The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  Regeane was very much lost in the crowd. She had nothing to offer. She was poor, a woman, and not beautiful. She didn’t think there would be many takers for her hand in marriage. Yet if Gundabald could find some poor mope to swindle, she had no doubt he would auction her off without the slightest compunction and then leave her to her fate. She just didn’t think he would find anyone. Besides, Gundabald had, as they said, a hot throat and a cold prick. He wanted to cool the one and heat the other as frequently as possible. To indulge himself he needed what little money came in from her estates. He would certainly sell her, but not cheaply. It remained to be seen if he could get his price. At the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care much one way or the other.

  When the papal blessing proved fruitless, the thread of hope that had drawn her across the Alps and sustained her in the difficult journey to Rome … failed.

  Gisela’s death had been the final blow. She had been Regeane’s only protection against a world that would destroy her in an instant if it so much as guessed her secret—and against the worst excesses of Gundabald’s greed. She had been Regeane’s only confidante and companion. Regeane had no other friends, no other loves. She was now abandoned and utterly alone.

  Dry-eyed, Regeane followed her mother’s body to the grave. She was overcome by a despair so black, it seemed to turn that bright day into bitter night.

  Now a faint silver shadow appeared against the blackness of the floor.

  There is nothing left but moonlight, Regeane thought. Drink it, drown in it. She will never reproach me. I will never see her tears again or suffer because of them. Whatever may become of me, I am alone.

  She stood, stripped off her dress and shift, and turned toward the silver haze.

  The gust from the window was icy, but pleasure wouldn’t exist without the sharp bite of pain. Even the brief flash of orgasm is too intense to be absolutely pleasurable. The cold caress was seduction, the quick cruel touch that precedes pleasure.

  Regeane went forward boldly, knowing that in a moment she would be warm. Naked, she stepped into the silver haze.

  The wolf stood there.

  Regeane was, as wolves go, a large wolf. She had the same weight as the girl, over a hundred pounds. She was much stronger than in her human state—lean, quick, and powerful. Her coat was smooth and thick. The pelt glowed silver as it caught the moonlight on its long guard hairs.

  The wolf’s heart overflowed with joy and gratitude. Regeane would never have admitted it in her human state, but she loved the wolf and, papal blessing or not, she would never let the wolf go.

  From the bottom of her heart, she reveled in the change. Sometimes, while in her human state, she wondered who was wiser, she or the wolf. The wolf knew. Growing more beautiful and stronger year after year, the wolf waited for Regeane to be ready to receive her teaching and understand it.

  The silver wolf lifted herself on her hind legs and, placing her forepaws on the window sill, peered out. She saw not just with eyes as these maimed humans did, but with sensitive ears and nose.

  The world humans saw was like a fresco—dimensionless as a picture painted on a wall. To be believed in by the wolf, a thing had to have not only image, but smell, texture, and taste.

  Ah God … how beautiful. The world was filled with wonder.

  The rain must have come in the evening. The wolf could smell the damp, black earth under the green verdure as well as mud churned up by horses’ hooves in a nearby lane.

  The woman hadn’t noticed it. She’d spent the day in grief-stricken reverie. For this she earned a brief flash of contempt from the wolf. But the wolf was too much a creature of the present to dwell on what was past. She was grateful for each moment. And this was a fine one.

  Usually in Rome, the scent of man overpowered everything else. That effluvia of stale perspiration, raw sewage floating in the Tiber, the stench of human excrement which, even by comparison to that of other animals, is utterly vile. All these filled the air and pressed in around her. Overlaying them were the musty omnipresent evidence of human dwellings: stale woodsmoke, damp timber, and stone.

  But not tonight. The sharp wind blew from the open fields beyond the city, redolent of dry grass and the sweetness of wild herbs growing on the hillsides near the sea.

  Sometimes the fragrant breath from the Campagna carried the clean barnyard smells of pig and cattle, and faintly, the enticing musk of deer.

  The night below was alive with movement. The cats that made their homes among the ruins sang their ancient songs of anger and passion among forgotten monuments. Here and there the slinking shape of a stray dog met her eye; occasionally, even furtive human movement. Thieves and footpads haunted the district, ready to prey on the unwary.

  Her ears pricked forward and netted what her eyes could not see—the suade thump of a barn owl’s wings in flight, the high, thin cries of bats swooping, darting, foraging for insects in the chill night air.

  The rush and whisper of the hunters and the hunted, silent until the end. The agonized death cry of a bird, taken in sleep on the nest by a marauding cat, rent the air. The chopped-off shriek of a rabbit dying in the talons of an owl followed.

  Those and many others were woven together by her wolf senses into a rich fabric that was unending variety and everlasting delight.

  The silver wolf dropped her forepaws to the floor with a soft, nearly inaudible cry of longing. Then her lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl at the sound of voices in the other room.

  Hugo and Gundabald were eating. The wolf’s belly rumbled with hunger at the smell of roast meat. She was hungry and thirsty, longing for clean water and food.

  The woman warned her night side to rein in her desires. She would get nothing.

  The wolf replied. They were both gone—the woman from her prison, the wolf from her cage. The wolf stood beside a clear mountain lake. The full moon glowed silver in the water. All around the lake, black trees were silhouetted against mountains glittering white with unending snow.

  The memory faded. The wolf and woman found themselves staring at the locked door.

  The wolf and woman both understood imprisonment. Regeane had spent most of her life behind locked doors. She’d long ago learned the punishing futility of assaults on oak and iron. She ignored what she couldn’t change and bided her time.

  They were speaking of her.

  “Did you hear that?” Hugo asked fearfully. Hugo’s ears were better than Gundabald’s. He must have heard her soft cry of protest.

  “No,” Gundabald mumbled through a mouthful of food. “I didn’t and you didn’t either. You only imagined you did. She seldom makes any noise. That’s one thing we can be grateful for. At least she doesn’t spend her nights howling as a real wolf would.”

  “We shouldn’t have brought her here,” Hugo moaned.

  “Must you start that again?” Gundabald sighed wearily.

  “It’s true,” Hugo replied with drunken insistence. “The founders of this city were suckled at the tits of a mother wolf. Once they called themselves sons of the wolf. Ever since I found out about her I’ve often thought of that story. A real wolf couldn’t raise human children, but a creature like her …”

  Gundabald laughed raucously. “A fairy tale made up by some strumpet to explain a clutch of bastard brats. She wouldn’t be the first or won’t be the last to spin a wild story to cover her own … debauchery.”

  “You won’t listen to anything,” Hugo said petulantly. “She’s gotten worse since we came here. Even while her own mother was dying she …”

  The silver wolf’s lips drew back. Her teeth gleamed in the moonlight like ivory knives. Even in the wolf’s heart, Hugo’s words rankled.

  Pointless the smoldering anger. Pointless the brief, sad rebellion. The door stood between her and her tormentors. The barred window between the magnificent creature and freedom.

  She began to pace as any caged beast will, obeying the wordless command: Stay strong. Stay healthy. Stay alert. Fear not,
your time will come.

  II

  MAENIEL WAS A WORRIER. TODAY HE HAD A LOT OF worries as he stood on the half-ruined gallery once intended for the delight of a Roman governor.

  He envied the man, who had probably stood here once, taking the air and complacently surveying his broad domains. Today, among other things, Maeniel worried about the hay. It didn’t seem to be ripening as fast as it should. And they needed that hay to carry them through the long, cold winter. Still, he sighed; the man had been too powerful to worry about hay. He’d probably had other concerns, possibly even more troubling than Maeniel’s. Say, for instance, politics in Rome.

  “Politics in Rome,” he muttered.

  Gavin, the captain of his guard, sat dozing on a bench, his back against a mural of Perseus slaying Medusa. The gorgon’s head in the hero’s hand glared at him. This didn’t worry Gavin. Nothing worried Gavin. He opened one eye and repeated, “What about politics in Rome?”

  “I was just thinking that even though the Roman governor didn’t worry about the hay as I do, he probably worried about politics in Rome.”

  Gavin opened both eyes. “Let me get this straight. You left off worrying about the hay to worry about what a long-dead Roman worried about?”

  “Yes,” Maeniel said.

  “Thank you for clarifying that.” Gavin closed his eyes. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll go back to sleep.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be ripening as quickly as usual,” Maeniel persisted.

  “The hay, or politics in Rome?” Gavin asked.

  “The hay.” Maeniel bit his lip.

  Gavin sighed deeply, opened both eyes, and looked out over the surrounding countryside.

  The land lay drowsing in the warm gold of the afternoon sun, a picture of tranquil, bucolic beauty. Three prosperous villages lay scattered along the mountainside surrounded by tilled fields, their deep green just beginning to bear the first tinge of autumn’s rich red, brown, and gold.

  Higher up against the face of the mountains were scattered flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle, fattening in the high summer pasture. Beyond them, snowcapped peaks floated in delicate ethereal beauty against the sky.

  “The hay,” Gavin said, “seems to me to be ripening much as it always has ever since we came here.”

  “Do you really think so?” Maeniel asked hopefully.

  “Yes,” Gavin replied, closing his eyes again.

  Maeniel shook his head. “Still, I hear from Clotilde that it’s going to be a bad winter. She says the fleeces of the sheep have grown twice as thick as is usual and—”

  “No,” Gavin said firmly. “I won’t listen anymore. Every year at this time it’s the hay. Then, when that’s in, the question will be, is it enough to carry us through the winter? Or should you send to the lowlands to buy more, to ensure the survival of our stock? Then, you will fret yourself about wood. Have we enough? Suppose a really bad storm comes and the snow is too deep for us to venture out to cut more? So we must cut more now, stacking it ever higher and higher until we must sleep in the snow because the wood fills all of the houses.

  “In between, you will be venturing out in blizzards to visit every cow, sow, ewe, and nanny goat with a pain. To hold her hoof until she delivers. If one sneezes, you hear it in your sleep and come wake me up to commiserate with you. Hold the lantern up, Gavin. Ply your axe with a will, Gavin. Pull, Gavin. Push, Gavin. Take your men and fall on those brigands, Gavin. I know they are not on my land, but I like it not that they raided so close, Gavin.

  “Now it is the worries of deceased Romans, and politics that concern us not at all in our mountains. At first I wondered when Rieulf, old and ill, placed his demesne in your hands. But after the first winter I understood the wisdom of the old man’s choice. He definitely knew how to pick the right man for the job.”

  Maeniel listened meekly to Gavin’s tirade. They were old friends. He heard it several times a year when Gavin grew frustrated with him.

  “I wish,” Gavin wound down, “that you would find something else to worry about besides hay or the sheep, goats, wood, and snowstorms. At least it would be a change for me to listen to.” His voice trailed off as he sniffed the air. “Fresh baked bread,” he whispered. “I forgot it’s Matrona’s baking day.” His body floated from the bench. He seemed pulled along by the enticing odor, his nose sniffing the air.

  Maeniel placed one big hand on Gavin’s shoulder and pushed him back down on the bench. “Matrona has a lot of work to do on baking day. She becomes very irritable. Remember the time I had to rescue you? She was trying to push you feet first into one of the ovens. You had both feet braced against the wall on either side of the door. You were screaming at the top of your lungs, and if I hadn’t—”

  “You didn’t have to rescue me,” Gavin denied hotly. “It’s just that I’m a gentleman and didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “To be sure,” Maeniel soothed, “to be sure. Besides you were right … I mean about the worry business.”

  “You’re giving it up?” Gavin asked.

  “No,” Maeniel said. “I have a new one.” He handed Gavin a letter.

  Gavin gave it a cursory glance; then realizing its importance, he began to read more slowly.

  “Not politics in Rome,” Maeniel said. “Politics in Franca. The woman comes recommended by Charles, the great Charlemagne himself. I had better marry her.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Gavin said handing him back the letter. “I’d tell the great Charles to go fly his hawks or chase Saxons, whatever the hell a king does. Forget marrying. When some royal cousin comes here, lock your gates, sharpen your sword, and wish them Godspeed over the pass into the valley. I’m betting you’ll never hear any more about her.”

  “I can’t take that bet,” Maeniel said quietly. “The stakes are too high.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Gavin insisted. “You’re sitting in an impregnable fortress. This rock has never fallen to assault, not even in the time of the Romans.”

  “And if Charles ever seriously decides to dig me out,” Maeniel said flatly, “he can. Why do you think I send Charles’ court a hefty sum of silver? Every year a nice present of gold and jewels is sent to the court in time for Christmas. I keep the roads clear of thieves and bandits, don’t overcharge the merchants traveling through the pass. In between I keep my fingers crossed. So far he’s left me alone.

  “But no more. The reckoning has come, and in a form I can’t really quarrel with. He’s offering me a marriage with a woman of the royal house. I dare not refuse. The letter says she is young, comely, and—”

  “The letter,” Gavin broke in, “does give every pertinent fact about the lady: her birth, her lineage, yes, every fact, but one. What’s wrong with her?”

  “What could be wrong with her?” Maeniel asked.

  Gavin stared out glumly over the village. “Now who’s the optimist? Aside from dire poverty, I can think of a few things. Promiscuity, drunkenness, insanity, dishonesty, stupidity, leprosy, cruelty, and greed. Any and all of the above. In addition, she’ll probably turn out to be a humpbacked dwarf with only one tooth remaining in her head and halfwitted in the bargain.”

  “Sometimes I think it was a mistake for your father to send you to school. It stimulated your imagination no end,” Maeniel said.

  “I know,” Gavin agreed. “I told him that every day until it was a question of what would wear out first—his arm, his belt, or my backside. As it was, you and I both ended up trying to run away to seek our fortune. Well, we found it, and now you must marry this … creature to keep it.”

  “It’s a small sacrifice,” Maeniel answered.

  “Let’s hope,” Gavin said.

  “If she’s a humpbacked dwarf, she may have a pleasant personality. If she’s insane, I’ll see she’s cared for. Drunken, dried out at intervals; promiscuous, persuaded to be discreet. Cruelty and greed can both be restrained. And even leprosy, God help me, can be treated. At this altitude the sick either recover quickly or die.”
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br />   “That’s it,” Gavin said. “Look on the bright side. She may not survive the first winter.”

  “Or she may be as the letter says: young, comely, and amiable. Poverty might be her only real fault.”

  “No,” Gavin said. “If that were the only problem, they’d never be offering her to such as you. A down-at-the-heels Irish mercenary. If it hadn’t been for Rieulf, we’d still be earning our bread selling our swords hither and yon. As it was, you did him a service and he began to love you. You were lucky …”

  “That’s true.” Maeniel looked out over the valley again, still somewhat preoccupied by the hay. “What do you think, Gavin? Should we get some of it now and—”

  A loud yell erupted from the direction of the kitchen.

  Maeniel turned. Gavin was gone. The lure of fresh-baked bread had proved too much for his captain to resist.

  Gavin on a horse, sword in hand, might be the terror of every brigand in the mountains, but when he fought Matrona, he invariably lost.

  Maeniel decided to go rescue him. Leaving the hay and the future to take care of themselves, he started off in the direction of the commotion in the kitchen.

  III

  REGEANE WOKE NAKED ON THE BED THE NEXT morning. The wolf had paced the floor until moonset. Until the two in the next room were deep in sodden slumber and snoring loudly. Then, she climbed into the bed, rested her muzzle on the pillow and slept. She didn’t remember turning human. The bed smelled of warm animal, human and otherwise.

  Her old, blue dress lay across the foot of the bed. Though she thought it blue, it had been faded by a thousand washings into a muddy gray.

  As she stepped into it, she realized the dress, only months ago very loose, was becoming tight across the shoulders and breast. Once, she had been able to wear it only if she held the hem off the floor. Now, it barely covered her ankles.