“Dear Lord,” Marco said. “Look at that.”
Behind the company, a trio of wolves stood in the road where the highway met the path to the abbey gates. Another wolf stood on a stone wall marking a crofter’s field just off the shoulder. It lifted back its head and let out a long, moaning howl.
Marco hissed. “It’s the red one.”
Courtaud.
The company of men and horses milled in the path with the abbey in front of them and the wolves blocking their return to the road at the rear. The trio of wolves trotted toward them, while the bigger wolf dropped its head and stared. His eyes gleamed.
“Quickly, into the abbey,” Montguillon said. “Bar the gates.”
“No,” Nemours said. “Back to the highway. Draw your swords,” he commanded his men. “We’ll run them down.”
The guards obeyed as the company turned to face the threat to their rear. Lorenzo and Marco were already drawing their swords. Lucrezia reached into her robe and drew her dagger. The sidesaddle, with all its ladylike appearance, now seemed rather foolish. Her legs dangled off the left side in an inviting target. And it limited her mobility. Lorenzo cursed himself for not insisting she sit astride her mount as she’d requested.
Then Lorenzo looked behind to see five more wolves emerging from the open gates of the abbey. Blood dripped from their muzzles. The sheep that had been milling about the fields caught one glimpse of the wolves and scattered in all directions.
“Forward,” Nemours said. The company bunched into formation, nervous horses stepping high, tossing heads. “Slowly. You in the back, keep those devils off our tails.”
The snow on the path between the road and the abbey had already been tramped down by feet and hooves before their approach, and now it was doubly packed down. The horses found their footing and swiftly closed the distance to the wolves.
“Stay together!” Nemours said.
As the riders approached, the three wolves turned and sprang from the road. Together with Courtaud, they leaped to safety over the wall. Rather than chase them into the fields, Nemours wisely ordered them forward. The instant the party was past, Courtaud and his smaller group joined the five emerging from the abbey, already breaking into long, loping strides.
Back on the road, Nemours ordered them into a brisk trot. No panicking, only a steady ride toward the safety of the city.
The wolves paced them for about ten minutes, then, without warning, charged. They came up snarling and howling into the middle of the horses. Lorenzo heard a shout. He turned to see the two guards at the rear struggling to get their mounts under control. One of them, a short, stocky fellow named Bruno, who rode a roan-colored gelding, found himself separated from the others. Wolves swarmed him.
Lorenzo shouted to get Nemours’s attention, but it was already too late. A wolf leaped onto the roan horse’s back. Bruno twisted in the saddle trying to get his sword up and ram it into the animal’s gut. But the wolf grabbed his sword arm in its jaws and shoved off. Man and beast flew from the back of the horse and slammed to the ground.
The wolves fell on him. As they howled and snarled, the man’s horse fled down the road, eyes rolling back in terror. It galloped riderless toward the city. Bruno screamed and flailed. The others could only draw up and watch.
“Break them apart,” Nemours shouted. “Run them down.”
Most of the company turned to obey, but the Dominicans and one of the two remaining guards kept riding toward Paris. Instead of ten riders, they were suddenly down to six and the mastiff. Martin shouted a warning.
Half a dozen more wolves sprang over stone walls and poured onto the road. They fought their way into the larger pack, still tearing at Bruno, whose screams died. Courtaud snarled and bit at haunches to get them back into the attack, but they were too busy fighting over the body.
“Bloody hell,” Nemours cursed. He was looking back and forth between the wolves and his deserting guard and the fleeing Dominicans and it was hard to tell what left him more agitated. “Back to the city, all of you.”
They took advantage of the distracted wolves to put distance between themselves and the carnage. Moments later, the wolves came pouring down the road after them, the hunt renewed. The riders reached the houses and ramshackle buildings on the outskirts of Paris. Peasants stared as they approached, but when they saw the wolves, they threw down bundles of sticks, grabbed the hands of small children, and barricaded themselves in mud and thatch huts.
Lorenzo looked back. The wolves were closing the gap.
“Tullia!” Lucrezia screamed.
The dog had fallen several yards behind. Most of the pack continued after the riders, but two wolves veered away to attack her. They paced Tullia on either side. One leaped for her back. The mastiff fell, and the two animals came up rolling. The wolf yelped and struggled away. Tullia emerged with blood on her muzzle.
Lucrezia jerked back on her reins. The horse tossed its head, balking, but she got it around and charged at the two wolves.
“Marco!” Lorenzo shouted.
His brother turned, wide-eyed. Without another word, the two brothers veered around and galloped after her. The others pounded away toward Paris. Nemours was shouting at them to turn around and help, but only Martin followed him back. The last guard fled for his life.
The wolves surrounded Lucrezia, blocking her from the dog. One leaped at her where her legs hung over the sidesaddle, but a deft kick struck it in the jaw and sent it sprawling. And then Lorenzo and Marco were into the fray. The pack had been so intent on their new victim that they didn’t notice the new attackers until they were upon them.
Lorenzo leaned out of the saddle and swung his sword. It drew blood. A wolf yelped and shot away from the pounding hooves. Then Martin and Lord Nemours came storming in. Swords flashed and bit hard.
Courtaud stood to one side, watching, not fighting. Suddenly, he raised his head and howled. At once, the attack stopped. Wolves ran or limped away down the road. One lay in the snow, bleeding heavily, trying to gain its feet. Lorenzo leaped from the saddle and thrust his sword between its ribs. It howled, flopped once, then lay still. Lorenzo looked around, gasping for air.
He could hardly believe their fortune. There had been fifteen of the beasts, if not more, against four men, Lucrezia, and an exhausted, wounded mastiff. Watching them flee, he expected them to turn and charge in with a new attack, but the sound of a trumpet caught his ears.
He looked toward the city as he climbed back into the saddle. The walls were no more than a quarter-mile distant now, and figures watched from behind the crenelations on the walls. One of them blew his trumpet again, a long, clear note. Lorenzo realized through the pounding of his own pulse that it had been sounding for several seconds.
A company of riders galloped from the city walls, twenty strong. They lowered lances with steel tips that glinted in the late afternoon sunlight.
Lord Nemours pulled up beside Lorenzo. He was panting, and his face was flushed in spite of the cold. A long tear ran down his tabard, and blood dripped from his arm, but it wasn’t his own.
“I don’t know who sounded the alarm,” Nemours said, “but I swear before God that I will give that man a knighthood. As for those worthless guards of mine, I’ll see them both hanged, damn them.”
“Don’t judge them too harshly,” Lucrezia said. “They couldn’t control their mounts.”
She had dropped to the ground to cradle Tullia in her arms. The dog was exhausted, but uninjured.
“You had no problem controlling yours. If a woman—” He stopped. “But for your sake, my lady, I will see them flogged and their pay docked five livres, which I will donate to the Hôtel Dieu in your name to care for the orphans and widows of this plague. My God, you are a brave woman. I’ve never seen the like.”
“You are too kind.”
Martin jumped down to help her back into the saddle.
Nemours grinned at Lorenzo and Marco. “Please tell me that one of you hot-blooded Italians is courting this fine lady. Widow or not, she’d make a fine wife for any man.”
Without waiting for an answer, Nemours turned to Lorenzo. “And you were right, my friend. They
did
attack us on the open road. Those devils fear nothing.”
Lorenzo was still watching the departing wolves, who disappeared into a copse of trees that marked a stretch of broken forest several hundred yards away.
“They’re getting more dangerous by the day,” he said. “Will you help us destroy them?”
“Yes!” Nemours slapped his sword in his gloved hand as the riders approached. “And when I am done slaying them for the glory of God, I shall take up the cross and lead a new crusade against the Saracens.”
The provost hurried up to greet the company riding out from the gate. Lorenzo shared an amused look with his brother. A crusade? Never mind that nobody had waged a holy war in generations, or that the Ottomans controlled the eastern Mediterranean, Nemours seemed quite sincere.
“All the same,” Marco said, “I’ll take his help over that bastard Montguillon’s. He rode off, the coward.”
“We’ll need both their help,” she said. “And the monks were unarmed. They couldn’t have helped anyway.”
“Like Nemours said, you really
are
too kind,” Lorenzo said.
Marco nodded. “Maybe he could have, maybe he couldn’t have, but he didn’t bother to try.”
Because of Tullia, exhausted and barely able to stumble forward, the brothers brought up the rear as they escorted Lucrezia the final stretch to the city walls. Wooden plague panels sat on posts on either side of the road as it reached the barbican, with its raised gate. Skulls grinned from the panels, warning of the pox that was sweeping over the city.
“At last we enter the protective womb of Paris,” Lucrezia said dryly as they passed through the barbican and into the city. “What could possibly touch us within the safety of her walls?”
Behind, the portcullis clanked to the ground, sealing them inside.
Chapter Twenty-three
The group broke apart inside the city walls. Nemours stopped at the walls to brief the guards and order the sergeants to send out a large, well-armed hunting party to pursue the wolves. He also said he wanted peasants gathered from the surrounding countryside and brought within the
enceinte
. Everyone seemed to know that the beasts could come and go at will, but they would tear through those cottages with ease.
Montguillon and Simon departed for Saint-Jacques without so much as an adieu. Lorenzo suggested that he, Marco, and Lucrezia follow the friars. But first, he told Lucrezia, he wanted to secure her house. When Marco agreed she decided not to fight it.
She sent Martin to the Cité with orders to fetch Demetrius from where the brothers had left their servant at Giuseppe’s manor. The two men would secure the d’Lisle manor house. He left with Tullia in his care.
A few furtive souls darted from alley to alley, and a man ran by with a basket, but the streets were largely empty. Half a dozen people lay in front of a parish church, wrapped in blankets, their faces covered with open, oozing sores. One of the stronger ones moaned for alms as they approached and Lorenzo dropped a few silver pennies, being careful not to touch the man’s flesh or breathe the bad air coming off his body. The church itself was chained shut.
“They shouldn’t lock the doors,” Lucrezia said. “Where else to go when you’re dying if not your parish priest?”
“What about their own homes?” Marco said. “Get out of this awful cold.”
“These are the ones without homes. For every one you see there are fifty dying in their own beds.”
“All this in the last two days?” Lorenzo said. “It’s like the Black Death.”
The traffic picked up deeper into the city as they approached Saint-Jacques, but most of the mule-drawn carts carried dead plague victims. Hunched men in black drove the carts, wearing rags wrapped around their mouths and noses, and hiding their faces behind hoods. The quiet and the clomp clomp of hooves sent a chill down Lucrezia’s spine.
Down one alley, a priest with a long, gray-streaked beard and a tattered cassock cried repentance at the surrounding houses. This was God’s punishment he said. For war, for avarice, for the
fillettes
—harlots—who copulated openly on the Rue de Glatigny.
“Repent!” the man cried when he spotted the three riders. “For the hour of the Lord is at hand.”
He was thin and cold, and in spite of his zeal, she felt sorry to see him out in this weather wearing only a light robe.
“You’ll catch your death out here, Father,” she said.
“We shall all die,” the priest said. “A pestilence emerges from the bowels of the earth, and the devil has sent forth his ravening wolves. Cast off your fine clothing and cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes. The city shall be destroyed—no two stones shall lay one atop the other.”
The priest grabbed at Marco’s cloak where it fell around his boots. Marco kicked his hand away.
“Don’t touch me, old man.” He sounded shaken.
They left the raving priest behind and approached the priory of Saint-Jacques. It had only been an hour since they’d traveled with the Dominicans, but upon their arrival, neither Montguillon nor Simon were anywhere to be seen. The subprior made them wait in the chilly courtyard while he went for instructions. Nobody would take their horses, so they stood holding their reins and stomping their feet against the cold. Latin chants came through the doorway of the chapel, the iron-bound doors perversely open in spite of the weather. Heaven forbid the friars find a little comfort from the elements inside. Still no Montguillon.
“What the devil is keeping him?” Marco asked. “I’ll bet he’s taking a hot bath.”
“A hot bath?” Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “More likely stripping out of his hair shirt and having Simon break the ice on a bucket specially prepared for maximum discomfort.”
“He wears a hair shirt?” This time it was Marco’s eyebrows that went up.
“In fact, he tried to convince me to wear one as well. Henri Montguillon is a devotee of the mortification of the flesh. You see why I wasn’t so keen to put myself under his command.”