He led the hounds in a circle once again, larger this time, and noted a place where both animals took some time snuffling about the meadow grass. When the circle was completed, with no other sign that the dogs had found an interesting trail, he returned to the spot, unleashed them, and ordered them off on the scent.
The hounds obeyed with scant enthusiasm. “Squire be ten years old,” the fewterer remarked, as if to excuse the animal’s lack of zeal.
The hounds followed their noses to the edge of the fallow ground, then turned south along a hedgerow which separated the meadow from a newly plowed field to the east. The dogs followed this barrier, with the hunting party close behind, to the edge of a wood. No coppicing had been done in this grove, so there was little to hinder the advance of our company. Ancient trees so blotted the summer sun here that little vegetation grew on the forest floor.
We kept the hounds in view readily enough, for they proceeded at a leisurely pace, though there was little undergrowth to impede them. Two archers in the party notched arrows, unwilling to be caught unready should a wolf suddenly appear from behind an oak. They need not have been so cautious.
The forest gave way to meadow again, and we entered bright sunlight on the Bishop of Exeter’s lands. We followed the hounds to another hedgerow, beyond which was a field that the bishop’s villeins had newly plowed.
The track then turned north, as the hounds followed the wall. I began to wonder if the beast we trailed was old, or injured, that it did not leap a hedgerow or fence to continue its path, but instead went round.
We had come near to the place where the beast would have been when I heard it last in the night. But the track seemed wrong. Unless the hounds were backtracking, following the path the animal made as it sought a meal, rather than the trail it left after it slew the lamb.
The track plunged once again into the forest, and we followed until, 200 paces beyond, the wood ended on the banks of Shill Brook, a quarter-mile downstream from Mill Street Bridge.
“This is a waste,” I told the fewterer. “The dogs are backtracking. We go where the beast was, not where it now is.”
“’Twas the only scent the hounds found,” he replied defensively. “An’, even if ’tis so, we may come upon the beast’s lair, where it lays in the day before seeking prey at night.”
I agreed that might be so, knowing little of wolfish habits, and predicted that when we waded across the brook, the hounds would soon turn east. I must cease making prophetic statements. They seem usually to be wrong. When we crossed the stream, the track did not lead east. It led nowhere.
We splashed across to the north side of the brook (for here it flowed east, having turned from its southerly path through the town) and waited for the hounds to find the scent. They could not.
After much fruitless trotting about, their noses pressed to the ground, the fewterer called them to us. “Strange they cannot recover the trail. Squire can’t see so well in ’is old age, I think, but I never see ’im lose a scent.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “the animal passed through the brook for a few paces. If we follow downstream the dogs may find their way again.”
The fewterer leashed his hounds and led them along the north bank of the stream. Occasionally they frightened a trout from under the bank, but they gave no sign that they had recovered the scent.
We followed the brook for 200 paces or more, until the fewterer pulled at the leashes and turned to me. “Mayhap the beast left the brook on the other bank. If we find no track here we might return on the other side.”
I agreed, but was not ready to do so yet. We fought our way through brambles and undergrowth until we were nearly to Aston. The party did not complain, but as we continued east they more and more often peered at me with questioning eyes.
Perhaps the wolf had been this far east when I first heard it howl, but if so the dogs had found no trace of its presence. I spoke the words all were eager to hear, and we waded back across the brook to retrace our steps on the south bank.
The hounds seemed to enjoy this sport. They occasionally flushed a rabbit or a hedgehog. But when we arrived back where the trail had emerged from the wood to cross, as we thought, the brook, they had found no spoor to interest them. We had been three hours at our work, and were nearly back where we began.
The only course remaining was to seek the track upstream, toward the town. I directed that the hounds be separated, one dog on either side of the brook. As we set out I heard the bell from the Church of St Beornwald ring the ninth hour.
The dogs followed their noses up the brook all the way to Mill Street Bridge. They did not recover a scent. Tenants and villeins of Lord Gilbert Talbot and the Bishop of Exeter gazed in wonder as we clambered up the banks of the brook to the bridge. We made a rare spectacle. A dozen tired, mud-caked men, scratched and bloodied, and two weary old hounds. I was going to need another bath.
Hubert Shillside turned to me as we stood perplexed on the bridge. “I think,” he complained, “we must find better hounds. These are too old…they have missed the trail somewhere.”
This thought had occurred to me, but before I could reply the fewterer leaped to defend his charges.
“Nothin’ wrong wi’ the dogs. They’re not so young as t’run down a stag, maybe, but if there was a wolf left a trail they’d find it.”
“So you say, after Master Hugh heard the beast, and after the slain lamb, that there must be no wolf because your hounds cannot find it?” Shillside remarked sarcastically.
“’At’s what I’m sayin’. Master Hugh may’ve heard a wolf…no offense,” the fewterer looked at me and tugged his forelock. “But there be no trail or the dogs would’a found it.”
“But they did,” I said.
“Maybe,” the fewterer muttered.
“What is your meaning?” I challenged the old man.
“Oh, they found a scent. But t’were it a wolf they’d a been more eager to be off.”
“You are sure of this?”
“Nay. Can’t be certain. But I’ve worked Squire an’ Tawny since they was pups. I know ’em…an’ old or not, they didn’t act like they was on a trail of no wild beast.”
“Well, wolf or no, they are fatigued from the day’s labor, as are we all. Return them to their kennel and feed them well.”
“Will you be wantin’ ’em tomorrow?”
“No…unless there is better reason than we have found today.”
“What is to be done, then?” John Holcutt asked. “Must we hope the beast will travel on to curse some other place?”
“No. There may yet be a way to take this marauder. Take two or three others back to the meadow where the lamb lies. Build a screen downwind of the lamb. Tonight we will watch the meadow. Perhaps the wolf will return to its kill. You two,” I said to the archers, “will accompany the reeve and me tonight.”
Chapter 4
Our company broke apart, its dispirited members making their weary way to their homes, or, in John Holcutt’s case, to the meadow. Tomorrow there would be an all-night vigil at the church, awaiting Easter dawn and the removal of the cross from the Easter Sepulcher. Tonight we four would keep a vigil as well.
The two archers were known to me. They were tenants on Lord Gilbert’s land, and I had seen each put a dozen arrows into the butt end of a barrel at 200 paces. Unless John Holcutt built the screen well away from where the lamb lay, if the wolf returned this night he would find an unwelcome surprise. This thought reminded me that the time had come to renew the archery competitions Lord Gilbert sponsored on Sunday afternoons. Such contests were suspended for the winter, but ’twas time to renew the practice.
I ate a light supper, then made my way to the meadow where the reeve and his assistants were completing the screen. John had built a framework of saplings and fallen branches from the nearby wood. Into this he wove tall grasses which had withstood the winter, and ivy and foliage from the hedgerow. The blind was but two paces from
