It was white, heavy, raw, pure silk, almost priceless, sewn with gold at the bodice, sleeves, and hem. She slipped it over her head.
I must leave, she thought. Her mind was clearing. The fabric caressed her skin, a sensual delight. He kissed her gently with an exquisite tenderness. Another sensual delight. I’ll leave in the morning, she thought.
He led her to the triclinium. There was possibly more food on the table than there had been at the wedding feast. Hams, cheeses—white, yellow, blue—wines in flagons, clay bottles, and even amphoras chilled in a tub of snow. Scattered among this largess were whole haunches of pork, beef, tender lamb, and veal. Bread was scattered everywhere—the thick, rich, dark Roman breads made with dates, onions, herbs, olive oil, and cheese.
Maeniel’s people were feasting. They were all wearing arms and armor. Some looked battered and bloodied.
There were no candles or lamps. Only torches lit the room. The couches had been replaced by benches. Two chairs were at the high table. Maeniel led her toward them. His people stood and, raising a shout, lifted their cups to Regeane.
The curtains separating the triclinium from the garden belled out, then flapped in the wind. Regeane shivered.
The wolf rose, swimming up from profound darkness. She was, as always, voiceless, but Regeane realized the woman and the creature were at odds. The narrowed, blazing gaze caught and held her.
Their chairs were so close Maeniel’s arm pressed against hers.
The wolf directed her mind away. She saw the huge gray. The vision was clear. She could smell the wind of the heights, taste the purity of air blowing over a snow-covered glacier locked in eternal winter on peaks so high they thrust through the thin blanket of air covering the world.
The gray wolf climbed higher than the trees or even grass, beyond the path of the ibex who take a road over barren, windswept rock seemingly dancing along the edge of the sky. He ran though the air was thin and the cold so intense it struck through the triple thickness of his coat and brought him almost to agony.
Higher and higher he struggled over snow-covered ice, skirting crevasses yawning like frigid, toothless mouths breathing out inky, silent, freezing death. Up above him rose a ridgeline drenched in moonlight, glittering against a dead black sky.
Up and up the gray toiled, indifferent to the burning pain in his lungs, the stretch and return of muscles and tendons that seemed ready to simply tear free of his bones with the next step. Up and up toward what seemed, to the untutored eye of the woman, the roof of the world.
Someone touched her face. The vision faded. She realized Matrona was bending over her and Maeniel had hold of her hand.
“My lady,” he spoke softly, “are you well?”
Matrona stroked her cheek. “Stop swilling, you sots! Get a plate of food together and pass it up to our younger sister here. She needs food. And wine, no, not that Campagnan red, but some of the white, chilling in the snow.”
In a few seconds a plate and goblet were thrust before her. Sausage—beef and pork—roast beef, loin of wild boar, all smothered in their appropriate gravies. Some sort of greens cooked in cheese and oil, and wine, cold and thirst quenching. Every mouthful was pleasure. No, more than pleasure. Each was a different variety of ecstasy.
Sometime later, when she looked up, the food was gone. Maeniel’s arm was around her shoulders.
“There, are you better now?” he asked.
“Yes.” The yes was a sigh of repletion.
The arm around her shoulders tightened, the back of his free hand caressed her cheek.
In the deepest darkness of her brain the wolf gave a cry of fear and fury. Go, it said as clearly as if the word had been articulated.
No. The woman turned toward her dark companion. He is lost, the gray one, lost. We are separated by the power of king and pope, law and God … Then she felt a terrible uprush of sorrow because she knew the silver one spoke the truth and, sooner or later, she would leave this man’s bed and seek her final freedom in the moonlight. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. The parody of a prayer pronounced her victory and her doom.
Gundabald stepped between the curtains separating the triclinium and the garden. Six of Basil’s mercenaries were with him. They all held crossbows in their hands. A look of madness was in Gundabald’s eyes. His loaded crossbow was pointed directly at Maeniel’s chest.
The room went utterly and absolutely still.
“What do you want, Gundabald?” Maeniel asked.
Gundabald laughed. Perhaps it was a laugh, Regeane thought. An ugly cackle in the silent room.
“Everything I have tried has failed,” he said. “Even now, the mob hunts me. But I and my friends here don’t take well to the role of outcast fugitives. Not when the table in front of us holds enough treasure to make us all wealthy men for life.”
Regeane glanced at the silver and gold dishes, the ruby-studded cup near Maeniel’s hand.
Maeniel shrugged. “Matrona, give it to them. After all, it’s only gold and silver.”
Matrona replied with a grunt and rose. She began to collect plates and cups and dump them into a sack she’d made of her mantle.
Not even Regeane noticed that as she worked, she was moving closer and closer to the semicircle of men in the doorway.
No! Regeane thought. No! The crossbow was pointed directly at Maeniel’s chest. She remembered her father, the wound that ended his life. Pink and white roses, the petals steeping in blood. She knew what Gundabald was going to do. The wolf knew what Gundabald was going to do. The wind she remembered in the convent cell’s darkness, the wind from beyond the world; she felt it start and begin to blow. Suddenly, the air in the room was thick with the smell of blood and roses.
Regeane pulled free of Maeniel’s arm, kicked the chair to the floor behind her, and stood.
“Sweet niece,” Gundabald said. “Sweet niece, if you are wise …” he repeated.
But the wind was blowing harder now, the curtain flapping wildly. Regeane understood. She had summoned it. Her life summoned it and, perhaps, her death.
“Uncle,” she spoke one last warning, “go. Go! Go now or you will surely die.”
The crossbow bolt swung away from Maeniel toward her. All of the glittering lethal stars swung toward her.
She was the silver wolf, for one horrible moment entangled in her dress, then she was free and coiled like a spring. A shimmer of moonlight with bared fangs, she went for Gundabald’s throat. She expected to die in mid-leap … but she didn’t.
Gundabald was brutal and coward, but he was no fool. She’d flung herself into his trap.
Something like a black cloud flew toward her. The steel meshes of the net closed around her. The wolf struggled on the floor at Gundabald’s feet.
Gundabald gave a yell of pure triumph. He shouted to Maeniel, “Look! Look! Look what you have married!”
The mercenaries thrust their torches at Regeane, blinding the wolf. Then she was woman again, and all the crossbow bolts were trained on her.
“Now,” Gundabald shouted, “I think you will be glad to pay me to take her away.”
Regeane sighed. A simple sound, but a terrible one. Her sigh was the cry of one who has struggled long against death, but now yields to the cold embrace. The protest of one sunk in grief who realizes the full meaning of everlasting separation from one deeply loved.
Everyone in the room felt the pain in that sound, even Gundabald. “How she can feel so much is beyond me,” he said, but he steadied the crossbow in his hand and pointed it at her heart.
“Gundabald!” Maeniel’s voice shouted and the gray wolf stood on the table challenging him.
Gundabald’s eyes dilated and his jaw dropped. Regeane thought that he looked, for all the world, like a man whose worst nightmare has come true.
The faces of the mercenaries went ashen with fear. A terrible blast of wind struck the entrance to the dining room. The torches on the walls burned blue.
; Maeniel was gray as are dark storm clouds or a rock shadow on a snowy glacier. His leap held such power that it carried him all the way from the table to where Gundabald stood. Then he was man again. His left hand tore the crossbow away from Gundabald. With the right—man to man—he killed him.
The whole pack bolted over the tables at the mercenaries. They came four-legged, without weapons, clothing, or armor; furred, fanged, and enraged … eyes glowing in the darkness.
Wind screamed through the room. Wine bottles and crockery shattered as the pack leaped forward, heedless of anything but the attack.
Maeniel lifted Gundabald by the neck, throttling him. Gundabald struggled violently, kicking, clawing at Maeniel’s face while his own grew darker and darker.
Outside a nightmare chorus of screams and snarls rang out as the pack caught Gundabald’s men and killed them.
“I swore,” Maeniel roared, looking directly into Gundabald’s eyes, “that I would kill her tormentor with my bare hands—” Gundabald’s body went limp. He hung like a rag doll from Maeniel’s fist. “—and I have,” he finished as he dropped Gundabald’s lifeless body to the floor.
The wind died, the torch flames flared.
Maeniel knelt down and, with trembling hands, helped Regeane free herself from the net. “My God,” he whispered, “my God, why did you do that? Why didn’t you let me handle it? The minute they were out the door they were dead men.”
“No, he never intended to let you live. That was how he killed my father—with a crossbow bolt through the heart.”
Maeniel glanced over at the sprawled, lifeless body. “Perhaps you’re right. Are you hurt anywhere, in any way?”
“No,” she whispered as he embraced her. She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder. Then she felt the wolf, in the silence of her heart, rest her head against the same shoulder in perfect love and trust. And they were one.
His arms tightened protectively around her. It was some time before they both realized the stone floor they were kneeling on was hard and the night breeze was cold.
Maeniel rose, went to the table, and dropped his own tunic over his head. Then he wiped his hands carefully and gave Regeane her dress.
“You didn’t tell me,” she said, “and when I tried to make my confession to you …” Her voice rose. “You … treated me as though I were a madwoman.”
“Regeane, we were the principal actors in one of the finer dramas played out in this city since the Imperial court moved to Constantinople. How many ears do you think were pressed against that door? Five, ten, two dozen, or even more. And, as for afterward, heaven help me, you’d been through so much. I was afraid for you. Afraid your mind might snap. I thought my fears were realized when you went for Gundabald. I was mercilessly slow about his death. He felt the full agony every—step—of—the—way.” Maeniel spoke the last words through clenched teeth.
Then he extended his arms to her and she yielded bonelessly to his embrace. They still stood there as the wolves entered.
Gavin returned first, naked and annoyed. He saw Regeane looking at him and dove for his clothes. “He has a lot of human habits,” Maeniel commented. “Shame is one of them.”
Matrona followed. She seemed comfortable in her skin. “They’re dead,” she said. “Later we’ll take the bodies and dump them. We weren’t hungry. At least not that hungry.” She and one of the others carried Gundabald’s body away to join his companions.
The rest trailed in, dressed, and made ready to eat and drink, especially to drink, again. But before they sat down, Gavin lifted one of the amphoras that had been chilled in the snow. They all filled their cups with the slightly sweet vintage flavored with a touch of honey.
Regeane took Maeniel’s hand. She was weary to the point of falling, but filled with the deepest peace she’d ever known. She stood, looking at them as they raised their cups to her.
God, they were a wild, savage crew—masters, she was sure, of their mountain fastness. She would be their lady, a fascinating and sometimes dangerous task. She wondered if she’d be equal to it.
But Maeniel spoke, “My brothers, my friends, my companions in arms, but best of all, those who run with me along the trackless paths of moonlight. I give you Regeane, your lady. The silver wolf and my wife.”
Don’t miss the breathtaking sequel to
THE SILVER WOLF.
NIGHT OF THEM
WOLF
by
Alice Borchardt
Available in bookstores everywhere.
In NIGHT OF THE WOLF, Alice Borchardt moves from the fall of the Roman Empire even deeper into the mists of history—to ancient Druidic Gaul—to tell the enthralling, seductive tale of the uncanny wolf Manael.
As a wolf, he fought for the survival of his pack. As a man, he surrendered to the desires of his own unfamiliar flesh. But in both forms, this hunter would soon become the prey. For even as the conquering forces of Rome swept across the land, the stage was being set for a battle between the shapeshifting Manael and Dryas, the powerful Druid priestess summoned to destroy him …
NIGHT OF THE WOLF
by Alice Borchardt
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in bookstores everywhere.
The Silver Wolf Page 52
