M. Lachlan: Wolfsangel

On the day that she was to go back on that vow a neighbouring farmer had visited to warn that, very unusually, there was a wolf in the area. Three of his sheep had been killed the night before. In such a tight community of small farms wolves were rare, put off by the number of men. Hence the local farmers had little experience of dealing with them.

So Saitada, the farmer and his wife drove their livestock into the pen by the pigsty and waited the night with the dogs and a spear. You have two ways to go with a wolf, unless you are an experienced trapper. One is to light your torches and sing your songs, hoping that the noise will drive him away. The second is to lie in wait to spear him and kill him. Neither will work but both courses of action will provide the comfort of doing something. If you come in force he will slip away and try again tomorrow. If you wait, he can wait longer, until you are tired and sleep takes you. To catch a wolf, you need a trick and a trap, things the farmer did not have.

The farmer was eager for sleep and wanted to get things over with, so he commanded silence from the women. Still, he could not quite keep quiet himself, so impressed was he with the weight of his spear. Men who have never had to fight love a weapon. They love to hold it in their hands, feel its balance and speculate on the damage they might do, were they called to do it. There is a killer in every cowardly man, waiting for the right set of circumstances when the time has been drained of the possibility of reprisals and he feels free to act. The farmer was no different and began, as he sat in the warm night, to feel the importance the spear bestowed upon him and, despite himself, to talk.

‘When I was a boy it was said no one threw a spear better than I.’

The farmer’s wife rolled her eyes because she had heard this story before many times when he was in drink.

‘I thought we were being quiet for this wolf,’ she said.

‘I’m just saying,’ said the farmer, ‘had I been born higher I would have made a mighty warrior. As a boy I had quite the feel for weapons. The earl himself saw me one day and said he wished half his warriors could shoot a bow as well as I. I was quite the-’

Suddenly he was quiet. In the trees by the farm two gigantic eyes seemed to burn, less a wolf than some fiend from hell.

He moved smoothly behind the slave girl. She did not flinch, having endured worse than a wolf had to offer her.

‘That is no ordinary wolf,’ said the farmer’s wife.

‘Sound the alarm,’ said the farmer. ‘Fetch aid, fetch aid!’

‘You fetch aid,’ said his wife; ‘you’re the man.’

‘If I move it might see me,’ hissed the farmer.

‘If I move it might see me,’ hissed his wife.

‘I am needed to till the land. Who will provide for poor Saitada?’ said the farmer.

‘I will go for aid,’ said Saitada.

‘Too late. The wolf is among you,’ said a voice close at their ears.

The three turned but couldn’t for a moment see anyone. Suddenly, so bright and white in the starlit night that they wondered how ever they could have missed him, a young man of around twenty was there. He was strikingly handsome, long-legged and lithe. He seemed to draw the moonlight to him, and beneath it his muscles rippled as if under some silvery sea. For a breath it didn’t seem remarkable that he was almost completely naked. All he had to cover his modesty was a huge and bloody wolfskin draped across his back, a rear paw cheekily positioned by his hand over that part the nuns shun. His hair was bright red and stood up in a shock.

‘Christ’s wounds!’ said the farmer. ‘You nearly made me jump out of my skin.’

‘Well, I did jump out of mine,’ said the man, sliding away the paw that concealed his shame and then whipping it back again.

‘How dare you appear in front of my wife like that!’ said the farmer, who was a pious man when it suited him.

‘The wolf behind you?’ said the strange man.

‘Where?’ said the farmer. ‘Oh Lord, the eyes.’

The farmer turned to run but he had those grim burning eyes in front of him in the wood and the strange and terrible young man behind. He had nowhere to go and, his brain running out of ideas for what to do with his body, he simply flopped to the floor.

‘Not eyes,’ said the man, ‘just torches left by some kind traveller.’

The farmer squinted into the darkness. Now it was obvious: they were just brands.

‘As I thought,’ said the farmer.

‘Fire,’ said the pale man. ‘That is the way to keep the wolf at bay.’ He walked to the wood and returned with the two burning torches. Now he had tied the wolf skin’s back paws around his midsection.

‘I have covered that serpent that tempted Eve,’ he said.

The man held the torches up and looked at the peasants. ‘A farmer, his pretty piggy wife and who is this rare beauty? No wonder you panic, old man, to see such a face.’

‘I wasn’t panicking I was… taking advantage of the terrain, that is why I got down.’

‘It seems this one knows better than you that fire keeps the wolf at bay,’ said the man, holding up his hand to Saitada’s chin and studying the scar on her face.

Saitada did not flinch to hear his words because the scorn of a man meant nothing to her. He gently turned the undamaged side of her face towards him.

‘Such beauty is a terrible thing,’ said the man, ‘for no shield can deflect its dart, and even the most nimble of warriors can no more dodge it than you can, old man.’

‘You are mocking me,’ said Saitada, ‘but I am glad of it if it means you will not lay your hands upon me.’

‘No, lady,’ said the man. ‘You are far more beautiful to me than any woman on earth. You have snatched the spool of destiny from the hands of the fates and woven a skein yourself. ’

‘You speak fine words, sir,’ said the farmer.

‘High praise from such a judge,’ said the traveller with a bow.

‘And now you’re mocking me!’ said the farmer, who like most old men tended to hear only those parts of the conversation that concerned himself. ‘I once threw a spear the length of a laine. And it stuck in the mud properly too.’

‘Don’t worry, ma’am,’ said the man to the farmer’s wife. ‘I shall mock you when I have finished with your husband, but, oh, shall I ever finish with such an example? No, ma’am, you are quite safe, I shall never finish with him.’

‘What of that wolf?’ said the farmer, whose head had become a little disordered since the stranger’s appearance, though he had drunk little.

‘I have slain that night-time caller, that freeman of the forests, that furry sir, oh farmer, my manure mangler, my seedy serf, my shit smith. But he tore my clothes,’ said the man. ‘Will you lend me some of yours so that I might cover the splendour the priests would call our shame?’ He went to pull the wolf skin away but stopped at the last instant.

‘If you have killed the wolf, as I see you have, then I owe you a cloak,’ said the old man. ‘Here in the house I have one that has served me many winters.’

‘I prefer the expensive one you’re wearing,’ said the man. ‘It was woven by the finest hand that ever picked up a distaff.’

‘It was woven by me,’ said Saitada.

‘I know it, lady,’ said the man and bowed deeply.

‘She is not a lady, she is a slave,’ said the farmer.

‘She’s freer than you will ever be,’ said the man. ‘Now get me your cloak before I tear the skin from your back and wrap myself in that instead.’

The stranger’s words seemed to sizzle through the farmer’s mind. He felt as though he was frying in the juice of all his boasts, all his pretensions and weaknesses. He did as he was bid. The pale fellow stretched out his hand to Saitada and it seemed to her that little points of light began to dance around her, tiny silver orbs no bigger than seeds, glinting in a shimmering web. He put on the cloak she had made, drew it around him and began to sing. Half beautiful is she, like the moon And from her shall spring the moon taker Oh the sun it grows dark at the noon And the wolf in his dreams is a waker