Authors: Alice Borchardt
Regeane looked up at the hanging lamp festooned with alabaster doves. Some of them must have exhausted their oil. They were going out now slowly, one by one.
Lucilla staggered against the couch. “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Christ, I’m everything they say I am—whore, bitch, a sow eating her litter, and my son … Oh, God, Antonius!”
Her face paled to a dirty white color. A faint sheen of sweat broke out on her skin.
Regeane eased away. As the oil in the lamp was used up, the room grew darker. The wolf moved closer.
Lucilla staggered and fell to her knees. She stared up at Regeane, uncomprehending. “Where are you going?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”
Regeane backed toward the inky darkness of the atrium. The change was taking her powerfully, paralyzing her throat and tongue. She could barely form the words of her answer. “I’m going to find out what is in the night.”
THE PAPAL MESSENGER’S FINGERS WERE TIGHTLY wound around one of Maeniel’s silver wine cups. Fast asleep, he was stretched out on the table, lying on the remnants of last night’s feast.
Maeniel scratched his head and tried to remember the man’s name.
Matrona eyed him from the other side of the table.
“What did he call himself?” Maeniel asked.
“Harek,” Matrona answered.
“Harek,” Maeniel said. “Funny, I could have sworn he was a Roman.”
Matrona snickered coldly. A snicker is always cold, but Matrona’s was nastier than most. “A lot of them name themselves after us barbarians. They think it makes them sound tougher.” She smiled, but the smile wasn’t much of an improvement over the snicker. “I can’t say it helped him very much.”
Maeniel nodded. The papal messenger was about an inch under five feet tall. Matrona towered over him.
“He was a bit stiff at first,” Gorgo said, “but he loosened up nicely after a while.”
“Too much,” Matrona said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gorgo said. Gorgo was a big man whose long brown hair melted into his thick brown beard and moustache. He was still sitting upright, something of an accomplishment after a night of heavy drinking.
“How about when he chased Silvia around the hall?” Matrona said.
“Silvia?” Maeniel said. “She was afraid of him?”
“No,” Matrona said, “coy.”
“Maybe she wanted some privacy,” Gorgo said delicately.
“I can’t think why,” Matrona said. “She never bothered about it before.”
“That’s true,” Gorgo said.
“Silvia.” Maeniel mulled the matter over in his mind, then asked, “Did he catch her?”
“In the kitchen,” Matrona said.
“Did he achieve his objective?” Gorgo inquired.
“I can’t say,” Matrona answered, “but he charged in bravely, pushing things aside with his hands. He looked like he was swimming.”
“Silvia has no reason to fear a high wind,” Maeniel said.
“Silvia,” Gorgo said, “has no reason to fear an avalanche.”
“True,” Maeniel said, studying the small man on the table with interest. “He’s very brave for a Roman.”
“At any rate,” Matrona continued, “they both behaved as if they believed he had.”
“Don’t describe it,” Maeniel said.
“It’s just as well the kitchen has a stone floor,” Matrona said.
“It’s just as well he found Silvia attractive,” Gorgo said. “I was about to see if he could fly.”
“Don’t do that,” Maeniel said.
“Not from the parapet,” Gorgo said, “just here in the hall. He called me a barbarian, a crude, stupid barbarian.”
“Drink,” Matrona said, “brings out the worst in him.”
“I didn’t chop the hole in the ceiling,” Gorgo complained. “Besides, it’s as I told him, if there wasn’t a hole in the ceiling, how would the smoke get out? If it couldn’t, when we lit the fire we’d all suffocate,”
Maeniel squinted up at the hole in the ceiling and scratched his head again.
“I can’t think what they wanted so much space for anyway,” Gorgo muttered.
The dining hall was what remained of a small Roman basilica. It was a long, T-shaped room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a high domed roof over the long table at the end. At some time in the past someone had taken a pickax to the center of the barrel vault that covered the long end of the T. A similar
implement had gouged a large hole in the marble floor. The remains of a large fire smoldered in the pit under the hole in the ceiling.
A lot of Maeniel’s people were sleeping heaped together around the crude hearth. Legs protruded from under the table at the end of the room.
“Where’s Gavin?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Matrona was busy prying the silver cup out of Harek’s hands.
“You can tell he’s a churchman by the tight grip he has on the silver,” Gorgo said.
Maeniel glanced at the firepit. Gavin wasn’t among those sleeping around it. Where was he?
Maeniel walked along the table, looking at feet. Some had their toes pointed upward, others the heels, but heel or toe, none belonged to Gavin.
He finally found him, heels up, lying between Silvia’s larger feet at the end of the table.
“Gavin and the papal messenger in one night?” he asked Matrona.
“No.” She was still occupied with the silver cup. “I think he just crawled on top of her so he could have a warm, comfortable place to sleep. He asked me and I said yes.”
“But he was too far gone,” Maeniel said.
Matrona finally freed the cup and strolled away to put it with the rest under lock and key. “I know,” she shot back over her shoulder at Maeniel. “That’s why I said yes.”
Poor Gavin. However, poor or not, they had to get started today, and left to himself, Gavin would sleep until late afternoon. Maeniel grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him out from under the table.
Gavin screamed. “Eeeeeee! Daylight!” He went back under, powered by his fingers and toes, and tried to flop down again on top of Silvia.
Maeniel sympathized with him. She looked billowy and comfortable. She was almost as big as a bed. Silvia, however, was waking up and didn’t want any part of Gavin. She straight-armed him, catching him under the chin and pushing him aside.
Gavin moaned. The cold from the icy stone floor penetrated
his clothing. He curled up on his side like an injured caterpillar and whimpered softly.
Maeniel grabbed Gavin by the ankles and hauled him out again. He held Gavin up like a wheelbarrow, legs in the air, upper body free, and arms on the floor.
“Oh, God!” Gavin shrieked, both hands clutching at his skull.
“Must I throw you in the fountain?” Maeniel asked
The fountain in the courtyard was fed by snowmelt from the glaciers that towered over the pass. Even in the warmest weather, the water was bitter cold.
Gavin shuddered violently, but immediately decided sobriety was the better part of valor. “I’m awake, Maeniel.”
“Good.” Maeniel let go of his ankles.
Gavin managed to stagger to his feet. He was pale and his eyes were slitted against the light.
“We are going to Rome,” Maeniel said. “We’re leaving today.”
“No,” Gavin moaned. “There’s going to be something wrong with her, I tell you, terribly, terribly wrong. You already know part of what’s wrong. You saw the letter. Her closest relatives are such bestial scoundrels, they even managed to shock the pope himself. And living among those dissolute and depraved Romans, you know, it must be difficult to shock him!”
Maeniel’s eyes roved around the hall. Under the table Silvia huffed, snorted, and rolled over. “Dissolute Romans,” he muttered at Gavin. “And what are we?”
Gavin staggered along the table, looking for a jug with some beer or wine in it. Eventually he found one. He lifted it to his lips. His Adam’s apple moved up and down for perhaps half a minute. When he set the jug down he said, “Noble, pure-hearted, chaste barbarians. I know because that’s what the pope’s messenger told me last night. Some writer named Tacitus said so.”
Matrona rested her fists on her ample hips, threw back her head, and howled. “The only time you’re chaste, Gavin, is when you chased, but could not catch her. I have seen manure piles purer than your heart and, as for nobility, you’re a by-blow gotten on a scullery wench who was probably a slow runner.”
“You notice,” Gorgo said, “he had already learned better than to mention sobriety.”
Gavin’s face turned an unhealthy and nearly impossible shade of greenish purple. “My father,” he said in a strangled tone, “is …”
Matrona began to roll up her sleeves. “Come on, Gorgo,” she said. “He’s started going on about his father. He needs to be thrown in the fountain.”
Gavin backed up and jumped behind Maeniel.
Maeniel noticed Gavin had a black eye and a split lip on one side. “Who had the temerity to strike my captain?” he asked half jokingly. “Matrona?”
Matrona gave an evil chuckle. “No, I wasn’t the one this time.”
Joseph spoke up. He was a large man with a lugubrious face. A moustache drooped down over his upper lip. “He mistook me for Matrona.”
“I didn’t.” Gavin’s horrified denial came from behind Maeniel.
“You did,” Joseph said, shaking his head. “And I feared lest you make a similar mistake with someone less patient, so I put you to sleep.”
Gavin staggered away, muttering about disrespect and false friendship.
“Gorgo, Joseph,” Maeniel said, “go fetch some money.”
People all along the table were waking now, searching for and finding a hair of the dog.
Gorgo and Joseph returned with a large chest, “It’s heavy,” Joseph moaned.
“Well, dump it out on the floor,” Maeniel said.
They did. A heap of gold and silver poured out. There were antique silver and gold coins, jewelry studded with precious and semiprecious stones, and the occasional showy pieces of glass, tableware, cups, plates, serving platters, and bowls.
Matrona came up with two pairs of saddlebags. She began to pack them. One pair with jewelry, the other with gold and silver coins.
Maeniel’s household gathered round. Both men and women selecting jewelry for themselves and, sometimes, others.
Gavin clapped a dented diadem on his head. It was made mostly of copper, but had a ring of gold and silver birds in flight on it. “Was this a king’s?” he asked.
“No,” Maeniel answered. “It belonged to a priest.” He looked faintly ill.
“A Christian priest?” Gavin asked mystified.
“No,” Maeniel said. “A pagan one. A …” He groped for the word. “A druid. Now, take the damned thing off. For it
is
a damned thing, and you will find out soon if you wear it.”
Gavin snatched the circlet off and threw it back into the pile.
Maeniel clapped his hands. “Listen! We are leaving this day for Rome. Those of you who want to come, scratch up some silver and gold coins. We will need to stay under a roof from time to time. And I hear living in the holy city is expensive. Matrona, who will remain here and care for the livestock?”
She had taken advantage of everyone’s distraction to strip off her dress and put on a costume she found in the chest. It consisted of draped gold chains that covered her breasts and another set of smaller chains that hung from her hips and hid the pubic area. Matrona was a tall woman with a slim waist and ample hips and breasts. Her skin was dark. She had large brown eyes—they were heavy-lidded and sleepy looking—and beautiful curved, sensual lips.
Gavin stared at her. He was glassy-eyed. His mouth was hanging open.
“Matrona, the livestock! Cattle, sheep, goats, horses,” Maeniel said. He snapped his fingers. “Remember.”
“Three families have pregnant women among them,” Matrona said. “I consulted them. They fear to risk the journey. They will remain.”
Joseph looked at Gavin sadly. “Let her take him in the kitchen, my lord. His brain is mush.”
Maeniel noticed that the chains didn’t hide nearly enough of Matrona. “Please,” he said, making a graceful gesture. “Tend to Gavin before we leave.”
“I don’t know why I bother,” Matrona said. “His brain is always mush.” She snapped her fingers at Gavin and departed. Gavin followed, looking as if he were drawn along by a ring through his nose.
“What about the papal messenger?” Joseph asked.
“Don’t wake him,” Maeniel said, strolling away. “Put him on Audovald. He will bring him safely down the mountain.”
THE PAPAL MESSENGER DID AWAKEN WHEN THEY were better than halfway down the mountain. Gavin had fallen asleep on his horse. Matrona put a handful of snow down his neck. Gavin screamed. His scream woke the papal messenger, who screamed in turn when he realized where he was.
Maeniel, who was riding behind him, said, “Be quiet. Don’t alarm Audovald. His task requires concentration. This path is steep.”
“Oh, yes,” the papal messenger murmured. “The horse.” In truth, he had no desire to distract Audovald. The path was not only steep and marred by patches of ice. On one side the drop was straight down into a valley filled with rocks. About five thousand spruce trees clung to a slope too steep to hold snow. Insuring that if he fell, the spiny tree limbs would rip him to pieces on the way down. A boulder in the valley would reduce him to something with the consistency of fruit pulp and in addition, there appeared to be a river in the valley that would wash away what remained.
“Where are we going?” he asked in a shaky voice.
“To Rome,” Maeniel replied unconcerned.
“With all your household?”
“They normally accompany me when I travel,” Maeniel said.
The papal envoy made as if to pick up the reins.
“Do not annoy Audovald with directions, either,” Maeniel said. “He knows the way.”
THE WOLF EXPLODED INTO THE NIGHT, THE BEAST in full control. She wanted to escape Lucilla and her dreadful grief. To flee the stifling city, the stench of its gutters, the enclosing walls. The multiple terrors of a world ruled by men like Gundabald and Hadrian. A world that would force a woman to kill her own son.
So she ran, a gliding gray shape, skimming low across the ground beyond the environs of Rome through the long grass of the Campagna.
Thank God
, she thought.
Thank God for the wolf
. The wolf had always set her free, even when she’d been imprisoned. The wolf had always allowed her to escape; given her freedom. The wolf drowned her grief for her mother, consoled her for the sense of separateness she’d felt when she’d first realized that she lived not only in this world, but in another, also.