The Wolf King (36 page)

“It’s too easy,” he said. “You’re planning something or hiding something. What is it?”

Stella whispered, “Why, nothing.”

Damn Stella to hell. She was a lousy liar, but then she always had been.

By day the huge reception hall was dim, the only light coming from heavy glass ports in the Roman concrete barrel vault above, and Lucilla guessed Adalgisus was telling the truth about only ten men accompanying him. But since Ansgar had stripped the town of its defenders, these few were enough, and if they met with any resistance, a massacre might result. They could cut through the unarmed citizenry the way fire roars through dried brush. If Ludolf and Dulcinia had any idea of what was going on, they might both try to stop Adalgisus and be the first to die. That’s why Stella was so frightened.

Lucilla managed a smile of gentle resignation. “My lord, you are too suspicious. What could two women, alone, possibly conceal from a man of your excellent strategic intelligence. You arrived, did you not, at the neighboring monastery of Temi and then waited there for Ansgar to ride out. Whereupon you hurried here. Am I correct?”

Adalgisus smiled complacently. “You are a woman of discernment—great discernment.”

Lucilla continued, “Only this morning Stella confided in me that she had written you upon my arrival some weeks ago. Yes, I was planning to flee, alone if necessary, but you forestalled me. So I must yield the field to you and consider myself your prisoner. Simplicity itself, my lord, and no need for suspicion. I am truly at your mercy.”

Flatter them, flatter the bastards. They lap it up,
Lucilla thought.
If only I can get him out of here before he turns the situation into a bloody mess
.

“Still, I think I would prefer that the lady Stella de Imola shares our journey past the borders of Ansgar’s lands. I will take leave of you at the villa Jovis, and your husband can collect you there. I have no wish to find myself either harassed or pursued.”

“Let me call my maid,” Stella said. “I must dress for the journey.”

“No! We will not be on the road that long.”

One of Adalgisus’s men stepped up next to Stella and took her arm. Stella tried to pull away.

“Come, come, my lady,” Adalgisus said. “Eberhardt is an old friend. He tells me you met during your sojourn in Ravenna some time ago.”

This just gets worse and worse,
Lucilla thought. She felt her legs shaking under her divided riding skirt. “Very well. Let us go now,” Lucilla said.

Stella looked as frightened as a mouse in the talons of a hawk. Just at that moment, Stella’s maid Avernia hurried down the stair. Adalgisus was hustling Lucilla toward the door, Eberhardt doing the same to Stella.

“My lady, my lady Stella—”

Both men paused, and Avernia caught up with them. Lucilla saw Eberhardt glance up the stair, trying to see if Avernia was alone.

“Avernia, go away,” Stella hissed. “Don’t make a fuss. Hear me? Don’t make a fuss or I’ll take a stick to you.”

“No,” Avernia shouted. “What are you doing?” She was growing progressively louder and louder.

Eberhardt threw Adalgisus a look of angry despair. He pulled Stella toward the door. Avernia snatched Stella’s other arm and forced him to halt.

“No! No!” she shouted. “No! To arms! To arms! My lady is—”

Lucilla felt Adalgisus release her. His sword flashed in the half-light, the way a lightning bolt gleams against an angry sky. He drove it through Avernia’s chest from left to right. Avernia’s next cry ended in a horrible gurgle. She staggered back, the expression of surprise on her face almost comical had it not been for the most ugly and uncomical wound. She sat down on the floor, tried to breathe, and a fine mist of blood droplets sprayed from her mouth, spattering Stella’s skirts. Then she clutched at Stella’s outstretched hand.

Eberhardt pulled Stella away. Stella was a small woman and helpless in the large, powerful man’s grip.

“No,” Stella whispered as she was propelled through the doors and out into the square.

Lucilla saw Avernia fall back, her body writhing as the she tried to breathe with her lungs filling with blood. She watched as blood foamed at Avernia’s lips and poured at last from her mouth.

Adalgisus wiped his sword on Lucilla’s skirts and shoved it back into its scabbard. “Move,” he said, pointing to the door. “Now.” Lucilla did.

Dulcinia hurried down the corridor toward Ludolf’s room. On her way, she made a decision, an important one.
Drug him? Is Lucilla mad
? No, she was going to tell her lover the truth. The problem was, she didn’t find him in his bedroom. Dismayed, she began to search and found him a few doors down, in the library.

Ansgar, though uneducated himself, was a supporter of culture and had forty books, a very large number for the time. Ludolf was trying to find a copy of Ovid’s
Art of Love
for Dulcinia, who had never read it in its entirety. He was sure there was one, but the problem was the books were mixed in with state correspondence and Stella’s household accounts. When Dulcinia entered, he looked up from the stack of scrolls he was sorting and saw at once that she was frightened.

“Something is wrong, but I don’t know what. Lucilla dressed for travel, and she told me to keep you in your room.”

Ludolf’s face hardened. “Is she planning to run away?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think so. Lucilla’s not a fool, and the countryside’s not safe for a woman traveling alone. It’s simply impossible, not even to be thought of. Besides, I know Lucilla. If she wanted to flee, she’d go on foot. She can pass for a peasant woman; I’ve seen her do it. No, no, she looked frightened, not for herself but for me and… yes… you.”

Ludolf dropped the scroll in his hand. “Quick, help me arm myself.”

It took only a moment for Dulcinia to drop his mail shirt over his head. He was putting on his sword belt and hurrying down the corridor—Dulcinia behind, almost running to keep up—when they heard Avernia’s cries.

Ludolf began to run.

But by the time he reached the stair, Stella and Lucilla were riding hard down the road out of the city. When he and Dulcinia reached the foot of the stair, Dulcinia got a good look at Avernia and screamed. She was a lot better at it than poor Avernia had been.

“She’s dead?” Ludolf sounded stunned. “Why? How? What happened? Dulcinia, if you know anything you’re not telling me—”

“No, oh, God, no, I don’t,” she gasped out, shaking her head.

Just then the blacksmith entered. He ran to Avernia but stopped when he could see clearly that his wife was a corpse. Dulcinia’s scream had roused the servants. They were gathering, some making the sign of the cross, all gaping at the body.

“What—?” the blacksmith asked. “No, not you!” He pointed to Ludolf’s sword.

“No,” Dulcinia said. “We were in the upstairs hallway when we heard her scream. We came quickly, as quickly as we—”

“No,” one of Avernia’s sons said. “We were working at the cathedral across the street. We saw a party of armed men ride in, not many, only—” He shrugged and looked at his brothers. “—maybe eight, ten? I don’t know, not a lot. We spoke of it among ourselves, then decided to call later because they were armed and we didn’t know them. At least we didn’t know all of them. We did recognize one.”

“Who?” Ludolf asked.

“He looked, well…” The young man seemed uncertain.

“Tell it,” the blacksmith said.

“He looked like Adalgisus, the king’s son, but we couldn’t believe he would be here… and with such a small escort. So we doubted our senses, but we did think we should tell our father, so we did.

“Don’t leave her lying there like that.” He pointed to Avernia.

“No, no,” Dulcinia whispered, and pulled off her own mantle.

Avernia was lying on her back, head turned as if looking at the stair, her cheek in a pool of blood. Dulcinia closed her eyes, wiped the blood away from her mouth, and pillowed Avernia’s head on her own folded mantle.

“Where is Lucilla?” she asked fearfully.

There were at least a dozen people crowded around the body, with more and more pushing in from the square every moment.

“Yes,” Ludolf echoed. “Where is Lucilla, and where in God’s name is my mother?”

It took a while to get things sorted out. Avernia’s sons remembered bringing a letter from Stella to Florence but knew nothing else about the matter. Their mother had been closed-mouthed about the contents.

“She must have written him the day Lucilla arrived,” Ludolf said. “He waited until Father left, then came. But in heaven’s name, why did he take Mother? With all due respect to your friend, she is openly the pope’s supporter and serves his interests. But Mother—what could Mother have possibly done that would earn his displeasure?”

“Lucilla knew he was coming, and she knew that if challenged you might not yield her up peaceably,” Dulcinia said. “She, and probably your mother, wanted to protect us. What would your father have done if he’d been here?”

Ludolf snorted. “I don’t think he would have allowed even the son of his liege lord to make light of his hospitality.”

“Yes,” Dulcinia said. “That’s what I thought, and Lucilla knew. He hasn’t many men, most are probably with his father awaiting the Frankish king. He took your mother as a hostage for his own safety.”

Avernia’s body lay in the kitchen on the table where they’d eaten breakfast only a few hours before. Her daughters were washing her, preparing her for the funeral.

“Dulcinia, will you come with me?” Ludolf asked. “We ride within the hour.”

“Yes, with all my heart.”

He went to the kitchen to comfort the weeping women and pay his last respects to Avernia. Dulcinia ran upstairs to dress.

True to Ludolf’s word, they rode out before noon. Even though most of the able-bodied men were with his father, Ludolf was able to muster twenty rather formidable graybeards who had allowed younger men to campaign with Ansgar.

Dulcinia found them a dangerous-looking group, possibly not as agile or high-spirited as the youngsters, but long in experience and grim fury. Adalgisus had murdered one of their own and kidnapped their lord’s wife. If they caught him, he would face an unpleasant reckoning.

They stopped at the monastery Temi. Ludolf minced no words with the father abbot. “I don’t care who he is,” he told the abbot. “He entered my house without my permission, took my mother and a guest of ours, and when one of my servants tried to stop him, he murdered her. I want my mother back. She has done him no harm, and he must be brought to book for his crimes.”

The abbot threw up his hands but was unable to do more than point out the general direction Adalgisus had taken, saying bitterly, “All he did was eat a lot, drink even more, then sit around—when he was not sleeping, that is—and demand to be waited upon. He didn’t confide in me about where he’d come from, what he was doing here, or where he was going. And if I’d known he was up to some mischief that involved your family, I’d have warned you, because as far as I’m concerned, an unhappy neighbor is bound to be more trouble than a distant king, and your father is well aware of my sentiments. And you should be also. If you’re going after him, I’ll lend you fresh mounts.”

Ludolf nodded, took the horses, and left. Fortunately, the road Adalgisus had taken soon narrowed. It was little traveled and the fresh tracks of a group of horsemen had to have been theirs. The road led into a mountainous wilderness of scrub oak, willow, golden broom, wild rose, and briar. The countryside had a certain strange beauty, the yellow broom flowers twined with the white, thorny ones of briar, and here and there the wild pink rose and blossoming pear seemed to explode among the thickets of oak and still-bare willow.

Dulcinia was a fine rider, but this trail challenged even her skills. Once one of the horses stepped into a hole and tossed his rider into a mound of briars. The horse was only lightly injured, the rider more uncomfortable than hurt, but the gelding had to be unsaddled and left to find his way back while his rider was given one of the remounts they’d been supplied with at the monastery.

“One thing good about this,” the blacksmith said to Ludolf. “They can’t have left the road. We won’t have to hunt them in the countryside.”

The road gained altitude quickly but when they reached the notch where it turned down, Dulcinia saw that a river wound through the narrow valley.

“Odds are,” the blacksmith said, “he will have taken to water.”

Ludolf nodded. “Want to bet his trail vanishes at the river?”

“No,” the blacksmith said. “It’s a sure thing.”

It did.

Stella was a good rider. For that Lucilla was thankful. She was able to keep up. Adalgisus was clearly frightened. Lucilla cursed her luck and promised herself she would do everything possible to keep up his courage. He was a fool and therefore dangerous, but a terrified fool didn’t bear thinking about. For one thing, they were traveling too fast. The pace Adalgisus set would wear out the horses before nightfall. Unless he knew a convenient spot where they could get remounts, he would have to go someplace where the stock could be watered and fed and rested, or most of them would soon be on foot.

On foot in a wilderness,
Lucilla thought, observing the overgrown countryside around her. This area toward the mountains had never been thickly settled even in Roman times; now it was deserted. Even brigands here wouldn’t prosper—not unless they had a taste for robbing each other.

Not long after midday, they reached the river and drew rein.

“Stop,” Eberhardt told Adalgisus. “Our mounts were not the best cattle when we started out, now they are all but foundered.”

Stella’s and Lucilla’s mounts were in the best condition. The women were lighter than the men, but even their horses were lathered; and Lucilla had noticed spurring had little effect on her horse now. At least five of the party had straggled for some miles behind as the horses stumbled and slowed on the rocky ground.

“I suppose,” Adalgisus said, looking at his companions. “I suppose I’d best do that.”

“Besides,” Eberhardt said, “we can use the water to cover our tracks.”

Then the two men moved away, speaking together in low tones. Lucilla dismounted, loosed her saddle girth, and began to walk her mount in a circle to cool him off. Stella called out to Lucilla to help her dismount. Stella was a small woman, but once on the ground she followed suit.