The Silver Wolf Page 18

Matrona came up with two pairs of saddlebags. She began to pack them. One pair with jewelry, the other with gold and silver coins.

  Maeniel’s household gathered round. Both men and women selecting jewelry for themselves and, sometimes, others.

  Gavin clapped a dented diadem on his head. It was made mostly of copper, but had a ring of gold and silver birds in flight on it. “Was this a king’s?” he asked.

  “No,” Maeniel answered. “It belonged to a priest.” He looked faintly ill.

  “A Christian priest?” Gavin asked mystified.

  “No,” Maeniel said. “A pagan one. A …” He groped for the word. “A druid. Now, take the damned thing off. For it is a damned thing, and you will find out soon if you wear it.”

  Gavin snatched the circlet off and threw it back into the pile.

  Maeniel clapped his hands. “Listen! We are leaving this day for Rome. Those of you who want to come, scratch up some silver and gold coins. We will need to stay under a roof from time to time. And I hear living in the holy city is expensive. Matrona, who will remain here and care for the livestock?”

  She had taken advantage of everyone’s distraction to strip off her dress and put on a costume she found in the chest. It consisted of draped gold chains that covered her breasts and another set of smaller chains that hung from her hips and hid the pubic area. Matrona was a tall woman with a slim waist and ample hips and breasts. Her skin was dark. She had large brown eyes—they were heavy-lidded and sleepy looking—and beautiful curved, sensual lips.

  Gavin stared at her. He was glassy-eyed. His mouth was hanging open.

  “Matrona, the livestock! Cattle, sheep, goats, horses,” Maeniel said. He snapped his fingers. “Remember.”

  “Three families have pregnant women among them,” Matrona said. “I consulted them. They fear to risk the journey. They will remain.”

  Joseph looked at Gavin sadly. “Let her take him in the kitchen, my lord. His brain is mush.”

  Maeniel noticed that the chains didn’t hide nearly enough of Matrona. “Please,” he said, making a graceful gesture. “Tend to Gavin before we leave.”

  “I don’t know why I bother,” Matrona said. “His brain is always mush.” She snapped her fingers at Gavin and departed. Gavin followed, looking as if he were drawn along by a ring through his nose.

  “What about the papal messenger?” Joseph asked.

  “Don’t wake him,” Maeniel said, strolling away. “Put him on Audovald. He will bring him safely down the mountain.”

  THE PAPAL MESSENGER DID AWAKEN WHEN THEY were better than halfway down the mountain. Gavin had fallen asleep on his horse. Matrona put a handful of snow down his neck. Gavin screamed. His scream woke the papal messenger, who screamed in turn when he realized where he was.

  Maeniel, who was riding behind him, said, “Be quiet. Don’t alarm Audovald. His task requires concentration. This path is steep.”

  “Oh, yes,” the papal messenger murmured. “The horse.” In truth, he had no desire to distract Audovald. The path was not only steep and marred by patches of ice. On one side the drop was straight down into a valley filled with rocks. About five thousand spruce trees clung to a slope too steep to hold snow. Insuring that if he fell, the spiny tree limbs would rip him to pieces on the way down. A boulder in the valley would reduce him to something with the consistency of fruit pulp and in addition, there appeared to be a river in the valley that would wash away what remained.

  “Where are we going?” he asked in a shaky voice.

  “To Rome,” Maeniel replied unconcerned.

  “With all your household?”

  “They normally accompany me when I travel,” Maeniel said.

  The papal envoy made as if to pick up the reins.

  “Do not annoy Audovald with directions, either,” Maeniel said. “He knows the way.”

  X

  THE WOLF EXPLODED INTO THE NIGHT, THE BEAST in full control. She wanted to escape Lucilla and her dreadful grief. To flee the stifling city, the stench of its gutters, the enclosing walls. The multiple terrors of a world ruled by men like Gundabald and Hadrian. A world that would force a woman to kill her own son.

  So she ran, a gliding gray shape, skimming low across the ground beyond the environs of Rome through the long grass of the Campagna. Thank God, she thought. Thank God for the wolf. The wolf had always set her free, even when she’d been imprisoned. The wolf had always allowed her to escape; given her freedom. The wolf drowned her grief for her mother, consoled her for the sense of separateness she’d felt when she’d first realized that she lived not only in this world, but in another, also.

  Regeane thought. Regeane pondered. Regeane feared. Regeane struggled. But the silver wolf simply was.

  She came to a stop in the long grass shivered by the night wind. The sweep of the countryside was faintly illuminated by the slow, unending dance of the stars.

  To the wolf’s eyes, it was a shimmering, dark sea of grass, an undulating satiny carpet of life.

  The rhythms of the night were timeless, formed by the needs of the earth as it drifted beneath the stars. The wind rose as the parched autumn earth released its heat into the cool, night air, and the stalks of the long grasses brushed each other, rustling and whispering in the silence.

  Regeane heard the hunting cries of bats as they darted and swooped above her, seeking their insect prey.

  Men might have abandoned the Campagna, but all around Regeane it throbbed with life. The rattle and shift of grasses as they moved and tossed. The cry of insects as they challenged each other and made love, fighting, mating, breeding, and dying in their swift-moving miniature world. Frogs called, singing their ancient songs in the low marshy places concealed in the folds of the earth’s grassy gown.

  To the wolf’s ears, even the velvet slap of an owl’s wing was loud. She heard clearly the nervous squeak and churring of the mice foraging warily among the grass stems for food.

  She scented a deer nearby; the musk vivid as a spoken word.

  The scent of blood drying and fading, rising from the spot where a stoat had surprised a rabbit.

  Regeane understood that the wolf knew … the wolf knew things she didn’t.

  She’d had no plan when she went flying from Lucilla’s villa. She had taken the necklace with the vague idea of bringing it to Antonius in the hope that he could use the jewels to buy food and shelter for himself until she could find a way to rescue him. But what rescue could there be for Antonius or, for that matter, for her?

  She had only the wolf and her dim knowledge that the world was more than the plans of men like Gundabald or follies of war and politics. But the woman had only the haziest idea of what the wolf knew.

  The wolf stood perfectly still, motionless as only a wild creature can be on the hunt. She searched the Campagna with eyes, ears, and nose. Her body quivered like a harp, strung with the intensity of her desire, her need. Listening, seeing, but above all, feeling with her whole body, until far away she heard music, the distant strains borne by the night wind to her ears.

  The wolf lunged forward at a run.

  Regeane ran, the night wind in her face, the stars a deep cold fire above her. The act of running filled her with profound joy. She reveled in the bunching and return of the wolf’s powerful shoulder muscles, the advance and retreat of the iron sinew that drove her hips and thighs.

  She fled from the world of men and into the vast dark universe that stared in indifference at the follies of mankind and would, she was sure, gaze at its passing with the same indifference.

  The wolf’s mind joined her forebears on other runs beneath other stars. Sometimes driven by the lash of terror and starvation as she traversed barren wastes, her belly cramping with hunger. Sometimes in joy when the quarry was sighted and she bore down, closing in with the rest of the pack, tasting the warm, rich blood in her mouth.

  And then there were the runs on the nights of love. For a few moments, it seemed she didn’t run alone. A dark shape raced beside her.
Love, brief, excruciatingly joyous love, unlike human love, without its guilt, fear, and regret.

  Love, a lance of fire in her loins; its delight echoing through her whole being.

  Love, the warm milk scent of the den, the life flowing from her teats into small mouths. The soft young bodies pressed against her seeking comfort and security.

  Love, a circle garnering of itself, for itself, what it gives.

  A love that yields and adores, that is not taken or forced.

  She reveled in these memories, memories without words, images, dreamlike fragments wrenched out of time. Images of what the world had been, what it should be, and what it never would be again. Not for her. For the woman, she would be wed to a man and he would take her maidenhood by force and perhaps wreak other violence upon her unless she killed him first.

  She was so deeply caught up in the wolf’s memories that she was almost shocked when she realized she’d reached her objective. She saw the procession before her.

  The wolf stopped so quickly it brought her down on her haunches. And when the woman realized what she was looking at, she made a soft whining sound of distress.

  But the wolf ignored her. And, caught deep in the matrix of the wolf’s indifference, the woman had to agree. The music was the most beautiful she had ever heard. Even played as it was by hands and lips that were dust. The instruments carried by men and women who were now only bone encased in the house of earth.

  In the forefront of the procession, the priests and priestesses danced joyously to the sound of lyre, cithara, and the double flute. The low, endless throbbing pulse of the drum bound the music together.

  The sacrifices led the procession: white oxen with gilded horns garlanded with flowers and greenery. They paced tamely forward, going tranquil to their fate.

  Behind them, marching four abreast, came the gods’ worshippers. They were crowned with gilded laurel and linked by long garlands of spring-green branches turned with daisies, clover, lilies, and roses.

  Torchbearers, pacing alongside them, led the silent throng as they passed before the wolf’s eyes.

  The clothing they wore was that of the distant past, and reminded Regeane of the few broken monuments remaining in Rome that depicted the ruling families gathered to honor their gods. The men wore draped togas, their heads covered by one fold of the garment. They were accompanied by their wives, clad in the long stola of honorable marriage, uncut hair dressed high behind a diadem. Both sexes led and carried small children. The older children and young people walked before them, trying to emulate the dignity of their elders.

  As Regeane studied this stately company, she remembered one rainy day when she paused beside a basrelief of some unknown emperor leading his family toward the capital in solemn worship. An old farmer, who’d sold his produce, paused beside her. He rested his handcart on the ground and gazed at the frieze in sorrow and asked, “Did we ever stand so … before our gods?”

  The wolf’s first impulse was to flee. They were dead. The dead had a right to the peace and joy of fond remembrance. They had no need to be reminded of the agony and struggle of the living.

  Unlike so many of the shadows the wolf saw, these dead had cut their ties to the earth. To the pain and strife of those who breathe and bleed, suffer and love. They had overcome the futile grief at the terrible wrench of life’s ending.

  What right had she, a creature of moonlight and darkness, to bring her need to them?

  But need she did.

  Hunger she did. For … justice.

  And there would never be justice among mortals for her or Antonius.

  Perhaps she might find some among the dead. At least when Antonius’ struggles were ended, they might welcome him and let him join them.

  The glittering procession glided past her. The late night air held the biting chill of winter. The stars glittered in dense, magnificent loneliness.

  But the cold breeze that stirred the wolf’s fur moved not a fold of their garments. The flowers of a forgotten springtime bloomed in the crowns the frolicking dancers wore. The procession marched in the warm, still air of a summer evening. The wolf followed through the cold, winter night.

  The sacred way they trod led to a high rock that towered over the surrounding countryside. A temple, bone-white, crowned the rock. Its pale columns and pediment reared against the midnight sky.

  Even from where she stood, the wolf could see it was a ruin. Roofless, the columns pitted and broken, the pediment looted of the ivory and crystal-eyed statuary that once did honor to a nation and its gods.

  But still it stood majestic, decked in robes of starlight, a plaything of the wind and rain, gazing with patient tranquility on the brown plain and the eternal splendor of the dark blue sea beyond.

  The wolf paused at the foot of the rock and looked up.

  The steep path to the summit, once paved with marble and lined by statues of kings and emperors, gods and goddesses, was now only a barren, weed-grown trace.

  The marbles had been ripped out long ago to feed the lime kilns at Rome and Naples. The few standing statues were mutilated, without hands or heads. Many had fallen and were only vine-encased lumps lying on the grassy slopes leading up to the rock.

  The woman inside the wolf wondered what the dead eyes of the ghosts saw. Did they behold the temple in its ancient splendor or did they see what she did—an abandoned ruin? Did it matter to them what they saw? Did they care?

  The wolf sniffed the wind and scented the clean, sweet breeze from the ocean and she knew it didn’t matter. They lived beyond time with no worldly trifles to diminish their ardor or tarnish their love. To them, today was as yesterday or tomorrow. Life an eternal moment.

  I will come, she thought, as a supplicant. And beg help for Antonius and … myself.

  Laurel bushes grew all around the approach to the high rock. A branch yielded to the wolf’s jaws. A supplicant must bear a palm. The wolf began to climb the steep path to the temple crowning the summit, toward the stars.

  The sacred way circled the rock, going ever upward toward the sky, until she came at last to the top overlooking the sea. The air was clear, and the breeze blew constantly.

  When the wolf reached the top she found the temple empty and dark. The wind whined softly among the stark, broken columns. Before the doors to the sacred precinct the undying fire of the gods was a conical mound of pale, dead ash. The eternal sea breeze drew the ash into a veil of dust, dancing before her in the cold night air.

  The wolf paused, the laurel branch still clenched tightly in her jaws. A flicker of ironic laughter danced in her mind, so softly the wolf wasn’t sure if it belonged to her or another.

  “You feared to trouble the dead. Now all of your fears are set at naught. See how easily they escape you when they desire.” Somehow Regeane formed the words in her mind. She had only the limited resources of the wolf to draw on. And though the wolf thought well, she thought in images and patterns and not with words as humans did.

  But somewhere in the recesses of the wolf’s brain, she found the symbols she needed. They coalesced into words and she cried out silently. I come as a supplicant. Hear me. Answer me. Help me.

  The night wind blew more strongly for a moment. It swirled around the fire circle, lifting a cloud of ancient ash into the air, and sobbed through the shattered columns of the temple.

  Voices. Voices sang in the wind. Voices out of time. Voices whose lips were dust.

  Some condemned. Some mocked. Some even laughed as if coming from an immense distance down a long, coiling corridor of eternity where they had forgotten they were ever human.

  Voices. Wordless, whispering voices. Fading and finally falling into silence around her.

  Regeane gathered herself within the wolf’s brain and cried out again silently. Does no one hear the supplicant?

  The reply was the shadow of a sound. As if a vagrant breath of the ever-moving air swirled and caught at the broken pedestal where the tall statue of the god had once stood.


  Be silent, the voice commanded, for where I dwell, the supplicant is always heard.

  The sweet scent of bay seemed to grow stronger in the wolf’s nostrils.

  She glided from the far end of the temple toward Regeane, clothed in white, wearing the long, softly draped chiton and peplos of a woman. The peplos covered her head and arms. Not even her hands were visible.

  Her form was the shape and semblance of a woman. Her face was a thing of horror. The starlight gleamed on the naked bone of a skull.

  The wolf, wrapped in the beast’s indifference, whined softly, deep in her throat.

  The voice of the apparition resonated in the wolf’s mind. “Who are you? Why do you come to Cumae to trouble the noble, the sacred dead?”

  The voices in the wind leaped to a crescendo, moaning, weeping, cursing, howling. The blast plucked at the wolf’s fur and rattled the leaves of the branch in her mouth.

  The specter drew closer and closer.

  I am wolf, Regeane thought as her consciousness strove to separate itself from the wolf’s. The world seemed to recede as the woman’s mind twisted and turned, trying to force the wolf’s muscles to run gibbering in terror from the thing she faced.

  Red fury exploded through the double consciousness as the wolf raged back at the alien creature trying to control her, to turn her from her objective.

  Regeane was thrust away into blind darkness. She could no longer see or hear. Taste and touch were denied to her as she was tossed into a lightless void, screaming soundlessly. Their union was as sudden, as simultaneous as the burst of lightning and the clap of thunder when a storm breaks directly overhead.

  One moment she was in darkness; the next she stood woman-wolf, naked on the broken stone before the ruined temple and its dead fire, the laurel branch in her hand.

  She was woman and wolf both, and she had never known such power. She could feel the quivering tension inside her. She was taut as a wire, drawn between the two opposite poles of her nature, taut as a harp string strained to its absolute limit just before it sings its sweetest note … or snaps.

  She confronted the unnatural horror in front of her.