The Wolf King (2 page)

It opened in front of them. A man stood behind it holding a wax light. One of the monks, he surmised. When they were safely inside, the monk slammed shut the door and shot the bolts. The monk, if that’s what he was, let them both catch their breath.

“We come,” he gasped, his arm wrapped around the woman; she sagged against his shoulder.

He could smell a faint perfume in the darkness. She was growing warmer, and the scent was being released from her clothes and skin. It was a shock to him, a delicate scent like the incense of the Christian churches he’d been forced to attend by his Lombard masters, but not so musky, leaning more toward flowers.

“We come,” he gasped out again, “in search of food and shelter—”

“Be quiet,” the old monk whispered. “What were you two playing at out there? Were you trying to rouse the abbot and his whole house?”

Someone or something giggled in the darkness. The monk, if that’s what he was, muttered something unintelligible under his breath. “Too bad for you both now,” he muttered.

The woman took a deep breath and pulled the bearskin around herself. “My husband and I—” She indicated him. “—got lost… We were coming over the pass… and…”

“Husband? Tee-he-he. Oh, my, what a deception.”

The figure materialized next to them. It carried a torch. He could see enough and smell enough to tell it was dirty, crippled, and old; how old, he couldn’t tell. It limped and had a head of thick, white hair. Crippled: the back was hunched and twisted, the shoulders were higher than the head. Dirty: the stench of unwashed flesh was a vile reek in the stonewalled corridor. He’d never encountered any human quite so aromatic, even in the slave barracks where men went for months without washing.

It giggled again and reached a filthy paw toward the woman.

He was just getting over the shock of hearing he had a wife, but he instinctively interposed his body between this thing and the woman. It turned toward the monk with the wax light and chuckled horribly.

“He says he’s her husband?”

“Yes, my lord abbot,” the gatekeeper answered obsequiously. “We should honor the sanctity of the marriage bond as Christ…” The porter spoke gently, slowly, as if to a child.

“Abbot?” the woman whispered. He found he was holding her hand; it tightened on his own.

The creature turned away from the gatekeeper and began to try to pull the bearskin away from the woman’s body. A thread of drool ran down from the corner of its mouth to the chin. The mucus glistened in the light—the light coming from behind them.

Something smashed into the side of his face. He felt her hand pulled free of his as he lost control of his body and went down. The back of his head struck the stone floor of the corridor; his vision dissolved into flashes of light.
No
, he thought.
No
. Twisting, he tried to fight off the stunning effects of the blow and regain control of his arms and legs.

Someone screamed. A woman.

He had a moment’s sorrow that he couldn’t have offered her better protection. He was still struggling, but couldn’t feel his arms and legs; and when he could, it seemed only a few seconds later—he found he was tied hand and foot and being dragged along the corridor feet first, his head bouncing uncomfortably along the cobbled walkway.

“My lord, I beg you…”

Everything was black as the bottom of a well. He wondered if he’d been blinded by the crack on the head… but no. It was just dark because he could see a little.

“My lord!” The old man who’d opened the gate continued to remonstrate with his captors.

“Drive that fool away!” The command came from the one he’d heard addressed as abbot. “Drive him back to his cell. I don’t want this one to get away.” The creature sounded like a peevish child.

“You know, you know how I love to hear them scream. You can hear them for a long time afterward. After we drop the slab some of them go on all night, screaming and screaming and screaming.”

She was not as frightened as she ought to have been. This was her first clear thought. She’d awakened when he pushed his hand down her dress. She’d believed for a moment, for a joyous moment, that he was her husband taking familiar liberties while waking her from a nap. But that happy, carefree moment quickly faded.

The other memories were a jumble. He was carrying her. It was cold, oh so cold. He was saying insulting things. They were dragging him away, down the hall. Now three women appeared, coming out of the darkness. One carried a candle, but she could see them all clearly. She must see well in the dark, she thought.

They were questioning her, tugging at her clothing, trying to get her to accompany them.

“Is he really your husband?”

She felt an odd sense of dislocation. The questioner was an older woman. She seemed respectable enough in her brown mantle and linen veil. She smelled of soap, perspiration, and wine. The other two stank only of drink. They went unveiled and their gowns were shapeless and none too clean. They walked in such a heavy aroma of alcoholic deterioration that she wondered how they managed to stay upright. She was sure they had both been drunk almost constantly for months.

One was dark with lank, greasy hair; the other might have been a blonde but she was so filthy it was impossible to tell anything about her original appearance.

“Is he your husband? Really your husband?” the older woman asked again.

No.
The idea, for a number of reasons, was ludicrous. But she wasn’t about to tell them that. She’d spoken in hope of protecting them both from any opportunistic lechery among what she was sure, by now, must be a nest of brigands.

“What is it?” the woman shrilled. “Are you dumb like poor Morgana here?” She indicated the more wretched of her two companions, a child.

“No, I’m not dumb,” she heard herself answering. “Yes, he is my husband. What are they doing to him? Where are they taking him? All we ask is shelter for the night, then we will leave in the morning and never trouble you again.”

The blond one, the one called Morgana, began to whimper. She sounded like a dog, a dog whipped too often.

The lank-haired one leaned toward her. “Look, look, Lavinia. She… has…jewels.”

The woman reached forward haltingly, to fumble at her neck. The idea of being touched by any of these women was repulsive. She eased backward.

“Don’t like us, do you?” the older woman taunted. “Don’t worry. When you’ve been here as long as we have, you won’t look much better. Fact is, you’ll probably look worse.

“Sully here probably isn’t much older than you are. But right now
he
won’t be able to keep his hands off you. Forget about your man and be nice to the abbot. He rules here.”

“Sully, Morgana, bring her along now. Girl, you come with us. Don’t give us any trouble now and you won’t get hurt. Be a shame to spoil your pretty face.”

Then the two slatterns closed in on either side and began to hurry her along the corridor.

Again the weird feeling of dislocation. Her memory was a jumble of images, images she couldn’t sort out. Every time she moved, she felt dizzy and her head hurt. Every step sent a dagger of pain into one side of her face. The horse reared. She saw its head against a sky streaked with red, orange, and black, a sunset sky. The snow was blue in the failing light. She was a good horsewoman. Somehow she knew that she should have been able to control him, but this animal was insane with terror and it was falling. Falling. And there was pain. Pain then as now, like an ice dagger driven into her ear and cheekbone.

Then he was fumbling with her dress. At first she was overjoyed, thinking it meant the end of the rearing horse, the pain, the cold. Not passive cold but a stinging burning chill in her hands and feet. A cold that crept, preceded by a buzz of agony, through her fingers and toes, then feet and hands. She had known she was freezing to death. Not a peaceful death, but an awesomely agonizing one as ice crystals formed in her flesh, bringing paralysis and pain on top of pain… driving deeper toward the bone.

Then she was sure all this was part of a nightmare and she would wake safe and warm in her bed… with… and then she lost the trail in confusion. But he would be there and she had simply been dreaming. It took only seconds for her to realize warmth and safety had been the dream and the nightmare… reality. But he did have her over his shoulder, and he was insulting the Franks, her people, in Saxon. He’d wrapped her in this bearskin and seemed to mean her no harm.

Then they were in a room and God, God, the stench. But the older woman, Lavinia, was lighting a many-branched oil lamp with her taper. The lamp flared temporarily, throwing a blinding light into what had been darkness only seconds before. When her vision cleared, she saw the older woman had something like horror in her eyes. Morgana crouched down near a fireplace in one corner of the room, shivering. Sully was pointing again at her neck.

“Jewels, Lavinia… jewels. Can I have some?”

Lavinia shook her head, was shaking her head over and over. She ignored Sully. “I knew it would happen one day,” she said. “They’d bite off something too big to chew or sink their fangs into, something strong enough to eat them. And now, by the look of you. woman, they have. What is your name, girl, and of what family are you?”

She looked down at herself, trying to see what inspired such horror in the woman’s eyes. She was wearing a dalmatic of green silk brocade trimmed with sable over a divided riding skirt of soft suede leather embroidered with gold. Her mantle was white brocade, heavy material lined with ermine. She reached up to her throat. Sully was right. Jewels, at least a half-dozen necklaces; her hair was done up in a snood of soft metal chains; and if the necklaces and snood were a match for the rings on her fingers, the count was seven. They were all made of silver or gold and embellished with precious stones.

“That’s a lot of jewels,” Sully said. “You think he will give me some?”

“No,” Lavinia snapped. “What are you, half-witted like her?” She pointed to Morgana. “You could well be looking at all of our deaths. Do you think women dressed as she is wander about the mountains at night, free for the taking? No, her family will be looking for her and they won’t stop until they find her.

“Girl, are you fool enough to let yourself be carried off by some pretty-faced scoundrel like the slave dragged off to the chapel?”

“No, I wouldn’t run off with anyone.”

“Husband. Husband indeed. That slave is no one’s husband. No, you belong to some great lord, husband or father, and he will be wild until he finds you. And when he catches up with you, he will probably kill every single one of us.” She slapped her forehead. “What to do? What to do? What is your name?”

“Regeane.” The word passed lips that seemed to belong to someone else. “Regeane,” she repeated hesitantly. “Regeane is my name.”

When Maeniel returned to his stronghold, a few of his people greeted him. Gordo, a huge, bearded man, gave him the news.

“What do you mean, she left? Two days ago? Did no one accompany her? What are you thinking? What were you thinking?” he almost screamed.

Gordo managed to look pained and taken aback at the same time; it was rare for his leader to show strong emotion about anything. Maeniel’s present conduct amounted almost to hysteria. Disapproval crept into Gordo’s expression of concern. This simply was not done. “You forget the dignity of your position,” he admonished his lord.

Maeniel ran his fingers through his hair. He raised one hand, then let it fall to his side. “Where is my wife?”

He sounded dangerous. Gordo was unperturbed. “I’m trying to tell you. Please listen.”

Maeniel took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“She worried about the weather,” Gordo continued. “She worried about you. She was afraid you might not return in time to join the king. She worried about the great Charles’s army, saying that one good blizzard could wipe out the Frankish warriors. We told her we thought that no great loss, these kingly quarrels being nothing but a nuisance to humbler folk. If they all died, so much the better for us, Matrona said—that, I didn’t.”

Maeniel nodded. “I’m familiar with Matrona’s sentiments. Continue.”

“The weather grew worse. We could all feel the storm but Matrona said they would beat it to the foot of the pass if they hurried. So she went.”

“Not alone!”

“No, not alone,” Gordo explained patiently. “She took Matrona. Gavin whined and moaned a lot about it being cold, but he, Antonius, and several others went with them. The storm came that night, and it’s been blowing ever since. With Matrona not here, there is no one to cook.” Gordo sounded disconsolate. “With your permission, I’m going hunting,” he said as he ambled phlegmatically out of the room.

Maeniel hurried to his bedchamber. His wife could write. Possibly, just possibly, she’d left a note for him.

His room was empty but not cold. The fireplace, a shallow opening in the wall, was overhung by a huge marble hood. Even in the coldest weather, the stone—once warmed— trapped enough heat to keep it comfortable. Assuming, that is, someone kept the fire burning. Someone had.

The Romans who built the fortress hadn’t envisioned this room as a bedchamber. It may have been the
tablinium
office belonging to the general who commanded the fortress.

The room was lit by three large, round windows set high in the wall on one side. Each window was plugged with thick glass to keep out the wind and cold. One couldn’t see much through them, but they let in a lot of light. A door and two more windows were below. All were now closed by heavy oak shutters against the bad weather.

When he’d first come here, the room attracted him. Not only because of the light, but the windows and door opened onto a private balcony with a view of a beautiful valley and the mountains beyond. Over the years he’d made the room into a place of luxury. Silk rugs from somewhere in the east covered the floor and hung on the walls, insulating the cold stone. The bed was a giant carved four-poster made of cedar and comfortably equipped with three layers of hangings. Silk gauze for warm summer nights; silk brocade for nippy spring and autumn ones; and heavy, woolen and silk tapestry for the worst winter weather.