Hal Baker, your cousin. It’s a bit late for you to be out, it’s getting dark and I think it’s going to snow. Why don’t you give me that basket, I’m going that way. Tell your mother that I’ll call tomorrow and tell her how her mother is managing,’ he added, in case Robin was reproved for giving away a valuable basket stuffed with goodies to a random stranger.
‘Thanks, Cousin!’ squeaked the child, and ran away, back down the path to her house. Hal Baker hefted the basket and walked on, with his easy soldier’s stride, into the darkening wood. The full moon was already riding high, silver as the coins he had grabbed from a certain baggage train.
It was getting colder, presaging snow, and the ache in his leg, wounded at Salamanca, intensified. He really wasn’t used to the English climate any more, he thought. I had better get where I am going. Grandma Boone use to live - where? Down this path? I don’t remember this wood anymore, he thought sadly. I used to know it so well. I played here with my friends, with dear Tommy and Danny. I wonder where they are now.
He stopped trying to map the forest in his head and just walked, coming upon the small thatched cottage almost where he thought it might be. Snow started to fall as he pushed at the back door and found it, as usual, open.
There was no light but the fire. A shawled and lace capped figure sat in the big bed.
‘Well, Grandma Boone, how are you this cold night?’ he asked, but she did not reply.
Hal dropped his pack, deposited the basket on the kitchen table, and threw an armload of kindling onto the dying fire. Then he swung the kettle onto the hob and shed his red cloak over the settle. He sat down and sighed, rubbing at his aching thigh. He had been happy in the army. He was sorry not to be there, at the triumph he was sure would take place. He would never see Wellington ride into Paris. He had seen many things in Portugal and Spain, and now he was home, he did not know how he was going to stand the loneliness. No one knew what he knew, had been where he’d been.And with this injured leg, no army would have him back.
He shook himself and unpacked the basket. Small fruitcakes, a pot of milk, a pat of butter and some sugar in a screw of blue paper. Hal found the tea and the teapot. He poured boiling water over the leaves, inhaling with pleasure. Tea was something he had certainly missed. He poured a cup for the old lady and approached the bed.
‘Grandma Boone?’ he asked. The lace capped head tilted a little. He could see the gleam of dark eyes.
‘Why, Grandma,’ he commented. ‘What big eyes you have.’
‘All the better to see you with, my dear,’ came a voice which might have been a very old woman’s. He looked hard at the lace cap. It was lumpy.
‘And, Grandma, what big ears you have!’ he exclaimed.
‘All the better to hear you with, my dear,’ said he old woman’s voice.
‘And what big teeth you have,’ he observed, ‘putting down the cup.
‘All the better to eat you with, my dear!’ growled the figure, and found itself grabbed, mid leap, and pinned down by hands which had been lethal on many a battlefield.
‘You shouldn’t play with your food. Didn’t your mother tell you that?’ The wolf struggled.‘Lie still, wolf, or I will snap your neck,’ growled the soldier. ‘What have you done with Grandma Boone? Where is she?’
‘I don’t know, she wasn’t here when I came in,’ protested the wolf. ‘Ouch,’ it added.
‘Hoping for little girl for dinner?’ asked Hal, one hand fisted in the wolf’s ruff and one slamming his hindquarters flat.
‘They’re tasty,’ admitted the wolf. ‘You would have been a fuller meal. I might have had to store a few bits of you for a few days, to soften.’
‘But now?’ asked Hal.
‘I am at point non plus,’ admitted the wolf. ‘You’re not frightened of me?’
‘No,’ said Hal. ‘I have seen loups garoux before.’
‘Where?’ asked the wolf, sounding a little muffled, nose in pillow.
‘Portugal, in the mountains. They attacked our camp. A musket ball restricted their ambitions, as it will do for you. ‘
‘I really don’t know what to say,’ said the wolf.
‘If I let go, will you attack me?’ asked the soldier.
‘No, I’d really like to talk to you rather than tear out your throat. Though that remains a possibility, you understand.’
‘Good,’ Hal gradually released the wolf, who shed the old lady’s garments, shook its fur into order, and sprawled on the bed. Hal sat down beside him and took up the cup.
‘Please refrain from tearing out my throat until I have finished this tea,’ he instructed. The wolf nodded, taking in Hal’s uniform and almost offensive lack of fear. The soldier emptied the cup, then took the other which he had prepared for himself and sipped with great pleasure. Milk and sugar. Pure luxury.
‘That’s where this happened to me,’ the wolf told him. ‘Where I was bitten.’
‘Portugal?’ asked Hal.
‘Yes. I was sleeping in my tent, the next moment, teeth were in my neck. I thought that it would kill me, but I was rescued. Unfortunately. The French attacked. They sent me to a surgeon, he stitched me up, I was a happy enough prisoner until...’
‘The next full moon?’ guessed Hal. The wolf sighed.
‘Yes. I escaped the prison easily enough, slunk aboard a fishing craft, slunk ashore somewhere on the coast, and slunk all the way home.’
‘You’re from here? Do I know you?’ asked Hal.
‘Who are you?’ asked the wolf, tilting his head to eye the soldier more closely.
‘Hal Baker, late Corporal of the Northumberland Fusiliers.’ Hal stood up and saluted. ‘Invalided out after Salamanca. Shot in the leg. It’s serviceable ’nough, but I can’t march. I slunk home, too, my wolf. And now I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.’
‘Try having paws and fur and fangs and a terrible desire to tear out throats. I don’t belong anywhere, either. My name was Tommy, and you were my friend.’
‘God, Tommy, Dammit, I was so looking forward to meeting you again!’ Hal dragged the wolf into a close embrace. After a startled moment, the wolf nosed him, huffing into his neck, absorbing his scent. Hal lay down, and the wolf curled up almost in his lap, licking his hands.
‘You joined the army, too?’ asked Hal.
‘Just after you. And, as I said, in Portugal the loups got me, and here I am.’
‘And here I am, too,’ said Hal. ‘I loved you, my Tom.’
The wolf licked his hand again, then reached up and licked his face.
‘I love you, too. But there isn’t much I can do to prove
