The Silver Stag of Bunratty (6 page)

Two days later the castle was full to the brim and Lady Johanna was delighted to see the visitors; she loved to show off her English clothes and English ways. Unfortunately, her delight did not make her easier to live with, as she wanted everything to be even more perfect than usual. Margaret grumbled that she was sick and tired of running up and down to the solar for a new set of orders.

‘How can I get anything done with me spending my time listening to her complain about everything? And mark my words,’ she shook her finger at Cliar, ‘no good will come of
this hunt. Feasting on May Eve when the fairies are out and about and then going off to hunt a magical creature on Mayday morning. It’s crazy. Sir Richard should be making sure the charms are put in place to protect his horses and cattle from harm, not making merry and going into the Good People’s own territory on their special day.’

But make merry they did, in the Great Hall the night before Mayday. Because of the visitors, Maude and Matthieu were sent down the table to sit beside Tuan, and a group of musicians played (very badly in Matthieu’s estimation) some tunes on recorder and harp. Cliar came and stood behind the other children as they began to eat. ‘Remember what I told you about the bread,’ she whispered. ‘Be careful not to eat any.’

Tuan started guiltily. He had been so transfixed by the strange music that he had already nibbled a piece of his trencher. Within a few minutes, he began to feel very strange. Either there was no air coming into the hall or he was going to faint. But he had never fainted in his life. He looked around him. The hall was full of smoke, and the figures moved through it, in a fog so dense he could hardly recognise them. The talk around him was a buzz of bees, a flock of starlings in winter, a tribe of gannets exchanging
news on their cliffside homes along the seacoast. And now the flames were dancing in the darkness, like the priests’ stories of hell. And where Sir Richard and the Lady Johanna had been sitting, there was a hawk and a stoat. Fat John, to their right, had his place taken by a boar with huge tusks and bristles all over his face. Tuan looked down at his own hands, and was somehow not surprised to see that they were covered in fur, and instead of nails there were claws at the end of his fingers. Of course: Cú na Mara, the sea-dog or otter. His tribe’s totem animal. What else could he have become?

Someone, something, touched him on the arm, and he jumped. Even so close, he could hardly make out the features of the face that was peering down at him through the smoke. Surely that was a pony – a pony with a kindly expression, but nonetheless a pony? He shook his head and the room swirled around. He felt very sick.

‘Tuan, what’s wrong? Are you not well?’ The voice came from the rough-haired little pony by his side. It was Cliar. He shook his head and tried to get up. Staggering out of the hall, a hoof under one arm and a claw (was that young lioness Maude?) under the other, he was led out under the stars. The brightness outside and the cold air rushing into his lungs made him gasp and he promptly fell
onto his knees, vomiting.

‘Good, get it out of your stomach. It’s the rye bread,’ said the pony. ‘You must have eaten some. You should have remembered what I said!’

Cliar had been busy the day before. Margaret had once told her to be careful of using rye flour, for if the weather was wet, a form of fungus called ergot could develop in it. Cliar had gone to the mill and had taken some of just such flour, which had been thrown out by the miller. She had mixed it into the bread for the feast. It would not kill anyone, but it would have the effect of making everyone who ate it see strange things and give them very bad headaches and sick stomachs. It would ensure that no-one would be in the best of form for the hunt the next day.

Cliar and Maude walked Tuan around and held him steady while he cleared his stomach, and by the time the feast was over, the sickness had passed and in Tuan’s eyes they had all taken human form again.

Then the children prepared to carry out their other plans to sabotage the hunt, plans that would keep them busy most of the night of that moonlit May Eve.

CHAPTER 8

T
HE
S
TAG
H
UNT

ext morning, there was a huge breakfast set for the hunters in the Great Hall. Cliar was run ragged, bringing in dish after dish. She noticed that much of the food was sent back, uneaten. Many of the hunters looked as if they would rather be in bed than heading out for a day in the forest.

She had seen hunts at Bunratty before, but never one with so many people and never one that seemed so important to Sir Richard. He had sent Robert the Marshal out again and again to look for signs of the stag, and then the hunt had been planned like a military campaign. They now knew that the stag was in the eastern part of the wood, and the plan was to move it westwards, to the clearing known as Shepherd’s Dell, where the archers and the mastiffs would be waiting to take it down. Of course, as in
any campaign, things could change in the course of the hunt. That was half the adventure of it, the excitement of the chase.

Out in the bailey, the noise of the hounds was unbelievable. Gile became wildly excited with the racket. He strained on the cord that Maude had attached him to, first barking madly and then going into a sort of frenzied whimper of excitement. It was a beautiful morning, and in the distance the forest, with its fresh green leaves, looked like a magical place – or, thought Matthieu, an illustration in one of the Books of Hours he loved to look at. The hunters wore bright colours and even the most staid of the horses pranced around, pulsing with excitement.

‘It looks so beautiful,’ said Cliar. ‘Such a pity it’s all to kill something as wonderful as the stag.’

‘Come on, Cliar, I’ve got a horse for you.’ Maude’s pale cheeks were rosy and her eyes were like stars.

‘How did you manage that?’ Cliar was astonished. The only servants usually allowed to go on a great hunt like this were the huntsmen, who led the dogs when they were not in pursuit of the stag, and the beaters, whose job it was to beat down the ferns and brambles of the forest, frightening the quarry so that it would run from its cover.

‘I have organised it all. Tuan has permission to come
with us too.’

‘What about Margaret? Won’t she want me here to help with the preparations for tonight when everyone is back?’

‘No, I’ve talked to her, and she says she has lots of extra help from the village and that you have been looking pale and a day out in the woods will do you good. Look, she even gave us some food in case we lose the hunt and decide just to have a picnic in the forest. And Robert has said you can ride Shelly – she’s so stubborn and slow nobody else wants to take her, but he says you have a way with horses.’ Cliar looked at Maude with admiration. She had thought of everything. Standing beside her, Matthieu was grinning. Most of the time it was a pain to have a sister who liked to organise things so much for everyone, but sometimes it was very, very useful.

Lady Johanna rode by on a beautiful white palfrey. She was dressed in a magnificent purple dress with gold edgings and a scarlet and gold cloak. Her headdress was a tall red steeple, hung with a fine golden veil. Her horse’s bridle was hung with tiny golden bells. It was a pity, as Maude said, that she was wearing a face that would turn the milk sour, her thin mouth turned downwards and her eyes screwed up into a frown. She gave a cold glance at the children, but was too concerned with keeping her long, trailing outfit out of
the mud to pay much attention to them.

‘I wonder how far she’ll get in that dress?’ said Maude.

‘Oh, she’ll just go out as far as the edge of the wood,’ said Cliar, ‘and then she’ll come back. She just likes to show off her clothes to as many people as possible. She doesn’t like to get dirty.’

Maude snorted.

Tuan came riding up on Bellvoir, a young bay, smiling. ‘Isn’t it great that we all get to go along with the hunt?’

Cliar smiled back at him. ‘Yes, it will make everything easier, hopefully.’ Her stomach was full of butterflies. Their plan had to work …

The Marshal was explaining to Matthieu the progress of the hunt. In larger hunts they used separate packs of different kinds of dogs for tracking the game. But the Bunratty pack consisted of a mix of hounds of various breeds, mainly running-hounds and greyhounds. Sir Richard’s great mastiff, Grandcour, led the pack. Cliar’s heart almost stopped when she saw its great slobbering jaws and realised that those same cruel teeth would soon sink into the stag if the hunt was a success. She had a vivid image of the Silver Stag fallen, it’s flesh torn and bloodied by the evil points of the arrows and the steel heads of the lances and spears. She crossed her fingers. They would not
let that happen. They
could
not let that happen.

Robert was saying: ‘Lady Johanna, now, she would know about the great hunts, even the royal hunts in England. They are something to see, I’m sure, but even here we do not put on too bad a show. That’s a fine horse she has, Belami; brought all the way from France it was. And Sir Richard’s horse, Beauvallet, is a beauty – as fine an example of a destrier as you are likely to see; though some say they are too heavy a breed for hunting. You children must stay well at the back, so as not to interfere with what is going on. You, young Mathieu, you must watch carefully so that later you will know what to do when you are a part of it, when you are Sir Matthieu. You must watch what happens when the stag is brought down by the dogs and the archers. It is Sir Richard’s right to give it the
coup de grace
, the blow of the sword that ends its life. And you will see how we keep the dogs off the quarry so as not to ruin the meat. Cutting the meat is a skilled job and must be done properly. Then, Matthieu, we can blood you with the stag’s blood. After that we let the dogs have their share.’

The Marshal looked around and sighed. ‘I’ve never seen such a quiet lot of hunters, though. They must have spent too long at the wine. I don’t feel too great myself, but I won’t let that stop me making this hunt a day to remember.
You look dreadfully pale too, boy. But the ride will soon bring colour to your cheeks’

Matthieu was pale because he was afraid he was going to be sick. Being blooded was a tradition at one’s first hunt – after the kill, the blood of the dead animal was smeared over your face.

Maude went over and gave his shoulder a little shake. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We won’t let any of it happen.’

She sounded more confident than she felt. She felt responsible for how things went, for their plan that had been largely of her making, though Tuan had also added suggestions and Cliar had come up with the idea to add ergot to the bread.

The Marshal rode over to Sir Richard and spoke to him. Sir Richard nodded. The hunt was called to order with the horn, and set out towards the forest. When they reached the trees at its edge, Lady Johanna and her ladies turned back and the rest of the hunt continued into the darkness of the forest. The baying hounds, the jingling harnesses and the calls of the huntsmen to one another drowned out the birdsong that usually filled the wood.

The hunt had entered the eastern edge of the wood, and green branches folded over the riders’ heads. Yellow gorse
and drifts of bluebells grew in the small patches between the trees. At first they followed a path, but it became narrower and more overgrown as they travelled on, and eventually petered out altogether. Maude shivered as she spotted a cluster of feathers under her horse’s hooves; a fox or a bird of prey had been busy hunting the night before. She did not like the forest. She preferred open spaces where, she told herself, you could see your enemy approaching from the distance. She would never admit it to anyone, but the forest scared her. Cliar looked at Maude’s pale face and wondered at her nervousness. She felt sheltered in the forest, as if the trees were placing their branchy arms around her, enfolding her as a mother might her child. She led the group of children as they trailed behind the hunters, the dogs leading the chase, now baying in full voice.

There was a flash of something bright between the trees and the dogs went mad with excitement, picking up speed and tearing through the undergrowth so that the hunters could barely keep up with them. Another flash of silver, and then it was impossible to watch, for the horses were crashing through the bushy undergrowth of brambles and brushwood and new ferns, and bringing the hunters further and further into the heart of the wood.

At the back of the hunt, the children exchanged anxious glances. They would soon know if any of their efforts had been successful.

At first it seemed that their plan had not worked at all. The hounds pursued a single course under the trees, baying loudly, the huntsman’s horn calling them on.

But then things began to go wrong. One of the hounds stopped and lifted her head. She sniffed the air, paw raised, as if puzzled by something. Then she suddenly took off into the undergrowth to the left of her path, away from her companions. Some of the other dogs ran after her, five or six of them following a trail away from the main hunt. The main body of the pack kept running forward, along with Sir Richard and the Marshal, but several huntsmen exchanged glances and made after the straying hounds, so that the hunt was split. The children looked at each other and smiled. Within a few minutes the same thing had happened again; some more of the hounds took off at a tangent, and several hunters followed them.

‘It’s working perfectly,’ said Maude.

There was the call of a horn far in the distance, and the main body of the hunt, with Sir Richard at its head, drew to a halt.

‘It’s the sighting call,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Let’s go east.’

‘But the tracks are going this way,’ said the Robert, his forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

The horn called again.

‘Quickly, now.’ Sir Richard spurred his horse and led the way eastwards.

The children watched.

‘That store of honey I gave young Bat, the miller’s son, was well worth it,’ said Cliar with satisfaction.

‘Just be sure he gets the hunting horn back to us safely,’ said Maude. ‘It was my father’s.’

But then there was another call, a thin, eerie one, from the south.

‘Did he get his friends to help out?’ asked Matthieu, puzzled.

Cliar shook her head. The horn called again from the north.

‘It’s the ghosts,’ she said. ‘They said they would help us; it’s a ghost horn, leading the hunters astray … nobody will know which way to go!’

‘I wonder where the stag actually is?’ asked Matthieu.

That had been their worry all through the night, when they had carefully laid false trails of deer droppings and fresh meat all over the forest. The plan had been to throw the dogs into such confusion that the hunt would have to be
abandoned. The after-effects of the ergot and the hunting horn calls from different directions would confuse the hunters further; one could only hope that by some piece of bad luck the hunt would not actually come upon the stag.

‘It looks like the plan has worked. Let’s go home,’ said Matthieu, who was getting tired and who had had enough excitement for one day. His stomach had felt sick all morning, from worry that they might not succeed with their plan. ‘We can’t really do any more, can we?’