The Wolf King (27 page)

“Yes,” Robert said, picking up Mona’s hand. “I know.” Then he, too, was silent.

Regeane stood with her head bowed next to him. When she raised her head, the candle’s glow caught her eyes. They flashed like mirrored moons in the darkened room.

“They were following me,” she said. “You shouldn’t have stopped me. They weren’t going to catch me alone. I was going to catch them.” She lifted her hand in shadow; her long nails looked like claws.

The crowd gasped, but Robert strode over to the wall and lit a new torch with a guttering, spent one, and light filled the room. “Beningus, speak the law.”

A tall, rather lean man stepped out of the crowd and faced the impromptu gathering. “I am,” he said, “of your choosing. Long ago when words on paper were only foreign wonders to us, the men and women of our family committed laws to memory, and when we held our assemblies those who had disputes of sufficient importance to require the attention of our greatest men could call on us to tell them what was proper under the laws. We stood with and before our leaders and spoke of how disagreements and quarrels were settled in the past and how we felt they should be settled now, that the peace might be kept among us.

“To this end, I never learned to read and write. Because now kings turn to moldy books filled with symbols that but few understand, and they interpret the law to their own advantage. But I, and my kind, are living repositories of what has been and what should be and we are forbidden to twist the teachings we have received to our own advantage. We may accept no payment for our services. Our trade—we are stock merchants and tanners—sustains us. More than sustains us, actually. Last year I did quite well.”

A gust of soft laughter swept the room.

Robert sighed and whispered to Regeane, “The honesty of Beningus’s family is proverbial.”

“Tell us what we must do, Beningus,” Dorcas said.

“I have thought on it,” he replied. “The laws of brigandage and outrage apply.”

“Desire was present,” a man in the crowd spoke up.

“Yes, but the laws of desire apply to marriage and property, not murder, and this was murder. The law protects women from outrage and men from secret murder. The women were both outraged and murdered. The men were secretly and silently murdered. The law of brigandage applies because these men are outsiders and not from among our people. But the law directs that the king or chief men of a place will protect the people against theft and bodily harm. So, soldiers of his or not, he may not shield them from answering the accusations brought against them. And should they prove guilty— why, then he must hang them.

“A king who does no justice is not fit to be a king. A king who cannot keep the peace is no king at all.”

The room held a vast stillness. The silence was long and loud. Regeane knew something momentous was happening. She knew she’d been present at the birth of a change that would one day shake the world.

This was a humble gathering of a few sympathetic souls who came together to mourn some unimportant men and women who met their deaths by misadventure. She couldn’t imagine why this very minor event would change all subsequent history or even make the very powerful Desiderius rest uneasy on his throne, but it would. She knew because Remingus and his men were among the people crowded into this room.

She could see them everywhere, some as shadows superimposed on the faces and bodies of living men and women; others brought the absolute darkness of the grave with them, carving out niches in the shadows as the living instinctively avoided their domain. All were fully marked by the horror of their mortality and entrance into eternity, from Remingus, who had withered on a Carthaginian cross, to the rest who wore the wounds that had carved away their lives.

Honor,
Regeane thought.
Honor and doom. They gave their moment under the eye of the sun to honor and to destruction, that their particular world might live. Knowing that life itself is not a profit-and-loss statement and cannot be totaled up like one. We are all more and less than the flesh we wear from birth to death, but we are never sure why or how much
.

Chiara woke when she sensed the presence of Hugo’s guest in the room. She was secretly relieved rather than otherwise. She’d been worried about him, since they hadn’t parted friends at their last encounter. She was afraid he might stop speaking to her, and she found—much to her surprise—that she would miss him. Compared to the errant spirit, most humans she was allowed to meet were deadly dull. Like most girls of her age, she was virtually imprisoned; the preservation of what her family considered her innocence became of overriding importance as she approached the age when she would be married. So she’d found in the last few years that her human contacts were being sharply curtailed.

Her nighttime adventure frightened her father, though as it happened she survived with her reputation unscathed. A miracle, considering the circumstances, but the experience convinced Armine that his daughter needed protection from the hazards and temptations of the world. To this end, Chiara found herself moved to an inner room overlooking a pleasant garden.

Her new maid, a dour and grim old woman recruited from a community of anchorites vowed to the service of God’s holy church, slept in the outer chamber. Since the building was four stories high and the only entrance to Chiara’s bedroom was through the chamber where Bibo—the name of the formerly cloistered nun—slept, it was clear to Chiara she was going nowhere without paternal permission and supervision.

“Very nice. You got me into all kinds of trouble with my father, not to mention the bishop and the king, and then you not only don’t apologize, you don’t even drop by and talk to me. Some friend you are.”

“Your father is a sweet innocent who understands everything about cloth and its manufacture and the difficulties of transporting whole bales of the stuff from one place to another, not to mention how to get the best price for his goods when he reaches his destination. But he’s an absolute patsy for any personable soul who wishes to sell him a bridge over the Tiber near Rome.”

Chiara thought this over for a second. “That being the pope.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Now get up. That hag in the next room is awake, on her knees, and trying to atone for some sins that even God has probably forgotten. She can hear one side of this conversation if not the other. She will judge you, at best, mad or, at worst, possessed if she hears you speaking to an empty room, and she probably gives regular reports to your father. And should you question her veracity to your devoted sire, he will believe her version of events rather than yours.”

“I’m not dressed,” Chiara objected.

“You are wearing undergarments, a linen shift, and a woolen nightgown. A nun could not equal your modesty at present. Get out on the balcony right now.”

“You are high-handed,” she said, but obeyed.

“You are in a right royal snit,” the spirit told her. “But you are going to listen to what I have to say.”

Chiara pushed the shutters aside, being very careful to make as little noise as possible. The night was clear. A sharp winter chill lingered in the air and the sky was crowded with what seemed like millions of stars. But there was no wind, and Chiara’s bedgown and woolen socks were warm. She was about to exclaim, “How beautiful,” but remembered the source of her last argument with the spirit and didn’t want another, at least not so soon.

But he answered her unspoken comment anyway. “Yes, it is.”

Chiara trusted herself to nod and she did. The spirit continued. “I didn’t come here tonight to discuss the wonders of creation but to bring you a much more important message. A great deal of trouble is in the offing for both your father and the king.”

“What’s going on?”

“First and least important at the moment is that Charles, the Frankish king, is advancing through the Alps. Frankly, I must say I admire the perspicacity of the wolf in choosing to follow that particular ruler, who shows an unusually high degree of ability and intelligence for a human and above all for one nobly born. Most of that particular subspecies of human have roughly the intellectual capacity of nits; this one, Charles, seems to be a highly competent individual. Which, by the way, bodes ill for the cowardly and devious Lombard ruler.”

Chiara said, “Huh?”

“Charles is smart and brave. Desiderius is stupid, cowardly, and inept. What do you think is going to happen?”

“Oh,” Chiara said, “but there’s many a slip between cup and lip.”

“True,” the being answered trenchantly.
“But
of more moment is the fact that the people of Pavia and the surrounding countryside are fed up with the depredations of the mercenary forces that your feckless king has hired to defend his domains. He doesn’t trust his people or his nobility and with good reason. He has never taken steps to win the loyalty of either.

“Instead, he’s made a state policy of scheming, backstabbing, and murder, and this policy is about to bear most unpleasant fruit. To put it very succinctly, tomorrow his chickens are coming home to roost, and he will find them very ugly fowl indeed. And you must warn your father that the square won’t be a safe place to visit. Don’t go there without protection, no matter what happens. Don’t stir out of this room. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Get a migraine, get a vile disease, fall into convulsions, but stay home.”

“I was already planning to wake up with terrible cramps. They’re going to try to burn the one you call the wolf.”

“The bishop and king are going to call an assembly and try Maeniel for sorcery,” Hugo’s guest said. “But calling an assembly is a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because the people have the right at an assembly to introduce other business, and make no mistake about it, they will take advantage of this devious monarch’s error and do so. As for burning the wolf… Well, his wife is here. Normally she might be stoned out of hand as a witch, but given the nasty temper of the citizenry at this moment, I find that against all odds they are listening to her—high-tempered bitch that she is—and she has plans that don’t include her husband being burned alive.”

“Good for her,” Chiara whispered truculently.

“Ye gods, but you women stick together.”

“Ha! I wish. Look at that dumb Bibo. Now I can’t do anything without her finding out. I’m completely cornered by that old witch and my father.”

“You’re going to go to the square regardless of what I say, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Chiara answered, and stamped her foot. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

The spirit gave a hiss of fury that turned at last into a sigh of disgust. “You’re going to get us all killed,” the spirit snapped.

“All? Nobody can do anything to you—you’re already dead.”

“Yes, yes, they can,” the spirit confessed. “If I expend all my energies in an act of violence, it can destroy me. That’s why I didn’t smash that repulsive little louse Hugo like a glass beaker.”

“Then how did he get all those bruises?”

“He’s a stinking sot. He got drunk to keep me from forcing him to help the wolf. Wandered out into the hall with, I think, some idea of forcing his way into your room. I pushed him down the stairs.”

“I can’t believe even a fall down the stairs would do that much damage.”

“It didn’t. The little pile of dog shit didn’t seem to feel it, so when he crawled back to the top step, I pushed him back down again.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Not as terrible as what he had in mind for you, my dear. I know. He was muttering about it all the way back up the stairs. You are an innocent and there are cruelties you don’t even know exist. Cruelties a man like Hugo will commit without a second thought.”

“Oh,” Chiara whispered.

The spirit was pleased that she seemed much more subdued.

“I see…”

“No, no, you don’t. And I would not have you do so. Now, will you stay home? Like a sensible woman?”

“No,” Chiara stated flatly. “Can’t you see I need to know what’s going on? I have to at least try to protect my father, because even if I hide, he will go. Especially if the king calls an assembly. He will feel it is incumbent upon him to be there, and I won’t let him go alone.”

“Perdition on it,” Hugo’s guest roared.

Just then the door to the chamber where Bibo slept creaked open. “My lady, my lady,” the old woman cried. “The danger… The night air carries the miasmic chill of the grave—death rides the night wind.” She seized Chiara by the neck of the gown and one arm and made an effort to drag her back into the room.

“Stop.” Chiara raised her arms, trying to fend her off and loosen the old woman’s grip on the fabric at her neck. “Stop it right now. You’re choking me,” Chiara cried desperately. “I just wanted some air.”

“A lover,” the old woman cried. “That’s it, you have a lover—a lover visiting you. He’s in the garden.” She twisted the narrow neck of the gown even tighter at Chiara’s throat.

Chiara gasped and gagged. The gown was really strangling her. A fist exploded in Bibo’s face, smacking her in the region of her right eye. With an ear-splitting shriek, she went down on her backside. At almost the same moment, Arminus charged through the outer door accompanied by two members of the king’s guard, both armed cap-a-pie.

“He hit me. Her lover hit me,” Bibo shouted.

“Take him alive,” Armine roared. “If her honor is compromised, he must marry her. If not, I’ll have his head on a pike! On a pike, I say, a pike.”

“My God,” Chiara whispered, and jumped back.

The first of the king’s guard reached the balcony and wasn’t able to slow his forward progress quickly enough to avoid slamming into the balustrade. Then he let out a truly unearthly yell as Armine, who was following him closely, crashed into his back and almost—almost, but not quite—shoved him over the rail; he was spared a fall of approximately fifty Roman feet to a flagstone courtyard at the center of the garden below.

Bibo wailed again, this time halfheartedly. “Her lover…”

Armine and the two guardsmen were no longer in danger of falling, but since they all had their naked swords in hand, there was a real chance one of them might inflict a serious wound on another, completely by accident. Chiara was standing in an alcove protected on one side by the bed and on the other by a high, very elaborately carven solid oak chest.