The Wolves of Paris

by Michael Wallace

  Montguillon and Simon departed for Saint-Jacques without so much as an adieu. Lorenzo suggested that he, Marco, and Lucrezia follow the friars. But first, he told Lucrezia, he wanted to secure her house. When Marco agreed she decided not to fight it.

  She sent Martin to the Cité with orders to fetch Demetrius from where the brothers had left their servant at Giuseppe’s manor. The two men would secure the d’Lisle manor house. He left with Tullia in his care.

  A few furtive souls darted from alley to alley, and a man ran by with a basket, but the streets were largely empty. Half a dozen people lay in front of a parish church, wrapped in blankets, their faces covered with open, oozing sores. One of the stronger ones moaned for alms as they approached and Lorenzo dropped a few silver pennies, being careful not to touch the man’s flesh or breathe the bad air coming off his body. The church itself was chained shut.

  “They shouldn’t lock the doors,” Lucrezia said. “Where else to go when you’re dying if not your parish priest?”

  “What about their own homes?” Marco said. “Get out of this awful cold.”

  “These are the ones without homes. For every one you see there are fifty dying in their own beds.”

  “All this in the last two days?” Lorenzo said. “It’s like the Black Death.”

  The traffic picked up deeper into the city as they approached Saint-Jacques, but most of the mule-drawn carts carried dead plague victims. Hunched men in black drove the carts, wearing rags wrapped around their mouths and noses, and hiding their faces behind hoods. The quiet and the clomp clomp of hooves sent a chill down Lucrezia’s spine.

  Down one alley, a priest with a long, gray-streaked beard and a tattered cassock cried repentance at the surrounding houses. This was God’s punishment he said. For war, for avarice, for the fillettes—harlots—who copulated openly on the Rue de Glatigny.

  “Repent!” the man cried when he spotted the three riders. “For the hour of the Lord is at hand.”

  He was thin and cold, and in spite of his zeal, she felt sorry to see him out in this weather wearing only a light robe.

  “You’ll catch your death out here, Father,” she said.

  “We shall all die,” the priest said. “A pestilence emerges from the bowels of the earth, and the devil has sent forth his ravening wolves. Cast off your fine clothing and cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes. The city shall be destroyed—no two stones shall lay one atop the other.”

  The priest grabbed at Marco’s cloak where it fell around his boots. Marco kicked his hand away.

  “Don’t touch me, old man.” He sounded shaken.

  They left the raving priest behind and approached the priory of Saint-Jacques. It had only been an hour since they’d traveled with the Dominicans, but upon their arrival, neither Montguillon nor Simon were anywhere to be seen. The subprior made them wait in the chilly courtyard while he went for instructions. Nobody would take their horses, so they stood holding their reins and stomping their feet against the cold. Latin chants came through the doorway of the chapel, the iron-bound doors perversely open in spite of the weather. Heaven forbid the friars find a little comfort from the elements inside. Still no Montguillon.

  “What the devil is keeping him?” Marco asked. “I’ll bet he’s taking a hot bath.”

  “A hot bath?” Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “More likely stripping out of his hair shirt and having Simon break the ice on a bucket specially prepared for maximum discomfort.”

  “He wears a hair shirt?” This time it was Marco’s eyebrows that went up.

  “In fact, he tried to convince me to wear one as well. Henri Montguillon is a devotee of the mortification of the flesh. You see why I wasn’t so keen to put myself under his command.”

  The subprior, a thin, ascetic-looking monk with one eye clouded and cross-eyed from the other, returned and gave them a nod. “Father Montguillon will see you now. He is in the scriptorium.”

  The man snapped his fingers and a younger monk came for the reins.

  “But the lady waits outside the gates.”

  Lorenzo scowled. “Whatever for?”

  “She is distracting the younger friars.”

  Indeed, there were several milling around the courtyard, and while some kept their faces hidden within drawn hoods, others kept glancing at her. She’d let her own hood fall but now pulled it up.

  But if the subprior thought she would demur, he didn’t understand her nature like the two brothers who looked to her for a response.

  “What is your master doing in the scriptorium?” she said.

  “Studying a way to defeat this devilry, of course.”

  He spoke in answer to Lucrezia’s question, but directed his response to Marco and Lorenzo, as if even speaking to a woman would pollute him.

  “And he told you to refuse me entrance?”

  “Not specifically, no.”

  “Did he tell you what happened on the road into the city?”

  “He said the wolves fell on you. You fled for your lives.”

  “Not exactly,” Lorenzo said with some heat. “Some of us fled for our lives. Abandoning those who fell under attack. Others put up a fight.”

  “Why don’t you guess which category your master fell into,” Marco said. “The brave souls or the cowards?”

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Lorenzo put in. “He was no doubt distracted by all those books waiting for him. Why fight wolves on the road when you can rush home to read about how to fight wolves on the road?”

  The subprior shifted from foot to foot.

  “My Latin isn’t as good as yours, Brother,” Marco said. “What is that pun they use for the Dominicans?”

  “Domini canes,” Lorenzo said. “Hounds of the Lord.”

  “Oh, right. I guess they’re hunting the enemies of God. But only squirrels and rabbits. If they meet an enemy with teeth and claws, they pick up their skirts and run squealing for home.”

  As if by signal, Lorenzo and Marco grabbed for their crotches in that typically Italian gesture that insulted another’s manhood. At the last moment, Lorenzo shot a glance to Lucrezia and stopped, blushing. Marco didn’t seem to remember until it was too late and he noticed her smiling.

  “A thousand pardons, my lady.”

  “I have three brothers. I have heard worse.”

  The subprior gave a disgusted snort.

  “Take us to the prior,” she said in a calm voice. “It appears that I have my own canes and they will not be put off.”

  “Very well. But I will not answer for your behavior.”

  “We never expected you would,” Lorenzo said.

  ✛

  In spite of the urgency of their mission, Lucrezia struggled to contain her curiosity as they entered the scriptorium. As a woman, she’d only dreamed of such places. Friars looked up as she entered, eyes widening in surprise. Some stared, others looked away, faces darkening.

  Not that she had room to complain. Raised in the bosom of the Luccan Republic, the daughter of a wealthy Italian trader and patron, she had been blessed with tutors. She’d learned to play the lyre and the harpsichord, even to compose. She had learned Latin, French, German, and a little Greek. And nobody had restricted her access to the great Tuscan libraries.

  More than once she’d spoken to French ladies about her upbringing and they had questioned her, marveling. Plenty were not-so-subtly scandalized, unable to understand why her interests would include pagan writers—or writers at all. But others were wistful. There were literate women in France, of course, but it was a rarity, and custom circumscribed their choices in reading material.

  Nevertheless, she had heard of the wealth and wisdom cloistered in old monastic libraries across Europe. Men rode about the continent, searching for manuscripts obscured since antiquity. There were rumors of lost works by Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, waiting to be found. Sometimes she dreamed of dressing like a man, passing herself as a member of the Curia on a Papal mission, and tricking her way into these musty lib
raries to search for hidden treasures.

  Her first glimpse of the Dominican scriptorium did not disappoint. Books lay open on desks: psalters, illuminated copies of the gospels, and other works filled with plain text that might have been anything from St. Aquinas to Gregory of Nanzianzus. One friar smoothed and chalked parchment, while another ruled it for the copyists and the illuminators.

  Montguillon sat beneath one of the glass windows, where the light was best. He held a pair of brass-rimmed eyeglasses in place while he read. The book was a text with thick, blocky letters, but not Gothic or German, as she first suspected. Latin, then.

  “What do you want?” he asked, without looking up.

  “You left without a proper goodbye,” Lorenzo said.

  “Oh, it’s you. Go away, I’m busy.”

  “It was shameful,” Marco said, “the way you abandoned the lady on the road. You’re a scoundrel and a coward.”

  He still didn’t look up. “I was unarmed. I had business in the city.”

  Marco reddened. “I ought to wring your neck, you little—”

  She put a hand on his arm. This wouldn’t get them anywhere.

  “We need your help defeating the wolves,” she said. “And you need ours, too.”

  At last Montguillon looked up. His eyes were large behind the bulging glass discs. He set them down.

  “And you, too. Where is Denys? I can’t believe he allowed you in.”

  “Is Denys the subprior?” she said. “He tried to stop us.”

  “He should have tried harder.”

  “We can help each other,” she insisted. “I have information, you have information—if we shared . . . ”

  Montguillon tapped the book. “I have all the information I need right here.”

  She leaned in, ignoring his scowl, and was surprised to recognize the text. She’d read it over often enough. Not classical Latin, but Vulgar Latin.

  “Man and wolf entwined,” she said, stepping back. “Notes on the transformation into a wolf man. Ceremonies and incantations.”

  “How do you know that?” he demanded.

  “Did you hunt that book down after you received an inquiry from a Franciscan inquisitor named Lucretius del Piombo? Or was it already in your library?”

  “I hunted it down. Purchased it at great cost. But I’d never keep this in my library—it is Satanic, forbidden information and I—” Montguillon stopped and his eyes narrowed. “How would you know that anyway, unless by witchcraft?”

  Both brothers looked furious at this, but Lorenzo spoke first.

  “I’m warning you. Accuse the lady of being a witch again and I’ll cut your wretched head from your shoulders.”

  “And you would hang for your crime, if you didn’t burn first.”

  “We have your promise, and your signature to prove it. Now let the lady speak.”

  “She didn’t answer the question,” Montguillon said, stubbornly.

  “The answer is quite simple,” she said. “I posed as Lucretius del Piombo, Franciscan inquisitor. I wrote that letter.”

  “Impossible, the Latin was fluent, the pen very fine. No woman wrote that.”

  Lorenzo and Marco laughed out loud. The prior looked suddenly less certain.

  “You’re a clever man. If you don’t accept that I wrote it with my own hand—and I did,” she added, unable to resist a small boast about her abilities, “—then I’m sure you can imagine several scenarios by which I had someone do it for me. None of which involve witchcraft.”

  “So you’re admitting you had this book? And you asked for a translation into Slavonic? Not speaking the tongue, why would you do that unless you intended to repeat it aloud in Vulgar and Slavonic so as to turn men into wolves?”

  He folded his arms as if there would be no possible way to refute this.

  Lucrezia sighed and glanced at the two brothers. Marco looked confused, Lorenzo uncertain, as if he didn’t want her to admit her role. She didn’t intend to—not all of it. Not the part where she helped Rigord complete his faulty translation and thus turn into a wolf. But if she hoped to get Montguillon’s help, then she had to give him some of it.

  What could she say? This wouldn’t require a mere withholding of facts, but an active lie, something to which she was unaccustomed.

  I translated the text to figure out what he was attempting to accomplish. That’s all. Once I knew he was going to complete the ceremony, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, I decided to corrupt it. I read about the silver and decided to alter his chalice . . .

  Yes, that was it.

  “Send the others away first,” she said with a glance at the copyists.

  “Very well.” Montguillon waved his hand. “All of you, out.”

  The friars obeyed. When they were gone, Lucrezia took one of the empty chairs in the room, gathered her skirts, dirty from the road, and sat near the fire. Lorenzo and Marco followed her lead.

  And as she told her story, she prayed that the Boccaccio contract was solid. Because when she finished, Montguillon would have everything he needed to burn her at the stake.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The scriptorium lay silent when Lucrezia finished. She’d only held out the one detail—how she had been the one to provide Rigord the correct translation in the first place. When she got to the part about how Courtaud had returned to attack her, she skimmed through the awful details, ending with how she found the tip of his tail in Cicero’s mouth after her mastiff fell.

  Most of this was new to Marco and he looked troubled. She wondered if he was rethinking his insistence that Lucrezia was not a witch.

  Lorenzo had shifted subtly in his seat, pulled back his cloak, and rested his hand on his sword belt clasp, a deep blue enamel with a lion in gold inset. One movement would be enough to draw his weapon, and it was clear he expected the Blackfriar to turn on her.

  But she didn’t think Montguillon would level fresh accusations. He looked deep in thought, but there was no malice in his expression. He leaned toward the desk and lifted a brass bell. It rang out in clear, high tones.

  “The creation of a wolf man is a complex matter,” the prior said. “There are some who are taken by witchcraft. Others eat unwholesome mushrooms, wear a wolf pelt, and look into the night sky when the moon is full. There is even a story of a wolf caught in a trap in Silesia that returned to human form in daylight. When questioned by the Inquisition, he insisted that he fought demons in his wolf form. That during every full moon, he would descend to hell itself with a pack of other wolves of God, and fight his way to the throne of Satan. There was some uncertainty in the matter—the investigating brothers decided to release the man.

  “But this is something unprecedented. A partially corrupted spell. A wolf pack that attacks men in daylight. And instead of fleeing to the mountains or the woods where they may grow in strength, perhaps killing villagers and travelers, they attack castles, infiltrate city walls, and battle armed men on the king’s highway. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “So why do you sound so confident?” Lorenzo asked.

  The corners of the prior’s mouth tugged upward in a smile that came across as smug more than pleased or amused.

  Simon entered the scriptorium. He had bathed, changed his filthy white robe and his black cloak. The tonsure on his head was freshly shaved.

  “You rang, Father?”

  “Bring me the Moravian fragment.”

  “Yes, Father.” Simon disappeared through the far side of the scriptorium.

  “So why do the wolves return?” Montguillon asked. “Again and again, as if pursuing a wounded animal?”

  “My husband’s book suggests that we’re marked,” she answered. “When they attack, those who survive leave their scent with the wolves. It drives them mad with hunger.”

  “Almost right,” he said. “Ah, here it is.”

  Simon returned carrying a book.

  If the book of incantations and magic from Rigord’s library had looked fil
thy, worm eaten, and in dire need of fresh copying, this manuscript was far worse. It lay within two pieces of vellum, but the pages were loose, some of them half devoured by worms, and most of them missing. There looked to be no more than a dozen leaves as Montguillon laid them out carefully on the desk.

  “In the eighth century,” Montguillon said, “when Charlemagne was struggling heroically to Christianize the Frankish tribes and rebuild the Holy Roman Empire, a courageous young monk named Atticus the Greek ventured into the wilds of the eastern mountains to bring the cross to those benighted people. Seven centuries later, the task is only partially completed. There are all manner of witches and wizards in those lands. Nobles who gain everlasting life by drinking the blood of virgins. Entire tribes of men who can change into wild animals. Sorcery in every village. All manner of curses, hexes, and other dark magic. Most of it is underground these days, but in the time of Atticus, the people were quite proud of their diabolical ways and spoke freely of their beliefs and practices. Atticus asked many questions and recorded what he heard. Wisely, the church suppressed this book—not because Atticus’s intent was suspect—but because other, weaker sorts found the information tempting. Very little has survived. Some made it into other books, copied and recopied, but so far as I know, this fragment is the only surviving copy of his original manuscript.”

  Montguillon lifted his eyeglasses and bent over the individual leaves spread on the desk.

  “The light is poor in here. Lorenzo, you will read this.”

  He handed one sheet to Lorenzo, who then passed it to Lucrezia without glancing at the text. She ignored the prior’s scowl and read it through once in silence. The script was sloppy, perhaps hurried, and it was filthy with dirt and soot. When she was confident she could read it without stumbling, she began.

  “The wolves have tracked me to—something, I can’t read where—and I am secreting this manuscript in the hands of my illiterate servant, Dorn. God willing, it will find its way into your hands. They have already slain the two brothers sent by your grace to escort me home, as well as six of the boyar’s own guards. The rest have fled, leaving the two of us alone within the stronghold.