The Wolves of Paris

by Michael Wallace

  Nemours stood tall and his eyes gleamed. He slammed a mailed fist against the stone wall.

  “Yes!”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Back in the street, Lucrezia reached into her cloak. She drew out a small brass box, barely large enough to hold a signet ring. She held it out for Lorenzo to take. He turned it over in his hand and looked up at her, questioning.

  “The tip of Courtaud’s tail,” she said. “With any luck that will get the bigger pack on your trail so they’ll leave me alone.”

  He still didn’t understand. “Then where are you going?”

  “Home. I’m going to wait in Rigord’s library with my dagger and my blood-stained sheath and wait for my husband to find me.”

  “We’ll stay together. It’s safer that way.”

  “Safer, but less effective. Courtaud’s pack is bigger. They’ve been outside the walls, growing, while my husband is inside the city, killing and hiding. Rigord will be afraid to challenge the larger pack.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “But it fits everything we know. Courtaud, terrorizing the road, coming in for swift assaults, then fleeing. Meanwhile, murders continue in the city. That has to be Rigord, don’t you think?”

  “And you’re going to confront him in his own home, where he knows his way around? That’s madness.”

  “I won’t be alone. Martin and your man Demetrius will be there. Tullia. My other servants. And Nemours will send me some of his men. They’ll be hiding. And ready.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Lorenzo said. “Let Marco face the larger pack. My place is with you.”

  She shook her head, and there was such flinty determination in her eyes that he knew she wouldn’t budge. That was what he loved about her. If she had been the demure, agreeing type, he would have been infatuated, of course—she was too beautiful not to catch his eye. But Lucrezia was a woman who could stand up to the Dominicans, who would face wolves and not shake in terror. But only this once, wouldn’t she let him be the protector?

  “Marco can’t handle the prior by himself,” Lucrezia said. “And if Nemours comes charging out, waving his sword like some crusader, you’ll need to manage him, too. That brute Courtaud will give you as much as you can take and more.”

  Before he could answer, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. “May God be with you this night, my dear.”

  Then she swept up her cloak and turned her back on him. When she rounded the corner, Lorenzo made his way toward the cathedral of Notre Dame. By the time he arrived, the soft gray of twilight had faded, replaced by the cold, hard blackness of night.

  The streets were deserted. A dog barked in the distance.

  ✛

  The might of Notre Dame frowned down at Lorenzo as he approached the cathedral doors. A row of stone kings marched across the front of the facade, beneath a rose window that gleamed with reflected light from two torch-bearing men-at-arms who waited by the front doors. Like hands clasped in prayer, three arched portals marked the entrance into the cathedral. The men drew swords as he approached. He announced himself and entered.

  It was a strange army that gathered in the nave, beneath the soaring ceiling, supported by pillars of stone. Henri Montguillon and his young friar Simon led a group of a dozen monks, armed with staves. One of them was the old monk who had beaten Lorenzo on the soles of his feet, his legs, and his buttocks. He didn’t look so intimidating now, stoop-shouldered and wiry, but he was a mean old bastard. He’d get his blows in.

  The bishop of the cathedral was a man named Enguerrand de Moray, which sounded more like the name of a warring baron or knight than it did a man of God. He led several priests, armed with swords, and carried a crosier himself, with a heavy metal crook at the end. His primary goal seemed to be to protect the cathedral itself, its reliquary with holy relics from the saints, as well as the treasury—the mitres, liturgical vestments, cruets, chalices, and other sacred and valuable objects under the bishop’s stewardship. De Moray scowled at Montguillon, as if he cooperated with the Dominicans only under duress. The prior must be feared in the city, to cow even a bishop.

  Closer to the choir, Lord Nemours gave instructions to several knights and other men-at-arms. They carried pikes, spears, and swords. The men engaged in a vigorous debate, with Nemours’s voice occasionally booming over the others.

  A few minutes after Lorenzo arrived, Marco pushed open the heavy oak doors and strode into the nave.

  “Well, Brother, you’ve done it,” Marco said as he approached, his voice echoing in the vast, empty space. “I pray to God that she’ll be safe.”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “I know it.”

  “You sent Demetrius to her house?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Yes, and anyone else who could handle a sword. She’ll be well protected. Still, I’d rather we were there or she were here.”

  “If the lady isn’t coming,” Montguillon said, making his way from where he’d been speaking quietly with his monks, and followed by Simon, “then how are we going to lure the wolves?”

  “He’s right,” Marco said. His hand rubbed nervously at the brass hilt of his sword, but he didn’t draw the weapon. “How can you be sure that both packs won’t attack her and not us?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Lorenzo admitted. “Rigord Ducy will seek her at home—Lucrezia was reasonably sure of that, and I trust her. His blood stains her dagger sheath. As for the red wolf, I expect this to draw him.”

  He reached into his coin purse and removed the small brass box that Lucrezia had given him. An enamel cross covered the lid, surrounded by geometric designs. Like something brought by a crusader from Acre or Jerusalem, Christian but Oriental at the same time. It lay cool and heavy in his hand, the relief smooth, as if worn down by hundreds of palms over the centuries.

  Lorenzo flicked the catch with his thumb. A nub of tail no longer than the length of his pinkie finger lay curled at the bottom. Dried blood matted the ruddy fur. A dank animal smell drifted into the air. Lorenzo’s hand shuddered and the tail jumped about as if alive.

  Simon held out his torch and leaned in for a better look. As if unable to contain himself, he stretched out a finger with his other hand, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Montguillon’s breath came out in a hiss. “Don’t touch it!”

  He slapped Simon’s hand down and the younger friar blinked with surprise.

  “Now put it away,” Montguillon insisted.

  Lorenzo snapped the box shut. He refastened the clasp.

  The prior glowered. “An evil thing, it should be cast into the fire. Hand it over.”

  “It’s our bait—I won’t give it up to be burned.”

  “I won’t burn it, not until after we’ve sent these fiends to hell.”

  “Then what do you want it for?”

  “You’re too weak, Brother, to be tempted by such a thing. It’s safer in my keeping.”

  Lorenzo stared at him, suspicious. “I’m not going to touch the cursed thing. As for the friar,” he added with a sharp look at the younger man, “if Simon is drawn to touch it, maybe you should worry about him, and not me.”

  He tucked the box into his coin purse.

  Lord Nemours’s group dispersed. The provost himself strode down the center aisle from the direction of the choir.

  “My men will hide in the transepts until I give the command,” Nemours said. “Twenty more are concealed in the cathedral close and will rush in to surround the building and prevent escape until the city watch arrives. I have two men in each bell tower to watch for a signal from the walls of the Cité.”

  “What kind of signal?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Very simple. A waving torch. It means the wolves have been spotted crossing the Seine. There’s only one door open into this place. I have two men guarding it. They’ll feign a defense of the church, then flee inside, crying for help.”

  “Failing to secure the doors an
d letting the wolves enter,” Marco said. “Yes, I like it.”

  “I’ll have men there, and there,” Nemours said, pointing to the shadows in the front corners of the cathedral. “As soon as the wolves are inside, they’ll swing around and barricade the doors shut. That’s when my men will flood out.”

  Bishop de Moray had wandered over during this. “This is a sacred place. A battle with these unholy beasts will leave it desecrated.”

  “Stay out of the way, Bishop,” Nemours said. “A desecrated cathedral can be cleaned. Dead priests don’t clean up so easily.”

  “What about my Dominican brothers?” Montguillon asked.

  “You stay out of the way, too. Better yet, go into the choir and pray for our deliverance.”

  “The Blackfriars might be useful,” Lorenzo said before the prior could offer the rebuke already sputtering on his tongue. “And the bishop and his priests, too. The bishop can show Montguillon’s friars the exits out of this place—the catacombs and crypts, the side doors, anywhere else where the wolves might flee when they realize they’re going to die. They can block the escape.”

  Nemours clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent idea, Marco. No, that’s the other one. Lorenzo, is it? You Italians keep an eye on these holy men, make sure they keep their innards firmly tucked into their guts where they belong.”

  “They can fend for themselves,” Marco said. “We want to fight these beasts.”

  But Lorenzo had been thinking. Wolves wouldn’t fight, or run, like men. Once they started to panic, they’d shoot through here with spears and swords flailing and clattering on the stone all around them. The cathedral might be a good place to trap the wolves, here at the heart of the Cité, but they’d have a devil of a time finishing the job. There would be knife and sword work from the nave to the sanctuary before the killing was done. The priests and monks might be effective enough in the cleanup if there were someone to lead them.

  “We’ll lead the priests and friars,” Lorenzo said. “Can you spare two men?”

  “Of course.” Nemours clapped his mail gauntlets. “Jean-Marc, Drouin, go with the Italians. Do what they say. The rest of you—every man to his place.”

  Lorenzo and Marco trailed the prior and the bishop as they retreated toward the choir.

  ✛

  “You gave in rather quickly,” Marco said. “Not losing your nerve, are you?”

  “I’m not sure I had any nerve to begin with,” Lorenzo admitted. He lowered his voice. “But no, I’m worried this won’t be as easy as Nemours seems to think. How will his men react when faced with a dozen huge wolves?”

  “You think they’ll break ranks?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. Remember the guards on the road during that last attack?”

  “They fled like children,” Marco said. “All the same, I’d rather take my chances with Nemours than with all those monks and priests. Montguillon left us, too, remember?”

  “He’s no coward. He simply didn’t care if we lived or died. And he’s planning to claim this victory as his own. He won’t do that by pissing himself in a corner.”

  Marco scowled and looked across the mass of Dominicans and cathedral priests walking in front of them, separated into twin clumps of mutual antipathy. “You’re right that the Blackfriars look rather more keen to be here. Seems the bishop and his boys are more concerned with guarding their treasures than anything else.”

  Nemours’s men, Jean-Marc and Drouin, sat in a corner away from the religious men, their backs to one of the large pillars stretching to the vault. It looked at first like they were engaged in quiet conversation, but on closer inspection Lorenzo saw they were furtively playing cards.

  Marco tapped his shoulder and led him up by the choir, where the torches gave better light. “I have a question to ask you, Brother, and I want an honest answer.”

  “What is it?” Lorenzo asked warily.

  “I’m your older brother, and your superior in the company as well.”

  “You’ve reminded me of that before, although I think it has been at least two days.”

  “When you sign your name, it’s my good name you sign as well.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Marco. Enough.”

  Marco leaned in and fixed his gaze. “Have you had her?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Have you seduced her? Did you satisfy your carnal lusts on Lady d’Lisle?”

  Lorenzo flushed. “Bugger off, I don’t have to answer that.”

  “Have you defiled her?” Marco insisted.

  “No, I have not!”

  Marco studied his face for a moment. “Good. In that case, I give my blessing.”

  “You what?”

  “I don’t like it, I’ll admit that,” Marco said. “I’m older, I have two shares in the company to your one share. I’d make a better husband for Lucrezia than you. In every way. She knows that already.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “You think this is idle boasting?” A crooked smile came to Marco’s face. “Do you remember the masked ball at the Medici palace? The night you drank too much fortified wine and serenaded the duke’s mother?”

  Lorenzo groaned. “What a fool I made of myself.” He fixed his brother with a sharp look. “And I seem to remember that you were the one who supplied me with both the wine and that preposterous lute.”

  “It was to keep you occupied, little brother. While you were singing drunken love songs to an eighty-year-old woman, I was making love to Lucrezia in the Hall of Statues.”

  “What? You were?”

  “It was harmless, I only stole a few kisses. She never knew it was me.”

  “You devil.” Lorenzo tried to summon his outrage, but it failed to boil. If Marco meant to challenge him for Lucrezia’s affections, he would hardly be confessing his crimes in such a manner.

  “But I’m no fool,” Marco continued. “I see the way she looks at you. She’s never looked at me that way.”

  “So you’re yielding the field of battle?” Lorenzo said, carefully.

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Then why the insults and veiled accusations?”

  “Because I don’t want you to treat her like some innkeeper’s wench, that’s why. Lucrezia isn’t a woman you toss into the gutter when you’re done, whistling your way back to Florence with a head full of fond memories. Is that clear?”

  “I asked her to come back with me,” Lorenzo said. “If her father accepts, I want to marry her.”

  Marco raised his eyebrows. “And? What did she say?”

  “She put me off. Said if we survived the night, she’d consider my offer. Until then, no promises.”

  “She did, hmm? In that case, Brother, you’d better fight like the angel Gabriel tonight. Because if one of those wolves tears out your throat, I’ll be there to lend Lucrezia my consoling embrace.”

  This time Marco’s grin was genuine, friendly, and Lorenzo laughed.

  One of Nemours’s men came running down the nave, armor clattering. He arrived panting and spoke in short gasps.

  “The signal. The wolves. They crossed the Seine. Running toward Notre Dame.”

  He continued toward the transepts, calling his message to any within earshot. Jean-Marc and Drouin threw down their cards and sprang to their feet. The priests clumped in a fearful knot around the bishop. The Dominicans split apart, with Montguillon leading one group and the old friar who’d beat Lorenzo another. Simon led two other young monks deeper into the cathedral, off to God knew where.

  The two brothers exchanged grim looks as they drew their swords and flattened against one of the stone pillars. Lorenzo’s coin purse wedged between his leg and the cold stone, the cursed box with Courtaud’s tail jabbing into his thigh.

  “May God be with you, Brother,” Marco said.

  Lorenzo slapped a hand on his brother’s arm. “And you, Brother.”

  Then they braced for the attack.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

 
Lucrezia was numb with cold when she spotted the wolves crossing the frozen river. Martin had come up to the tower three times begging her to come inside. It was warmer downstairs, he said. Take refuge in the library, while they surrounded and protected her. The Boccaccio servant, a Greek named Demetrius, was even more insistent. He had orders to protect her, by God, and he wouldn’t see her killed. When he took her elbow as if she were a child and tried to forcibly lead her downstairs, he and Martin almost came to blows.

  “Enough!” she cried. “Downstairs, both of you.”

  What if she made her last stand up here instead? If the men weren’t enough, if Rigord and his pack fought their way through, she’d sooner it end here than in the library. How terrible to be downstairs, in the middle of all those burning candles, as the wolves surrounded her, snarling and driving her toward the center of the circle and the heart of the inverted star. Martin and Tullia dead outside. The servants with their bellies torn open, Nemours’s men dead up and down the halls. And then the wolves would be on her.

  No, she’d rather hurl herself from the tower. She’d slam onto the frozen river a hundred feet below and die with a broken neck rather than give these fiends satisfaction with her body.

  But that wasn’t the only reason she waited in the tower. She wanted to watch and confirm. She didn’t know if her hunch was true, but she expected Courtaud to cross in a larger pack, running openly down the streets, daring anyone to challenge them. They would run directly for the cathedral. Lorenzo and Marco would be there waiting, God save them, together with Lord Nemours and Montguillon, the Dominican prior. It would be an open battle.

  Rigord would slink into the Cité. He was the creeping, treacherous type, after all. Wolf or man, that wouldn’t change. The type of man who would lure a young woman to France to use and discard.

  A light flashed from a tower in Notre Dame. Two waves of a torch back and forth.

  A signal. Probably a response to something on the river walls. Lucrezia scanned the riverbank.

  There were other towers on the island taller than hers, and the cathedral blocked the sky to the east, but she could follow the curve of the Île de la Cité most of the way around. She looked first to the bridges—the Grand Pont and Petit Pont—but saw nothing on the spans. She followed the river on the Left Bank.