The Wolf King (31 page)

“So,” Desiderius said angrily. “I am to condemn faithful men of mine on the word of a drunken tavern keeper and the half-grown son of a widow who runs a house of ill repute?”

This last was a gratuitous insult. Everyone within earshot knew it. Dorcas was a model of propriety.

Robert went white with fury, but Beningus placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Johns is a temperate and well-conducted merchant, and Dorcas sells bread for a living. Bread, I might add, that is eaten at your table. You may deny the accusation, my lord, but there is no need to insult those who bring it before you.”

The crowd was silent.

Regeane noticed the wind was picking up.

“Very well,” the king answered with ill grace. Then he pointed to the most hardened of the mercenaries, the man with scratches on his face. “Tell us,” Desiderius ordered. “What happened?”

The man gave Robert a taunting, insolent look. “We went out, as it was said, to hunt, and those people attacked us at the ford. An ambush. They were not alone. Others were with them. We put up a fierce resistance to the cowardly assault by thieves, and the men were killed, the rest fled. As to the women—” He sniggered and elbowed the man nearest him. “—you can’t blame us that we ran them down and collected some soldier’s pay. They were not virgins and neither was really unwilling.”

“Then why, I wonder,” Beningus asked, “was it necessary to kill them?”

The large man looked uncomfortable. “We didn’t do that. Must have been their menfolk when they came back and saw the ladies had been too accommodating.” He gave a shaky laugh but no one, not even his comrades, joined him.

Desiderius snapped his fingers and pointed at the soldiers. “Release them forthwith.”

Regeane felt nauseated. She could smell the scratched mercenary in a way no human possibly could. She knew what he’d done and knew Itta had inflicted the scratches, ugly ones, with her nails before she died.

No one moved.

The silence was thick now. Above, the sun was beginning to darken and the wind was blowing hard. The square was sheltered but occasional hard gusts lifted the dust into a cloud and whirlwinds danced like yellow wraiths over the humped cobbles. The men’s mantles were fluttering, and women took a firmer grip on cloaks and veils.

Regeane saw, as did everyone else, that they were at an impasse. The armed mercenaries surrounding the king weren’t about to jump down into the crowd and risk God knows what, and the men who’d captured the malefactors had no present or future intention of letting them go free.

Beningus tried to break the stalemate. “My lord,” he said, addressing the king. “Perhaps before you act in such a hasty fashion, you should listen to Johns, the tavern keeper, and the men who accompanied Robert to retrieve the bodies. They will tell you that this family was caught unaware and unprepared. That there was no sign of any attack at the ford. Moreover the young girl, Mona, should be examined by the midwife to see if she was virgin before she was interfered with. You see, my lord, most possibly all the people here knew this family well, and they had a good name. None here consider them capable of an act of brigandage as is claimed by these soldiers.”

Desiderius’s face was flushed and his hands were shaking. He was, everyone knew, at the edge of an abyss. Robert was standing near Maeniel, who leaned over and spoke softly into his ear. No one but Regeane heard what he said.

“No, don’t run mad. There are too many of them to keep a guilty secret. Put some pressure on one of the young ones. He will break.”

Yes
, Regeane thought.

The two youngest ones stood a little apart from the older three. One had his head bowed, seemingly drawn inside himself. He stared fearfully at nothing, eyes wide with shock. Robert picked him. He strode over to the soldiers and pulled him away from the rest. Holding the boy’s shirt twisted tight in his fist, he roared, “All right, you tell me the girl I loved wasn’t a virgin. You tell me she was a slut. Look me in the eye and tell me—
tell
me she wanted what was done to her.”

The boy tried to turn aside.

“No, you stinking liar. Look. Look me in the eye and say it—”

“No.” The boy broke as Maeniel said he would. “No, she didn’t want us. She screamed and screamed. Oh, God, I can still hear her screaming in my head, even after I—” He paused, a look of horror frozen on his features.

“Even after you cut her throat?” Robert added in an unbelievably level tone.

“Yes,” the boy answered in a strangled voice. “Yes, even then I could still hear her… screaming.”

Robert stepped back and let go of the boy’s shirt, wiping his hand on his tunic as if it were contaminated by something foul—as Regeane thought it had been. The boy sank to his knees on the stones, sobbing, moaning that he was damned.

Robert turned to Desiderius and pointed a finger at him. “You are no king. A king who will not administer his own laws and does not defend his people’s lives is no king.”

In the distance, lightning was flashing and thunder sounded a distant rumble.

Desiderius, in his turn, pointed at Robert. “Take that insolent little gutter rat out and hang him,” he shouted at the soldiers gathered beneath the portico. “Do it and do it now.”

Robert stood glaring at him defiantly.

The soldiers were afraid to move. The mob was a gigantic animal no one wanted to attack. Yes, there were about forty of them, well armed, in a position of command standing above the rabble on the porch, yet exclusive of women and children, there were at least several hundred able-bodied men among the citizens, and yes, these were men with families. So if the king and his mercenaries took a firm stand, they might run… But if they didn’t, if they chose to fight back, the results could well prove disastrous for king, courtiers, and soldiers alike.

The bishop, old as he was, tried to save the situation. “My lord king,” he spoke loudly into the tense silence. “My lord king, the boy’s confession belies the first tale told. It is left to you to find the truth, and if these scoundrels deserve hanging, why, hang them.

“And you, young man,” he spoke to Robert, “your sorrow and anger are understandable, but do not provoke your sovereign lord further. You have proven the truth is not in these—” He gestured toward the mercenaries. “—these hirelings. Be content, I beg you.”

The boy ran toward the bishop and threw himself on his knees in front of the prelate. The bishop lifted his hand in absolution and made the sign of the cross.

“Am I damned?” the boy asked.

“No,” the bishop replied. “I have, as well as any man can, implored forgiveness for your sins, but you must make confession.”

The youngster pointed at Robert. “He speaks the truth. I and my friends are guilty of murder. No one attacked us. We saw the women, desired them, and planned to catch them alone by the stream and have our pleasure of them by force, but the women fought. The young one got away to her menfolk, so…”

“So,” the bishop continued. “I know, there was no help for it. You must kill them all.”

The bishop gave Desiderius a bleak look. “You are the king. Do justice.” He looked up at the exposed braces of the colonnade, beams high up helping to hold the colonnade away from the building. He pointed. “They will do for a gallows.”

A spatter of rain struck the square. Regeane felt a few drops brush her face. All around her Regeane heard people sigh. At the edges of the crowd the less interested members of the assembly, seeing the imminent arrival of the storm, began hurrying away to their homes. Regeane grabbed Maeniel’s arm and moved him toward the bishop. She was hoping somehow to put both of them under his protection. Desiderius was a treacherous man. Maeniel was fettered still. Somehow, she had to get that collar from around his neck.

She saw the anger in the king’s face and the fear in Hugo’s when she pulled Maeniel toward the bishop. Rain was reaching the square as a wind-driven mist and under it the crowd was melting away. Regeane’s clothing was drenched before she quite realized how it happened. Hugo bent over and spoke to the king in a low voice. Desiderius lifted his hand.

No
, she thought.
No
.

Remingus the ghost, the terror, the mummified corpse, was beside her. His eye holes stared at Hugo.

The captain of the guard had a spear. Hugo snatched it and let it fly at Regeane. The spear took her in the body, low above her left hip. The pain of death ripped through her, and she fell back into the street. The change tried to take her the way a hawk takes a rabbit with a sudden pounce. She fended it off.

She was still frightened of what the mob might do if she went wolf in the open day.

“Call the wolf,” Maeniel roared. “Call the wolf, Regeane. Only the wolf can save you.”

The full force of the storm hit then. Rain slashed at the crowd. The women fled toward the church, but the men didn’t run. The world was fading. Maeniel went wolf as the lightning hit. The fetters fell away.

The chain,
Regeane thought, still struggling in the street,
the chain
.

The collar was still around his neck and attached to the chain, but the end of the chain was no longer under the control of Desiderius’s captain. A second later Maeniel was a man again, and the chain was a weapon.

The first of the mercenaries to try to take him died horribly. The chain swung around the man’s neck. His face turned scarlet, then blue. Maeniel jerked; the links snapped into a tighter spiral and ripped the man’s head off. The mercenaries on the porch fired into the mob. Led by Maeniel, Robert and his friends charged the porch.

Regeane felt her senses drenched by night as the wolf gained full control, and the silver wolf crouched on the cobbles. The nobles and functionaries of the Lombard court jammed the doorway into the palace in hysterical flight. Heedless of anyone’s safety but the king’s, the captain of the guard pulled his men in, made them into a wide wedge, and driving over and through the bodies of the terrified courtiers, he took the king into the palace. The silver wolf saw Hugo among the last few stragglers, clawing at the captain’s back. He turned and, fixing Hugo with a malevolent glare, threw him at Maeniel who was leading the charge.

Maeniel simply elbowed him aside in his attempt to reach the king, but again, the captain of the guard prevailed. His mace slammed into Maeniel’s shoulder and drove him to his knees. He was unable to really hurt the wolf but their struggling bodies blocked the entrance and gave the rest of the guard, now in mortal terror of the mob, time to swing the big doors outward.

“Back away,” he told Maeniel. “We will slaughter those in the passage. Back away.”

Maeniel and Robert both knew it was true. The narrow passage led directly into the palace courtyard and was constructed so as to be easily held by a few men. The door slammed shut and the sound was lost in the almost constant drum roll of thunder from above.

The bishop remained seated in his chair. The few stragglers who hadn’t been able to escape with the king were crouched around him. These included Chiara, Armine—who embraced her protectively—a few elderly men, women, and Hugo, who had managed to elbow the weaker people aside and capture the position closest to the bishop.

Regeane saw that there was no sanity left in the faces of the mob.

Maeniel stepped deliberately between the bishop and the furious men, and coiled the chain around his arm. He said, “No. They are helpless and innocent. Robert, where are the killers?”

The bishop then demonstrated his acuity. “They fled,” he said. “They could not get into the palace and the rest would not defend them.” He pointed to the street leading to the cathedral, the only really good entrance to the square.

“No,” Robert shouted. Sheets and sheets of blowing rain were flung across the square. “We’ll never catch them in this.”

“Speak for yourself,” Maeniel shouted back. “And if I am too slow, my wife can.”

Regeane spun around and charged across the square. Robert and the others followed into the rain. Lightning struck close to the porch, the bolt driving into one of the warehouses. Flames blossomed, filling the air with the harsh scent of burning hair and feathers, only to be extinguished by the driving rain.

Regeane, hard on the heels of the criminal band, faltered for a second, then ran on. The wind was in her face telling her they were ahead and frantic with fear.

Maeniel spared a moment for the bishop. “Get them into the church.”

The bishop was already on his feet and gathering his little flock around him when Maeniel went wolf. The wolf glared for a moment at Hugo with savage yellow eyes. Hugo scrambled behind the bishop, pushing Armine and Chiara aside. Armine pushed back. The heel of his hand caught Hugo in the chest, sending him spinning into the rain.

The bishop glanced back at Maeniel. The wolf’s lower jaw dropped, his tongue lolled, and for a moment the bishop would have sworn the animal was laughing. Then the wolf leaped from the porch and followed the rest, the chain snapping and dancing behind him, striking the cobbles as he ran and sending sparks flying.

Fire in the rain.

The Saxon heard nothing, saw nothing, but one moment she wasn’t there and the next moment she was. He was stirring his low fire with a stick, wondering if he should bother to add more fuel, since he was about to roll himself up in the bearskin and sleep, when he felt eyes on him, looked up, and saw the black wolf. She was sitting on her haunches and staring at him from across the fire.

“Matrona?”

A second later she was a woman, the firelight’s shifting patterns illuminating her voluptuous flesh. He averted his eyes and pulled off his mantle.

Matrona laughed. “You worry so about a little skin, you humans. Why not take a good look? What? Am I repulsive?”

“No!” he answered shortly. “Quite the reverse, but I would not be shamed or have my manhood show itself to no purpose.”

Matrona gave a husky laugh. “How do you know it would be to no purpose?”

This time he blushed. “I wouldn’t care to be caught with the king’s mistress.”

The woman—the black wolf—was wearing a necklace, a magnificent cloisonne dragon with scales of ruby, amber, topaz, and sapphire. Matrona gave a throaty laugh. She was wrapped in his best embroidered woolen mantle now, so he could look at her. She walked around the fire and stroked his rather bristly cheek with one long-fingered hand.

“Listen, you beautiful brute—and you are beautiful—I am no man’s mistress and no man’s, not even a king’s, possession. I do what I like, with whom I like, and whenever I like. I always have and always will. Yes, I lay with Charles; the lord Maeniel requested it. The king enjoyed the experience and so showed me his favor. And he opened his mind to me. That’s why I am here. Where are they? Charles is on the march across the mountains, but he entrusted the lord Maeniel with an important task. If he has failed, I am to undertake it, and if I fail, you are to finish.”

“What?”

Matrona picked up a stick and drew a crude map. “Charles comes,” she said, and made a line indicating one pass through the mountains. “His uncle Bernard follows another route. Here!”

“He split his force?”

“Yes, but so did Desiderius. One half is based at Ivrea, the other at Susa. If Charles attacks at either place, he feels sure Desiderius will pull his force from the other. Tell me the result. You have commanded men. You will see Charles’s plan.”

“Yes, I do,” the Saxon answered. “When the attack comes, Desiderius will believe Charles’s main force is there. For instance, if Charles attacks at Susa—because, were I Charles, that is where I would go—Desiderius will strip Ivrea of its strongest warriors. Then Charles’s uncle, commanding the force at Ivrea, can attack the weakened garrison, punch through, and make a flank attack at Susa. Attacked from before and behind, Desiderius’s forces will flee back toward Pavia. He dare not lose his army to Charles, but will hope to stand a siege.”

Matrona nodded. “But,” she said, “there are no maps of the land between Ivrea and Susa. When Charles’s uncle reaches the garrison, the force at Ivrea must ride swiftly to Susa. The countryside is forested, wild, without clear roads or tracks.

The wolf was to find the quickest way from Ivrea to a point at Desiderius’s flank at Susa. Now I ask you, where are they? They both should be back by now.“

“I don’t know. They quarreled.”

Matrona heaved a deep sigh. “He feared for her.”

“Yes. But she followed, traveling in some way I cannot comprehend.”

“The Lady’s Mirror?”

“Yes. I promised to wait for her. As you see, I am here.”

“Yes,” Matrona said. “I know where it is. I traveled here with my people long ago, but it won’t do me any good, at least not before morning. That place is dangerous by starlight.”

The Saxon looked away from her into the dark forest. His imagination kept presenting him with a picture of what he’d seen before she’d wrapped herself in the mantle. All of a sudden he found he wasn’t the least bit tired. But he did feel a need to get away from her before he made a complete fool of himself.

“I will conduct you there in the morning,” he said. “The countryside hereabouts has changed over time, and I will continue to—”

Matrona stroked his cheek again. “Aren’t you tired of waiting? How long has it been?”

“Since I got here?”

“No,” Matrona said, and kissed him.

Lucilla was caught and she knew it. A second later Ansgar’s son had the doors closed and his back against them.

“Stay there, Ludolf,” Ansgar ordered, “until I find out what this is about. Lucilla?” he asked his wife.

She sneezed again. “Oh, God, yes, this is Lucilla. Pope Hadrian’s… friend. Damn it, Lucilla, you tell me what you’re doing here and don’t stand there trying to look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I know you. And you wouldn’t be here unless you were up to something.”

“Lucilla?” Ansgar repeated. “The name is well known.

And no, don’t tell me what you’re up to. I don’t want to know. Stella,“ he addressed his wife, ”no more questions.“

Stella looked half-sick but outraged. “Just the same… husband, I tell you—”

“No, you have told me enough. Don’t say any more. I don’t want to be privy to some plot. I don’t care to know of something that would require me to take drastic action. My lady Dulcinia, how could you allow yourself to be used in a way as to create such an embarrassing situation? I am a liege man of Desiderius, the Lombard king. I hold my lands according to his appointment as my father did before me, and I owe good faith and loyalty to my lord.

“Now, Lucilla,” he continued sternly. “Are those men, the escort you brought with you, are they pledged to you?”

Lucilla gathered her wits. “No,” she said. “No, they belong to Count Rufus of Nepi. Please, please, Ansgar, no bloodshed. Allow me to pay them for their services and dismiss them quietly.”

“Very well, but no tricks. And nothing passes between you that my son cannot hear or see, and your friend, Dulcinia, remains here as surety for your good behavior while you go about this business. Son, accompany her, alert your uncle, but do nothing that will alarm the town.”

Lucilla withdrew on Ludolf’s arm.

“Dulcinia, you tell me what’s going on,” Stella said sternly.

“No, Dulcinia, don’t, and Stella, you be quiet.”

Stella sneezed three times and blew her nose in her handkerchief. “Oh, God, I feel awful and now this. Husband, she’s up to something and you should find out now what—”

“Shush, dear,” he said, embracing Stella. “Go back up. We will talk at supper. You’re ill and need your rest now.”

“My sweet,” she said, “don’t kiss me. You’ll get whatever I have.”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Every spring like clockwork—and sometimes in the autumn—it comes upon you. Only Ludolf ever seems to suffer the way you do, though not so badly, thank heaven. And since he’s your son, I can’t think it’s contagious. Now do as you always do, be an obedient and sensible wife. Go rest and we will talk later at dinner.”

Stella climbed the stair, still muttering to herself. “Obedient and sensible, indeed.” Ansgar could be so maddening. Lucilla’s presence alarmed her and her darling husband didn’t seem to have the slightest idea how upsetting this particular development was.
To tell the truth
, Stella thought,
I am afraid
. Instead of going to her own room, she turned into her husband’s. It overlooked the square.

A group of servants were clustered at the window when she entered. All except her maid, Avernia, scattered. Avernia was a privileged character. She’d been with Stella since she took her first lover in Rome, at Lucilla’s behest. Stella joined her at the window.

“Is that who I think it is?” Avernia asked.

“Yes,” Stella snapped.

“As I live and breathe. Lucilla. Ah, well, you have nothing to fear. He knows all about you.”

Stella gave her a withering look. “Any woman is a fool who lets any man know all about her.

“I told him when we met that I was practically a virgin— that Aldric was my first lover.”

Avernia’s eyes rolled. “No! You never said that.”

“I was the star attraction in a brothel and, pregnant or not, he’d never have married me if he hadn’t believed I was a wronged woman.”

“What are you going to do?” Avernia looked frightened.

Stella licked her lips. “I don’t know, but she can’t stay here. Sooner or later she will pay me back for naming her to my husband by telling him all about my little adventures in Rome.”

“He still won’t repudiate you,” Avernia said. “You are the mother of his children. Surely he wouldn’t. No, it would be impossible—”

“Shut the door,” Stella said between her teeth. “What, do you want to tell the whole household?”

Avernia ran, pulled the heavy oak door shut, and shot a big iron bolt.

Stella sat on the bed, clenching and unclenching her fists in her silk gown. “Damn Lucilla,” she whispered. “Damn that scheming whore. What is she doing here? How dare she interfere in my life again. How dare she chance causing Ansgar trouble.”

Avernia shrugged. “I can’t think that what she’s doing here matters. The problem is how to get rid of her.”

“God,” Stella whispered. “God. Ansgar is the best thing that ever happened to me. Why does she come here now and ruin everything? I’ll kill her if she makes me look a common strumpet to him.”

“Well, that’s what you were.”

The crack of the slap echoed in the room. Avernia shrieked so loudly that Stella was certain it had been heard in the street. Avernia burst into tears and began to run toward the door. Stella jumped up and threw her arms around Avernia. “No, no, don’t. Don’t run out there and create a scene. You have as much to lose by this as I have. You must stay here and help me think of a way out of this.”

Avernia wanted to have hysterics, but there was so much truth in what Stella said that she brought her anger and hurt under control at once. She had a husband also, the town blacksmith. She’d borne him five children, all living and prospering in the new city. She couldn’t afford scandal about her past, either. “All right, but don’t slap people who are just telling you the truth. Put your mind to solving this. Losing your temper with me won’t help.”

“Yes, yes. Be quiet and let me think.” Stella began to pace up and down. Her second circuit of the room brought her to the window. She looked down at Lucilla in the square below. She paused, then strode quickly over to her husband’s desk against the far wall opposite the bed, sat down, found a wax tablet, and laboriously began to write.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t think Lucilla will want to interfere in my life if I give her a few problems of her own to worry about.”

“How will you do that?”

Stella didn’t answer but instead asked, “Are your sons still riding to Florence to purchase scrap iron?”

“Yes.”

“Then they can carry a letter.”

“They will if I tell them.”

“You had best tell them, and not one word to Ansgar. Hear me? Not one word.”

“I don’t—”

“I do.” Stella looked up. “You had best keep your mouth shut. Do it for both our sakes. Or that big, strong, bad-tempered husband of yours will find out how you earned your dowry.”

Avernia gasped. “No.” She made the sign of the cross. “I am silent as the grave, and so are my sons. I swear it.”

Sometime just before dawn the Saxon asked Matrona, “How did you know I was not a peasant?”

She laughed. “What peasant knows how to clean the rust from mail, pick a fine warhorse and battle train him, sharpen a sword so expertly that it will shave a boar’s bristles but leave the blade polished like a mirror? In the matter of the sword, I watched you with the weapon you picked up at that hideous place where you and Regeane tried to shelter. The thing had the look of a fire poker and, indeed, I believe someone probably used it for that purpose, but within a week you had it clean, sharp, and glowing like moonlight.”

“Though mistreated, a fine weapon,” the Saxon agreed. “I had to sacrifice some steel to clear the corrosion and rust from the blade, but since it was finely crafted in the first place, it was not harmed in the process. All sharpening takes steel from a blade; a good smith allows for that.”

“Spoken like a true farmer,” Matrona said. “They always worry a lot about their edged toys.”

“In my country, sometimes they do,” the Saxon replied. “I cannot be sorry for being taken for a son of the soil.”

“Yes! Is that why you let them use you as a mule when you were sold across the mountains?”

“How did you know?”

He must have blushed; Matrona felt the heat in his skin. “Your body is marked by both the harness and the lash,” she said. “Why didn’t you let your kin ransom you?”

He was silent.

“Why?” she asked again.

“Am I sharing your bed or are you sharing mine?”

“We are in the forest, there are no beds,” Matrona answered.

He absorbed this for a moment. “No promises between us.”

“None. Mutual pleasure, that is all.”

“I was too proud. My lady mother was dead. I would not have men point at me and say, there goes a man with a known price, and then hear women laugh. I would rather do the work of a mule.”

Matrona sighed. “Men, the things they do in the name of honor.”

“I think you cannot know. Many nights I confess I lay weeping in the vile cowshed where we were chained, wishing desperately for my home, my horses, hawks, and hounds. They would have killed me in some slow fashion had I been recaptured. I killed two men when I escaped, but better death than everlasting slavery, everlasting exile.”

“Yes,” Matrona answered.

“Even you?”

“Yes. Once, a time or two, I made the choice; but I’m falling asleep.”

He replied by embracing her more tightly. He didn’t know if he clung to her or she to him, but after so long alone, the feel of a woman’s body was comforting.

He owed Regeane and her people everything. He dreamed of them, the wolves in the mist. Graceful, confident, moving down at nightfall ghostlike through the trees. Above, the sun was slipping into shadow as the clouds moved down from the mountains. He had been going down to his camp. Also, he was carrying a gutted deer carcass over his shoulders. He’d wondered if they would attack, try to take the deer from him. But they didn’t.