The Wolf King (46 page)

The year before Pope Hadrian had out-bluffed him near Rome, and had Desiderius supported his minions in the Holy City with troops, Regeane and Maeniel might well have died. And Hadrian, under his thumb, might have been forced to abdicate or been murdered. But again Desiderius had backed out of the quarrel and fled.

Both forces came to a stop well out of the pass at Susa on the open plain. The glittering massed ranks of Desiderius’s army were drawn up six deep in battle array. The sun was to Charles’s back. The Frankish commanders sat on their horses, waiting for the king’s signal.

Maeniel watched the Lombard host. By then all of his household were present, mounted, and ready to fight and win. Silvia was there. She was dressed as a man, or possibly the wearing of armor simply made her appearance androgynous.

“Do we fight?” she asked Maeniel. She sounded eager.

“Hold back,” he told the rest of his pack. “I don’t know.”

“On balance,” Antonius said, “I think he will run. And then the king will have to decide if he wants to organize a siege at Pavia.”

“He has a magnificent army,” Maeniel said. “He might very well win, even though in a difficult position. His commander is, moreover, an able man.”

“His position isn’t that bad,” Antonius said. “A tributary of the Ticino is in front of him. His archers can catch the Frankish foot on the boggy low ground and destroy them. His commander has placed his heaviest cavalry on both wings. He’s no fool. That’s what Hannibal did at Cannae. His center will break, but not far—see those little hills behind them? They will not halt a retreat. But he could envelop the
scarae
and maybe—just maybe—destroy them. The foot will perish easily enough, but Charles’s elite troops are better armed than anything he has. And better motivated. No general likes fifty-fifty odds in a pitched battle. That’s why both he and Charles are holding back.

“I’m betting he will take the safe way out and ran. He can base part of his force at Turin and keep the rest at Pavia. Then he can let Charles beat his brains out against its walls. But his commander is aching to fight. He knows they will never have a better opportunity, and his advice might carry the day, but his king is a shifty, devious little rat. My advice, my lord, is hold your position and don’t budge.”

Antonius smiled. He shifted his position on his horse’s back. “I don’t spend enough time in the saddle.”

Matrona’s mare, Cloris, pranced and tossed her mane.

Audovald spoke sharply to her. She became quiet.

The sun began to burn Maeniel’s back through his mail shirt.

Antonius was vindicated.

Desiderius ran.

A beautiful, orderly retreat orchestrated by the captain of his guard. The archers held their position as the cavalry withdrew in double file. The captain of the guard, as he had on the day when he pulled the king away from the mob, left last, in command of the rear guard.

“Nivardd is an able man,” Antonius said.

“Nivardd,” Maeniel repeated. “I never knew his name.”

Regeane and the rest spent the night in a tumbledown ruin of a village in the wetlands of the river valley. They sat up late, strangely convivial around the open fire.

“It is peculiar no one lives here,” Chiara said. “There is not even any trace of brigands.”

“No one has been here for a long time,” the bear said. He grinned at Regeane. “I take it you concur, my lady.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can always tell.” The houses, though roofless, were still standing, and they camped in one with its back to the wind.

“Taxation ruined this place,” the bear said. “I know. I traveled this way a long time ago with a sorcerer of my acquaintance. The people here fled to escape the taxes, not long before the old empire died. They were vanishing even then

and those who remained were at their wits’ end what to do to evade the assessment since, flight or not, the amount they must ante up to the collectors remained the same.“

“There were fewer and fewer of them to pay it,” Armine said.

The bear nodded. He really didn’t look like Hugo any longer. He kept his hair close-cropped; Hugo had worn his long. He never drank; Hugo had been a sot.

The bear had been frank about the matter when Regeane had asked him about it. “It has no effect on me, not the essential me, that is. I don’t have brain to fuddle. At least not the way Hugo did.” He had been cleaning a duck bone with his teeth. “I do enjoy food, though. The taste, I mean. This body would starve without me to care for it. So if I have to eat, I might as well enjoy it.

“What are you going to do now, wolf?” he asked Regeane.

“I don’t know.” She was cracking open a fish cooked in clay. There were a number in the fire. She hadn’t been able to snag any big ones, but she’d taken eight medium-size ones during a quick wade-fishing expedition.

“Give me some of that,” Chiara said, extending a piece of flat bread.

Regeane expertly deboned the fish and dropped half into Chiara’s flat bread, along with some of the greens she’d used to stuff them.

Chiara ate voraciously. “I’m starving,” she said between mouthfuls. “Fighting gives you an appetite.”

“That was hardly a fight,” the bear said in lofty condescension. “A bit of a skirmish, that’s all.”

“Somehow I had the feeling, a strong feeling, it was more than that,” Armine said. “But my dear friend Hugo, if you want to call it that, I’ll humor you. Though at one point I believe both of my arms were broken.”

“They probably were,” Regeane said.

“I know,” Armine said, meeting her eyes across the fire. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Regeane answered.

Armine was doing his best with a bowl of stewed rabbit.

“I think,” she continued, “it had something to do with what Chiara and I tried to do for the bear.”

Chiara began to tremble and cry. Gimp got what remained of her fish. He was sitting with them, finishing everyone’s leftovers, and since none of them were happy with the rather vinegary wine, he was washing them down with copious drafts of the same.

The bear Hugo put his arm around Chiara and began to comfort her. “I’m here,” he said, “and I always will be.”

“You don’t even smell like Hugo,” she said.

The bear Hugo laughed. “Ask the wolf, she’s the expert.”

“He doesn’t,” Regeane said. “He smells clean. No aroma of dirt, perspiration, or constant drink. He has a dry, sharp smell, rather like some kind of soap.”

“Do you smell everything?” Chiara asked, distracted from her grief.

“Everything,” Regeane said. “Scents are a constant background to all everyday things. For instance, these ruins, they haven’t been lived in for a long time, not by humans at any rate. A fox denned here in the next house, the vixen raised a litter, but they’re gone. The latest odor is some months old: a traveler came by last winter. He remained a few days. He dug. He probably had treasure on his mind. I smell an old—again, some months old—scent of turned earth, and… and there is an owl in a ruined temple nearby. You can’t see the building because it’s mostly a mound of brush, but I smell brick and limestone and marble. That says temple to me.”

Chiara and Armine both goggled at her.

“No wonder you weren’t worried about brigands,” Armine said. “You should probably know if there were any within miles of us.”

Regeane nodded and cracked open another fish bundle and began to prepare a second meal for Chiara.

The bear Hugo yawned. “This damned body is tired. I would know if anyone came this way, too. That owl has fledglings in her nest. That’s where she is, out hunting for them. I don’t know where the male is. I was wondering if something happened to him. I don’t smell anything, but I perceive temperature gradients, movement, body processes, heartbeat. It does beat. Your intellectual classes are woefully ignorant of how living things work. When I extend my perceptions, your bodies are transparent to me, and, among other things, I sense what you would call topography. The shape of the land and the things living on it.”

“There he is,” Regeane said. “I think he has a rat.”

“The male owl,” Hugo bear answered. “She heard him. I felt air displacement by his wings. The human who was looking for treasure was right, there is some here. A small hoard.” He yawned again. “In the morning I’ll show you where it is. You can dig it up. Am I right?” he asked Armine. “You didn’t leave Pavia with much cash in hand.”

“No,” Armine said. “The king hadn’t paid me, and I didn’t think it at all healthy to hang around waiting for him to clear his debts. I didn’t know you could do things like find buried treasure.”

“How the hell do you think I kept that fool Hugo in funds? When we met he didn’t have enough money to pay a louse to bite him.”

“Show me this right now.”

“No, you’ll disturb the owls. The rat is a banquet to them. Leave them in peace. This ruin is overrun with noxious rodents. When momma owl is finished raising her young, they will improve the atmosphere of this place no end.”

“Is it deep?” Regeane asked.

“No,” the bear replied.

“Then I’ll get it,” she said. “They won’t notice me the way they would humans with noise, torches, and trampling the vegetation. Give me a minute.” She rose and went through an opening in the ruined house into the darkness.

Armine looked appalled, astonished, frightened, and outraged at the same time. The outrage was because the living arrangements of a family of owls were placed before his wishes.

“Your attitude is original, to say the least. I would think our welfare would take precedence over an owl’s.”

“Why?” the bear asked. “They have as much right to be here as you have; more, in fact. We’re trespassers. This is their home.”

“If you look at it that way, he’s right,” Chiara said.

Regeane forestalled further discussion by returning with a leather sack in her hand. She dropped it at Armine’s feet. It ripped open easily, and a collection of silver and gold vessels tumbled out, small ritual objects.

“There’s more,” she said. “But this was all I could carry— as a wolf, I mean.”

“Good God,” Armine whispered. “There’s a fortune right here. But part of this is yours,” he said to Regeane and the bear.

Regeane shrugged. “I have plenty. You should see my husband’s strongroom. He could have paid that ransom he offered the king twice over and still have money to spare.”

“I don’t give a damn,” the bear said. “I sense things like this all the time and other, more unpleasant things, too. There are fifteen or sixteen babies in a well not far from here. Times were very hard for the last inhabitants of this place. They couldn’t raise any children at the last. That’s one reason why they ran away. That’s probably why the gold was buried also. They felt sure the tax collectors would confiscate these sacred objects and melt them down. Too bad. Now you will do the same.”

“No, I don’t think so. Not all of them, at any rate,” Armine said. “A great many unpleasant things can be said of the Florentine merchants, but no one ever accused us of being blind to beauty.” He was studying an exquisite silver bowl with a pattern of white grapes, the fruit picked out in moonstones.

“I believe,” he said, “that we should go into banking, bear. I didn’t in my youth. I simply didn’t have enough capital. But you will enjoy banking, bear. It’s much more interesting than the cloth trade.”

“You understand me too well,” the bear said. “It doesn’t do to bore me.”

Chiara moaned. “Oh, lord, but interest calculations are a nightmare.”

“Yes, well, I’ll give you both charge over the counting house. Your tremendous influence will be envied by every woman in Florence.”

“Oh,” Chiara whispered, sounding absolutely delighted. “I can see myself going to mass clad in velvet and brocade with an illuminated missal in my hand.”

“Yes,” Armine sighed. “And violating all the sumptuary laws.”

“Oh, nonsense. Mother told me they only crack down when the city goes to war. Besides, banking is against church law, too.”

“Oh, yes,” Armine said, “but it’s easy to get around the church. It’s a rare bishop who won’t look the other way when he receives a large donation.”

Regeane yawned.

Armine glanced around uneasily. “Before we bed down for the night,” he asked Regeane and the bear, “are you sure we’re still alone?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “We would know.”

She and Chiara took the house warmed by the fire. Regeane was a wife, Chiara was an unmarried girl. Propriety demanded they sleep apart from the men.

Regeane and Chiara bedded down together against the wall. “That’s a lot of gold,” she told Regeane. “Are you sure you won’t take some?”

Regeane laughed. “You’ve seen the way I travel. Where would I put it?”

Chiara blushed.

“What will you do about the bear when you reach the city?”

“I don’t know,” Chiara answered. “For now I suppose he can go on being Hugo. And, unless I miss my guess, he and my father will soon go into business together.” She frowned. “What do you think? Will he ask my hand in marriage?”

Regeane was pushing some grass together to make a softer

bed. She could always sleep as a wolf but didn’t want to alarm Chiara.

“Because if he doesn’t plan on marriage, I won’t consider anything else. It’s like my mother said, it’s all right for a man to go hopping from one bed to another, but women must consider family life and children. Not to mention finances and reputation and all the other things sex brings with it. And besides, that’s Hugo’s body, and I’m not sure I would like to—”

“How you do chatter,” the bear’s voice said.

Chiara paused and stamped her foot. “You’re getting sneaky. I didn’t feel you. Besides, this was a private conversation and you had no business sticking your nose—”

“Enough,” the bear said, “little madam shrew. Will you ever be done correcting me?”

“Not so long as you behave like a lout.”

“A lout? I, a lout?” the bear roared.

Chiara stuck her fingers in her ears. “I won’t listen.”

“A fat lot of good that will do you,” the bear shouted. “My voice is in your mind.”

Chiara removed her fingers from her ears. “Yes, that’s true but—”