All I want to do is serve you. The knight exclaiming: Then you shall join my household. I have need of an honest lad to be my squire…
He laughed at himself. All the same, it could happen! Then, instead of monkish black, he’d have bright clothes to wear, green and scarlet. He would take care of his master’s clothes and weapons. He would learn to ride and hunt and fight.
He hung on to the collar, trying to restrain the big greyhound as it bounded up the steep side of the dingle, under scratching branches, through a patch of tall stinging nettles, and over an ankle-breaking pile of moss-covered stones. Wolf hopped and swore and rubbed his shins. “That’s enough!” He tugged the dog to a standstill under a rock face which leaned out overhead. There was a dank, sour smell. A bad feeling hung over the place. “We’re not going any further,” he said, shivering. “It’s time to go back.”
The greyhound strained at the collar, growling. A prickle of sweat started under Wolf’s armpits. He remembered he was still on the slopes of Devil’s Edge. And he was alone, and a long way from the fire.
In the black tangle of thorn trees and brambles at the base of the cliff, a chalky oval gradually formed.
With eyes in it.
A face like a half-moon, white one side and dark the other, floating in a aureole of insubstantial hair like dandelion fluff. It vanished, pulling back into blackness, and Wolf saw that it had been peering from the mouth of a low cave set under an overgrown rocky ledge.
Dry mouthed, Wolf recognised it. The thing he’d mistaken for a demon — the strange child. This was what they had been following. The dog had brought him straight to its lair!
The greyhound threw itself at the spot where the white face had vanished. Wolf jerked it roughly back. “Leave it!” he said in a fierce undertone. “Leave it!”
He dragged the dog away over the rockspill and nettles — through thickets of hawthorn and hazel and over piles of rotting leaves. The wood closed behind them and the horror faded. At last Wolf risked a glance over his shoulder and his headlong pace slowed to a shaken walk.
It hasn’t followed. We’ve lost it.
He thanked every saint he could think of for his narrow escape from — well, from what? A demon? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t look like the ones he’d seen in pictures, the ochre and vermilion demons gleefully gambolling on the Doomsday wall of the abbey church. The strange child-thing wasn’t hairy or horned.
But no earthly child would roam the hillside naked in this haunted twilight. No mortal child would take refuge in such a dark and frightening cave.
Then it must be an elf. And that was almost worse. Elves were uncanny, like ghosts. Pale, malicious creatures, which lived in the dark places under hills and mounds, just like that cave, tempting mortals away to waste their lives in false enchantments.
Wolf remembered the creature’s fleeting expression as it looked out — narrow-eyed with terror like a hunted fox. Perhaps it hadn’t meant him any harm. Perhaps it had only been running from the hounds — caught, like him, between the hunters and their prey. And what if it wasn’t an elf? Suppose — just suppose — he had left a frightened child in a cold, dripping cave in the middle of a dark wood?
“Of course it was an elf!” he told himself furiously. He thought of its weird face, its glittering eyes. No need to feel sorry for an elf, no reason to go back.
The distant fire winked behind a black scribble of branches. He had himself to look after. He’d take this valuable hunting dog back to its master, claim his reward and never think about the elf again. He set off through the clutching wood. Twigs tugged his hair, wet grass snaked about his ankles. Cursing, he tore free from another bramble — and blundered nearly into the arms of a giant figure straddling the way.
Wolf recoiled, bursting with terror, and tugged the greyhound in front of him. “Keep off!” he snarled. “Keep right away from me! Or I’ll set my dog on you!”
“Your dog?” The voice was deep, human and angry. “That’s my dog, you thief! Take your dirty fingers off his collar! What are you doing with him? Are you the boy who got in my way on the hill?”
“Yes — no!” Wolf’s heart was bumping about like a rabbit in a sack. This was the lord of the hunt, the reckless rider who had leaped his horse into the dingle. “Nothing — I wasn’t stealing him, sir!”
“Let go of him, I said!” the man roared.
Wolf’s fingers slipped from the collar, and the dog leaped happily forwards. “Believe me; I was bringing him back—”
“Yes, after you stole him in the first place. Don’t lie to me! D’you think I’m a fool? Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Wolf Osmundson.” They were talking English. He tried to make himself sound more important — more French. “Wolf fitz Osmund. My father was—”
“Wolf, is it?” The man gave a hard laugh. “Ho! The second wolf I’ve caught today.” He stabbed a finger into Wolf’s chest. “We’ve already skinned the first. You’ll be next. Or perhaps I’ll slice your ears off. Who’s your master?”
“I’m not a peasant!” Wolf went stiff with scared rage. The man wasn’t joking. The laws were savage: a thief could lose a foot, a hand, his eyes. “I’m from St Ethelbert’s at Wenford — I’m a clerk, a scholar! My father held a manor. Let’s speak French if it’s easier for you, lord. Or Latin — I know them both. And I can read and write.” Too late, he heard his own voice ringing with insolent defiance. He clenched his teeth. But instead of hitting him the man said merely, “If you can do all that, why are you here?”
Wolf looked away, unable to think of a good lie, sullenly aware that silence would be taken for more insolence. He curled numb toes in his wet boots. His back ached. His face and arms stung with the slashes of countless twigs. Bitterly he remembered his ambition to become a squire. Well, that dream was over.
“You’ve run away, haven’t you?” The man’s voice was gentler.
Wolf cleared his throat. “I didn’t — I don’t want to be a monk.”
It sounded weak — feeble.
“I suppose they beat you,” said the man with tolerant scorn.
Wolf burned. He remembered the bold and powerful shapes of horse and rider tearing into the trees. How could someone like that ever understand? He burst out, “Maybe they did! But that’s not why! I’m not fit for that life. It’s like being shut up in a box. A stone box. And outside, everything’s going on — without me.”
“A stone box!” the man muttered. “Now that I can understand. Where are you running to? Home?”
“I have no home. My father’s dead.”
There was a moment of silence. They were standing in shadows as black as well water, and Wolf couldn’t see the man’s face. “Who are you, lord?” he asked, shivering.
“My
