The Wolves of Paris

by Michael Wallace

  The party moved at a steady pace, meant to conserve the strength of the horses for what would be a long, hard ride to reach Paris by dusk. Tullia seemed delighted to be running on the open road. Her tongue lolled, and when she grew impatient with the pace, she let out a joyous bark that boomed through the chill morning air.

  They traveled the first half-mile in silence except for the creak of leather and the sound of hooves crunching the crust that had formed on the snow. A few sled tracks disturbed the surface, but mostly it was tamped down by paw prints. No sign of the wolves now along the white, bitterly cold countryside.

  When they’d been on the road an hour and there was no sign of the enemy, the men began to relax. The guards removed their helms and tied them to the saddles. A few loosened their breastplates. They’d finally stopped staring at her when they thought she wasn’t paying attention, and began to gossip and tell bawdy jokes in their thick, provincial accents.

  Tullia, not yet tired, ran up front near Martin, and Lucrezia used this as an excuse to push up to the front of the line. She hoped to talk to Lorenzo, but he was deep in conversation with his brother, so she didn’t disturb him. Instead, she watched him.

  He cut a fine figure in the saddle, with his ermine-lined cloak, his shoulder-length hair, and his muscular shoulders. Both brothers were handsome. But when she looked at Marco, it was in the way one studied a beautiful sculpture. When she looked at Lorenzo, she wanted to kiss him.

  That thought gave her pause. It shouldn’t have surprised her. For the past hour, her thoughts had drifted to the bold, almost lewd way she’d slipped into his bed the previous night. She had been afraid, and cold and exhausted. Had meant it when she insisted she didn’t mean to seduce him. He’d become a dear friend, but this was no time to think about more than that. For one, she wasn’t entirely sure that her husband Rigord wasn’t still alive. One of the wolves might open his mouth and speak to her in her husband’s voice. If he were a wolf, would it still be adultery if she gave herself to Lorenzo?

  And yet, if Lorenzo hadn’t obeyed her wishes, had put his hands on her body, would she have resisted? She thought not. How could she have? Not after he recited the Decameron. She’d been quite aroused. A flush passed over her face at the memory.

  As if feeling her gaze, Lorenzo glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened and a smile played at his lips. Then Marco asked something about the city walls of Paris, and Lorenzo turned back in the saddle to answer. She felt a pang of disappointment.

  Get hold of yourself, woman, she thought. You’re not a damsel in some troubadour’s song.

  ✛

  They came upon the scene of a struggle. It had churned up the ground, and blood stained the surrounding snow. Lucrezia followed the brothers to the ground, grateful to be out of the sidesaddle that left her back sore and her neck stiff.

  “What is it?” Montguillon asked, pushing his way through the guards. He came down from his horse and handed the reins to Simon, the younger friar still mounted.

  Marco squatted and poked at the ground. “Wolf tracks. They brought down something. A man, maybe.”

  “It might have been a deer,” Lorenzo said.

  “These wolves don’t hunt deer,” Montguillon said. “They’ll take mutton if they’re hungry enough, maybe even cattle. But nothing from the forest, only livestock. And only if they can’t get human flesh. They hunger for it always.”

  Lucrezia gave him a sharp look. How did he know that? And yet, it matched what she’d read in her husband’s books. One passage in particular stood out, from a worm-eaten tenth century text, written by a Byzantine monk sent to the Caucuses to Christianize the heathen tribes. He had reported on their superstitions and magical beliefs.

  These vaukalak, or wolf men, gain eternal life at the cost of their souls. Their hunger is neverending, their thirst for blood unquenchable. To stave off starvation, they will consume livestock, but they desire human flesh at all times. And above all else, they will hunt those whom they have marked. These they will pursue to the ends of the earth.

  Still wondering about the source of Montguillon’s knowledge, Lucrezia bent and examined the scene more closely. The blood was frozen, and darker, almost purple where it was most concentrated. In places it left a fine, pink mist where it had sprayed across the surface.

  “Here,” she said. “A boot print.”

  Lorenzo put his own foot against the print. “A man,” he said. “About my size.”

  “Was it a peasant?” Montguillon asked.

  “I think so,” he said. “Look, these are hobnails in the print.”

  “Praise God for that,” the prior replied. “I was worried it was the priest from the village. I warned the man, but he was altogether too brave in traveling about alone while this business was afoot.”

  “But a peasant has mouths to feed,” Lorenzo said. “A priest is more easily replaced.”

  “Every life has value,” she said, before Montguillon could put voice to the flash of anger that came to his eyes. “Priest and peasant alike.”

  “There’s nothing more to see here,” Marco said. “Let’s go.”

  But less than a mile down the road they came to a scene of even greater carnage. It was at the base of the same hill leading into the woods where they’d been ambushed two nights earlier on their final sprint to the chatelet. A hand-pulled sledge lay overturned in the road, its load of hay scattered. Three crows sat to one side, cawing and plucking at a bloody patch in the snow. Two of them lifted sluggishly into the air at the approach of the horses, the riders, and the dog, but soon settled back down to feast.

  Entrails spread across the snow like a man’s red leggings, twisted into a knot. A severed leg lay ten or fifteen feet from the cart, still wearing a heavy wooden shoe, but the flesh was chewed to bone between ankle and knee. A clump of hair emerged from the snow, with one of the crows pecking at it. The bird came up with an eyeball in its beak. It tilted its beak toward the sky and bobbed its head to swallow its prize. Lucrezia looked away, her stomach churning.

  Montguillon came and stood over the dead body. He looked down with a cool gaze. “Yes, a dead body. The work of the enemy. Now keep moving, we haven’t the time.”

  Nemours’s men muttered darkly at this and Marco cursed, almost too low for her to hear. She guessed if she said something inflammatory, the others would be all too pleased to abandon the two Blackfriars on the road to fend for themselves.

  It wasn’t yet midmorning, but the party was anxious to pass through the woods as quickly as possible. When they reached the hill, they spurred their mounts along, proceeding from a trot to a canter, tiring for the horses going up the hill. Too many miles left to go to keep that pace for long.

  Something stirred in the shadows of the forest. No howls, no glimpses of figures lurking behind trees, but she felt eyes watching. Lucrezia didn’t know if the entire wolf pack was hiding in these woods, but there were scouts at least. Someone was noting their passage. Smelling their trail.

  “Stay close, girl,” she said to Tullia when the mastiff strayed.

  Lucrezia breathed a sigh of relief when the road emerged on the other side to carry them back down the hill. An hour later, they stopped to break ice at a stream and let the horses drink. The snow was too deep to clear away so the animals could eat, but Lorenzo said he remembered passing a prosperous-looking freehold not much further up the road. They could pay the farmer for hay, ask his wife to feed the people as well, before they continued on their way. So far they’d made good time and a short break would be more of a help than a hindrance.

  But when they reached the farmhouse, Lorenzo and Marco paused at the head of the lane that led to the thatched cottage, its roof topped with a hat of snow that drooped like an old man’s capuchon. The cottage door lay open, broken free and dangling as if ready to fall off. Snow drifted into the house. Together with Martin, the three men discussed the matter in glum tones. She edged her horse up.

  “The wolves?” she asked.

>   “There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Marco said. “I’m sure the people escaped with their lives.”

  Lucrezia doubtfully eyed the cottage door.

  “You don’t need to protect her with falsehoods,” Martin said.

  “When did they get so brazen?” she said. “Breaking down doors and attacking people in their homes. This isn’t the same as a single child, or a man hunted down on the road—this was an entire family.”

  “Are they going to attack us on the highway?” Lorenzo said. “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but there was a commotion from the road, where they’d left the rest of the party. One of the guards had spotted something up ahead. Lucrezia called for Tullia and made her way back, alarmed.

  To her surprise, it was a large company of men, riding from the direction of Paris. There were some twenty in all, and as they came closer, Nemours’s men let out a shout of recognition. The two parties hurried to meet each other.

  A company of knights rode at the vanguard, their banners carrying the lion and fleur-de-lis of the king. The men wore the tabards of Lord Nemours, the king’s provost, a white field with a stiff-winged eagle embroidered in gold. A noble family rode in the center, protected by more armored knights to the rear. It was Lord Gilbert de Nemours himself, together with his wife and two daughters.

  The knights parted as Nemours pushed through on his horse. He was a tall man with a curly gold beard, turning gray. Not as strong, they said, as when he’d ridden under the banner of Jeanne d’Arc or led the king’s forces to victory against the English at Gerberoy, but still an imposing figure in the saddle.

  “Lady d’Lisle,” he said in his rich baritone. “What a surprise to find you with my men, and in the company of Blackfriars, too. How curious. These men,” he added with a glance at Lorenzo and Marco and their clothing, “Are they Italians? Your brothers?”

  “Florentines, yes. But not relatives.”

  “Yes, well. What brings you on the road so far from Paris?”

  There was something strained in his voice. His horses were blowing, his men looked tired and more than a little anxious to keep moving.

  “We’ve spent the past two nights enjoying your hospitality.”

  His eyebrow raised. “Is that so?”

  “There was trouble at your castle. They said you’d only just left a few days earlier. Did you get word? Is that why you’re returning?”

  “No, I wish that were true. There’s trouble in Paris, too. An outbreak of the pox. So sudden—it’s all through the streets, from the Cité to the university.” He pulled at his beard. “But that isn’t why we left the city.”

  She nodded, waiting for him to continue, even as she guessed at the answer.

  “My lady, there are wolves inside the city walls.”

  The three men-at-arms who had escorted Lucrezia and her companions from the chatelet let out oaths and crossed themselves.

  “Cunning, bloodthirsty devils, ” Nemours added. “The Seine froze over from this terrible cold, and they crossed into the Cité right under the nose of the watch, killed two women not far from your residence. They were seen outside the palace where the king was in court. The burghers are fleeing the city. So are the lords of the cloth and sword.

  “Between the plague and the wolves I thought it prudent that his highness leave as well. I sent him under guard south to Fontainebleau, then thought I would escort my family to our castle where they’d be safe.”

  Lucrezia found this news troubling. How was that possible? The wolves had been out here, attacking the chatelet, surrounding it at night with their howls.

  “How many have they killed?” she asked.

  “At least a dozen so far. We cannot find their lair. Either they’re hiding somewhere within the city or someone is letting them in deliberately. I have difficulty reconciling either possibility.”

  A deep frown settled onto Lorenzo’s face. “And how many wolves are there if they can terrorize the city and attack travelers on the road at the same time?”

  “What do you mean?” Nemours demanded. “Be clear, man.”

  “They chased us down the road two nights ago,” Lorenzo said. “Then they attacked your castle. Killed one of your men, and a prisoner in your dungeon. Well, the prisoner died in the fight.”

  “Was this the man we caught running naked across the estate?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Who the devil was he, anyway?”

  “Name was Giuseppe Veronese—he was one of our agents in Paris before this madness came over him. I am Signore Lorenzo Boccaccio and this is my brother Marco. We are from a noble Florentine family.”

  Nemours glanced back over his shoulder to his wife. She was a handsome, middle-aged woman wearing a fur-lined robe in rich lavender, with a dress below that was more like a houppelande, with full, dagged sleeves. She wore a heart-shaped headdress.

  The king’s provost gestured for Lorenzo and Marco to follow him up the road. Lucrezia took it on herself to join, as did Montguillon. Nemours gave the prior a hard look, but didn’t object.

  “I don’t want to talk in front of my wife. She’s terrified already. Convinced these wolves will come and deflower my daughters in the night.”

  “It’s blood they want,” Lorenzo said, “not a child’s maidenhead.”

  “Yes, and you know something of this, don’t you?” Then Nemours turned his penetrating gaze on Montguillon. “And I’ll bet this Blackfriar knows something, too. Out with it—there are wolves on the road, and I don’t feel safe, not even at the head of a company of mounted knights.”

  Lorenzo started to speak, but Marco jumped in first. “We came to Paris to search for our missing agent. When the prior told us he was being held in your castle, and that he may have something to do with the wolves in the city, we decided—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Nemours interrupted, “but I don’t know you. Or you,” he said to Montguillon, “except by reputation. Let me hear it from the lady.”

  Lucrezia told him the truth. Not all of it, of course—she wouldn’t confess her own role. But she admitted that her husband hadn’t drowned in the Seine, as claimed by one of her faithful servants, but had turned. Had become a loup-garou. The wolves had spoken to her. The pack leader was a friend of her husband’s, an Occitanian named Courtaud. She wasn’t sure if her husband was alive or not, but the wolf pack was growing. She told how she had found information in one of her books. Rigord had turned himself willingly into a wolf. But due to an error in his incantation, he couldn’t turn back.

  “This is witchcraft,” Nemours said. “Have you touched this evil, my lady?”

  Montguillon hissed air between his teeth. Lorenzo spoke up at once.

  “The lady is pure. The prior has even signed a document stating her complete innocence.”

  “Yes, of course,” Nemours said. “Please excuse me, my lady. You would never dabble in such things. And one only has to look at your face to see that you are untainted by anything evil.”

  “You are too kind, my lord,” she said.

  Lorenzo outlined their intention to return to the city to fight the wolves. This time Nemours didn’t tell him to be quiet, but listened intently. When the story was done, the provost shifted in his saddle and looked uncertain. When he spoke, it seemed to be with some reluctance.

  “I am loathe to abandon my family. Especially if, as you say, the wolves can penetrate the walls. But my duty is to my sovereign. If we don’t silence these fiends, the streets of Paris will be bathed with blood. I shall accompany you to the city.”

  It was high, flowery language, the way they spoke at the court, but Lucrezia appreciated his resolve. Nemours wasn’t a coward. She nodded her head in quiet acknowledgment.

  He turned and shouted instructions to the others. His wife protested, but he spoke over her. There were some thirty men-at-arms milling on the road, ten of which Nemours ordered to accompany his wife to the chatele
t, with the rest returning with Nemours and the others to Paris. Among this latter group were the three men who had followed the smaller party from the chatelet that morning.

  A few minutes later, the groups separated. Lady Nemours’s face was pinched and she and her daughters kept glancing over their shoulder at the larger group as they departed.

  “Thank God for that,” Nemours said to Lucrezia a few minutes down the road.

  “My lord?”

  “You don’t know how good it is to be free of that woman and her incessant worrying. Oh, I know, sometimes there’s reason to worry, and this is one of those times. But oh, how her voice gives me a headache. Not like yours, my lady. When you speak it is like a silver bell. And your accent is quite delightful.”

  Lucrezia glanced at Marco and Lorenzo out of the corner of her eye. Marco was scowling, but Lorenzo passed a wink to Martin, who stifled a smile. Her servant was used to such things and recognized when flattery was backed with motive. Nemours’s sweet words held no illicit intent.

  They rode without speaking for a stretch, the silence broken by hooves crunching through snow and horses blowing, tired after so many hours on the road. The first to speak were the Dominicans, who conversed in Latin about some theological point that didn’t interest her. The guards began to chat in thickly accented French. Finally, the brothers from Florence spoke in the pleasant, harmonic Italian of Tuscany, but it was financial business—the depressed price of peppercorns due to manipulation by Venetian merchants.

  Lorenzo glanced her direction from time to time, clearly tiring of the discussion with his brother. She wanted him to break free and come tell her more stories from the Decameron. Or she could practice the verse from Ovid she’d been committing to memory. Anything to relieve the mental and physical exhaustion that made her droop in the saddle.

  But it was Lord Nemours who drew near to her again.

  “What do you think about the prior?” he asked in a low voice, meant only for her ears.

  “A man of God. Rigid, but sincere. He thinks he’s fighting for God—I suppose he is, in his own way.”