The prior glowered. “An evil thing, it should be cast into the fire. Hand it over.”
“It’s our bait—I won’t give it up to be burned.”
“I won’t burn it, not until after we’ve sent these fiends to hell.”
“Then what do you want it for?”
“You’re too weak, Brother, to be tempted by such a thing. It’s safer in my keeping.”
Lorenzo stared at him, suspicious. “I’m not going to touch the cursed thing. As for the friar,” he added with a sharp look at the younger man, “if Simon is drawn to touch it, maybe you should worry about him, and not me.”
He tucked the box into his coin purse.
Lord Nemours’s group dispersed. The provost himself strode down the center aisle from the direction of the choir.
“My men will hide in the transepts until I give the command,” Nemours said. “Twenty more are concealed in the cathedral close and will rush in to surround the building and prevent escape until the city watch arrives. I have two men in each bell tower to watch for a signal from the walls of the Cité.”
“What kind of signal?” Lorenzo asked.
“Very simple. A waving torch. It means the wolves have been spotted crossing the Seine. There’s only one door open into this place. I have two men guarding it. They’ll feign a defense of the church, then flee inside, crying for help.”
“Failing to secure the doors and letting the wolves enter,” Marco said. “Yes, I like it.”
“I’ll have men there, and there,” Nemours said, pointing to the shadows in the front corners of the cathedral. “As soon as the wolves are inside, they’ll swing around and barricade the doors shut. That’s when my men will flood out.”
Bishop de Moray had wandered over during this. “This is a sacred place. A battle with these unholy beasts will leave it desecrated.”
“Stay out of the way, Bishop,” Nemours said. “A desecrated cathedral can be cleaned. Dead priests don’t clean up so easily.”
“What about my Dominican brothers?” Montguillon asked.
“You stay out of the way, too. Better yet, go into the choir and pray for our deliverance.”
“The Blackfriars might be useful,” Lorenzo said before the prior could offer the rebuke already sputtering on his tongue. “And the bishop and his priests, too. The bishop can show Montguillon’s friars the exits out of this place—the catacombs and crypts, the side doors, anywhere else where the wolves might flee when they realize they’re going to die. They can block the escape.”
Nemours clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent idea, Marco. No, that’s the other one. Lorenzo, is it? You Italians keep an eye on these holy men, make sure they keep their innards firmly tucked into their guts where they belong.”
“They can fend for themselves,” Marco said. “We want to fight these beasts.”
But Lorenzo had been thinking. Wolves wouldn’t fight, or run, like men. Once they started to panic, they’d shoot through here with spears and swords flailing and clattering on the stone all around them. The cathedral might be a good place to trap the wolves, here at the heart of the Cité, but they’d have a devil of a time finishing the job. There would be knife and sword work from the nave to the sanctuary before the killing was done. The priests and monks might be effective enough in the cleanup if there were someone to lead them.
“We’ll lead the priests and friars,” Lorenzo said. “Can you spare two men?”
“Of course.” Nemours clapped his mail gauntlets. “Jean-Marc, Drouin, go with the Italians. Do what they say. The rest of you—every man to his place.”
Lorenzo and Marco trailed the prior and the bishop as they retreated toward the choir.
✛
“You gave in rather quickly,” Marco said. “Not losing your nerve, are you?”
“I’m not sure I had any nerve to begin with,” Lorenzo admitted. He lowered his voice. “But no, I’m worried this won’t be as easy as Nemours seems to think. How will his men react when faced with a dozen huge wolves?”
“You think they’ll break ranks?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. Remember the guards on the road during that last attack?”
“They fled like children,” Marco said. “All the same, I’d rather take my chances with Nemours than with all those monks and priests. Montguillon left us, too, remember?”
“He’s no coward. He simply didn’t care if we lived or died. And he’s planning to claim this victory as his own. He won’t do that by pissing himself in a corner.”
Marco scowled and looked across the mass of Dominicans and cathedral priests walking in front of them, separated into twin clumps of mutual antipathy. “You’re right that the Blackfriars look rather more keen to be here. Seems the bishop and his boys are more concerned with guarding their treasures than anything else.”
Nemours’s men, Jean-Marc and Drouin, sat in a corner away from the religious men, their backs to one of the large pillars stretching to the vault. It looked at first like they were engaged in quiet conversation, but on closer inspection Lorenzo saw they were furtively playing cards.
Marco tapped his shoulder and led him up by the choir, where the torches gave better light. “I have a question to ask you, Brother, and I want an honest answer.”
“What is it?” Lorenzo asked warily.
“I’m your older brother, and your superior in the company as well.”
“You’ve reminded me of that before, although I think it has been at least two days.”
“When you sign your name, it’s my good name you sign as well.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Marco. Enough.”
Marco leaned in and fixed his gaze. “Have you had her?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Have you seduced her? Did you satisfy your carnal lusts on Lady d’Lisle?”
Lorenzo flushed. “Bugger off, I don’t have to answer that.”
“Have you defiled her?” Marco insisted.
“No, I have not!”
Marco studied his face for a moment. “Good. In that case, I give my blessing.”
“You what?”
“I don’t like it, I’ll admit that,” Marco said. “I’m older, I have two shares in the company to your one share. I’d make a better husband for Lucrezia than you. In every way. She knows that already.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“You think this is idle boasting?” A crooked smile came to Marco’s face. “Do you remember the masked ball at the Medici palace? The night you drank too much fortified wine and serenaded the duke’s mother?”
Lorenzo groaned. “What a fool I made of myself.” He fixed his brother with a sharp look. “And I seem to remember that you were the one who supplied me with both the wine and that preposterous lute.”
“It was to keep you occupied, little brother. While you were singing drunken love songs to an eighty-year-old woman, I was making love to Lucrezia in the Hall of Statues.”
“What? You were?”
“It was harmless, I only stole a few kisses. She never knew it was me.”
“You devil.” Lorenzo tried to summon his outrage, but it failed to boil. If Marco meant to challenge him for Lucrezia’s affections, he would hardly be confessing his crimes in such a manner.
“But I’m no fool,” Marco continued. “I see the way she looks at you. She’s never looked at me that way.”
“So you’re yielding the field of battle?” Lorenzo said, carefully.
“I suppose I am.”
“Then why the insults and veiled accusations?”
“Because I don’t want you to treat her like some innkeeper’s wench, that’s why. Lucrezia isn’t a woman you toss into the gutter when you’re done, whistling your way back to Florence with a head full of fond memories. Is that clear?”
“I asked her to come back with me,” Lorenzo said. “If her father accepts, I want to marry her.”
Marco raised his eyebrows. “And? What did she say?”
“She put me off. Said if we survived the night, she’d consider my offer. Until then, no promises.”
“She did, hmm? In that case, Brother, you’d better fight like the angel Gabriel tonight. Because if one of those wolves tears out your throat, I’ll be there to lend Lucrezia my consoling embrace.”
This time Marco’s grin was genuine, friendly, and Lorenzo laughed.
One of Nemours’s men came running down the nave, armor clattering. He arrived panting and spoke in short gasps.
“The signal. The wolves. They crossed the Seine. Running toward Notre Dame.”
He continued toward the transepts, calling his message to any within earshot. Jean-Marc and Drouin threw down their cards and sprang to their feet. The priests clumped in a fearful knot around the bishop. The Dominicans split apart, with Montguillon leading one group and the old friar who’d beat Lorenzo another. Simon led two other young monks deeper into the cathedral, off to God knew where.
The two brothers exchanged grim looks as they drew their swords and flattened against one of the stone pillars. Lorenzo’s coin purse wedged between his leg and the cold stone, the cursed box with Courtaud’s tail jabbing into his thigh.
“May God be with you, Brother,” Marco said.
Lorenzo slapped a hand on his brother’s arm. “And you, Brother.”
Then they braced for the attack.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Lucrezia was numb with cold when she spotted the wolves crossing the frozen river. Martin had come up to the tower three times begging her to come inside. It was warmer downstairs, he said. Take refuge in the library, while they surrounded and protected her. The Boccaccio servant, a Greek named Demetrius, was even more insistent. He had orders to protect her, by God, and he wouldn’t see her killed. When he took her elbow as if she were a child and tried to forcibly lead her downstairs, he and Martin almost came to blows.
“Enough!” she cried. “Downstairs, both of you.”
What if she made her last stand up here instead? If the men weren’t enough, if Rigord and his pack fought their way through, she’d sooner it end here than in the library. How terrible to be downstairs, in the middle of all those burning candles, as the wolves surrounded her, snarling and driving her toward the center of the circle and the heart of the inverted star. Martin and Tullia dead outside. The servants with their bellies torn open, Nemours’s men dead up and down the halls. And then the wolves would be on her.
No, she’d rather hurl herself from the tower. She’d slam onto the frozen river a hundred feet below and die with a broken neck rather than give these fiends satisfaction with her body.
But that wasn’t the only reason she waited in the tower. She wanted to watch and confirm. She didn’t know if her hunch was true, but she expected Courtaud to cross in a larger pack, running openly down the streets, daring anyone to challenge them. They would run directly for the cathedral. Lorenzo and Marco would be there waiting, God save them, together with Lord Nemours and Montguillon, the Dominican prior. It would be an open battle.
Rigord would slink into the Cité. He was the creeping, treacherous type, after all. Wolf or man, that wouldn’t change. The type of man who would lure a young woman to France to use and discard.
A light flashed from a tower in Notre Dame. Two waves of a torch back and forth.
A signal. Probably a response to something on the river walls. Lucrezia scanned the riverbank.
There were other towers on the island taller than hers, and the cathedral blocked the sky to the east, but she could follow the curve of the Île de la Cité most of the way around. She looked first to the bridges—the Grand Pont and Petit Pont—but saw nothing on the spans. She followed the river on the Left Bank.
There! Moving on the ice, which glinted in reflected light. The moon was a waning gibbous now, but still full enough to see their dark shapes coming across one after another. Lucrezia counted. Eight, nine, ten . . .
They kept coming and coming. She caught her breath as the last wolf ran onto the frozen river. Twenty-five wolves. Sweet Virgin, so many.
As they reached the island, they leaped from the ice, eight feet into the air, caught their paws on the river wall and heaved over, one after another. The last wolf stopped and lifted his head. He was a huge brute, and though she couldn’t see the color of his fur, his size left little doubt. It must be Courtaud. No other wolf was that big.
Courtaud lifted his head to sniff at the air. He turned his snout this way and that, and then he looked up in her direction. Lucrezia gasped and sank behind the crenelated wall. Her heart thudded like a blacksmith’s hammer, ready to burst free from her chest.
Moments later, when she dared peek through the crenelations, they were gone. Carefully, she lifted her head, but saw nothing at first. From a nearby alley, a man shouted as if for help, then abruptly fell silent.
There they were, emerging onto the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, which cut east toward the cathedral. The pack separated, half of them sprinting forward as if planning to boldly attack the front doors, while the others melted into side streets. A secondary attack? To break into homes to spread terror? But when she realized that they were all continuing east, she let out her breath. She was afraid for the others, but she couldn’t help the flood of relief to confirm they weren’t coming here.
“My lady?”
Lucrezia started, her heart pounding. It was only Martin, his hair caught up in the wind and blowing about his face. He had no torch, so as not to serve as a beacon to their house.
“Won’t you come down, my lady? It won’t do any good to escape the wolves only to expose yourself to the cold and the bad air. The city is filled with the pox—the vapors will rise to find you.”
“They’re on the island. I saw them cross.”
His voice tightened. “Are they coming here?”
“No. They run for the cathedral.”
Lucrezia looked back toward Notre Dame. The wolves had disappeared. The streets lay quiet. She searched up and down the walls, the bridge, the river. How long until Rigord came across? How many wolves would his pack boast? Fewer, perhaps, but enough.
Martin joined her in searching. Nothing. All dark.
“Perhaps you were mistaken, my lady,” he said. “Could they have all gone to the cathedral?”
“Maybe. There were so many of them. Twenty-five.”
“Twenty-five,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder and fear.
“Or maybe Courtaud killed Rigord.”
“I won’t shed a tear for the heartless bast—for the man.”