The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  At the height of the Roman order and power, people had buried their dead here. Now, all the tombs were desecrated; robbed long ago.

  This one must once have belonged to a great man, but now the building was empty. The sarcophagus rested at the roadside. Shepherds driving their flocks to market used it as a watering trough.

  The tomb once looked like a small house with a pitched roof, but one wall was broken and the side of the structure opened to the elements. However, the overhanging roof and the low platform that once held the sarcophagus created a dry spot where they could sit, look out on the road, and finish their stuffed bread.

  Regeane was ravenous. She felt a mild despair as she devoured the food. She could have eaten several more. Silve drank the wine with her loaf. She was soon replete and slightly glassy-eyed. She itched and started scratching herself everywhere.

  Regeane finished the bread, licked her greasy fingers, and wondered if there was enough food in the world. She also understood why Silve and Hugo drank the noxious mixture of wine and drugs—they stilled the pangs of hunger. She was tempted by what remained in Silve’s jug, but resolutely resisted the temptation. The stuff was poison and, sooner or later—probably sooner—it would kill them.

  Silve continued scratching vigorously.

  “Silve,” Regeane snapped. “Are you taken with a plague of bugs?”

  “No,” Silve said. “It’s the poppy gum. The stuff takes you that way sometimes.”

  Regeane glanced around uneasily. The sky seemed to have grown even darker.

  “Shit,” Silve said thickly. “It will rain all night. I’ve a good mind to find a warm taverna and spread my legs in the back room. Come one! Come all! A copper apiece! At least I’ll get to sleep half the night. The tavern keeper will want part of my take, but he’ll give me plenty of wine, and I won’t have that damn Hugo rubbing me raw while he sweats the drink out of his carcass. The bastard can get it up while he’s drunk, but the nasty little cocksucker can’t get it down.”

  “Why don’t you leave him then?” Regeane asked.

  Silve laughed. “Because, of the nearest two, I owe money to the owner of the first. The barmaid of the second told me if I took away any late night business from her, she’d cut my face.”

  “Awkward,” Regeane said commiseratingly.

  “Whatever,” Silve replied.

  The Appian Way gleamed in the fading light like a narrow black ribbon. As Regeane watched, a few lights appeared in farmhouse windows along the road.

  “We have to go,” Regeane said, some alarm in her voice. “It won’t be safe here after dark. As it is, I’ll be locked up and you’ll probably get a beating.”

  “Noooooo,” Silve moaned. “It’s dry here. Waaaaarm. I want to stay,” she sniveled.

  Again, Regeane felt the sensation of being watched. She glanced at Silve and saw a wasp crawling over her face. The insect was black, an iridescent blue-black. The tiny carapace shone like a dark rainbow. She looked more closely and saw the whole right side of Silve’s body was covered with them crawling everywhere. Dark antennae quivered on their heads; feet feeling, exploring. Their bulbous abdomens armed with the vicious stingers wavered above Silve’s skin.

  Regeane reached out, snatched Silve’s dress at the shoulder, and pulled her out of the tomb. Silve saw the wasps. She screamed and began waving her arms, beating at them with her hands.

  To Regeane’s momentary surprise, the wasps didn’t sting Silve. They drew away and hovered near the entrance to the tomb like an evil black cloud. Silve, still half drunk, staggered. She was searching her face and body for possible lumps.

  Regeane looked down the Appian Way and saw it coming.

  “No,” she whispered. Then screamed, “Run, Silve! Run!”

  “Run?” Silve said looking around. “Run where?”

  The thing was approaching faster and faster, moving like the first rocks of an avalanche, but headed up the road toward Regeane. It gabbled and gibbered with a thousand voices, somehow one in madness and agony. It stank of burning cloth, burning wood, burning bone, burning flesh. Then, as it drew closer, of decomposition and death.

  She could hear its voice, howling and shouting at her. “Where is she? You saw her. You can bring me to her.”

  Then it was all around Regeane, and the anguish in the voice was almost beyond endurance. “They said I killed her—her and the child. I never—I never—” The thing moaned.

  Regeane threw her mantle over her face, trying to escape the stinking cloud surrounding the apparition. She found herself alone in the dark with it. Its existence flowed with sorrow.

  “I couldn’t feed them.” The desolation in the voice was pain compassed by the hoop of eternity. “I couldn’t stand to see their faces as they starved.” Sorrow, so heartwrenching it seemed to drown the whole world in grief. “I was mad with pain.”

  “No,” Regeane heard herself shouting. “You were mad with pride.” She remembered the woman and the child in the church. “They had wanted to live,” she yelled at the damned and damnable thing around her. “They wanted to live! You killed them and you paid the forfeit.”

  The air around her stank of putrescence. “They hanged me in chains!”

  Regeane saw and smelled it. The rotting body swaying at the gallows. Leg only, bones trailing rags of flesh, dancing almost as if alive in the night wind. Falling and scattering in the grass. The torso coming apart at the belly; the hips falling to splatter against the earth dragging the lungs and the skin from the ribs. Last of all, the head and shoulders coming down; the fleshless skull striking the cobbles and bursting with an appalling stench. The almost-liquid brain mass that had once been the man running off in puddles, congealing to be trampled in the road.

  The wasps struck, sinking their stingers into her face through the mantle into her cheeks and tongue, through her dress into her arms and breast, and, worst of all, through her eyelids into her eyeballs.

  She didn’t hear the wolf roar. Her own screams deafened her. She only knew she had four legs, not two. Her jaws opened with a shout of outrage and fire filled the air around her.

  When she woke, she was lying on her side. One shoulder rested in a clean rain puddle. She opened her eyes and slowly got to her feet. One side of her dress was soaked. She explored her face and neck with trembling fingers. No swelling. No pain. Had the whole thing all been a dream?

  She glanced down. Near the puddle a big patch of mud showed canine footprints. She remembered the wolf coming to her aid. Had she really been here? Somehow fought off the terror? Regeane was too stupefied by shock to consider the implications of this.

  She looked around. Silve was gone. She had evidently found somewhere to run. Then she realized the tomb where they stopped to eat had vanished. It simply didn’t exist any longer.

  Regeane picked up her skirts and ran.

  She stopped running near the city. Not because she was winded. Her stamina was usually greater than most humans’. But because she passed some laborers working near the city. And was frightened by their stares. Respectable women alone were an uncommon sight. Prostitutes advertised their wares. So she wouldn’t be taken for one of them, but she might be mistaken for a married woman sneaking out to see her lover. As such, she left herself open to being accosted by some lecherous opportunist. She stopped, wrapped herself tightly in her mantle, pulled the veil down over her face, bowed her head, and walked on.

  She didn’t dare pass through the ruined Forum so late. She started home through the narrow streets surrounding the Pantheon. These alleys were impassable except on foot. Flights of stone stairs surrounded the terra-cotta brick walls. Among them, it might as well have been night.

  The sky above was a dim blue-gray pall. What little light remained showed only rain misting past high shuttered windows.

  She was making her way home as quickly as possible when she met the funeral cortege. It was a poor one—the corpse wrapped in a winding sheet carried on an open bier. Torches flared in the hands of a few
relatives and friends following the dead man. The flames sputtered in the wind, funnelled down the street, and burned blue from the damp.

  Regeane flattened herself against the wall to let them pass.

  Silve appeared from the darkness like a bat flying out of the mouth of a cave. “Witch!” she screamed as she pointed at Regeane. “Demoness! She is here to steal his soul. Kill her! Kill her! She will drag his soul to hell and sell it to the devil in place of her own!”

  Regeane stood for a few seconds transfixed by both fear and sheer astonishment. Then she saw the dead man’s relatives believed Silve. The pain and sheer terror in her voice carried a dreadful certainty with them. Even Regeane could tell that whatever the truth or falsity of the servant’s outcries, Silve herself believed them—absolutely. Suddenly, the bier rested in the street and the burial party were groping for missiles in the shadows.

  Regeane ran again. The only thing that saved her was the relative scarcity of stoning material. Yet even as she fled, she felt something hit her hard in the small of the back. A broken roof tile slashed past her arm, leaving a burning sensation behind. Then she was clear of the enclosing walls, running along a thoroughfare intended for more than foot traffic. The lodging house was just ahead.

  She slowed, not wanting anyone to see how frightened she was. The sky was indigo blue twilight, not quite night. An outside stair on the side of the house led to their quarters.

  She was climbing the stairs when she saw her arm was cut and her hand bloody. She wiped it on her dark mantle. The thick woolen mantle was almost black; she hoped the blood wouldn’t show. She flexed her arm, and the cut closed.

  She was thinking only of warmth and safety when she entered the door. She knew she would be locked in for the night, but even the narrow room seemed a secure haven after what she’d been through today. She had no idea what awaited her.

  IV

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS, THE ROOM WAS warm. Braziers glowed in each corner. A roaring fire burned on the hearth.

  Regeane sank into a chair by the fire.

  Hugo and Gundabald sat together at the table, feasting.

  The wolf’s nose wandered among perfumes, saffron, cinnamon, cloves, and pepper—spices that didn’t find their way into the food ordinary people ate.

  Gundabald was disjointing a capon stuffed with a forcemeat of preserved figs, seasoned with butter, cinnamon, and the excruciatingly expensive pepper. His cheeks gleamed with grease. He popped some of the moist, delicious meat into his mouth, then glared angrily at Regeane. “Where the hell have you been?”

  She realized his anger concealed some anxiety. Since he had never before shown any concern for her welfare, she couldn’t help but believe his worry must be rooted in some change in her status.

  “You’ve found a match for me, and it’s a wealthy one,” she said.

  “Clever girl! Now, where the hell have you been?” He was rising from the table.

  The wolf warned her. She didn’t listen or react quickly enough, but she was on her feet when he reached her. He backhanded her across the face as hard as he could. Her head flipped loose on her neck like a broken doll’s. She lost consciousness for a second. Her ankle caught on one leg of the chair. She fell, striking her head hard against the floor. This was the first time she felt the full power of a man’s fist directed at her. The sheer force and destructive ability was shocking.

  She sat up, then. Using the arm of the chair, she pulled herself to a standing position. Blood was streaming from her nose and trickling from one corner of her mouth.

  Gundabald stood in front of the fire, warming himself at the flames.

  She reached for a napkin, one of the ones on the table.

  “Damn! Don’t stain the linen,” Gundabald said.

  Regeane used her mantle to wipe off the blood on her face.

  “Now, where have you been?”

  “Hugo deserted us,” she said.

  Hugo—his mouth full—made a gabbling noise.

  “Shut up!” Gundabald said, then clouted him hard on the side of the head.

  Hugo strangled, and began coughing on what he was trying to swallow.

  “I’m surrounded by fools!” Gundabald mused. “Don’t you ever dare leave your cousin alone in the streets again! Hear me!” he roared. “Or that’s only a taste of what you’ll get.”

  “God! God! God! Yes,” Hugo moaned. “Christ Jesus Savior, what’s gotten into you! First, you try to spoil what little looks she has … then you’re … clubbing at me … what …”

  “Shut up!” Gundabald roared.

  Hugo shut up.

  “You,” Gundabald said, “are a fool who never can see beyond the end of your nose. And she,” he pointed at Regeane, “is a hateful little snob who no doubt wishes both you and I are in hell! But she is now very valuable property! She is sold! And a damned generous price I got for her in the bargain. No! It’s not a great match. That’s not to be expected. She’s too damned poor, but it’s a wealthy one. The fellow is sitting on a pile of gold. The king wants to bring him to heel. A marriage is cheaper and a whole lot less trouble than throwing an army against his stronghold. The king will expect him,” Gundabald chuckled, “to be deeply and tangibly grateful for a match among the royal kin, and so will I. In fact, the moneylenders had only to hear his name and their purses opened. Did you think all of this luxury fell like manna from heaven?”

  Regeane’s nose had stopped bleeding though she could taste salt in her mouth from an oozing cut on the inside of her cheek. But the terror she felt outweighed the pain. “What about the full moon?” she whispered.

  Gundabald stepped toward her. She shrank back, cringing away from his fist.

  “Wolf,” Gundabald said softly. “More like a dog, and a whipped dog at that.”

  Regeane hated herself for being grateful that he didn’t hit her again. Somewhere in the darkness deep down, the wolf was enraged beyond reason, but the woman wouldn’t let her near consciousness.

  “You are a fool,” he continued. “Do you know that? This man loves you about as well as you love him—that is to say, not at all. What were you thinking he’d do—welcome you to his bosom? A penniless woman fobbed on him by a king. A mighty king. A king he dare not disobey.”

  Gundabald backed up and warmed his rear end at the fire. He laughed harshly. “God, my sister was a mawkish sentimentalist. The idea of bringing up a thing like you to be a proper lady? But then considering what has to be done, perhaps you’re better off as you are. No, trust me, bitch creature. Your secret is the least of your worries. From the day you arrive, you’ll probably have to be careful of everything you eat or drink. As soon as he dares, he’ll be rid of you.”

  Regeane stared at him, eyes wide, her guts turning to water, sick with terror.

  “Wake up, you lackwit,” Gundabald said gleefully. “Nothing protects you. How many wives have been dismissed in disgrace, labeled barren by their husbands because they were never bedded?” Gundabald smiled. His big, blunt teeth gleamed yellow against his black beard.

  “Barren,” Gundabald mused. “Barrenness is a kindly, even compassionate excuse. Are you aware of how easy it is for a great lord to arrange the pollution of his marriage bed? He waits until nightfall, then sends a strong servant to her room. They are caught. The man—already paid—flees. But the next morning, she is led out into the wilderness with a halter around her neck. Unless she has a family to uphold her protestations of innocence, the woman is doomed. There, near a lake or swamp, the erstwhile wife is strangled or drowned. She is forgotten, the mud is her tomb.

  “I’ve only mentioned two ways husbands have of ridding themselves of inconvenient spouses. There are others, many others. One wrong move—one moment’s silly arrogance—and he’ll be done with you.” Gundabald shrugged and smiled his terrible smile again. “Perhaps your foot won’t even have to slip. Perhaps he prefers his concubines already. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I doubt my own judgement. And, as for you, whey-faced bra
t, you have nothing to recommend you. Not wealth. Not strong kinfolk. No, not even a hint of beauty. You pale, flat-chested, stupid little twat …”

  “Father,” Hugo shouted. “Stop! Look at her. I’ve seen dead men with more color in their faces. You don’t want her to hang herself before she even sees him. We need the money!”

  Gundabald snorted. “What do you want me to do? Let her go into this marriage with her head stuffed with moonbeams? Most men are like me, even the good ones. They have the morals of bulls or stags.

  “This one now. This one likely has the morals of a jackal.” He spoke thoughtfully, at least as much to himself as to Regeane. “Else, how did he rise from paid hireling to his present position of eminence?

  “God, but Gisela spoiled you. It is time you found out how the world goes and what drives it. I see it’s up to me to teach you and, if you don’t learn, your husband will likely kill you, if the church doesn’t burn you first.”

  Regeane could feel herself trembling. Her stomach muscles fluttered. Not so much because of the threats Gundabald held over her head. She had confronted them all her life. But because she knew she was in the presence of evil. Gundabald was cruel, but when he was sober, his outbursts were almost always calculated to serve his interests. He wanted something from her and it couldn’t be good.

  Regeane wiped blood from her mouth with her hand and looked at it.

  Gundabald walked up to her and slapped her again. Not as hard as before. This time only enough to make her ears ring and her nose bleed a little. “Pay attention,” he said smiling. “Pain is a great attention-getter. At least I’ve found it so. Now, don’t be downcast,” he said gently. “And don’t be afraid. We won’t abandon you.”

  She wondered if he was egotistical enough to believe she found this promise comforting.

  His face was close to her. His breath laden with the scent of the elaborately spiced food was hot on her skin. She sat down to escape the sickening smell.

  “This man’s demesne straddles one of the passes through the Alps. Every merchant and traveler crossing the mountains makes him richer. But this rascal is an upstart, lord of a band of mercenaries. Their loyalty can, no doubt, be bought once his strongboxes are in our hands. But it will be up to you to make the killing look like an accident!