The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 6

The bright, late summer days had turned from warm to hot, and Tom, Hugh, and Miles were lingering in the shadowy hall after midday dinner, none of them in haste to be about their afternoon work. Hugh had spent the early morning riding out to exercise the dogs while the day was still somewhat cool and then he and Degory had rather uselessly worked with Skyre, who was seeming less and less likely to ever be a usable scent-hound after all. In the alarm after Sir Ralph was found, no one had remembered her save Degory, and when they carried Sir Ralph’s body back to the manor, he had stayed behind, searched for her, found her, “Cowering under a bush close by where he was,” he told Hugh when he went to ask his help. “She maybe saw it or something. It’s like she’s witless. I’ve brought her in. She won’t stop shaking.” Nor did she until Hugh had wrapped her in a blanket, tightly swaddling her almost the way a nurse would do a howling baby to quiet it. But Skyre had not howled, only trembled, and even now still trembled and cringed at any sudden noise or movement. Still, she had been too promising a hound to let go without he tried to save her, but it had made for a discouraging morning and because he had nothing particularly planned for this afternoon, he was simply sitting on the dais step with Baude between his knees, stroking a brush down her back and sides not so much because she needed the grooming as for the pleasure it gave them both.

Tom, with seemingly no more ambition toward the rest of the day than Hugh had, was leaned back in his chair behind the table, legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes shut although-if anyone had asked him-he would have said he was not sleeping, only not ready to move. He had spent the morning walking the fields with Lucas, the reeve, overseeing the start of the barley harvest, and once he bestirred himself he’d be out again all the afternoon.

Miles had his head down on his crossed arms on the table, and under the table Bevis was stretched out with his chin resting on Miles’ foot. When Hugh had laughingly goaded him at first about the hound’s unwanted devotion, Miles had grumbled, “Can’t you kennel him with the rest of the hounds?”

“He’s too used to being with Sir Ralph. I doubt he’d do anything but make trouble if put with the other hounds.”

“Instead, he’s making trouble for me,” Miles had muttered. But lately, except when he remembered to complain, he had begun to seem as content in Bevis’ company as the hound was in his; he had not, Hugh noted, moved his foot since Bevis’ chin came to rest on it.

Miles and Bevis had been out about woodward duties from not much after dawn today, away to Skippitt Coppice to see where best to start the autumn cutting. Most times lately when Miles went out, George from the village went with him and, “I think he might do well enough in my place the while until you find someone else,” Miles had told Tom over dinner. “He knows what he’s seeing when he looks at it.”

That would be something to tell Mother when she came home, Hugh thought. What they would do for a woodward was one of the things she had talked of when he was taking her and Ursula to St. Frideswide’s. He had taken the chance to ask her then when she thought to come home and been relieved when she said, “Before Miles leaves us, surely.”

He had been half-afraid she was thinking of nunhood for herself. It would be the most straightforward way to fulfill Sir Ralph’s order that she live a virtuous, unmarried life, and almost Hugh could want it to be that simple for her. Almost but not quite.

Nor did he want it for Ursula, he had admitted to himself. She had been quiet out of the ordinary on the ride to St. Frideswide’s. Once, to Hugh’s pleasure, she had started to whistle back to a linnet in a hedgerow as they rode past, but Lady Anneys had reminded her that whistling was unladylike and Ursula had fallen quiet again, until-outside the cloister door in St. Frideswide’s guesthall courtyard when Hugh had lifted her up for a better embrace good-bye-she had clung to him and whispered in his ear, “I wish I was going home with you.”

He had whispered back, “I wish you were, too,” but had set her down and let the waiting nun take her hand as he turned to embrace his mother, too.

She had said nothing, only when she drew back from him had looked deeply into his eyes as if searching for something before briefly touching his cheek and turning away. He had stood there in the courtyard, watching as she and Ursula went inside, until the door was closed behind them, shutting them in and him out, and then he had ridden away, as oddly bereft as if that door would never open to let either of them out again.

To the good, he was not bereft by Lucy being gone to stay with Elyn. That was merely pleasant; but along with missing Lady Anneys and Ursula, he missed Tom sharing the loft with him and Miles. Before she had left, Lady Anneys had told Tom he should move into the lord of the manor’s bedchamber above the parlor when she was gone. “It’s yours,” she had said. “You may as well grow used to it.”

“But where will you sleep?” Tom had protested.

“Not there again, if I can help it,” she had said. “In the girls’ chamber with Lucy, probably.”

But it was odd to have Tom gone from their own chamber. “It’s not that we miss your snoring,” Miles had told Tom the first morning after he had shifted. “It’s just hard getting used to the quiet.” They had been standing in the hall, breaking their morning fast, and Tom had thrown a heavy-crusted chunk of bread at him. Miles had ducked out of the way and Bevis had seized the crust for his own.

Now Miles gave a wide yawn and sat up.

“Don’t,” said Tom without opening his eyes. “If you start moving, I’ll have to.”

“All right,” Miles said and put his head down again.

Hugh, still stroking the brush down Baude’s back, said, “I’m thinking to hare-hunt tomorrow morning. Helinor,” the manor’s cook, “says she wouldn’t mind some fresh meat for the pot. Either of you interested in coming?”

Tom stretched and said, “Yes. Good. I’ll come.”

Miles mumbled into the crook of his arm, “Not me.”

They sat in silence a little longer, until Miles said, still without lifting his head, “Did you know there’s a copy of Sir William’s will in Sir Ralph’s strong-chest, Tom?”

“Um-hum,” Tom murmured. His eyes were closed again. “There’s Sir William’s will, and deeds, and rent statements, and papers that look left over from Sir Ralph’s lawyer-days. I’m still reading through them. It’s killing me.”

Idly, Hugh asked, “What were you doing in the strong-chest, Miles?” The iron-bound, padlocked box was kept under Sir Ralph’s… under Tom’s bed, to hold what ready money there was and whatever deeds, charters, and suchlike as were worth safe-guarding.

“I had him fetch me some pence yesterday,” Tom answered, rather than Miles. “To pay old Wat for turfing that place where the stream bank had started to slide. He made good work of it. Wat, I mean.”

“Sir William’s will was lying right on top of everything else,” Miles said, “and I was curious.”

“You were snooping,” Tom said lazily and not as if he minded.

Miles sat up, stretched his back and crooked his neck as if they were stiff, and asked, “What did you think of the will?”

“I thought it read pretty much like Father’s.” Tom sounded not in the least interested. “He’ll have to make a new one, now Sir Ralph is dead and can’t be his executor. But if Philippa and I are married soon enough, he won’t have to bother with deciding who’s to oversee her marriage in his place.”

“You’re thinking you’ll marry soon?” Hugh asked.

Tom rolled his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Might as well, since we’re going to do it sooner or later anyway and none of us are much interested in a year’s mourning for Sir Ralph anyway, are we?”

“If Sir Ralph had a copy of Sir William’s will in his safe-keeping,” Miles said, “don’t you suppose Sir William has a copy of Sir Ralph’s?”

“I suppose.” Tom did not sound like he was supposing it very hard.

“Then he must have known everything that was in it long before Master Wyck told us. Just as Sir Ralph must have known what was in his will, too,” Miles persisted.

Still lazily, Tom granted again, “I suppose.”

Hugh looked up, frowning warily. Miles was going somewhere with this.

Miles reached over and shook Tom’s knee. “But remember how Sir William tried to put off Master Wyck telling us about it?”

“He thought it was too soon to be burdening Mother with it,” Tom said. “That’s all.”

“Was it?” Miles demanded. “What about Selenger?”

Tom finally drew himself up straight in his chair. “What about him?”

“Mind how he was here so often before she went away? Always coming to see her? Keeping her company for half an afternoon at a time?”

“Yes,” Tom granted.

“I half-thought…” Hugh started, thought better of saying it but knew there was no going back, and finished slowly, “I’ve half-thought she went with Ursula to be away from him.”

Tom was deeply frowning now. “She never said that, did she?”

“No. It was just something I… felt.”

Carefully, as if he had considered the words for quite a while, Miles said, “He’s been to the nunnery to see her.”

“To see Mother? Don’t be witless,” Tom protested. “Why would he go without telling us he was? Or else, when he came back, tell us how she is?”

Miles held silent, waiting for them to figure it out for themselves. Tom took hardly longer than Hugh did to see where Miles was going; but while Hugh said nothing, Tom protested more strongly, “Miles, don’t try that one. He’s not angling for her, if that’s what you’re going around the bush to say.”

“Then why did he go?” Miles said.

“I don’t know.” Tom was impatient about it. “A letter from Elyn. Complaints from Lucy. Sir William wanting to ask her something. I don’t know.”

“Why not ask if we had any word to send her?” Miles demanded. “That would be courtesy.”

Tom made an impatient gesture at him. “Give it over, Miles. He’s not fool enough to be after her if that’s what you’re on about. She won’t marry again. Why would she? She’s too old to want another husband, anyway.” He stood up and stretched his arms wide to the sides. “It’s too hot for this much thinking. I’m away to see how far they’re likely to get with Pollard Field today. Time you shifted yourself, too.”

Miles waved a lazy hand at him, saying nothing. Nor did Hugh. Tom left, and when he was gone, Miles stood up, still saying nothing, and left, too, with Bevis at his heels. Hugh stayed a little longer where he was, stroking Baude with his hand now, considering everything Miles had said and some of the things he had not, before finally rising to his feet. Baude, who was beginning to feel the weight of her whelping, rose more grudgingly, and he told her, “You stay here.” He pointed at the hall’s cool stone floor. “Stay.”

With a whoof that Hugh took for gratitude, Baude lay down again, and he went in search of Miles.

He found him in the stable, sitting on a manger’s edge feeding carrot bits to Lanval, the squat roan gelding with carthorse in its ancestry that Sir Ralph had said was good enough for him. Bevis, lying flat on his side under the manger, opened an eye at Hugh, decided he was no problem, and shut it again. Hugh leaned a shoulder against the post outside the stall to show he meant to stay awhile and asked, “Where did you get the carrots? And why’s Lanval in stable rather than pasture?”

“I’m riding out again this afternoon. There’s a stretch of timber over Ashstock way that’s ready for thinning, I think, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a look at it. As for the carrots, they’re from the kitchen garden, of course.”

Raiding the kitchen garden had been a favored pastime with them and Tom when they were small. Helinor would have let them have what they wanted for the asking but the skulking and “stealing” had been better sport, and Helinor had obliged by calling dire threats after them whenever she saw them at it. She never complained of them to Lady Anneys, though, and always had some treat for them when they ventured into the kitchen itself.

Hugh grinned. “Nobody saw you?”

“Well, yes, but only Alson.” The kitchen maid. “I gave her a kiss to keep her quiet.”

“You would,” said Hugh. For years he and Miles and Tom had jested at each other’s alleged passion for Alson, who was somewhat old enough to be their grandmother. But this time Miles let the jest lie and Hugh did not keep it up. Lanval crunched carrots and swept his tail at flies whose lazy buzzing was the only other sound in the stable. The other horses were in pasture or at work, and Gib, like everyone else on the manor who could be spared, was out to the barley harvest. There was no one there, no one to overhear, and in a while Hugh asked, “How did you know Master Selenger went to St. Frideswide’s of late?”

Miles slowly drew his hand down Lanval’s long face before saying, seemingly to the gelding’s forelock, “Philippa told me.”

Carefully, because so far as he knew none of them had been near Sir William’s manor in a week, Hugh asked, “When did you talk with Philippa?”

Miles looked at him, saying nothing at all.

Hugh looked back at him and did not ask again but said instead, very, very quietly, “She’s meant for Tom.”

Miles turned away, ducking under Lanval’s neck to the other side of the stall. “We know,” he said.

“If you know…”

“We know.” Miles pulled his saddle from the stall wall and slung it over Lanval’s back.

Hugh tried again. “Miles…”

Miles began fastening up the girths. “How long have you known about us?”

“I haven’t known.” Nor could he say how long he had been working hard not to know it. “I’ve only thought it… possible. Miles, it’s no good.”

Miles paused in drawing up the rear girth and looked at him across Lanval’s back. “No,” he agreed. “It isn’t any good. Nor is it well-witted of us. And no, it isn’t safe either. We know all that. And no, I’m not going to take Philippa from Tom. We’re neither of us fools, Philippa and I. It will be years, if ever, before I can afford a wife, before my ruin of a manor-a manor I’ve never even seen, mind you-is worth anything again.”

“But you and Philippa…”

“Know we have no hope of each other. That she’s all but promised elsewhere. That I can’t give her anything worth having. We sometimes see each other, yes. That’s all. We see each other and take what comfort there is in that, for this little while until we won’t be able to see each other anymore.”

Miles’ sharp bitterness warned Hugh to let that be the end of it, but more than the bitterness, Hugh heard the pain behind the words-he had always been too able to hear Miles’ pain-and found himself saying against good sense, “Even if Elyn bears Sir William children, Philippa will still have a goodly dowry. Enough to make a good start toward bringing your manor back.”

Miles finished with the girth, heaved a sigh heavy with patience, and hands clasped, leaned his arms across Lanval’s back. “Do you really think,” he said, “that Sir William will give her much of a dowry-if any at all-if she marries against his wish?”

No answer was needed to that, and Miles turned away from Hugh’s silence to take down his bridle from the peg where it hung at the end of the stall. But as he turned back, Hugh asked, “About Master Selenger. You really think there’s something to worry about him?”

Slipping the bit into Lanval’s mouth, Miles said evenly, “I think his interest in Lady Anneys is very sudden.”

“It might not be. He might have… been interested for a long time. He’d hardly have let it be known while Sir Ralph was alive.”

“I’d be willing to have a go at believing that, save for how hard Sir William tried to delay her knowing Sir Ralph’s will.”

“He feared Mother was too tired for it just then. That’s all.”

Miles paused in buckling the bridle’s throat lash to look at him. “Hugh, you can think better than that. You just don’t bother.”

Hugh crossed his arms and glared at him, refusing to be drawn.

That did not stop Miles, who went on, “In truth, most of the time, you’d rather not think further than your hounds if you could help it.”

“I think enough to know you’re trying to goad me into an argument.”

Miles grinned. “See? You can think when you’re forced to it.”

“You want an argument so I’ll be forced to think about the possibility that Sir William maybe wanted Mother not to know how the will bound her because he wanted Master Selenger to have better chance of… something… with her.”

“Or ruining her,” Miles said curtly. “She doesn’t even have to marry again, remember. She only has to be ‘unvirtuous’ for her to lose her control of everything and Sir William gain it. And what’s ‘unvirtuous’ can be almost anything, depending on who’s deciding. Which means Sir William.”

“And me. I’m executor with him.”

“Making you an executor was a jest and you know it. Sir Ralph never expected you’d do aught but leave everything to Lady Anneys and Sir William.”

Yes, Hugh knew that. Had known it from the first.

It had not bothered him until now.

But his bother was not the point at present and he said, “Miles, we don’t even know that Sir William knows Master Selenger is giving her such heed, let alone that he’s behind it.”

“How does Selenger get away from Denhill so often and easily, if not with Sir William’s leave?”

“How does Philippa get away to see you?”

“She doesn’t. We meet at the far end of the orchard, beyond the hedge and very rarely. Leave that. Listen. If Selenger brings Lady Anneys to marriage or anything else or even the seeming of anything else, it’s you who are going to be in as much trouble as Tom. It won’t be Lady Anneys but Sir William who has the say over who you and Tom and Lucy and Ursula marry. It will be Sir William who’ll have the profit from selling you all to the highest bidders, whoever they are, and never mind how any of you feel about it. If any of you refuse his choice, you lose your inheritance.”

“I know all that, but-”

“Think about the possibilities. Because I’ll warrant Sir William has.”

“Tom is to marry Philippa…”

“There’s no betrothal yet. Nothing that seals and sets it to happen. Let’s suppose Sir William decides instead to find someone else for Tom. Someone who’ll pay Sir William a goodly amount to marry a daughter to the well-propertied young man that Tom now is.”

“Then Tom will have her for a wife instead of Philippa.”

“And Sir William will still have Philippa to marry off profitably to someone else altogether. That’s double profit for him. Well and good and all very reasonable, as such things go. But suppose whoever he finds for Tom is so ghastly that Tom can only refuse the marriage? Then everything-this manor and everything else that are Tom’s-goes to you. Whose marriage Sir William likewise controls. You’re now in possession of Tom’s inheritance as well as your own and very well worth marrying to Philippa, who thereby gains more than she would have if Sir William had settled for merely marrying her to Tom. Or he may play the same game on you he played Tom, finds you a bride you have to refuse. Then everything goes to Lucy, and can you imagine what someone is likely to pay him to marry a son to her at that point? He can-”

“Miles!” Hugh said harshly. “Stop it!”

Bevis stood up uneasily under the manger and Lanval tossed his head. Miles caught the gelding by the bridle and stroked his face, speaking to him soothingly. Hugh, regaining control of his anger, said, trying to be reasonable, “None of that’s happened yet and nothing says it’s going to.”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Miles agreed very quietly. “And it may not. But it’s possible.”

“Not very,” Hugh insisted.

Miles straightened and began to back Lanval from the stall.

“Wait,” Hugh said. “Is George going with you or only Bevis?”

“Only Bevis. George is gone to the harvesting.”

“Then I’ll come with you, if you’ll wait while I fetch Foix and saddle him.” His tall-legged bay palfrey. Because he suddenly did not want Miles to ride out alone with himself this afternoon. Not alone with his dark thoughts anyway. “I haven’t been toward Ashstock for a while either and ought to see how the hunting seems that way.”

Miles did not frown against the thought, only looked momentarily surprised before-surprisingly-he smiled and said, “Hurry up, then. The day won’t last forever.”

Despite of that, they made no haste on their ride, let the horses set their own easy, head-bobbing walk along one of the lesser trails through the forest’s green quiet, and did not talk at all themselves, the only sounds around them the soft fall of the horses’ hoofs on the trail’s bare earth and the softer whispering of the trees among the sunlight-flecked green shadows. And when they reached the Ashstock woods and talked a little, it was only about the five well-grown ash trees and an oak that Miles judged ready for cutting and how many trees could be planted to replace them. Hugh found out enough signs of deer to show there would likely be good hunting this way, and then in companionable silence they started homeward, still making no haste, so that by the time they rode out of the woods above the manor, the sun had slid from sight, leaving the green twilight sky feathered by a few high clouds turned gold from the vanished sun, and smoke from supper fires was rising lazily above the hall and village roofs. Home and supper, and afterward a quiet evening, and then bed. That, Hugh thought, was the way every day should end.

He remembered that day afterward, because, in its way, it was the last of the good ones.