The Wolf King (24 page)

She trotted back and checked each corpse. Yes, five of them. Five signatures of men not dead. Signature odors; footprints, shod—these peasants had all been barefoot—and here and there a wisp of cloth, a thread caught on the new-flowering briars that flourished at the edge of the forest. They went the same way she was going, toward Pavia.

The wolf sat down and considered.

She needed clothing, but didn’t want to get it this way. Still, a dress was a dress and the two women she’d seen wouldn’t miss them. The woman had finished her laundry and it was drying on bushes near where her body lay. Regeane found a shift, skirt, and blouse, and improvised undergarments from a torn-up old shift that seemed to have been used as a nightgown.

She used the rest of the garments to cover the corpses. She pulled the two women’s bodies out of the water and tried to arrange them decently, but since rigor was beginning to set in, there was little she could do. She finally settled for covering them all, including the men.

She found the house they had come from on higher ground overlooking the ford. It was empty. She looked inside only long enough to be sure there were no children who might have hidden nearby, and then walked on toward Pavia.

She’d braided her hair back and covered it with a veil. She knew the killers had gone the same road and she was afraid of coming upon them, but she didn’t. They were mounted and must have been in a hurry to reach the city, because once finished with their murderous work at the ford, they had spurred their horses to a gallop and were long gone.

Mercenaries. Yes. The woman smiled bleakly. Desiderius would be hiring.

The sun was hot on her back but the walk wasn’t a long one. When she reached the top of the hill, she saw that the city crowned the next rise. It was nested into the river curve just ahead, surrounded by orchards, croplands, vineyards, and gray-green olive groves, all basking in the fair spring sunlight.

She crossed a footbridge over a creek that flowed into the river. People were out and about, women in their yards, sweeping, shelling peas, even kneading bread in troughs near their doors. Men were busy, involved in cultivating fields and gardens and among the vines. Her passing caused no comment but she got a few long stares. Women alone were an unusual sight, but her veil, braided hair, and long overdress proclaimed her a respectable girl on some private errand.

Regeane knew the rules: her eyes were downcast, and she avoided all of the masculine stares fixed on her, pretending, as was proper, that they didn’t exist. The road quickly began turning into a street. Houses of timber and wattle and daub crowded on both sides. These weren’t so public as she had seen in the countryside: they all had heavy wooden doors and few windows fronting the road. But she could still see a curtain or two move as she walked past. Just ahead loomed the gray stones of a Roman gate.

She hurried, uneasy with the almost squalid dwellings around her. She was regretting the river and the forest, the wilderness she’d left behind her. She was entering another wilderness now—a much more dangerous one.

She saw five men loitering in front of a tavern just outside the gates. The wolf knew them before the woman did, and the woman felt the hair stir at the back of her neck. Those were the ones. One muscular soldier had scratches on his face. The women must have put up a fight. Two others; nondescript, sandy haired, but their eyes gave her chills, empty and dead. One had a fresh, bloody bandage around his hand. And two not much more than boys, but with faces that said they’d left childhood behind a long time ago.

They studied her with calculating interest as she came closer and closer to the gate. She didn’t think they’d try anything. There were too many people about. The tavern keeper was standing in his doorway, a clay cup in his hand. It was late now. The sun was high overhead but the jumble of houses was so high, two and three stories, that the streets were shady.

Regeane passed them, breathed a sigh of relief, and entered the gate. Two doors bound in iron stood open. There were no guards or any other signs of official presence. The houses on the sloping street inside were even taller than those on the outside and were even more inward facing, as in Rome. Only barred doors and high stone walls faced the street.

Regeane found herself climbing; the street canted up. From time to time she saw women looking down at her from second-floor balconies, but when she looked directly at them or paused as if to call out a greeting, they vanished back into their dwellings.

Regeane kept on walking, growing more and more uncertain as she did so. She’d given a fair amount of thought to reaching Pavia but not much to what she would do when she got there. She knew no one in the city. She had no money. A wolf perforce must travel light. She’d hoped to find a fountain. Women tended to congregate when they drew water. She might ask after the king and what prisoners had been brought to the city and where they were kept. But unlike Rome with its endless piazzas and fountains, this city seemed to have no public spaces. Unless you counted the tavern she’d passed, and she didn’t care, as a woman alone, to approach that. And yes, as she hurried along, the wolf told her there were footsteps behind her.

The five at the tavern?

The wind was blowing up the street. Yes, they were distinctive. The wolf’s mind could pick apart the sensory data the way the human hand sorts change. Two were together, the two youngest ones ahead of the rest. Yes, they had the most energy. They were the soberest. The other three were about half drunk.

Regeane lifted her skirts and began to run. They continued at the same pace. Her feet were bare. When she reached the top of the hill, she saw why they had been in no hurry. The street dead-ended into a small plaza. It was surrounded by houses all turning a blank face to the street and one small church of the kind the poor visit, with a simple, pillared porch and a low roof. On one wall beside the porch was a fountain, a pipe set in the wall that emptied into a stone basin.

Remingus stood beside it. He was no longer the corpse reclaimed from the cross where the Carthaginian had left him. No, he looked like a man. As she watched, he pulled off the old-fashioned legionary helmet. He was wearing a leather cap under it. He pulled off the cap and ran his fingers through perspiration-soaked hair. He reminded her a little of Maeniel, thickset with dark damp curls.

“At noon,” she said, “under the sun.” Yes, he was a being of awesome power.

“We are allowed to do this,” he said.

“Allowed by whom?”

Remingus laughed. “They are coming.” He pointed down the shady street. The square was filled with sunlight.

“I know,” Regeane said. “I will have to kill them.”

Remingus rinsed his helmet in the fountain, filled it at the pipe, and offered Regeane a drink. She drank. She hadn’t known her thirst was so great.

He pointed to a narrow passage next to the church. She hadn’t seen it because it was almost lost in shadow. “Where does it go?” she asked.

“To a small garden in back of the church. It’s quiet there. No one can see you. All of the houses around it turn blank walls to the space.”

Regeane drank again and nodded.

“I’m not sure I can kill five men,” Regeane said. Remingus just laughed and said, “Catch them as they come out of the alley. You can take them by surprise.”

The first two entered the square. They made no bones about their intentions and ran toward her. Regeane turned and ran down the alley. It was rather long, stretching the length of the church. She never reached the end because a door opened, then someone grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

Regeane, nonplussed, found herself standing in a small kitchen with a tall, lean, grim-faced woman. She’d opened the door only long enough to pull Regeane inside. She slammed it shut and threw a big bolt.

From the outside, one of the men threw his shoulder against the door. The woman snatched up a heavy iron frying pan and shouted. “Son of a degenerate pig, go away or I’ll brain you.” She slammed the frying pan against the heavy door.

Regeane could hear the men talking outside. One of the older ones was remonstrating with them. “Don’t be a fool. You have no idea how many people might be in that house. Let it be, goddamn it. Let it be. I don’t plan to get killed here. Not over a woman.”

Someone slammed a fist or a shoulder against the locked door. This was followed by a cry of pain. “I told you, let it be.”

There was another cry of pain and a string of curses. “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding.”

“Try that again and you’ll find that’s only a scratch, you stupid bastard.”

“I’ll kick your ass so hard…” The voices trailed off as the men moved away.

“Sounds like they’re leaving,” Regeane whispered.

The old woman snorted. “I wouldn’t be too sure. They probably just went back to the square.”

The room was warm. Regeane found herself perspiring. There was a fire in one corner of the room. The smoke was vented by the Roman precursor of the chimney, a double wall with a vent near the fire that allowed heat and smoke to rise and exit outside of the building.

There were stone counters on the other three walls. Bread dough rose in a wooden trough in the center of a counter. It was very dim, but the room did have a window, so small Regeane hadn’t seen it from the outside, just a narrow slit near the door with a grating over it.

“Fool girl,” the woman said. “What did you think they were going to do when they got you alone in the priest’s garden? Why didn’t you go into the church?”

“They came upon me so quickly…”

“Yes…” the woman answered. She sounded suspicious. “Well and good, but what are you doing wearing Mona’s dress?”

Like many another woman with no good explanation for her behavior, Chiara took refuge in hysterics when the watchman found her in the forum in front of the cathedral. The watchman called the captain of the guard. He could do no more with Chiara than the watchman could. He called the king.

Desiderius arrived. He’d been up late drinking with his cronies, so at least two-thirds of the court mustered out trying to find out what all the excitement was about.

Chiara found herself just where she didn’t want to be: the center of attention.

“Call her father,” Desiderius said. “She’s Armine’s daughter.”

Chiara was sobbing now in terror, not of Hugo’s guest—he had, it transpired, done very little—but in complete despair of thinking up a really good explanation for her presence in the forum in her nightclothes.

Armine arrived. He gave Chiara short shrift. “You stop that right now, my girl. You never were a screamer; don’t try to convince me you’ve started to come all undone at this late date.”

Chiara calmed herself. “I must have been sleepwalking. Mother always said I was given to it as a toddler and—”

“Sleepwalking,” Armine said. “And no, I never knew your mother to say any such thing. Sleepwalking… what are you? Angelina, the upstairs maid? She sleepwalked herself into becoming the mother of twins.”

Chiara’s face flamed. “I am not in the least like Angelina.”

The bishop had just arrived in time to hear Armine’s last statement and Chiara’s angry denial.

“What have you done?” he shouted angrily at the captain of the guard. “Awakened me from my warm bed over a simple case of fornication?”

Chiara didn’t know what fornication was, but she wanted nothing to do with it. “I don’t know anything about forn— forn—whatever that was he said. The watchman woke me. He stank of wine. He frightened me. He began shouting at me. Everyone is shouting at me and saying I forn—forn— whatever that is. I didn’t. I didn’t do it—whatever it is.”

Chiara was upset, really upset by now. Besides the uproar around her, she could hear the almost Homeric laughter of Hugo’s guest. Peal after peal rang out over the noise of the crowd.

The bishop was an old man and was wearing a woolen gown and a nightcap. “I told you,” he said waspishly to Desiderius, “not to entertain that sorcerer Hugo at your palace. Now look what he’s done. Debauched the innocent daughter of one of your most faithful men. The blacksmith said he found that madman wearing the piss pot on his head yesterday. This silly besotted girl—” The bishop pointed at Chiara. “—rescued him from his own folly. Further, he carries on conversations with the empty air. All night long this necromancer consorts with daemons. The woman who lives beneath him says she fears for her soul’s salvation, so loud are the sounds, the moans of the damned souls he commands. His own servant, Gimp, fears him like death.”

The archbishop became so vehement that his nightcap fell off. Reaching for it, he lost his balance and only the captain of the guard’s strong arm saved him from dashing his brains out on the stone floor. The captain got little thanks for his pains. The archbishop cursed him roundly and called for his staff and chair. Both were fetched by his servants.

“Is this true?” Armine seemed thunderstruck. “Are you in love with this Hugo?” he asked Chiara.

“What?” Chiara screamed. “Hugo? You think Hugo and I are… Hugo? Hugo!” His outrage was nothing to Chiara’s. “I’d rather make the beast with two backs with—with—a sick goat than with
Hugo
?

Hugo’s guest sounded as if he was going to die.

“And you,” Chiara said. Her eyes roamed around. No one was quite sure whom she was addressing. “You! You just stop it.” Chiara tried to say something else, but all that emerged from her throat was a harsh croak. The captain of the guard gave her a cup of wine.

Desiderius was deeply annoyed; he wanted to get back to his drinking. Chiara was thirsty, and besides, she was certain she’d managed to make a complete fool of herself.

Hugo’s guest told her, “I can’t remember when I have been so entertained.”

“I wish you weren’t dead,” she muttered into the wine cup between clenched teeth. “I’d like to kill you, too.”

Hugo arrived, being supported by two members of the king’s guard. It was clear even by torchlight that someone had beaten the snot out of Hugo. One eye was closed, the other barely open. His upper lip was swollen, his lower split. It was impossible to count his bruises and those were only the visible ones not hidden by his clothing. Hugo seemed only about half conscious, and he was rubber legged.