Authors: Alice Borchardt
They planned to use her in the same way they’d used her mother. Even if she refused to help them, she knew that wouldn’t stop their plotting. They had turned to her mother only when other methods failed with Wolfstan.
Gundabald eyed her suspiciously. Her capitulation had been too rapid. “My, we are mealy-mouthed all of a sudden,” he said.
“Yes,” Regeane replied, “but I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Gundabald uncovered another one of the dishes. This one a highly spiced fish stew, thick with onions, leeks, and blazing hot cracked peppercorns. “Want some?” Gundabald asked, spooning it out on a trencher and falling to with his fingers.
The dish assaulted the wolf’s nose across the room. “No. I have no appetite. My head is spinning.” She looked around. The air in the room was a smoky haze, left by the brazier’s embers as they burnt themselves out.
The blazing hearth fire was dying down, the remaining braziers darkening. Cold began creeping in.
Regeane walked over to the table. Gundabald was occupied by his greed and a jug of good red wine. Hugo, when he saw her walking toward him, scuttled to the other side of the table. Gundabald rolled his eyes at him, annoyed. “Where is your sword?” he mumbled, his mouth full.
Hugo looked shamefaced. “I pawned it to buy drink a few days ago.”
Regeane stopped in front of the table.
“Have some food,” Gundabald invited her.
Regeane shook her head. “Only a cup of wine.”
Hugo poured it and offered it to her, keeping his arm extended, well away from her.
She took the wine—sipped it.
Very good
, she thought—finished the cup and placed it on the table. Exhaustion was on her like a leaden cope, weighing her down.
“Remember,” Gundabald said.
“Yes,” Regeane answered.
“You don’t really have any choice.” His face was red, smeared with grease, flushed with all the wine he’d taken. The marks scored by her nails on his cheeks were still visible. He probably couldn’t feel them now, but in the morning he would, along with his hangover.
She felt she’d gained at least a small advantage. She’d better press that now. “I’ll need some money,” she said.
“For what?” he asked, then ate a large prawn yellowed with saffron. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed, then gulped a mouthful of some pale vintage.
“Clothes!” Regeane said. “Look at me. This is the best dress I have. I’ll need at least one new mantle and two respectable gowns. Not to mention something to attend the marriage feast in.”
“Don’t worry,” Gundabald said. “He won’t be in Rome for months.”
“I’ll still need to get a start,” Regeane said.
Gundabald was almost drunk. He was happy, things were going his way. He knew the girl was going to be a problem, but he had months to break her, crush her spirit.
Outside the wind buffeted the building. A particularly loud blast rattled the shutters, making it sound as if a giant hammer was being flung at the walls. He shivered. Next time, he wouldn’t tackle her after dark. True, her face was swollen and mottled with bruises, the gown she wore stiff with bloodstains, but she still looked entirely too good to have taken the full force of his arm.
Next time, he would face off with her by day and he could learn to judge more exactly how much punishment she could take without being maimed or killed. Physical suffering inflicted on a regular basis would soon sap her will to resist him. So much the better if it didn’t leave scars behind.
He fished in his scrip for some money. Regeane saw the glint of gold among the coins. She didn’t think she’d get any. She
was right. Twenty or so copper coins and four silver dinars landed on the table. Thankful for that much, she quickly scooped them up and went into her room.
The imprisoning bolts rattled shut as soon as the door closed behind her. She had one bolt on her side, and she drove it home. She stripped off her dress and shift. Then the wolf smelled food!
She burrowed under the blankets with her hands and found the pot. The old woman must have put it there. Protected by earthenware and the blankets, it was still just warm. The room was freezing. The shutters over the barred window did nothing to stop the wind.
Unimpeded and welcome, the wolf visited. She was starving. It took her less time to finish the stew than it would the woman. Her fur sealed out the cold. The rough tongue made one last circuit of the bowl.
Then, the woman jumped up naked and climbed quietly into the bed. Regeane crouched down under the covers and blessed the old woman: she’d double blanketed the bed and put on clean linen sheets. They were patched, worn, and threadbare, but smooth and comfortable to the touch.
When the wolf left, she took most of Regeane’s injuries with her. Her body no longer ached, though she remained exhausted almost to the point of unconsciousness. Still, her mind would not stop working.
Gundabald! The devil! They were one and the same. She knew she’d only begun to taste the misery he planned to deal her.
How could they have persuaded her mother to connive at the death of one who had loved and protected her? What kind of exchange had Wolfstan been for Firminius, her mother’s second husband? She remembered him as notable only for corpulence, indolence, and monumental greed.
No, she had nothing to hope for from Gundabald and everything to fear. Somehow she must escape, but she had no idea how. The little money he had given her would not carry her far.
The she-wolf, bold creature that she was, was simply angered by the usurpation of her freedom. She was physically mature, but her sexual maturity didn’t match the woman’s. She was yet the lean hunter—meat provider of the pack—able to outrace even the fleetest deer. Vestal virgin of the moonglow—
unchosen, untouched. She might rise to defend the woman on the marriage bed.
Ye gods!
the woman thought.
A true disaster
. She must escape. How? Where?
Something plucked at the edges of her memory the way an importunate beggar plucks at one’s sleeves. Wolfstan! His people believed his line had failed. Gundabald let that slip. But it hadn’t failed. She was here, carrying the same powers he had. They called him the Talisman. Who told her his story? She couldn’t remember and was too tired to try.
Her decision was made. It left her at peace. Could she find her father’s people? She would face pursuit and treachery by Gundabald and Hugo. So be it. The female hunter of the dark stared at her from the edge of sleep with glowing eyes, beckoning her into beyond.
She would succeed or die trying. She and herself were in accord. Regeane followed the wolf drifting into darkness where, in the shadowland of sleep, she and her companion could run free … through the endless forests of her dreams.
SHE WOKE EARLY. ONLY A FAINT BLUE LIGHT SHONE in around the shutters. She ruffled through the basket under her bed, searching for a few clean things to wear. Again, the old woman had not failed her. She had freshly washed a clean gray linen gown and a worn, but redyed, brown mantle. Underwear and a very threadbare veil of her mother’s—it had large, translucent patches—completed the ensemble.
She was afraid the door might be locked, but the old woman was there, involved in her endless cleaning, and she had undone the bolts.
Regeane collected Hugo—he protested weakly, but mindful of Gundabald’s orders, he came. She passed the old woman sweeping the hall with a twig broom.
Hugo was already out and going down the steps. Regeane paused next to her and pressed one of the silver coins into her hand.
The old woman could tell by the touch it was more than a copper. Her eyes widened as she secreted it. “Good fortune,”
she whispered. “May the Virgin watch over you. Take care. They are both pigs …” she muttered. “Pigs!”
Regeane hurried down the stair following Hugo. The sky was gray, as was the light around them.
“It’s before dawn,” Hugo whimpered. “Where are we going?”
“The thieves’ market,” Regeane said.
“I’ll kill that little cunt, Silve, for leaving me with this problem,” Hugo muttered. “What did you do to her? I went looking for her last night.”
Gundabald probably made him
, Regeane thought.
“I couldn’t find her in any of the usual tavernas. She’s disappeared. Oh, my head,” he sniffed. “My tongue tastes like the floor of an outhouse. My eyeballs are fried. The food, it burnt doing down, but it was worse going out. It feels like somebody poured hot grease up my ass.”
“It’s the pepper. Would a jug of wine quiet your nether regions?” Regeane asked.
“A jug of wine would quiet a lot of regions,” Hugo replied.
Regeane gave him some copper coins. “Please don’t buy the same stuff Silve did yesterday.”
“What was it?” Hugo asked.
“She said it had poppy gum and hemlock in it.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find her,” Hugo commented glumly. “She’s lying dead somewhere and nobody noticed her because she hasn’t started to stink yet.”
Regeane’s stomach rumbled with hunger. “Go get your wine,” she said irritably.
Hugo returned with a wineskin. He dosed himself liberally on their way to the market. He brightened a bit, but continued complaining as they walked. “It’s dangerous,” he said, “even for a man. You might be subjected to insults not proper for a lady to hear.”
Regeane stopped so quickly Hugo ran into her.
They were turning into a piazza by then. “Go away,” she whispered between her teeth to Hugo. “Amuse yourself. I don’t care how, but don’t bother me while I’m trying to shop. Now, go away.”
He did, drifting off after giving her an apprehensive look.
The little market square was filled with merchants whose mules were still harnessed to their carts. All in all, a highly mobile group. Ready to vanish quickly when the papal guard, the only effective law in the city, made one of its periodic sweeps through Rome. They were close to the river. The insulas surrounding the square were run down. In many cases, the first floors were abandoned to the Tiber’s periodic floods and the omnipresent damp.
The cloth seller’s cart was sandwiched between a slave dealer’s wretched stock and a load of broken furniture. To Regeane it looked like kindling. Irredeemable junk. The man hawking it was aggressive. On seeing Regeane, he tried selling her a “beautiful” chair—a perfect chair if only she had the enterprise to add one leg. And, he burbled cheerfully, he had several ones that would do. And he would offer them to her at a very nominal price.
“Firewood,” Regeane said.
The cloth seller cackled gleefully as Regeane pushed past and began examining the dresses hanging from the staves of his two-wheeled cart.
She glanced at the slaves, then quickly away. She shuddered. They were a painful sight. All women, too young, old, or ugly to interest the dealers in more attractive human merchandise at the bigger markets.
By and large, the dresses were equally hopeless. Most were worn. All were too small. Regeane was considered tall. The condition of the cloth discouraged her more than anything else. Silve had told her there were bargains to be had here, but nothing she’d seen was worth flint and steel to turn it into fire and smoke. If she could find good cloth, she was willing to rip out the seams, bleach, dye, and resew. But cloth so rotten it tore while being handled was hopeless.
“Cleaning rags,” she whispered.
The furniture seller looked angry. “Firewood!” he said in the Roman gutter argot. “Cleaning rags! Barbarian hellcat. She needs a lesson.”
The cloth seller laughed again, then dragged something from under the debris in the cart. The thing, though stained at the
hem, was beautiful: an overdress of blue brocade trimmed in white fur. The cloth seller dangled it before her.
“How much?” Regeane asked suspiciously.
“Six coppers only,” the cloth seller said, placing it in her hands.
Yes, it was in good condition. Her knowing fingers explored the fabric. Not pure silk, but that wasn’t to be expected, not here. If the stains didn’t wash out she …
The world vanished. She could feel the garrotte around her throat and even before it closed, she knew herself a dead woman. The man’s hands tightening the wire and twisting the wooden dowels at the back of her neck were too strong for her to challenge. Even though she ripped into them with her nails, felt the skin peel, and her fingertips slick with blood. She knew the hands would not release the wire and even probably took some satisfaction from the proof of her agony.
The steel thread crushed her windpipe. Sight was gone. Air was gone. Life was gone. The only thing remaining was the scream … silent … only in her brain and it went on and on and on and …
Regeane threw the dress away from her.
“What? Are you sick?” the cloth seller shouted. “Are you pregnant?”
“Why is it?” Regeane replied acidly. She was leaning on the cart, trying to get her stomach under control. “Why is it when a woman turns pale or seems ill—if she’s below seventy years—the nearest man asks her if she’s pregnant?”
“Because she often is,” a musical voice answered. “But in your case, I believe you to be unusually perceptive.”
Regeane turned and looked at the speaker. She was dangling the luxurious robe by one finger as if it were some filthy discard. “Take this … thing,” she said to the cloth seller, “and dump it into the unmarked grave where she lies. I’ll pay you.”
“Oh, God!” Regeane said. “That’s foul.” She was wiping her hands on her mantle. She felt contaminated.
The cloth seller tucked the robe deep into the rags on his cart.
The woman continued lazily. “Its previous owner betrayed her lover to a man named Paul Afartha. He pulled the strings on our late Lombard pope. Her lover belonged to the present
pope’s party. Paul had him tortured but—unfortunately for her—not to death. He was released when Hadrian became pope. He’s blind in one eye and lacks some fingers, but he still has one good eye and two hands. He strangled her. She was wearing that dress at the time.”
“It’s a good piece of cloth,” the man grumbled.
This time the imposing woman spoke sharply. “Bring the thing to my house. Apply to my maid, Susanna. She will pay you and burn it. Sacred blood, man! Stains from her last natural functions discolor the hem. Do as I say.”