The Wolf King (22 page)

“I am,” Regeane asked, “with the dead?”

“Dead and forgotten,” the centurion said. He sounded proud of the fact.

“I am not dressed,” she said.

“I am not alive,” the centurion answered. “But I will lend you my mantle.” He pulled it off and tossed it up to her.

Regeane wrapped herself in the all-purpose garment and descended the steps. They led her to a guard room—unattended, to Regeane’s relief—and she turned through the door and walked out to the bridge that wasn’t there.

The centurion stood with his men. Looking at him, Regeane couldn’t repress a shudder. He was an eyeless, lipless mummy, the dried skin stretched tight across his bones. His men were no better. They each wore their death wounds: part of one’s face was simply missing, another had a terrible wound that nearly amputated his leg and a cut throat. Regeane tried not to look too closely at the rest.

“We held the bridge,” the centurion said, “while our commander and his son retreated. They avenged us on the Carthaginian. We are content, we are honored to keep the bridge. We struck away the wedge that held the rock that crushed our enemies. Rome became great. Had we not fallen, the west and all subsequent time would have been different. But we were asked and were willing to pay the price.”

“It’s dark here, though.” Regeane glanced away into what was, but for the bone white buildings of the bridge and town, an impenetrable darkness surrounding her and the soldiers. “Dark,” she repeated, “and so cold. Where are the moon and the stars, the wind, the midnight shapes of trees, the soft rush of water, and the silken feel of grass? You were men and you remember the sun.”

“Yes,” came the answer. “I remember the sun when it was not cruel.”

Regeane saw a vineyard sloping down to a lake that caught the colors of sunrise over misty rows of vines bejeweled with clusters of moonstone, amethyst, and sapphire fruit. Then the vision changed, and she saw a man dying in the sun on an X-shaped cross: the centurion. His eyes were gone and the boiling heat tightened the skin on his bones.

“I was the last. I cut the throats of the wounded, but the Carthaginian was angry that the Roman commander got away and I died as you saw. But my spirit lives on, a thing to ponder—and you summoned it. Sometimes we must build with boundless sorrow.”

“I can’t believe that,” Regeane whispered, but the Roman and his men were gone and the wolf sank into a deeper sleep. When she awoke she found herself looking out across the marshland’s open water at the rising sun. She was lying on one of the blocks that had floored the town forum and was wrapped in the stained, tattered remnants of a scarlet cloak.

This must once have been a cistern, Maeniel was thinking, like the prison in Rome. He’d seen it long ago on one of his journeys there. Seen it and smelled it: a hole in the ground. The prisoner stepped off into the pit. The executioner waited below. No executioner here this time, but he didn’t think the king would show any mercy. He sat up. His head ached, he was naked, there was dried blood on his face and chest.

He was wary, though. Still a little dizzy from the blow, he checked his immediate environment carefully with all his senses, wolf and human. He could just see.

The prison was in the form of a flat-bottomed bottle; high above, a round cover, about three feet across, was the only entrance he could see. The sides of the bottle widened, sloping outward from the entrance at the neck, and formed a round space about ten feet across at the bottom. It was covered with sand. Very soft sand. And then he saw something else that made his skin crawl. There were gratings, heavy ones, set into the walls on either side of the cell.

No, it hadn’t been a cistern. It was a cistern.

He rose to his knees. A voice on the other side of the grating asked, “Are you comfortable?”

He recognized the king’s voice. “Hardly,” Maeniel said. “It’s cold, I’m naked, and I could use a little wine and something to eat.”

“Too bad,” Desiderius said. “But you will just have to make do. At least unless you teach me how to do that trick.”

“What trick?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Please, don’t play the fool. The trick I saw you do—not only I, but half the town and the entire court. We all saw you change yourself into a wolf.”

Maeniel didn’t answer. He was silent.

“Amazing,” the king continued. “You won’t admit it.”

“No.”

“Man, the fact that you are alive now is a tribute only to my insatiable curiosity.”

“Indeed.”

“Certainly,” Desiderius answered. “The bishop can’t wait to burn you. The captain of my guard wants to have you strangled. Your friend Hugo made some suggestions; rather imaginative ones, I might add.”

“Predictable.”

“Yes, and equally lethal as the other suggestions, though somewhat more painful. After all, you strangled his father.”

“Yes, yes, I did; probably one of my more useful and virtuous actions. I cannot regret it.” Then he laughed. “I doubt if Hugo does either. I think he was more pleased than not to be rid of his bad-tempered, drunken, scheming sire. He was probably overjoyed to snatch up whatever wealth the vile old scoundrel was hoarding and flee the city. If you must know, the pope and I looked high and low for him, and he could by no means be found. He probably only discovered his bereavement when he woke up sober one morning and realized he had no more money. By all means, keep him near you. I would rather caress a viper.”

The king chuckled. “You are indeed a master of dissimulation. He warned me about that. But I, as you, digress. What is the trick of it? How do you become the wolf?”

“I do not—as you say—become the wolf. I ^m the wolf, only sometimes I seem to be a man. And in the interest of both truth and brevity, I will say now I cannot teach you how to skin turn because I don’t know how I do it myself. I simply do, and she who gave me my name and power didn’t provide an explanation.”

“It is from the demonic then? This power of yours?” The king sounded eager to have Maeniel incriminate himself.

“I know nothing of daemons. I have never met one. Nor do I quite know what you Christians mean by the word. I do say that if you label everything you don’t understand demonic, the world you see will be filled with evil.”

“You are not a Christian, then?”

“No.”

“Would you accept baptism, if given the opportunity?”

Maeniel was about to reply with a snarl of fury when his human side reined him in sharply. This chance was too good to miss. He’d already concluded there was no good way out of this cell. If he could persuade this king to believe he might be converted, the process of instruction and baptism might offer an opportunity to escape. Once without chains and in the open…

“Why?” he replied.

“To save your soul, of course.”

No, he didn’t like this, and he didn’t trust the king’s intentions. He’d been tricked once. This had the overripe odor of another trick. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “My head is still sore and it hurts my nose. The best you will get from me is a ransom, your majesty. I have a lot of money; content yourself with that. When Charles crosses the Alps, you will need it.”

He heard an indrawn breath from beyond the iron screen.

“You reject my offer of an opportunity for salvation? What contumacious obstinacy! Consider your eternal soul.”

“It’s not my soul I’m worried about,” Maeniel said.

Beyond the screen he heard a door slam, and then the slow creaking of a gate being raised. Maeniel called the wolf but only for a few moments. The beast offered strength and resignation. A look into the eternal dark that held no human terrors, no heaven, no hell. Long ago he had simply seen himself as part of the world, his behavior for good or ill determined by what he was and not by any code imposed by others, and he found strength in this knowledge.

The man would struggle. The man didn’t know how not to struggle. But the wolf would center him with the knowledge and confidence of the night hunter’s peace with the changing world and his eternal assurance of his place beneath the stars and among them.

I have lived as well as I can. I am content
. Then he abandoned the wolf because water cold as death was pouring in through the grating and beginning to fill the cell.

Regeane pulled the tattered mantle from around her body and became wolf. The Roman said she’d summoned him. She was not sure what that meant. Once before she’d traveled in the land of death and another man had left her a token. So she became woman again and folded the mantle carefully, pushed it into a deep crack in the stone.

She looked out over the water and took a deep breath. The air was fresh and cool, too cool. She rubbed her arms uncomfortably. They were broken out in gooseflesh, but she clung to the woman shape for a few moments longer, drinking in the beauty the dream had denied her. How terrible to be sealed forever in darkness.

The water mirrored the changing morning sky, gold at the sun-struck center, then green and blue at last at the edges. Reeds, brush, cattails, and willow were black silhouettes against the burgeoning light.

Sometimes we must build with boundless sorrow.

Remingus—that was his name. She knew but didn’t know how she knew; that’s what Remingus had said. The phrase haunted her. He had spoken to her across the surely impenetrable barriers of time and death.

If you call me, I will come.

The whisper was so soft she could barely hear it. Paper rustling against paper, or a serpent’s scales moving over rock. She looked toward Pavia. Against the violet red and purple of the dawn, those few pinpricks of light still glowed, already almost extinguished by the breaking day.

Then she was wolf, warm coat glowing, burnished by the new light. Within a few moments she had found a fish, breakfasted, and was already on her journey. She spoke to Maeniel.
Be alive. Wait for me
. She tried to will it as she hurried on.

In Rome Lucilla breakfasted with Dulcinia. A buttermilk cream cheese with fruit and boiled eggs in a pepper and onion sauce; a well-watered white wine accompanied it.

“You’re being very unpleasant, sister mine,” Dulcinia told her gentry after a few moments’ conversation about the weather, spring vegetables appearing in the market, and those families still able to withdraw to country estates to escape the oncoming hot months.

“How so?” Lucilla contrived to look surprised.

“Don’t you dare!” Dulcinia said. “Half of Rome knows. No, not half—all of Rome not senile, below the age of two, or severely brain sick knows that he visited you and where he spent the night. What happened?”

Lucilla stirred in her seat, looking away from Dulcinia and out over the morning green. They were just inside, and the folding doors to the triclinium had been pushed back. Sudden tears appeared in her eyes.

Dulcinia drew in a deep breath. She’d known Lucilla a long time and loved her. “No. Don’t tell me he behaved… badly.”

“No. He didn’t. He said he loved me, would always love me, and then I’d say from the amount of ardor he brought to our lovemaking, he proved that nothing that happened made the slightest bit of difference to him.”

“Yes, at the Lateran Palace they said he’d returned all smiles and seemed very happy.”

“Yes, my dear, and so am I. But he did acquaint me with one disturbing fact. Gerberga has vanished.”

“Politics again.” Dulcinia sighed.

“When I met him,” Lucilla said, “politics was one of his chief interests, and I quickly became enamored of the game. If I hadn’t, I don’t think our relationship would have prospered. Even then the pro-Frankish party was beginning to groom him for high office, and I could see any woman who wanted to gain his love and keep it must take her place at the table. We rose together.

“And I cannot say I regret my ambition, when I remember my father’s farmhouse with its endless work, filth, screaming children, half-starved livestock. My mother died of overwork and childbearing before she reached your age, Dulcinia.

“The minute one of us girls’ hips began to spread and her breasts started pushing out the front of her dress, my father began looking to sell her to the highest bidder even if it were to the slave dealers from Ravenna. My sister went that way, and… and… yes: so, my dear, did I. And considering what I saw of those leering friends of my father’s—” Lucilla broke off. Her eyes had taken on a hardness that frightened Dulcinia. Her fists were clenched. She looked down at her hands, relaxed her fingers. In a few places her nails had bitten into her palms and drawn blood. “I must find Gerberga and that son of Desiderius, Adalgisus.”

“All I can see is that you are betting heavily on Charles doing some very difficult things… Bringing an army across the Alps, for instance. Even under the Romans, that wasn’t child’s play,” Dulcinia said.

“Yes, well, he has his part and we have ours. I prefer to concentrate on what I can control than on what I can’t. Are you still in demand among all these barbarians?”

Dulcinia threw up her hands. “Yes, but—”

“No buts. I’ve already spoken to Rufus—”

“Lucilla, I can’t help but be spotted as your agent. Our relationship is so well known no one even bothers to gossip about it any longer. I won’t hear any news about Gerberga and her lover. No one will tell me anything.”

“Yes, yes, yes, but your tiring woman, my dear, that’s another matter. Oh, these women from every town and village will be dying to know what’s new and all the rage at the courts in Constantinople and Rome. They will flock to have their hair done the way the Empress Irene does hers and find out what combination of oil of violets, myrrh, with a touch of rose, is current among the Greek ladies of easy virtue; and are stays made best of yew or hardened sinew, and how are they best sewn into silk to give minimum discomfort and maximum lift. Very complex, this business of being a woman, my dear, very complex.

“And credit me with being an expert in these matters of hair dressing, the uses and occasional exquisite abuses of face painting, and the lesser art of embellishment where paint does not belong. And I have a hundred recipes for perfumes, powders, and fragrant oils. I can even value jewelry, tell if it is silver, silver gilt, or gold—pure or alloyed—and have an excellent eye for stones, both precious and semiprecious. I can weigh a broach in my hand and say whether it is silver, gold, or plated pewter or even that impostor of impostors, gilt lead. I do believe I’m going to enjoy myself very much indeed.”