The Hunter’s Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

foreyard, trying to hold his shoulders straight against his weariness. Long summer days and their drawn-out twilight had always been pleasure for him, but today he had found himself wanting a brief winter’s day that would be done with and over, with a long night to follow when he could go to bed and not be anything except—with luck—asleep for hours upon hours and no need to say or do any of all the things he had had to do and say these past five days.
     
    As it was, having no need for haste to be home before dark, the guests had lingered over the funeral feast. Not that there had been that many guests. “And most of them are here simply for the pleasure of seeing him dead,” Miles had said low-voiced to Hugh as they came out of the uncrowded church after the funeral Mass. Nor was anyone there who had to take much trouble over coming except Master Wyck from Banbury and that was more because he had been Sir Ralph’s attorney than for respect. Certainly there had been no great grieving from anyone, unless Elyn and Lucy’s tears meant much, which Hugh doubted. That his sisters’ weeping seemed more from duty—they owed it to themselves to weep—than from feeling was among the thoughts weighing on Hugh all day. Another heavy thought was that despite Sir Ralph had lived a goodly number of years, been married, had children, known a fair number of people along the way, at the end of it all he was buried with no one much caring and only duty-tears over his grave.
     
    If anyone is going to miss him, Hugh thought as he crossed the foreyard, back toward the hall, his shadow stretching out black ahead of him, it will be me and the hounds. And I don’t think we do. Except maybe Bevis. The brindled wolfhound had been Sir Ralph’s present favorite, taken with him almost everywhere, even into church, where Father Leonel had frowned but not dared say anything. These days since Sir Ralph’s death, Bevis had limped restlessly through the hall and foreyard or else lain beside the hall hearth, long muzzle on paws, eyes fixed on the outer door as if awaiting Sir Ralph’s return. Yet when Tom had brought him to lie beside the bier, he would not, and today was tied in the kitchen yard, out of the way. Hugh had wondered before now how things would have gone that last day if Bevis had been with Sir Ralph. Assuredly not the way they had.
     
    But Bevis had cut a forepaw on a stone the day before and the morning of the hunt Sir Ralph had rumpled his ears and said, “Best you lie up today, old fellow. It’s only hare-hunting anyway.” But a very good hare-hunting, as it happened; the best there had been that summer. Only fallow and roedeer bucks and hare were allowable to the hunt through the summer months and early autumn, between St. John’s Day and Holy Rood, and since Sir Ralph had hunted roedeer a few days earlier, he had been in the humour for hare-hunting, and so Hugh had been out in the green-gold dawn that day, a-foot and without dogs, to quarter the rough pastureland beyond the village fields, looking for the best place to bring the hunt. He had been glad the signs for likely best hunting looked to be in the farthest of the pastures, well away from the fields where the grain was ripening toward harvest. Sir Ralph had no care if his hounds coursed through the standing grain, but it set the villagers to fury to see their work and hope of winter bread trampled by hounds and hunters for the sake of sport. Sir Ralph’s answer to their protests when they came into the manor court about it was always, “I have to live with your poaching my game out of my forest whenever you’ve a mind to it and stealing my wood whenever my back is turned. You can live with my trampling a little of your fields in return. Now get out.”
     
    A year ago Hary Gefori, the hay ward’s grown son and shaping well to take his father’s place when the time came, had dared say angrily back, “Aye, we poach, and when we’re caught at it, we’re