Every morning, Thomas woke to the sound of Captain Teague passing through the cramped room of their side of the cottage to help himself to any leftovers by the hearth. He cared little that the Redgraves' were meager people that made it day to day on the sweat and blood that Thomas proudly payed along with Mary's brothers in the fields.
Beltain had come and gone and the soldiers hadn't seemed to have budged from their position on Thomas' fields. They had had several clashes with the farmers from the north. It mainly happened at night with small bands of angry serfs raiding the camp, causing there to be even more guards posted at night.
Thomas had been able to re-dig a small area where he grew a garden that was large enough to support his family. Captain Teague had liked the aroma of the cooking so much though, that they eventually had to include him in the plan for meals. This made it easy for Thomas to bring back enough rabbit to feed everyone. Mary noticed that he seemed to bring in enough rabbit easily.
"Your father never hunted with you when you would bring us what you caught, did he?" she asked.
"My father worked hard in the fields all day during the spring and summer. I felt terrible taking the small respite that winter offered to him," Thomas admitted. "I often hunted alone and was lucky enough to have killed enough to feed us all."
Mary hugged him. "You still do it today," she said, "that means it's not luck. I've seen you examine a moment and do it instantly. You've looked at all the possibilities and found the best course faster than most people can react to a question. Sometimes it scares me."
She didn't fear Thomas but she did fear his ability to dismantle a situation into its key components and figure out the weakest point and the strongest. Cold contemplation of situations like they were puzzles to be figured out. He sized up many situations instantly and she often wondered if he sized her up.
"Why are you scared?" he asked.
She waited a moment, wanting to put it into the right words so that he didn't take offense. "Do you ever do that with me?"
"All the time," he admitted. "I wouldn't have married you if I hadn't. None of the other possibilities of my life made me happy."
She smiled and Will came running in from outside. "There's a fight among the soldiers!" he shouted to his family.
Thomas and the captain went out to see what was going on. Thomas knew what it was. The men were soldiers and they were itching for a fight. He didn't blame them, he knew what it felt like to want something so bad but not be able to act on it. Like working his farm was to him.
Two of the men slugged it out over between the camp and Thomas' garden. He feared that it would be kicked asunder if they weren't careful.
Captain Teague called out, "I demand you both to stop." They either didn't hear him or chose not to.
Thomas didn't care either way. He simply didn't want them to destroy the tiny bit of land he'd been able to work and they were getting dangerously close. He grabbed a hoe from his small shed and ran over to the garden just as one man threw the other towards it. Thomas braced himself with the hoe and blocked the man before he trampled his hard work.
The captain just looked on. He wondered how his men would react to a farmer getting in their way.
The soldier that Thomas caught spun and swung wildly at him. Thomas backed up and said calmly, "Just stay off of my garden."
Without notice, the other threw a punch but Thomas had expected as much. Just like he had made his need to work the land come into fruition by making a little garden, these men intended to make their need for battle into a fight. Thomas blocked the first punch but the other soldier lunged at him, knocking him off of his feet. Thomas rolled and, still holding the hoe in his hands, pinned it under the chin of his assaulter.
Thomas could hear the heavy footfalls of the man running up on him so he rolled off of the first man and brought the hoe's flat end square with the chest of the man that ran at him. He pressed the handle end of the farm implement into the earth and the resulting thrust forced the man into a kind of vault over the other. The sound of ribs snapped as his full weight hit the iron end of the hoe could be heard just barely over the noise of air suddenly leaving his lungs. Thomas took the spectacle's sudden surprise and distraction as an opening to sucker punch the man that was already on the ground. His nose crunched under Thomas' heavy fist but before a second blow could be landed, men pulled the two apart.
"How dare you strike one of the king's men!" Captain Teague barked.
"I was only protecting the garden. My family eats from that garden. As do you," Thomas' argument was simple and to the point and played on the Captain's own gluttonous desires.
The captain redirected his anger. He realized that if he punished Thomas, there would be no fresh rabbit or vegetables so he instead scolded his men for acting unbecoming of a proper soldier.
Thomas knew this was the start of a time that would be thick with animosity but he figured that if the captain knew that he wasn't afraid of his men, it gave him very little else to threaten him with.
It had been a couple of weeks and Thomas was off on one of his hunts. He had bagged two rabbits and a bird. He had taken a moment to enjoy the cool air that seemed to permeate the wood, resting at the base of a large tree. His eyes closed for a moment and a nap overcame him.
He and the wolf were coming to the opening of the wolf's den and noticed that something had torn it open. A bear came tearing out, it's maul wet and matted with fresh blood. The wolf started to chase it off but turned and ran into the den. Thomas followed. The inside was awash in blood. The den was once so full of life, now it was hard to distinguish between cub and mate. The wolf looked for a sign of life. Any sign of life. It looked up at Thomas and whined, "Why?"
Thomas shook himself awake. He stood and got his bearings then broke into a full run through the heavy growth back toward his farm. The flight back seemed long to him. Longer than usual. When he exited the wood and came into the clearing of his farm, he turned the run into a brisk walk. He didn't want to draw attention from the soldiers.
When he opened the door of his cottage he saw Mary sewing a cowl for Will. She was startled to see Thomas home so early. Thomas looked into the other room, the captain's room, and saw that it was empty.
"He's out with his men," she said. "What's wrong?"
Thomas sat and calmly said, "they've been massacred."
"Who?" Mary said, worry and anxiety thick in her voice.
"The cubs... his mate," a tear ran down his cheek. "In the end, we couldn't stop the bear."
Mary understood. She and Thomas had talked at great length about the wolf in his dreams. She knew about the song he and Will sung about the wolf and the fox. Her family had long believed that such dreams were omens. The animals were a type of totem and Mary understood that both Thomas and Will had dreams that often revolved heavily around these two animals. One, the wolf, known for it's ability to hunt and fearlessness and the other, the fox, known for it's sly and calculating nature.
Thomas wiped the tear from his cheek.
"You couldn't stop the bear from killing the wolf's cubs," Mary started, "doesn't mean you still won't slay it."
Thomas' mother, Muriel, came in from outside. She had been playing with Will. She sensed that the room was tense. "Am I interrupting anything," she said.
"No, mother," Mary said. "Thomas was just relaying his hunting adventures to me."
Muriel took the rabbits and bird from Thomas and began cleaning them.
When Captain Teague came in, he noticed that the women were cooking and Thomas was sitting at the table. Captain Teague sat at the table with Thomas. "We have reason to believe that there may be a conclusion to all this shortly," the captain said. "we've learned that some of the farmers are gathering in number like they are preparing for a big raid. We'll be ready. We plan on stationing a few groups of men a little further north so that there is a buffer zone. More than likely, the show of force will scare them into turning over their leader."
Thomas looked up at him. "Isn't that what this was supposed to be?" he said. "wasn't being here supposed to scare them?"
Teague looked perturbed. Thomas was right but he wouldn't say that out loud. Instead he started with, "if we were dealing with intelligent people, they would have seen what kind of threat we posed. As it is, you farmers aren't smart enough to know when to back down."
Thomas knew the comment was directed at his statement just as much as it was meant to be about the serfs angry over the taxation of their hard work to the north. Thomas relented. To cause a ruckus with the captain would only put his family in peril.
That night, as Thomas tucked in Will, his son grabbed his arm tightly. He seemed troubled. "Papa," he said, it was painfully obvious to Thomas that Will was holding back tears, "the fox is lonely. His family is gone."
Comics, "Alan Moore", "Captain America", "Robin Hood", "Ivanhoe", "Green Arrow", "Kevin Smith", "Tarzan",
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