What happened next you have already heard. The knife went in too easily, and Fletcher was overcome by a mass of crowding images of tragedy. His arrow that had killed the pup’s mother. Images of Alysse in childbirth, the infant, the girl, the Blessed Virgin, Alysse calling out to him from the other side, her body in its coffin awaiting burial.
From somewhere far off Aelric was saying something. “John, are you alright?” Aelric was shouting now. “Fletcher!”
When he came to his senses he was holding the pup in his hands, alive—tiny, helpless, but alive. The knife was lying in the dirt near the mouth of the lair.
II
Fletcher set the pup down, then went to the edge of the glen and emptied the contents of his stomach. He rinsed his mouth from the water bag on his saddle, spitting over and over again, trying to wash the terrible taste of tar from his tongue. “I can’t kill it, Aelric,” he said, coming back. “It’s got no mother and it’ll probably starve to death, or even end up supper to some larger animal, but I can’t kill it.” He waited for his breathing to slow and his heart to stop its wild terrified beating. What was that? Why would a pup affect him like that? He’d killed a hundred wolves, for Christ’s sake. Including pups—when he’d had to. What was this about?
“You’re in charge John,” said Aelric, shaking his head. “What’s next?”
Fletcher rinsed his hands with water from the water bag, and splashed water up on his face. Then he mounted his horse and led off in the direction of Warwick
“Not a word, Aelric,” he said.
“You’re in charge,” Aelric said again.
❧
Returning from the forest, Elspeth came upon three of the village boys, the one in the middle a strapping youth named Jason, who snatched her up by the waist and held her aloft for a moment.
“Put me down, Jason, you ruffian,” said Elspeth, laughing. She pounded his chest.
“Sit with me in church, Els,” Jason pleaded. He continued to hold her aloft, and she realized he must be incredibly strong. “I’ll put you down if you’ll promise to sit with me in church.”
“It would be improper. I’m betrothed, remember, and my father would not allow it.”
“You let me deal with your father, Elspeth.” He set her down on the road, and he and the other boys stepped into pace beside her.
“Nobody deals with her father,” one of the other boys said. He held his arms up in a mock stance of a man aiming a crossbow. Then he pulled the imaginary trigger.
Jason jumped him over the top and knuckled him under the ribs. “He shoots me dead, I’ll come back and drive him mad by knuckling him in his dreams.”
“Alin’s right,” said the other boy soberly. “He’s already a madman.”
“He’s not,” insisted Elspeth. “He’s a man of his word. And a gentleman.”
“A gentleman who’ll break every bone in Jason’s body if he sits beside you in church,” Alin said. He picked up a pebble and threw it hard into the brush, startling a small grouse out of hiding.
“He’s made commitments,” said Elspeth. “He’s a man of his word. And he’s given me over to a Welshman, and would not think kindly of a village whelp who would try to intervene.” Even as she said this, she knew that the marriage would not take place. It was an imposition, something she would prevent, but Jason did not know that, and she sometimes used the betrothal to her own advantage in conversations like this one.
“I’m seventeen,” said Jason defensively. “I’ve got my own flock already. I’m full-grown by any standard.”
Elspeth was unimpressed by this claim. “Are you man enough to deal with Meurig ap Gwynedd?” she asked.
“Bring him on,” Jason replied, but just then they came in sight of Elspeth’s hut, and he stopped before he could be seen by her father. Just before he left, he reached out and grabbed Elspeth by her braided hair, forcing a kiss. “You’re mine,” he said. Then he turned with the other boys and ran for the village.
Elspeth aimed an imaginary crossbow of her own and pulled an imaginary trigger. “So much for manhood,” she muttered as she continued along the path.
❧
As he thought about it, Fletcher realized he didn’t have it in him to confront the girl about the pups. At least not directly. He had had his say last night at supper. Today he was too tired from the hunt to bring it up again. It was none of her affair. A man’s work, that’s all. He skinned the wolf, gave the meat to Aelric for the dog, set the pelt aside for the sheriff, and made his way back up the path to Willem’s pub for ale. One flagon. Two. Maybe more. He couldn’t remember and he didn’t care. He hardly saw the flagons, said hardly a word to Sarabeth, but he was in a bad way as he stumbled back to his hut in the dark.
Elspeth had a small fire going, and a stew. “I was worried about you,” she said.
He pulled out a chair and dropped heavily into the seat, spreading his legs to steady himself.
“Eat some stew,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”
Fletcher said nothing. Who was she to tell him what to do, or how to feel better? “Don’t want stew,” he said heavily. He was having trouble forming up the words. “Bring some of that beer. We’ve got beer, don’t we?” His speech was slow and slurred like the mud in the river after a storm.
“You’ve had enough,” she said quietly.
“Who are you to tell me anything?” he demanded. “What do you know? About life? About anything? You think you’re so smart. What? Because of that bookbinder and his wife? You’re a girl, not even a woman. You’re like your mother.”
“Father, don’t . . .” she said.
“I thought you wanted to know about your mother.”
“I thought you loved her.”
“She was too good for us little people. Sat around reading while the other women worked. Puts ideas into her head. She starts imagining things, having dreams, thinks they’re real, that’s what she does.”
This tirade lasted until the light in the hut had faded so badly he had to grope to find his bed, stumbling in fully dressed.
Elspeth removed her father’s shoes and set them by the door, then went to her own bed. Before he had finished, her father said something that troubled her even more deeply than his drinking or his going on and on about her mother: The creature in the dream had been a dragon. And then her father had added angrily that she could not—must not—tell anybody about the dragon in the dream. The sheriff would catch wind of it and think she had gone mad. “Not a word,” he had said. “Not to Alcera, not to Levente, not to anybody.” She would be taken away from her father. Does having dreams about a dragon make one crazy? Had she gone mad? Would they take her away?
She sat up in bed and leaned her back against the bedstead of her small cot, arms wrapped around her knees, trying to tease out memories of what had happened in the dream about the dragon, but the dream was too far gone and she could not recall the details. Even so, thinking about it she had trouble going to sleep. What if the dream returned? She threw back the covers to cool her sweating ankles. She rose and went to the window to open the shutters and draw some air into the room. It wasn’t far—three or four steps—though it seemed to take forever. She felt as though she was walking in slow motion, the way a jester might walk in one of the festivals at the castle. It was a struggle to get to the window.
Even