The Silver Wolf Page 15

  Regeane was up. Her body was warm now. She’d finished the chicken dish and was raiding another on the table: spinach cooked with slices of rich, sweet bacon. “My mother had a nice dress,” Regeane gabbled between mouthfuls. “I buried her in it.” She tried to sound pathetic.

  Lucilla dropped the dress. The look she gave Regeane could have etched glass. “Don’t … you … dare … try … to … make … sport … of … me, my girl! What happened last night? I want to know and I want to know now!” Lucilla commanded.

  Regeane had a story ready. “I … I got frightened. I ran away in the dark. I got lost …” Regeane looked up from the food and gave Lucilla a quick glance to see how she was taking this.

  Lucilla nodded gravely.

  “I was afraid … I found the lodging house … near dawn. My uncle thought I had been with a man … He went crazy. Thank God you came. I was dying,” Regeane said faintly.

  “My … my … my,” Lucilla said, every word dripping sarcasm. “And all without your clothing.”

  Regeane finished the soup. Lucilla’s gaze was fastened on her like a death grip. Regeane couldn’t think of any convincing lie at all. She was naturally more or less truthful, but telling the truth in this case was impossible.

  Regeane slurped the juice left in the dish and snatched up a loaf of bread. One of the kind stuffed with rich, black olives. She dunked it in the juice. Then she said a word. The nastiest one the old woman ever taught her.

  “Ha!” Lucilla said. “That’s better.” She returned to her task at the chest. “There was blood on the ground, in the garden, a lot of it, and on the wall, and in the road. Someone—something—did a remarkable job of slicing up Basil and his friends. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You were too busy running away, naked, without your clothes, into the cold, wet winter night.”

  “It’s not necessary to belabor the point,” Regeane said. This time she tried for dignity.

  “Also,” Lucilla said, shooting a probing glance at her features. “You heal very quickly. When I first saw you, I was afraid you might be disfigured. But now they are only minor patches of purple and yellow. However, when we return to the villa, I’ll have my own physician look at you.”

  Regeane went limp with a relief so profound it was dizzying. “Are we returning to the villa?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lucilla said. “I, we, you have no choice. Your mountain lord will need to be impressed. I can’t think he’d be impressed in this … squalor. The pope handed me the task of persuading Maeniel he is being honored by this match. Men don’t value what comes to them too cheaply. So, you must be taught how to dress, learn at least some semblance of proper behavior in polite society. Be introduced to the problems of running a large household. And, lastly, be brought out. Fortunately, your future husband is no doubt a filthy barbarian, so he won’t expect too much.”

  “I know you’re angry with me,” Regeane commented darkly. “But there’s no need to insult my betrothed because of it. And what is brought out?”

  “Brought out is being introduced to the right people by the right people,” Lucilla replied haughtily. “And, as for this Maeniel, I’m beginning to think—even though you played on my sympathy last night like a viol—I now know you will probably be more than a match for him. Whatever he may be.

  “This marriage, though you don’t know, grows more important by the day. I will apply to the moneylenders again in your name. If they can’t produce enough coin to dress and bejewel you properly, the state coffers may crack open a bit. Come, finish eating. We must leave soon. I don’t want a brawl between your relations and my men. I don’t want any loose talk about you—whatever you may be. That monstrous uncle of yours can’t be allowed to cripple or kill you before your marriage. When I hand you over to Maeniel, my responsibility will be discharged. I don’t have much time. Your eager barbarian will soon be in Rome.”

  “Rome!” Regeane gasped.

  “Yes,” Lucilla said. “The pope sent for him. He feels there’s no time to waste.”

  Regeane said another word the old woman taught her.

  “Regeane,” Lucilla said sternly. “There are various ways of purifying a young woman’s speech. I warn you, I know most of them.”

  “I was carried away by strong emotion,” Regeane said sweetly.

  “Regeane,” Lucilla began, but then was distracted by a commotion at the door. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is it her uncle?”

  “No,” one of the soldiers outside answered. “A … woman?”

  “Maybe it’s the old one. She may want to clean. Let her in,” Regeane said.

  The door opened a crack. Silve scuttled in on all fours. She saw Regeane. She made twelve hiccuping sounds, six horse snorts, followed this with an undetermined number of sheep bleats as she gained the space under the table. Silve was so wet she left a trail of water from the door to the table.

  “What are you doing here?” Regeane snapped. “The last time I saw you, you were trying to get me killed by that funeral party. Now, you have the nerve to come back—”

  “You wanted to steal the man’s sooooul! You did! You did! Pleeeaaasse,” Silve gurgled. “I’m cold! I’m starving! Hugo beat me and stole the money I worked alllll night to get—” Silve made a sound like a drain backing up. “—enough. I was going away. I was! I really waaas. I won’t tell, won’t tell. I promise! I vow. I swear. On my father’s head, my mother’s head, my sister’s—”

  “Silence!” Lucilla said. She peered down under the table. “Who is she?”

  “My maid,” Regeane said.

  “Your maid!” Lucilla replied, horrified. “She’s a—” The word she used was one not even the old woman ever taught Regeane.

  “I am not!” Silve screeched. “I always charge at least a copper.”

  “At most a copper, I should say,” Lucilla replied disdainfully.

  Silve made some sounds reminiscent of an inadequately strangled chicken. One that escaped the hands of the executioner before its neck was quite broken. Regeane snatched up some bread, a bowl of soup, and passed them hurriedly to Silve.

  “Sllluuuurrrpppp!” from under the table, then rapid crunching.

  “What is this nonsense about you stealing someone’s soul?” Lucilla asked, outraged. “Do you do things like that?”

  “No!” Regeane shouted back, scarlet with indignation. “Besides, what would I want with someone’s soul? Whatever I may be, I have no truck with the evil one. I was born the way I am. I can’t help it. You blame me for it. She, my mother, blamed me for it. Hugo and Gundabald don’t think I’m human.”

  “You aren’t!” Silve screeched. “You made a place that wasn’t there, be there. You had teeth, big teeth. Fire was all around you. The wasps died in it … the ghost thing stank … burnt black and flew away.”

  “You!” Regeane screamed. “You! You …” She couldn’t think of a word sufficiently unpleasant. “I protected you against that nightmare, you ungrateful little wench. If you don’t shut your mouth, get out from under that table, and behave yourself right now I’ll … I’ll … turn you into a toad and you can spend the rest of your life sitting in the Forum ruins catching flies with your tongue. So there!”

  Lucilla threw up her hands.

  Regeane had never seen anyone actually throw up her hands. She found it an interesting sight.

  “I’ll never get things sorted out here,” Lucilla said.

  Silve slithered from under the table and sat on one of the chairs, still gobbling the bread.

  Lucilla looked at her and said, “Yeech! God! Turning her into a toad would be an improvement.”

  Silve began to cry, slobbering onto the bread.

  “Don’t make her cry,” Regeane said. “It’s worse.”

  “So I see,” Lucilla replied. Then to Silve, “Stop caterwauling!” Her tone did not admit the possibility of disobedience.

  Silve stopped caterwauling.

  “You are warm?” Lucilla asked.

  “Yes,”
Silve replied.

  “You are fed?”

  “Yes,” Silve replied.

  “Very well,” she said to both Regeane and Silve. “We are leaving now. My carriage is waiting downstairs.”

  “Silve, you are going with us. She can rest on my side of the carriage,” Regeane added hurriedly. She was used to Silve’s aroma. Actually, this was one place where she and the wolf took separate paths. The wolf found it interesting. Regeane would rather have been spared the experience.

  Lucilla shared her feelings. “Not in my carriage she won’t!” Lucilla said firmly. “I have no doubt the crabs that cluster around her source of income are sufficiently large and numerous to march on a walled city. I have no doubt a few moments’ work with a comb would be sufficient to capture enough from her head to defend the battlements. And, in addition, I believe she may not have ever had a bath in her life. A pile of rotting garbage in the summer sunshine is far more pleasant company than she is.”

  Silve opened her mouth.

  “Shut it,” Lucilla said.

  Silve shut it, but managed to whisper, “I could leave.”

  “Oh, no, you couldn’t. I’m not giving you a choice. You will do as you are told. Or … I’ll have you strangled, attached to an anvil, and thrown in the Tiber.”

  Silve’s lips parted.

  “Or … perhaps …” Lucilla continued, “if I find myself sufficiently annoyed, I might not have you strangled, instead thrown into the Tiber attached to an anvil—and let you breathe water—all the way down.”

  Silve’s mouth opened, but nothing emerged.

  Regeane snatched up an old mantle of her mother’s and handed it to Silve. It was faded, ragged, torn, and patched, but ample and warm.

  “Now!” Lucilla said. “Downstairs! Take your place behind my litter and say nothing to anyone and wait. Quietly. Understood?”

  Silve said nothing, but she nodded vigorously.

  “March!” Lucilla said loudly clapping her hands.

  Silve fled.

  “You do just leave them strewn about, don’t you?” Lucilla said.

  “What do you mean?” Regeane asked.

  Lucilla smiled for the first time. It showed all her teeth. “People who know far too much about you.”

  “Is that why we’re taking her?” Regeane asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” Lucilla answered shortly. She was still going through the clothing looking for something decent for Regeane to wear. The dress she had on covered her well, but came up rather high on her legs. Giving up on finding anything, Lucilla lifted the hem and looked at it. “Maybe I can let it down quickly … It’s cut off!” she exclaimed. “Well?” she asked Regeane.

  “Hugo and Gundabald,” Regeane sighed. “The hem must have been embroidered in gold or silver thread.”

  Lucilla gave an angry, exasperated snort.

  “Did you really mean to drown Silve?” Regeane asked.

  “Yes,” Lucilla said, peeling off her mantle and wrapping it around Regeane. “And I still might if she doesn’t do as she’s told. I don’t want her roaming the streets, carrying tales to your future husband, the Lombards, Basil, those wastrel relatives of yours, or even the pope. God knows, he has enough on his mind right now.

  “Your marriage is important, very important. Securing the Alpine passes is vital to King Charles’ interest and … the pope’s. Desiderius, the Lombard king, has given Basil a free hand here, promising him lordship of the city if he succeeds in unseating Pope Hadrian or bringing him under his domination.

  “Hadrian wouldn’t dare flout the grandson of Charles the Hammer. I can’t afford loose talk about you in every bordello and dive in the city. She will not drag your name through the mud. And neither will those relatives of yours. If they give me trouble, I’ll have them all silenced! Understood? Understood?”

  “Yes,” Regeane answered hurriedly.

  The mantle was beautiful, she saw, even as she used it to conceal most of her face and body. An autumn brown, Regeane felt it must have been the natural color of the very soft, silken wool used to weave it. Embroidered with a pattern of long willow leaves in mixed gold and silver thread.

  “Woe the willow,” Regeane whispered. “It weeps for the dying. Where is the cypress?”

  Lucilla’s lips tightened, a bleak hard expression froze on her features. She looked, for a second, her age or even older. A matron standing before a tomb.

  “It’s not time for cypresses, yet,” Lucilla replied. “They guard the dead. But I do think you might be better off with a new maid and as an orphan.”

  “Why an anvil?” Regeane asked.

  “Simply the best choice,” Lucilla said. “It holds the corpse to the bottom until decomposition is far advanced. No identification can be made. Though in the case of those three, I can’t imagine anyone caring. It’s still safer.”

  “What do you do when you run out of anvils?” Regeane asked.

  “Don’t be pert,” Lucilla said. “You are warm and fed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, downstairs into the litter immediately. Now! March!”

  LUCILLA’S CARRIAGE WAS LIKE THOSE USED BYROmans in the past: curtained and cushioned with silk and velvet within. But the Romans of earlier days had been borne in comfort, high above the throng on the muscular arms and shoulders of sweating slaves. A smooth ride was probably guaranteed by the presence of a driver with a large whip.

  Lucilla’s carriage rode anything but smoothly. It was drawn down the Corso by four stout gray mules. Steel wheel rims pounded the cobbles. Silk and velvet the interior appointments might be, but they were not enough to make the ride comfortable.

  Lucilla sat at one end of the litter, her back against the cushions. Regeane rested on the other. Cushion or no cushion, Regeane was flung into the air at every bump and pothole. She came down sometimes painfully on her backside, sometimes off balance. She had to grab for the heavy canvas curtains to keep from falling out.

  One wheel went into a deep hole. Regeane skidded sideways, arms flailing in desperation, sure in a second she’d be lying in the street. Lucilla caught her wrist just in time and pulled her back. She gave Regeane a nasty smile. “Relax, it’s just like riding a horse. You must go with the movement. Faster,” she shouted to the driver.

  Regeane gripped the pad covering the bottom and dug in with her fingers. But, inexplicably, the litter didn’t speed up. Instead it rolled to a stop.

  Something thumped against one of the heavy canvas curtains surrounding them. Lucilla whispered something ugly in gutter Latin, then pushed aside the curtain and peered out.

  A small crowd gathered around the litter. They eyed the magnificent vehicle with a mixture of awe, curiosity, and veiled hostility.

  A voice in the back of the crowd shouted, “Throw aside the curtains, Lucilla, and let the people get a good look at the pope’s whore.”

  Lucilla snatched at the curtains and shoved them back with a loud clatter of rings. “Very well,” she shouted. “Here I sit. Now, you, sir, step forward so that I can get a good look at your face … and remember it.”

  The man who had shouted the taunt at Lucilla ducked down and vanished into an alleyway.

  “How very brave,” Lucilla commented in a loud voice, then asked the crowd, “Are any of the rest of you of his opinion? Is he a friend of yours? Can any of you give me his name?”

  A nervous titter of laughter swept through the idlers around the litter, and they melted away with magical speed.

  Lucilla shouted a command and flung the curtains shut. The litter started forward again. “The pope’s whore, eh?” she said between clenched teeth. “I wish I’d gotten a better look at him.” She gave Regeane a rapid, hard glance. “You don’t seem surprised to hear me called the pope’s whore.”

  “I’m not,” Regeane found herself saying. She remembered that last night Basil had called Antonius the pope’s brother. Stephen, she thought, as Lucilla studied her from the corner of her eye. He is the pope himself. And Luc
illa … When Stephen realized what sort of rascals Gundabald and Hugo were, he hadn’t shown the slightest hesitation in sending her to Lucilla, about placing her under Lucilla’s protection. “I imagine,” Regeane said, “that you’ve been the pope’s mistress for a very long time.”

  Lucilla went slack-jawed with astonishment for a second.

  A flurry of missiles thudded against the curtains.

  Lucilla’s teeth caught at her lower lip. Her fists clenched, but she didn’t open the curtains again. Regeane heard the crash of galloping hooves and a loud cry of pain. She surmised the stone thrower had been punished by one of the men in Lucilla’s personal guard.

  “Hydra-headed monster,” Lucilla whispered bitterly.

  “What?” Regeane asked.

  “The Roman mob,” Lucilla answered.

  “What’s happened?”

  “No one wants a strong pope, Regeane,” Lucilla said, “least of all the Lombards. Basil’s minions in the churches have been giving sermons accusing Hadrian of being tainted with a vile disease, one that makes him unfit to be supreme pontiff.”

  “They wish everyone to believe him a leper, as Antonius is?” Regeane asked.

  At that moment the covered litter lurched to a stop before Lucilla’s door. Without waiting for help, Regeane swung herself down. Lucilla followed more slowly.

  When Regeane entered the atrium, a small body launched itself at her like a missile thrown from a catapult. Elfgifa hung around Regeane’s neck and threw her long legs around her waist.

  “You’re back! I knew she’d get you! I was the one who found you. Did she tell you?” The small face stared up at her expectantly.

  “Did she?” Regeane asked, untangling herself from Elfgifa and turning to Lucilla.

  “That terrible, terrible child,” Lucilla said fondly. “Yes, she did. The moment she heard you were missing, she climbed over the wall. She reappeared a short time later with the filthiest little boy I’ve ever seen. He demanded a silver coin and a bath.”