“You are in a right royal snit,” the spirit told her. “But you are going to listen to what I have to say.”
Chiara pushed the shutters aside, being very careful to make as little noise as possible. The night was clear. A sharp winter chill lingered in the air and the sky was crowded with what seemed like millions of stars. But there was no wind, and Chiara’s bedgown and woolen socks were warm. She was about to exclaim, “How beautiful,” but remembered the source of her last argument with the spirit and didn’t want another, at least not so soon.
But he answered her unspoken comment anyway. “Yes, it is.”
Chiara trusted herself to nod and she did. The spirit continued. “I didn’t come here tonight to discuss the wonders of creation but to bring you a much more important message. A great deal of trouble is in the offing for both your father and the king.”
“What’s going on?”
“First and least important at the moment is that Charles, the Frankish king, is advancing through the Alps. Frankly, I must say I admire the perspicacity of the wolf in choosing to follow that particular ruler, who shows an unusually high degree of ability and intelligence for a human and above all for one nobly born. Most of that particular subspecies of human have roughly the intellectual capacity of nits; this one, Charles, seems to be a highly competent individual. Which, by the way, bodes ill for the cowardly and devious Lombard ruler.”
Chiara said, “Huh?”
“Charles is smart and brave. Desiderius is stupid, cowardly, and inept. What do you think is going to happen?”
“Oh,” Chiara said, “but there’s many a slip between cup and lip.”
“True,” the being answered trenchantly. “But of more moment is the fact that the people of Pavia and the surrounding countryside are fed up with the depredations of the mercenary forces that your feckless king has hired to defend his domains. He doesn’t trust his people or his nobility and with good reason. He has never taken steps to win the loyalty of either.
“Instead, he’s made a state policy of scheming, backstabbing, and murder, and this policy is about to bear most unpleasant fruit. To put it very succinctly, tomorrow his chickens are coming home to roost, and he will find them very ugly fowl indeed. And you must warn your father that the square won’t be a safe place to visit. Don’t go there without protection, no matter what happens. Don’t stir out of this room. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Get a migraine, get a vile disease, fall into convulsions, but stay home.”
“I was already planning to wake up with terrible cramps. They’re going to try to burn the one you call the wolf.”
“The bishop and king are going to call an assembly and try Maeniel for sorcery,” Hugo’s guest said. “But calling an assembly is a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Because the people have the right at an assembly to introduce other business, and make no mistake about it, they will take advantage of this devious monarch’s error and do so. As for burning the wolf . . . Well, his wife is here. Normally she might be stoned out of hand as a witch, but given the nasty temper of the citizenry at this moment, I find that against all odds they are listening to her—high-tempered bitch that she is—and she has plans that don’t include her husband being burned alive.”
“Good for her,” Chiara whispered truculently.
“Ye gods, but you women stick together.”
“Ha! I wish. Look at that dumb Bibo. Now I can’t do anything without her finding out. I’m completely cornered by that old witch and my father.”
“You’re going to go to the square regardless of what I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Chiara answered, and stamped her foot. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
The spirit gave a hiss of fury that turned at last into a sigh of disgust. “You’re going to get us all killed,” the spirit snapped.
“All? Nobody can do anything to you—you’re already dead.”
“Yes, yes, they can,” the spirit confessed. “If I expend all my energies in an act of violence, it can destroy me. That’s why I didn’t smash that repulsive little louse Hugo like a glass beaker.”
“Then how did he get all those bruises?”
“He’s a stinking sot. He got drunk to keep me from forcing him to help the wolf. Wandered out into the hall with, I think, some idea of forcing his way into your room. I pushed him down the stairs.”
“I can’t believe even a fall down the stairs would do that much damage.”
“It didn’t. The little pile of dog shit didn’t seem to feel it, so when he crawled back to the top step, I pushed him back down again.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Not as terrible as what he had in mind for you, my dear. I know. He was muttering about it all the way back up the stairs. You are an innocent and there are cruelties you don’t even know exist. Cruelties a man like Hugo will commit without a second thought.”
“Oh,” Chiara whispered.
The spirit was pleased that she seemed much more subdued.
“I see . . .”
“No, no, you don’t. And I would not have you do so. Now, will you stay home? Like a sensible woman?”
“No,” Chiara stated flatly. “Can’t you see I need to know what’s going on? I have to at least try to protect my father, because even if I hide, he will go. Especially if the king calls an assembly. He will feel it is incumbent upon him to be there, and I won’t let him go alone.”
“Perdition on it,” Hugo’s guest roared.
Just then the door to the chamber where Bibo slept creaked open. “My lady, my lady,” the old woman cried. “The danger . . . The night air carries the miasmic chill of the grave—death rides the night wind.” She seized Chiara by the neck of the gown and one arm and made an effort to drag her back into the room.
“Stop.” Chiara raised her arms, trying to fend her off and loosen the old woman’s grip on the fabric at her neck. “Stop it right now. You’re choking me,” Chiara cried desperately. “I just wanted some air.”
“A lover,” the old woman cried. “That’s it, you have a lover—a lover visiting you. He’s in the garden.” She twisted the narrow neck of the gown even tighter at Chiara’s throat.
Chiara gasped and gagged. The gown was really strangling her. A fist exploded in Bibo’s face, smacking her in the region of her right eye. With an ear-splitting shriek, she went down on her backside. At almost the same moment, Arminus charged through the outer door accompanied by two members of the king’s guard, both armed cap-a-pie.
“He hit me. Her lover hit me,” Bibo shouted.
“Take him alive,” Armine roared. “If her honor is compromised, he must marry her. If not, I’ll have his head on a pike! On a pike, I say, a pike.”
“My God,” Chiara whispered, and jumped back.
The first of the king’s guard reached the balcony and wasn’t able to slow his forward progress quickly enough to avoid slamming into the balustrade. Then he let out a truly unearthly yell as Armine, who was following him closely, crashed into his back and almost—almost, but not quite—shoved him over the rail; he was spared a fall of approximately fifty Roman feet to a flagstone courtyard at the center of the garden below.
Bibo wailed again, this time halfheartedly. “Her lover . . .”
Armine and the two guardsmen were no longer in danger of falling, but since they all had their naked swords in hand, there was a real chance one of them might inflict a serious wound on another, completely by accident. Chiara was standing in an alcove protected on one side by the bed and on the other by a high, very elaborately carven solid oak chest.
“Her lover . . .” Bibo moaned.
“In God’s name, haven’t any of you a lick of sense?” Chiara screamed. “What is it? Are you are all maggot-brained madmen? How would I entertain a lover? We are four floors from the ground. The man would have to have wings.”
“There is,” Armine said, sounding astounded, “no one here. How can that be?”
“Her lover
,” Bibo whimpered.
One of the guardsmen reached down and set Bibo on her feet and then recoiled violently as she breathed on him. “Ya, she reeks of the tavern.”
Armine leaned over and sniffed. “Drunk, by God.” He turned to Chiara and shook a finger. “This is all your doing, my girl. Were it not for these midnight peregrinations of yours, we would—”
Chiara’s fists clenched and a look of outrage began spreading across her features, but just then three things happened simultaneously.
Armine’s feet were kicked out from under him, and he landed seated on the floor as Bibo had. The shutters to the balcony slammed violently shut, casting the room abruptly into complete darkness. And—
Chiara was suddenly but thoroughly kissed.
When one of the guardsman stumbled into the hall and returned with a torch, Armine gave a wild shout of surprise. Chiara drew in her breath sharply and pressed her fingers against her cheeks; her face felt incandescent. She followed the direction of her father’s gaze and saw her bed was covered with white roses.
Looks like nine miles of bad road, Lucilla thought. Rome was shadowed by its illustrious past, but here and there fragments of its former glory shone even among the ruins. Here, nothing remained. On their way into the city, they passed ruined villas and a decaying Roman town on the flatland below. Only a scattering of columns and tumbled stones remained of the forum and what once had been a large amphitheater. A few of the houses were inhabited by peasants who pastured flocks of sheep and goats on the rich grass that covered what once had been shops, streets, and dwellings. Beyond the city’s ruins, the open fields were being plowed up by peasants living on the rocky promontory that towered over the valley.
Dulcinia pointed out the remains of the city and several villas to Lucilla as they made the ride up from the deserted coastal plain. “The lord of this place,” she told Lucilla, “says the city was abandoned because it flooded during the spring rains. He said the villagers sometimes dig for treasure there, and even sometimes find it, but mostly they get pieces of broken glass, pottery, and from time to time a few fragments of marble. Shepherds pasture their flocks there because there is so much stone in the soil that it can’t be plowed.”
A nearby hill crowned by some sort of stonework was newly planted with a patchwork of olive trees and vines. Lucilla pointed to the tumbled stones. “I wonder what that was?”
Dulcinia shrugged. “Who can say, but it’s a village now.”
Lucilla looked more closely and saw the outline of huts and sheds grouped under the fire-blackened cupola of an ancient building. “Might have been baths or even a church,” she said.
Dulcinia shrugged again. “I suppose so. I can’t see that it matters. What will you do, my love, try to bring it all back? Not even you would want that.”
Lucilla sighed, then chuckled. “It floods indeed. A pleasant, polite way of saying take care, the countryside is not safe here.”
Dulcinia laughed softly, then looked back at their escort trailing along behind. The men rode negligently. Only a few wore their helmets and hauberks but most carried a businesslike assortment of weapons: swords, knives, and a powerful clubbed mace hung from every man’s saddle. Even the two women carried knives, a pair each, one long—the ugly and dangerous single-edged sax—and the shorter a double-edged utility blade. Lucilla also had a vicious half moon–shaped ax sheathed in leather under her saddle blanket.
The day was warm and clear, the sky blue; a cool breeze was blowing, and birdsong filled the air as they rode past a small copse of trees bordering the road. The two women rode astride wearing tunics, leggings, and divided skirts.
“I thought we might have had to fight at that last river crossing,” Dulcinia said. “I’m glad you’re along. I don’t know what I would have done alone.”
Lucilla’s face hardened. “Maybe we should have. He was one shifty-eyed bastard, and his threats may have been all a bluff. But I felt I couldn’t take the chance.
“Likely we’d have won; almost certainly we’d have slaughtered that contingent of scum he had hanging about the ford. But he insisted he paid dues to the local authorities—whoever the hell they are in that godforsaken place—so the threat of a minor war was unsettling to say the least. That, and he reduced the amount we would have to pay ever so quickly when he got a good look at Rufus’s men. Made me decide it wasn’t worth the risk, not over a few coppers.
“But I’ll bet his master, if he has one, sees damn little of whatever tolls he collects.”
“There, you see,” Dulcinia said. “I’d have paid the first price he asked. I’m not brave, my dear. Those outlaws he ran with terrified me.”
“Bah,” Lucilla said. “Parasites and scavengers all. He probably throws them his leavings. Not one decent scrap of armor or even one good sword among them. It’s not my business to clean out that particular viper’s nest, but I’ll make damn sure both Hadrian and Rufus hear about them. One or the other might make it his business to see their leader winds up adorning a cross.”
Just then they reached the rather steep road that led to the new town perched on the top of its rock. Quite a climb, but when they reached the top, both Lucilla and Dulcinia were heartened by what they saw. The town was still in the process of being built. The square was laid out in cobblestone, with a palace of sorts on one side, a church under construction on the other. At the end of the square was a stone balustrade where one could stand, take the air, be cooled by the spring breeze, and look out over the fertile and beautiful countryside beyond.
It was a market day and all manner of people were present buying and selling what was, considering the small size of the place, a variety of goods. Rabbits, chickens, geese, herbs, savory, garlic, thyme, mint, and small quantities of exotic spices such as cinnamon, cloves, saffron, and pepper. Mushrooms in abundance, onions, leeks, cabbage, artichokes scattered among bundles of fresh wild greens gathered by women before daybreak, their stems and roots in water to keep them fresh in the heat of the day.
The crowd in the square greeted Lucilla and Dulcinia with almost wild enthusiasm and escorted the two women and even their tough-looking male protectors to the steps of the palace. The local Lombard lord didn’t rush out to greet her. He and some of his men were already out testing—just testing, mind you—a new batch of beer. He was hustled along with respect but no fear by the laughing townspeople, and only prevented by the press of people around the palace from breaking his neck because he couldn’t see, he was so busy trying to pull a magnificent red velvet tunic down over a well-worn white shirt.
Lucilla thought he might as well have left his face covered up. One cheek was deeply scarred. He had a much-broken nose and part of one ear was missing. But his people cheered him and he bowed over Dulcinia’s hand like a gentleman.
Lucilla curtseyed to him and he replied gravely. “Ladies, you are a joy to behold. I hope you had a safe journey.”
“Tolerable,” Dulcinia said, “except at the river.”
The lord’s face darkened. “What happened at the river?”
Dulcinia spoke of being stopped and a toll demanded.
“That is my demesne and . . . and it shouldn’t have happened. That filthy little blackguard is back. I’d ride for the river now but—”
“He will certainly be gone, Father.”
The speaker was a young man as handsome as his father was ugly. “I am Ansgar,” the warrior said, “and this—” He gestured toward the young man. “—is my son Ludolf. When we came to this place, the filthy robber you encountered had his nest here. All the countryside around was waste, thanks to the fact that the people went in fear of him.”
The young man laughed. “Father, you weren’t married then, and I wasn’t even born.”
Ansgar looked a bit chagrined. “I’m sorry. I forget all this happened years ago. When my father died, my brothers and I divided his lands among ourselves. The eldest got the best. My other brother and I took the leavings.” He gestured expansively toward the en
d of the square overlooking the valley. “But I believe I got the better of the bargain.”
He was answered by cheers from the crowd in the square.
“But come, ladies. Come in. Sorry our housekeeping is a bit knockabout today, but my wife has a malaise she comes down with every spring and—”
“A song,” someone shouted in the crowd. The rest took up the cry. “A song. A song.”
The lord’s face darkened but Lucilla saw Dulcinia’s face flush with pleasure and a smile hovered on her lips. Ansgar looked ready to protest, but Dulcinia said, “No, no. Please, I would love to sing for them. Where?”
“The church porch.” Ludolf pointed across the square.
Yes, the church had a colonnaded porch and walls, no roof yet, but the scaffolding was up and carpenters were on top setting the ceiling beams. Musicians appeared as if by magic out of the assembled people: a woman with a harp, two men with flutes, and several with different sorts of drums.
Dulcinia strolled across the square, smiling, greeting and being greeted by the townsfolk. She looked uplifted, Lucilla thought, by the prospect of performing for the people. Yes, Lucilla thought, and she remembered the day outside of the tavern when she’d first spoken to the eight-year-old child scrubbing pots almost as big as she was. The little girl was sad, filthy, and malnourished, but when Lucilla asked her to sing, the glow that suffused her face was magnificent, and then and there, before the child opened her mouth, Lucilla had decided she must be rescued from her brutal fate. No matter what her voice sounded like. Of course, once she sang . . . oh, that God-given, heavenly voice . . . Dulcinia had reached the church steps and she had a few moments to consult with the musicians.
Another man hurried up. He held a huge viol. They put their heads together for what seemed like a long time, the occasional squeak, ping, hoot, shout, gush of notes escaping from among them. Then Dulcinia and the rest stood on the church porch. Two of the drummers dropped out but one produced a horn and the other a strip of leather with bells. Dulcinia raised one hand and every voice in the square hushed as she began to sing.
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