“There he is,” Regeane said. “I think he has a rat.”
“The male owl,” Hugo bear answered. “She heard him. I felt air displacement by his wings. The human who was looking for treasure was right, there is some here. A small hoard.” He yawned again. “In the morning I’ll show you where it is. You can dig it up. Am I right?” he asked Armine. “You didn’t leave Pavia with much cash in hand.”
“No,” Armine said. “The king hadn’t paid me, and I didn’t think it at all healthy to hang around waiting for him to clear his debts. I didn’t know you could do things like find buried treasure.”
“How the hell do you think I kept that fool Hugo in funds? When we met he didn’t have enough money to pay a louse to bite him.”
“Show me this right now.”
“No, you’ll disturb the owls. The rat is a banquet to them. Leave them in peace. This ruin is overrun with noxious rodents. When momma owl is finished raising her young, they will improve the atmosphere of this place no end.”
“Is it deep?” Regeane asked.
“No,” the bear replied.
“Then I’ll get it,” she said. “They won’t notice me the way they would humans with noise, torches, and trampling the vegetation. Give me a minute.” She rose and went through an opening in the ruined house into the darkness.
Armine looked appalled, astonished, frightened, and outraged at the same time. The outrage was because the living arrangements of a family of owls were placed before his wishes.
“Your attitude is original, to say the least. I would think our welfare would take precedence over an owl’s.”
“Why?” the bear asked. “They have as much right to be here as you have; more, in fact. We’re trespassers. This is their home.”
“If you look at it that way, he’s right,” Chiara said.
Regeane forestalled further discussion by returning with a leather sack in her hand. She dropped it at Armine’s feet. It ripped open easily, and a collection of silver and gold vessels tumbled out, small ritual objects.
“There’s more,” she said. “But this was all I could carry—as a wolf, I mean.”
“Good God,” Armine whispered. “There’s a fortune right here. But part of this is yours,” he said to Regeane and the bear.
Regeane shrugged. “I have plenty. You should see my husband’s strongroom. He could have paid that ransom he offered the king twice over and still have money to spare.”
“I don’t give a damn,” the bear said. “I sense things like this all the time and other, more unpleasant things, too. There are fifteen or sixteen babies in a well not far from here. Times were very hard for the last inhabitants of this place. They couldn’t raise any children at the last. That’s one reason why they ran away. That’s probably why the gold was buried also. They felt sure the tax collectors would confiscate these sacred objects and melt them down. Too bad. Now you will do the same.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not all of them, at any rate,” Armine said. “A great many unpleasant things can be said of the Florentine merchants, but no one ever accused us of being blind to beauty.” He was studying an exquisite silver bowl with a pattern of white grapes, the fruit picked out in moonstones.
“I believe,” he said, “that we should go into banking, bear. I didn’t in my youth. I simply didn’t have enough capital. But you will enjoy banking, bear. It’s much more interesting than the cloth trade.”
“You understand me too well,” the bear said. “It doesn’t do to bore me.”
Chiara moaned. “Oh, lord, but interest calculations are a nightmare.”
“Yes, well, I’ll give you both charge over the counting house. Your tremendous influence will be envied by every woman in Florence.”
“Oh,” Chiara whispered, sounding absolutely delighted. “I can see myself going to mass clad in velvet and brocade with an illuminated missal in my hand.”
“Yes,” Armine sighed. “And violating all the sumptuary laws.”
“Oh, nonsense. Mother told me they only crack down when the city goes to war. Besides, banking is against church law, too.”
“Oh, yes,” Armine said, “but it’s easy to get around the church. It’s a rare bishop who won’t look the other way when he receives a large donation.”
Regeane yawned.
Armine glanced around uneasily. “Before we bed down for the night,” he asked Regeane and the bear, “are you sure we’re still alone?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We would know.”
She and Chiara took the house warmed by the fire. Regeane was a wife, Chiara was an unmarried girl. Propriety demanded they sleep apart from the men.
Regeane and Chiara bedded down together against the wall. “That’s a lot of gold,” she told Regeane. “Are you sure you won’t take some?”
Regeane laughed. “You’ve seen the way I travel. Where would I put it?”
Chiara blushed.
“What will you do about the bear when you reach the city?”
“I don’t know,” Chiara answered. “For now I suppose he can go on being Hugo. And, unless I miss my guess, he and my father will soon go into business together.” She frowned. “What do you think? Will he ask my hand in marriage?”
Regeane was pushing some grass together to make a softer bed. She could always sleep as a wolf but didn’t want to alarm Chiara.
“Because if he doesn’t plan on marriage, I won’t consider anything else. It’s like my mother said, it’s all right for a man to go hopping from one bed to another, but women must consider family life and children. Not to mention finances and reputation and all the other things sex brings with it. And besides, that’s Hugo’s body, and I’m not sure I would like to—”
“How you do chatter,” the bear’s voice said.
Chiara paused and stamped her foot. “You’re getting sneaky. I didn’t feel you. Besides, this was a private conversation and you had no business sticking your nose—”
“Enough,” the bear said, “little madam shrew. Will you ever be done correcting me?”
“Not so long as you behave like a lout.”
“A lout? I, a lout?” the bear roared.
Chiara stuck her fingers in her ears. “I won’t listen.”
“A fat lot of good that will do you,” the bear shouted. “My voice is in your mind.”
Chiara removed her fingers from her ears. “Yes, that’s true but—”
“Oh, be quiet,” the bear said. Then he pulled her away from the fire into the darkness and kissed her. “Now go to bed. And don’t worry. I don’t need Hugo’s body.”
He departed, laughing.
“It seems he doesn’t,” Regeane said.
Chiara walked back to the fire. She was flushed; her long blond hair, which had been up, was down around her shoulders. She looked pleased.
“Look,” she said. On her ring finger was a fine band, three swan’s necks twined in heavy chased silver. “It’s beautiful,” she told Regeane. “I didn’t really notice it was on my finger until he was gone, but you do sort of have to wonder where he got it. I mean, will the original owner show up in the early hours and want it back?”
“No, I don’t think so. It didn’t come from the cemetery,” Regeane said. “There’s a lot more there than I brought. You and your father must get it in the morning.” She was also pleased to note Chiara was under no illusions about the bear, which augured well for their future relationship.
Remingus woke Regeane in the night. She found herself in the place of the dead, the thick darkness without moon or star. The town was here as it appeared before it became a ruin. The temples around the forum that was the heart of every Roman town stood on their platforms as they had before they fell to ruins, painted and inlaid statuary intact and gazing away into the middle distance. The statue of an emperor presided over the town, standing on his pedestal forever.
The house where Chiara slept was a shop selling basketry. Regeane couldn’t see her, but she knew the girl slept well becaus
e her breath steamed in the cold night air, and she sensed the puffs of vapor.
Regeane walked across the empty forum, her feet knowing the stones but not really feeling them. She wore the shift and worn, brown dress she’d borrowed from Chiara. Remingus stood with the boy Robert had killed, the one who had instigated and carried out the murder of the girl he loved.
“He is here with us.”
“Yes,” Regeane answered. “So I see.”
“Tell Robert his mercy was not a vain act,” the boy said. “I am not in hell.”
“Isn’t this hell?” Regeane asked. The chill in her body was piercing. The chill in her heart was deeper still. She had begun to weep. The tears running down her cheeks were droplets of ice, freezing cold against her skin.
“No,” Remingus said. “No, this is not hell nor do I know what hell is. But there is no hope here, so there is no sorrow. And he is with us. This is all we had left to ask.”
And Regeane looked out from Remingus’s eyes as he hung on the Carthaginian cross, looked into the sun. She tried to close her eyes—or Remingus’s eyes—and realized she/he had no eyelids. They had been cut away. And even the hardened Roman officers who retrieved his body for burial had been astounded at the things that had been done to him before he was put on the cross. The Carthaginians had exercised all their ingenuity in making him suffer, but still he won. And a door that had been open when Hannibal crossed the Alps swung shut, closing with a finality that rang down through the ages. And so did his pain.
The benediction of her tears blurred away the scene she saw, and when her vision cleared, Hildegard stood in front of her—as she had at the convent when Sister Hildegard came to be seated with her sisters in love, and Regeane hadn’t noticed she was dead. The younger woman had guided the elder to her place and put plate and cup before what, to the other nuns, was only empty air.
Now Hildegard reached out and touched Regeane’s face with fingers soft and dry as new silk. “Regeane, go to Rome. Lucilla wants you.”
Regeane awoke. The night air was cold and clear. The stars hung in splendor across the sky. Her mind as usual mapped them, and the wolf told her it was close to dawn.
Chiara had thrown aside her covers and was now curled up against the cold. As Regeane watched, the blanket was lifted, placed over her, and tucked in, rather in the same way a mother covers a child who has become restless in the night.
“Bear?” Regeane asked.
“Yes. Once Armine asked if I sat; well, I don’t sit and I don’t sleep, either. That Hugo carcass has to do both, but while it does, I’m at loose ends. I know something came to greet you, because you weren’t in your blankets a few moments ago.”
“I’m going to Rome,” Regeane said.
“Alone? Is that wise?”
“Probably not,” Regeane said, “but I’m going anyway. Make my excuses for me.”
“Ah yes, as if you left the table early after dinner. A minor matter. Nothing to it.”
“I hope not,” Regeane said. “Take care of her.”
“I will. Will we ever meet again?”
“I don’t know, bear. But whatever happens, fare thee well. And when you and Armine become bankers, try not to cheat too many people.”
Regeane heard an angry snort and knew the bear had more to say but she was wolf—the change was very easy at that hour—and was gone.
From where she sat, all Lucilla could see was a patch of blue sky, but she knew she was in a world of trouble.
Adalgisus had, once they’d reached Verona, tried to hide her from Gerberga, the Frankish queen. To this end, he had placed Lucilla on the top floor of a house overlooking the square. It was a house of ill repute. He felt she would be safe there, since the Frankish queen was a snobbish woman who paid little attention to any but the notables of the city, though there were a number of wealthy women there who would have given their souls to have entertained her in their houses. Gerberga stuck her nose in the air and pretended that only the Lombard lord, one Syagrius, was worthy of her notice. He was an individual of ancient Roman lineage whose great-grandfather had the sagacity to marry a lady who styled herself a Lombard princess—her father had had a lot of loot, and she wound up being his only heir. Syagrius called himself a duke. Dux, in the current terminology, a war lord. His family had seen to it that his brother was the archbishop of Verona, thus keeping things in the family, so to speak.
So Adalgisus, Syagrius, and Karl the bishop were the only people the haughty Gerberga would lower herself to associate with. Everybody else was on the outside looking in.
“With any luck,” Adalgisus had said gleefully to Lucilla, “she will never know you’re here.”
Since the lofty Gerberga was in daily attendance at mass, Lucilla got a good look at her every day when she was carried to the church in a sedan chair. She was escorted by four maids and two ladies-in-waiting and her two sons, each accompanied by a nurse and tutor.
“You’re her lover?” Lucilla asked Adalgisus on the first morning they went by.
“Why?” he asked. He was looking very vain. “I didn’t think you cared.”
Lucilla, who wanted to say she hoped so, because Gerberga was welcome to him, simpered and purred. “My darling, I love preening myself that I am the rival of a queen. How amazing.”
Adalgisus pulled her away from the window. “Come, sweet, my love, tell me some more stories about . . . torture.”
Lucilla gritted her teeth but Adalgisus was busy putting a hickey on her neck. She’d quickly found what buttons to push on the Lombard king’s son. She could always stoke his fires to a white heat by recounting the horrors the public executioner practiced on those who annoyed the powerful in Rome. Even Hadrian, who was no fan of torture, used it on occasion, for the same reasons everyone else did: to make an example of someone who indulged in spectacularly vicious criminal behavior, or to persuade the occasional recalcitrant to impart information that they preferred to keep to themselves. Lucilla reckoned herself safe if she could keep Adalgisus’s sex life interesting in the immediate future.
She wasn’t, and she found out why a few days later.
They kicked open the door near dawn.
Two men.
Lucilla was able to get a robe on—a heavy woolen overgown—and she managed to hide a knife and her medicines. She was hauled before the bishop.
He looked at Lucilla for a very long time, beating a steady tattoo on the arm of his chair with his fingers. “Are you sure this is the one?” he finally asked.
“Grifo and Myra, the proprietors, say the prince visits her rooms every day,” one of the soldiers answered.
“She’s a bit older than I would expect,” the bishop said.
“They say the prince is wild about her. He remains with her for a long time,” the man holding Lucilla’s arm twisted up between her shoulder blades told the bishop.
“I suppose there’s something to be said for experience,” the bishop said. Then he studied Lucilla’s face. His eyes frightened her. There was nothing in them.
“Let me go,” Lucilla said. “I have money.”
“Not here,” the bishop said.
“In Rome. I could make it worth your while. I have influence also.”
“Oh? I know who you are. And you don’t have enough of either money or influence to make me betray the king’s secret.”
I’m a dead woman, Lucilla thought.
“Come here.” The bishop beckoned one of the soldiers holding her arms.
The soldier went to his chair. They spoke in low voices.
Lucilla stood quiet. They hadn’t tied or chained her, perhaps because she hadn’t given them a fight. They were alone in the bishop’s hall. In the distance Lucilla could hear the bustle of servants. But besides her, the bishop, and the two soldiers, there was no one else in the room. Do it, something in her mind told her. Think too much and you’re lost.
With lightning quickness she twisted away, out of the soldier’s grip, but she hadn’t been able to see he
held a clubbed mace in his other hand. He was fast; a second later it crashed into the side of her head. She felt the blow. It was so hard she felt a terrible stab of fear that her skull was crushed, then paralysis, and at last darkness.
She awakened in another place, staring up through a steel grating at the sky. She’d been hit so hard that even lifting her head brought fierce, overwhelming pain. So she simply lay quiet, drifting in and out of consciousness for almost a day and a half. When the nausea and dizziness did abate enough for her to sit up, she began almost to wish the blow had killed her.
The cell was somewhere in the ruins of the old Roman city. Most of it was underground. The grating above was its only connection to the outside world. It was floored with overgrown mossy stone, with walls of the same ubiquitous terra-cotta brick the Romans had used to build everything from aqueducts to palaces. It ran some little way underground back into the ruins. There the walls and floor ran out and a fill of rubble and stony soil blocked any possible way of escape.
When Lucilla crawled back to the light, she found they had left her a jug of wine and a basket with a few hard, small loaves of bread. She went to take a sip of the wine and the smell made her jerk her head back. It was laced with opium, heavily laced with opium. Enough, by the odor, rather pleasant than otherwise, to kill two or three people.
There was one large flat stone, part of a very big column of some temple or other. It was round and fluted at the edges. It made a comfortable seat. She sat down and despaired, closing her eyes and letting her mind drift. She knew what the bishop intended and how she’d been caught. Bishop Karl probably owned the whorehouse. There was a definite affinity between the ecclesiastical establishment and houses of prostitution. The bishop of Ravenna had owned the first brothel into which she had been sold as a sixteen year old, and the bishop was careful to collect his percentage and his ground rents. Such business establishments were lucrative, to say the least. And since Christianity became part of the limited urban scene in the west long before it proliferated into the countryside, much church property was in the cities. So were most brothels. The church, the first corporate body in the west, owned a lot of them.
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