The Silver Wolf (27 page)

Regeane nodded soberly. “The Lombard princess?”

“Had an iron will and an equally firm grip on the purse strings. The whole family soon learned to jump to attention when she snapped her fingers. She made brilliant matches for her new husband’s brothers and sisters, not to mention his numerous cousins. I understand she snatched up a few from convents and monasteries in the process and, in no long time at all, they were among the first families of Rome.”

“Mother,” Augusta called as she began walking back toward them, “I really must insist …”

“I do hate being rushed,” Lucilla whispered to Regeane in a voice dripping with quiet fury, “but if we must, we must. I will introduce you to the pope, but I’ll stay in the background and let Augusta present you. She will be your sponsor, not I. Try to get along with her. Luckily that isn’t difficult. She’s bored with everything, but talk of clothes, jewels, the servant problem,” Lucilla’s eyes rolled, “the high price of slaves. Encourage her along those lines and I’m sure you’ll be successful.

“When you reach the pope’s villa, let Augusta do the talking. Go about with downcast eyes, keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. There will be a period of mingling and talk in the garden before the feast begins. Some of the men may try to draw you off on the pretext of showing you the villa. Don’t let any of them get you alone. Stay close to Augusta and follow her example.”

Augusta was within earshot and Regeane considered the last sentence probably was aimed at her.

“Naturally, Mother,” Augusta said.

Elfgifa entered the atrium. The little girl’s hair was still damp from the scrubbing she’d been given and she was dressed as
Regeane was in a linen shift covered by an overgown of heavy, embroidered silk, and a long-sleeved garment of stiff brocade.

She squirmed and stared up at Regeane with mutinous eyes. “My dress scratches.”

“Show some gratitude,” Regeane said. “Is this your manner to a friend who confers benefits on you? What would your father say? Lucilla had you dressed for the feast at her own expense. She’s given you a fine new gown and all you can say is it scratches. Curtsey and say thank you.”

Elfgifa curtsied, or rather bent her knees a little, and said, “Thank you. I don’t mean to be ungrateful. My father says we should always love our friends and those who do us good, but,” she fingered the heavy satin dress, “why do they put the rough part on the inside and the smooth part on the outside? The ends of the gold threads chafe my skin.”

“The smooth part goes on the outside because it looks better that way,” Lucilla said.

“Well, then, why can’t I wear it to the party inside out, then take it off and put it on the other way?” she asked.

“Because you can’t,” Lucilla said, “that’s why. Just think how silly you’d look in the street in front of the pope’s villa taking your dress off and putting it back on.”

“I’d rather look silly than itch,” Elfgifa said. “Besides …” She suddenly broke off and sniffed at Augusta’s dress. “She smells.”

“You forgot to say she smells good,” Lucilla said acidly.

“All right. She smells good,” Elfgifa said, “but she still smells strong. Like violets.”

Regeane did notice the odor of violets was almost overpowering near Augusta.

Augusta looked down her long aristocratic nose at Elfgifa. “The perfume is almost my own personal signature. My maid prepares it according to a formula of her own devising, from the petals of fresh flowers gathered every spring. I have received many compliments …” She broke off with an exasperated sound. “But why am I explaining myself to a child? Mother, is it absolutely necessary she accompany us?”

“Yes, it is,” Lucilla said. “I believe I may have located an
aunt of hers among the Saxons living in Rome. The woman, the abbess of a convent in the Saxon quarter, will be at the feast.”

Elfgifa looked alarmed. She pulled her hand free of Regeane’s. “I don’t want to go home,” she said. “I want to stay here and play with Postumous.”

“She didn’t leave?” Regeane asked.

“Oh, yes, she did,” said Lucilla. “While you were sleeping, she went over the wall again. My servants found her a few hours later rolling around in the gutter with the dirty little urchin.”

“He was teaching me how to fight,” Elfgifa said proudly. “There’s a trick where you can blind a man and another place where you get your fingers and squeeze.” The little girl began a demonstration of how it was done by reaching down between her legs.

“Mother,” Augusta gasped.

Lucilla snatched Elfgifa’s hand, pulling her upright and saying, “Young woman, I don’t think we want any further pearls of the wisdom imparted to you by Postumous just now, if you please.”

“Why not?” Elfgifa asked. “He’s teaching me words, too, and—”

“Don’t say them!” Lucilla said in a voice of stone.

“Why not?” Elfgifa asked, surprised.

“Just don’t,” she answered, hustling Elfgifa to the entrance of the villa. “Regeane, you will travel in Augusta’s litter. Elfgifa, you will come with me. We need to have a talk.”

AUGUSTA’S LITTER WAS, AS LUCILLA’S, A LUXURIOUS accommodation drawn by a team of white mules. Since they were away from the more crowded quarter where the poor lived, they traveled with the curtains open. Regeane found the slow pace favored by Augusta led to a much more comfortable ride than her earlier one with Lucilla.

The mules took a narrow twisting street bordered on both sides by the walled gardens belonging to the sumptuous villas of the very rich.

Regeane reclined at Augusta’s side.

“A most ill-mannered and undisciplined child,” Augusta
said. She was peering into a mirror, using the last light of evening to make sure none of her powder and paint was smeared and not a hair of her elaborate coiffure was out of place.

The wolf rose up out of the darkness in Regeane’s brain, took a good look at Augusta, and sniffed in disgust. The overpowering scent of violets really was almost too much.

Augusta heard the sniff and said, “What?”

Regeane slapped the wolf down. Emboldened by the softening of the light, the wolf wanted to be off. She wanted to jump down from the litter to the street. Leap the high walls of the villas and investigate with her eyes and nose the green gardens beyond them. She wanted to enjoy the changes in the slowly fading evening. The soft decline of the day from gold to rose into the tranquil blue of twilight. To riot among fountains and flowers, sniffing air redolent of pine and cypress.

The wolf didn’t want to think. She wanted to live and taste the pleasures of a world denied to both wolf and woman for so long.

“What?” Augusta repeated and broke in on Regeane’s longings.

“Nothing,” Regeane said hurriedly.

Augusta looked critically at Regeane. “You are attractive, but then, the chief charm of youth is youth. Tell me, did your mother run to fat as she aged?”

Regeane remembered her pale, quiet mother. She had seemed only a small thickening of the blankets when Regeane had gone to rouse her on that last morning. But for the face on the pillow and the hands folded under her cheek, there would have seemed nothing in the bed at all.

Regeane hadn’t needed to touch Gisela to know her long struggle with an endless procession of sorrows was ended. She had touched her, though, on the cheek and the texture of the flesh had reminded her horribly and incongruously of the flesh of a fresh-killed chicken: cold and a little damp with the night dew. Dew that doesn’t settle on a warm, living skin. Then she’d stood for a long moment, seeking screams or even tears in herself and not finding them.

She’d stood knowing something, she couldn’t quite say what, something important had finally ended.

She stood quietly, trying to remember how much she’d once loved the shell lying in the bed before her. Trying and not finding the love anymore than she could find the tears or screams. And then, she’d gone to Gundabald and sent Hugo to fetch a priest.

“What is wrong with you?” Augusta asked.

Regeane realized her thoughts must show in her face. “My mother died only recently,” she said quietly. “But no, since you ask, my mother was quite a slim woman all her life.”

“I’m sorry my remarks inadvertently caused you pain,” Augusta said.

She didn’t sound sorry, Regeane thought. In fact, she’d picked up the mirror again and was studying her face in it.

“But doubtless you’ll find consolation in your happy betrothal.”

Regeane almost laughed out loud, but caught herself at the last moment.

“It isn’t wise for a young girl like yourself to stay in mourning for too long, to wear a sorrowful countenance and go about veiled in black. Your chances pass you by.”

“Yes,” Regeane answered mechanically.

The litter creaked around a corner. For a moment Regeane could see all of Rome spread out before her. The Tiber was a ribbon of fire and the buildings were engulfed in the glowing golden haze of the setting sun.

“Your family was wise to draw you away from your grief,” Augusta said. “This mountain lord, Maeniel, is, I understand, a very wealthy man.”

The wolf was suddenly awake, alert, listening with every sense sharpened to the fullest. Regeane knew something was wrong. But what? “So I understand,” she answered cautiously.

The mules drawing the litter turned the corner and the city lying in its pool of light was lost to view. Blue dusk hovered in the narrow street between the high walls. The torchlight of Augusta’s soldiers flared against the stone.

Regeane tried frantically to think of a way to escape, to get past the soldiers guarding the carriage at the front and rear.

She realized she was sitting rigid, her back pressed against the cushions and her fists clenched. She tried to relax and
straightened her fingers slowly. Luckily, Augusta was still preoccupied with the mirror and she hadn’t seen Regeane flinch.

Regeane knew she was in danger. She didn’t understand why or what kind, but danger it was because she remembered the text of the note Lucilla sent to Augusta requesting her sponsorship of Regeane. And she had been present throughout the conversation with Augusta. Even though Lucilla had mentioned that Regeane was respectably betrothed, she had never once spoken Maeniel’s name to Augusta. As far as Regeane knew, there was only one other person from whom Augusta could have learned that name …

From Gundabald.

REGEANE SPENT THE REST OF THE RIDE TO THE LATERAN palace trying to tell herself not to be a fool. Telling herself there were at least a dozen ways Augusta could have learned Maeniel’s name other than from talking to Gundabald.

Perhaps gossip about the marriage was circulating among the Roman nobility. Perhaps Lucilla had spoken to Augusta at some other time. Perhaps …

But one thing Regeane did not do was ask Augusta for an explanation of how she knew Maeniel’s name. Nor did she show by any word or expression that she’d noticed anything unusual about the conversation.

After all, she reasoned, the explanation might be the one she feared, and if it was, she wanted herself and not Augusta on her guard.

It was dark when they arrived at the Lateran palace and, for a time, all thoughts of danger fled from Regeane’s mind. Nothing
in her life before had prepared her for such splendor. She was caught up in a welter of confused impressions.

The Lateran, like many other Roman houses, showed a blank forbidding facade to the street, but beyond the columned portico, luxury reigned supreme.

From a vestibule presided over by frescoes of the Three Graces and the Nine Muses, they entered a magnificent peristyle garden ablaze with lights and filled with the whole glittering panoply of Rome’s first families.

The splendid dress of the men, women, and children rivaled the very torches, set among the tall cypresses, shedding their light on the paths and flower beds.

Pools and fountains were everywhere. They splashed and sparkled, reflecting the jeweled finery of the guests and the flames of the torches.

Augusta took Regeane by the hand and then, like some magnificent regal butterfly, began guiding her among the groups of people gathered in the garden.

At first, Regeane felt awkward. She knew there must be so many things she didn’t know—sophisticated nuances of behavior must be required of those at home among this dazzling throng, matters of precedence and protocol simply impossible to imagine.

But she quickly learned very little was expected of her except to look demure, and allow herself to be admired.

And admired she was. Within a few short minutes of entering the garden, Regeane received more compliments than she’d ever received in her entire life. Augusta made much of her royal connections and carefully avoided mentioning her present poverty, staying with each group only long enough to allow Regeane to be seen and appreciated, carefully preventing any conversations lengthy enough for Regeane to betray any embarrassing ignorance of Roman affairs.

Besides, Regeane decided, people probably expected very little sophistication of a girl her age being presented in society for the first time.

Regeane was breathless when Augusta paused for a few moments near a moss-covered fountain in the shadows at the edge of the lighted garden.

“Is your head quite turned by all this?”

Regeane recognized the voice as Lucilla’s. It came from the shadows near the fountain.

“No, not quite,” Regeane said. “Addled a bit, but not turned. Though it looks like fun.”

Lucilla chuckled. “It is, yet I don’t really belong here. Not the way Augusta does. Most people are polite to me. They never know when they may need my influence with Hadrian. Others pretend I don’t exist. But I have a few real friends here and I enjoy these affairs for the pleasure of meeting them.”

“Mother, really. You’re impossible,” Augusta said. “Almost everyone here is at least polite to you.”

“Yes,” Lucilla said. “I suppose that’s true. Time has taken its toll on the recalcitrants. I’m almost an institution, though, like the pretty fountain behind you—look at it closely, my girl.”

“Don’t!” Augusta warned. “That fountain is no sight for a maiden.”

But Regeane was already looking, and her cheeks were burning.