‘I will go for aid,’ said Saitada.
‘Too late. The wolf is among you,’ said a voice close at their ears.
The three turned but couldn’t for a moment see anyone. Suddenly, so bright and white in the starlit night that they wondered how ever they could have missed him, a young man of around twenty was there. He was strikingly handsome, long-legged and lithe. He seemed to draw the moonlight to him, and beneath it his muscles rippled as if under some silvery sea. For a breath it didn’t seem remarkable that he was almost completely naked. All he had to cover his modesty was a huge and bloody wolfskin draped across his back, a rear paw cheekily positioned by his hand over that part the nuns shun. His hair was bright red and stood up in a shock.
‘Christ’s wounds!’ said the farmer. ‘You nearly made me jump out of my skin.’
‘Well, I did jump out of mine,’ said the man, sliding away the paw that concealed his shame and then whipping it back again.
‘How dare you appear in front of my wife like that!’ said the farmer, who was a pious man when it suited him.
‘The wolf behind you?’ said the strange man.
‘Where?’ said the farmer. ‘Oh Lord, the eyes.’
The farmer turned to run but he had those grim burning eyes in front of him in the wood and the strange and terrible young man behind. He had nowhere to go and, his brain running out of ideas for what to do with his body, he simply flopped to the floor.
‘Not eyes,’ said the man, ‘just torches left by some kind traveller.’
The farmer squinted into the darkness. Now it was obvious: they were just brands.
‘As I thought,’ said the farmer.
‘Fire,’ said the pale man. ‘That is the way to keep the wolf at bay.’ He walked to the wood and returned with the two burning torches. Now he had tied the wolf skin’s back paws around his midsection.
‘I have covered that serpent that tempted Eve,’ he said.
The man held the torches up and looked at the peasants. ‘A farmer, his pretty piggy wife and who is this rare beauty? No wonder you panic, old man, to see such a face.’
‘I wasn’t panicking I was… taking advantage of the terrain, that is why I got down.’
‘It seems this one knows better than you that fire keeps the wolf at bay,’ said the man, holding up his hand to Saitada’s chin and studying the scar on her face.
Saitada did not flinch to hear his words because the scorn of a man meant nothing to her. He gently turned the undamaged side of her face towards him.
‘Such beauty is a terrible thing,’ said the man, ‘for no shield can deflect its dart, and even the most nimble of warriors can no more dodge it than you can, old man.’
‘You are mocking me,’ said Saitada, ‘but I am glad of it if it means you will not lay your hands upon me.’
‘No, lady,’ said the man. ‘You are far more beautiful to me than any woman on earth. You have snatched the spool of destiny from the hands of the fates and woven a skein yourself. ’
‘You speak fine words, sir,’ said the farmer.
‘High praise from such a judge,’ said the traveller with a bow.
‘And now you’re mocking me!’ said the farmer, who like most old men tended to hear only those parts of the conversation that concerned himself. ‘I once threw a spear the length of a laine. And it stuck in the mud properly too.’
‘Don’t worry, ma’am,’ said the man to the farmer’s wife. ‘I shall mock you when I have finished with your husband, but, oh, shall I ever finish with such an example? No, ma’am, you are quite safe, I shall never finish with him.’
‘What of that wolf?’ said the farmer, whose head had become a little disordered since the stranger’s appearance, though he had drunk little.
‘I have slain that night-time caller, that freeman of the forests, that furry sir, oh farmer, my manure mangler, my seedy serf, my shit smith. But he tore my clothes,’ said the man. ‘Will you lend me some of yours so that I might cover the splendour the priests would call our shame?’ He went to pull the wolf skin away but stopped at the last instant.
‘If you have killed the wolf, as I see you have, then I owe you a cloak,’ said the old man. ‘Here in the house I have one that has served me many winters.’
‘I prefer the expensive one you’re wearing,’ said the man. ‘It was woven by the finest hand that ever picked up a distaff.’
‘It was woven by me,’ said Saitada.
‘I know it, lady,’ said the man and bowed deeply.
‘She is not a lady, she is a slave,’ said the farmer.
‘She’s freer than you will ever be,’ said the man. ‘Now get me your cloak before I tear the skin from your back and wrap myself in that instead.’
The stranger’s words seemed to sizzle through the farmer’s mind. He felt as though he was frying in the juice of all his boasts, all his pretensions and weaknesses. He did as he was bid. The pale fellow stretched out his hand to Saitada and it seemed to her that little points of light began to dance around her, tiny silver orbs no bigger than seeds, glinting in a shimmering web. He put on the cloak she had made, drew it around him and began to sing. Half beautiful is she, like the moon And from her shall spring the moon taker Oh the sun it grows dark at the noon And the wolf in his dreams is a waker
This last line seemed to amuse the fellow no end and he burst out in giggles, which Saitada could only share, as if she was a child learning some naughty secret. Her giggling seemed to grow and grow in her until she thought it might never stop.
And then it did stop and the night was silent. Everything had changed and for ever. It seemed to Saitada that she stood in the middle of a glade that was bathed in the silvery light of a flaming moon.
‘See the beauty of the garment you have made,’ said the man.
He was in front of her, but the cloak was not her cloak but a cloak of feathers that might not have been feathers but silvery flames or just points of light. It engulfed him and lifted him so he seemed to hover a stool’s height above the ground. The farmer and his wife were nowhere to be seen.
‘You have never been loved,’ said the traveller.
‘Sir, I have not,’ she said.
‘And you have not known until this moment that you could be loved,’ he said.
‘I have not.’
‘I can only love your kind,’ he said. ‘Who could love the princes and the heroes with their murders and their wars?’
‘I know no princes or heroes, sir.’
‘Bide your time,’ he said. ‘You’ll be sick to your back teeth of them before you’re done.’ He smiled at her. ‘You, my dear, are perfect.’
‘My face is not, sir.’
‘You chose imperfection — what could be more perfect? You saw your imperfection was perfection and therefore remedied it by imposing an imperfection on yourself thereby becoming perfect again. The logic is imperfectly flawless.’
He descended to the earth, and the cloak he had been wearing became a carpet of white feathers that covered the glade, deep as midwinter snow. She lay down upon it and, having only ever known straw before, was overwhelmed by its comfort.
The stranger spoke. ‘To strive to be the best, to excel and have the skalds sing your praises. They’re all at it. What better than to spit at what the gods gave you and spite your fate?’
‘I did it because I would not give them a moment’s more pleasure from me.’
‘They will have no pleasure ever again. Would you know their fate?’
‘If it is a bad one.’
‘I have repaid them,’ said the burning beautiful god, for now Saitada was sure this was not a mortal before her. ‘You should have seen the smith’s face when I spoke to him from the fire and he knocked that smelting pot onto his bollocks. He’s got his cock out of his breeks for a different reason now, I can tell you. Are you grateful?’
