Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  “Never mind that now,” Henri told her, affecting a bluff air and a mock threat with the back of his hand. “I’ve a score of things for you to do…” He related them, along with the reason.

  Gabrielle was at once caught up by her father’s urgency. She animatedly went about the business of preparing the auberge for the meeting. Hazy dawn light slanted across the eddying dust motes as Gabrielle threw open the shutters.

  She started when she caught sight of the figure slumped over the bar.

  “Reynald Labossiere—have you no work today?” she asked sharply, miffed at being taken by surprise. “Does Henri know you’re here?”

  “Oui, your father let me in,” the stoop-shouldered man replied, a bit slurred. “Relax. God be with you this morning, my child.”

  She hummed in petulant rejoinder, then began sweeping the floor vigorously, raising dust devils she hoped would dislodge him from his stool. “Let’s hope so,” she said after a time. “Let’s hope He’s with all of us.”

  Gabrielle eyed the mug of ale Labossiere sipped distractedly. “A poor start for any day,” she said, scowling.

  “Perhaps a poor day is starting,” he replied.

  She stopped sweeping and regarded him from the corner of an eye as she arranged tables and chairs. He was not at all unpleasant to look at, though he was probably twice her age. But circumstance and self-loathing had bent and twisted him like some fine golden figurine melted in an uncaring crucible. She had often admired the scar that coursed his cheek, though he would never speak of its origin. It sometimes made him look noble, courageous. Now, tufted by a scruff of beard, it merely made him look vagrant.

  He was a man who had prematurely retired from the strife of mainstream life. He took refuge in a renewed religious faith, though in a grim, pathetic way, wrapping Christianity about him like sackcloth.

  “What are you doing here so early anyway?” Gabrielle pressed, her tone laced with scorn. “Your bed too lonely a place?”

  “That’s hardly proper business for a child to discuss.”

  “I’m not a child, faineant—idler! I’m woman enough to know a man who’s been cuckolded without being man enough to do anything about it—”

  “Stop that now,” Labossiere commanded, his voice rising with emotion. “What sort of thing is that for a—? You know nothing of what you speak.” His words drifted off, dwindling to an echo in the depths of his mug as he returned to his sipping.

  “Oh, non?” she went on. “Faye—etourdi—thoughtless, selfish wench! I don’t know which of you I despise more—”

  Gabrielle caught her breath, her face flushing with embarrassment, and turned her back to him. Her nails dug into her flesh as she stood trembling slightly with arms crossed over her bosom. “Monsieur Labossiere, I am sorry…”

  “Forget it, girl. It’s all right. It’s all right. I forgive you…”

  Gabrielle made a tiny, mad whimpering sound in her throat. Her voice was once again laced with bitterness. “Of course you do. Just as you forgive Faye, and God knows what lovers she’s known, and the monsters who control our lives—”

  “We are Christians, Gaby. That’s our lot. It’s difficult, but we must forgive our enemies, those who do us ill. We are being chastised. There is a terrible burden of penance upon us. Temporal punishment for our sins, which we must bear.”

  “Hell,” Gabrielle swore, hopping lithely up onto the bar beside Labossiere, but at once arranging her skirts modestly. “These aren’t ancient days, Reynald. These invaders aren’t the Romans. We’re not so small that we need to—to embrace our fate by walking into the arena singing. By walking willingly into the beasts’ den.”

  “I once spoke like you,” he said, smiling wanly. “Life changes that. Beware how you live, Gabrielle…”

  “Ahh.” She waved at him scoffingly, rubbed her itching nose. “They might as well be the Romans,” she went on, a curious meditative note entering her voice. “They are not from this world…”

  He glanced at her sharply. “More visions?”

  She chortled. “You’re the only one who ever asks about my stupid dreams. You know what I dream of late? I dream of a hero who comes and sweeps me into his arms and rides off with me, away from this damned place…”

  Reynald’s expression softened. “What does he look like?”

  A puzzled gleam crept into her eyes. “That’s funny. He looks different at different times. Sometimes he’s even…scary. My hero…” Her countenance darkened. “And I dream of other things, not so pleasant. Castles, besieged. People screaming and dying in the midst of blood and thunder and awful sounds and—and I’ve dreamt of you, Reynald—”

  “Moi?”

  “Oui…you’re not everything you claim to be. Or maybe…even who you claim to be…” She shook her head abruptly, dispersing her reverie. “Do you know of the meeting? The Wunderknechten meeting here today?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he intoned grimly. “Rumor has it they’ve done violence against the powers that reign. That’s wrong, you know. And they may contemplate more. So I must do what I can to make them see the terrible consequences their actions may bring upon us all…”

  * * * *

  “You buried him?”

  “It—we buried it,” corrected one of the party that had battled the werewolf at the Cochieu farm.

  “Keep your voices down, s’il vous plait,” Jacques Moreau requested, offering his palms in a cautioning gesture.

  “You killed and buried a Farouche?”

  “And marked the spot well so that we might recover him when we need to,” Moreau assured, peering up to the lunette above the stairs in the inn. Henri Chabot, the concierge, leaned against the windowsill, watching for unwelcome customers. He shook his head reassuringly and spat another cherry pit into his hand.

  “We marked it with a crucifix,” Darcy Lavelle, the new guild leader, added. “There’ll be nothing rising from that grave until we’re ready to open it.”

  The gathering shuffled uneasily amid outbreaks of nervous coughing.

  “You’re sure of who it was?” someone breathed.

  Moreau sighed. “There was no mistaking.”

  The cure, Father Giroux, sat with slumping shoulders, shaking his head mournfully. “There was no other way?”

  “Violence begets violence,” Reynald Labossiere pronounced loudly from where he sat at the bar beside Gabrielle.

  “I tried to tell Jacques that this might not be the best way of handling—” Wyatt Ault began, but Darcy came to Moreau’s rescue.

  “Of course it was the best way,” he declared. “What were we supposed to do with the body until the duke or some representative of the king could be brought here? The fewer who know, the better, for now. And Pere Giroux, what would you have had us do—tame him? Teach him to do tricks? That’s what the Farouche have been doing with us. How many dance to their tune because they fear to oppose their evil magic? Is your Church not fundamentally committed to dealing with black magic, cure? The Farouche use our own political gamesmanship to control us. What is the officially sanctioned faith in Burgundy these days anyway? Are we Huguenot or Catholic?” He scratched his head vigorously, reestablished his composure, and sat down with a wave of his hand.

  “We are Christians,” Labossiere said. “And as Wunderknechten, that is all that matters. And Christians are bound to obey the existing political order—”

  “So long as it does not confound their faith,” Moreau interjected. “And if we follow the Farouche political order much longer, there will be no living Christians within a hundred miles of Dijon! And they won’t stop there. Isn’t that so, Wyatt?” He saw the ex-mercenary, now a tanner, shrug dolefully. Wyatt Ault’s wife, Marie, hugged his arm encouragingly beside him.

  Henri Chabot hissed them to silence from up in the
lunette. The doors presently were opened to admit two women. One was Darcy’s wife, Blanche, a charming, compassionate woman who was one of the more cherished souls in Lamorisse. Her kindly nature and blithe spirit always seemed to triumph over adversity. And she’d known her share. A congenital defect had left her clubfooted. Yet no one in town associated Blanche with any state of debilitation, so thoroughly did the woman’s spirit rise above her difficulty.

  Only her husband ever took note of her handicap, and then, only in antic affection.

  “Come now, Blanche, over here,” Darcy Lavelle called out in mock impatience. “Chabot’s three-legged mule out there gets around faster than you.”

  Lavelle was archly booed into submission, and Blanche moved beside him and gave him a short, sharp punch in the arm before kissing him lightly in greeting.

  The second arriving woman evoked many sympathetic smiles and a degree of indulgence that might have marked her for one denied cosmic justice. This was Yvonne Dusseault, whose husband, Jean, was a Farouche sympathizer who had spurned his faith and was said to be seen in the forests deep in the night, engaged in foul rituals endorsed by the clan. Yvonne’s militant support of the Wunderknechten was a byword, and despite her seemingly precarious position, there was a special reason for trusting her: Jean had often been seen cavorting with an avowed witch. A seductress said to be possessed of the shape-shifting powers of the evil Farouche brothers.

  The women were brought up to date. As they reacted to the news—Blanche with deep concern, Yvonne with seething anger—Father Giroux began to ramble.

  “King Henry—this is all his fault, you know. Nothing like this ever happened in Burgundy before—before he took to wife Marie de Medicis, n’est-ce pas? That’s the story, if truth be known. Henry of Navarre dared to use the controversy over Divine revelation for political ends. He opened the way…”

  “You may be right,” Moreau allowed absently, wrapped up in his own fear of failing them as their new magistrate. The Wunderknechten were tending toward defiance. And there would be no turning back after the slaying of the werewolf, Rene Farouche. Barring military intervention—and that was a remote hope in Burgundy under present conditions—they would soon be pitted against a powerful, frightening enemy. The true lords of the province—beings of unknown origin who stalked the night and plied their dark magic. “But as for what we should do next, I—?” Moreau went on uncertainly.

  But then Henri Chabot was calling sharply from the landing.

  “Aucoin! Claude Aucoin—it’s your daughter—”

  The glassblower lurched to his feet, brows knit with confused rancor. A man at the door nervously admitted Francoise Aucoin.

  Francoise swallowed when she saw the hostile looks aimed her way. She looked small and intimidated. Rather overdressed for the weather in the capuchin whose lapels she clutched at her breast. Her eyes moistened when she caught sight of her father’s reddening face in the crowd, but she squared her shoulders and strode into the auberge. The door closed softly behind her.

  “I told you—” her father started.

  “I know what you said, papa. I came anyway,” she told him, a stubborn tear forming in the corner of an eye.

  Gabrielle breathed in noisy exasperation at the bar and shifted into a posture full of adolescent petulance.

  Blanche Lavelle stood and motioned to Francoise. “Come, sit here, dear. You’re as welcome in this company as any who fear the Lord—”

  “Some fear Him more than others,” someone blurted acidly.

  “That’s enough of that,” Jacques Moreau said hotly. “She’s here now, and that means she shares our concerns. That’s all I care about.” There were a few dissenting murmurs, but in the downcast eyes of many in the audience Moreau found a tingle of satisfaction. He was glad he had come to the girl’s aid.

  But Francoise had not come to be defended. “I need no help from you, Jacques Moreau. I’ve come under my own power, God’s own power, if He be with me. Where is the girl from the farm?”

  Nadine Cochieu stood and eyed Francoise narrowly.

  “Oui?”

  “You are Nadine?”

  “And you are Francoise. So?” Nadine radiated hostility, unsure of why she had been singled out.

  “Was it Rene Farouche?”

  Nadine seemed shaken to hear the name pronounced again. She nodded gravely.

  “God be praised for His justice, then,” Francoise said vindictively. “I know what you’re all thinking. The befouled wench comes seeking public penance for her sin. She begs acceptance back into the fold. I don’t care about your acceptance. Any of you. I just wanted to know the truth of it. My soul is satisfied, God forgive me. Don’t you think I’m more mortified than anyone because of what I did? Nadine is your shining example now. She resisted his advances. I salute you, Nadine. As for me, my sin is no greater than that of scores of women in this town. But I’ll always be specially hated, won’t I? Because in my stupid innocence I bedded a man and awoke with a wolf…”

  Her tears flowed freely now. She gasped out two throaty breaths and turned sharply to storm out of the inn. Yvonne Dusseault leapt to her feet and followed in the girl’s wake.

  “You’re a damned lucky old fool, Aucoin,” she spat over her shoulder as she departed.

  There was a strained silence for a few seconds.

  “Courage,” Blanche Lavelle was heard to whisper. “What courage.”

  Then Reynald Labossiere blared in a stentorian voice: “You’re forgiven, Francoise. If Christ could forgive the fallen woman, then so must we. It’s His way…” Ale sloshed from his mug when he raised it high overhead.

  “Shut up, Reynald,” Gabrielle Chabot scolded beside him.

  “Forgiveness of sins is not a power you can appropriate, Labossiere,” Father Giroux argued. “It does not issue from an ale cup…”

  The Catholics and Huguenots abruptly broke into their traditional bitter arguments over the sacraments and the spiritual power conferred on the priesthood.

  Moreau smacked a heavy cup down onto a tabletop, shocking them to attention. “Listen to you all, fighting over the insoluble mysteries of faith again. Are we not Knights of Wonder? Do we not tolerate others’ beliefs because every man’s heart is his own truth-finder?” Grumbling. And sullen deference to the principle they had come to accept. Some, particularly the cure, still seemed uncomfortable with these Wunderknechten tenets, the philosophy of an oriental heathen.

  But they all ceased their arguing, to hear Jacques Moreau’s censure.

  “All right,” Moreau went on, running his fingers through his thick, tousled hair. “Here’s what we’ve done. Messengers have been sent simultaneously to the military field marshal, to Duke de Plancy—now listen to me, he is still the grand seigneur!—and to Paris. Someone will respond. We will confront the Farouche and press for some higher—God help us—some sympathetic authority who will help us take action against these ravening power-mongers. Meanwhile, we will present our evidence before the Farouche themselves—”

  “What evidence? You’ll have a worm-eaten corpse of one of their own!”

  “Let him finish,” Darcy Lavelle shouted. “Moreau is sensei now. Respect. That’s our duty.” He nodded to Moreau, who cast him a grateful glance and continued.

  “Sensei,” the priest spat under his breath.

  “We’ll have to do what we do quickly, won’t we? Anyway, there should be ways to identify him. The undertaker and Monsieur Roue will know.”

  “With all due respect, Moreau, then what? You have one dead Farouche and a lot of nasty living ones.”

  There was anxious muttering in response to Henri Chabot’s words.

  “We have many witnesses to what he was and what he did. A dozen or more. We must stand together in this…” He ambled as he spoke now, rubbing the back of his neck a
s he searched his soul for the words of encouragement the people needed to hear.

  “Defiance. That’s what we propose. Defiance to these usurpers of lawful authority. What the duke—the king himself—cannot or will not do, we Wunderknechten must. We are a society, a family, supporting one another. Fighting for one another to the death, if need be. Prayer and the sword. The pistol. The bow and halberd. We oppose these snarling whelps until they are driven back to the Pit they rose from. Remember Paille’s epic—we are the Deathwind. Bushido—that is our code. Its seven guiding principles: justice, courage, benevolence, veracity, politeness, loyalty, and honor. And we must stoically accept our fate, once we’ve begun. And we have begun…”

  Soft scuffling, the company now rapt in private thought and anxiety.

  “Easy to say these things,” someone advanced from the rear of the gathering. “It’s said that Serge Farouche and his band of cutthroats camp near here. Wait till he hears what’s become of his brother.”

  “Niaiserie—foolishness to start trouble with these fiends,” another man added, rumbled assent following his words.

  Marie Ault, a rather plump woman with a pleasant, cherubic face and an antic sense of humor took up the gauntlet. She was never one to mince words.

  “Tell that to your children when they ask you why you’re so frightened of the dark!”

  Supportive grunts and outbursts.

  “Do we stand together?” Moreau cried out over the din.

  Wyatt and Darcy rose almost as one and drew their swords. They strode to the front of the gathering and, Moreau echoing their action, touched their rasping blades one to the other. Others moved up to join them.

  “I have heard rumors that Simon Sardonis has returned to the territory,” Moreau said, eliciting shocked whispers. “Oui—the one called the Grejkill in the northern lands. He who is accursed by the Farouche foulness. Eager to avenge his family’s slaughter at their hands.”