The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  In the growing light she saw the reflection of her face in the water—the deep, yellow eyes buried in silver-tipped fur, the thick ruff that framed her face—then abruptly a tremor of darkness flowed over her and she found herself kneeling before the pool looking down at her human face, at the dark hair flowing over her shoulders and her own strange, sad eyes.

  Regeane remained kneeling among the irises and cascades of autumn daisies, transfixed by her own weariness and the beauty of the silent garden in the first light.

  The pool reflected the sunrise colors, transparent blue, then rose. The flowers, heavy with the night dew, were beginning to let down their fragrance into the cool, morning air. The aromas of mint and chamomile bruised by her knees hung around her.

  Regeane closed her eyes and took a long breath.

  “Oh, my God,” a voice gasped. “Oh, my dear, sweet, merciful God. No wonder you were afraid to marry.” Lucilla sat on one of the benches beside the pool.

  “You saw,” Regeane whispered. “You know.”

  “I saw …” Lucilla’s hand flew to her cheek and she turned her face away from Regeane. “Oh, God, I saw … I don’t believe what I saw.” She turned back to confront the younger woman.

  Regeane rose slowly to her feet and walked along the flagstone path toward Lucilla, asking, “Would you lend me your mantle? The air is cold and some of the servants might come out. I’m naked.”

  “So you are,” Lucilla said, staring at her with unbelieving eyes. “So you are, naked as a nymph. For a moment, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. They do that, you know, as you age,” she babbled. “I thought, ‘A wolf. How does a wolf come here? I must call my servants to drive it away,’ and then in a moment it came to me. ‘Old woman, that’s no wolf, but only a garden statue kneeling among the flowers,’ and then …” Lucilla drew back from Regeane, her face stiff with terror. “And then … and then … you moved.”

  Regeane stood only a few feet from Lucilla. She stretched out her hand. “The mantle, please. I’m cold.”

  Absently, still gazing open-mouthed at Regeane, Lucilla unwound the mantle from her shoulders and placed it in Regeane’s hand.

  Regeane wrapped herself in the heavy cloth. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t stare at me so,” Lucilla said. “Not with those eyes. I know I look a ragged hag, but I have my pride, and … I have passed a sleepless night.”

  “Are you going to denounce me?” Regeane asked.

  “Denounce you?” Lucilla asked, her mouth snapping shut. “For what?”

  “For being a witch, a sorceress.”

  Lucilla laughed. The short peal of laughter was shrill and slightly hysterical. “Of course not,” the older woman said. “I never denounce anyone except those who plot against Hadrian. Everyone knows that I’ve lived too long outside the law to sympathize with those superior judges, the iron-fisted soldiers who …”

  Regeane sank down on the bench.

  Lucilla took her in her arms. “Oh, dear. Oh, you poor dear.” Suddenly she stared down at Regeane in horror. “Have you been out on the Campagna all night?”

  Regeane sat up. “Yes, with Antonius. He’s safe. I left him in the care of a shepherd.”

  Lucilla buried her face in her hands. She sighed deeply, then let her hands drop to her lap and stared out across the reflecting pool. Then she let out a quick, little chuckle that surprised Regeane. “You think you’re a witch, eh?” she asked.

  Regeane said, “I don’t know what I am.”

  “Can you do … what I saw you do … at will?” Lucilla asked.

  “No,” Regeane answered. “I mean, I don’t know.” She began to flounder. “I never thought about it. My mother and I never talked about it.”

  “No, but then she wouldn’t, would she?” Lucilla said. “It does explain the hold your uncle had over you. Why she let him and that dissolute son of his dress her in rags while they went out and spent her money.”

  “No,” Regeane gasped.

  “Yes,” said Lucilla. “And it explains the hold they have over you, too.” She sat quietly for a moment, gazing down at her lap. Her fingers played idly with the folds of the gown.

  “I can just see that idiot mother of yours,” Lucilla said. “A saintly woman, otherworldly. Isn’t that what you told me? She locked you up, didn’t she? Hid you away like some dirty little secret. And in between bars, bolts, and narrow little cells, all you got to see were the wax candles of churches and shrines decked with the decaying, wasted flesh of purported saints and holy men.”

  Regeane gagged and whispered, “Stop.” She took a deep breath. “Stop. Don’t remind me. Sometimes she got pieces of dead flesh, little splinters of bone. She pounded them to a powder and tried to make me drink them.”

  “Ugh,” Lucilla said. “Just like that lack-wit physician with his hippopotamus dung.”

  Regeane gasped again. “I used to try to take her potions.” She began to cry, tears coursing down her cheeks. “She suffered so much. I wanted to try to ease her pain.”

  Lucilla jumped to her feet. “Seems to me you were the one doing the suffering,” she snarled. “All because she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, accept the situation and try to protect you.”

  “Yes,” Regeane admitted uncertainly, “but who could, who would?”

  “I can,” Lucilla said. “I will. I just have. And so could she if she had any backbone at all.”

  “Lucilla,” Regeane cried. “Please stop. I loved my mother.”

  “Child, child,” Lucilla said. She strode up and down before the bench. “We all loved our mothers. I loved mine, too, but she was like yours. Whimpering and groveling before Christ and his saints, and all the while living in mortal terror of my father’s fist and boot. Bearing child after child. I can’t remember how many. So often they died, most before the poor little mites ever got a chance to know what life was. Perhaps they were fortunate.”

  Her face was set in a mask of bitterness. “The life of a farmer in the Abruzzi is cruel enough to deaden the hardest spirit. I know it nearly did mine. But no matter. It’s your life and your spirit we’re speaking of here. Your life and your future. First, how did this … change come upon you?”

  “I …” Regeane said, “I … don’t …”

  Lucilla stopped pacing and stood tapping one sandaled foot. “Come, come,” she prompted. “When did it first happen?”

  “When I became a woman at the time of my first bleeding. I …” Regeane sighed. “I changed.”

  “So,” Lucilla’s eyes narrowed. “So,” she repeated, “this skill of yours is like that so beautiful hair, not a thing of art, but of nature herself.”

  “I seem to have been born with it,” Regeane said. “My father was also afflicted.”

  Lucilla’s good-humored chuckle surprised Regeane again. “My pretty, I’ve known a witch or two in my time. More than two if the truth be known. A woman in my profession involves herself in all kinds of shady dealings. And let me tell you, your powers would drive any of them mad with envy. Smelly old women, dabbling in drugs, caught up in the most revolting superstition and trickery. But you. No, real power is what you have, my girl.”

  “Power?” Regeane asked. “Or a curse?”

  “Power if you will have it, a curse if you deny it,” Lucilla said. “Come. Come. I saw you read the past in a piece of cloth when we first met. You can change your shape and become a creature of the night. Tell me, what else can you do?”

  Regeane stood up, clutching the mantle around herself, her mind in a whirl. “Power,” she murmured.

  Suddenly she staggered and Lucilla’s face seemed to recede into a great distance. Her gorge rose and her throat filled with bile. She felt sweat break out all over her skin.

  When she came to herself, she was seated on the bench, her head between her knees. Lucilla’s arm was around her. She lifted her head and rested it on Lucilla’s shoulder. “I need food,” she said to Lucilla. “Food and sleep. The change … the moon darkness drains me.”


  “The moon darkness,” Lucilla said. “Is that what you call it? The moon darkness?”

  “Yes, because the pull is strongest at the full moon. I can seldom resist it then, and though my mother fought it with fasting and prayer, I always changed.”

  “I take it you did the fasting,” Lucilla said dryly, “and she did the praying.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t work.”

  Lucilla nodded, She embraced Regeane. Her hand pressed Regeane’s face against her shoulder and she stared out over the garden.

  The red and blue dawn was turning to gold as the light from the new sun reached down into the atrium. The air resounded with birdsong and jewel-like hummingbirds darted about, sipping the sun-warmed nectar from the flowers.

  “Imprisonment, beatings, starvation, noxious messes forced down your throat, all in the name of purification,” Lucilla mused. “All futile. Not much of a preparation for life. But come, I think I can remedy your hunger and thirst. In the evening Susanna places a tray for one in my study.”

  Regeane stopped and was about to pick up the dress and sandals she’d discarded last night.

  “No,” Lucilla said sharply. “Leave that whorish thing where it is. Follow me.”

  Lucilla led her through another garden. This one was stiffly formal with an ornate marble tile walkway and clipped boxwood hedges. It was dotted with numerous pedestals. No statues, just pedestals.

  Regeane gaped at them.

  “Yes,” Lucilla said. “Once this garden was filled with beautiful bronze statues. The previous tenant, one Bishop Maxtentus, said he found them shockingly pagan and had them melted down.”

  “Oh,” Regeane gasped. “How sad.”

  “Don’t waste any tears on the statues, little love. Hadrian feels, and so do I, that Maxtentus found them shockingly valuable and sold them one and all for high prices to a Greek merchant who sailed away to Constantinople with them.

  “He gave Hadrian the rather glib story about paganism, but when Hadrian asked him what he’d done with the bronze, Maxtentus developed a terrible stammer. When Hadrian looked into his other affairs, he found most valuable things he touched tended to stick to his fingers at least long enough for him to sell them at a profit.”

  “What did he do?” asked Regeane.

  “Maxtentus?” Lucilla asked.

  “No, Hadrian,” Regeane said.

  Lucilla chuckled. “Maxtentus is holding down a see in some nameless place among the Saxons. He’s up to his rear end in big, hairy, beer-guzzling warriors and busty blond women who never bathe and dress their hair with butter. He speaks only Latin. His flock apparently finds him a very satisfactory shepherd. He cannot remonstrate with them about any of their bad habits. They continue to worship trees, wells, and rivers. He continues to exhort them to abandon their ancient ways in a language of which they speak not one word. And he continues to believe they could understand him if they would … only … try.”

  Regeane began giggling.

  “What do you think of this peristyle?” Lucilla gestured at the garden. They paused near a door for Regeane to take in the view.

  “Not much,” Regeane said, “rather cold. I hope he doesn’t steal anything from the Saxons. They’ll cut off his hands.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Lucilla replied. “The bronzes did belong to the church and they were very beautiful. Still, the pool remains.” She pointed to an enormous reflecting pool in the garden. “I raise carp there.” She indicated a jar near her hand.

  Regeane looked down. Two large carp sulked in the bottom, fins waving gently in the still water. “Uuum.” Regeane eyed then hungrily. “Breakfast?” she asked hopefully.

  “My!” Lucilla looked a bit taken aback. “Raw or cooked?”

  “At the moment,” Regeane said impatiently, “either.”

  “Ah, yes,” Lucilla said as she began unlocking the door. “I forgot you’ve been running around on all fours all night.”

  She opened the door. The room was small, dim, and odorous with cedar and furniture polish. It opened into a private walled garden.

  The first thing Regeane noted was a napkin-covered tray resting on a circular table in the center of the room. She charged.

  “Hold!” Lucilla said. “It will not fight back or even run away. Arms up.”

  The mantle Regeane was wearing fell to the floor. Lucilla dropped a heavy linen gown over her head.

  Regeane got to the table. She found ripe pears, herbed cream cheese, bread, and a pitcher of white wine. She ignored the wine. It was the only thing on the table she ignored.

  Lucilla poured herself some wine. She watered it a bit. “How is Antonius?”

  Regeane stopped eating for a moment. She had to take a deep breath to talk. “He is … well. You know, not well, but—”

  “But as healthy as he ever is,” Lucilla filled in.

  “Yes, even his kidnapping by Basil didn’t damage his … composure.”

  Lucilla shook her head and sighed. She took her wine, walked to the porch, and stared out into the garden. “No, of course not. Execution wouldn’t damage his composure … as you put it. Can you help him?”

  The question was asked so quietly Regeane almost didn’t hear it. But when it penetrated her consciousness, she stopped eating again. “Yes,” she answered.

  Lucilla turned back toward her. “How?”

  Regeane said, “Ummmmmm.”

  “Regeane, are you in danger of developing the same type of stammer Maxtentus did when talking to Hadrian?”

  “My activities require a lot of explaining,” Regeane said.

  “Your point is well taken,” Lucilla said. She bowed slightly to Regeane and turned back again to the garden.

  Regeane ate. With every bite she felt better. At last, she relaxed, replete, and had the leisure to glance around the room.

  Lucilla’s study had a gentle dignity lacking in the over-ornate dining room. Bookshelves lined the walls. Diamond-shaped structures built into them held scrolls, flat shelves held books and, in many cases, unbound piles of papers. A slab of glass in the roof shed a clear morning light on the table where Regeane was sitting. The portico opened into the garden.

  A fountain on the wall spurted water into a basin. The fountain head was an arrangement of bronze acanthus leaves combined to suggest the face of a god peering out through the leaves in a forest. The bronze glowed in the delicate gold of the new sun; water sparkled.

  The rest of the garden lay in cool morning shadow. Chamomile, valerian, and poppies grew thickly clustered in beds along the garden walls. The smaller chamomile enthusiastically puffing into cushions of yellow and white presided over by drooping violet-throated poppy heads, scarlet and white, mixed with high valerian spikes.

  The roof over the portico was a grape arbor shaded now by a thick growth of winter-denuded ropey vines. A few leaves remained, green at the center, crisp and brown at the edges, moving slightly in the first morning breeze.

  “What is this place?” Regeane asked.

  “A place where I seldom, if ever, invite even my friends,” Lucilla said. She walked to a bookshelf and lifted a brass scroll from its place and handed it to Regeane.

  Grasping the ring, Regeane unrolled it. “It’s Greek,” she said, disappointed. “I can’t read Greek.” She examined the papyrus very closely. It had been glued to a backing of a new vellum to preserve it because the papyrus was very old and already crumbling to dust at the edges.

  “Neither do I,” Lucilla said, “but I have a Latin translation here on the shelf beside it.”

  Regeane closed the scroll very carefully. “It is old and must be precious.”

  Lucilla nodded and replaced it on the shelf. “It is a letter written by Queen Cleopatra of Egypt to Julius Caesar on the matter of the calendar. She gives him the best opinion of the Egyptian sage, Sosthumeus, and later, her own views. Then, she makes some suggestions. It is to be noted that he took them. This is believed to be the only letter surviving written in the queen’s own hand. It wa
s salvaged when the library at Alexandria burned.”

  “Oh,” Regeane whispered staring into Lucilla’s face, “what else is there?”

  “Up on this shelf,” she indicated a higher one, “Arete, one of the first to write a study of natural law as it relates to women. Her fellow citizens at Cyrene are said to have amended their marriage law at her suggestion. She is called ‘Lycergia’ or law-giver.

  “Over here are poets Myrtis, Erinna, Anyte. Those are some of the Greeks. Here, a few Romans: Sulpicia—”

  Regeane burst into tears. “They are all women.” The tears weren’t healing. They scalded her face, burnt her eyes, and made her nose swell. When Lucilla tried to comfort her, she moved away and finally ended by washing her face in the garden fountain. “All women,” she repeated as she walked back to where Lucilla stood.

  “Yes, I don’t banish male authors and, in fact, have many books by them, but not in here. And you may come in to read or study as you please. Only don’t remove any books from this room. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I have no confidence in others. I have seen men who, on finding a book was written by a woman, made haste to consign it to the flames. I protect what is here, though I cannot think it will survive me.”

  Regeane nodded. “I am honored. You haven’t slept.”

  “No,” Lucilla said. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her long blond hair was swept to one side and, in the growing light, Regeane could see how much gray was mixed into it.

  “I have powers,” Regeane said. “I will try to save Antonius.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lucilla said. “There is one poet who is not here. I cannot find one collection of her poems still in existence. The priests have done their work well. Yet, I cannot think she won’t be remembered because she reached out and touched the central chord of loneliness and longing in each human soul. I thought of her often tonight.

  The moon has set.

  And the Pleiades:

  It is the middle of the night,

  And time passes,

  Yes passes—

  And I lie alone”

  Regeane’s eyes burned, but no tears came. Her head hurt. “She killed him. Gundabald helped her. She helped Gundabald … I don’t know if it matters which one of them … He was my father. I got the powers from him. Except she called them a curse and was sure she was cursed … through me.”