The Wolf King (25 page)

“Did you drown him?” Hugo asked Desiderius.

“Drown?” the Archbishop screeched. “Drown who?”

Desiderius looked dismayed.

“The wolf,” Hugo said, spitting blood between his broken teeth.

The archbishop was on his feet, moving like a much younger man. He aimed a swing at the king’s head that would probably have split his skull if the captain of the guard hadn’t deflected it with his shield. The staff was sheathed in silver and had a lead weight in the handle.

Again the captain got little thanks for his pains. The bishop fetched him a whack with his staff and cursed him again. “You hell-bound pagan!” the bishop yelled. “I’ll have you know my church is consecrated ground. I told you if I caught you drowning any more of your enemies in the basement of my church, I’d excommunicate… I’ll deny the sacraments, I’ll see you in hell, In hell—” The archbishop tottered toward the church.

Desiderius and the rest followed Hugo, carried along by the watch.

“I apologize,” Armine told Chiara. “He couldn’t possibly— I mean the man is in such a condition that… How? Why?”

When the crowd reached the subbasement, it was apparent no one was going to be drowning anyone for some time. The watchman peered down into the gloom where the stopper was fixed into the pipe that filled the cell. The chain that connected it to the lever was snapped off near the top of the handle. It dangled from the stopper into darkness.

The watchman made the sign of the cross and told the bishop, “When we tried to fish for the end of the chain with a pole, someone—some thing—began laughing.”

The bishop called down into the cistern. “Is anyone there?”

“Yes,” Maeniel answered. “Would you send down a bit of food and water? I’m hungry and thirsty.”

“No,” Hugo muttered. “Daemons, daemons,” the bishop muttered.

“Mona’s dress?” Regeane repeated.

“Mona’s dress,” the woman said.

“Her name was Mona?”

“Was?” the woman asked.

“She’s dead,” Regeane answered.

“Dead? She can’t be dead. She’s betrothed to my son.” The woman grabbed Regeane by the shoulder. Regeane felt her nails bite. “Dead?”

“They’re all dead,” Regeane said. “I found them at the river. She, the older woman—”

“Itta.”

“Yes,” Regeane continued. “Itta had been washing clothes. I think her daughter—”

“Mona.”

Regeane nodded. “I think her daughter was with her. The five men who followed me up the street—”

“Five? I saw only three.”

“I think the others were behind them,” Regeane said, “but they came across the river. I think they wanted the two women, but the men—I mean Itta’s husband—”

“Alberic?”

“Yes,” Regeane said, “and another man and boy—”

“Avitus and Alan, his brother and his brother’s son.”

“Yes,” Regeane said. “It helps to give them names, I suppose… But in any case, when I got there they were all dead.”

“No!” the woman shouted. “You’re lying. You have to be.”

Regeane heard a creaking at the back of the room. A stair was descending from the upper floor; as soon as it hit the ground a young man hurried down.

“All dead? Woman, what are you saying?” he shouted.

“My son,” the older woman said. “My son, Robert.”

“Dead,” Regeane repeated. “All of them.”

The boy ran out.

“No,” the woman yelled after him, but he slammed the door in her face, saying, “Stay here, Mother.”

“No, no, no,” the woman whispered stubbornly.

“I think,” Regeane continued, “they wanted the women. Their menfolk defended them, but they were no match for well-armed mercenaries, and—”

“It can’t be. I was talking to Itta only yesterday at the fountain about the marriage. My son worried about them living at the ford, since it seems the Frankish king Charles will soon carry war across the mountains. He has some quarrel with Desiderius.”

“Yes,” Regeane said.

One narrow shaft of light entered through the window slit, creating a bar of gold on the trough filled with bread dough. “By now it’s finished its first rise. It needs to be punched down and the pans filled. I can’t waste the fire in the oven.”

“Here, let me braid the dough,” Regeane said. She followed the woman’s directions, braiding as Matrona had taught her. That’s what the loaves were: long braids heavy with olives, eggs, and oil. Regeane saw some like them hanging from wires near the fire grate.

“They keep a long time,” the woman said, “and are good work bread. The men take loaves to the field with them. I braid so there will no quarrels about who got the largest share. I’m a baker; it’s my business to sell bread.”

And then unaccountably she staggered over to a stool in the corner and began to weep into her apron.

“Oh, no.” Regeane went over and embraced her. “I wish I could have brought you better news. I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

After only a few moments, the woman dried her eyes, then pulled off the apron and went to get a clean one from a stack on the counter near the door. “Itta washed them,” she said. “I bake, she did laundry.” And then she began weeping again. Whispering over and over, “I can’t stop. I just can’t seem to stop. She was my best friend.”

At the woman’s direction, Regeane put on the apron and loaded the ramekins and two or three pots of stew into the oven.

“They leave them here to make use of the heat while I bake,” the woman explained.

Regeane nodded, then closed and locked the door to the oven. When she was finished and washed her hands in a bucket, the woman spoke.

“You’re a noblewoman.”

“How do you know?”

The woman seemed annoyed. “No peasant girl has hands like yours.”

Regeane studied her hands for a moment. “Yes,” she said.

“Why are you here?”

“Desiderius imprisoned my husband, the lord Maeniel.”

“Well then, you may soon have grief of your own. He is in the bottle.”

“The bottle?” Regeane repeated.

“The cistern under the church. Prisoners seem to drown there.”

Regeane rose, pressed her hand to her breast, and closed her eyes. “No.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

The woman explained the workings of the bottle to her. “ ‘Tis said the Romans built it to assure the city would have a good water supply if attacked, but no one will drink from it now. Too many who crossed the lord Desiderius have died there. There was a disturbance in the square last night, and it is said Lord Maeniel still lives. But who knows for how long?”

“Yes,” Regeane whispered. “I have to get him out. Would the king hear a plea for mercy?”

“The storm from the mountains roaring over the valley knows more about mercy than that man. I will not say his name and never will again because if what you say is true, he killed my friend. He will never see any wrong his soldiers do. Never. We of the town have complained of their depredations in vain. We’re supposed to be protected by laws. We insisted on our own laws when we conquered here and settled this valley, but he knows them not.”

She spat on the floor and rubbed it in with her foot. “We are less than this to him.

“My great-grandfather raised his great-grandfather on his shield. We fought for him. We made him king. And he—he denies us. Beningus the law speaker will be here tonight. We have a meeting of our… burial society. We will see what he says about this.

“What is your name?”

“Regeane, daughter of the Saxon lord Wolfstan.”

“Yes, I have heard of you. No bad things; only good. I am Dorcas, baker of Pavia. I follow the trade my father and husband did before me. We are not well met, but I am glad to know you.”

Hugo’s guest visited Maeniel. Maeniel was furred against the cold; the underground cell was chilly.

“What do you want?” he asked Hugo’s guest rather unceremoniously, once he’d turned human; it wasn’t comfortable. “I hope you didn’t hurt the girl.”

“No,” the bear howled. “She’s one of the few humans I rather like. Tell me, can you see me?”

“Yes, I see a sort of bear shadow, and if you’ll excuse me, I will call the wolf.” He did and sat, his tail curled respectfully around his body, listening to what the bear said next.

“Let me in, I ask you one more time. I think I can probably still save you, but you must offer me the use of your body.”

The wolf rose and turned his back on the bear, curled up, dropped his tail over his nose to keep it warm, and went to sleep.

“They will burn you,” the bear shouted. “Even if I am able to keep them from repairing the pipe, they will find another way. I am the only thing that is keeping them away.”

The wolf opened his eyes, looked past his rather large brush at the bear.

The bear stormed out, rattling the grating over the cell, all the pipes, and anything loose in the chamber above.

The guard, the watchman Sextus, was above, sitting on the basement steps. He was, as usual, about half drunk, but he sobered immediately at the bear’s bellow of rage and made the sign of the cross. His hand grabbed for the wine jug but the bear got it first, lifted it, and hurled it full force at the wall next to Sextus. To the watchman’s eyes, the wine jug seemed to leap into the air and explode, drenching him with clay fragments and wine.

The bear stormed out of the church, flinging open the doors before him. Seeming and sounding like a destructive wind gust.

Sextus fled screaming.

Regeane helped Dorcas prepare for the meeting. It would take place here in Dorcas’s shop. A table was placed on trestles, and Dorcas and Regeane carried benches down from above. The stair was constructed so that it could be pulled up and the top part of the house cut off from the basement.

Regeane found the upper living quarters comfortable and attractive. Windows in the back of the room looked down on a courtyard with a fountain and a garden where herbs and vegetables grew, or at least had been spaded up and were ready for planting. Rosemary, thyme, borage, garlic, and other winter crops filled the herb garden.

The side walls had no windows, as the house shared them with the buildings on either side. The other set of windows overlooked the street. Regeane noticed these had heavier shutters than the inside windows. This floor had benches and a rather fine table and folding chairs, and even a few books on a shelf against the wall.

Dorcas pointed to a stair, a rather steep one rising along the wall. “Sleep rooms up there. If you won’t mind sharing my bed tonight, I offer you the hospitality of the house.”

“Thank you,” Regeane said. All the walls were hung with tapestries of Dorcas’s own making and in the corner there stood a large loom. “Do you know, I never learned how to use one.”

“A noblewoman like you?” Dorcas sounded surprised.

“They are expensive, and my uncle and his son spent all the money,” Regeane said.

“I hate to see a smart woman sacrificed to worthless men.”

“I think that’s what happened to my mother, but then she listened to my uncle, and…”

“And what?”

Regeane found herself in a corner. She certainly didn’t want to tell the story of how her father died. “She repudiated her first husband. Folly! He was rich and my uncle hoped to get some of his money. I suppose he succeeded to some extent, but it never came to any good.”

“Such schemes don’t,” Dorcas said. “Money is best earned. I know. I’ve worked all my life.” Then she began weeping again.

Regeane tried to offer some comfort but Dorcas pulled away. “A lot of good it’s done me, all that work. I had a bit saved and had mind to offer the money to Itta. She could have bought a house in town and set up as a washerwoman. She did well at it. She could have paid me back. Oh, why? Oh, why did I delay? My own grasping selfishness caused my best friend’s death.”

Regeane found herself crying in sympathy and embracing Dorcas. “Say rather cautious and afraid. The world is a cruel place. Don’t blame yourself. How could you know such a dreadful thing as this would happen? You did your best. I’m sure she needed the work you gave her.”

None of this seemed to help Dorcas much. Regeane thought of the people she loved, her women friends Lucilla, Barbara, Matrona. How would she feel if one of them were struck down in such a brutal, meaningless way? She didn’t know how she could endure it either.

Then she saw Robert coming up the street. He was riding a mule. She and Dorcas went down to meet him.

*        *        *

Chiara went walking in the palace garden. It was, at present, near the end of winter, a rather bleak place, but some early flowers she didn’t recognize were beginning to push their heads above the soil. A fine clump of some sort of white and purple mountain lilies was coming up at the base of trees. Quince and apple blossoms were swelling, readying themselves to open. The long catkins of the oak, ash, and willow decorated their branches with green chains of wind-pollinated flowers before the new leaves were ready to make an appearance. The air from the mountains that glowed almost like a mirage in the distance, lifting white and blue peaks against the warm azure sky, was cool and carried a hint of dampness from the river, a smell of growing things pushing themselves up from winter’s new-mulched soil.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered as she closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face.

“Yes,” Hugo’s guest answered.

She gave a snort. “You.”

“Yes, again.”

“Did you do those awful things to Hugo?” she asked sternly.

Hugo’s guest chuckled.

“It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is. Hugo is a piece of shit. Don’t waste your sympathy on him. Hell, if I hadn’t stopped him, the son of a bitch would have raped you in your own garden.”

He was right. Hugo might not have been able to commit successful sexual assault—Chiara would have both fought and screamed—but he would have tried and might have injured her in the process. Chiara chewed at her lip. “You’re right,” she finally said, “but what happened?”

The bear growled.

“You stop that,” Chiara said. “Now, what happened? Can’t you see I don’t think I’m special? I worry. What would you do to me if you got angry?”

“Nothing, and you know it. I couldn’t have been more enraged than I was last night.”