The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  Hugo, still sitting on the floor, was blinking as he returned to full consciousness. He pointed a shaking finger at Elfgifa. “She … she …”

  Gundabald clouted him on the other ear, saying, “Shut up, you moron.”

  “It appears he has some grievance against the child,” Emilia said. “If he has, I’d like to hear it.” She folded her arms and glared down at him.

  Hugo got to his feet and, casting a dazed, fearful glance at Emilia and Gundabald, he began backing away muttering, “Nothing … nothing.”

  “He doesn’t have a large vocabulary, does he?” Lucilla commented. Hadrian gave Lucilla a glance that could have ignited a bonfire.

  Both women backed away, covering their faces with the mantles.

  “Augusta,” he said, “Both the young lady’s reputation and safety are at stake here. If you have anything cogent to say in the matter, then speak up. And by cogent, I don’t mean malicious tale-bearing and spiteful innuendo. I mean any fact of which you are aware that has any bearing on the matter.”

  Augusta shook her head slowly.

  “Very well,” Hadrian said. He turned again to Gundabald. “We are both concerned with the young lady’s safety and virtue amidst the tumults and temptations of the world, and I believe a convent would serve both our purposes equally well. Abbess Emilia, have you a penitential cell?”

  Emilia looked nonplussed. “I don’t know … I … We seldom have call for such a thing.”

  For a moment it looked to the terrified Regeane as though the abbess was going to object to having her convent turned into a prison, but finally she said, “Yes. I do believe we have a few doors with bolts on the outside, rather than on the inside. If this is really the sort of accommodation you wish for the young lady?”

  “I do,” Hadrian said. “She is not to go out. She is not to receive visitors.” He glanced at Lucilla. “Any visitors. She is to be kept under lock and key until the marriage contract is signed and she is handed over to her bridegroom.”

  XVIII

  THE BOLT WAS A BIT RUSTY, AND IT GAVE A LOUD, metallic screech when Emilia shot the bar into the socket.

  It was, Regeane thought, an only-too-familiar sound. She stood and listened to Emilia’s retreating footsteps and the silence descending.

  They had been returned to the convent under heavy guard. The pope’s militia rode three deep around the mule litter carrying Regeane, the Abbess Emilia, and Elfgifa.

  The whole of Rome seemed to have taken to the streets. A good-humored crowd for the most part, dancing, drinking, and wenching. All the taverns and many brothels were doing a brisk business.

  They were ablaze with lights and the frolicking mobs spilled out into the streets at their doors. They cheered the soldiers of the papal militia and parted willingly to let them pass. People on balconies threw flowers, and women blew kisses and sometimes shouted raucous promises of more intimate entertainment if they would care to dismount and tarry for a while.

  But Regeane was not fooled for a moment. Twice they found themselves riding through the smoke of burning villas. The screams coming from the flaming houses behind the high walls turned Regeane ice-cold with fear. And she wished herself rid of the wolf. The creature with whom she shared her body could hear only too well.

  In the more populous parts of the city, the litter jolted past the gutted ruins of taverns and wineshops that hadn’t opened their doors quickly enough to the roistering throng.

  Many private houses and insula were tightly shuttered and dark. The people inside hid, fearing to show a light, cowering behind their barred doors, wondering who the mob might see fit to turn on next.

  Abbess Emilia leaned back, her arms protectively embracing Elfgifa, her eyes closed, her lips moving in silent prayer.

  Regeane, on the other hand, peered out through a slit in the curtains, terrified yet fascinated and appalled by the spectacle, at the same time powerless to shut out the sensations of pity and fear that surged through her. Feeling all the while the wolf’s silent wonder at this incomprehensible human madness.

  When they reached the gates of the Saxon quarter, Emilia opened her eyes, signed herself with the cross, and whispered, “Thank God.” The streets were silent here, guarded by relatives belonging to the households of the Saxon nobles residing near the Vatican.

  “These Latins haven’t a scrap of common sense among the lot of them. In my humble opinion, just to show the Lombards they’re not afraid of them, they’re going to pillage their own city and burn it to the ground before their enemies can get around to it,” Emilia said.

  The litter came to a stop before the convent gates. Regeane jumped down and Emilia handed Elfgifa to her and followed.

  “God in heaven above,” she said, puffing a bit as she hauled Regeane and Elfgifa along. “This wretched city is mostly in ruins already. I see no earthly reason to wreck the rest of it. And His Holiness, God preserve him, is no better than the rest. Half his people out destroying the place, the other half, God help them …” She let go of Elfgifa’s hand to make the sign of the cross again. “Hiding under their beds.

  “That worthless cousin of yours, a debauchee without even the saving grace of courage. And that uncle of yours, Gundabald …” She crossed herself again. “One only has to look into his eyes to know he would have sold Christ more quickly than Judas and congratulated himself for profiting by the transaction. He could tutor Lucifer himself in evil. And … and.” She plunked Regeane and Elfgifa down at the table and presented them with bread, cheese, and wine.

  “And,” she continued rattling on, “His Holiness can’t think of anything better to do than imprison you. A virtuous girl if I ever saw one. Just like a man: one helpless innocent in all this confusion and conflagration and he must lock her up at once.”

  Regeane said, “I …”

  But Emilia rolled on inexorably. “Be of good cheer, girl. There are worse things than marriage. Do you know I was once a married woman myself?”

  Regeane managed an “Oh?”

  “Oh, yes,” Emilia said. “My dear, I sat weeping the whole week before I was to be wed. I nearly went into hysterics when I saw him. He was fat, bald, old, and covered with warts like a toad. His disposition was no better than his looks. He was as annoying as a grease spot and as smelly as an untended chamber pot.”

  Regeane said, “Ah …”

  “Oh, no, my dear,” Emilia said cheerfully. “You see it all turned out for the best. One week after we were married, during the wedding festivities, he consumed the best part of an ox, two and a half barrels of my father’s excellent ale, fell down in a fit and choked to death on his own vomit, leaving me a wealthy and independent widow. I would wish you similar good fortune.

  “Men,” Abbess Emilia sniffed. “I can’t think why God created them,” she sighed. “I suppose for the same reason he created rats, mosquitos, and fleas. Another cross for women to bear so that their salvation may be all the sweeter. I know they’re good for some things, though put to it, I can’t imagine what. I think we could do with a great deal less of them. They say that in heaven there will be no marriage or giving in marriage and I suppose that means we may all go our own way in peace. And I for one look forward to that pleasant state with blissful anticipation.

  “Now, don’t worry, my dear. No matter what His Holiness says, you’re welcome here among us and I’ll do my best to make you comfortable.”

  And Regeane thought, standing in the narrow room within the limitations of the pope’s orders, Emilia had done so.

  The bed was a cot, but a comfortable one. Fitted out with a feather tick, linen sheets, blankets, and even a goose-down comforter in case it grew cold. A brazier stood in the corner and in it Regeane saw a fat heap of red coals. They warmed the room against the growing chill outside. At her elbow was a table with a bookstand, a book, and, beside it, a tall candle that cast a fitful light in the tiny room.

  Weariness lay over her shoulders like a yoke, bowing her down. As she began to pull off her rui
ned dress, her fingers brushed something hard in the lining and she remembered Adraste’s mirror. She withdrew it carefully from its place in the silken lining. She didn’t want to look into the polished silver face again. Not here. Not alone by candlelight.

  The silver was icy to the touch. It seemed as though her fingers had no power to warm it.

  She studied the flower pattern on the back for a second. Red valerian. The flower of Rome. It grew wild everywhere, shooting up pink rockets of flowers among the ruins, even rooting itself in small pockets of soil in the brickwork of inhabited buildings, blowing and bowing from walls and eaves high in the air.

  The flowers on the mirror were inlaid with coral. The exquisite workmanship perfectly simulating a starburst of bloom.

  A pretty trinket, Regeane thought, an expensive bauble that once must have graced the dressing table of a lady of fashion. Her fingers stroked the back of the mirror.

  Who was she, Adraste, and why did she send me her mirror? Regeane wondered in the silent room.

  All at once she felt the touch of a presence that gathered like the shadows cast by the flickering candle. A presence that seemed held in abeyance only by her will.

  She set the mirror on the table beside the candle and the presence dissipated, seeming to fade like a shadow when a cloud crosses the sun.

  The room had one narrow window near the foot of the bed. Simply a long slit, not big enough to admit a human body. It looked out over a garden and the roofs of the Saxon quarter below. Beyond she could see the Tiber and the city perched on the rolling hills.

  The wolf’s ears could hear the faraway sound of tumult, of violence. Fires burned against the night sky. The people of the ancient town killed with the same abandon that they devoted to laughter and song.

  Two quarreling kings, Desiderius and Charles, and each one wanted this city; each wanted to dictate papal policy.

  Urbi et Orbi, the city and the world, Regeane thought. I am Peter and upon this rock … I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

  The pope, the papacy—things not of this world, but in it. And what was she herself, but a thing not completely of the world.

  The wind blew hard, bringing an icy chill into the room. It carried the smell of smoke from the city. The waft of burning stung her eyes, then passed as the air cleansed itself. From beyond the city, carried on the wings of distant winds, the wolf smelled snow and the tang of frost. Air from distant mountains, where millions of stars glowed like crystal light, filled the room. She saw high peaks, floating pure and unapproachable as a divine dream. High granite precipices mantled in sparkling glaciers and sweeps of pure untrodden snow. The changing, moving sun sometimes cast back rainbows into the dazzled eyes of travelers. At other times, the peaks boiled with storm clouds or draped themselves in the morning mist. Veiling themselves like eastern queens until the air cleared, the fog burned away by pure light.

  Valleys whose springtimes were like bowls of flowers set in the snow, slowly turning to green in the long, summer silences then brown with thick, rich hay in autumn when the eternal winter of the heights reached down and reclaimed them.

  A wave of almost unbearable longing rose in the wolf’s heart, bringing a hard, painful lump to Regeane’s throat and tears to her eyes. A feeling that she could forever abandon the world of men and run out across the Campagna.

  It was growing colder there, now that the wind was blowing. In those coldest hours before dawn, the ground mist would settle on the grass and the long blades would be covered by a soft frosting of crystals. They would crackle beneath her paws as she passed. She could find a place to lie up and sleep. A place to den where a soft woman’s body would remain warm while the long, daylight hours passed. When night came again, she could run on and on until she lost herself in the green solitude of those deep valleys and the vast silence of the peaks beyond.

  Regeane opened her eyes and the dream faded.

  Bolts and bars. Narrow rooms like this one were her life, not the freedom of mountains and forests. Conventions that tied her hand and foot and dictated what a woman must do and be. Crystal streams, and storms that set the night sky aflame. It might be that all the world had for her was an iron collar and a chain. That might be the best the world had to offer her. Someday she might stand at the stake and pray for dry wood, a soft breeze, and a hot fire.

  She felt so tired, she staggered toward the bed. Oh, sleep. Blessed, blessed sleep. Her clothes dropped to the floor and she crept between the clean, soft linen sheets in a sweet relief. In spite of the brazier, the air in the room grew colder and colder. Regeane pulled the covers up to her chin. Her head touched the pillows. Sleep washed over her. The wolf dreamed of mountains. She hunted in dark woods among stands of fir, laden with snow, below ice-coated pines whose long needles glittered like frost daggers … under a drowsy moon.

  SAD, SO SAD. THE NAKED PAIN IN THE WORDLESS voice was so terrible it jolted Regeane out of sleep. She woke thinking Elfgifa. She knew Elfgifa had been bedded down in the dormitory room with the orphans in the nuns’ care. Had she perhaps been awakened by some nightmare and was she even now crying for the comfort of Regeane’s arms?

  Regeane turned on the cot and stared into the darkness open-eyed. The room was illuminated now only by starlight glowing through the window slit. The candle had burned down. The flame extinguished in a cascade of hard wax.

  But the wolf knew the hour as she knew the hours of the passing day by the changing slant of the moving sun and the night by scent and sound, the position of the wheeling stars. She matched them against the template engraved since before the beginning of time on her mind and heart. It was close to dawn, that darkest hour when even the four winds seem to feel the weight of night and a breathless hush precedes the coming of dawn. The room was freezing and Regeane could see the cloud of mist created by her breath on the air.

  She listened and found that even the wolf’s ears heard nothing. Only a dream, she thought. I had a nightmare of my own.

  In the profound darkness and silence something sighed. No, Regeane thought, remembering the face in the mirror. No. But she knew however much she wanted to deny it, the dead called to her from beyond the world.

  Another sigh—this one louder followed by low laughter, brittle and cruel that seemed to mock her fear. And shadows began to gather themselves and grow darker near the table and the mirror.

  It’s coming, she thought in terror, coming to visit me. Suddenly, the air around her grew colder. The shadows were an ugly phosphorescent mist. Mist the color of a corpse candle.

  She gasped, choked, and tried not to breathe as an almost intolerable stench of decay pervaded the room. Regeane threw the covers aside and leaped to her feet.

  The cold was more than cold, a freezing shock wave that seemed to chill her to the bone and then she remembered she couldn’t run. She was locked in with the thing. She retreated toward the door. The awful stench nearly gagging her. She would scream, she decided. Hammer on the wooden panels. Surely someone would come.

  At the thought, another sort of terror overcame her. What would the good ladies think of her? But the thing was taking shape now and what she could see a ghastly blasphemy of the human form.

  Regeane shoved her shoulders and back against the door. She found she was afraid to turn her back on it, afraid she would throw herself against the bolts and bars in vain and in a few seconds she would feel a hand on her shoulder. She would turn, she knew—she would turn and look into the face of God alone knew what horror.

  No, it was better to confront it, no matter what grisly shape it might assume.

  The thing was almost solid. She heard it move. It squelched and plopped as it took a step. It seemed wet, coated with rivulets of decay, like a piece of rotten meat. All at once she realized the step it took was away from her. It was backing away, fleeing.

  The sudden breath of perfume was almost as dizzying as the stench had been. Ascent, sharp, yet sweet and fresh like crushed wild mint, sub
tly mixed with something even sweeter. The heady fragrance of an orchard blooming in the sunlight or a meadow at springtime when in the cool morning the grass is wet with dew.

  The very air around Regeane had changed and it seemed as laden with promise as when God first touched the rich, fertile earth with His hand and called forth life.

  She was suddenly aware that she could see the room clearly. Light was streaming in under the door and around the frame.

  Someone, Regeane thought incoherently, someone in the hall with a torch or lantern. But that couldn’t be. No torch or lantern she’d ever seen shed such a fierce white light. A light so bright she could see the whole room in the glow of the few rays stealing in around and under the heavy door.

  The ugly thing was only a shadow now. It gave another cry laden with loneliness and loss as it faded and fled away into nothingness.

  The room grew cold and dark around Regeane again. But she realized the cold was only that of a winter morning and the dark only the empty night.

  Regeane stumbled toward the bed, shivering, her teeth chattering, and dove under the covers. The other world was reaching out for her now. She was sure she couldn’t sleep and not sure if she would ever sleep again. But when she next opened her eyes, the sun was sending a shaft of transparent yellow light through the window slit. And the room was full of the low cooing of doves welcoming the morning.

  XIX

  EMILIA SENT UP BREAD, CHEESE, RATHER WELL-WATERED wine, and wild strawberry and fig preserves. The bread was fresh baked, the preserves so honey-sweet Regeane ate every bit and scraped the dish. Folded on the table Regeane found a soft linen shift and a robe of fine, brown woolen.

  Washing water arrived in a ewer carried by a nun wearing the same soft shade of brown robe as that on the table.

  She was a woman of severe mien with an eye that glittered like an eagle’s. Despite a webwork of wrinkles, her face held the same threatening bird of prey profile that dominated the monuments of the past scattered through the city.