and well. When he started walking again, it was with the firm tread of contentment. Home. He had been born here, and he took his name from it: it was part of him. He had walked some sixty-odd miles over the previous two days, and he was tired — comfortably tired — and now he looked forward happily to resting in his own house.

  The first house in the village belonged to Glevian the blacksmith. There was a well there, since forging iron needed water, and Tiarnán paused to get a drink. He heaved the wooden cover off and let down the bucket that stood always ready beside it. While he was hauling it up again, the woman of the house, who’d heard the thump of the well cover being moved, came out, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Greetings, Machtiern,” she said, seeing Tiarnán.

  Talensac called its lord by the old title “machtiern.” This was not strictly accurate: machtierns had been officials responsible for justice in Breton villages, and had been replaced by feudal lords. The village called him “machtiern” anyway.

  “Greetings, Judith, Conwal’s daughter,” replied Tiarnán, saluting her with the bucket before drinking from it.

  Judith remained in her doorway, still nervously wiping her hands on her apron. Tiarnán finished drinking, set the bucket down, and hauled the cover back over the well. “It’s a hot day for the season,” said Judith brightly.

  Tiarnán nodded, wondering what had happened during the six days he’d been away to make her hover like this. She was plainly aching to tell him something. “Has all been well in the village?” he asked helpfully.

  Relieved, Judith threw her hands up. “Oh, Machtiern, my brother Justin —”

  “What’s he done now?” asked Tiarnán resignedly, his sense of well-being slipping away.

  Judith’s brother Justin — called Justin Braz, Little Justin, because he was enormous — was the village troublemaker. A big-boned sprawling young man with a shock of sandy hair and a broken nose, he had a habit of picking fights in alehouses and chasing unsuitable girls. In this latest incident he’d apparently combined the two, scandalously taking the sister of a freeman from the neighboring village of Montfort into an alehouse, and then brawling with her indignant brother. The brother had a broken jaw and collarbone, and the alehouse keeper, who’d tried to intervene, had bruises, two smashed ale kegs, and a broken window shutter. The bailiff of the lord of Montfort had come to Talensac to complain, and Justin had been put in the stocks.

  “But it wasn’t his fault,” insisted Justin’s sister, with more loyalty than conviction. “It was the other fellow started the fight.”

  “There never was a fight with Justin in it that wasn’t started by Justin,” replied Tiarnán. “So Kenmarcoc put him in the stocks, then?” Kenmarcoc was Tiarnán’s bailiff, in charge of the manor in his absence.

  “Yes, Machtiern,” said Judith, giving up the argument for her brother’s innocence, in which she believed no more than did her lord. “Yesterday afternoon, that was. And the bailiff of Montfort wants him to be flogged. And he says he must pay for the damage to the alehouse, and a fine as well.”

  Tiarnán sighed. People weren’t flogged in Talensac. There wasn’t even a whipping post to chain them to. Petty offenses, like moving boundary stones or taking other people’s firewood, were punished with fines and the stocks; a poacher or a thief might be beaten round the churchyard with hazel rods, and then fined and shoved in the stocks. On the other hand, the lord of Montfort was a powerful man with a number of manors under his lordship, and he would not stand for his property and peasants being damaged. If he was seriously annoyed, he might send a party of men to Talensac to seize Justin and do the flogging themselves. Private wars between manors had started for less. Tiarnán wished furiously that Justin would learn to behave himself. “Well, run up to the lis and fetch Kenmarcoc,” he ordered.

  Judith gathered up her skirts and ran down the muddy road to find Kenmarcoc at the manor house, which the village called “the lis,” and Tiarnán followed her at his usual quick walk. Glevian the blacksmith, who’d been working in the kitchen garden, trailed belatedly out after him, and several men who’d seen Tiarnán arriving while they worked in the fields followed, interested to see what he’d do. Women who’d been spinning in the open doorways of the low mud-and-wattle houses, or working in the kitchen or garden, hurried to join them. Several children came running, calling out to Tiarnán that Justin Braz was in the stocks for smashing up an alehouse at Montfort. “I know,” Tiarnán called back, but didn’t pause until he reached the center of the village, the green space before the church where the stocks stood. From there the road crossed the brook on a low wooden bridge and went on by the gates of the lis.

  Justin Braz was sitting on an upturned bucket, hands and feet locked securely in the stocks. He had a spectacular black eye, and a split lip which had filled his sandy beard with dried blood, but that would be from the fight in the alehouse. While it was traditional to throw things at people in the stocks, no one ever threw anything at Justin’s face, because he’d be able to see who’d done it. His Talensac enemies paid tribute to his strength and ferocity by hurling their mud and slops over his back. He looked sullenly at Tiarnán and at the gathering crowd of villagers.

  Tiarnán went to one of the willow trees by the brook and cut off a switch as thick as his thumb with his hunting knife. Looking impassively at Justin, he began to strip it of bark and leaves. Though Tiarnán had been born in the manor house, he had spent much of his childhood in the village. His aristocratic parents had both died in his infancy, and he had been cared for by a series of peasant nurses, overseen by the parish priest. This homely upbringing had ended when he was eight and sent off to the ducal court as a page, but he still felt in many things like a Talensac peasant. He did not need to be told that the village was offended with Justin but reluctant to bow to the wishes of the bailiff of Montfort.

  Justin cleared his throat, unsettled by his lord’s dark look. “So, Machtiern,” he said. “You’re back.”

  “Yes,” replied Tiarnán evenly, still peeling off willow bark. “And I find you here, it seems.”

  “It wasn’t my fault there was a fight,” said Justin defensively. “I just took the girl to the alehouse for a bit of fun. Her
brother didn’t need to make such a fuss about it.”

  There was a derisive snort from the assembled listeners. Respectable girls did not go to alehouses, and any brother who found a sister in one and didn’t make a fuss as good as admitted that his sister was a whore.

  “Justin,” said Tiarnán deliberately, “you are a drunkard and a brawler and a disgrace to the village. Will you have it said in Montfort that Talensac people are whoremongers?”

  The people of Talensac murmured their agreement; some of the elders nodded approval.

  “You can’t make any whores in Montfort,” said Justin resentfully. “The girls are all whores already. Machtiern, you can’t blame me for fighting. I’m a fighting man. I’ve fought well for you, as none knows better than yourself.”

  This was perfectly true. When Tiarnán was summoned to the duke’s wars, he brought with him a band of able-bodied young men from his estate, armed with spears and slings and whatever weapons they could find. Justin had fought like a tiger for Tiarnán and the duke. On the other hand, he fought like that all the time.

  “Alehouses,” said Tiarnán disdainfully, “are no place for battles.”

  “I went to the alehouse for a little joy,” Justin answered defiantly. “A man can’t always be grubbing in the fields. And I can’t afford to disappear into the forest for three days out of every seven.”