carcass slowly and turned it over to inspect the damage the arrow had made in the pelt. The shaft of the arrow was broken, but he would recover the tip later when he skinned it. The pelt would go to the sheriff. He would give the rest of the carcass to Aelric for the hound.
“John, look here,” said Aelric. He pointed to the wolf’s throat, which had been cleanly sliced through with a knife. “I thought you said you put an arrow in it.”
Fletcher indicated the broken shaft in the animal’s shank. “Somebody else did that.”
“A poacher in the king’s forest!” Aelric gave a low whistle.
“A poacher would’ve taken the carcass,” said Fletcher flatly. He ran his hand along the animal’s back, stiff now in death.
“Why cut its throat but leave the pelt behind?”
“He didn’t come to take the wolf, only to kill it. Probably a farmer who’d lost too many chickens.” But maybe Elspeth had done this, which was more disturbing.
“Why not skin it anyway?” asked Aelric. “It’s a pretty thing.” He glanced at the hound, then ran his fingers through the wolf’s thick fur.
“And be caught in the act or later with the evidence in his hands?” Fletcher said. “Maybe he heard someone coming.” He let out a low whistle. “Look here at its belly. This wolf had pups.” As he talked he cleaned off the carcass as best he could and slung it up on the horse behind the saddle. With a rope he tied it to a pair of iron rings that hung behind the saddlebags.
“Home now?” asked Aelric.
“Not yet. While we got the hound we’ve got to find the lair and kill the pups. And a mother wolf means a father wolf. Let’s hope we find him, or else we’ll be hunting again tomorrow.”
They found the wolf’s lair on the edge of a small glen, near the ruins of a Roman wall, not far from the rise where she had taken the arrow. When the wolf had led him down river she had taken them away from her lair, a mother’s instinctive movement even in dying to protect her young. It was a beautiful and sacrificial thing, something he admired in the animal even as he realized that its blood was on his own hands. He caught an image of a squalling, bloody baby Alysse had left him.
Footprints leading up to the lair told him someone had been here, too. The opening had been widened by a solid, stomping kick. Had Elspeth done that? She did not seem heavy enough, but then again, she was a tough girl who often did things that surprised him.
Within the lair, deep back, he found a single pup. What that meant was hard to tell. Had there been other pups? Had Elspeth taken them? Why? What had she done with them? And why leave this one? Perhaps she had decided to scatter the litter, hoping to give them a better chance of survival, and had simply missed this one. Either way, without a mother it was likely to starve. That was the way of the forest. Some creatures live, some die.
Despite himself Fletcher rankled at that. A pup without a mother was evidence enough that there was something wrong with the world. Should he leave this tiny creature at the mercy of the elements? It would soon enough be a meal for some forest creature, and if not that, then it would starve. And if it survived somehow, he and Aelric would be back hunting it as a mature animal, only later in the year, maybe in winter when the natural game in the forest would grow scarce and like its mother it would make its way out of the forest to fill its belly with chickens and farm animals.
He withdrew his hunting knife from its sheath, and then paused for a moment, aware of the pup’s tiny head and its soft fur against the rough calluses of his palms and fingers, and in his mind’s eye he pictured Elspeth as a baby, equally as helpless, but Elspeth had taken Alysse from him, and this pup had done nothing except to be born. Elspeth had grown defiant, and he could lose his job if the forester caught her in the forest. She was risking everything—she was nothing but trouble, right from the start—she had taken Alysse from him—he could wring the girl’s neck. He braced himself to do what his sense of duty told him had to be done, and then took the pup’s head firmly in one hand, and prepared to slit its throat in a single firm stroke.
What happened next you have already heard. The knife went in too easily, and Fletcher was overcome by a mass of crowding images of tragedy. His arrow that had killed the pup’s mother. Images of Alysse in childbirth, the infant, the girl, the Blessed Virgin, Alysse calling out to him from the other side, her body in its coffin awaiting burial.
From somewhere far off Aelric was saying something. “John, are you alright?” Aelric was shouting now. “Fletcher!”
When he came to his senses he was holding the pup in his hands, alive—tiny, helpless, but alive. The knife was lying in the dirt near the mouth of the lair.
II
Fletcher set the pup down, then went to the edge of the glen and emptied the contents of his stomach. He rinsed his mouth from the water bag on his saddle, spitting over and over again, trying to wash the terrible taste of tar from his tongue. “I can’t kill it, Aelric,” he said, coming back. “It’s got no mother and it’ll probably starve to death, or even end up supper to some larger animal, but I can’t kill it.” He waited for his breathing to slow and his heart to stop its wild terrified beating. What was that? Why would a pup affect him like that? He’d killed a hundred wolves, for Christ’s sake. Including pups—when he’d had to. What was this about?
“You’re in charge John,” said Aelric, shaking his head. “What’s next?”
Fletcher rinsed his hands with water from the water bag, and splashed water up on his face. Then he mounted his horse and led off in the direction of Warwick
“Not a word, Aelric,” he said.
“You’re in charge,” Aelric said again.
❧
Returning from the forest, Elspeth came upon three of the village boys, the one in the middle a strapping youth named Jason, who snatched her up by the waist and held her aloft for a moment.
“Put me down, Jason, you ruffian,” said Elspeth, laughing. She pounded his chest.
“Sit with me in church, Els,” Jason pleaded. He continued to hold her aloft, and she realized he must be incredibly strong. “I’ll put you down if you’ll promise to sit with me in church.”
“It would be improper. I’m betrothed, remember, and my father would not allow it.”
“You let me deal with your father, Elspeth.” He set her down on the road, and he and the other boys stepped into pace beside her.
“Nobody deals with her father,” one of the other boys said. He held his arms up in a mock stance of a man aiming a crossbow. Then he pulled the imaginary trigger.
Jason jumped him over the top and knuckled him under the ribs. “He shoots me dead, I’ll come back and drive him mad by knuckling him in his dreams.”
“Alin’s right,” said the other boy soberly. “He’s already a madman.”
“He’s not,” insisted Elspeth. “He’s a man of his word. And a gentleman.”
“A gentleman who’ll break every bone in Jason’s body if he sits beside you in church,” Alin said. He picked up a pebble and threw it hard into the brush, startling a small grouse out of hiding.
