The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 4

They are not so bad as that,” Master Wyck said stiffly. “There are, however, certain provisions that I thought best to make known as soon as possible, particularly concerning you, my lady.”

“Please, then,” Lady Anneys said. Her face was calm, her voice was even, but her hands were clasped tightly together in her lap. “Continue.”

Master Wyck cleared his throat again. “It might be best if I read them out to you as they stand, so there can be no mistaking.”

“We’re in for it,” Miles said, for only Hugh to hear.

Hugh jerked a fist sideways against his thigh to shut him up.

“What Sir Ralph willed is this,” Master Wyck said.“‘ To my wife Lady Anneys Woderove, besides her dower lands I leave ten marks yearly, such sum to be paid from such lands as our son Thomas inherits in his name and from such heirs as follow him, for the term of her life or until she fails in such provision as here follows, namely that she live chastely, virtuously, and unmarried. Likewise, she is to have full say and rule concerning our unmarried children’s marriages as given above but her rights therein to be utterly lost should she marry or prove, by the determination of her fellow executors, to have been unchaste or lived unvirtuously. Should such happen, the right and control of such of our children as are yet unmarried and the rights and profits of their marriages shall fall to my other executors, with Sir William Trensal to become chief executor with final say in all matters and the ten marks yearly that were hers to go to him in her stead. Likewise, should any child go against her wishes in the matter of their marrying or against Sir William Trensal’s wishes in like matter, should she fail in her duty as above stated and her rights fall to him, their inheritance is to be utterly and finally lost, to pass to their heir as hereafter given in this will.’”

Master Wyck ceased to read, looked up from his paper, and said, “There is a clause then detailing which of his children inherits from whom in the event of one or another’s death. Master Hugh is to inherit should Master Thomas die before him, but should Master Hugh die first and without heirs of his body, his inherited properties are to revert to Master Thomas. One daughter’s dowry is to be increased by the other daughter’s should one or the other of them die before marriage and all to be shared equally between their brothers should both daughters die unmarried.”

He finished. Around him the silence stretched out, becoming too long before Miles said very quietly, “What it comes to, then, is that Lady Anneys has full and final decision over not only Lucy and Ursula’s marriages but Tom’s and Hugh’s.”

“Yes.” Master Wyck’s face was blank and his voice level.

“She chooses or agrees to whom Tom and Hugh and Lucy and Ursula marry,” Miles went on, “or they lose every part of their inheritance. Even Tom.”

“Yes,” Master Wyck agreed again.

“Unless she marries or lives unchaste or… what was the other word?”

“Unvirtuously,” Master Wyck supplied.

“Unvirtuously,” Miles said. “If she does, then Sir William is to become chief executor in her place.”

“Yes.”

“Meaning,” said Miles, “that Sir Ralph has bound at least her and Tom almost as completely as when he lived. Neither of them has any freedom outside the narrow limits he’s made for them.”

“I would hardly say the limits are so narrow as all that,” Master Wyck said stiffly.

“Only because you don’t have to live inside them!” Miles snapped.

“Miles,” Lady Anneys said quietly. But Tom, having sorted everything into place, burst out, “He’s right, though! The thing is written to keep a stranglehold on both of us. Even dead, he won’t let go!”

“That is commonly the way with wills,” Master Wyck pointed out. “The testator determines what his heirs-”

“Most testators don’t try to keep their dead hands clenched around their heirs’ throats,” Miles snarled. “Do they?”

“No. No, not usually to the extent herein. No. But that does not render it less legal…”

“What it comes down to,” said Tom, “is that either Mother lives exactly the way Father has willed her to or else she gets nothing and has no say in anything.”

“One can hardly say she gets nothing. Her dower land is hardly nothing,” Master Wyck protested.

“It’s nothing compared to ten marks yearly. Come to that, how the hell am I going to find that much money out of what’s left to me without beggaring myself anyway? And who’s he to say whether she marries again or not now she’s finally quit of him? How-”

“Tom,” Lady Anneys said gently. “I have no need of those ten marks.”

“My lady,” Master Wyck said, “you can hardly refuse-”

“I can ‘loan’ them back to my son before he’s given them to me,” Lady Annneys said, unexpectedly firm. “There’s nothing in the will against that. As for marrying or not marrying, my living chastely or unchastely, I have no intention toward either marriage or unchastity so there is no problem there either.” She looked, smiling, at Hugh and reached to touch Tom’s hand gripping the arm of his chair; he turned his hand over to hold hers, and she went on, “Nor do I think either of my sons is such a fool that I’m likely to refuse who they choose to marry.” She moved her smile to Miles. The angers that had been writhing up around them all were suddenly, simply gone. Even Miles’ and even before she said, “The most I might ask is that they help their nephew, whose inheritance has been so badly handled by their father. Is there anything else from my husband’s will that we should know?”

Master Wyck fumbled, “No. There’s nothing else, I think. The minor bequests. The provision for Masses. Those are, of course, the executors’ concern…”

Lady Anneys rose to her feet. “We’ll see to them, surely.” She looked toward the window, where the sunlight had begun to fade, the sun gone behind the forest. “You and Sir William have a ways to ride. You’ll wish to be going?”

It was a gracious dismissal and Master Wyck took it graciously, though as everyone stood up, Miles muttered in Hugh’s ear, “Probably glad to escape so easily,” before offering aloud to fetch Elyn and Philippa.

“If you would,” Lady Anneys said.

While Miles went parlorward, she moved with Sir William and Master Wyck toward the hall’s outer door, making light talk and no haste, with Tom and Hugh following behind them. In the yard, while they waited for Elyn and Philippa and for their horses to be brought, Sir William took Lady Anneys by the hand and promised, “I’ll come back in a few days, my lady. We can go over matters then, to see where we stand and all when you’ve had time to rest.”

She thanked him gravely, thanked Master Wyck, prompted Tom to do the same, kissed both Elyn and Philippa when they came out, and stood waving to them all as they rode away, with Tom on her right and Hugh and Miles on her left, each with a hand raised in vague farewell. But when the riders were well gone, Lady Anneys’ hand dropped to her side, her shoulders slumped, and her weariness was suddenly, nakedly plain. Tom put an arm around her, saying, “It’s over with, Mother. It’s done. We can all have rest now.”

She leaned against him, her eyes shut, her head sideways against his shoulder. “Rest,” she agreed on a long sigh. “Yes. Let’s all do with that.”

What surprised Hugh in the days that followed was how easily they learned to live without Sir Ralph. A few times in the first week after the funeral Lucy and Ursula went together to the churchyard to pray at his grave. No one else did and Lucy soon stopped and Ursula, so far as Hugh knew, went only once more after that and then bothered no more either.

The household remained, as always, Lady Anneys’ concern, with Lucy and Ursula learning beside her as she not only gave orders to the servants but worked at such things as pastry-making in the kitchen, weeding among the cabbages in the greens garden, and sometimes scrubbing clothes in the laundry because, as she often said to Lucy’s protests, “There’s no better way to know a thing than by learning to do it. Even when you have servants to do it for you, you have to know it yourself to understand whether they do it well or ill, and always there are things better done yourself than by anyone else.”

Tom went on much as he had been, ordering and overseeing things about the manor, but all went more evenly and easily without Sir Ralph there to make trouble where none had to be. Tom could even be heard whistling as he went striding from one task to another, and in the evenings he often told about his day in ways that made them all laugh aloud with him. Laughter, Hugh realized, had been scant here while Sir Ralph lived.

For Hugh there were still the hounds. If they missed Sir Ralph, they did not show it. Even Bevis had given up his restlessness and unexpectedly attached himself to Miles, following him everywhere-not entirely to Miles’ pleasure-except up the steep stairs to the bedchamber. Besides that, nothing much was changed except the hounds were now all Hugh’s own, any choices about them all his to make and no one else’s. Not that he was making many decisions yet, willing to let things go on as they presently were. One of the smooth-coated coursing hounds, Baude, was in whelp from a breeding with Makarie and that was as much of the future as Hugh was ready to look at. For now it was enough to ride out every day, not to hunt but simply with the hounds loping beside his horse to keep them fit. His lovely hounds. His.

And then there was Miles. Without his anger at Sir Ralph, he sometimes seemed almost uncertain what to feel, as if thrown off balance by the void; but he joined in the laughter when it came and seemed, like Tom, to go easier about his work. It was maybe awareness that he’d be losing his work soon that made it harder for him than the rest of them to find his balance. The vague plan was that he would stay at Woodrim until the escheat of Sir Ralph’s lands was done-the determining by a royal officer of what the deceased had lawfully held, to whom it lawfully went, and what fees could be had for the king from it all. Once that was settled, hopefully by Michaelmas at September’s end, he would be away to his own manor and what they would do for a woodward here was undecided yet. In the meanwhile he went on as usual, often away to the woods-but never by himself these days, always with a servant or at least the wolfhound Bevis because the day after Sir Ralph’s funeral Lady Anneys had asked it of him. “Please,” she had said. “For safety’s sake, don’t go alone.”

That was the nearest anyone spoke of Sir Ralph’s death. Or of Sir Ralph at all. Except that Lady Anneys continued to dress in widow-black, he might have died long ago and in an ordinary way, instead of less than a month ago and murdered, with his murderer yet unfound. Hugh wished he could leave off thinking about that day as completely as everyone had left off talking about it, but all too often his thoughts circled back to it, trying to see something, anything, that might have told how it was going to end. Something…

But there was nothing, even now. Philippa and her uncle had sung together. Sir Ralph and Sir William had sat up from their dozes and some chance remark by Sir William about someone they knew lately buying a hawk had set Sir Ralph to one of his favorite rages against hawking-how he would never take it up, not to save himself, no, by God’s teeth he wouldn’t. All that fiddling with hoods and jesses and staying up nights on end and the rot about who can have what kind. “Gerfalcons for a king, peregrines for earls, merlins for ladies, hobys for boys. God’s teeth, give me hounds and a long chase with a death at the end of it and venison on the table or a good hare pie. If I want a damned duck for my supper, I’ll send to the poultry yard for one.”

The talk had gone off then to the morning’s hare-hunt and somehow come around to Sir Ralph saying suddenly at Tom, “They’re pushing their plough-land out again, those peasants of yours. I swear I’ve lost an acre of pasture.”

From where he still sat beside Philippa, Tom had answered even-voiced, apparently not in the humour for quarreling, “I’ll see to it.”

“You damnably well will. I don’t keep this manor for the peasants’ pleasure. You’re not to let them graze that pasture again this summer either. Cattle-cropped grass is no good for hare-hunting and you know it.”

“They have to graze somewhere.”

“They want to keep too many cattle. That’s where the trouble lies.”

“They-”

“Don’t quarrel with me, boy! This is my manor. I’ll do as I please about it. If any of your peasants don’t like it, let him pay to go free and get out of here and be damned to him.”

“It’s said Clement is going to do that come Michaelmas quarter day,” Tom said bitterly.

“He’s one of the ones who’s been nothing but trouble at almost every manor court, isn’t he? Good riddance to him.”

“He’s one of the best men in the village,” Tom had said hotly. “It’s shame to lose him.”

“It’s not shame to be quit of his whining over ‘his rights’ any longer. It’s bad enough I have to listen to you whine for him.”

“Then don’t!” Tom had sprung to his feet. “But don’t you whine at me when the place goes to ruin, because when it does, it will be your doing, not mine!”

“Like hell it will!”

But Tom, red-faced and hands in fists, was striding out of the clearing toward the greenway and neither looked back nor answered. Sir Ralph spat into the grass after him and then, as if satisfied by a good day’s work, lay back onto the cushions, smiling. The wary silence that always followed one of his angers ended with Lady Anneys gently pointing out a flaw in Lucy’s embroidery. Elyn said something about how well her own was coming on and Miles moved from the spring’s edge to sit where Tom had been, beside Philippa, asking her and Master Selenger, “Sing something else?”

Master Selenger obligingly started the lilting, “The Lady Fortune is friend and foe…” As he reached the second line, “The poor she makes rich, the rich poor also…” Philippa began it over again with, “The Lady Fortune is friend and foe…” and as Master Selenger reached, “Turning woe to good and good to woe,” Miles joined in with, “The Lady Fortune is friend and foe…” so that the song turned and turned around on itself as, following behind him, Master Selenger started over again.

Not about to spoil their singing by adding his own, Hugh rose and went to where Degory and the hounds were sprawled asleep in the shade beyond the spring. He stirred Degory awake with a friendly foot in the ribs and they settled together to check the hounds’ paws for cuts or thorns. That Miles could sing-and sing well-for some reason always surprised Hugh, probably because Miles so rarely sang at all, but he and Philippa and Master Selenger were happily winding and warring their way through the Lady Fortune song, repeating its one verse faster and faster to see who would lose their way first, while Sir William and Elyn clapped to the beat and Lady Anneys propped up Lucy, who had fallen over with laughter.

Never given to singing or to noticeable pleasure in listening to it, Sir Ralph stood up and came over to join Hugh presently crouched beside young Skyre, seeing to a slight scrape on her ear. Despite she was nearly full-grown, she was still as scatter-brained as a puppy, with more eagerness than good sense when it came to the chase and at least twice this morning had been knocked over by Somer for being too bold among her elders and betters. But to Sir Ralph’s “How is she?,” Hugh answered, “Taken no hurt that I can find besides this scratch and it’s not much.”

“Let me see.”

Hugh had shifted a little aside without getting up, and Sir Ralph had squatted down on his heels to take hold of the young hound’s head in his usual rough way, holding her hard by the muzzle while pulling her ear up for a better look.

Sir William strolled toward them, asking, “Trouble?”

“Nothing much,” Sir Ralph had said, had let her go and stood up, turning away from her.

It was just then that something among the trees must have caught Skyre’s eye-a squirrel maybe, or the bright flit of a bird among the bushes. No one ever knew what. All that Hugh-crouched beside her and rummaging in a leather bag for an ointment for the scratch-saw was her head snap up, suddenly alert. Knowing what a fool she could be, he had dropped the bag and grabbed for her collar but too late; she was away in a single long bound and gone among the trees and he was left sprawled stomach-down on the grass while above him, Sir Ralph roared out, “Skyre!” Snarling, “Get up, you fool,” he kicked at Hugh’s hip, grabbed up a leash lying there, and whipped it across Degory’s bare legs with, “Idiot! Get after her!” Swore, “Damned idiot!” at Hugh just scrambling up, hit him across the back with the leash for good measure, and went furiously away into the woods himself, slashing the leash at the underbrush as he went.

Within the hour he was dead.

When the body was found, they had made the hue and cry for his murderer. Law required that and fear made certain of it. The search had spread through and beyond the woods. They had tried to find a track to set the dogs on but maybe they had trammeled too much in the first horror of finding the body or there was too much blood; even Somer, best of the lymers, failed to take up a scent. Nor did Hugh with his huntsman’s skills find any track to follow nor had anyone at all been seen. They had been left with nothing more to do but carry the body home and send a man to bring the crowner.

It sometimes took days for a crowner to come but Master Hampden had ridden in with his men late the next day, while Hugh was gone to fetch Ursula. He had viewed the body and where it had been found, asked questions, but received few answers because no one had many to give. By the time Hugh had returned from St. Frideswide’s, he was holding his inquest, where it was officially found that Sir Ralph’s death was indeed murder by person or persons unknown. “And that,” Master Hampden had apologized afterward to Lady Anneys, “is the best I can presently give you.”

He had ridden away before the funeral, with promise that a search would be made and questions asked about likely strangers seen anywhere around there, adding a warning to keep watch themselves for anyone and anything-and as easily as that it had all been settled, tidied away into the crowner’s records as tidily as Sir Ralph into his grave. Hugh wished his thoughts could be as tidily done with and put away; but aside from them-and time was dulling their edge, he found-things on the whole were very good. The summer was coming on to Lammastide with promise of a fine harvest if the weather held, and Tom had asked him what the chances were of having venison for a start-of-harvest feast he was minded to give the villagers.

Hugh had warned, “You do this, you risk making a new custom they’ll want every year,” and Tom had answered, “Father made enough bad customs here over the years that a good new one will likely get us more than it loses.”

Therefore, tomorrow Hugh would ride out with some of the hounds to find where best to hunt a roedeer stag in a day or two; and though neither he nor Tom had said it, they both knew the fact that the hunt would be the first one since Sir Ralph’s death made it all the sweeter.

But this afternoon Hugh had spent helping Degory clean out the kennel and kennel yard and spread clean straw, and he was satisfyingly tired and hardly thinking of anything at all as he bent over the washbasin set on the bench outside the hall door to scrub his face and hands before going in to supper. The late afternoon sun was warm on his back through his shirt, and when he dried his face and hands, the linen towel smelled of the rosemary bush over which it must have been draped after laundering. Inside the hall there was the thud of tabletops going onto trestles as the servants set up for supper and his stomach growled with timely hunger; but the soft thud of a horse’s hoofs behind him turned him around to see Gib of the stable leading a saddled and bridled gray horse toward him across the yard.

Frowning with puzzlement rather than displeasure, Hugh said, “That’s Master Selenger’s horse, isn’t it?” Knowing it was.

“Aye,” Gib answered. “The man is back again. I make that three days running he’s been here.”

“It is,” Hugh agreed.

Sir William, a few days after his promised visit to see what help or comfort he might give Lady Anneys, had sent Master Selenger to ask if Tom needed help with anything and promise that he had only to ask if he did. Tom had thanked Master Selenger but said, “It’s what I’ve been doing for years here. The only thing that’s changed is that it’s all easier done without Father to tell me what’s wrong with everything I do.”

Master Selenger had laughed at that, said he was likewise charged with asking after Lady Anneys, and had ended by sitting with her in her garden, talking for a somewhat while. When he came back yesterday, he had brought Elyn with him and not seen Tom at all but kept company with Lady Anneys, Elyn, Lucy, and Ursula in the garden for much of the afternoon.

And here he was back again. Without Elyn. And not to see Tom, who had gone past the kennel two hours ago on his way to the east field and not yet come back.

Hugh, frowning, turned back toward the hall and immediately smoothed the frown away to greet Master Selenger coming out.

“Hugh,” Master Selenger returned cheerfully. “Good day. I hear there’s to be a hunt.”

“We mean so,” Hugh said. “Would you and Sir William be minded to join us for it when the time comes, do you think?”

“Surely,” Master Selenger answered and they talked hounds a little before he made his farewell, thanked Gib, and gave him a small coin for waiting with his horse.

Watching him ride away, Gib gave the coin a toss and said, “He’s a gentleman, is that one.”

Hugh agreed to that, but while Gib tucked the coin into his belt pouch and headed back for the stable, he stood watching Master Selenger out of sight. A man much about Lady Anneys’ own age. Well-featured, well-kept, pleasant-mannered.

All things Sir Ralph had not been or bothered to be.

Hugh went in search of his mother and found her in her garden, alone, standing at the gate toward the cart-track, looking outward across the field where the last of the hay, dried and carefully gathered into haycocks, was waiting to be stacked or else carted away to byres and the stable. In the westering sunlight they looked like heaps of gold, and in their way they were-food through the winter for horses and cattle. Lady Anneys turned as Hugh neared her and said, smiling, “I was thinking I might get a rosebush next year. When I was a girl, a neighbor had one in her garden. The flowers were more red than anything I’ve ever seen and smelled so beautifully. I’ve always wanted one of my own.”

Hugh had not known that. He had never heard her want anything at all, he realized; and wondered, with a twitch of what felt like guilt for never having wondered it before, what else she had wanted and never had. Her silence about anything she felt or wanted had been a way of hiding from Sir Ralph, he suddenly thought. They had all hidden from him in whatever ways they could. Tom had used his anger, Miles his mockery, Hugh the talk of hounds and hunting. Lady Anneys had had her silence.

But in keeping Sir Ralph shut out, they had kept shut away from each other, too. For safety’s sake you left as few gaps in your wall as possible. Even banded together the way he had been with Miles and Tom against Sir Ralph, Hugh knew how much he had never said. And Lady Anneys had had no one at all. No friends because around Sir Ralph friends had been impossible to have. Not her children. She could give them her love and what comfort there was in that but not her protection and assuredly not her thoughts.

But none of that was anything he could say to her and he said instead, “I’ll find you a rosebush, come the spring. I’ll ride to Northampton, Oxford, or even London to do it, if I have to.”

Lady Anneys smiled at him and said, “That would be lovely.” But not as if she believed it would truly happen. Which goaded Hugh to ask, a little more abruptly than he might have, “Where are Lucy and Ursula?” Had she been here alone with Master Selenger?

“I sent them in with my sewing when Master Selenger left. I was ready to be alone awhile.”

Hugh stepped back, ready to leave her, but she held out her hand and said, “But I’d welcome your company. You’re not a chattering young girl.”

Hugh returned to her side. She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and they stood together in companionable silence, Hugh looking out at the hayfield, Lady Anneys toying with the purple flowers of whatever it was growing tall beside the gate, until in what he thought might be a safe while, Hugh asked easily, as if merely making talk, “Was Master Selenger good company this afternoon?”

“Very good,” Lady Anneys said.

Hugh waited but she said nothing more and in another while he said, “I wish nothing would change from how it is now.”

Lady Anneys let that lie for a few moments before she said, “That would be good. But Tom will likely marry soon.”

“Philippa?” Hugh asked, despite he knew the answer.

Lady Anneys a little nodded. “And Miles will go away to his manor before then. It’s time and past for him to take up his own life.”

“This is his life,” Hugh said and could not keep an edge from his voice. “Here. With us.”

Lady Anneys slightly shook her head against that. “Miles hasn’t had a life here. He’s had Hell. He needs to be free of here. He needs the chance to heal as best he can from everything Sir Ralph did to ruin him.”

“Sir Ralph is gone,” Hugh said stubbornly.

“In body,” Lady Anneys answered.

And though his soul was surely gone to Hell, he lingered in other ways, Hugh bitterly, silently admitted.

“And you,” his mother went on. “You’re free to go, too, if you want.”

“There’s nowhere else I want to go.” Why should there be, when everything he wanted was here? “You, too,” he said. “You’re free, too. To stay or go.”

“I’ll likely go,” she said. She must have felt him tense under her hand because she squeezed his arm and added mildly, “Once Tom is married, Philippa should be mistress here without a mother-in-law at her back, watching her every move. I have my dower lands to go to and I will.” Her smile deepened. “I can find you a wife and husbands for Lucy and Ursula from there as well as from here, probably. Unless you want to find your own?”

Hugh made a sound that admitted to nothing.

Lady Anneys laughed at him, squeezed his arm again, and let him go. “There’s no hurry, though. And after all, Ursula may choose the nunnery.”

“Do you think she will?”

“I don’t know.”

Hugh tried to think of Ursula grown up and shut away into a nunnery but couldn’t. Not that she’d be any more lost to them in the nunnery than married, he supposed. And a nunnery might be easier to visit than a brother-in-law, he half-jestingly supposed to himself, ready to let go of thought about what might come and be simply at peace in the summer-warm quiet, waiting to be called to supper.

But quietly, hardly louder than the bees humming in the beebalm in the garden bed behind her, Lady Anneys said, “I think, when you return Ursula to St. Frideswide’s, I’ll go with her and stay, too, for a time.”

Startled, Hugh demanded, “Why?” More roughly than he might have if she had not taken him so much by surprise.

For a long moment she did not answer; then said only, still quietly, “It would be best, I think,” in a way that somehow stopped him asking more.