The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

  “I hope not,” the gray said ominously, “for his sake. Otherwise he’ll make the near acquaintance of my teeth. Mayhap that is all I can do for her. But if her man is a brute, I shall certainly rid her of him, that I promise. I don’t find these Romans all too difficult to kill.”

  The woman who had been the black wolf chuckled nastily.

  “I take it you’re not hungry then,” the red said.

  “We dined tonight,” she said, “on an unwary footpad who was foolish enough to try to slip a dagger between his ribs.” She gestured toward the gray. “The fool was tender. A bit fatty for my taste, but tender.”

  “Hmmm,” the red said hopefully, “do you think we could find another? I’m starving.”

  “Let’s go try,” the gray said. “I hope we see that silver beauty again. Maybe we can follow her home and, if her husband is minded after the fashion of most humankind, I’ll crack his bones and lap the marrow.”

  THE SILVER WOLF CROSSED THE CORSO AND paused to sniff the wind lightly. The mixture of odors blunted her nose, confusing the wolf, and frightening the woman. At least a dozen fires were burning in the city. Beyond the overpowering smell of wood smoke hung a miasma of death and decay. She realized the city belonged neither to the pope nor to the Lombards, but only to itself.

  A tide of Caesars, barbarian conquerors, and kings had passed through it and over it, but in the end its real rulers had always been its turbulent and stubborn people. They held it now. The tide Lucilla had spoken of was at the flood. The magnates who controlled the lands that fed the city and its angry, independent people would decide the issue between the Lombards and the pope.

  She thought of the others she’d seen. Were they really like her? For a moment a dream she’d believed dead had possessed her, the dream of love. Who had the gray been? What kind of man was he by day? Churchman, warrior, thief, or madman?

  The silver wolf wanted to go back and find his spoor. To follow him. Find him and begin the long frolic that would end in … what? Did her kind, partaking as they did of the nature of both beast and human, make love as men or wolves? Or was their coupling some secret beauty denied to both beast and man? Something unique only to themselves?

  She suspected it was. The wolf’s free heart cried out for the gray, urged her to find out who and what he was. Images flowed freely through her brain. They could carry their dance of love across a world that was a garden to them. They could consummate their desires high on a mountain peak where no man’s foot had ever trod. There, the snow packs so deep and the crust freezes so hard their wide paws can fleet across it the way a flung stone skips over water. Comfortable where the windchill alone would kill a man in minutes, they could find a trysting place for a pair of lupine lovers. Did the deep woods beckon, they might easily penetrate places pathless to humankind. Hidden among trees so tall, with trunks so thick they would laugh at the bite of an ax. They could explore the endless possibilities of desire in moonlit glades and worship the mistress of the night together.

  Oh, God, the dream was real. A gnawing hunger in the wolf’s heart, a pain in her throat.

  The woman cringed in terror. Whoever he was by day, how could he have the power to protect her from the wrath of both king and pope? In the instant their eyes met, he had wanted her as much as she wanted him. She was caught in a trap and she could not pull him down to perish with her.

  No, she would grit her teeth and embrace a man. And try to forget the mysteries of moonlight.

  The stench of a slaughterhouse jerked the wolf away from her thoughts.

  She eased along the Corso, moving stealthily from shadow to shadow. When she smelled it, she realized the horrible odor was coming from the insula where Antonius had lived with the rest of the maimed outcasts of the city. Two Lombard soldiers guarded the door. They had set torches in brackets above their heads and the street was brightly lighted around them.

  The fierce brilliance burned the wolf’s eyes. She faded back into the shadows, remembering that there was a back way into the insula down the sewer pipe.

  She wasted a few minutes wandering among the alleys around the insula until she found the pipe.

  The wolf hesitated, whining and snarling softly at the woman’s will that drove her so inexorably. Finally she plunged into the narrow opening.

  They were lying in the courtyard helter-skelter. Blood and even more noxious substances congealing around them. Even in the faint light, the wolf’s superior vision could recognize a few of them.

  The one with stumps for legs had been beheaded. Before they beheaded him, he’d been castrated. The larger pool of blood was between his legs. Why had they done it? She couldn’t imagine. Maybe only for fun.

  The girl with the hole in her cheek had died under torture. She dangled from a balcony, head hunched between her disjointed arms. She’d been strapadoed, then flogged. What remained of both her ragged gown and her flesh hung in strips from her body. She no longer moved, but blood still dripped from her flayed carcass, drop by drop on the stones below.

  The hunchbacked idiot boy had been eviscerated and left to die. The wolf could see and smell the foul trail he left on the stones as he dragged himself round and round in agony as suffering and blood loss took their toll.

  A few soldiers wearing the livery of the papal guard lay among the dead. They, at least, had been able to die fighting. Hadrian had made an effort to defend the place.

  The woman melted perfectly into the wolf and they became one. Death on four legs slinking toward the entrance to the church. In the distance ahead of her through the darkness she heard someone scream. It was a horrible outcry, more animal than human, one of agonizing pain. It ended in retching sobs.

  The wolf went forward like a silent silver thunderbolt through the church and came to a halt at the entrance to what had been Hadrian’s quarters.

  It took a second for her eyes to fully absorb the scene.

  The once-beautiful room was almost bare, having been stripped of everything that could possibly be of any value except the table. Tied to it was the young shepherd boy in whose care she had left Antonius.

  They had roped him to the table faceup, leaving only one arm free. A black-bearded soldier held the arm by the wrist. Two of the fingers were mangled and bloody. The man was reaching out with an iron pincers toward a third.

  “Please,” the boy pleaded, his eyes rolling in agony. “Please, gentle sirs. I know nothing.”

  The wolf recognized the black-bearded soldier. He was one of Basil’s men—the one who’d pursued her into the alleyway. She had escaped him through the drain. Elfgifa had been right. The child had wanted to cut his throat. Hadrian should have done it.

  A man standing next to him said nervously, “Sirus, perhaps we should have left a few more of them alive.”

  “Alive to do what?” the black-bearded one snarled. “Even had they been willing to speak against their master, their protector, do you think the men in the synod would listen to the drivelings of such as these? I thought for a while the girl knew something, but she died too quickly.” He smiled at the young man tied to the table. “I plan to go more slowly with this one.

  “Now,” he said, tapping at some silver chains dangling from his belt. It was Lucilla’s necklace. “Tell me how a creature like you came by such rich jewels as this.”

  The wolf could see the animal terror in the boy’s eyes as he raised his head. He didn’t answer, only stared at the pincers in the black-bearded soldier’s other hand in horrified fascination.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll break a few more fingers. Then maybe you’ll become more talkative. Hold the lamp higher,” the one called Sirus said as he forced the boy’s arm down over the edge of the table and reached with his pincers for the fingers.

  The boy’s eyes screwed themselves tightly shut. His body bucked against the ropes that tied him to the table.

  The wolf felt every muscle tighten in her body. It seemed to her she was moving very slowly. She took out the throat of the
one holding the lamp first.

  He stumbled away from the table, gurgling. The only sound he could make. He gave a very surprised look at the blood spurting everywhere as he died.

  The bronze lamp hit the floor with a clatter. The oil splashed and eerie blue flames spouted from the mouth and began to play over the metal. The light in the room turned to purplish twilight.

  A second later, Sirus went over backward, both hamstrings severed by the wolf’s teeth. His neck fell like ripe fruit into her waiting jaws. She snapped his spine low down so that he didn’t die immediately.

  The wolf thought of the girl. She even remembered her name—Crysta—while she closed her jaws on his throat, suffocating him slowly.

  It seemed to the boy still tied to the table that the choking and gasping sounds went on a long time. Finally, they stopped and all he could hear was the drumming of heels on the floor. Then that ceased, too, and there was only silence.

  A few strokes of a knife freed him. He rolled from the table and fell to his knees, clutching the wrist of his maimed hand, holding it high before his face, his eyes averted from Regeane’s naked body. She had removed Lucilla’s necklace from Sirus’ belt and wore it around her neck.

  The fallen lamp had relighted itself and the flames spouted high. Shadows danced frenetically on the wall.

  “I told them nothing, my lady,” the boy whispered, peering at her through his fingers.

  To him, Regeane seemed truly a goddess. Her long silver-tipped hair hung like a garment over her body, covering her nakedness, the curve of her breasts and stomach made a pattern of light and shadow in the flames flowing upward from the lamp. Her eyes compelled him. Glowing in her shadowed face, they seemed to see into the innermost depths of his soul.

  “I told them nothing, my lady,” he sobbed out again. “I cannot say it was out of loyalty to you or the poor leper, Antonius, but because I knew they’d kill me as soon as I talked. Kill me the way they killed the others. They didn’t,” he gasped, the tears flowing down his cheeks. “They didn’t have to be so cruel.”

  No, they didn’t, Regeane thought as her woman’s mind tried to cope with the simple amazement of the wolf. Why all this madness?

  “How did you come here?” she asked.

  “The leper Antonius sent me,” he answered. “Told me to warn the priest. To tell him where he was hidden.”

  Of course, Regeane realized. Antonius would have wanted Hadrian to know about his hiding place.

  “But when I got here,” the boy continued, “there was no priest. Only the soldiers, and then the Lombards came …” The boy giggled hysterically. His nose ran and he mopped at it with the back of his good hand. He was still holding the injured one like a claw before his face, looking at Regeane between the fingers.

  “The only reason I escaped so easily is that they were occupied with the girl—the girl they whipped to death.”

  “Where is Antonius?” Regeane asked.

  “At Cumae. There are many caves in the rock. No one goes there at night. It’s said to be haunted.”

  “It is,” Regeane answered. “Here.” She took the necklace from her neck and threw it over the boy’s head. “You’ve earned your pay and double. Now, can you find the villa of one Lucilla?”

  “The pope’s …” His voice trailed off. He was unwilling to use the word in front of one who might be their protectress, too.

  “Yes. She will help you.”

  “I don’t fear for my safety once I’m away from here,” the boy said. “These Romans have no love for the Lombards.”

  “Were the two outside part of this also?” Regeane asked.

  The boy nodded. “They came in force, killed the pope’s guards, and then left these four to question the prisoners. They helped flog the girl to death. They took turns.”

  “Blow out the lamp,” Regeane said. “Unbar the door and call them inside.”

  The boy looked up at her fearfully. “They’re armed.”

  “These two were armed. It didn’t matter.”

  The boy lifted the lamp in one trembling hand. Just before he blew out the last flame he looked up. The woman was gone and the wolf looked back at him, teeth gleaming in the half-open jaws, eyes glowing with a red light in the flare of the one tiny flame.

  XXIII

  THE TOPS OF THE ORCHARD TREES WERE GRAY IN the moonlight when Regeane leaped the wall into Lucilla’s villa.

  She was thinking that killing wasn’t difficult if you knew what to do and took your victims by surprise. Dogs and real wolves gave warning of their intentions before they struck. She needn’t and hadn’t.

  She moved soundlessly through the dark garden. She remembered Lucilla’s message that the villa was guarded by a company of Frankish mercenaries. She didn’t want anyone to see her and raise an alarm.

  She peered into the atrium and saw Lucilla alone, pacing up and down beside the pool.

  The atrium was dark, the only light the sickle of the new moon, shining both in the water and the sky.

  The change was easy to call now. A second later, Regeane rose to her feet a woman, and walked toward Lucilla.

  She blinked and stared at the pale figure confronting her. “Regeane? Or are you only some ghost?”

  “I came,” Regeane said. “You knew I’d get here somehow, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” The word was a sigh. Lucilla reached out to touch Regeane as if to reassure herself that she was real. She drew back her hand as if she’d been burnt. Staring at her fingers covered by blood, she exclaimed, “Christ!”

  “It isn’t mine,” Regeane said indifferently.

  “Whose is it?”

  “I don’t know their names. They were Basil’s men. Basil sent soldiers to the insula where Antonius lived. They killed everyone there. Mutilated some of them before they killed them.” Freed of the wolf’s indifference to violence, she felt suddenly sick with horror. “I found them torturing someone—a boy … The shepherd I paid to hide Antonius. I … the wolf … No, I and the wolf killed them. I sent the shepherd boy safely into the night. He may make his way here. You’ll know him by his broken fingers. Please receive him kindly and don’t try to extort information from him. After I reach Antonius, not even the shepherd boy will know where he is anymore.”

  Then Regeane cleaned herself by turning wolf and jumping into the pool.

  Lucilla made a half-stifled sound under her breath and averted her face, covering it with her mantle.

  The wolf shook herself dry like a dog and Regeane reappeared in front of Lucilla a second later.

  “God!” Lucilla whispered. She was gasping, one hand pressed to her breast. Her face looked pale in the faint moonlight.

  “I’m sorry,” Regeane said. “Did I startle you?”

  “Startle me? Oh, my, yes,” Lucilla said waspishly. “Startle is a bit too weak a word for what I just felt.”

  “What do you see?” Regeane asked. “I can’t see the change. I’m inside it.”

  “Nothing,” Lucilla answered. “But then one doesn’t see a hummingbird’s wings when it’s in flight. Only a shimmer, a diffuse sparkle like the reflection of moonlight on moving water.”

  “I’m cold,” Regeane said. “Double cold when the wolf is not with me, because I have killed and I never wanted to.”

  “There’s another mantle on the bench and some wine.” Lucilla pointed to the one nearest the door of the triclinium.

  Regeane wrapped herself up and poured a cup of wine. The ewer was the same one she’d seen on her first night with Lucilla. The vessel had a snarling wolf’s head spout.

  “You saw the pitcher, didn’t you?” Lucilla asked. “It frightened you when you first came here.”

  “Yes. For a little while I’d managed to deceive myself about my true nature, but the sight of the pitcher brought it all back.”

  “And you’re still trying to deceive yourself, aren’t you?” Lucilla said. “I can see the tears running down your cheeks. Why all this grief? Is it the men you killed?”


  Regeane found herself shivering. She cradled the wine cup in both hands and drank deeply. “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it,” Lucilla said bleakly. “What other choice did you have?”

  Regeane shook her head. “None. I couldn’t let them torture the truth out of the boy. In fact, I couldn’t bear to watch them torture him at all … and some of the other things they’d done there … were unspeakable. They must have killed some of those poor wretches slowly, simply for the sake of watching them suffer. Basil’s men deserved to die. The wolf knew it. I knew it. But the wolf doesn’t remember their eyes as the light goes out of them the way I do. She doesn’t care. To her everything is simple. You do what you must. She protects me while I’m with her.”

  Regeane’s face twisted with pain. “But I’m not wholly her. I’m myself, also, and so I suffer.”

  “I can’t help you,” Lucilla said. “If you do such things, you have to find some way to live with them. I know I have.”

  “Do you?”

  Lucilla laughed. “Do you remember what Hadrian said about Paul Afartha? That I murdered him?”

  “You didn’t deny it.”

  “What would be the good? Half of Rome knows I did, and he was not the first. Paul belonged to the Lombard king and for a time he controlled the chair of Peter, as much as if he sat in it himself. When the Roman nobles banded together, defied him, and elected Hadrian, Paul promised he’d tie a halter around Hadrian’s neck and drag him captive before Desiderius. But by then I’d charmed the Franks into an alliance with the Holy See. Antonius was my ambassador to the Frankish king.

  “It’s one of the reasons Hadrian loves him. Faced with a possible war with the Franks, Desiderius didn’t send troops to help Paul and he had to flee. Fool that he was, he went to Ravenna where, if possible, the archbishop loved him even less than I did. He took Paul captive.