The dogs followed their noses up the brook all the way to Mill Street Bridge. They did not recover a scent. Tenants and villeins of Lord Gilbert Talbot and the Bishop of Exeter gazed in wonder as we clambered up the banks of the brook to the bridge. We made a rare spectacle. A dozen tired, mud-caked men, scratched and bloodied, and two weary old hounds. I was going to need another bath.
Hubert Shillside turned to me as we stood perplexed on the bridge. “I think,” he complained, “we must find better hounds. These are too old…they have missed the trail somewhere.”
This thought had occurred to me, but before I could reply the fewterer leaped to defend his charges.
“Nothin’ wrong wi’ the dogs. They’re not so young as t’run down a stag, maybe, but if there was a wolf left a trail they’d find it.”
“So you say, after Master Hugh heard the beast, and after the slain lamb, that there must be no wolf because your hounds cannot find it?” Shillside remarked sarcastically.
“’At’s what I’m sayin’. Master Hugh may’ve heard a wolf…no offense,” the fewterer looked at me and tugged his forelock. “But there be no trail or the dogs would’a found it.”
“But they did,” I said.
“Maybe,” the fewterer muttered.
“What is your meaning?” I challenged the old man.
“Oh, they found a scent. But t’were it a wolf they’d a been more eager to be off.”
“You are sure of this?”
“Nay. Can’t be certain. But I’ve worked Squire an’ Tawny since they was pups. I know ’em…an’ old or not, they didn’t act like they was on a trail of no wild beast.”
“Well, wolf or no, they are fatigued from the day’s labor, as are we all. Return them to their kennel and feed them well.”
“Will you be wantin’ ’em tomorrow?”
“No…unless there is better reason than we have found today.”
“What is to be done, then?” John Holcutt asked. “Must we hope the beast will travel on to curse some other place?”
“No. There may yet be a way to take this marauder. Take two or three others back to the meadow where the lamb lies. Build a screen downwind of the lamb. Tonight we will watch the meadow. Perhaps the wolf will return to its kill. You two,” I said to the archers, “will accompany the reeve and me tonight.”
Chapter 4
Our company broke apart, its dispirited members making their weary way to their homes, or, in John Holcutt’s case, to the meadow. Tomorrow there would be an all-night vigil at the church, awaiting Easter dawn and the removal of the cross from the Easter Sepulcher. Tonight we four would keep a vigil as well.
The two archers were known to me. They were tenants on Lord Gilbert’s land, and I had seen each put a dozen arrows into the butt end of a barrel at 200 paces. Unless John Holcutt built the screen well away from where the lamb lay, if the wolf returned this night he would find an unwelcome surprise. This thought reminded me that the time had come to renew the archery competitions Lord Gilbert sponsored on Sunday afternoons. Such contests were suspended for the winter, but ’twas time to renew the practice.
I ate a light supper, then made my way to the meadow where the reeve and his assistants were completing the screen. John had built a framework of saplings and fallen branches from the nearby wood. Into this he wove tall grasses which had withstood the winter, and ivy and foliage from the hedgerow. The blind was but two paces from the thistles and nettles of the hedgerow. No beast would come upon it from behind. The dead lamb lay forty paces west. No wolf who fed there this night would need another meal.
I sent the reeve and one archer to the castle for supper, and kept the other archer with me. It was not yet dark, but I did not wish both archers absent should the wolf return before they finished their meal. I would send the unfed archer to his supper later.
I might have sent them both with John, and kept a bow and arrows with me as I watched alone. But this would have been a mistake had the animal chosen that moment to return to its kill. If wolves laugh, the beast would surely have done so as any arrows I loosed fell wide of their mark.
John and the first archer returned, well satisfied, and I sent the other to his meal as the twilight faded. Only the outline of bare tree limbs was visible to the west, where the setting sun still gave illumination to the sky. By the time the second archer stumbled up to the blind from his supper, the meadow lay tenebrous under a starlit sky.
If a wolf had chosen to return then silently to finish its meal, we should never have seen it. But two hours later a waning moon rose over the greenwood to the east and the pale white carcass of the lamb became visible. It was undisturbed. I was uncertain whether to be pleased or regretful that we had not been visited in the dark.
We were not visited in the moonlight, either. One by one my companions fell asleep. Their steady, measured breathing was the only sound to break the silence of the night. I let them sleep. Unless they snored, as one of the archers was wont to do. A gentle kick usually brought him awake and stopped his rumbling. And the reeve woke from his slumber several times to watch with me. He may as well have slept, for no beast visited the meadow that night.
I sent my companions to their homes as the sun rose over the fields and forest to the east toward Aston. I required of each man that he rejoin me at the screen at sunset. I was unwilling to accept failure. There would be many others awake all this night in the church, keeping the Easter Vigil. We four would honor God by doing our duty to Lord Gilbert and the tenants and villeins of his manor.
I returned to my chamber in the castle and lay on my bed for a fitful sleep until dinner. I dreamed of pale blue yarn and wooden-soled shoes and slavering wolves.
The castle cook revived my body and spirit. A good meal almost always performs that miracle. There was this day a leg of mutton, a coney pie and a ham, with mushroom tarts, a compost and cooked, spiced apples.
Thus refreshed, I went about manor business for the afternoon. It was my duty to inspect Lord Gilbert’s manor each day. This day there was plowing to oversee and the manuring of a field ready to be planted to barley. As dusk settled on the town, I joined the stream of residents walking to the Church of St Beornwald for the lighting of the great Paschal Candle and the commencement of the Easter Vigil. My soul was drawn to remain, but duty demanded otherwise. I stood at the rear of the nave while the great candle was lit, then quietly made my way out through the porch into the darkening churchyard.
The two archers were at the blind before me, and John Holcutt appeared soon after. This night was colder, and the waning moon appeared in the east an hour later. We shivered in the cold and waited for the moon to rise. When it did it was often obscured as a thickening body of clouds drifted from north to south across the town and meadow.
At dawn the clouds thickened more, and in the growing light I could see what only the touch on my face had told me ’til then: snowflakes drifted across the meadow. But the lamb lay as it had been for two days.
My knees were stiff with cold and it was with some discomfort that I stood and stretched. I remember my father, who rarely complained of anything, lamenting aching joints when winter came. Was I become my father already?
We four peered over the screen at the undisturbed lamb, stamping our feet to drive out the cold. This exercise was not successful.
Neither was the watch over the dead lamb, so I called it off. I told John and the archers that, unless the wolf gave more sign, we would no longer seek it, but hope that it had traveled to some far county.
I walked, stiffly at first, like an old man, back to the castle and my chamber. I wished to clean myself before Easter Mass, so asked for a bucket of hot water to be brought. I would not eat. It is my custom to fast before mass, as was once customary, but now seems an uncommon privation.