“Between the plague and the wolves I thought it prudent that his highness leave as well. I sent him under guard south to Fontainebleau, then thought I would escort my family to our castle where they’d be safe.”
Lucrezia found this news troubling. How was that possible? The wolves had been out here, attacking the chatelet, surrounding it at night with their howls.
“How many have they killed?” she asked.
“At least a dozen so far. We cannot find their lair. Either they’re hiding somewhere within the city or someone is letting them in deliberately. I have difficulty reconciling either possibility.”
A deep frown settled onto Lorenzo’s face. “And how many wolves are there if they can terrorize the city and attack travelers on the road at the same time?”
“What do you mean?” Nemours demanded. “Be clear, man.”
“They chased us down the road two nights ago,” Lorenzo said. “Then they attacked your castle. Killed one of your men, and a prisoner in your dungeon. Well, the prisoner died in the fight.”
“Was this the man we caught running naked across the estate?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Who the devil was he, anyway?”
“Name was Giuseppe Veronese—he was one of our agents in Paris before this madness came over him. I am Signore Lorenzo Boccaccio and this is my brother Marco. We are from a noble Florentine family.”
Nemours glanced back over his shoulder to his wife. She was a handsome, middle-aged woman wearing a fur-lined robe in rich lavender, with a dress below that was more like a houppelande, with full, dagged sleeves. She wore a heart-shaped headdress.
The king’s provost gestured for Lorenzo and Marco to follow him up the road. Lucrezia took it on herself to join, as did Montguillon. Nemours gave the prior a hard look, but didn’t object.
“I don’t want to talk in front of my wife. She’s terrified already. Convinced these wolves will come and deflower my daughters in the night.”
“It’s blood they want,” Lorenzo said, “not a child’s maidenhead.”
“Yes, and you know something of this, don’t you?” Then Nemours turned his penetrating gaze on Montguillon. “And I’ll bet this Blackfriar knows something, too. Out with it—there are wolves on the road, and I don’t feel safe, not even at the head of a company of mounted knights.”
Lorenzo started to speak, but Marco jumped in first. “We came to Paris to search for our missing agent. When the prior told us he was being held in your castle, and that he may have something to do with the wolves in the city, we decided—”
“Excuse me, sir,” Nemours interrupted, “but I don’t know you. Or you,” he said to Montguillon, “except by reputation. Let me hear it from the lady.”
Lucrezia told him the truth. Not all of it, of course—she wouldn’t confess her own role. But she admitted that her husband hadn’t drowned in the Seine, as claimed by one of her faithful servants, but had turned. Had become a
loup-garou
. The wolves had spoken to her. The pack leader was a friend of her husband’s, an Occitanian named Courtaud. She wasn’t sure if her husband was alive or not, but the wolf pack was growing. She told how she had found information in one of her books. Rigord had turned himself willingly into a wolf. But due to an error in his incantation, he couldn’t turn back.
“This is witchcraft,” Nemours said. “Have you touched this evil, my lady?”
Montguillon hissed air between his teeth. Lorenzo spoke up at once.
“The lady is pure. The prior has even signed a document stating her complete innocence.”
“Yes, of course,” Nemours said. “Please excuse me, my lady. You would never dabble in such things. And one only has to look at your face to see that you are untainted by anything evil.”
“You are too kind, my lord,” she said.
Lorenzo outlined their intention to return to the city to fight the wolves. This time Nemours didn’t tell him to be quiet, but listened intently. When the story was done, the provost shifted in his saddle and looked uncertain. When he spoke, it seemed to be with some reluctance.
“I am loathe to abandon my family. Especially if, as you say, the wolves can penetrate the walls. But my duty is to my sovereign. If we don’t silence these fiends, the streets of Paris will be bathed with blood. I shall accompany you to the city.”
It was high, flowery language, the way they spoke at the court, but Lucrezia appreciated his resolve. Nemours wasn’t a coward. She nodded her head in quiet acknowledgment.
He turned and shouted instructions to the others. His wife protested, but he spoke over her. There were some thirty men-at-arms milling on the road, ten of which Nemours ordered to accompany his wife to the chatelet, with the rest returning with Nemours and the others to Paris. Among this latter group were the three men who had followed the smaller party from the chatelet that morning.
A few minutes later, the groups separated. Lady Nemours’s face was pinched and she and her daughters kept glancing over their shoulder at the larger group as they departed.
“Thank God for that,” Nemours said to Lucrezia a few minutes down the road.
“My lord?”
“You don’t know how good it is to be free of that woman and her incessant worrying. Oh, I know, sometimes there’s reason to worry, and this is one of those times. But oh, how her voice gives me a headache. Not like yours, my lady. When you speak it is like a silver bell. And your accent is quite delightful.”
Lucrezia glanced at Marco and Lorenzo out of the corner of her eye. Marco was scowling, but Lorenzo passed a wink to Martin, who stifled a smile. Her servant was used to such things and recognized when flattery was backed with motive. Nemours’s sweet words held no illicit intent.
They rode without speaking for a stretch, the silence broken by hooves crunching through snow and horses blowing, tired after so many hours on the road. The first to speak were the Dominicans, who conversed in Latin about some theological point that didn’t interest her. The guards began to chat in thickly accented French. Finally, the brothers from Florence spoke in the pleasant, harmonic Italian of Tuscany, but it was financial business—the depressed price of peppercorns due to manipulation by Venetian merchants.
Lorenzo glanced her direction from time to time, clearly tiring of the discussion with his brother. She wanted him to break free and come tell her more stories from the Decameron. Or she could practice the verse from Ovid she’d been committing to memory. Anything to relieve the mental and physical exhaustion that made her droop in the saddle.
But it was Lord Nemours who drew near to her again.
“What do you think about the prior?” he asked in a low voice, meant only for her ears.
“A man of God. Rigid, but sincere. He thinks he’s fighting for God—I suppose he is, in his own way.”
“I don’t like him.”
This surprised her. “I always heard you were a devout man.”
“Yes, but I’m devout in my own way.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“I thought you might. And do you? Dislike him, I mean?”
She thought about the way he’d accused her of witchcraft, how he’d burned two women at the stake. How he’d ordered Lorenzo beaten. Anger bubbled to the surface and it took effort to fight it down.
“It’s not the time to harbor grudges. We might need the prior and I know he needs us.”
“So you trust him?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “I trust him to fight the wolves, but after that, I fully expect him to turn on me, no matter what he has or hasn’t promised.”
“We shall see,” Nemours said. He raised his voice loud enough for others to hear. “Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about how to face these brutes. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing your enemy but not knowing his strength. But you say they’re only men in wolf clothes.”
“I’d rather face regular wolves,” she said. “Or men. Not both at once.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve got the strength of wolves, but the cunning of a man. And they’re evil the way only men can be.”
“We’ll be in the city soon enough. I can draw on as many arms as I require. And it’s still the middle of the day—they won’t attack us on the open road in daylight.”
Lorenzo drew his horse next to the provost. His brow furrowed with worry. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, my lord. I think we’re being hunted even now.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Lorenzo pulled into the lead where he could get a better view of the road and the surrounding fields. His horse was happy to push ahead. The winter air was cold, clear, and quiet, but his unease had been growing for the past fifteen minutes. He saw nothing amiss.
So why did he feel unsettled? And what about his horse? She had stiffened beneath him while Lucrezia and Lord Nemours chatted on the road. It was the slightest tensing of her shoulder muscles, a tug at the reins to pick up the pace. She was a strong gray mare and had carried him well. Like the other mounts, the horse had begun the day at a good pace, but began to limp toward their goal as hours spent on the frozen road took their toll. And so he was surprised at her renewed energy.
It had been a long, tedious journey. He’d spoken to his brother about trade, and for a time he drifted back to engage Montguillon to try to pry loose information about the wolves. But the prior was gray from his illness and struggling to stay in the saddle. He waved off questions. Simon claimed to know nothing. He shot looks at the prior as he said this, and Lorenzo wondered if this were true or if he were simply afraid to answer without Montguillon’s approval.
Later, when Lorenzo tired of re-imagining the feel of Lucrezia’s body pressed against his, he thought about how to defeat the wolves. He was sure that a strong enough force could defeat them, but how to lure them into open battle? They were clever beasts; they may be bold enough to attack armed men on the road, but they would be more cautious inside the city, where they could be trapped in alleys or attacked by archers from open windows.
“What’s wrong up there?” Nemours called as Lorenzo continued in the lead.
He scanned the road ahead. Still nothing. Maybe he was wrong.
Lorenzo shrugged and let his horse drift back with the others. The fear of attack faded, but didn’t disappear entirely. Gradually, the horse relaxed as well.
Over the next hour, woodland and meadow gave way to farms, then villages. In late afternoon, they crested a hillock and caught a view of the walls and towers of Paris, still several miles distant. A haze hung over the city, the fires from twenty thousand hearths, fighting the bitter chill. The only time he remembered such cold was a winter spent in Stockholm and Danzig as a boy during a trade mission to the Hanseatic League.
Lucrezia, riding sidesaddle, caught up to him as they approached a monastery that sat in a field to the left of the highway. Tullia ran alongside, tongue lolling. The poor dog looked exhausted. A mastiff wasn’t like a sheepdog that could follow its flocks thirty miles in a day. It was a stocky animal not built for long runs.
“I need to stop at the abbey,” she said.
“Why now? We’re so close.”
“That is Saint-Denis. They took me in when my carriage couldn’t carry me through the snow. They loaned me horses and a sledge—I lost them both. And I abandoned my own team and carriage. Martin will attend me. You ride on ahead with the others.”
Lorenzo eyed the abbey with a frown. Saint-Denis sprawled in a field to the left of the road, a quarter-mile in front of them. Small outbuildings—a water mill, housing for the lay brothers, and a blacksmith shop—clung to the exterior walls like mushrooms sprouting from a fallen tree trunk. The gates hung open, and smoke drifted skyward from chimneys within the abbey. A few sheep milled about on the muddy path that led from the highway to the gates.
Meanwhile, the horses were breaking into a trot down the road, as if anticipating a final run to the safety of Paris. If Lucrezia stopped, the company would shortly leave her far behind.
“Hold up,” Nemours cried at his men from the rear. “We’re still too far out and they’re exhausted. Bring it home at a walk.”
“It will only be a few minutes,” Lucrezia told Lorenzo. “I’ll tell the abbot what happened and promise to return in a few days to settle matters. Then I’ll catch up to you on the road.”
Before he could protest, she called to Martin and the two of them began pulling ahead of the company. Lorenzo went back for Marco. He was telling his brother Lucrezia’s plans when Nemours caught up with them.
“What is Lady d’Lisle about?” Nemours asked, sounding irritated. “There are wolves on the road. Tell her to come back here at once. We’ll ride in together.”
“She’s not riding with us to Paris,” Lorenzo said. “She wants to stop at Saint-Denis.” He explained what Lucrezia was planning.
“And she insists on doing it now?” Nemours said with a grunt. “Doesn’t that woman see the danger?”
Lucrezia and Martin were well ahead of the group now, with Tullia jogging along several paces behind.
Nemours gave orders to follow her up to the abbey. They turned off the highway, and Lucrezia turned as Lorenzo and Marco caught up with her. Worry pinched her face.
“What’s wrong?” Lorenzo asked.
“It’s so quiet. Something is wrong.”
“Were you expecting trouble? Is that why you wanted to stop?”
She didn’t answer his question. “Where are the lay brothers? Why are those sheep milling about with nobody to tend them? The blacksmith shop is quiet—there’s no smoke coming out of the furnace chimney.”
“But there’s plenty of smoke coming from inside the abbey,” Marco said.
“Too much of it,” she said.
Lorenzo saw she was right. It billowed upward in several places, more than there had been only moments earlier. The smoke carried a pungent odor as it settled in the air, like burning paper and pitch, not the cozy wood smell of a small cook fire.
“What is going on here?” Nemours said.
“Back to the road,” Lucrezia said. “It’s the wolves.”
“Are you certain? Where is that prior? He would know.” Nemours looked behind him. “Father Montguillon! Come up here.”
Montguillon and Simon had been content to linger behind most of the day, keeping to themselves and their own council. Now they were forcing their mounts into the center of the riders, even before Nemours had called for them. The prior was growling for men to move out of his way. His voice was pinched and anxious.