“Why have we heard nothing of this?” Lorenzo asked. “Giuseppe’s own servant investigated and found nothing.”
“In the interest of avoiding mass panic of the kind that sweeps through these fevered peasant minds as easily as a winter wind off the Alps, I suppressed my findings. Unfortunately, Nemours did not report his prisoner either, taking him for a madman. I only just learned of him.”
“But nobody has positively identified this madman as Giuseppe Veronese. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I am certain it is he,” Montguillon said. “But you shall have the opportunity to see for yourself. You will come with me to Lord Nemours’s chatelet.”
Lorenzo’s first inclination was to protest. He wanted away from the oppressive atmosphere of the priory, and the unpleasant memories it raised. There was business to execute, and Lucrezia to consider. He had no desire to humiliate himself in front of her again, but at the least he could stave off Marco’s advances.
“What if we reach the castle,” Lorenzo said, “and we discover that Giuseppe is normal in appearance? That he hasn’t lost his mind, and denies any knowledge of these wolf men? Denies it, that is, without torture?”
“If his appearance is unaltered, and it appears that Lord Nemours is offering us a deception, then we shall have some questions to put to the king’s provost.”
Montguillon’s lips pulled back in an unpleasant smile, as if pleased at the thought of bringing down someone so powerful as the king’s highest minister in Paris.
“Very well,” Lorenzo said, turning toward the door of the chapel. He was anxious to end this interview. “Twenty-five miles you say? Are the roads good? Do you have a swift carriage?”
“We’ll need every hour of daylight. I’d rather not be caught out on the road at night. Not with the servants of Lucifer abroad in the land.”
The two men pushed open the heavy oak doors of the chapel, passed down another corridor, and reentered the scriptorium, where the young friar was still waiting with his hands clasped together while the copyists continued their work.
“I’ll return in the morning,” Lorenzo said. “Two hours before sunrise.”
“No, you’ll stay here,” Montguillon said. “We’ve already prepared rooms for you.” He looked pointedly at the saffron cross pinned to Lorenzo’s breast. “And there is the matter of your penance.”
The friars in the scriptorium looked up from their manuscripts at this last word. They tugged at beards with their blackened fingers and rubbed at bloodshot eyes, their eyelids streaked with ink. Lorenzo flushed. He lowered his voice.
“But if I’m scourged, I’ll be weakened, and I’ll need time to recover. If you want to leave in the morning, we don’t have time for any of that.”
“You have plenty of time, my friend. Especially if you don’t repent. Nine thousand years in purgatory. An eternity in the fiery torments of hell.”
“But I confessed and repented. I really don’t think—”
“And as for temporal punishment, you may either submit willingly or struggle against your sentence. And suffer a greater purging.”
Lorenzo fell silent. His heart thundered in his chest. Every friar in the scriptorium was now staring. Some men looked afraid, others pitying. One man leered at him with a face as ugly and stony as a cathedral gargoyle. The prior, those looks promised, was not an easy taskmaster.
“Simon,” Montguillon said to the young friar. “Take Lorenzo Boccaccio di Firenze to the chamber. Present him to the devices we have prepared.”
Chapter Seven
Martin stood in the doorway and cleared his throat. He held a whip in his hand. Lucrezia looked up from where she was fastening a leather collar around Tullia’s neck. It was reinforced with iron studs and would hopefully provide some protection for her throat.
“Is the carriage ready?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady.”
His voice was pinched. The fire was dying in the hearth, the candles burned down or snuffed, and his face lay hidden in shadow behind his hood.
“And did you prepare the letters for Marco and Lorenzo?”
“They will receive them first thing in the morning. But, my lady . . . ”
“Yes, Martin?”
“The leprosarium may put off some men, but not these two. And when they visit the leprosarium and nobody there has seen you, they’ll quickly realize that you lied.”
“It will put them off for a day or two,” she said. “Before they can gather enough courage to question lepers, I’ll be back.”
Lucrezia stood and turned to let him fasten the riding cloak around her shoulders with its heavy fur lining and a silver brooch shaped like an oak to fasten it at her neck.
Tullia sat obediently on her haunches. She whined.
Lucrezia rubbed her hand along the mastiff’s powerful neck. “Yes, of course you will come with us.”
She whined again. A tremble shivered down her coat.
“You miss him, don’t you?” Lucrezia said. She took the dog’s head in her hands. “He fell defending us. We’d all be dead if Cicero hadn’t chased them from the house. There, be calm. It’s all right.”
“Maybe she’s frightened,” Martin said. “It’s like she knows. We’ll be crossing the bridge, riding through the gates at dusk. It will be a long trip with those creatures abroad.”
Lucrezia crossed the room and opened the oak chest that sat next to the hearth. She pulled out a sheathed dagger, made in Toledo of hardened Damascus steel. It was a gift from her brother Domenico upon her departure from Lucca.
“To use against those pesky Florentine brothers,” Domenico had said. “Or your husband, should he prove a scoundrel.”
She had laughed off the suggestion at the time. Rigord, a scoundrel? And yet there was blood on the sheath, and it was her husband’s after all. Torn with guilt, she hadn’t even tried to scrub it out.
As for the pesky Florentine brothers, Lucrezia didn’t always want to stab them. Under other circumstances than the present, she might have entertained the dream of returning with one of them to sun-drenched Tuscany, out of this dark, benighted corner of northwest Europe, to the land of Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masolino. Petrarch and Dante.
She had history with both of them. Marco, cool-headed and sophisticated, the heir to the Boccaccio fortune. Lorenzo, the handsome, lovesick boy. Charming, but impetuous. He seemed to have matured since she’d seen him last, but maybe not. There was that troubling business with the Inquisition. Lucrezia most definitely did not want to step into the middle of that.
She pulled back the cloak and belted the dagger to her waist. “We’ll be safe, Martin. They won’t attack moving horses on the open road.”
“You let that one go. He has your scent.”
“They already had my scent, Martin. Here or in the countryside, they’ll be hunting for me. My only hope is to get to Giuseppe first.”
“The morning, then. We’ll ride out at first dawn, get ahead of Montguillon.”
“And risk the prior spotting us on the road?” she said. “No. We leave tonight. We’ll stop in Saint-Denis, and reach the chatelet by morning.”
Martin hesitated, then nodded slowly. “In that case, the carriage is ready, and we should leave at once.”
Lucrezia returned to the chest one more time. She removed a small wooden box. It was white, with a red Eye of Horus painted on the surface, and a clasp in the shape of a lapis lazuli scarab beetle with gold eyes.
✛
They left the Cité by the Grand Pont, which crossed to the right bank. They took the Rue de Saint-Denis north, and left the city walls at dusk.
A light snow fell as they gained the fields. At this hour there would normally be stragglers on the road. Peasants with carts of hay, or drovers leading sheep into folds. Riders coming in from Normandy, and Flemish wool merchants slowed by the weather and late to arrive within the protective walls of the enceinte. But it was quiet, not a sound on the road but the clomp of the two horses.
/> Martin sat on the perch, flicking his whip periodically when the horses slowed. A pair of lanterns with horn panes flickered on poles thrusting from the carriage over the heads of the two horses. Lucrezia sat in the carriage, wrapped in blankets and sharing Tullia’s warmth. The mastiff was calm at first, but grew restless as they put distance between themselves and the safe confines of Paris.
The ground was hard and they made good time for the first few miles. If the roads were not too rutted, they might reach Saint-Denis ahead of schedule, and could press on another few miles to the next village. Leave first thing in the morning, they would be in and out of Gilbert de Nemours’s chatelet before the prior was halfway there. Then return to Paris via a more circuitous route.
But Lucrezia hadn’t counted on the snow. Protected within the carriage, the first thing she noticed was their pace slowing. Within half an hour, Martin was cursing, whipping, and the carriage was sliding along the road whenever they turned. Martin hunched forward, his head and shoulders like a great snowy mane. Snow thickened the air, left the lanterns twin pinpricks of swirling light, unable to illuminate the road. The landscape ahead was like a white sheet. Fields and road blended together. The road was a slight indentation, quickly disappearing beneath the onslaught.
“Martin!” she cried, suddenly terrified. “We have to turn around.”
The storm had caught them out in the open. She’d ignored that hint of snow in the air as they left the city. It was rare to see more than a few inches in Paris and she meant to fight through it. But she could feel a change in the air. This storm was only now drawing its strength.
He flicked his whip at the horses and shouted over his shoulder. “It’s too late. We have to press on.”
“But Martin!”
“Another mile. There’s a way station for pilgrims at a monastery up ahead. We’ll seek refuge for the night.”
As Lucrezia fell back into the carriage, Tullia lifted her head. A rumble started deep in her chest, like the sound of distant thunder. Her ear cocked to one side.
“What is it, girl?”
A growl this time. Her ears twitched side to side and she turned her head as if to get a better angle on whatever she heard. The growl grew and Tullia drew back her lips.
And then Lucrezia heard what had caught the mastiff’s attention. In the distance, a sound to curdle milk in a babe’s belly.
It was the long, wailing howl of a wolf.
Chapter Eight
When morning came at the monastery of Saint-Jacques, the chapel bells ringing for matins, Lorenzo moaned and struggled to a sitting position. The cold ached to his bones, and he kept the blanket around his shoulders as he groped to the other side of the cell in search of the chamber pot. His feet throbbed at every step. When he’d finished passing water, he sank back to the straw mat with a groan.
They’d chained his hands and winched him off the floor by his wrists. When his feet were dangling above the stone floor, a bent old friar took a cane and beat the soles of his feet. From there, the cursed old bastard worked his way up the bare calves, thighs, and all the way to the naked flesh on Lorenzo’s buttocks. The blows were steady, methodical, pitiless, delivered with all the passion of a peasant threshing wheat. But with his measured pace, the old man didn’t tire. He went on and on and on, until Lorenzo couldn’t stop the groans, until he was begging for mercy. The old man never answered. Maybe he was deaf.
Beaten by Methuselah. Then forced to pass around the frozen monastery wearing nothing but rags on his feet and a loin cloth, carrying a beam of wood like Christ on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Then he’d crawled into the chapel on hands and knees—he couldn’t have walked any more anyway—and prayed in front of the shrine of the Holy Virgin until late into the night. Three hours of sleep and now he was up.
But now you’re done. They have no more claim on you.
Yes, for now. Until he returned to Florence and the inquisitor determined that he was still carrying heresy, still placing more faith in the ancient pagan philosophers than in the Gospels. As taught and interpreted by the church, of course.
Then learn to keep your mouth shut, you fool. Give the correct answer before they beat it out of you.
Lorenzo dressed himself and threw open the door to his monastery cell. It was still nearly dark and he stumbled into what proved to be nearly a foot of fresh snow. More snow fell from the sky, coating his hair and eyelashes.
He wanted to bury his feet in the snow, let the cold numb his flesh until it eased the throbbing pain. But after so many weeks on the road, in cold boots and with numb feet at night, he was already at risk for chilblains. He needed to keep his feet dry and covered.
Working in the dim light of pre-dawn, lay brothers swept out the snow that had blown beneath the arcades, while the other friars filed toward the chapel for matins.
Two men came around the arcade from the other direction, and when they drew close enough to identify, Lorenzo was disappointed to see his brother with the prior.
“There you are,” Marco said. “Hurry and dress. The horses are ready.”
“Where are we going?”
“Nobody told you?” his brother said with a frown. “They’re holding Giuseppe in Lord Nemours’s chatelet.”
“Yes, but . . . you’re coming too?”
“Why wouldn’t I? And Fournier, too. It has been some time since I’ve seen Giuseppe, and the man’s servant may be needed to identify him.”
“His identity is already certain,” Montguillon said.
“Yes, of course, Father,” Marco said, “but you are unknown in Florence. Our word will carry more weight when we return to Italy and report.”
“Yes, I see,” the prior answered, deftly put off by Marco’s explanation.
Lorenzo wished he had that ability. “Are the roads passable?”
“We have a sleigh and four strong horses,” Montguillon said. “We can pass through this snow with little difficulty.”
“But what if it keeps snowing?” Lorenzo asked.
“We are on God’s errand. We’ll get through.”
✛
The hardest part was getting out of Paris itself. Snow didn’t stop the morning crush of people and animals, the emptying of chamber pots filled with steaming urine and night soil into the streets, the refuse of butchers and tanners that didn’t make it to the river. The filth left the roads fouled, slick with packed snow and icy. And when they finally passed through the city gates on the Rue de Saint-Denis, no sooner had they gained the open road when the sleigh struck an abandoned handcart hidden beneath the snow.
The sleigh lurched and nearly toppled. When it came down, one of the runners had fractured. By the time Fournier and the driver—the young friar Simon again—had returned from the city with a wheelwright, the horses were cold and two fresh inches had fallen.
The passengers stood in the open air, watching the wheelwright at work, stomping and hugging themselves to fight off the chill. Simon and Fournier rubbed the horses with blankets to keep them warm.
“God’s blood!” the wheelwright cursed when his hammer slipped and fell into the snow. He was a squat, pig-faced man with massive forearms. One ear was docked where it slipped out from his cap, perhaps an old injury or maybe a punishment for a crime committed as a boy.
Montguillon glowered as the man released a stream of oaths, most of them dealing with anatomy of some kind: God’s teeth, Satan’s warty prick, Peter’s hairy ass, and so on. That the prior held his tongue in the face of this ongoing blasphemy was a wonder.
At last the man finished his work, then demanded an exorbitant sum for the emergency repairs. The wheelwright stood in front of the prior with his tools in a bundle slung over his shoulder and his hand outstretched. Montguillon stared at Marco until the older Boccaccio brother reluctantly handed over the silver.
The men shook the snow from their cloaks, brushed off the seats, and climbed back into the sleigh. Moments later, Simon had them moving again, sluggishly at first, then pi
cking up speed.
“Can we still reach Lord Nemours’ castle by nightfall?” Lorenzo asked.
“Yes, of course,” Montguillon said.
Lorenzo hadn’t been speaking to the prior, but to Fournier, who had watched the wheelwright work with a gloomy expression. Fournier shook his head.
“Doubtful. We’ll be lucky to reach Villepinte.”
“I tell you we’ll make it,” Montguillon said. “Be patient.”
“I’m not looking forward to spending another night on the road,” Lorenzo said in Italian to his brother a few minutes later when they settled in.
“There are all sorts of villages along the way,” Marco said. “The priory probably owns half this land. We could stay with a tenant if we really get caught out. No, we won’t be spending the night out of doors.”
“You’re assuming the prior will let us stop at all.”
The two brothers sat in the back row with Fournier, with the prior alone in the front row, behind Simon on his perch, driving the team. The sleigh was not enclosed, and there was no canopy overhead to keep out snow. The four men and their driver wore heavy cloaks, and wrapped themselves in gray wool blankets taken from the priory. They rose periodically to shake the snow from their cloaks and to brush out the snow at their feet or collecting in the gaps on the benches.
The four horses pulling them were tall, stout animals that forged through the snow with relative ease. Every fifteen or twenty minutes they would pass a smaller, slower sleigh, or occasionally, a man on horseback. The nearest Lorenzo could tell, they were making better than three miles per hour. To his surprise, he determined they would, in fact, reach the chatelet near to or shortly after dusk.
In late afternoon, they drew upon a sleigh struggling in the snow. The problem was not the sleigh itself, which wasn’t much bigger than a farmer’s hay sledge, but the animals. They were two short, stocky horses, well-suited for drawing a carriage, but not the best choice for pushing through the snow, which was eighteen inches high now, and up to twice that in isolated drifts. The animals struggled to get their hooves clear and so were pushing the snow aside instead of stepping through it like the animals pulling the prior’s sleigh.
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