The Wolf King (45 page)

“They say you are a witch,” the child gasped. “What I saw you do to the lord, I believe you must be. Give me something. Something so I can just go to sleep and never wake up. I was a good girl when I was at home. A good girl. Now I feel filthy. They are always at me. I made a baby. I know I did, but I killed it because I didn’t want to see them kill it. I can’t stand any more of this place. I would rather die.”

Lucilla walked the girl over and seated her on the bed. “Why don’t you run away?” she asked.

“I did. I did.” The girl began to tremble violently. “They caught me. I went home but there was no one there. The house where we lived… was empty. Even the villa nearby was gone. Only the wind, the pines, and the silence remained.

I didn’t know what to do. I stayed there sleeping by the cold hearth till they came. Look at my back.“

Lucilla did and flinched. Her back was covered with scar tissue. She looked almost as if she’d been burned.

“It marked me. I won’t run away again. I have nowhere to go.”

“I could give you somewhere to go,” Lucilla said.

Once, when she had moved into her villa in Rome, she’d found a half-starved cat living in her garden. When she’d offered the animal food, it had been afraid to approach the dish but when she moved away, it pounced. The expression on the starving animal’s face was very like the one on the girl’s face, frightening in its utter desperation.

“You can—I’ll do anything.” She fell to her knees. “Anything.”

“Take a message to Rome.” Lucilla had a ring, a ring all her intimates knew. It had a cameo of Hadrian. She handed it to the girl with some silver wrapped in cloth. “Listen to me carefully,” she said. “When you come to the city, go in the early morning among the women drawing water at the fountains. Ask for Lucilla’s villa. You may hear slighting remarks about me, you may not. Who knows? But if you do, pay no attention to them. Go to the villa; this ring will guarantee you admission. Speak to Susana, my maid. She is the keeper of the villa and you may trust her absolutely.”

“Yes,” the girl said eagerly.

“Repeat that back to me—”

The child did, word for word.

“The message is only one word. Only one but you must remember it. Perfectly. Understand?”

“Yes. I understand. What is it?”

“Verona.”

“Verona. Is that all?”

“It is sufficient. Just say Verona. If you fail to find Susana, go to Dulcinia.”

“Dulcinia the singer?”

“You have heard of her?”

“Yes. Everyone knows of Dulcinia, but these are famous people, my lady. Will they receive me?”

“Show them the ring and they will. If all else fails, go to Simona, mother of Posthumus. She is not rich or famous, but she will be a friend to you.”

When she and Chiara both entered the bear’s world, she heard his roar of fury and terror and knew, to her amusement, that their entry into his world brought the same sense of violation that humans felt when he tried to take control of them. And then she was moving very, very fast across a level field, and she was part of it, the sense of dimensionality fading. She was a light twisting in and out of a maze, moving at high speed toward… what?

She had no idea, and then she began to be afraid and tried to slow her forward progress, but found she couldn’t. Faster and faster she traveled^ away from her own life and world, the images speeding past her in a blur of motion. Her mother’s face, Gundabald flogging her on the floor of her lodgings in Rome, the pope, Lucilla, Maeniel, and then they were gone—those she’d loved, hated, feared—and still she was going—being pulled?—traveling faster. She felt the union woman-wolf-wolf-woman. She tried to scream. Her gorge rose, she vomited, the pain of nausea reuniting her with her body for a second. Then the woman-wolf—she was both, she realized to her surprise, not just one or the other, not either or. Then her muscles locked. She shed her body the way a cicada sheds the shell that has been buried in the earth for many long years, the way a butterfly sheds the chrysalis, the way a bird pecks its way free of an egg.

And she saw the tree. You cannot see the oak in an acorn or the peach in the thick-shelled poisonous seed, not unless you enter its life, its being. Even knowing the shape, the form it takes, is not to know it. Nor is it enough to name and remember its parts. The root, the stem-trunk, the rings, the leaves, the fruit, its body naked in winter, clothed in green in the springtime or even the count of leaves it sheds in the bitter autumn winds. By none of these things will you know the tree, for the universe is a tree, and that’s why the Irmunsul of the Saxons was planted, that we might remember that we are part of the tree of life and it is part of the earth and the earth is part of the universe and unless you comprehend everything else, the tree remains a mystery.

The universe exploded into life around Regeane. She saw it as part of the singularity that is its heart and beginning. It erupted. Not like a volcano but a flower unfurling around her, world upon worlds, lying beside each other like the growth rings of a tree. And the beings belonging to each world knew nothing and could know nothing of one another. But they were all of the tree, the singularity belonging to its roots. Some things moved between the worlds and… she… was one… of them. The bear was another. He could no more possess her than a man could possess the fixed stars. She was his equal and in some ways his superior.

Unbearable like the flash of orgasm in the flesh, so this was to the mind. Unsustainable, blinding, a light so bright it closes the eye of the mind in its sheer, raw glory.

“I can’t—I can’t,” Regeane screamed.

And she was back in her body—woman—healed whole among the vines, the strange lobe-leafed ivy that covered the tumbled stone of a ruin. She could see, like a double image superimposed on the mass of creepers, what the building had once been to the Romans, and before that the footbridge over a wild river, and yet beyond where no river ran there and the sea lapped a pale sandy shore not far away.

“Stop,” Regeane screamed. “Stop!” And it did, and she sat leaning

Chiara handed Regeane her mantle.

“What are you doing here?” the bear roared at Chiara.

“Oh, shut up,” she told him, then she glanced at her father, who was sitting up. The blast of energy Regeane had loosed by trying to fuse with the bear had helped him, too. His arms were very sore but no longer broken. Still, he was dizzy and pale with a number of minor injuries.

“And you be quiet, too,” Chiara said. She planted her hands on her hips. “When you were both dead and gone, I’d just have been something to use or sell to those men, and the king’s money would have spoken loudest. So both of you just… just… be quiet. Besides, I want to know what happened to me.”

“I don’t know,” the bear said. “I think we were granted some sort of a… vision. You saw my world in some way.”

Regeane was quiet. She was shaken to her very core by what she’d seen. She had gone farther than either Chiara or the bear.

“I can see,” the bear told Regeane, “that any further attempt to capture you or the gray wolf would be futile. I’m not sure such an attempt would be practical with Chiara. She—” He looked at her standing over him. “—she is somehow talented. You said,” he spoke to Chiara, “you said you loved me.”

“That’s because I do.” She looked both mutinous and mulish at the same time. “But don’t let it give you any ideas. I’m my father’s daughter, and I won’t just throw myself away on just any wandering evil spirit. I’ll expect some assurances, something more in the line of a settlement than just a lot of airy promises.”

“Now you be quiet,” Armine said. “The bear and I will settle your future between us.”

Chiara glared at them both, then began struggling toward the road.

Gimp was found resting against a milepost, sleeping.

“Damnation, they took the horses,” Armine said. “He can’t even be depended on to look after horses.”

“He can’t be depended on for anything,” the bear snarled.

Then he sat Hugo down. Hugo’s eyes went blank, his body slumped.

Regeane peered at Hugo’s face. “He looks like Hugo now,” she said. “When the bear is in residence, he seems someone else.”

“He is,” Armine said truculently. “The creature—daemon— whatever he is, told me Hugo’s brain is mush. He was struck by lightning during the storm. Whatever happened, Hugo is gone. I’m not entirely sure if I believe everything that creature wants me to, but when he isn’t present, this—” He pointed at Hugo’s body.“—shows no signs of consciousness.”

Chiara came back and handed Regeane a dress and shift. Regeane went back into the ruins to change. She hoped to ride along with them for a time, but before she did, she smiled a long, slow smile of satisfaction at Hugo.
It looks as if Hugo is going to live a long, healthy, prosperous life
—
a thing I wouldn’t have bet on a few years ago.

When she returned, Armine and Chiara and the bear were talking together.

“Can you do what I just saw you do in Florence?”

“What?” the bear asked.

“Leave Hugo’s body and be in … say … a competitor’s counting house while he’s doing business?”

“Certainly.”

“Ah, Hugo, is it? Hugo?”

“It might as well be,” the bear answered.

“I hope you didn’t kill them, too. I mean the men escorting us.”

“No,” the bear said shortly. He was holding the reins of four horses. “They are on foot and—” The bear’s smile was saturnine, to say the least.“—I think probably running yet.”

Chiara sniffed but looked satisfied.

“My dear Hugo,” Armine said. “I believe this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Matrona approached Charles’s tent a few hours later. She was wearing a long, flowing robe of white linen. It was deeply embroidered with gold at the neck, hem, and sleeves.

The
scarae
at the entrance heard her. It was Arbeo, who had been Maeniel’s jailer when they first met the king. “He won’t see anyone, my lady, but he told me if you came, to let you in. It’s been a terrible evening. The king’s counselors were here, all screaming and yelling for us to retreat, saying the king’s plan failed. We’re going to lose. We must beat a retreat or attack with our full force tomorrow. The king won’t let them do either one. He says he won’t waste his best troops yet—” Arbeo broke off because Charles was standing behind him.

“Be quiet!” said Charles. He motioned Matrona into his tent.

She entered and sat down in a camp chair. The model Antonius had built filled fully half of the tent. Next to the model was a table with wine and some cold joints of meat.

Charles gestured toward the table. “Wine? Food?”

“No,” Matrona said.

“Well?” he asked.

“The garrison at Ivrea is no more. I stampeded the horses. Bernard finished them. They were slaughtered to a man. None escaped to warn Desiderius.”

Charles nodded.

“The lord Maeniel is with Bernard. He will attack at dawn. His army is on the march even now. They will emerge from the morning fog and catch Desiderius in the flank.

“Your plan has worked, my king. In no little time at all, you will be master of the Lombard kingdom.”

“I wish I were as sure as you are,” Charles answered. He walked over to the wine pitcher on the table and lifted it. The thing was Roman; a procession in high relief was cast around the belly of the pitcher, nymphs and satyrs frolicked together in the rites of Bacchus.

“I am sure,” Matrona said. “I looked into my mirror and saw what will be.”

The handle of the pitcher was an acanthus flower spike. Charles’s hand rested on the handle. “A beautiful thing but pagan, deeply pagan. As you and your lord are, my lady Matrona. If I win, I’ll have this beautiful Roman pitcher melted down, that it be made into a reliquary for the bones of some saint or other. Do you know where I got it?”

“You probably took it from the Saxons who, no doubt in the world, stole it from someone else,” Matrona said.

“Yes, it was buried among the loot I acquired when I destroyed their sacred tree Irmunsul. So I gave it a reprieve as long as it served me, but I plan to win the world for Christ, and pagan things no longer have any place here.”

“Yes.”

“So accept Christ and lead your lord and his beautiful wife to the baptismal pool, and I will find a high position for you in my kingdom.”

Matrona smiled. “Do you think that a swim in a chilly pool and a bit of bad Latin muttered over us by a bishop will make much difference to our essential natures?”

Charles looked uncomfortable.

“My king, I will be blunt. At this stage in your career, you cannot afford to fail. A king who fails has but one place to fall and that is into a grave. My lord has given you victory and at no little cost to himself. Allow him some peace in return. This is all he asks.

“You attacked the Saxons and destroyed the sacred tree because you needed money to content your nobles, who might have defected to your brother’s wife had you been too stingy with your largess when he died. You attacked the Lombards because you needed a victory, and a big one, to impress the most powerful magnates of the Frankish realm. Men who, I might add, hold even your life in their hands, should they choose to act in concert. After tomorrow your position will be secure. Use your strength to be merciful and to grant my lord the peace he asks.”

A wave of fury swept over Charles, a rage so intense Matrona, who could feel, smell, and sense his wrath, felt sure he would have killed her if he had a weapon at hand. Then it faded and something like grudging admiration took its place.

“Are you always so brusque with kings?”

Matrona’s lips twitched. She knew better than to smile. He was still on the edge of murder. “I never lie,” she said. “I may not always tell the whole truth, but I never lie.”

He stretched out his hand to her. “Come. There is some little time before dawn, when I must ride out with my troops. What are you wearing under that magnificent gown?”

“Nothing.”

When she met Maeniel in the shadow of the fortress at Susa the next day, she said, “He knows.”

Antonius, riding along with Maeniel, answered, “It doesn’t matter what he knows. The problem is what he cares to do about what he knows.”

“Succinct and, as usual, to the point,” Maeniel said.

“Religion and expediency are at war in his mind,” Matrona said. “We are very useful to him.”

Charles had thrown his bowman and foot at the old Roman fortress. They were taking casualties without visible effect as they tried with little success to force a passage at the river. Desiderius’s men on the high ground wielding compound bows were using Charles’s troops for target practice.

“This is what I do not like about war,” Matrona said. “They are only a diversion, but they will die just the same.”

“I’ll give credit to Charles: he was in the vanguard leading the attack.”

As Matrona and the rest watched, Charles blew retreat, thus tempting Desiderius’s mercenaries to abandon the cover of the fortress to press the rout.

It was after daybreak and before sunrise; the fog that had filled the river valleys still meandered in clouds on the wooded slopes and near the water. In some places visibility was very good. In others, both armies clashed in the murk. Bernard and his army attacked at the dramatic moment when the sun’s first rays blazed down from the notch in the pass, striking long corridors of light down through the mist and illuminating the whole valley. The river was a pale, lacy maelstrom, the grass an emerald carpet. The forest outliers still hugged moisture and the night’s darkness that lay like a stain on the earth. The stones comprising the ancient fortress were burned to almost alabaster brilliance in the golden light.

Charlemagne closed his trap.

Bernard’s men crashed, howling, into the flanks of Desiderius’s army. The king was among them, upholding the Langobard standard. He fled first. Maeniel was mounted on Audovald; the horse half reared and pranced with excitement. Maeniel gave the loud snort that is
Go
in horse. And they went.

The massed ranks of the
scarae
struck the line first, punching through those few of Desiderius’s troops that tried to make a stand.

Maeniel felt the splendid rush that is long-held tension dissolved. He, like the rest of the great magnates of France, led his men into battle.

Battle, such as it was. The erstwhile captain of the king’s guard, blindly loyal to his sovereign, tried to put his troops together and make a stand. Indeed, they might have prevailed, had Desiderius shown courage or resolution. Charles had brought the best part of his army over the mountains, but they were less than the experienced troops the lord of the Lombards commanded.

It was a fine mercenary army, and Desiderius had schemed, murdered, betrayed, and extorted wealth from every nook and cranny of his kingdom in order to put together this massive mailed fist, to impose his will on all of Italy. But when the moment, or rather moments, came to strike and destroy his enemies, Desiderius always backed away.