The Wolf King

by Alice Borchardt

  Ansgar hurried his good-byes, urged on by Gerald. “Let’s go now and she will quiet down. The longer you delay, the worse she carries one. Come,” Gerald commanded.

  Ansgar left with his wife’s wailing ringing in his ears.

  When he was past the door, Lucilla snapped, “Oh, shut up. Save your sympathy for that louse Trudo and that pack of cowardly, badly armed scavengers surrounding him. Your husband and his men will probably destroy them the way a blaze does kindling. Your husband is a competent and intelligent soldier, and Trudo is a lazy rapscallion who wants to live off the best efforts of others. He probably will never know what hit him.”

  Stella called Lucilla a name peculiar to the Roman argot that Ludolf didn’t recognize, sat up, and demanded nourishment. Ludolf and Dulcinia hurried away to the big kitchens at the back of the house to find something for her.

  Stella sat and stared spitefully at Lucilla. They were at the back of the rather imposing palace, in a small room adjoining an herb garden. The very expensive spices that seasoned the few state banquets Ansgar had to give were located here. Other herbs, medicinal and culinary, were prepared and stored. A short flight of steps led down to the wine cellar, a private place where Stella, the lady of the house, kept her accounts and oversaw the manifold and complex task of running the large household.

  “What did you tell him about me?” Stella asked Lucilla.

  “Nothing.”

  Stella sniffed. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Stella, I’m not a fool, and don’t take me for one. He is your husband. You are the mother of his son. I can’t think he would be grateful to anyone stupid enough to bring anything discreditable in your past to his attention. I think you underestimate Ansgar. Yes, he’s slow to quarrel, but once he does, I suspect he’s extremely dangerous. I have no desire to earn his enmity. Certainly not by slandering his wife and certainly not while I’m a guest in his home, enjoying both his generosity and hospitality.”

  “I was afraid of you when you first came,” Stella said abruptly.

  “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  Stella frowned. “I wish I’d known that when you first came,” Stella said. She avoided Lucilla’s eyes.

  A dreadful suspicion began to creep into Lucilla’s mind. “Stella, what did you do?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Stella! You tell me right now—”

  “I don’t think he paid any attention—”

  “Who?”

  “Adalgisus,” Stella said.

  Lucilla’s yell of sheer rage brought Dulcinia and Ludolf running. They found Stella vainly trying to keep the chair between herself and an infuriated Lucilla, but when spectators entered the room, both women stopped, straightened their clothing, and smiled.

  “We were just having a little chat,” Stella said, batting her eyelashes at Lucilla.

  “It’s quite all right,” Lucilla said. “Pay us no mind. Our discussion, while somewhat animated, is basically friendly.”

  Both Ludolf and Dulcinia looked as if they didn’t believe this, but left and went back to the kitchen.

  “Lucilla, will you please be calm?”

  “Yes, yes,” Lucilla whispered. “Be calm. You knew this before you let Ansgar leave?”

  Stella nodded. “I did, but I didn’t think after the weeks you’ve been here that Adalgisus would take any notice. He is, after all, hiding out with his mistress in one of those fortified towns in the north.”

  “How close is the nearest town?”

  “Not far. You can see the walls from the cathedral steps on a clear day.”

  “It’s a clear day,” Lucilla said. “Does it belong to the Lombards?”

  “Yes, everything around here is part of the Lombard kingdom.”

  “Yes,” Lucilla answered gravely.

  “I’m tired of this nonsense. Tired and hungry,” Stella snapped.

  “Hysterics give you an appetite.”

  Stella opened her mouth but nothing came out. She drew in a deep breath. “Be grateful I’m a lady.” she told Lucilla, “and don’t care to call names.”

  “Something about a female dog? Was that on the tip of your tongue?” Lucilla asked.

  “How very perceptive of you.” Stella then swept out of the room.

  They ate in the kitchen. Yes, Ansgar gave banquets and ate with the principal men of the city each night, and for this he used the large state dining room. But meals among the family were taken in the kitchen, a long room with the garden behind it on the east side of the house. The table was a simple plank affair set on trestles, with benches on either side. Because of the hearth fire on one end of the room, it was always warm. A double wall at the back with an inset grate carried away the smoke, and folding doors leading to the kitchen garden all along the back of the house were open in good weather for light and ventilation. A shallow porch with a colonnade protected the room in the summer from the worst of the day’s heat and in the winter from the rains that drenched the countryside.

  All in all, Lucilla thought, it was the most beautiful room in the house. She was looking out over the kitchen garden. Early greens, chicory, turnips, and carrots were waving their feathery foliage over the furrows; the last onions were in bloom and the garlic heading up. Hardy rosemary was covered with blue flowers, and thyme perfumed the walks between the vegetable beds. The flowers on the tiny, creeping plants—which ranged from white, purple, blue, to deep mauve—were drenching the still rather bare garden with early color and fragrance. The sage had not yet come into its own, but a few of the gray stems bore early violet flower spikes. Along the walls espaliered pomegranates were covered with the fiery orange buds that would open to begin the fine, tart, succulent crop of autumn.

  Stella sat at one end of the long table in intense consultation with the cook over the night’s menu and the future celebration when Ansgar should return. Dulcinia sat with Lucilla. They ate fresh cheese, bread, onions, and bacon.

  “I need to talk to you, Lucilla,” Dulcinia whispered. “Alone.”

  “We are about as alone as we will ever be,” Lucilla said snappishly. “Stella’s not paying a bit of attention. What’s wrong?”

  “Ludolf,” Dulcinia whispered.

  “I did notice he was sticking like a bad burr. Is he making himself obnoxious?”

  “No,” Dulcinia said, still speaking softly but sounding strained. “The reverse. Yes, the reverse is true.”

  Lucilla shrugged. “You’re a serious artist. He’s a handsome, young man. Have a fling. Because, make no mistake, that’s what it would be—a fling.”

  Dulcinia shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first, but—” She still sounded strained. “But, well, you see, I’m late . . . and . . . but—”

  “Please, please be clear,” Lucilla said between her teeth. “You know I have lived a harsh life. What? Are you afraid of shocking me? If you’re pregnant, girl, there are medicines. If you care to bear the child, Ansgar will, no doubt, be happy even with a little by-blow. He can afford to support it and, by the by, so can you. Chrispus is very generous, and he won’t give a tinker’s damn who the father is.”

  Chrispus was Cardinal Chrispen Mantleck, collector of musical instruments and occasional musicians, Dulcinia being a case in point. “By the way, does he know about Chrispus? I hope you haven’t been keeping a secret, too,” she added under her breath.

  “Oh, yes, he knows. He knows about my birth and parentage, or rather lack of known parentage, and even my early upbringing before you rescued me. I didn’t keep any secrets from him. I do believe I’m pregnant, but that’s not the problem.”

  “And so—” Lucilla spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Tell me, what’s wrong?”

  “He’s talking marriage,” Dulcinia answered softly.

  “My God, that is a problem. He can’t—”

  Dulcinia nodded. “I know.”

  “You won’t—”

  “Oh, yes, I would,” Dulcinia said fervently.

/>   “Oh, damn, you’re—”

  “In love,” Dulcinia said softly. “Wildly, madly, and ever so hopelessly. Yes, I am in love.”

  “God, what a mess.”

  Then she became aware that Dulcinia was weeping open-eyed, silently, the tears running down her cheeks. And, as if from nowhere, it came to Lucilla that Dulcinia was as much her child as the two she’d carried in her womb, and she loved the singer perhaps more than those children of her own flesh and blood. And she was prepared to love Ludolf also. She knew little about the boy, except that he did have a fair face, and that when Dulcinia had confessed her pregnancy, he’d had the good taste to talk marriage. He seemed an honest young man.

  “Where is he now?” Lucilla asked.

  “He really feels bad,” Dulcinia said. “He has the sniffles the way his mother did when we came here. I believe he has a fever. He went to his room but wants me to come up and read to him in a little while.”

  Lucilla rose. “Come.”

  They returned to the rooms on the upper floor. Now Lucilla was hurrying. She began pulling her divided riding skirt and boots from the cupboard.

  “What’s wrong?” Dulcinia asked. “What’s the matter? You’re acting as if something terrible is about to happen. What are you doing?”

  “Something terrible is going to happen, but it needn’t be terrible for you.” Lucilla had the skirt on and was pushing her feet into the boots. “Where is Ludolf’s room?”

  “In the other wing. Over the garden. It’s quiet there.”

  Lucilla grabbed Dulcinia’s arm. “Go to his room.” She had the two small bottles in her hand, one wrapped with gold wire. She pressed them into Dulcinia’s palm. “The one with wire is opium, the other valerian. Go to his room, lock the door, stay there. Keep him occupied for the rest of the day.”

  “But what—”

  Lucilla’s fingernails dug into Dulcinia’s flesh. “Do you love him?”

  “Yes. Yes, but—”

  “Then do as I say.”

  “Lucilla, you’re frightening me.”

  “Be frightened. Sometimes it’s very intelligent to be afraid. This is one of those times. Hear me?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “Even if you have to drug him, keep him quiet for the rest of the day. Now, go.”

  Dulcinia fled.

  Lucilla was dressed. She threw a leather bag over her shoulder then hurried to the stair. She saw Stella looking up at her from the foot of the steps. She heard the commotion in the street.

  Rain. The rain was still blinding when the two wolves together swam the river beyond Pavia. It was swollen with snowmelt. The spot where Mona and her family were murdered must be underwater now, Regeane thought. She hoped the horror would be cleansed from the earth there, and the spirits of the dead would find peace. All the dead, not simply the victims.

  Above, the sky was brightening as the worst of the storm passed over. Long shafts of sunlight were striking down through the meshwork of storm clouds, driving the shimmering wetlands they swam through into brilliance. They were gone, free. The town, its claustrophobic terror, behind them; imprisonment, death only a memory; and the fresh, clear water cleansing away sorrow, fear, the marks, the stink, and even dimming the memories of the pain.

  He led. She followed, the old pattern reasserting itself, oddly comforting for both of them.

  It seemed he hurried away. He hated the confinement of cities. She had been a little frightened by him after they had left Rome. Each night, even when she felt abominably weary, he had become the wolf and left, ranging out into the darkened and sometimes dangerous countryside. At first she’d accompanied him on these runs, but then the strain of days spent on horseback or riding in carts along roads that hadn’t seen maintenance in several hundred years took its toll on her. That and the long terrors of her struggles with both the Lombards and her rapacious kin. Exhaustion began to set in and his rush to return to his stronghold seemed more and more senseless.

  Matters had reached a crisis when, one evening, she’d climbed in beside him after a long blustery, rainy ride. She was chilled and so tired, she was almost without appetite for supper. She’d bitten her tongue all day to keep back complaints. She was almost desperately looking forward to the warmth of his arms and the muscular body that embraced her, made her feel safe, secure, and above all loved. A security that allowed her to spend the night in a profound restful sleep without dreams.

  But instead of the man she felt the wolf, and he slid from the bed and drifted as silently as starlight toward the tent flap and the night outside. She sat up enraged, so enraged it frightened her. She began screaming and throwing things at him. When he turned human in astonishment and fright at seeing his formerly compliant wife turn into a shrieking virago, she’d dissolved into a storm of weeping.

  In under a moment the tent was full of wolves. All of them blaming him for doing something terrible to her, or trying to comfort her and abate her hysterics. Matrona entered then, carrying a flagon. She persuaded Regeane to take a few sips. The stuff tasted dreadful but it warmed and soothed Regeane no end.

  “What is it?” Regeane asked when she could speak again.

  “A little something I picked up among the isles, back of the north wind.”

  No one said anything. No one knew where that was.

  “It cuts the chill,” Matrona said. “There they need it because it is always cold.”

  “What did you do to her?” Gavin asked Maeniel accusingly.

  Most of them were human now because they wanted to talk, and wolf speech was far too laconic for the range of emotion flowing. Gavin was tastefully draped in a blanket, Gordo was wearing his mantle as a sarong, Matrona was clad in a shirt, one of Maeniel’s. Silvia wore her skin only.

  “He must have done something to her,” Silvia said, “because I’ve never before heard her scream like that. What did you do?” She glared at a slightly bemused Maeniel, who had gone back to wolf.

  “Yes, what did you do, my leader?” a somewhat horrified Gordo asked.

  “It must have been something terrible,” Silvia said. “Matrona, take her to your tent. I will stay with you. Have no fear, little one, we will protect you.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Gavin said. “I’ve known him since I was thirteen years old and we met in that Irish forest and I’ve never known—”

  Maeniel became human, and Matrona dropped a tunic over his head. “Be quiet,” he commanded, and was obeyed.

  Silence fell.

  “Regeane, what’s wrong?”

  Regeane, now ashamed, opened her mouth to say, “Nothing,” but Matrona caught her eye. “Tell him,” she said.

  “I’m so tired . . .” she whispered.

  “Ah, I see,” Matrona said. “Out. Everyone out. Leave the newlyweds alone to settle this.”

  Maeniel sat down next to her on the folding cot and took her in his arms. With a weary sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Next time,” he said, his lips on her hair. “Next time don’t try so hard to please me.” She nodded, and as they both lay down, he said, “Promise?”

  She was drifting off to sleep when she answered, “I promise.”

  Yes, she had promised, trusting him then as she must now. Tell him the truth.

  She tested the depth of water around her by turning human and standing up. It was shallow, up to her waist. The forest of reeds around her murmured in the dying gusts of the storm winds. Odd, she stood not on mud but on stone.

  Maeniel paused. He became human also, but his feet trod mud and he struggled toward her, landing his footing at last on the same platform her feet rested on.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “How you worry,” he replied. “Somewhere in the Po valley.”

  “How should I not worry? I can’t see dry land anywhere around. Nothing, not even a tree, only water plants, reeds, cattails, and long grass, grass with sharp edges,” she said, looking down at a shallow cut she’d just gotten on the palm of
her hand.

  “Hush,” he said, and put his arms around her.

  She let him kiss her. As he did, a particularly hard gust of wind struck them, chilling her. In a second, her skin was covered with gooseflesh. She pushed him back.

  “I’m cold. Night is coming on. We don’t know where we are. We’re lost and you want to—”

  He kissed her again.

  “You might at least apologize.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I apologize.”

  “Apologize and mean it.”

  “No,” he told her, and kissed her again. “I still think I was right. But you were lucky and so was I. Had the treacherous Lombard king not been a stubborn fool, we might both have perished, but we didn’t, and so I will waste no more worry on something that almost happened. I did underestimate you, though. And you must be content with that admission and not ask for more.”

  Regeane gave a little cry of exasperation.

  But then he kissed her again, and she found she was no longer cold. “Oh,” she said. “It seems years since I saw you, but the water is too deep here.”

  “Too deep for what?” he asked.

  “You stop. Stop teasing me.”

  “Shush. Look.”

  A cloud covered the sun for a moment, and to the west of them an abandoned villa emerged from the sparkling reflection of sun and the water.

  “See,” he said. “I knew something would turn up. It always does if only you relax.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “Remember the bear.”

  “What? Are you going to lose faith in your senses because they fooled you once?”

  “Fooled you,” she snapped, “not me.”

  “Yes,” he said ruefully. “And in Rome, a certain tomb—”

  “Point well taken,” she said.

  “Let’s swim for it.”

  They did, threading their way among the hammocks of cattails and reeds until they reached a long, straight stretch of open water bounded by stone walls that had been a canal built to bring water to the fields from the river. The whole of the ground floor was underwater. Here and there what had been magnificent mosaics shone up through the water where they were not covered by streaks of silt. Two gladiators fought to the death in one panel, their names emblazoned beside each. A Mirmillo battled a Retiarius, and the portrait showed the Mirmillo entangled in the Retiarius’s net while his sword was plunging deep into his opponent’s body.