A Conspiracy of Wolves

‘Perhaps he wanted merely a quiet place to drink himself to death,’ said Michaelo, punctuating the comment with a sniff of disapproval.

Brother Michaelo, a fount of information, a master of scorn. Owen urged his horse to a trot.

2 A Clearing in the Wood

Dappled sunshine, a pair of horses tied to a low branch, and, beyond them, their riders lifting a stained cloak over the blood-soaked body, then gently lowering it and bowing their heads. Alisoun had spied another horse and a donkey across the clearing. Gerard Burnby, one of the York city coroners, talking in a low voice to the clerk who wrote on a wax tablet propped on the donkey’s back. Dogs. Throat torn out. Hoban Swann.

Hearing that, Alisoun had hurried away; Hoban’s wife would need her. She’d taken the narrow trail along the river to save time, her heart heavy, praying for Hoban, for Muriel, for the unborn child. Had she heard twigs snapping behind her? Turn and turn again, she’d seen nothing, yet sensed a shadow. By the time she’d reached Magda’s house she was out of breath, yet she stopped only long enough to add to her basket a sleep powder gentle enough for an expectant mother – milk of poppy, valerian, and various herbs to calm and cool. The grieving mother-to-be would need sleep.

Now, as Alisoun sat in the shuttered bedchamber listening to Muriel Swann’s even breathing, she sipped watered wine, calming herself. She’d had all she could do to quiet the grieving woman long enough to coax her to drink a cup of wine in which she’d mixed the sleep powder. Bartolf Swann had foolishly sent a hasty message to Muriel with the first servant he’d encountered, a boy who embellished the details into a terrifying tale of snarling wolves dismembering Hoban. Alisoun had arrived to find Dame Muriel’s mother, Janet Braithwaite, physically restraining her daughter, who was leaning halfway out the window. She’d come perilously close to leaping out and ending her own life and that of the child she carried.

‘How can I bear to see him so? How can that not curse our child?’ Muriel had wailed.

After a long struggle involving the cook, reluctant at first to touch his mistress, they succeeded in guiding the expectant mother to a chair. Alisoun rubbed Muriel’s hands and talked and talked until she at last convinced the grieving woman that she had seen Hoban, and that, though mortally injured, he was whole. Once Muriel could hear it, she fell to weeping, an expression of grief far safer than a leap out the window. Dame Janet had blessed Alisoun for knowing just what her daughter needed to hear. Alisoun wondered why the woman had not shouted for assistance.

As the wine settled Alisoun, she winced at the memory of her fearful flight along the river. She’d carried her bow – why hadn’t she turned and confronted her shadow? At the least she would know whether she’d imagined it. Though she had not seen him since the night she’d tended his wound, she’d feared it was Crispin Poole, who would be concerned that she would connect this attack with his encounter with a vicious dog and consider it her duty to report it. Yet why then had he not shown himself? Confronted her? She would have reassured him that she meant to keep her word. Despite her doubts about why – honor or fear – she had no intention of betraying him. He, too, had been attacked in the wood.

Though not so viciously.

The royal forest of Galtres was a combination of woodland, marsh, small farms, and villages, subject to laws that protected game, especially deer, and their habitat, and also restricted the felling of trees. Owen had convinced Brother Michaelo to accompany him as his scribe, recording his examination of the corpse and the clearing in which Hoban lay. As coroner for Galtres, Bartolf Swann was known for keeping detailed accounts of the circumstances in which a body was found; though the coroner from York would have dutifully recorded his observations, Bartolf would expect a more thorough accounting from Owen. Michaelo had not been keen, admitting that he’d never ridden through Galtres without a full complement of armed guards, as was Archbishop Thoresby’s wont. Bands of outlaws were known to hide there.

‘Not to underestimate your skill with the bow, Captain Archer. But you are a complement of one.’

‘I should think that sufficient to guard a monk who has taken a vow of poverty.’ Owen was already regretting his request. But he had a purpose in testing Michaelo’s mettle.

Once past the hovels of the poor clustered close to the walls of the city and St Mary’s Abbey, Owen led the way through woodland and meadows, aware of a subtle shift as his awareness sharpened, his thoughts focused. He surprised himself with the thought that he’d missed this, the search, the sense of responsibility for restoring order.