Lucrezia took a deep breath. When she let it out, a deep sadness came into her eyes. Lorenzo’s heart fell. A small, sharp stone of despair settled in his gut.
“Is it my brother? It is, isn’t it? I know he wants you, and he’s a better match, he—”
“Lorenzo, no. It’s not Marco. He’s a fine man, but I don’t love him and I don’t want to be his wife.”
He shouldn’t force an answer, but he needed to know. Like a sharp wound, the sooner the blade came out, the sooner he could struggle past the pain and begin to heal.
“Is that what you think about me, too?” he asked. “A fine man, but you don’t love me? Is that what it is?”
“Lorenzo,” she said again, more firmly this time, as if coming to a decision. He’d dropped her hands, but she took his. “Wolves are trying to kill me. My husband might still be alive.”
“The church would annul your marriage. He gave himself to Satan.”
“I know. But it’s all hanging over our heads. One of us might die tonight, or both. If not, if we survive . . . ”
“Yes?”
“Then I will consider your generous proposal. I promise you that. And it may very well be that my answer will be yes. Indeed, I suspect it will.”
Lucrezia continued walking, and Lorenzo followed with his heart soaring, happy to be behind so he could smile widely and without embarrassment.
Now, there was only the small matter of the wolves.
✛
They found Lord Nemours in a fine mood. The provost strode up and down his great hall, his cape flapping and making the torches flicker. Shadows danced along the walls. He roared his approval when a servant ushered Lucrezia and Lorenzo into the room.
“Behold, the flower of this city,” he cried. “This is what you’re fighting for, men. And welcome to you also, our um, Italian gentleman. Welcome, friend!”
A score of men-at-arms joined him in strapping on breastplates and cuissarts and jambarts to protect their legs. Pages and envoys came running and left as Nemours shouted instructions and received messages above the din.
“Where’s Rogerin, that old crow? What? The pox? Damn! Has someone summoned Montmorency? Well then, where the devil is he? How about the Lord Mayor—is he going to send us some men or not? Well of course he needs to man the walls, the fool. But what about the men who aren’t working, get them out of the taverns and whorehouses and put them to work.”
As he spoke, he worked his way through the men toward the two newcomers. He clapped Lorenzo on the shoulder and kissed Lucrezia’s hand. “My lady.”
Lorenzo watched the excitement with growing doubt. It looked like Nemours meant to field an army—that would be easy enough for the wolves to avoid.
“We’re not as strong as we should be,” Nemours said. “Hundreds down with the pox, some even dead. Reminds me of when I fought John Talbot at Harfluer. Four men in five struck down with the bloody flux, but at least those English dogs were suffering the same fate. Don’t suppose we can count on that here, eh?”
“How many men can you raise?” Lorenzo asked.
“Five hundred by dusk. If we don’t catch them this evening, I can promise double by nightfall tomorrow. But I think they’ll attack us tonight, the way they set upon us outside the city walls. And it will be dark soon—they won’t expect us to be prepared, not so quickly.”
“My lord,” Lorenzo said. “May I offer some small counsel?”
“From you? Of course I’ll listen to your counsel. The Italians are nothing if not cunning, and the Florentines are the most devious of all.”
“I
hope
that’s not our reputation,” Lorenzo said.
“Not your only reputation. There’s money of course, and everything it buys. Oh, and art, and all those Roman ruins you have lying around everywhere you stick a spade. And Italian women are known for their beauty,” he added with a wink in Lucrezia’s direction. “The point is, you know how to slip a knife in when a man isn’t looking. So you think you have a plan that’s better than marching up and down the streets, peering in dark alleys, is that it?”
“I do. May we speak in private, the three of us?”
“Of course. And I know just the place—I’ll show you my plans.”
First, Nemours shouted some instructions to his sergeants. Then he led Lorenzo and Lucrezia out of the great hall and up a winding stone staircase into the tower of his manor. A small watch room sat at the top and he shooed out the two men playing dice in front of a fire pit while they kept a casual watch over the darkening city.
A chill gust flapped their cloaks as they stepped onto the tower roof, protected behind a crenelated wall that kept them from falling. They drew in their cloaks.
Paris stretched below them. The spires of churches and abbeys thrust into the gray sky. Houses, chapels, and manors pushed against each other and crowded the lanes and alleys all the way to the ramparts of the city walls, which enveloped the city in a rough circle that enclosed both banks of the river. Every sixty yards or so—the range of an arrow in flight—a tower reinforced the wall like a stone fist. Inside the walls, the Seine was an icy ribbon curling around the Cité. Smoke sputtered from thousands of chimneys, but it was clear up here, the air frigid but sweet smelling. Not so much as a hint of the foul odors and miasmas that drifted from the filthy river, slaughterhouses, and open sewers that polluted rich and poor districts alike.
“One would think the Lord Mayor could keep them outside the
enceinte
,” Nemours grumbled, “but that’s apparently too much to ask. So we’ll concentrate on the Cité. I sent fifty men to guard each of the bridges. The river is frozen through the length of the city, but I posted archers at the barbicans and at the guard towers all along the banks. When they attack, we’ll be ready. We’ll throw them back and then hunt them back to the gates of the city.”
“Do you have enough men for that?” Lorenzo asked.
“My young Italian, a general never goes to battle with enough men. That’s the reality of war. But I have sufficient to win this one. All it takes is one man to sound the alarm, then we’ll give chase on foot. Five patrols of twenty men each on the island, and another ten patrols throughout the rest of Paris. Wherever they attack, we’ll close in and surround them. Swords, spears, crossbows—no mercy until every one of those brutes is dead.”
He gave a confident nod, and added, “Now, don’t you think that’s a solid plan?”
Lorenzo chose his words carefully. “Perhaps too solid.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re not animals, or not
merely
animals, rather. They’ve got human cunning. They’ll see your forces and either hold off on their attack or attack where you’re weakest. This is a plan for repelling an English army, not for defeating these creatures. Some of them might be able to shift to human form and back again. They may even receive aid from other forces. Someone to strengthen them, to whisper orders in their ears.”
“You mean the devil?” Nemours said, his voice low, as if saying it too loud would draw the very attention of hell.
“We don’t know,” Lucrezia said. “But they can breach the city walls somehow, even cross the Seine whether or not it’s frozen. Your steward posted sentries, but two wolves gained entrance to your chatelet to attack us.”
“So my plan is too open?”
“Perhaps,” Lorenzo said. “What I’m thinking is more subtle.”
“Ah, there it is. The Italian cunning.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then what about my men? Without them, how will you repel the wolves from the Cité?”
“I don’t plan to repel them,” Lorenzo said. “I plan to lure them in and trap them. We’ll turn the Cité into a wolf pit. And that’s when your men will surround them and destroy them.”
Nemours stood tall and his eyes gleamed. He slammed a mailed fist against the stone wall.
“Yes!”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Back in the street, Lucrezia reached into her cloak. She drew out a small brass box, barely large enough to hold a signet ring. She held it out for Lorenzo to take. He turned it over in his hand and looked up at her, questioning.
“The tip of Courtaud’s tail,” she said. “With any luck that will get the bigger pack on your trail so they’ll leave me alone.”
He still didn’t understand. “Then where are you going?”
“Home. I’m going to wait in Rigord’s library with my dagger and my blood-stained sheath and wait for my husband to find me.”
“We’ll stay together. It’s safer that way.”
“Safer, but less effective. Courtaud’s pack is bigger. They’ve been outside the walls, growing, while my husband is inside the city, killing and hiding. Rigord will be afraid to challenge the larger pack.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “But it fits everything we know. Courtaud, terrorizing the road, coming in for swift assaults, then fleeing. Meanwhile, murders continue in the city. That has to be Rigord, don’t you think?”
“And you’re going to confront him in his own home, where he knows his way around? That’s madness.”
“I won’t be alone. Martin and your man Demetrius will be there. Tullia. My other servants. And Nemours will send me some of his men. They’ll be hiding. And ready.”
“I won’t leave you,” Lorenzo said. “Let Marco face the larger pack. My place is with you.”
She shook her head, and there was such flinty determination in her eyes that he knew she wouldn’t budge. That was what he loved about her. If she had been the demure, agreeing type, he would have been infatuated, of course—she was too beautiful not to catch his eye. But Lucrezia was a woman who could stand up to the Dominicans, who would face wolves and not shake in terror. But only this once, wouldn’t she let him be the protector?
“Marco can’t handle the prior by himself,” Lucrezia said. “And if Nemours comes charging out, waving his sword like some crusader, you’ll need to manage him, too. That brute Courtaud will give you as much as you can take and more.”
Before he could answer, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. “May God be with you this night, my dear.”
Then she swept up her cloak and turned her back on him. When she rounded the corner, Lorenzo made his way toward the cathedral of Notre Dame. By the time he arrived, the soft gray of twilight had faded, replaced by the cold, hard blackness of night.
The streets were deserted. A dog barked in the distance.
✛
The might of Notre Dame frowned down at Lorenzo as he approached the cathedral doors. A row of stone kings marched across the front of the facade, beneath a rose window that gleamed with reflected light from two torch-bearing men-at-arms who waited by the front doors. Like hands clasped in prayer, three arched portals marked the entrance into the cathedral. The men drew swords as he approached. He announced himself and entered.
It was a strange army that gathered in the nave, beneath the soaring ceiling, supported by pillars of stone. Henri Montguillon and his young friar Simon led a group of a dozen monks, armed with staves. One of them was the old monk who had beaten Lorenzo on the soles of his feet, his legs, and his buttocks. He didn’t look so intimidating now, stoop-shouldered and wiry, but he was a mean old bastard. He’d get his blows in.
The bishop of the cathedral was a man named Enguerrand de Moray, which sounded more like the name of a warring baron or knight than it did a man of God. He led several priests, armed with swords, and carried a crosier himself, with a heavy metal crook at the end. His primary goal seemed to be to protect the cathedral itself, its reliquary with holy relics from the saints, as well as the treasury—the mitres, liturgical vestments, cruets, chalices, and other sacred and valuable objects under the bishop’s stewardship. De Moray scowled at Montguillon, as if he cooperated with the Dominicans only under duress. The prior must be feared in the city, to cow even a bishop.
Closer to the choir, Lord Nemours gave instructions to several knights and other men-at-arms. They carried pikes, spears, and swords. The men engaged in a vigorous debate, with Nemours’s voice occasionally booming over the others.
A few minutes after Lorenzo arrived, Marco pushed open the heavy oak doors and strode into the nave.
“Well, Brother, you’ve done it,” Marco said as he approached, his voice echoing in the vast, empty space. “I pray to God that she’ll be safe.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“I know it.”
“You sent Demetrius to her house?” Lorenzo asked.
“Yes, and anyone else who could handle a sword. She’ll be well protected. Still, I’d rather we were there or she were here.”
“If the lady isn’t coming,” Montguillon said, making his way from where he’d been speaking quietly with his monks, and followed by Simon, “then how are we going to lure the wolves?”
“He’s right,” Marco said. His hand rubbed nervously at the brass hilt of his sword, but he didn’t draw the weapon. “How can you be sure that both packs won’t attack her and not us?”
“I can’t be sure,” Lorenzo admitted. “Rigord Ducy will seek her at home—Lucrezia was reasonably sure of that, and I trust her. His blood stains her dagger sheath. As for the red wolf, I expect this to draw him.”
He reached into his coin purse and removed the small brass box that Lucrezia had given him. An enamel cross covered the lid, surrounded by geometric designs. Like something brought by a crusader from Acre or Jerusalem, Christian but Oriental at the same time. It lay cool and heavy in his hand, the relief smooth, as if worn down by hundreds of palms over the centuries.
Lorenzo flicked the catch with his thumb. A nub of tail no longer than the length of his pinkie finger lay curled at the bottom. Dried blood matted the ruddy fur. A dank animal smell drifted into the air. Lorenzo’s hand shuddered and the tail jumped about as if alive.
Simon held out his torch and leaned in for a better look. As if unable to contain himself, he stretched out a finger with his other hand, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
Montguillon’s breath came out in a hiss. “Don’t touch it!”
He slapped Simon’s hand down and the younger friar blinked with surprise.
“Now put it away,” Montguillon insisted.
Lorenzo snapped the box shut. He refastened the clasp.