“Then what?” Lorenzo said.
“The witch will give him instructions, then he’ll know what to do.”
Lorenzo wanted to shake him. “Lucrezia is not a witch!”
“If that is the case,” the prior said with a smile, “then why are they drawn to her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see? The wolf has returned to his mistress. He’s looking for her now.”
Lorenzo didn’t wait to find out what he meant. Sword in hand, he ran for the ladder.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucrezia allowed Martin to hustle her down to the chapel, though she’d have prefered to accompany the brothers to the dungeon. But Marco insisted he would settle matters with the prior and if she showed herself she’d only subject herself to his cold-eyed attention.
As for Lorenzo, he seemed almost paralyzed with fear when talk came of confronting the Dominicans. Of course, she was frightened, too. Mostly of the fire, but Henri Montguillon studied her like a falcon eying a dead mouse held in the glove of its trainer. He was capable of anything.
And now, frustrated in the chapel, trying to fight off the fear, her mind churning, Lucrezia couldn’t concentrate on her book.
“But if I can get there in time,” she told Martin, who warmed his hands over a candelabra on the altar, “I might be able to save Giuseppe.”
“You mean give him one of your tinctures, my lady?”
“Yes, to stop him from changing.”
“That won’t help you—even if Giuseppe returns to health, they’d still torture a confession from his lips. He’ll agree with whatever they claim and then they’ll come after you. We have to stay out of their way.”
“How long until dawn?” she asked.
“Another hour, maybe a little longer. There’s nobody to ring the bells, so it’s hard to know for sure.”
Lucrezia looked back at her manuscript. Fire was the enemy of books, and so she kept the candle far enough away from the leaves that she had to squint through the gloom to read the letters. She had discovered a book of hours chained to a lectern. It was rather dull reading, but the copyist had doodled fanciful illuminations in the margins: two trees drinking wine and entwining their branches, as if engaged in inebriated bonhomie, a hare with a saddle and reins ridden by a wizened old man with pointy ears, and a dog with a mischievous grin urinating on a bishop’s crosier. On the last page, the scribe had written in tiny letters in Latin:
Thank God I have finished
This book is only fit for worms
The book was old, and indeed the parchment was riddled with tiny pinpricks left by bookworms over decades, maybe centuries. But reading the cranky scribe’s postscript, she felt as if he’d left a message just for her, one side of a conversation that began in the distant past and continued to this moment. The book itself was like a tedious lecture, or a pedantic boor at a party. The postscript was the friend who leaned over to whisper snide remarks.
She leaned in for a closer look. Then discovered a bonus.
It appeared that some stiff-necked person, lacking humor, had scraped the letters from the parchment with a knife, but someone else had come along later, noticed the partially erased complaint, and re-penned it. A second message, as if to say, “I agree. What a boring book. At least I only had to
read
the cursed thing. Look at what this poor fellow had to say when he wasted untold hours copying it.”
If only Lorenzo were here. He would find this amusing. Or better yet, she wished she had a quill and ink and she could add her own message for some future reader. How to do it without defacing the text? It would have to be subtle.
Tullia lifted her head and cocked her ears. A growl rumbled deep in her chest.
The dog had been lying across Lucrezia’s feet while she read. Not sleeping. Every few minutes, she sighed or let out what sounded like a grumble. Lucrezia wasn’t the only one who wished she were out of the cold chapel and in front of a cheerful fireplace on this winter night.
“What is it, girl?” Lucrezia said. Then, to Martin, “Did you hear something?”
“No.”
He drew his hands away from the candelabra, swept back his cloak, and rested a hand on the pommel of his sword. He strolled down the nave and cracked the doors leading out of the chapel. A gust of wind blew snow across the threshold and made the candles flicker. A howl floated through the air from outside.
“Blessed saints, the wolves are in the castle,” he said. “They must have crossed the moat.”
“How is that possible?”
“They have your scent, my lady. They’ll stop at nothing to destroy you.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Someone let them in.”
He must be right. They were animals, after all. Once the change was complete, these
loup-garou
may or may not retain their minds, but their bodies were forever changed. Strong, terrible teeth, and a gnawing hunger that could compel them to track their prey for mile after mile. But no hands, no way to climb walls or throw ropes with grappling hooks. Someone must have helped them inside.
“Unless,” she said. “What if it’s Giuseppe?”
“But he was still a man earlier. That was the howl of a wolf.”
“Giuseppe was under torture, Martin. Think what that means.”
“Oh. Yes, I see. Damn that prior.”
“I didn’t get to him in time,” she said. “But he’s only one. Open the doors.”
“My lady, he has your scent. You’re marked.”
Was that part true? She thought maybe it was. A collective memory passed from one wolf to the next as they changed. All imbued with her scent, whether they’d met her before or not.
“Then we have to draw him—destroy him before he flees. He knows Lorenzo and Marco, he’ll have recognized them. If Giuseppe escapes the castle, he’ll tell the others. And then my friends will be marked, too.”
“They might be marked already. The attack on the road, my lady.”
“Open the door!”
Martin was sluggish to obey. As he did, Lucrezia snapped her fingers at the mastiff.
Tullia rose. Her growl lifted in volume, and the fur rose on her back. Lucrezia drew her dagger with one hand and grabbed at Tullia’s collar with the other as they came down the nave toward the front doors.
“Not yet, girl. Not until I say.”
Tullia stiffened, as if she would tear away in disobedience.
“No. He’s too much for you alone. Do what I tell you.”
Martin stood in front of the open doors. He moved his shoulder to block Lucrezia, but she insisted on pushing past into the open air.
There was little space to waste within the walls of the chatelet, and other buildings enveloped the chapel on three sides. However, a tiny, moonlit courtyard opened in front of the chapel doors, surrounded by an arcade. Doorways along the covered passageways led to servant’s quarters, the lord’s manor, and the banquet hall.
Something moved on the opposite side of the arcade. Hidden in the darkness, out of the moonlight. It flowed like liquid from one shadow to the next. Tullia strained.
A bell clanged from one of the gate towers. A distant cry: “To arms! To arms!” Another shout answered a moment later, from above, on the walls of the chatelet, perhaps from the central tower that loomed above the chapel to their backs.
The small castle was aroused, men arming themselves. But nobody had found them yet. Only that thing moving around the arcade toward them. The dagger felt small in her hand.
“Back into the chapel,” Martin whispered. “He can’t enter holy ground.”
“Don’t be a fool. He can enter where he pleases.” Her grip tightened on her dog’s collar. “No, Tullia. No.”
The mastiff was pulling, almost strangling herself against the collar. One word and she’d leap into the shadows and grapple with the wolf. She might drive it off. But her mate Cicero, bigger, more powerful at the shoulders and jaws, had already fallen to these monsters.
The wolf’s eyes appeared first. Glowing with reflected moonlight, they stared back from the shadows. Then the head emerged, showing a massive snout, filled with gleaming teeth and a red tongue. The haunches appeared next.
“My God, it’s huge,” Martin said. “That’s Giuseppe? He must have been a giant.”
Was he? Nobody had mentioned that. Perhaps he’d grown.
Martin was a big man himself, and he’d faced down these beasts already. But his voice trembled and he looked like he wanted to throw down his sword and run for his life.
“Stand tall. We’re three. You and I have blades.”
And if they stood their ground, she thought, they might hold off the wolf from attacking for a few moments longer, until help found them.
The wolf stepped fully into the moonlight. It had thick, rust-colored fur, and a tail that was missing the last inch.
“Courtaud,” she whispered.
It bared its lips into a snarl. It was an animal, not a man, and yet so much more than a dumb beast. When she met its gaze, she could feel its thoughts scratching in her mind, like a whisper directly into her head. Not words, more like an impression. She’d heard that voice before—the night they’d attacked her in her home—and this time the thoughts were clearer, the words stronger.
You recognize me.
“Leave me be.”
She felt its thirst, its hunger. Its hatred. Deep and rasping and full of evil, like thoughts from the mind of Lucifer himself.
Your blood. Your flesh. Mine.
Martin’s face hung slack with horror, and she knew he could hear the wolf’s thoughts as well. “Get back, demon of hell.” His voice grew stronger. “I warn you.”
Tullia growled from deep in her chest.
Courtaud lifted his head and howled. To hear a wolf howl in the distance was enough to send a shiver down Lucrezia’s spine; this close, it turned her bones to jelly and her muscles to soft cheese.
Two more shapes slunk out of the darkness on either end of the courtyard. The larger of the two was nearly as big as Courtaud himself, but the smaller one terrified her more. He was long and lean and gray. Ribcage and hips showing. Red eyes, mouth drooling.
Hunger,
came the thoughts from the smaller wolf.
Must eat.
Three. Blessed Virgin, there are three of them.
“Giuseppe?” she said to the one who’d spoken in Italian. “Is that you? Do you remember the Boccaccio—Marco, Lorenzo? We came to help you. I am your master’s friend. By the Virgin—please listen.”
The three wolves came together now, slinking low, ready to spring forward. Lucrezia turned Tullia’s collar toward Courtaud. It was her only hope, that Tullia could hold off the leader of the pack while she and Martin grappled with the other two. A slim hope, barely there.
A door banged open on the far side of the courtyard. Men poured out, led by Lorenzo and Marco. There were half a dozen in all, every one of them armed with sword, dagger, or spear. They spotted the snarling, drooling beasts and hesitated. Then Lorenzo shouted and charged forward with a wave of the sword, and this spurred the others into action. Lucrezia gasped in relief.
Courtaud snarled with rage.
Away!
The three wolves sprang for the chapel, doors still open. As Martin turned, gaping, Tullia tore free from Lucrezia’s grip.
“Tullia! No!”
The dog chased the wolves down the nave, up the chancel, and was about to disappear into the rooms beyond. Lucrezia shouted after her, and the mastiff stopped at the last moment. She stood in place, barking in fury at the departing enemy. Lucrezia cried out in relief.
The brothers reached Lucrezia. Marco caught her in his arms as if afraid she would fall in a quivering heap to the ground.
“My God,” Lorenzo said to Marco as he helped hold her up. “Did you hear that? It spoke. It was warning the others.”
“Not out loud,” Marco said, his voice grim. “But I heard something. It was in my mind. Like the devil’s own voice.”
“We have to stop them,” she said, struggling free. “Close the gates. Man the walls. Do you hear me?”
“Of course, my lady,” Marco said. “But let us get you to your rooms and barricade the doors.”
“Let me go.” She struggled free from the well-meaning but oppressive grasp. “Listen to me. That was the lead wolf. Courtaud. Kill him and it ends.”
Marco blinked and opened his mouth to renew his protest, but Lorenzo seemed to understand. He shouted to the men-at-arms, who had thundered past and into the chapel before hesitating at the darkened passages beyond. Nobody would be anxious to go in there.
Quickly, they spread Lucrezia’s message, and moments later she found herself trailing the two brothers as they scrambled up the stone staircase to the walls of the chatelet. Together with Lord Nemours’s rapidly wakening guard—only a dozen men in total, Lorenzo said, since the king’s provost had returned to Paris with most of his retinue—they fanned across the walls behind the battlements. The entire fortress was a rectangle roughly a hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, with all of the buildings crowded within this space. A circular guard tower marked each corner. Two more towers fortified the gates.
“There!” a man shouted.
Lucrezia and the two brothers hurried to where he stood, pointing down. He hurled his spear. Cursed when it missed. Cried for another.
Two wolves swam across the moat. A third leaped from a window on the exterior stone wall. It broke the thin sheet of ice with a crack and swam after the others. The first wolf reached the edge of the moat and scrambled out. Without waiting for the other two, he disappeared across the grassy field into the darkness. Another man hurled a spear at the second wolf as it reached the side of the moat. It sailed long and buried itself in the turf. The second wolf pulled out of the moat and tore away, trailing water.
“A bow!” Lorenzo shouted. “Give me a bow for God’s sake.”
At last a man leaned over the edge with a crossbow in hand. He didn’t hurry. When the last wolf reached the edge, the guard released the bolt. It shot through the air and struck the wolf on the back. The beast howled and fell back into the water.
It struggled out. The shaft was buried in the animal’s back but it was still going to get away. But the guard had been quickly but calmly reloading his crossbow. As the wolf regained its feet, he fired a second time. This time, the bolt hit the wolf in the throat. It fell and didn’t get up. The men on the walls cheered.