Chapter IX
IX
Baron d’Ocerne feted us all that evening with a most immoderate banquet. Long tables were set out on the rear promenade with a view of the formal gardens and, beyond them, the wild, forested foothills of the Margeride Mountains.
Antoine was seated at the baron’s table with his family, along with the bishop and Lord Bauterne.
The places closest to them were reserved for the officials and local gentry, followed a little farther along by the hunters from noble stock, and so on all the way down to the various hired woodsmen, dog handlers, trappers and trackers who would be doing all the actual hunting, along with the hounds, the rats and me.
At my end of the table, the hounds received better service than the men.
The hunters’ charges were treated like favored children, and their pack leaders—distinguished with gilded collars—were served the leavings directly from their masters’ plates, carried down to us by the chateau staff.
The dogs seemed restless and agitated, in spite of their training.
Many of them shivered strangely and strained against their leashes, putting their handlers to the test. One russet pointer in particular seemed quite unsettled; it hovered just outside the light of the lanterns, trembling and growling at its fellows.
Everyone was very thirsty after the ceremony and the baron’s wine stores were seemingly bottomless.
As the meal progressed, my companions traded tales of big-game hunts across the continent.
I contributed a lascivious (and only partly fictionalized) account of my hunt for the Gorgon of Crete, which provoked laughter from the hunters and more skittishness from the dogs.
“The beasts are putting the handlers through their paces tonight. There are too many of them all together,” said the man across from me, noticing my discomfort.
He was the loudest voice at the table, a nine-fingered trapper from Gascony.
“I know you. You’re the Cypriot professor—the one with the baron’s son. ”
“I am.”
“Well, my sympathies to you, sir,” he said, raising his cup in a mock salute. “You may be assured the young lord will get you nowhere near the Beast or the bounty. Though I’ve no doubt you’ll see your share of whorehouses.”
“And who do you believe will take the prize, sir? You and your lord, I suppose?” I asked.
“Yesterday I would have said so. But now—well.” He drained his cup in a single, open-jawed swallow. “Now the prize is all but guaranteed to our new master of the hunt, Lord Bauterne. The man is a legend even down here in the provinces.”
“Ha!” interrupted the man to his left, a Flemish dog handler with no teeth. “I think the Normans may have something to say about that.”
“The Normans?” I asked.
“Lords Jean-Charles and Jean-Francois d’Enneval—father and son, and the previous masters of the hunt.
” He pointed to two large, blond men seated close to the baron’s table.
They were almost identical from a distance, with impressive mustaches waxed and curled in the grenadier style.
“Most simply call them Enneval the Elder and Enneval the Younger. They have chased the Beast from Julianges to Velay these past few months—and marked it more than once.”
“And yet it remains at large, which is why Lord Bauterne has been assigned to take over their charge,” countered the Gascon.
“Well, let us see how the king’s favorite fares facing a real killer in the wild, rather than chasing fat deer in His Majesty’s hunting—”
“By the Lord!”
The hum of dinner conversation was suddenly shattered by the baying of dogs.
I leaped to my feet, my Walloon blade in hand, and was nearly knocked over by two enormous hounds who came barreling out of the darkness, bound in a murderous tangle.
They tore at each other ferociously, carrying their savage melee up onto our long table and through the remains of the baron’s fine meal.
The banquet erupted into bedlam.
Chairs tumbled to the ground as the men around me sprang back from the bloody spectacle, crying out in shock. Handlers roared obscenities in all the dialects of France, struggling to restrain the other dogs, which had gone mad with fear. The air was suddenly rank with the stench of blood and shit.
It was over in seconds. The smaller dog—which I realized was the skittish russet pointer—howled as the larger, a darkly brindled female mastiff, bit deeply into its throat.
With monstrous strength, she chewed through her victim’s neck and then tore it out, sending a long rope of crimson over the white tablecloth.
I stood very still, watching the powerful hound on the table only a few feet away.
Easily as tall as a man, she was imposingly muscular, with a thick neck and broad muzzle full of cruel teeth.
Her coat was fawn mottled with black streaks, darkening around her face in a predator’s mask.
Her drooping ears and jowls glistened redly in the candlelight.
Even amid the commotion, I could hear her growling with each exhalation, a terribly deep sound that promised more violence.
Sarmodel, if she comes for us, be ready.
Of course, my love.
“Soeur!” someone bellowed from the head of the table.
A small man pushed through the chaos. There was no mistaking the all-black uniform of the Lieutenant of the Hunt. Bauterne forced his way forward, scattering hounds and hunters alike with blows of his gloved hand. “Soeur! Heel!”
The huge hound cringed visibly at the sound of his voice and I suddenly noticed what the other hunters must have seen from the beginning. The animal wore a gilded collar around her bloody throat; she was the lieutenant’s prized pack leader.
I slowly sheathed my sword.
“Heel!” The dog whined and lowered her head, all but crawling off the table to Bauterne’s side. Already a diminutive man, he seemed a child beside the hulking animal, but she feared him like the flame. He seized her collar and dragged her away from the kill, ignoring her shrill cries.
A whine came from the mauled animal on the table, and Bauterne turned back toward it. “Soeur, my girl, what is this? What have you done?” he muttered. He drew his knife.
“For shame, sir!”
“Shame!”
Several of the hunters called their disapproval, like hecklers at a cockfight.
Bauterne silenced them with a cold glance.
There was the barest flurry of movement, as though he were flicking some mud from his glove, and then his black hunting knife was buried in the dying animal’s ribs, piercing its heart.
To my relief, he was very precise; I felt the poor creature’s pain and fear drain away in an instant.
Sarmodel claimed its anima with a pleasurable surge.
Bauterne wiped the knife on the hound’s coat, and when he stepped away, he held another gilded chain collar, wet with blood.
“You dog-fucking bastard!”
Bauterne turned lightly to face his accuser.
Not one but two men approached him—the blond military men the Gascony trapper had called the Normans.
The Ennevals were so equally proportioned and so uniformly weathered by sun and wind that it was difficult to tell who was the father and who the son.
Even their grenadier mustaches were of identical styling and lush proportions.
They advanced beside the banquet table with an identical gait, somewhere between a hunter’s careful pace and a lord’s strut.
Enneval the Elder rushed to the dog on the table, his large hands remarkably gentle as they cradled the animal’s head.
His son stepped forward to meet Bauterne, his knife drawn. The lieutenant inclined his head, as though responding to a courtly greeting.
“Young Master Enneval. You have my apologies.” Bauterne proffered the dripping gilded collar to the Norman. “It seems my Soeur has taken issue with your pack leader for reasons I cannot explain, and with the most regrettable consequences.”
The mastiff was growling again, her eyes on the young Norman as he approached Bauterne.
“Consequences, yes,” said the blond man, sheathing his knife.
He stood nigh two feet taller than the lieutenant, and he plucked the bloody chain from Bauterne’s hand as though taking a toy from a child.
“Keep your bitch on her leash from now on, or someone will mistake her for the Beast and claim her hide. Those also are consequences.”
“Such a man would be no friend to the people of Gévaudan. I assure you there is no better pack leader in France than my Soeur, and she will win us the Beast,” replied Bauterne.
“Surely, sir—surely you can see this was an accident. Again, I apologize.” Bauterne seemed calm and his words remained exceedingly polite, but I was not fooled; he was as rattled as the rest of us.
I also suspected he was a man unaccustomed to being questioned, especially in public.
The younger Norman stared down at him, tightening his fist around the chain.
“I well understand the blow of losing a favored hound, sir,” Bauterne continued.
“My Soeur is my own true companion on the hunt, and I am sure you felt the same about yours.” He raised his hand for the enormous dog to approach him.
She stood obediently by his side and he held her collar like the bridle of a horse.
“You see? She heeds me in all things. This aggression is not in her nature.”
“Which is it, then? She obeys you in all things, or she is so poorly trained she feeds on her own?”
“She must have been provoked, sir.” Bauterne’s conciliatory tone began to sharpen.
“Provoked?”
For just a moment, it seemed as though the altercation would indeed degenerate into violence between the two noblemen.
I would have struggled to choose a victor in such a fight.
Their physical differences aside, Enneval the Younger’s sheer malice seemed quite evenly matched with Bauterne’s blistering pride; both were being held in check quite poorly.
“Son, be quiet,” interrupted Enneval the Elder.
He did not raise his voice, but the other noblemen were immediately silent.
The older man’s mouth was bent in a deep frown beneath his blond mustache.
His fingers stroked the ears of the russet pointer one last time before he let its head rest again on the table, amid the ruins of the baron’s banquet.
“There is no need to argue with Monsieur Bauterne. He is the king’s emissary, and he will extend the king’s courtesy, I am sure.
He knows he has deprived us of our most valuable dog, who took years of care and training at my expense and must now be replaced.
Just as we have been.” Nobody was catcalling anymore; not even the drunkest of the guests dared interrupt.
The man’s eyes burned with bitterness and he suddenly seemed to show his age—there was no longer any mistaking him for his son.
He looked to Bauterne and raised his gloved hand, shining with the blood of his most favored hound.
Slowly, he stepped forward and wiped his thumb across Bauterne’s cheeks, leaving two red streaks.
“First blood is yours, sir. I am certain you will compensate us accordingly, if we are now to hunt together, as you say,” said Enneval the Elder, his voice taut.
Bauterne’s eyes were wide with shock, his nostrils flared, but he did not bite back. Again, I was impressed with his composure.
“Of course, sir” was all he said.
Enneval the Younger was chastened by his father’s words, but he was not quite finished.
“My father and I will share our fire, our men and our hounds with you, Monsieur Bauterne, as the king commands. But a stupid cock in a wig is still a stupid cock, even with a royal decree. Do not presume to speak to me about ‘provocation’—I know my own dogs.”
Bauterne again tipped his head politely, color rising behind the bloody streaks on his face.
The Ennevals had insulted and humiliated him quite acutely and very publicly, and he did not seem the type to forget such an affront.
“I hope we may speak again when tempers have cooled. I will apologize now for a third time and I will remove myself, but such is the limit of my courtesy. Please, enjoy the rest of the evening and I will see you at the push tomorrow.”
The Lieutenant of the Hunt left the Ennevals standing over the corpse of their best hound.
I considered offering my condolences—I know well how hard it is to lose a beloved animal—but their quiet, furious grief seemed a private thing.
The other hunters began to lead their dogs away from the banquet, which was certainly over now.
Antoine was suddenly at my side. He was flushed, and not only from the wine.
“Professor, my father is ready to burst into flames; I fear you have embarrassed him in front of the bishop.”
“Me? Sir, I can assure you this had nothing to do with me!”
“And yet you are here at the center of the disturbance, again.” He grimaced. “My God, the smell down here. What happened?”
“A very good question, sir.”
I am no expert, but there was something amiss with the dogs—all of them. Do you sense anything? I asked Sarmodel.
Only that we seem to have attracted unwelcome attention again, he answered. My love, it is time to leave.
He directed my gaze to the baron’s table, where Antoine’s noble father and the Bishop of Mende were in stern conversation. Their eyes were on me and the bloody carcass on the table in front of me.
First blood, I echoed Enneval’s words uneasily, taking one final cherry pastry.
1. Now regarded as something of a dress rehearsal for the main event at the Bastille in 1790.