A Conspiracy of Wolves

‘Two men – or more if Hoban had already collected his father’s hounds – his horse, and their own animals, as well as their victim,’ said Owen. He crouched beside some flattened brush, poking it with a branch, stirring up the stench of urine and blood. ‘One of the animals was injured.’

‘Those attacking, or one of Swann’s?’ Michaelo wondered aloud.

‘Cannot say. But I see no hoof prints just here, so one of the dogs, not a horse.’ In fact, he’d noticed only one set of hoof prints; perhaps only Hoban had been mounted. He followed the bloody trail of flattened brush to the bank of the Ouse, toed an indentation in the mud, the grass compressed. ‘Keel of a small boat. Planned with care, this attack? Or did Hoban happen upon men desperate to hide their activities? The boat could move the men and the dogs, but what of Hoban’s horse?’ He looked round, saw no hoof prints by the river.

‘Master Bartolf said it had not returned to the house,’ Michaelo noted. ‘Nor were the dogs there.’

‘One of the men might have ridden Hoban’s mount to the ford farther upriver. We should go to his home, see whether the horse simply returned by now. Or the hounds.’

Michaelo made a sound deep in his throat.

‘Are the signs of so much violence hard for you to see?’ Owen asked.

‘Does it not disturb you? The violence, the blood.’

‘My dreams are haunted by it. But I honor the dead by doing what I can to expose the darkness that took them.’

‘And bring them justice?’

‘Justice? No. Breathing life into the dead, undoing their injuries – that would be justice, but that I cannot do. I seek to prevent further violence, expose the corruption …’ Owen’s words sounded hollow to him even as he uttered them. ‘It is little enough.’

‘You are an honorable man, Captain.’ Michaelo held Owen’s gaze for a moment. ‘God surely blesses your work. Perhaps this is His intent, the work through which I might atone for my sins, serving you in this endeavor.’

It seemed he had taken to heart Owen’s hint of having a possible ongoing need for his services. Time would tell whether the monk embraced that challenge. ‘To Bartolf’s home then. I pray the servant Joss is there.’

‘Do you suspect him?’

‘Until I talk to him, I’ve no way of knowing.’ But how Joss received them might help Owen understand why Bartolf had become so concerned about entrusting the dogs to him that Hoban had felt it necessary to ride out of an evening to rescue them.

The ride to Bartolf’s home gave Owen more to puzzle over. The track was wet and overgrown, part of the marsh when the Ouse flooded, hardly the path Hoban would commonly take. Why had he done so as night fell? And how did Joss happen on Hoban’s body? With his one eye Owen swept the narrow track, looking for anything that seemed out of place. Again it was Michaelo, following, who found it.

‘An item fallen beside the track,’ he called out. ‘To your left, wedged in a low branch.’

Owen’s blind side. He dismounted, guided to the spot by the monk, who remained astride.

‘There,’ said Michaelo, ‘near your right knee.’

Crouching down, Owen saw it, brown and easily dismissed as a dry leaf or part of the trunk, a leather pouch that fit in his palm. He opened it, finding within a waxed parchment packet containing an oily salve. He sniffed. Betony, boneset, and something else he could not identify – but Lucie would know what it was. The combination suggested a wound and a broken bone, common enough among country laborers, horsemen. Owen tucked it into his scrip.

Michaelo leaned down. ‘Is it useful?’

‘That depends on who dropped it, and when.’

No smoke rose from the long, low house, no dogs prowled the fenced area to one side. The gate was fastened, the structure appeared to be complete and undamaged. No one answered as Owen called out and opened the door. Spare furnishings, bowls, and moldy bread sat on a shelf along the wall that looked out into the dogs’ enclosure. Up the ladder to the loft, a pallet was piled with skins, an overturned jug and bowl.

‘Had he no one to tidy and cook for him?’ Michaelo said with disgust.

‘If so, whatever he paid them was too much,’ said Owen. ‘Perhaps Joss did it all.’ Or someone else was missing.

Exiting the house, Owen spied the well-worn track he recalled taking the few times he had called on Bartolf. Much wider, more appropriate for accommodating Hoban on horseback with the dogs ambling along. ‘Seems to me this would have been Hoban’s choice to and from the house at dusk, not the narrow track to the clearing where he was killed.’

‘Perhaps the way along the marsh was not his choice?’

‘Possible, though I saw no sign of struggle at the house.’

Before mounting his horse, Owen cupped his hands and called out for Joss. Waited. Called again. Nothing.

‘Perhaps he often disappeared,’ said Michaelo, ‘and that caused Bartolf to worry about the dogs.’

‘Yet he spent several days in York without concern.’

‘Ah,’ said Michaelo.