The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  Cecelia began to applaud again. “Wonderful. Never have I been approached with such grace and charm. Of course, I’m as vain as the next woman. More so, I should think. Flattery will get you anywhere with me. But come, my dear,” she said, placing a hand on Regeane’s arm. “In this conversation between Hera and Athena, we are forgetting Aphrodite.”

  Regeane colored to the roots of her hair. “Oh, my goodness. Aphrodite, surely not.”

  “Who would you be then?” Cecelia asked. “Dulcina’s words crown me as Hera, the all-powerful goddess. She herself must surely be Athena, wisdom enthroned. So, for the purposes of this little symposium, who are you?”

  “Diana,” Regeane said. “The virgin goddess, lover of wild things, the forest dweller, patroness and protector of maidens, the lady of moonlight.”

  “Diana, the huntress?” Cecelia questioned. “What would the virgin goddess know of love?”

  “She would be,” Regeane said, “an acute and objective observer.”

  Cecelia began to laugh. “I daresay she would be.”

  Regeane took her seat on a long book chest beneath a window that looked down on the rose garden. Wooden louvered blinds covered the window. The dusty rays of the afternoon sun shone through the partially open slats, creating a pattern of gold on the floor.

  Dulcina stepped into this tracery of light and shadow holding a lyre in her hand.

  “Do you know Propertius, my dear?” Cecelia asked.

  “The name, no more,” Regeane answered. “Augusta, that’s Lucilla’s daughter, spoke of him.”

  “I know who Augusta is,” Cecelia said. “I also know she would rather not claim that redoubtable woman as a parent.”

  “Yes,” Regeane said. “She’s ashamed of her. In any case, when Dulcina sang at the pope’s banquet, Augusta mentioned Propertius as the author of her song.”

  “I have written a musical setting for many of his works,” Dulcina said. “I would like to present them to you now.” So saying, she struck the lyre and began to sing.

  Gradually, almost imperceptibly, Regeane found herself transported back in time. To a world where Rome was the glittering queen of cities and to be a prosperous citizen of this ruling city was the very pinnacle of good fortune.

  Dulcina sang of a young poet newly come from the provinces, and told in his own words how he met his fate in the eyes and face of the loveliest of women, his Cynthia. The tormented power of his passion spilled from the verses Dulcina sang and vibrated in the dusty air of the room.

  The music of his poetry was alive, as vivid, as real to Regeane as the day when the poet penned them. Regeane was as seduced and enraptured by this world as the poet was.

  A world where conquerors reveled uncaring amidst the spoils of whole continents. A world where men and women drank the fairest vintages and reclined on silken couches amidst the splendor of colored marble, gazed at paintings by the finest artists, and ate delicacies spiced with flavors of lands so far away they were only legends.

  A world where married women like Cynthia draped themselves in coan silk and the softest linen. Aglitter with jewels, they ignored their complacent husbands and dispensed their favors when and where they willed.

  A world where lamps burned all night and a lover and his mistress could drink together till dawn and then couple in savage passion on the very couches of the banquet hall.

  Regeane listened as the poet moved from infatuation to adoration, his delight in his goddess-like mistress seeming to lift him as far above mere mortals as the immortal gods, finding both ecstasy and peace in her arms … until the darkness crept in.

  Love, Regeane thought, seems to demand eternity and desire possession of its object. The poet realized he had neither one.

  Was Cynthia really a loose woman or only too frail a vessel for the poet’s immortal fire, she wondered. Slowly, over the time of their affair, the poems change. They become even more brilliant. The verse sings more beautifully as the poet descends into savage jealousy and morbid self-loathing as his obsession with the woman begins to destroy him. In the end, his hatred for Cynthia seemed as great as his love had been. He dreamed of her death and, perhaps, desired it.

  Did she die or not? Regeane wondered. Or did the poet only want her to be dead to him? No matter, because the poet found there is no freedom from love, even in death.

  Cynthia’s shade comes to trouble his sleep. Even as her voice calls from the world beyond death, it is drenched with passion and desire. She promises a restless eternity. The serpents that guard the tomb will weave among our mortal relics. Thy bones will twine with mine. Threat or promise? Who could tell? Perhaps neither, but only a statement that love once given is stronger than death and she would remain his real and only love all the days of his life and beyond.

  But Propertius’ songs end on a strangely high note. The last poem, mock-heroic in tone, tells how a very much alive and angry Cynthia drove the whores from his bed, the pimps from the triclinium. She purified the house and opened her arms to him. And the poet leaves us with a picture of himself and his mistress lying together in contented bliss. The first man to tell us that love is better than power or conquest sleeps at last, forever, in his Cynthia’s arms.

  Regeane came down to earth with a bump. She sighed and stretched.

  “A little unwatered wine, my dear,” Cecelia said. “Some for all of us.”

  Regeane poured three cups. Cecelia wouldn’t and didn’t remove her veil to drink. The thing was long and loose. She lifted it out.

  “Well?” Dulcina asked, putting the lyre back in its case.

  “You need no praise from me,” Cecelia said. “Certainly you know how good you are, but you’ll get it nonetheless. I will recommend you to the first houses in Rome. And I’ll never speak to anyone again who denies you admittance. But come, we’re neglecting Barbara’s largess.”

  They gathered around the table. The food was still edible, warm and as delicious as it had been earlier.

  Regeane found herself embarrassed to be eating another lunch so soon. The wolf wasn’t embarrassed, however. Regeane got a sneer from her alter ego. And both she and Dulcina fell to with a will.

  “It seems,” Regeane said, lifting a particularly generous portion of roast dripping with gravy toward her mouth, “love gives one a tremendous appetite.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Dulcina said. “I’ve never been in love.”

  “Ah,” Cecelia said as she managed the complicated process of spooning baked apple under her veil without getting a drop on herself or the cloth. “But you do have a lover.”

  “Albinus?” Dulcina said. “My lady, the man is rising seventy. He doesn’t even bother to hide his bald spot and never worries about his paunch. If I went into transports of ecstasy about him, the shock might kill him. I’m an artist. I may sing of love and while I’m singing I may believe in it, but I don’t plan my life around it. I’m far too practical.”

  “And you, Regeane?” she asked.

  “I’m to be married to a man who commands a pass in the Alps,” she said.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” Cecelia said. “Some ferocious barbarian, no doubt. Yet many of these northern lords are tall, handsome men, fond and respectful of their womenfolk. And,” she said as if trying to soften, “it may be you will come to love him.”

  “I hope not,” Regeane said. The words popped out of her mouth before she thought. “I don’t plan to love him. I plan to survive him.”

  “How very wise, my dear,” Cecelia said.

  Dulcina nodded her agreement. “Look at Propertius’ love, a theme for poets, a sickness of the soul, a curse.”

  “But my dear,” Cecelia said, “don’t we women live for love and build our lives around it?”

  “A king and a warrior are going to make a pact over my body,” Regeane said. “I see nothing there around which to build a life.”

  “I see that you’re a sensible woman, as I am,” said Dulcina. “Lucilla found Albinus for me. He’s a very pleasant sort, she t
old me. ‘Of course you’ll stand somewhere in his esteem between his water organ and the antique cythera he bought last year in Greece. So don’t let his attentions go to your head. But he’s generous and if you’re prudent and thrifty, I’m sure you’ll do quite nicely.’ She was right. He is, and I have. Besides she didn’t tell me how kind and considerate he was and, believe me, a little kindness and consideration go far with someone who’s as well acquainted with neglect and abuse as I am.”

  “In your unhappy childhood, no doubt,” Cecelia said.

  “Unhappy isn’t the word, my lady,” Dulcina said. “All the words I can think of are too impolite to use in your presence. I can remember the day Lucilla came into my life as though it was yesterday.”

  Regeane was shocked to realized there were tears in Dulcina’s eyes.

  “She offered me a silver coin to sing for her. I remember I snatched the thing at once and held it tightly clenched in my fist behind my back. For I was afraid if my voice displeased her, she’d take it back, and a little money meant I could lie down in the kennel I slept in, for a few nights running, with a full belly. And you can’t imagine how important that was to me at the time.

  “I sang the prettiest song I knew for her. Avile, filthy ditty the muleteers who drank in the tavern taught me. They delighted in teaching me all the dirtiest songs they could dredge up. Such foul language falling from a child’s innocent lips was always funny to them.

  “But Lucilla didn’t laugh or blush. When I was finished she put another silver coin in my hand and paid a visit to my master. Then she led me away to paradise. Or at least what was paradise to me. Clean bed linen, good abundant food, and a life lived among people who didn’t turn the back of their hand to me for pleasure, as the tavernkeeper did.”

  “And to think you might be a child belonging to one of the first families of Rome,” Cecelia said.

  “What?” Regeane asked. “How is that possible?”

  “Don’t you know, my dear?” Cecelia asked.

  “No,” Dulcina said. “Her people are barbarians. No doubt they have such tricks among them, but they aren’t so widespread or so generally approved of.

  “Many families, Regeane,” Dulcina explained, “don’t bother to raise all the children they have.”

  “The rich are worse about it than the poor,” Cecelia said. “They often don’t want to divide an inheritance or pay out a dowry. So the child is abandoned in some public place. They are frequently taken by slave dealers who raise them for future sale.”

  “Better to strangle them at birth,” Dulcina said, “than let them live to endure such suffering as I did. Believe me, life is at best a dubious gift under such circumstances.”

  “But,” Cecelia said, “suppose you had been born beautiful?”

  “All the worse for me,” Dulcina said. “Then the brothel keeper wouldn’t have sold me to the tavern where I learned to sing and came to the attention of Lucilla. As it was, I didn’t completely escape the attentions of his … customers and it was years before I could endure the touch of a man without cold chills going through me.”

  “How strange,” Regeane said. “Yet you live with Albinus, an old man.”

  “I never feel afraid of Albinus, and I’m safe, Regeane. So he can never really hurt or disappoint me. You see, I can’t love him.”

  “So you’re free to like him,” Cecelia said.

  “Exactly.” Dulcina looked down into her wine cup. “Much more of this and I’ll have to be poured into my litter and make the journey home unconscious.”

  Cecelia pushed the tray toward her. “Eat a little more, my dear. What about you, Regeane? What does the virgin goddess think of love?”

  Regeane lifted the wine cup quickly to hide her face because she remembered she had surrendered her first kiss to a nameless shepherd on the Campagna. She had felt only pity for him at the time, yet she vividly recalled the silken brush of those soft lips on her own. Afterward, she had dreamed of caresses far more intimate than that one. Delivered to other places in far more pleasing ways.

  She thought of the long nights she had spent alone. In the slow drift between sleep and waking she had journeyed with the wolf across a world of beauty, enchantment, and freedom. She had run with others across Arctic wastes, through mountain valleys, played in the shallows of rivers by moonlight and … they … she remembered dimly … had always been beside her. Brothers, sisters, and friends. But had the fierce silver beauty lovers? The wolf didn’t know and couldn’t, or wasn’t ready to remember. Had the warm, quivering, eager emptiness of the female desire felt the hot, pulsing power of the male?

  And then the awareness surged over her consciousness like the rush of an oncoming tide. Of course the wolf did, and one day the wolf would, but not just yet. No, not quite yet, but soon—very, very soon—she would want … what?

  Regeane jumped to her feet, turned, and walked quickly to the louvered window. Oh, God, here was a complication, an event she hadn’t counted on at all.

  She pushed aside the slats and stared down into the garden. The thick heady scent of roses enveloped her.

  The wolf reared up in the darkness of her being and examined the world through her eyes. The beast who won the wolf would have to do more than bare his fangs at his rivals. He would have to best all of them at single combat because she wouldn’t yield herself for less. The woman could be taken, moved like a pawn on the chessboard of men’s power games, but the wolf was free. A lean silver mass of fury who would yield herself only to the best, the strongest, the fiercest of her suitors.

  Cecelia’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “Excuse me, my dear. Have I been indiscreet? Asked a question I shouldn’t have? Perhaps you have a lover?”

  Regeane shook her head, her fist clenched at the bodice of her dress. “No,” she said. “It would be very dangerous for me to have a lover. My prospective husband might not be jealous of me, but he will certainly be jealous of his honor. No, I was merely thinking. I often dream of love, but when I wake, I find my pillow wet with tears. For if a lover would be a danger to me, it would be even more dangerous for me to learn to love my husband. The length of my marriage depends on the success of my illustrious kinsman, Charlemagne. Should he fail, I’m sure my husband would look around for another match. Divorce is common among the Franks and so is … something even cheaper than divorce … murder.”

  Dulcina began to laugh. “Good heavens,” she said, “you’re even more of a realist than I am.”

  “Yet your pillow is wet with tears,” Cecelia said.

  Regeane turned from the window and faced Cecelia. She was sitting at the head of the table and the slanted rays of the westing sun shone on her face and body, covering her with bars of golden light and black shadow.

  One struck the veil rendering it for a moment transparent to Regeane’s eyes. Under it Regeane could see clearly the soft outlines of a face so beautiful it took her breath away. A sweet, sensual mouth, cheekbones planing down into hollows that made the faces of other women seem broad and squat. Above them, the wide-set, flower-blue eyes. And below, the stark, black triangular hollow where the nose had been.

  Regeane tried not to allow her face to show anything as she averted her eyes. She wasn’t horrified, but grief-stricken at the destruction of so much beauty. “I wonder what the ancients would have thought of our little symposium?” she said.

  “If you mean Plato,” Dulcina said. She made a sound of disgust. “Pah! I can imagine that pack of male fools sitting around a table discussing the existence of love, a complete abstraction to them. As though love in the abstract ever existed. Love is always particular, never general.”

  “Besides,” Regeane commented, “I think the philosopher once said women never discuss the nature of love, only lovers.”

  “Indeed,” Cecelia said. “Perhaps Dulcina is right. The philosophers haven’t the remotest understanding of love.”

  “Of course they haven’t,” Dulcina said. “Any woman who’s ever borne a child, nourished i
t at her breast, cleaned it, protected it through all the years knows more of love than the most intelligent of those fools. But why are we going on about love? Look at your precious Propertius. He was killed by it, or so they say. I’m disgusted by it.” She pointed to Regeane. “She’s afraid of it, and your life was destroyed by it.”

  Cecelia flinched and Dulcina clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve had too much wine. It must be loosening my tongue.”

  “Not at all,” Cecelia said. “Don’t apologize, my dear. I always encourage my pupils to speak freely to me. I like to know what they really think when they read Livy or Cicero. I like to hear about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations. They often come and bring their troubles to my ears. Sometimes they ask my advice about their own lives. Nothing they say ever leaves this room. I, in turn, often confide in them. I have told them more than once my story. If it hasn’t come to your ears, then they must have been more discreet than I supposed.

  “You must understand my family is an ancient one. I even number a few Caesars in my line. It is said we are the purest blood in Rome. We trace our ancestry back to the imperium. But we are poor now, our great estates in Gaul and Britannia long gone, our Latin lands confiscated by the Lombards. All that remains of our once-vast wealth is a villa on the Via Latia and a few vineyards and castalia near Nepi.

  “However, given our distinguished position in society, we were not surprised when one of the wealthiest men in Rome asked for my hand in marriage. He was a good thirty years older than I, but I knew my duty. He offered to restore the family fortunes.”

  “Yes,” Dulcina said, “distinguished ancestors won’t repair the leaks in the roof, replace threadbare clothing, or put bread on the table.”

  “Only too true,” Cecelia said. “I was married in my great-grandmother’s wedding dress, the only truly magnificent garment our family still possessed, a gown of old-fashioned silk and gold thread embroidered with citrines and seed pearls. The only reason it hadn’t been sold was because citrines and seed pearls simply don’t fetch enough. Semiprecious stones, you know.