The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 7

The morrow started as fair a summer’s day as could be hoped for, warm and clear-skied and the hounds ready to run. The hare-hunt went well. The hares gave fine sport, both the ones that were caught and the ones that escaped-sometimes especially the ones that escaped. At the hunt’s end Tom sent the smallest hare away to old Goditha in the village who was ailing. “It’s old age and she won’t get over that,” he said blithely, “but meat in the cooking pot will make her daughter-in-law better resigned to having care of her.”

The rest of the dead hares were handed over to Degory to take to Helinor in the kitchen. “Tell her to make as many hare pies as she can from them. Two for the hall at supper tonight, the rest for the harvest-folk at their noontide break tomorrow,” he said and Degory trotted away happy at the likelihood of hare pie tonight and maybe tomorrow, too, because when he was not needed for the hounds, he had been at the harvest.

Not ready to end the morning, Hugh and Tom saw the hounds back to the kennel together and helped Degory, back from the kitchen, to settle the hounds to a well-earned, well-fed rest. They made easy talk while they did and while they headed to the hall to wash before dinner, beginning to feel their tiredness now but laughing as they went, reminding each other how one of the young hounds had leaned too far over in turning after a hare and gone down in a flail of legs and humiliation. By the time he had untangled himself and stood up, Bane had been standing with the dead hare in her mouth and a distainful look at him.

“Baseot’s young,” Hugh said in his defense. “He hasn’t learned to match eagerness to balance yet.”

“I’ll warrant he remembers after today!” Tom laughed.

They came from between the stable and byre into the sideyard where the wide-trunked elm that must have been young when the manor was spread welcome shade and found Miles there, sitting on the bench beneath it, doing nothing.

“Very grand,” Tom said. “Wish I had that kind of lazying time.”

Standing up, ignoring the jibe, Miles said, “One of Sir William’s men is here to see you. I thought you’d want to know before you saw him.”

“What’s he want?” Tom asked.

“To see you. That’s all I know.”

“And thought to warn me so I’d be ready, in case there’s an ambush in it?” Tom scorned. “Give it over, Miles.”

They rounded the corner of the hall into the foreyard and Sir William’s man rose from the bench beside the door where the late morning shadow still lay and it was cooler than inside the hall. Someone had properly given him a cup of ale and he had probably been happy enough in his waiting, but leaving the cup on the bench, he came to meet them, bowed, and said to Tom, “Sir, Sir William asks you come to see him.”

“When?” Tom asked.

“Now, please you.”

“Now? For what?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I’m not going now. I want to wash, sit down awhile, and have my dinner. When all that’s done, then I’ll go to Sir William.”

He moved to go on, into the hall. The man said, “Please, sir, I think he meant you to come directly back with me and I’ve been waiting awhile.”

Tom stopped, turned back to the man, and smiled on him, not unkindly but not yielding either. “I don’t care what Sir William meant. I’m dirty and tired and starting to be hungry. When I’ve taken care of all that, then I’ll go to Sir William. You’re welcome to ride back and tell him so, or you can wait, eat with us, and ride with me.”

Looking as if neither choice made him comfortable, the man bowed. “I think I’d best go back. To let him know you’re coming.”

“As you choose,” Tom said and went past him into the hall, leaving the man to bow to his back and tossing over his shoulder as he went, “If he’d had the courtesy to say what he wanted me for, I might be more willing to oblige, but since all he did was order me to come, he can damn all wait until I’m ready.”

The man was staring, startled, at Tom’s back as Hugh and Miles went past him, too. Hugh could only hope the man had wit enough not to pass that along to Sir William with the rest of the message and that dinner would take the edge off Tom’s sudden ill-humour. He had sounded exactly the way he had when readying to do battle with Sir Ralph, and Miles must have thought so, too, because he said, low-voiced for Tom not to hear, “You better go with him, Hugh.”

“Hah,” said Hugh. “You think I can stop him if he gets hot-humoured?”

“If worse comes to worse, you can throw yourself between him and Sir William.”

“If you’re keen on throwing, you go.”

“Have you ever known me to be a soothing presence when there’s trouble?”

“A point well-made,” Hugh said. “I’ll go.”

Washed and in clean hosen and shirts, they fed well on a plain dinner of new-baked bread, fresh cheese, cold pork tarts, and garden greens-lettuce, borage, cress, parsley, fennel, and young onions mixed and dressed with vinegar and salt. Afterward, leaving Miles still comfortably at the table, Tom and Hugh grudgingly shrugged into their good doublets that were unfortunately-considering the day was now moving into its midday heat-of wool. Deep crimson for Tom and forest green for Hugh. Tom, who had begun to mellow over dinner, began to unmellow, grumbling while fastening the stiffly standing upright collar high under his chin, “I’ve probably already irked Sir William enough by not being there before now that I doubt making pretty for him is going to help.”

Not any happier about it himself, Hugh said, “It can’t hurt.”

“It’s hurting me. I’m roasting.”

“I like the way your face matches your doublet,” Miles offered.

“Remind me to wrap you in a blanket and set you by the kitchen fire when we get home,” Tom returned.

They rode at an easy walk, making no haste. Sir William’s manor was barely two miles away and the day too warm for hurry. Once past Woodrim’s church, the road to Denhill curved between this year’s fallow field sloping green up to the woodshore on one side and a grassy verge, thick hedge, and golden-standing wheatfield ready to the harvest when its turn came. Because presently the work was farther off, in Pollard Field, here was strangely unpeopled, and there was not even the usual distant calling back and forth because all the harvest-folk were still at their midday rest, stretched out in the shade of the hedge and trees along Pollard Field and the stream there. The day was drowsing. Gay blue chicory, bright yellow yarrow, and bold red poppies still bloomed in the tall summer-growing grasses along the road; and if the grasses’ greens were beginning to dull with the year’s turn toward autumn, the sky was clear, high-arched, and deeply blue, and contentedly Tom said, “It’s going to be a good year for the harvest. Everything is the best I’ve ever seen it.”

“There looks to be deer in plenty, too,” Hugh said. “The hunting should be good all winter.”

“Praise St. Eustace. Not so much salt meat.” Tom had never cared much for salt-kept meat, no matter how it was cooked.

They rode beyond their own fields and for a while were quiet, easy-swaying in their saddles to their horses’ even stride, until Tom said out of wherever his thoughts had been, “You don’t mean to leave, do you, Hugh? I mean, you can if you want, but all in all I’d rather you stayed.”

Hugh had been gazing aside at the green roll of country-side, the land sloping away just here to a long view of fields and woods familiar to him all his life. They were as part of him as his own arms or legs-or heart-and no, he did not want to go away. Not now, not ever, and he turned his head toward Tom and answered as quietly as Tom had asked it, “No. I’m not wanting to leave.”

“Good.” Tom suddenly held out his hand. Hugh without hesitation reached for him in return, but better than only a handshake, they gripped each other’s arms near the elbow, forearm to forearm in promise that their friendship would go on. Then, just as suddenly, they both felt foolish for showing so much feeling and let each other go and Hugh said, for the sake of saying something, “Of course your wife may want me out from underfoot when the time comes.”

“Philippa? Not likely. She’s as used to you being underfoot as the rest of us are.”

“Do you think it’s about your marriage Sir William wants to see you?”

“Probably.”

“Are you ready to talk about it?”

“Why not? We’re getting no younger, Philippa and I. If Sir William and I can make our agreement soon enough, then the banns can be said, we can be wed by maybe Michaelmas, and I’ll have someone warm in my bed come winter.”

“And Philippa?” Hugh asked despite himself.

“She’ll have someone warm in bed, too, you dolt.”

That had not been what Hugh meant but he let it go, because after all, Tom probably had the right of it. There was small use in wondering what Philippa thought of the marriage when she was going to have no choice about it.

They were riding through Sir William’s manor now, the land that would someday be Tom’s if he married Philippa. And if Elyn birthed no sons, Hugh silently added. Ahead, as the road rolled over another lift of low hill, the manor hall and its surrounding buildings came into sight, settled tightly in a curve of land below a hill, gardens and orchard flanking it before the fields began, with an arm of forest stretched behind it, hedged from the rest. That made it easy for Miles to come unseen to the orchard’s end to meet with Philippa, Hugh thought; and wished he had not.

“Father kept too much of Woodrim for hunting,” Tom said. “Sir William has more in fields. If I can put Woodrim and Denhill together someday, it will make a manor well worth the having.”

“Do you know,” he added as they neared the manor yard, “I think I’d prefer to live here when the time comes that Sir William is no more. You can have Woodrim for a hunting lodge and all the hounds you can fit into it.”

“I have been thinking…” Hugh started, but stopped, unsure how to say what had only lately begun to shape itself in his mind.

“Go on,” Tom encouraged.

Hesitantly, Hugh said, “I’ve thought of maybe setting to breed and train hounds for more than my own use. To sell, you know. We have two good lines already. If I worked at it…”

He stopped because it sounded overbold when said aloud; but Tom reached over to punch him lightly in the arm, saying, “Good. Good for you. Do it. I’ll breed sons and you can breed hounds. And sons of your own, too, when the time comes. Once I’m married, we’ll find you a wife.”

Two servants came out from the hall to meet them as they rode into the manor foreyard, one to lead them inside, the other to take their horses away to the stable. Sir William greeted them in the great hall, not with the-at best-simmering rage Sir Ralph would have had for Tom not coming immediately, but merely courtesy as he led them into the parlor. It was larger and more comfortable than anything at Woodrim. There was a fireplace, for one thing, with a long, cushioned settle in front of it, and everything-polished wooden table, short-backed chairs, close-woven reed matting-was better-made and better-kept. It was more comfortably lived in, too. At Woodrim there was a barrenness still there from all the years of no one daring to show much of themselves to Sir Ralph, hiding from him by having very little of their own for him to attack, either by word or, in his angers, by deed. Here, there were Elyn’s tapestry frame beside a chair with the wall-hanging she had been working at for a year and more; an untidy sewing basket at one end of the settle that was surely Lucy’s; Philippa’s lute lying on the end of the seat below the window that looked out into the garden.

Besides that, there was a wooden chest standing open along one wall, scrolls and papers inside it. More writing-covered papers, an inkpot, several clean quills, and a penknife with a knotwork pattern carved around its wooden hilt were on the table where Sir William’s chair waited at one side and a tall-legged joint stool at the end. Gesturing Tom to the stool and seating himself in the chair, Sir William said, continuing his jest, “It’s a wife you need, Tom, to stir you up in the morning and set you going.”

Left to sit where he chose, Hugh went to the window bench. A brief look into the garden showed him Elyn, Philippa, and Lucy sitting together on the turf-topped seat in the slight shade cast by a trellised vine at the garden’s far end before he turned back to the room as Tom answered Sir William with an easy smile, “That’s what we’re to talk about, isn’t it? Marriage?”

Sir William, shuffling the papers on the table in front of him, said, “That’s why you’re here, yes. Your marriage to Philippa.”

A maidservant came in with a pitcher and three pewter goblets. Sir William bade her set them at the table’s other end and waved her out. “Hugh, if you would?” he asked, and Hugh rose, went, and poured the dark wine for them and for himself while Tom said, “What sort of agreement were you and Father shaping before he died?”

“Well.” Sir William settled comfortably back in his chair. “Things have changed since then. You’re no longer your father’s heir but lord of the manor. That puts a stronger front on things for you.”

Hugh returned to the window seat with his wine and sat down. Tom had already set his goblet aside and was leaning toward Sir William, saying, “It doesn’t change that you’re married to a young wife who’ll likely give you other heirs. For all I know, Elyn is bearing right now.”

Sir William slightly flushed. “She’s not.”

“That’s not to say she won’t,” Tom insisted. “If she does, there goes much if not most of Philippa’s inheritance. A daughter would mean Philippa’s inheritance is cut by half. A son would mean Philippa loses almost everything. Any marriage settlement we make has to allow for both those chances.”

“You’re the son of my best friend. He and I meant from the very first for our children to marry. It was his hope.” Sir William spread his hands in a gesture of open-heartedness. “It’s still mine.”

“My father’s main hope was to make everyone closest to him as miserable as possible,” Tom said curtly. “Now that he’s dead, I don’t have to oblige him anymore. We know what Philippa will get if she remains your heir. The question, then, is what do you have to offer in compensation for everything she loses if you have a son to replace her?”

Sir William rapped the tabletop with his knuckles. “Tom. Let’s not take a harsh line with this. We’re here to talk it out…”

“That doesn’t mean I lie down and roll over and take what I’m given. Because Sir Ralph wanted me to marry Philippa doesn’t mean I have to marry Philippa and no more than gamble that I’ll gain more than I lose by it.”

Sir William took a deep drink of his wine, maybe hoping to wash down the anger tightening his face. Hugh guessed he had not counted on argument from Tom, while Tom was suddenly feeling the freedom Sir Ralph’s death had given him; and Hugh said, hoping to forestall trouble, “Wouldn’t this better wait until Mother is here to have say in it?”

Sir William dismissed that with a flick of one hand. “We don’t need a woman’s dealing in this. Besides, she’s put herself away into that nunnery.”

“Not forever,” Hugh said. “She-”

“She’ll accept what I decide,” Tom cut in impatiently.

Sir William looked back and forth between them and-to give himself somewhere else to look, Hugh guessed-restlessly picked up the small-bladed penknife and one of the untrimmed quills lying on the table and began to work a point onto it, saying while he did, “Besides, it’s doubtful she’ll much longer have any say at all in these matters, what with this uncommon interest she’s taking in John Selenger. Not that he isn’t worth her interest but-”

“It’s Selenger who’s shown uncommon interest in her,” Hugh said. “She went into the nunnery to get away from him.”

Tom gave him a surprised look. He clearly had never connected the two, despite what Miles had said yesterday.

With a slight and maybe scornful smile at one corner of his mouth, Sir William said, trimming more intently at the quill, “It’s odd, then, that she sent him a letter asking for him to come see her there.” He looked up, first at Hugh, now as surprised as Tom, and then at Tom. “Or didn’t you know that? Sent for him and was not at all ungiving of her… company, shall we say?”

Tom and Hugh traded looks. Hugh shook his head, not believing it. Nor did Tom, who said angrily at Sir William, “I doubt both the letter and that she welcomed him. I think Miles is right. I think you’ve set him on to her.”

“John needs no ‘setting on’ to have interest in a comely woman. And why shouldn’t she have an interest in him? Their marrying would give her protection and the pleasures of a husband and-”

“And give him her property to use as he chooses,” Tom snapped, “while she loses all say in my marriage and in Hugh’s and the girls’. You’d have say over all our marriages. You’d make them to suit yourself and take the profits of them for good measure. You knew what was in Sir Ralph’s will. You wanted to keep it from us long enough for Selenger to have a clear run at her.” Tom swung around to Hugh. “Miles was right!”

Red-faced with open anger, still clutching the quill in one hand, Sir William pointed at Tom with the penknife and said furiously, “Miles has nothing to do with this. Now listen, Tom…”

Tom stood up so sharply he knocked over the stool behind him. “If Selenger wants a wife, he can have Lucy. She’s ready for marriage and it’ll save the bother of searching out someone else for her. But if all he wants is to make trouble for Mother so you can have the profit of it, then be damned to you both!”

The quill bent and broke in Sir William’s grasp. He drew in breath for an angry answer but Tom stepped around the corner of the table and leaned over him, one hand on the table, the other braced on the back of Sir William’s chair. Thrusting his face close at Sir William, he said, “As for Philippa, the next time you want to talk marriage with me…”

Sir William, crowded back into his chair, swept a hand at him like warding off a fly too close to his face. Tom jerked away, enough that Sir William was able to shove himself out of his chair and swing around to put it between them, saying angrily, “Listen, you young fool…”

But by then Hugh was across the room and gripping Tom by the arm, pleading, “Tom. Let it go. Let’s go home. You’re both too angry for this. Let’s go.” Tom shook him off. Hugh moved in front of him, between him and Sir William, insisting, “It’s wrong, Tom. Let it go for now. The day’s too hot for talking. This isn’t the time. Let’s go home for now. We can all talk later.” Spilling words the way he would have spilled water on a fire to stop it.

And Tom fell back a step and then another, threw up his hands in surrender, and said, “Yes. Fine. Good enough.” Forcing himself back from his anger, he slapped the side of Hugh’s shoulder. “You’re right. Let’s go.” And before Hugh could answer that, he swung around and stalked from the room.

Still churned with the suddenness of it all, Hugh turned around to Sir William, trying desperately to think of some apology that was not betrayal of Tom, saying, “He’ll settle. I’m sorry. We’ll be back. Or you can come to Woodrim next time.”

“Supposing there is a next time,” Sir William snapped; but like Tom, he was forcing his anger back into control and said a little less tersely, “Yes. Next time I’ll come to Woodrim maybe. I’m sorry, too.”

He made to lay the penknife still clutched in his fist onto the table beside him, then went rigid, staring at it so that Hugh looked, too. And saw the short, sharp blade was bloodied. He and Sir William raised their eyes from it together, looking at each other with mutual unbelief before Sir William half-whispered, “I forgot I was even holding it.”

“You must have… when you swung at him… you must have…”

“I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know… I didn’t mean…”

“He didn’t know either.” Hugh was already away from the table, leaving. “It’s so sharp he must not even have felt it.” And with the high, crimson collar of his doublet and no one looking for blood…

By the time he was out of the parlor, Hugh was running. Running, he passed through the great hall without seeing it, ran out of it into the yard where no one was, and crossed it, still at a run, into the stableyard, where a stableman leading Hugh’s unsaddled and unbridled Foix away from the watering trough startled to a stop, staring.

“My brother,” Hugh demanded. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” the man said. “Stormed in and rode out. He’s gone.”

“You couldn’t have saddled his horse in the time.”

“I hadn’t unsaddled it yet. I was tending to this one. I’d just finished wiping him down and was coming out for the other one. It was tied there.” He nodded to a ring in the stable wall. “Sir William said you’d be here a longish while so I was making no hurry about it…”

Hugh grabbed the lead rope from him. “My bridle. Get it. Fast.”

The man went-not fast enough-into the stable and came out with both saddle and bridle. Hugh grabbed the bridle from him, flung a rein around Foix’s neck to hold him where he was, stripped off the halter, and bridled Foix as fast as his suddenly clumsy fingers would let him. Foix shook his head and tried to back away and Hugh cursed him. The stableman, still not fast enough, made to throw the saddle on Foix but Hugh said, “No, I haven’t time,” and flung himself up and astride Foix’s bare back, gathered the reins, swung him around, and set him into a gallop out of the yard.

Tom couldn’t be far ahead. He’d know by now he was bleeding. He’d have stopped to deal with it. Over the first rise of the road he’d surely be in sight.

He wasn’t. And beyond the rise the road curved and the forest came down to its edge, cutting off longer view, and Hugh, leaned low over Foix’s neck, dug his heels harder into the horse’s sides to set him faster. But Tom must have ridden with an anger that more than equaled Hugh’s desperation because it was beyond there, after another rise of the road, that Hugh finally saw…

… not Tom. His horse. A bay, like Hugh’s. Riderless. Grazing on the grassy verge beside Woodrim’s wheatfield near a spreading oak tree that in harvest served the workers for shade when they broke for their dinner or rest times. But it was barley harvest now. There was no one in sight here. Not even Tom. Only his bay horse.

Confused, Hugh drew rein, bringing Foix to a halt beside the other horse. And only then saw Tom. Lying on his stomach in the long grass at the edge of the oak’s deep shade, his head pillowed on one arm as if he might be sleeping, his face turned away from Hugh, who suddenly wanted to go no nearer.

But he slid from Foix’s back and went toward him, saying unsteadily, “Tom? What are you doing?”

He knelt and touched Tom’s shoulder; said, “Tom?” again; and then-all unwillingly-took hold of his shoulder and started to turn him over.

And knew by the body’s utter slackness, even before he saw the dulled, empty-staring eyes, that Tom was no longer there.