The Wolf King (15 page)

“I take it his affection for Regeane is in very bad taste?” Chiara asked.

Again Hugo ignored her. “We are a great family, though fallen on evil times, and are related to the house of the Arnulfings, the Frankish kings. A lowborn commoner like this Maeniel would have thought her a great prize, even had she been a hunchback half-wit with only one tooth in her head. But the pope was deaf to my father’s warnings.

“So Gundabald and I contacted the Lombard party in Rome. The pope himself was brought to book, and Regeane was tried as a witch.”

Chiara frowned, but everyone else at the table gasped.

“She determined trial by combat, and this Maeniel championed her. It was a long, bitter battle, but—I can hardly credit it, for the Lombard champion was so puissant, bold, fair, and honest a warrior—but he met defeat at the hands of this Maeniel.

“I believe he and Regeane must have compacted in the black arts to destroy God’s champion.”

“Don’t lay it on too thick,” Hugo’s guest warned him, “but keep going, you’re doing fine so far.”

He was and he knew it. All but Chiara were staring at him in openmouthed admiration. “But that is not the worst.”

“No?” Armine gasped.

“No. My father felt this Maeniel was hopefully not too far under Regeane’s spell as to be immune to all good counsel, so he went to try one more time. He found them at their wedding feast. I know; I followed him. I was deeply worried about his safety, and I had good cause. For when he began to remonstrate with this Maeniel, he and Regeane forsook their borrowed human shapes. In the semblance of a wolf, as her father had been, she fell on my saintly father and—joined by her besotted lover, he also in wolf form—they rent him limb from limb.

“It happened so quickly! I could do nothing. When I saw that if I tried to bring them to book for this ghastly crime, my own life would quickly be ended, I fled away, determined to avenge my father and then retire to a monastery to live out the balance of my life in prayer, self-mortification, good works, and holy penitence. But before I go, I must warn the Lombard duke of this Maeniel and Regeane, who now serve the Frankish king and hope to aid him in his war against the rightful ruler of Lombardy, Duke Desiderius.”

“That’s quite a story,” Chiara said.

“Oh, dreadful day that Christ’s anointed lord, his Excellency the ruler of the Lombards, should be attacked by black sorcery,” Armine said. “But what can he do against this pair, pray tell me?”

Hugo smiled. His remaining teeth were impressive, a little scummed by green but still good. “Tell him to include wolfhounds among his war dogs, because, depend on it, Maeniel and Regeane will try to bring intelligence about his movements and plans back to Charles, the Frankish king. If the Lombard can destroy them, he will deprive the Franks of one of their most useful weapons.”

Armine frowned. “I was to send letters to the King Desiderius tonight. This tale is so fantastical… I can hardly credit it. But all know the strongholds of paganism constantly threaten those who receive Christ, so I will warn him that this vile pair have bent their malice on him—and to include the finest of his wolfhounds among the dogs of war.”

When they were finished with their lovemaking, they swam out to the falls in the center of the lake and rested on the black basalt platform carved by the water over the centuries. The nights in the mountains were cold still—sometimes cold even in high summer—but the afternoon sun was warm on their bodies and the water was, to Regeane’s surprise, almost hot.

“There’s a warm spring hereabouts,” Maeniel explained. “It fills the pool above. Once it was called the Lady’s Mirror.”

“The Lady?” Regeane asked.

“Yes,” Maeniel said. “She is only the Lady. Matrona said they called her that in Greece two thousand years ago.”

Regeane smiled. “Matrona remembers?”

“Yes.” Maeniel did not smile. “Matrona remembers.”

Regeane was resting on her back on the stone, her head in his lap, letting the warm water flow over her. It was, with the air around them still bearing a bit of winter chill, a sensuous delight. She reached up and touched his face.

“We have made love as man and woman often, but we have never loved, not in our other form.”

She looked a bit apprehensive.

He bent over and kissed the tip of her nose. “You weren’t old enough. As a woman, you are full-grown, but a she-wolf avoids desire until she is at the height of her powers. You have not reached yours yet, but know, if you are thinking it is like dogs, it is not.”

“No?”

“No. When the time comes and you are ready, I will guide you. Until then, be content.”

She reached up, wound her fingers in his hair, and pulled his face down to hers for a kiss. The sun was warm, his body was warm. The sunlight was a dazzle on the water and the very air around them was redolent of springtime. When they broke off the kiss, she found she was no longer resting against his body. He was on top of her, and she was in his embrace.

“Again?” she asked in mock annoyance.

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said. “I don’t mind if I do. Or rather, I don’t mind if you do.”

“I will,” he said, “do.”

She gave a little start. “I think you have.”

“I’m only just beginning.”

“If that’s the beginning, what is the end like?”

“Concentrate—and I’ll make sure you find out.”

After that, neither of them was interested in words any longer.

When they were finished, she fell asleep in his arms. He was too much the wolf to sleep. He lay there and held her. The sun sank lower in the sky. All he heard was birdsong and the sweet rushing sound of falling water. Sometimes the wind muttered as it ruffled the treetops and changed the aspens bordering the lake from green to silver with its breath. Far away, a wolf howled. And he wondered if the pack still gathered at the pool above before the hunt; but then the wolf cry turned what had been pleasant languor into discomfort.

She awoke, opening her eyes. He slid into the lake near the falls, and she followed.

“There’s a pack hereabouts, and we’d best be going. To them, all we are is other wolves. They won’t want us in their territory.”

She nodded and turned to swim to shore, but he caught her arm. “Quiet.” He put his finger to his lips. The wolf song was beginning again, and he wanted to listen. “They are talking about a human camped not far away.”

They were resting together in the water, their arms on the basalt platform near the falls. He looked at her.

“Oh,” Regeane said. “The Saxon. I forgot to mention him. He came with me, just in case.”

“What is this?” Maeniel said. “A state procession? Who will pop out of the bushes next? Matrona? Gavin? Antonius? Barbara?”

“Gavin,” she said. “He hasn’t really been seen since we made camp with the king.”

“Naturally,” Maeniel replied. “His opportunities for debauchery are limited in the mountains. When he discovered the ‘refreshment’ wagons accompanying the king, he probably went wild.”

Regeane dove, turned, and began to swim toward shore.

Maeniel followed.

A few hours later, they came upon the Saxon’s camp. He was hunched morosely over a fire. The two wolves emerged from the timber, ghosted down silently toward a tent pitched near the forest. When they entered and found it empty, they changed form and dressed in human clothing, then came out to greet the Saxon.

He’d set snares and they all had a fine dinner of rabbit stew, accompanied by bread, a flat bread he had made by simply heating a rock and throwing the dough on it. It had been a long time since Maeniel had seen anyone make bread that way.

They spent the night in comfort. Regeane and Maeniel took the tent; the Saxon rolled up in his bearskin and slept beneath the stars.

The quarrel erupted before dawn.

“You have had a fine day in the forest,” Maeniel told Regeane. “Now you’re slowing me down and keeping me from my real work.”

It was not yet even dawn and a silver mist flowed through the forest, feeling its way among the trees with long, wispy tendrils. It had begun to fall from the peaks just after sunset until it filled the hollows and valleys lower down and shone like mother-of-pearl in the lambent moonlight.

Then, just at daybreak, before the sun reawakened in the notch beyond the pass, it had seemed to hold the whole world in its soft thrall.

It had entered the tent then, so softly, silently, that even Maeniel, the gray wolf, didn’t sense or feel it. But Regeane waked, swam up out of the depths of the dark water that rests at the bottom of consciousness. Perhaps it haunted the silver wolf—as it haunts us all—because that is where the first ancestor, neither plant nor animal, coalesced out of nothingness and crossed the infinite, unknowable barrier between animate and inanimate, and life was born. Life knows water before anything else. It fills our lungs in the womb as a reminder of what we came from and who we are; it rests as a pool beneath consciousness and farther down below dreams; and in the deepest sleep, the mind-brain rests in it and is renewed so that it may attain consciousness when it awakens.

And from that deepest pool, the well beyond the world, from the mist, the voice had called to Regeane,
If you love him, don’t let him go alone
. Then the voice was torn to tatters by the winds of time as the mist faded in the dawn wind, and she sank down into sleep and didn’t remember.

Maeniel now kissed her on the forehead and pushed her toward the Saxon. “Go home,” he commanded. “From now on I must travel fast—in the shadows by day and the darkness by night. I’ve no mind to worry if you cannot hold your shape, or defend you from other wolf packs, or teach you how to live in the wilderness, snap down whatever you can catch, and avoid leaving traces for other wolves or men. You don’t know enough to follow at my heels, and it will be many years before you do. This is not a daytrip on my land or a hunt organized for your amusement, and I haven’t time to tutor you in the skills you will need to survive. A mistake on your part might get me killed in the best case, or us both in the worst. This is war—and war is no place for fools.

“And as for you.” He turned to the Saxon. “I can charge you with the task of getting her home safely. In all the time you’ve been with us, you have never really seen me angry, but if I find you’ve aided and abetted her folly any longer, you will feel my wrath. That I promise. And you will suffer it for a long, long time.

“Possibly you think your Lombard masters were hard, but what they did to you is nothing compared to what I can do. I will track you down wherever you might flee and exact my due, and if anything happens to her—” He broke off.

“Regeane,” he said. “His life is in your hands. Do you understand?” Tears were pouring down her cheeks. “There is no earthly force that could ever bring me to touch one hair of your head, but I can’t say the same for him. Do you understand?”

“Y-y-yes,” she stammered.

“Good.”

For a second a fleeting gray shadow was visible in the morning mist and then was gone.

Lucilla and Dulcinia met a few days after Silvie imparted her big news.

“How in the hell did Silvie get pregnant?” Dulcinia asked.

Both women were in Lucilla’s garden resting after dinner. Neither one felt like moving too much. Lucilla simply rolled her eyes toward Dulcinia.

“Either I’ve completely neglected your education or—”

“I know, I know, but half of Rome has marched over Silvie’s body. If she didn’t get pregnant then, why in God’s name now?”

“She may have,” Lucilla said, “and taken a potion or lost it. Remember, she endured a great deal of privation before Regeane took her in hand. Now she has plentiful meals at regular intervals, and she’s stopped drinking that godawful stuff she used to.”

“Now she serves it to her customers,” Dulcinia said.

Lucilla shook her head. “What they serve in the lowest grade of taverns is a lot worse than the stuff she sells. I won’t say the potions she hands out over the counter are good for your health, but she’s oddly honest in that way. The whole neighborhood resorts to her for drink, and she treats a lot of illnesses with her mixtures.”

Dulcinia looked surprised.

“The poor often go to the tavern when they are sick. She has potions for the ague, recurring fevers, sickly children, and even colicky babies. Little can help the falling sickness, but a few herbs mixed with wine can somewhat limit the effects. And then, of course, the woman whose period hasn’t come, and whose husband is out of town—mayhap she’s just late but…”

“Ahh, yes,” Dulcinia said.

“And then there are those with the wasting disease of the lungs, not to mention others simply old and troubled with aches in their bones.”

“What she doesn’t know,” Dulcinia said, “Simona probably does. She advises Silvie frequently.”

“Simona?” Lucilla asked.

“Posthumus’s mother,” Dulcinia said. “It was to her Silvie ran first after she escaped Hugo. Simona sent her to me and then…”

“You brought her to me,” Lucilla said.

“What about the child?”

Lucilla took a deep breath in through her nose. “Well, she wants it; otherwise, with her skills, she wouldn’t be carrying it. So I sent her home with Susana, my maid, and gave her strict orders to do everything Susana says.”

“The father?”

“She hasn’t the slightest idea.”

“Probably just as well. Given the nature of Silvie’s friends, if she knew, it might only cause trouble.”

Lucilla nodded. “Likely when she begins to show, her customers will all be looking at each other.”

“Yes, and they will probably all have good reason to do so.”

“Not a doubt of that.”

A few days after Hugo’s story to Armine, Chiara was foolish enough to let him catch her alone in the garden. She’d done her best to avoid him since she’d heard the tale, even going so far as to take a tray in her room when the family dined with him, but the garden had to be tended. This was simply a practical matter. True, the courtyard garden was one place to take the air and receive visitors, but it extended around the back of the fortified house and contained a small orchard of fruit trees: quince, peach, pear, and pomegranate. A large herb garden supplied seasonings and greens for the household, not to mention medicines for Madonna, who was—much to Chiara’s sorrow—not doing well at all. The physician had bled her again, but her lady mother was so frail, Chiara had been appalled by the cruelty of the procedure.