The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  And their only sin was that they had the misfortune to cross an imperium so bloated with conceit that it could find no more fitting object to worship than itself, a self personified by the goddess, Roma.

  Not to worship at this shrine of naked power was, to the imperial government, a dreadful crime deserving the cruelest punishments. Their deaths were horrible and depicted in meticulous detail.

  As the stories continued on and on, Regeane found her imagination begin to clothe the actors with life.

  When men were spoken of, Regeane saw Hadrian, a man willing to sacrifice himself rather than commit what he considered an evil act or Antonius who, even lost in the darkness of his crippling disease, had found the courage to be kind to her when they first met.

  When women walked into the gruesome spotlight of torture and death she saw Lucilla, proud and ruthless, but also kind and courageous. Or her mother, bringing her crushed heart to a God she believed she’d failed and whose love she felt she didn’t deserve.

  The children, though, were the worst because they brought Elfgifa to mind. The child’s Saxon pride and her impudent innocence.

  The story of one mother, who fought with her child and taking the little hand in hers forced the lifesaving sacrifice, tore at her heart. Surely she herself would burn incense to a thousand gods rather than see Elfgifa perish.

  Adherence to principle was well and good and Regeane could understand it. But a mother’s love, so deeply rooted in the fabric of life, was a force that could transcend even the power of law and the state and made nothing of principle.

  As Regeane’s needle flew back and forth through the cloth, she began to feel at first depressed, and then weighed down by the inevitability of the stories. She had not known there were so many imaginative and cruel ways to deprive human beings of life. The stubborn resistance of the Christians must sometimes have brought out the worst in their executioners.

  Regeane began to feel that if she had to listen to another account of branding, flogging, roasting alive, or flaying, she would leap to her feet, throw the altar cloth at Sister Angelica, and storm out of the room when a solution to her problem presented itself.

  During a cheerful description of molten lead being poured into someone’s open wounds, a shaken Regeane missed the cloth and slashed her palm with the needle.

  The cut wasn’t deep, but it hurt and bled copiously. Regeane dropped the needle and cloth into her lap and clutched at her wrist. The blood ran between her fingers and dripped on the linen in her lap.

  Sister Angelica had hysterics. She had them with great determination and skill.

  Abbess Emilia arrived. She clucked, tished, and tut-tutted, applied cold compresses and aromatics … not to the still bleeding Regeane, but to Sister Angelica.

  A few minutes later, Regeane found herself back in the kitchen with Sister Barbara. She washed the cut on Regeane’s hand with wine.

  “Nothing,” she said. “A mere trifle. It will heal in a few days. Tell me, my dear, what did it? Patient Grizelda, the sufferings of the holy church under the Emperor Nero, or the persecution of Diocletian?”

  “Diocletian,” Regeane said.

  “Ah, well,” Barbara answered, “you were spared the worst.”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse,” Regeane said.

  “I can,” Barbara said. “Patient Grizelda. I find the worthy woman’s sufferings both boring and infuriating. Sister Cecelia, a rather learned woman you have yet to meet, tells me the tale was written as a moral lesson to young girls that they might learn to respect and obey their husbands. But I firmly believe Angelica has it read as an inducement to virtue and new vocations.

  “Given weekly doses of patient Grizelda, even the less impressionable of her pupils emerge, if not confirmed man-haters, at least cherishing a firmly rooted distrust and fear of the whole sex. This she feels makes it easier for them to forgo the more transient delights of the world and,” she added piously, “fix their eyes on the eternal lover.” Barbara promptly belied the piety of this statement by laughing uproariously.

  “It isn’t funny.” Still caught up in the story, tears started in Regeane’s eyes. “It was terrible and all the poor people wanted to do was live in peace and practice their religion … and I don’t see how you can laugh.”

  Barbara’s face sobered and she reached out one hard, calloused hand and touched Regeane’s cheek. “Oh, my dear, how young you are. Sometimes I forget my years and the distance that separates me from children like you.

  “I laugh, my dear, because time has given me a besetting sin called perspective. The dead are dead, and nothing we can do will help them. Besides, one hopes they will have forgotten the griefs of the dust in eternal bliss. And because I know many of God’s people saved their lives, and no doubt their families also, by committing apostasy, which makes me feel better. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

  Barbara patted Regeane’s cheek gently and gave her a smile so infectious that Regeane found herself smiling back in unabashed delight.

  “There now,” Barbara said, “that’s better.” Then she stepped back and daubed at Regeane’s cut with the wine-soaked cloth. “See,” she said. “It’s stopped bleeding.”

  Regeane shook her head. “I can’t understand how she can listen to all those horrors day after day, and get so upset about a little blood.”

  “Tell me,” Barbara asked, “did you bleed on the piece you were embroidering?”

  “Yes,” Regeane answered.

  “Then that’s what she was upset about. Better you had cut your throat and bled on the floor rather than spoil any of her handiwork. Besides, they are not horrors to her.”

  “No?” Regeane asked. “How could they not be?”

  “They are only words to her, my dear. You see, she has no imagination and you do. Now, come help me set the table for the afternoon meal.”

  Barbara led Regeane to the refectory. It was a long, low-ceilinged room beamed in oak. The room had no windows, but looked out past a porch supported by wooden uprights on a small garden filled with late-blooming roses. The bushes were arranged in a circle around a waterfall fountain whose flow trickled down from a pipe over mossy stones.

  Regeane immediately walked to the porch and gazed longingly out at the sunlit garden. “Oh, how beautiful they are,” she said. “I didn’t know so many of them bloomed this late in the season.”

  “Yes,” Barbara said. “That is why they are called the ‘roses of the double spring.’ This was Abbess Hildegarde’s favorite garden. When she came here to found her convent she brought some exquisite white-flowered ones with her from the chill mist of her northern land. Everyone said they would die in our warm southern clime, but they didn’t. They thrived and even made love to our own native varieties and now we have several the like of which have not been seen before. People come from all over Rome to cut canes and start them in their own gardens.”

  “Made love?” Regeane asked.

  “It’s as good a word as any,” Barbara said. “Though flowers do it in all innocence with the help of bees. But come, let’s get the table set. It’s almost time to ring the dinner bell.”

  The refectory had one long, plain wooden table with benches stretching its length on either side. A big sideboard stood against the wall of the room opposite the garden. It held plates, cups, spoons, and serving dishes.

  The table was very simple—long boards set in a row but polished to a high gloss.

  Regeane jumped back when she saw a lectern on one end. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Never fear,” Barbara laughed. “Abbess Emilia chooses the readings at meals and she doesn’t like to hear anything that disturbs her digestion. She likes a bit of Boethius or some psalms, the more cheerful ones. And occasionally, a story about the Eastern fathers, happy ascetics living in the desert, fed by manna from heaven. Now set fourteen places. Give everyone a plate, a bowl, a spoon, a cup, and a napkin.”

  When Regeane was finished, Barbara surveyed her work and pronounced her
self satisfied. They both brought in the food.

  Barbara rang the bell and the nuns hurried to their meal. To Regeane’s great relief, there was no reading at all.

  By the time Regeane was finished eating, she was convinced Barbara’s claim to being the best cook in the world was true.

  The first course was a thick lentil soup spiced with herbs and chopped ham. The second, roast meat in a sauce made with the drippings carefully combined with chestnuts, mushrooms, and wine. The dessert was honey-glazed apples, lightly seasoned with the cinnamon and clove basil, topped with rich cream.

  Regeane ate until she could eat no more. Then she rose and helped Barbara clear the table.

  The nuns drifted out of the room slowly to their afternoon siestas, leaving Emilia, Barbara, and Regeane alone.

  “Well, how was it?” Barbara asked Emilia impatiently.

  “Incomparable as always, Barbara,” Emilia said. She spoke as one paying the usual tribute to superb fare, but Regeane noticed she looked worried and preoccupied.

  “What’s wrong?” Barbara snapped.

  “Nothing,” Emilia said hurriedly. “I was only wondering what to do with the girl.”

  “That’s easy. Send her up to Cecelia. She can spend a quiet afternoon with her.”

  “I don’t know,” Emilia said hesitantly. “Cecelia’s such a butterfly. Her accounts never balance, her letters go out only after I’ve prodded and urged for months on end and …”

  “And,” Barbara said, “all her students love her.”

  “Yes,” Emilia said, “because she stuffs their heads with dreams.”

  “I see nothing wrong with a few dreams, Emilia,” Barbara said glancing at Regeane, “especially at her age. Better dreams than nightmares.”

  “Oh, very well. I suppose it’s the best place for her right now. Explain to her about Sister Cecelia and send her upstairs to the scriptorium. When you’re finished, come back. I have something important to discuss with you.”

  “Very well,” Barbara said. “Regeane, come to the kitchen. I’ll prepare a tray for Cecelia.”

  Regeane followed Barbara and waited while Barbara began slicing the roast.

  “Now,” Barbara said as she arranged the slices on a silver platter, “you will notice when you enter that Cecelia wears a heavy veil over the lower part of her face.”

  Regeane was spooning cream over the baked apples. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because,” Barbara said, “she has no nose.”

  XX

  CARRYING THE TRAY, REGEANE ENTERED THE scriptorium with some trepidation. As Barbara had said, a heavily-veiled woman sat near a book stand in the corner. “Ah, my dear Regeane,” the veiled woman greeted her. “Barbara told me she would find some way to send you to see me before the day was over. Set the tray on the table and please sit down. I hope Barbara sent up enough for two. As you see, I have a guest.”

  Regeane frowned for a moment, puzzled, then recognized Dulcina, the singer she had heard at the pope’s banquet last night.

  “If I know Barbara,” Dulcina said, smiling, “she sent up enough for three.” She rose, took the tray from Regeane’s hands, and set it on the table. Then she embraced Regeane.

  Confused for a moment, Regeane stiffened and almost drew back, but deep within her the wolf gave a soft, inaudible cry and she relaxed in Dulcina’s loving embrace.

  The wolf fully awakened and her memories filled Regeane’s mind. Memories of singers long ago. Singers so gentle, so much a part of the living world that their voices had the power to call even the savage wolf packs of the mountains from their dens down into cool, green, high meadows, dotted with copses of silver birch and red-berried rowan, where she, like the rest of the wolves, lay at the singers’ feet. The fiercest among them at peace with God and man, enraptured with the glory of the song.

  “Daughter of Orpheus,” Regeane greeted her almost adoringly.

  Cecelia applauded, clapping her hands softly. “Excellent,” she said. “Were we all not Christians today, Orpheus would indeed be your patron, Dulcina.”

  Regeane studied Dulcina’s face. She remembered Augusta’s cruel story of how her life began—a waif singing in taverns for a few coppers to buy extra food. The sadness of such a beginning still lingered. Dulcina was thin-faced with high cheekbones, startling emerald-green eyes, and dark, fine, mouse-colored hair. She managed somehow to look even more aristocratic than Augusta. But a shadow of sorrow hovered in the brilliant, jewel-like eyes and in the soft curve of her lips. She seemed confused and even a little embarrassed to be so praised.

  “But we are all Christians now and a daughter of Orpheus is an outcast among the godly,” she said.

  “What foolishness,” Cecelia said with a merry laugh, the laugh of a happy child.

  As Regeane drew closer to her, she realized Cecelia’s eyes, the only part visible above the heavy veil, were a child’s eyes. Soft blue, clear, wide, and innocent, they confronted the world with the same open enjoyment as Elfgifa’s. It was as though she were always ready to be amused and delighted by any new experience that came her way.

  As Regeane took Cecelia’s hand, she was close enough to see, in the shadowy planes of her cheeks and outline of her lips, the vibrant glow of what once must have been great beauty.

  Cecelia took Regeane’s hand in both of hers and patted it. “My dear, I quite agree with Lucilla. You are everything she says and more: intelligent, sensitive, and beautiful. Come, sit down and join us. Dulcina has a message for you from Lucilla.”

  “Yes,” Dulcina said, taking her seat at the table. “She asked me to tell you that her house is safe again, guarded by a company of Frankish mercenaries. And you may shelter there whenever you wish.”

  “Thank you,” Regeane said.

  “A clever woman, Lucilla, though devious at times,” Cecelia said. “But given her rather equivocal social position in Rome, I suppose it’s necessary.”

  Devious, yes, Regeane thought, meeting Dulcina’s sad, but somehow wise eyes. Lucilla had managed to obey the letter of Hadrian’s orders while disobeying them completely.

  She had contrived to send a message to Regeane without visiting her or even dispatching a messenger. Regeane exchanged glances of perfect understanding with both women. Cecelia, in spite of her almost childlike innocence, understood this as well as Regeane and Dulcina. Mirth flashed in Cecelia’s eyes and the breath of her soft chuckle disturbed the heavy linen veil over her lips.

  “Lovely Dulcina, I hope you won’t be in a hurry to leave now that your real business with me is concluded. Autumn or no, the streets of Rome are crowded and dusty and a long, stuffy ride in a curtained litter would be tedious and fatiguing.”

  Dulcina’s fair-skinned cheeks flushed slightly and she lowered her eyes. “I would do anything Lucilla asked me to,” she said. “Noble lady, if I seemed to use you, I can only say I’m sorry.”

  “I did wonder what was going on,” Cecelia said, “when the foremost songstress of Rome presented herself at my door, bearing a cherished and long-coveted gift. As soon as you asked to see Regeane, I understood. And don’t dare apologize for your unswerving loyalty to your distinguished patroness. Would that we all had such faithful hearts. I have no qualms about being used in such a noble enterprise as keeping Hadrian in the papal chair.”

  Regeane gave a start of surprise. “How did you know …” she began.

  Cecelia waved a hand at her, motioning her to be silent. “For years,” she said, “everyone has known Lucilla served Hadrian’s interests in every possible way. Her intrigues as much as anything were responsible for his election as pope. Please convey my greetings to her and request that she visit me at her convenience, for I have observed her career from afar for many years and often longed to meet her.”

  Dulcina’s reply was equally formal. “She, too, I believe, has longed to meet you, but I think she feared the humiliation of being turned away. Many have. You are more accessible to the poor than to your old friends. Indigent young girls fi
nd a home in your literature and music classes, while the first families are turned away from your door.”

  Cecelia sighed. “Yes. I suppose I have been guilty of excluding a few of my former acquaintances. But I fear many of those who called were only seeking a moment’s titillation, an opportunity to gossip about my …” She sighed. “My great misfortune. I can hear them now. ‘Oh, my dear,’ ” she mimicked, “ ‘How is she bearing up? Is it true she is as ugly now as she once was beautiful? Pray, tell me, did you get a glimpse of her face? Or does she remain always veiled as they say? And banishes all mirrors from her chambers?’ What they offered was not true friendship, but only a kind of morbid curiosity. Being the object of such attention is at best unpleasant, at worst infuriating.”

  Dulcina smiled ruefully. “My lady,” she said, “I believe you may have outlived that morbid curiosity, as you call it. During the time you were in society in Rome you were known as the arbiter of beauty and good taste. Now your approval is sought by every aspiring poet and artist, often in vain.”

  “Truly,” Cecelia said, seeming to preen herself behind her veil. “Ah, but then it is ‘the unattainable’ all poets and artists seek.” She sighed. “I suppose my goodwill has simply become another unattainable thing.”

  “I don’t know,” Dulcina said. “All I know is that you are both sought after and feared. A kind word from your lips opens many doors. A harsh judgment closes them for you are famed far and wide as the most formidably learned woman in Rome. ‘Too prolonged,’ you say of one poet, and he, in fear of you, shortens his verses. ‘Bombastic’ you say of another and he tempers his hexameters with lyrics. Praise or blame from you is valued indeed. That’s why I both hoped and feared I wouldn’t be sent away after I brought my message to Regeane because whatever you think of my little songs, the ultimate obliquity would be to be dismissed by you without a word. No matter whether your judgment be for good or ill, I cannot bear to think I inspire indifference.”