The Wolf King (26 page)

Chiara giggled.

“You stop that. I don’t care to be laughed at. It’s too demeaning.”

“It tickled.”

The bear swirled again. “Chiara, you creatures draw the energy you live on from the food you get. Plants somehow get it from the sun. If they are too long in darkness, as once happened to the earth, they die.”

“Where did the sun go?” she asked, slightly horrified.

“Stop asking me to explain one thing while I’m trying to explain another.” The bear, Hugo’s guest, sounded waspish.

Chiara listened, all attention. “Please continue.” She sounded so very sedate and adult, the bear found himself mollified and amused. He couldn’t smile, but a soft ripple of laughter rolled over his being, and Chiara saw the shimmer.

“Very well.” He continued, “I—I draw my energies. Specifically,” he added because she still looked a bit horrified, “from my relationship with sentient beings. Without them I die.”

“Die?”

“I’m not sure, Chiara, if death is the right word to apply to me. Perhaps I simply go dormant and then wake again… under certain conditions.”

“Mysterious?”

“You are so young, Chiara. All life is a mystery. Born in poisoned air from the clash of lightning, wind, and rain above a raging sea.”

“God made it?” Chiara asked breathlessly.

“I cannot say because I do not know. If God… The tools he used to make the universe are beyond mortal comprehension. Far more complex than these simpleminded priests would have you believe.”

“I don’t… understand.”

“No, and you never will. I don’t either, and I am a whole millennium older than you are.”

“A millennium is a thousand years,” Chiara said.

“Yes.”

Chiara looked out over the river and toward the mountains. “A thousand years,” she whispered to herself. “A thousand years? No wonder you think Hugo is a fool. What must you think of me?”

“I would think Hugo a fool if he lived a millennium of millennia. You? No—but only very, very young. And I envy you and your kind your engagement with the earth, with what to me is an alternative reality, even though it means you must die.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true, but on a day such as this, death seems very far away.”

“Is it very beautiful?” he asked almost wistfully.

“Can’t you see it?”

“I perceive it, but that’s not the same thing. Let me— Chiara?” he asked. “Please let me, for a moment, look at it through your eyes?”

Chiara drew away from the faint movement she saw in the air nearby. “No.” She sounded alarmed. “Is that how you got the terrible power you have over Hugo? Did you trick him into—”

This was as far as she got because a terrific wind gust roared at her out of nowhere, pulling her hair free of the fillet she’d used to bind it and whipping her skirts high as she turned her back to protect herself from the blast. And then quickly as it came it was ended, leaving her disheveled, frightened, and absolutely alone.

Regeane went downstairs with Dorcas to let Robert in. He staggered into his mother’s arms. He was gray and looked stricken. Dorcas embraced him. “Oh, my son.”

He swallowed, and Regeane saw his chest heave as he gasped for air. “Mother, give me a moment. It’s almost impossible for me to speak of what I have seen, but let me say one thing.” He pointed to Regeane. “She told the truth, and they are all dead. I have another question to ask you.” He stared at Regeane. “Did you have any part in their deaths?”

“No,” Regeane said flatly.

“Did you travel alone?”

“Yes. I came following the river in hopes of rescuing my lord Maeniel.”

“The clothing—”

“I needed a disguise.”

“You picked a foolish one.”

Regeane nodded. “I can see that now.” She clenched and unclenched her fists.

“Your lord is known to the people hereabouts. He has the name of witch, and it is said he and his followers are not natural men but belong to the wild hunt that rides the clouds when the storms come sweeping down from the mountains in the autumn to flog the earth with bitter wind and cold. And at night when the summer heat draws cooling thunder from the clouds, and sheets of lightning bright as day dance over the wheat and rice cradled in the arms of giant rivers, you and your lord ride with the first hunter of all, among the tall cloud tops on steeds born of thunderheads and revel in the caress of midnight rain.”

“Yes,” Regeane answered. “I suppose in a way that is true, but remember the soil bears the fruit of the storm that embraces the earth with rain. A thing may be terrible in its majesty but not evil. Neither my lord nor I would harm the innocent or willingly cause them misfortune. I found what you saw, and I grieve with you at both the folly and cruelty of such actions.”

“It is true,” he said. “No woman did or could do what was done to Mona and Itta, and they were all killed by steel.” With that he began to weep. Dorcas tried to comfort him but broke down in sorrow, and for a time they grieved together.

At length Robert regained his composure and spoke quietly to Regeane and his mother. “When I rode to the river I took two others along, Gannon and Sheiel. We found the bodies. Someone had covered them and tried to compose their limbs decently.”

Regeane nodded.

“Yes, we saw your footprints. When we had done all we could, we washed them in the river and cleansed the marks of outrage and murder on their flesh. Then we wrapped them in some clean linen cloth Itta had at the house. We spoke among ourselves and came to the conclusion that it would be best not to bring them publicly to the city for fear the men who committed this brutal crime might flee. So the corpses are shrouded and in their dwelling. Gannon sent for his wife, and she and some of the other women and Sheiel remain at the river.

“Then Gannon and I spoke with Johns. He keeps the taverna where the soldiers are lodging. He and the rest of the men determined they are almost certainly the guilty ones. They left the taverna at first light. When Johns asked where they were bound, they told him, amid much laughter, that they were going hunting. We think they planned to have their will of the two women while they were doing the washing, as their habit is to wash in the cool of the morning and dry the clothes in the sun when it is high. Mother, we found a dozen of our aprons in a bundle near Itta. They seemed to have seized her and Mona first, but Mona fought; indeed, one of them has scratches on his face, and another is wounded. We think Mona made the scratches. There was blood under her nails. She reached her father, Alberic. He and his brother fought. We think they wounded one of the attackers but they were taken by surprise and had no weapons. All three fell.

“Then, they… they—those human dogs—dragged Mona off.” Robert was silent for a moment. “She was wearing my ring. They cut off her finger to take it. That’s how I know, why I’m sure, they were the ones. Johns said when they returned from the ‘hunt,’ they paid him for another night’s lodging. When one of them fumbled in his scrip for the money, Johns saw the ring. At the time he didn’t think anything of it, believing it only a similar one, but when we told him what we found, he told us what he had seen.”

Regeane whispered, “Her finger. But then, I didn’t notice, there was so much blood.”

“Mother, I want them dead,” he continued almost calmly.

“I want them all dead. I don’t care if the king hangs them or I cut their throats myself, but I want them dead. And I will see them off to hell before another day passes.

“We will have the law. Lombard law gives us rights. We will demand justice of Desiderius. His men will not offer insult to his people without redress.”

“So far,” Dorcas said, “he has shown no willingness to listen to his people. Mona is not the first, my son. Lillas was accosted on her way to the fountain a few weeks ago. She is but a new bride. Of course, she won’t tell what happened. God knows I wouldn’t either. She won’t bring disgrace to either her own family or her husband’s, but she lost the child she was carrying. When her father and father-in-law confronted the king, he laughed in their faces, and two days later her husband was killed in the street almost at his own doorstep. And no one is brave enough to name the killers, though at least a dozen people saw who they were.

“Now Lillas sits in her house and mourns her husband and her child. My son, I would not sit in my house and mourn the last and the best of my children—you.”

“Mother, I could not bear the name of man,” Robert said softly, “if I suffered this to happen without seeking vengeance.”

“Let me help,” Regeane said quietly.

“How could you possibly be of any assistance to us?” Robert asked. “You are a small woman and weaponless.”

“I have weapons you cannot see, I and my lord both. Let me be there when you take the king to task.”

“We will have to put the matter to rest tonight,” Robert said, “but I see no harm in it.

“We sent for Beningus. He will hear the case and tell us the law.”

Someone knocked and Dorcas hurried to see who it was and admit them. Regeane continued to set the table, covering it with heavy cloth and placing spoons for the pottages that would begin the meal, while Robert helped Dorcas with the benches. The room began filling up with people who spoke softly to both Robert and Dorcas and then embraced them.

Everyone sat down together for the meal. Regeane and Dorcas brought bread and the four pottages to the table. Broad beans cooked with salt pork; chicken, a stewing hen with saffron and early spring greens; pork shoulder with cloves, apples, and wine; and lentils cooked with ham and thickened with eggs.

Beningus arrived and sat at one end of the table. Robert sat at the other. He had little appetite and, as still more people crowded into the room, he mobilized more benches and served them buffet style from the pots on the table.

It grew dark outside and candles, torches, and rushlights appeared among those gathered in the shop. Robert had set several torches on the walls. They were lit and they brightened the room immensely. When everyone was finished eating, the tables were taken down and more benches and chairs appeared from nearby dwellings. They were needed by now. Regeane was sure there must be over a hundred people squeezed into the room. Most were men but there was a sprinkling of women among them.

“Widows,” Dorcas said. “Like myself, they are family heads. Many, again like myself, don’t marry a second time. They fear to jeopardize their children’s future. A second husband might lay waste the wealth garnered by the first.”

Then Dorcas peered through the window slit. “It’s dark,” she said.

Robert joined her. “It’s dark and there is no moon. Bring them now,” she told him.

He nodded and left. Several other men accompanied him. They brought back the dead. They were wrapped in cloth, shrouded, all but their faces, which showed that last unearthly calm that even the violently murdered wear when the journey to dust has begun.

Dorcas wept over Itta and the men. Others from the crowd joined in the grief, but Robert was silent. He stood next to Mona’s shrouded form silently. From time to time he sighed, and once touched her cheek with the back of one work-roughened hand.

Regeane stood quietly among the general grief all around her. At length Robert raised his head. His eyes met hers and he beckoned her closer. Now the torches had burned down and were only rather dull, smoky lumps. The wax lights melted and the only lights in the room were the candles burning at the head and feet of each of the five corpses. They rested together on a hurdle stretched over the same supports that had held up the dinner table.

“Tell us what happened,” he asked, “and tell us, if you can, who is guilty.” Then he uncovered Mona’s hand. Regeane saw the missing finger. He placed Mona’s hand in hers.

Without hesitation, Regeane clasped the still, cold fingers in both of hers. She became aware the room had fallen silent behind her. Regeane tried to get Robert to meet her eyes but he avoided her glance.

“What do you expect her to do? Bleed?” Regeane asked. She was speaking of the belief that when a murderer touches the corpse of his victim, the body will begin to bleed, even though the person has been dead for some hours.

The stump where the finger had been remained raw flesh. No drop of blood showed on Regeane’s fingers. “I had to know,” he said.

Regeane replaced Mona’s hand on her breast and stepped back. She didn’t look at Robert or even the crowd gathered in the room, but only at Mona’s still face.

“The five soldiers staying at the inn near the Roman gate closest to the river are guilty. And none is more guilty than the others. They planned it together. They all took part in the rape, in the murders. They came down the road from the city very early so they would not be seen, and they waited near the river for sunrise. If you look, you will find a clearing where they left their horses.

“Just at sunrise, Itta came down, accompanied by Mona, to wash a big bundle of clothing in the shallows. The men remained at the house, all but one who joined a party of charcoal burners and went to cut wood.”

“How could you know?” asked Robert.

Regeane clenched her fists in the fabric of her skirt and said forcefully, “I know.”

Dorcas said, “Avitus’s brother is a charcoal burner. Robert, be quiet. She is not obliged to tell us how she knows. Go on, Regeane.”

“Itta fought. She had a knife. She wounded one of the soldiers and badly scratched another one with her nails. The girl ran for help. Her father and his brother and nephew were near the boat, building a fire. They had no chance. The soldiers were upon them before they could seize such weapons as they had. Those were few and not very effective. They were killed, even the boy, out of hand.

“They dragged Mona away toward the river.” Regeane paused. She knew what happened then but didn’t want to tell it. Not to the man who had loved the girl who died so horribly.

“The rest were already dead,” Robert said. “So there was no help for her.”

“No.” She remained silent.

“I wish I had been there,” Robert said.

“Then they would have killed you, too,” Regeane said. She spoke harshly. “Death hangs about them the way fog clings to water.”