The Wolf King (14 page)

At that point the squad of escorting mercenaries rode up. Hugo had a brief, unsettling moment when it looked as if they might mistake him for the thieves. But he was able to put an end to the misunderstanding at once by pointing out the direction in which the brigands fled. They gave chase.

“I’m afraid it’s pointless,” Hugo said to the merchant.

Already the mercenaries had pulled up. The ground was treacherous and no one wanted to lose a valuable animal.

“Yes,” the merchant replied. “But thank you for saving our property. I am Armine Welborn of Florence.”

“Hugo of Bayonne.” Hugo bowed. Hugo had never been near Bayonne, but it had a good sound.

“You don’t know what a great service you’ve done me. Every animal here is precious. We carry nothing but silk this trip. Gauzes, damasks, tapestry, woven hangings from the east, all intended for the king’s court in Pavia. The loss of even one of these mules might have ruined me.”

“Not at all,” Hugo said, bowing again. “Delighted to be of service. If you are a native of the city of flowers, perhaps you might tell me where I can find safe lodging for the night.”

Hugo felt the merchant’s eyes on him, shrewdly assessing his worth. His clothing was wrinkled and travel stained, but he was wearing a heavy silver ring on one hand and gold one on the other. He and the silent Gimp were both riding very good horses.

“Why, at my house, of course,” Armine said. “You have done me a great service. The very best lodgings in the city are, I’m sad to say, squalid, without the amenities a gentleman like yourself takes for granted.”

Hugo managed a sanctimonious smile. “I have indeed endured many hardships on this trip, but if I can accomplish my objectives, I will feel well rewarded.”

“My goodness,” Armine said. “What can those objectives be?”

“I have,” Hugo said, “both sad and unpleasant family business to settle.”

The tip of Armine’s nose twitched. “My,” he exclaimed. “In Florence?”

“No, not at that fair city, but farther on, in Pavia.”

“Armine,” someone shouted. “Come on, we must reach the city before dark unless you really want to lose those precious things of yours. Get moving.”

Hugo and Gimp fell in with the merchant caravan, and they started off. A few hours later, they were crossing the Arno and entering Florence.

Hugo found Florence depressing, a place of high walls, narrow streets, and almost constant fear among the powerless. The city was now in the hands of perhaps a dozen powerful families, each with its own fortified residence, each claiming a segment of the populace as adherents.

With the decay of Roman government, the small holder, the independent entrepreneur, disappeared. The only way the small tradesman or farmer survived here was to accept the patronage of these few leading families and pay homage to them. Street violence between these contending families was almost constant and no night passed without a savage brawl between one family’s adherents and another’s.

Armine’s residence was comfortable but frighteningly well fortified with double gates—one of wood, the next of iron— and high walls fronted the street, guarded by iron spikes at the top. Hired mercenaries patrolled the walls both night and day.

Inside, there was an attractive garden surrounded by a colonnade. This, Hugo discovered, was for the ladies, who seldom if ever left the compound. In fact, Armine’s daughters had never been outside of the house, and they were both in their early teens.

On arrival, Hugo made his first visit to the bathhouse and then, clean and fresh-smelling, he was shown to a forbidding suite of rooms. All of the windows were covered by iron gratings; the walls and floor were of stone.

Gimp said only, “Looks like prison.”

“You’re mute,” Hugo reminded him.

“Still looks like prison.”

Hugo was going to hit him, but his guest stopped him. “He will stay mute when necessary. Let him be. How is this nonsense going to make me a god?”

“Watch and see,” Hugo said truculently.

His guest growled. “You’re upsetting me.”

Hugo stretched out on the bed. “What do you want?” he muttered.

“An explanation.”

“I have no explanation,” Hugo said. “I’m going to have to improvise.”

Just then there was a knock on the door. A servant entered with a tray. It held a silver wine pitcher and a cup, among other things.

“My lord told me to tell you that supper will be late this evening,” the servant said. “So you don’t go hungry, he felt you might need refreshment.”

Hugo wasn’t interested in the other objects on the tray. A few days of sobriety were enough for him. With some alacrity he rose and grabbed the wine pitcher and poured a large cup, while Gimp helped himself to the fruit, bread, and cheese on the tray. Hugo got only one cup down, the second was slapped out of his hand.

“I don’t trust improvisations when you’re sober; how do you think I feel about them when you’re drunk?” his guest said in a thick, grating voice.

But the wine on an empty stomach had done its work and Hugo fell asleep on the bed.

He was awakened much later by a servant. He’d had a nightmare about Gundabald. All Hugo’s nightmares were about Gundabald. He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, but considering what he was about to do, he felt he’d better look a little haggard. So his appearance was all to the good. He dressed himself with care, choosing his darkest clothing, and went for pale and interesting.

From the hoard amassed by his guest, he chose presents for the girls and an exquisite chain for their father.

Gimp sat on the floor in the corner and stared at him.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked his guest and Gimp.

“You look like you had the squirts for about a week,” Gimp said.

“How the hell should I know?” his guest said. “One human looks almost like another to me. You’re all skinny and ugly. Get downstairs and put this magnificent plan you’re being so secretive about into action. And stop bothering me. If you must know, you look like someone with a wasting disease. There, does that satisfy you?”

Then Hugo was spun around, the door opened, and he was pushed out into the corridor.

Dinner was stately and the food was good. Hugo thought it was as gloomy a meal as he had ever attended. Madonna Helen and her two daughters were in attendance. They all looked rather like prisoners broken on the rack and then allowed to live out their days in the care of their families.

The girls were both blondes and outdid Hugo in paleness, and this wasn’t helped along by the fact that current fashions in Florence called for liberal applications of white lead to protect the complexion from even the slightest ray of sunshine. Considering the way they hung on Hugo’s every word, both were starved for company.

Three boys, younger than their sisters, tried to enliven the proceedings with a food fight and were marched off to bed early in the company of twelve attendants.

To Hugo, not an imaginative man by any means, they looked like prisoners being escorted to the gallows.

Madonna Helen, their mother—a slender blond woman— was in what was politely known as a decline. The physicians had bled her copiously and prescribed all sorts of expensive nostrums containing poisons like mercury, alum, and opium. This was complicated by the fact that she must eat a special diet consisting only of boiled vegetables. This treatment had brought her several times to the edge of death and had reduced her to such a state of wraithlike emaciation that Hugo had trouble believing he was looking at a living woman.

After the boys left, the conversation lagged until the merchant began asking Hugo about his travels.

“How was Rome?”

“I was there for only a few days,” Hugo replied.

“A few hours is more like it,” Hugo’s guest said to him silently.

Hugo plowed on, “The present pope is a foe of the Lombards and, though I tried to enlist his help with my family problems, he threatened he’d have me driven from the city if I did not leave quickly. I am alone now—but for my poor, mute servant—so I fled.”

“How terrible,” the older of Armine’s daughters said. Her name was Chiara; her sister’s, Phyllis. “My life has been sad since my father was killed,” Hugo said. “How horrible for you,” Phyllis said, and sighed. “Terrible in the deed,” Hugo said, “and terrible in the way it was done; but I fear ‘tis not a tale for the ears of gentle ladies.”

“Oh, I’m quite liberal with my daughters,” Armine said. “I approve,” Hugo said. “For this story is one that should improve the hearts of women, teaching them to respect the greater wisdom of their menfolk, and the folly that can result when their desires of the heart overrule the head. A fine moral lesson.”

“You see,” Armine said to his daughters. “Listen and learn.”

“It began,” Hugo said, “when my aunt Gisela was betrothed to a wild pagan Saxon named Wolfstan. My father—” Hugo raised his eyes to heaven. “—God rest his soul, a saintly man if there ever was one… In any case, my father, Gundabald, objected to the match, seeing that this Saxon refused to become a Christian, bow his neck to Christ’s sweet yoke, and be washed in the water of rebirth and eternal life.

“But Gisela would hear none of the warnings given by her brother or any of the objections of the many priests he called to support his position that Christian and pagan flesh should not commingle in the marriage bed. For this Saxon was both handsome and rich, and Gisela was wildly in love with him. The fortunes of our family were in decline then, and Gisela, while not poor, was not nearly as rich as she wished to be, and I think she might possibly have been in love with the fine life he could give her.

“And, indeed, for the first year they seemed to be happy and the match a fortunate one. He allowed her to have her own chaplain and receive the sacraments, but she did say that he would not observe the many occasions during which the church enjoins chastity upon even those joined in wedded bliss.”

Both Armine and his wife seemed a little uncomfortable as Hugo began to recite the list. “All Sundays, all holy days, the entire period of Advent and Lent, and quite a few more.”

“There do seem to be a lot of them,” Armine said, with a side glance at his wife. “Not all churchmen are as strict—”

“But my father felt Gisela should be doing more to advance the cause of Christianity with her husband, rather than allowing herself to be won over to his ways. So he rebuked her strongly, leaving her in tears and angering this Wolfstan greatly.

“A few days later he set out with some of Wolfstan’s Saxons on a hunting party. Somehow they contrived to lead my poor father into the deep woods and abandoned him there. Whereupon he was set on by a gigantic wolf. At this point, he despaired of his life, fell to his knees before the ravening beast, and seized the cross of Christ that he wore always around his neck. To his utter astonishment, the vicious creature recoiled before the sacred object.

“Seizing his opportunity, my father snatched up a crossbow, called down God’s blessing on the bolt, and fired at the wolf. The beast went down, gasping, in its last agony. To my father’s horror, a great wind swept through the forest, and the sky darkened as if it presaged a dreadful storm. This lasted for only a few moments, but… but…” They were all openmouthed, hanging on Hugo’s every word. “But when the wind ceased, the sky cleared, and the birds began to sing again, my father saw—where the wolf had been lying—the body of Wolfstan, his sister’s husband.”

This revelation called for a bracer for the men and honey cakes and sweet wine for the women. Hugo could see he had achieved instant popularity in Armine’s household.

“How dreadful!” Phyllis pressed her hand to her breast. “I cannot see how he survived the shock of such an experience.”

“My father was a strong man,” Hugo said. “But alas, that is not all, only the beginning.”

“Really?” Chiara said.

Hugo thought he detected some mockery in her tone, but the rest were staring at him in openmouthed credulity. So he ignored her and pressed on.

“As you so aptly observed, my father’s shock was great. But that did not prevent him from seizing Gisela and returning home with her. Nor did he rest until she was married to a good—Christian—man, named Firminious.

“But he forgot the contumacy and obstinacy of some women. On her return home, shortly after her second marriage, she was found to be pregnant. We urged her to be… rid of the child, tainted as it would be by evil, but she refused.”

“She refused to kill her child,” Chiara said.

Armine shot her a reproving look, and her face became expressionless.
I am not winning this one over
, Hugo thought.
But then, it’s the father I want
.

“We meant the child no harm,” Hugo said, “but we felt it would be best oblated, that is, sent to an establishment of holy nuns and brought up in, shall we say, seclusion. But Gisela defended her child vigorously and was supported in her stubborn, misplaced affection for Regeane by Firminious.”

“Regeane was the little one’s name?” Chiara asked.

“Yes. But early, very early in life, Regeane began to display affection for the black arts, as her father had. Alas, Firminious died while Gisela was a young woman, and she would no longer yield to the strong male guidance supplied by my father, Gundabald. In vain she brought the child from shrine to shrine, churches devoted to the worship of Christ, his holy mother, and many saints, trying at all costs to quell Regeane’s turbulent spirit and bring submission to her rebellious soul.

“But she failed, and we were in Rome seeking the blessing of the pope himself when Gisela, worn out by so many sorrows and tribulations, went at last to her eternal rest. Not long after she died, we received news that Charles, king of the Franks, had arranged for a marriage for Regeane.

“Naturally, we were horrified.”

“Naturally.” Chiara lifted one eyebrow and echoed Hugo ironically.

Hugo ignored her. “But the pope, the new pope Hadrian, interfered with our attempts to obstruct the marriage. He removed Regeane from our care and saw to it that she was wed like poor Gisela to an outright barbarian and scoundrel. Needless to say, this scoundrel was delighted with her.”