Loup-Garou

Gil Couteau sat in the warm sunlight of the courtyard industriously polishing his long, straight sword. It was a good sword, he ruminated, scraping industriously at the dark stain which insisted on sticking in the crevices of the scrollwork hilt, but it was becoming thirsty from lack of use. His superstitious eye seemed to detect some subtle lessening of the keenness of the edge; some slight dullness in the polish of the blade since he had used it almost daily against the cursed Saracens in Palestine.

With the sword across his knees he leaned back against the wall and relaxed into sleepy comfort. It was good, he decided, to be done with wars, and with slicing heads from infidels; it was good to be in Merrie England, where nothing much had happened since his arrival; it was good to have the stout walls of Castle Randall about him, and a real bed to sleep on once more.

With half-closed eyes he watched the golden flash of flies across the sunlight and listened to the hum of wasps who had their nest somewhere up the tower. Two grooms were asleep against the stable wall. Two more were trying to work up interest in a desultory cockfight near the portcullis. Ho hum! Life was good. His head nodded forward on his breast.

He was awakened by a ragged thunder of hoofs upon the lowered drawbridge. He leaped to his feet, all his sleepy content shattered, as a wild-eyed horse charged into the courtyard and plunged to a stop before him, in a great lather of sweat. From its back slid a bleeding bundle of a man whom he recognized as the serf Gomar. “Oh, sir,” gabbled this one, in a mixture of Saxon and English which Gil still found hard to understand, “oh, sir; Lady Constance! I must to Lord Robert. Gray Henry, the Wolf, has stolen----”

Without pausing to finish, the serf started into the castle at a slouching, staggering run, and Couteau followed him, sword in hand.

They found Sir Robert Fitzgerald, lord of the castle, in an alcove off the main hall. He was dressed in a dust-colored robe, like the priest of some occult order, and, surrounded by an array of test-tubes and retorts, was poring over a huge volume as they rushed in. He leaped to his feet, however, and strode forward with a step which belied his sixty-five years.

“Oh, sir,” cried the serf, throwing himself at the old man’s feet, “your daughter, Lady Constance, has been stolen----”

“By whom?” thundered Sir Robert, jerking him to his feet as though the burly Saxon had been a feather.

“By your foster-brother, Gray Henry,” sobbed the man.

“Henry the Wolf,” whispered the old man, his face growing pale beneath his long beard. “But that’s impossible,” he cried, shaking the serf savagely. “She had three men-at-arms with her. Where are they?”

“Dead! We were put upon in the forest,” came the answer.

Sir Robert returned slowly to his seat behind the test-tubes. He seemed older--grayer. “Call my son Brian,” he commanded at length. “This matter will require fighting, methinks. Couteau, stay with me.”

He busied himself arranging his apparatus as the others departed. “You have heard of my foster-brother since you returned with us from Palestine?” he finally inquired.

“Merely his name, sir,” replied the other, “and that he holds Castle Barnecan, up the river.”

“There is more to it than that,” said Sir Robert. “Henry has an evil reputation. He dabbles in sorcery as I do in alchemy. Perhaps he has had more success than I. So ’tis said by the country-folk.”

He paused, paced back and forth for some moments, then resumed: “You have heard of the gray wolf of Barnecan?”