The Hunter’s Tale Read Online Free PDF

beaten and fined for it. So, in like, when you and your hounds and horses have robbed us of our grain, why shouldn’t you pay?”
     
    Sir Ralph had half-risen from his chair, his hands gripping its arms so his knuckles stood out white, his face purpled with fury and his words almost throttled by his anger. “Pay for what’s mine? I own all this manor and everything on it, including you and every stalk of wheat and rye and barley and plain pasture grass. If anyone’s going to pay, it’ll be you—with half the teeth in your head and the skin off your back. Tom and you there, Duff, take him. Hugh, fetch my dog whip. I’ll show…”
     
    Hary had not waited to be taken or whipped but had spun on his heel and shoved his way among the men gathered to the court, with no one—including Tom—trying to stop him before he was out the door. That had earned Tom a yelling-at and every man there the fine of a penny each, including Tom, though Hugh doubted Tom ever paid it, since Tom and Father Leonel between them kept the manor accounts and Sir Ralph “never cares what the accounts say,” Tom had raged once to their mother. “So long as the hounds are healthy and the roof isn’t falling in, he doesn’t care. I could be stealing him blind and he’d never know.”
     
    ‘Are you stealing him blind?“ Lady Anneys had asked.
     
    ‘No. The more fool me,“ Tom had said bitterly.
     
    Now everything was Tom’s, and if the villagers had warily held back from outright celebration of Sir Ralph’s death, Hugh did not doubt there was nonetheless hidden joy among them because Tom, for all that his anger could flare like Sir Ralph’s, was far more even-handed in his dealings. He had been even more pleased than Hugh the morning of that last hunt to hear the chase would likely keep well away from the grain fields.
     
    ‘It will be closer to the gathering place, too,“ he had said.
     
    ‘Farther for the servants but closer for us, and Mother and the girls won’t mind the walk.“ Which they would have to make, whether they minded or not, because last night Sir Ralph had pointed at Lady Anneys across the parlor and ordered, ”See to it there’s food laid out at the spring after the hunt. We might as well make a day of it, since Sir William is bringing both Elyn and his girl.“ Sir William being their near neighbor and as passionate to the hunt as Sir Ralph.
     
    That night Miles said, while he and Hugh and Tom had been readying to bed in the chamber they shared over the kitchen at the hall’s other end from Sir Ralph and Lady Anneys’ own room, “So we’re to hunt in the morning, guzzle through midday, and return to the slaughter in the afternoon. I wonder if I feel a sickness coming on and must keep to my bed for the day?”
     
    Tom had thrown a wadded shirt at him. “If I have to be there, so do you.”
     
    ‘I hate hare-hunting.“
     
    ‘You hate all hunting.“
     
    Miles threw the shirt back at him. “Hare-hunting is worse. You can hunt the fool things twice in a day. Everything else you hunt and then go home. Red deer, roedeer, fallow deer, otter, badger, fox, boar, bear, wolf…”
     
    ‘Boar? Bear? Wolf?“ Tom had repeated cuttingly. ”When have any of us ever hunted boar or bear or wolf?“
     
    ‘Never, thank St. Eustace. It’s been bad enough listening to Sir Ralph moaning on about lacking them. Years and years of him moaning there’s no wild boar or bear or wolf left for him to slaughter. Moaning on and on…“
     
    ‘Nephew,“ Tom warned, ”if you don’t shut yourself up…“
     
    ‘… and on and on and…“
     
    Tom and Hugh together had shoved him backward onto the bed and made to smother him with a pillow until laughter broke up their wrestling and they had all settled to sleep in the cheerfulness they so often had together when away from Sir Ralph.
     
    In the morning Hugh had been first up and dressed and away, leaving them pulling on their heavy hunting hosen and debating whether