The Wolves of Paris

by Michael Wallace

  There! Moving on the ice, which glinted in reflected light. The moon was a waning gibbous now, but still full enough to see their dark shapes coming across one after another. Lucrezia counted. Eight, nine, ten . . .

  They kept coming and coming. She caught her breath as the last wolf ran onto the frozen river. Twenty-five wolves. Sweet Virgin, so many.

  As they reached the island, they leaped from the ice, eight feet into the air, caught their paws on the river wall and heaved over, one after another. The last wolf stopped and lifted his head. He was a huge brute, and though she couldn’t see the color of his fur, his size left little doubt. It must be Courtaud. No other wolf was that big.

  Courtaud lifted his head to sniff at the air. He turned his snout this way and that, and then he looked up in her direction. Lucrezia gasped and sank behind the crenelated wall. Her heart thudded like a blacksmith’s hammer, ready to burst free from her chest.

  Moments later, when she dared peek through the crenelations, they were gone. Carefully, she lifted her head, but saw nothing at first. From a nearby alley, a man shouted as if for help, then abruptly fell silent.

  There they were, emerging onto the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, which cut east toward the cathedral. The pack separated, half of them sprinting forward as if planning to boldly attack the front doors, while the others melted into side streets. A secondary attack? To break into homes to spread terror? But when she realized that they were all continuing east, she let out her breath. She was afraid for the others, but she couldn’t help the flood of relief to confirm they weren’t coming here.

  “My lady?”

  Lucrezia started, her heart pounding. It was only Martin, his hair caught up in the wind and blowing about his face. He had no torch, so as not to serve as a beacon to their house.

  “Won’t you come down, my lady? It won’t do any good to escape the wolves only to expose yourself to the cold and the bad air. The city is filled with the pox—the vapors will rise to find you.”

  “They’re on the island. I saw them cross.”

  His voice tightened. “Are they coming here?”

  “No. They run for the cathedral.”

  Lucrezia looked back toward Notre Dame. The wolves had disappeared. The streets lay quiet. She searched up and down the walls, the bridge, the river. How long until Rigord came across? How many wolves would his pack boast? Fewer, perhaps, but enough.

  Martin joined her in searching. Nothing. All dark.

  “Perhaps you were mistaken, my lady,” he said. “Could they have all gone to the cathedral?”

  “Maybe. There were so many of them. Twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder and fear.

  “Or maybe Courtaud killed Rigord.”

  “I won’t shed a tear for the heartless bast—for the man.”

  “You can call him whatever you like,” she said, touching his arm. “Heaven knows I’ve cursed him every day in my head since I learned his secret.”

  She hesitated, thinking about Lorenzo and the decision she had made about her future.

  “Martin?”

  “Yes, my lady?” he said, without looking up from his scan of the river and bridges.

  “Could you be happy outside of France?”

  Now he did look up. “Are you going to leave, my lady?”

  “You’re French, and a Parisian. Rigord tore me from my home in Tuscany, and I’ve never been happy here, not truly. So I understand how you might feel. And I want to know, if I leave France to return home, would you come with me? Or is that too much to ask?”

  Martin said nothing for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and thoughtful.

  “Have you come to an understanding with one of the young Florentines, my lady?”

  “Not yet. But he asked, and I’m considering his offer. My heart tells me yes.”

  “Forgive my impertinence, but may I ask which brother?”

  “It’s no impertinence, my friend,” Lucrezia said. “It’s the younger one. Lorenzo. I love him, Martin. I think he loves me, too.”

  And now he did offer a small bit of impertinence, but she didn’t mind. Martin put his hands on her shoulders and he was smiling.

  “I’m so happy to hear it, my lady. And my answer is yes, I would be honored to return with you to Italy, to serve you and your family. If you’ll allow my wife and children to accompany me.”

  “Of course, Martin. Of course.”

  She kissed him on his whiskered cheek. He made a sound in his throat and though she couldn’t see it, she smiled at the blush that must surely be reddening his face.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’m going to shoo Nemours’s men away from the wine before they’re too drunk to lift a sword. Won’t you come with me, my lady, and leave this cold?”

  “In a moment, Martin. I need to watch a little while longer.”

  When he was gone, she peered deep into the shadows of the surrounding neighborhoods. Had it ever been so quiet, so deserted? No movement in the dogleg alleys that hooked off the main streets. Nothing on the river or the bridge.

  Rigord, you villain, where are you?

  Her gaze drifted toward Notre Dame, hulking over the Cité. Several minutes had passed since the wolves crossed the river. They must be there by now. If they hadn’t attacked yet, they would soon.

  As if in answer, a long, eerie howl sounded through the night. An answering call, then another, all from the direction of the cathedral. One by one the wolves added their voices until it became a wailing chorus howling on the wind, up and down. It was a terrifying song, like the devil’s own choir from the lowest pits of hell. Her breath stopped up in her throat, and she stood transfixed, rigid with fear and cold and uncertainty.

  Enough! She drew her dagger and headed for the stairs. If Rigord wouldn’t come, she could at least help Lorenzo. Gather the men and lead them to Notre Dame.

  But as she rounded the first turn of the descent down the tower, Tullia burst into a roaring bark somewhere in the house below. Men shouted, someone screamed. Snarling wolves. Tullia fell silent.

  Lucrezia gathered her skirts and raced around the curving steps until she came to the bottom of the tower staircase. An arched stone passageway stretched roughly thirty feet to a pair of open doors on the far side. Torches sputtered in the wind that moaned down from the tower to her rear.

  One of Nemours’s men-at-arms lay on his back in the corridor, with a wolf snapping at him. The man groped for his sword, which lay on the flagstones only inches from his grasping fingers. His other hand beat ineffectually against the wolf’s head. The beast shoved its snout beneath the man’s cuirass, which had hiked up as he fell to expose his belly. The man cried out in pain.

  Lucrezia’s fear fled and left behind a shaking fury. How dare he? The fiend, she’d stab him to death.

  “Get away from him, you brute!” she cried, running down the hallway.

  The wolf paid her no attention as she closed the distance. It jerked its head back and forth at the man’s belly. The man screamed and bucked his arms and legs, back arched. The wolf gave a final jerk and came up with a chunk of meat hanging from its bloody muzzle. He spotted Lucrezia, but took the time to swallow the man’s flesh in two quick gulps.

  Lucrezia threw herself on the wolf. She brought the knife down from above her head. It sank deep into the wolf’s flesh. The animal snarled, a sound that was half wolf, half man. They rolled on the ground and she wrenched the blade free and stabbed again. This time she only grazed fur. The wolf kicked its legs and struck her in the chest. She flew back with a cry as the blow drove the air from her lungs. She fell over the dying guard. Somehow she managed to keep hold of the dagger.

  Its thoughts came into her head. You little whore. You will suffer for that.

  Blood ran down its gray fur and dripped to the flagstones. The droplets mingled with the rapidly spreading puddle from the dying man at its feet. Belly open, hands clenching and unclenching, and e
yes rolling back, the man didn’t have long. The wolf came forward with a limp.

  Lucrezia regained her feet. The knife was sticky in her hand. Blood smeared across her gown and ran down her wrists into her sleeves. She wiped her hands and dagger on her cloak as she backed toward the stairs.

  “Martin!” she cried. “Help me!”

  The hallway beyond rang with the sounds of battle: shouted orders, injured men crying for help, wolves snarling and howling. Tullia roared her deep-throated bark. Demetrius cried for Martin, who shouted back. They were trying to close ranks.

  “Martin!” she tried again.

  The wolf bared its teeth in something approximating a grin. The wound to its shoulder was bloody, but not crippling. A few inches lower, only a sliver of flesh, and her dagger would have plunged deep into its chest. Instead, it was injured and enraged.

  She’d reached the stairway up to the tower, with the injured wolf driving her forward, crouched, ready to leap for her throat the moment she took her eyes away. A flight up the stairs seemed not only foolhardy now, but impossible. With her skirts and cloak and the wolf, injured or not, leaping after her, she wouldn’t make it past the first curve before he dragged her down.

  “Martin!”

  Nobody hears your cry, woman. Only me. My revenge will be sweet. You will feel my teeth as I feed. Soon you will beg me for death.

  “No,” a voice said behind the wolf. “She is mine.”

  The voice was low and rough, like gravel poured over a steel shield.

  Something large and dark stepped out of the shadows. What she saw then brought a surge of fear like the overflowing banks of a mighty river, carrying everything away. Her strength, her sanity.

  It was Rigord. He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a wolf, either, but something altogether more monstrous.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The tension grew thick in the heart of the Notre Dame cathedral. Lorenzo and Marco waited with their backs pressed to the stone. The cold seeped through and soon Lorenzo was fighting a shiver.

  A minute passed since the signal came down from the tower. Then two. Still nothing. How long would it take the wolves to race the length of the Cité? Was it a false alarm?

  “Come on,” Marco whispered. “I can’t stand this waiting.”

  Then the doors burst open and the two men Nemours had posted at the door raced inside. They didn’t shut the door behind them, and their spears clattered to the ground. They fled down the nave, pounding toward the choir. Torchlight reflected the terror in their faces. It was not feigned.

  Nothing followed them through.

  “What the devil is going on?” Lorenzo asked. “Where are they?”

  “Should we go look?”

  “No, let Nemours—”

  Lorenzo didn’t finish that thought. A howl started up outside.

  It was one wolf at first, a long, ghostly cry. Others started in, yips turning to howls, and soon it sounded like a hundred voices. The street in front of the cathedral must be full of them, standing shoulder to shoulder, heads lifted to the moon. Howling.

  “Sweet Mother of God,” Marco said. He clapped his hands over his ears. “How many are there?”

  Lorenzo fought the urge to cover his own ears. This was no ordinary howl. There was something unnatural in the piercing wail that went on and on, something that drove through his flesh like nails, until they shivered against his bones.

  The first wolf came through the door. He was so huge, so powerful at the shoulder and jaws that it could only be Courtaud, even if shadows hid his features and color.

  The wolf turned his head from side to side and snarled.

  I smell you. I hear you.

  More wolves came in, one after another. They resumed their howling inside, and the sound filled the vast open space, echoing off the stone walls and cascading up to the roof and back down again. From outside, the sound had been an awe-inspiring, terrible sound; inside, the full force of the song struck Lorenzo like a blow.

  It drove the hope from his breast. His mind roared like a thundering waterfall, making coherent thought all but impossible. Through it all came a message, as if written in his head by the ink-stained fingernail of Satan himself.

  Throw yourself to the ground. Beg for mercy.

  “No,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Fiends of hell,” Marco muttered. “Make it stop.”

  There were only a dozen, perhaps fifteen, wolves in total. How did they create such an awful, penetrating sound? And what black magic carried on their voices?

  Somewhere in the cathedral a man cried out in terror. A slap of metal on metal. He fell silent. And still the howling went on. A weapon clattered to the ground, then another. At the back, near the choir, a priest screamed in Latin. Another man sobbed.

  “Courage, Brothers!” a voice cried in Latin from the back.

  A man walked slowly, purposefully down the center of the cathedral from the direction of the choir. His face was hidden behind a hood with his black robe drawn about him. He chanted in Latin as he came, one step after another. Walking alone, he drew gradually closer. He was chanting the 23rd Psalm.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”

  “Henri Montguillon,” Marco said. “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s driving back the darkness,” Lorenzo said, surprised and encouraged.

  Indeed, the awful wolfish chorus seemed to be only sound now. Frightening, yes, but incapable of causing the kind of unholy terror that would cause a man to throw down his weapon and beg for mercy. Lorenzo’s legs no longer threatened to collapse beneath him. His grip tightened on his sword. He paused to wipe a sleeve across the cold sweat that poured down his forehead.

  Courtaud trotted down the nave toward Montguillon, who continued to walk, his chant growing louder and louder. The prior of Saint-Jacques and agent of the Holy Inquisition was no coward. He stood only thirty feet from the head of the wolf pack now, all alone. Now twenty feet, now ten. His staff tapped the stone as he walked and chanted.

  “For the glory of God!” Nemours boomed from the transept to Lorenzo’s right.

  Men poured out of their hiding places. They flooded down from the towers to rush in front of the doors. Men in armor, with swords and spears. Shouting, banging hilts against their spaulders. The clamor rose above the wolf howls.

  Lorenzo and Marco broke from the shadows behind their stone column. Swords in hand and shouting a Florentine battle cry, they joined the charge toward the front of the nave. A dozen wolves met them, their howls faltering. Gathering ranks now, but suddenly uncertain. Against them two score men or more. Men with iron and steel. Against tooth and claw.

  Two men reached the doors of the cathedral. They grabbed the brass handles and dragged them shut with a boom. The wolves were besieged from the back now, and more men charged from the front and sides.

  Courtaud leaped at Montguillon’s throat. The prior lifted his staff. His chant died on his tongue and he cried a challenge as the wolf flew through the air. He brought his staff around. The wolf slammed into him and drove him to the ground.

  Men joined the battle from every side. Some screamed oaths, others prayers and divine pleas. Three men with spears surrounded one wolf. They thrust and jabbed. The animal snapped at the spear tips and tried to break free, but a fourth man joined the battle. He waded in with sword swinging. A few feet away a man went down screaming as a wolf clamped its jaws on his face.

  Still running, Lorenzo and Marco had almost reached Montguillon. The prior struggled to bring his staff to bear. He held it against the wolf’s chest to force the beast back, but Courtaud was too strong, and soon crushed the clumsy weapon against Montguillon’s chest. His head dipped down.

  Lorenzo reached the struggle first. He swung his sword for the wolf’s head.

  Courtaud danced away with
a snarl. Blood dripped from his muzzle. Montguillon lay on his back with a hand at his throat. Blood flowed between his clenched fingers.

  The two brothers attacked, jabbing and swinging. The wolf was too quick. He jumped away, then came in biting and snarling before they forced him back again. Three times Lorenzo swung, and every time the blade whistled through the air, just grazing an ear or swishing along the wolf’s back.

  But working together they drove him back until he was against the wall near one of the transepts. Courtaud tried to duck to one side, then the other, but they kept him hemmed in.

  The wolf lifted his head and let out three little yips. Screams sounded at the back of the cathedral. Something moved at the edge of Lorenzo’s vision. He darted his eyes to the side and Courtaud shot away. Marco swung with his sword, cursing as the beast ducked underneath his blow.

  A screaming, terrified mass of men came running from the choir, throwing down their swords and staves. It was the priests and monks, fleeing for their lives. A man tripped over his robes and a dark shape fell upon him.

  “They’re coming out of the ground!” one of the men cried. “It’s a doorway to hell!”

  Wolves boiled up from a hole in the floor. Lorenzo’s heart froze in his chest. More and more—sweet virgin, they kept coming, as if a gateway had opened from the infernal lands in the center of the earth, with no end to them. They emerged snarling and snapping and killing. And still they kept coming. Was there no end to them?

  No, he realized, they were emerging from the crypts. The gate lay open, shaking and clanging as wolves rushed past. There were a dozen more now, tearing through the priests and monks as if they were lambs. Most fled for their lives, running down the nave and into the middle of the battle between Lord Nemours’s men and the other half of the pack.

  The wolves savaged any who fell behind. Three of them surrounded Bishop de Moray and drove him to one side like an old deer, culled from the herd. De Moray swung his crosier in desperation and smacked one on the head. It flew to the side. The bishop turned to run. One of the other two clamped its jaws on his calf and the man went down with a cry. The three wolves buried their muzzles. The bishop’s cries turned to screams of pain and terror as they tore him apart.