The Silver Wolf Page 3

  The dress, when it was new, had broad bands of embroidery at the neck and sleeves. The thread was gold. A thing Hugo and Gundabald scrounged assiduously for among her mother’s possessions. One of them had long ago picked out the rich strands.

  Outside, the light was bright. They should feel safe, she thought.

  They must have. The heavy door opened at a touch.

  Gundabald was sitting at the table. His eyeballs looked as if they were bleeding. Drool was dried in the stubble of his bristly black beard, but he gobbled the dark bread, whey cheese, and sour wine with a good appetite.

  Hugo knelt on the floor, retching into a chamber pot.

  The large round loaf was in the center of the table. Regeane twisted off a big hunk. The bread was thick and smelled of olive oil and onions in the dough. Regeane’s strong teeth ripped into it. She had good teeth.

  Little was left of the cheese but rind. She ate that along with the bread, biting her fingers twice in the process.

  A brown terra-cotta bowl of figs rested next to the bread. She reached for a fig. The flat of Gundabald’s knife came down across the back of her hand. It made a slapping sound. It hurt.

  She flinched and snatched her hand back. Her eyes met Gundabald’s.

  He chuckled, spraying crumbs from his mouth.

  Her hand was still on the table near the bowl. The fingers were long and tapered finely, so it was not noticeable that the nails were dense, narrowing to blunt points at the tips.

  Gundabald hit her again; this time raising a weal on the backs of Regeane’s fingers. She didn’t flinch or pull away. Gundabald loved hurting people. To show pain only encouraged him.

  He glared at the red marks his knife made, then back at Regeane’s face. He seemed baffled by her stoicism.

  “Eat some more of the bread,” he said. “It’ll put meat on your bones. You need some.”

  Hugo had finished vomiting. He was sitting in one of the chairs by the table. His face beaded with sweat. But he managed to turn an appreciative eye toward Regeane. “She’s not bad now,” he said. “That hair. Those eyes.” Then he applied himself to a cup of red wine. The first swallow gagged him. He hawked and spat on the floor, then very quickly gulped a few mouthfuls.

  Gundabald eyed him, then Regeane. She does have her points, he thought. Her hair was long and dark, almost black at her scalp and neck, shading toward silver and, finally, white at the tips. It never tangled. He had himself seen it rise and fall back into position when the wind blew it too far out of place.

  Her eyes were truly beautiful, large, warm, and dark—until they caught the light. Then they flared into gold, as water does in the setting sun.

  Aside from that, she wasn’t much. Skinny, pale, and colorless. Gundabald favored women who allowed him to get a good grip—those who would squeal, moan, and give him a hard ride. He had a feeling she wouldn’t do any of the three. And God help the man who woke in bed with her by moonlight.

  Still, she was nearly as helpless as any other woman by day and he needed to take measures to protect her. Charlemagne’s star was on the rise, and she was a potentially valuable property.

  Hugo gulped more wine, presumably trying to keep his mutinous stomach from reacting to the insult. The wine was of strange substance. It stank. Between swallows of wine, he gnawed on some of the bread. He had less success at eating than Regeane and Gundabald did. Hugo had a few rotten teeth.

  Gundabald drew his foot back slowly and carefully. Then slammed his heel into the unsuspecting Hugo’s groin.

  Hugo didn’t scream. Regeane doubted that he could scream. He clutched at the spot between his legs. His eyes rolled back in their sockets until only the whites showed. His chair tipped over backward. His skull hit the wooden floor with an audible crack.

  Gundabald stuffed the last of his food into his mouth, sighed, and rose to his feet. He stood over Hugo and turned the gasping man on his side so he wouldn’t strangle.

  Hugo spewed a fan of vomit on the floor: bread, wine, then fragments of meat and turnips as his violated innards reached for last night’s supper.

  Regeane rose to her feet in horror, one hand on her breast. She knew they were a violent pair, but this exceeded the usual measure of savagery.

  Gundabald snorted in derision at the fallen Hugo, then dropped a few silver coins in front of him. “Get her a maid,” he said.

  Hugo made a gurgling sound that somehow seemed to indicate puzzlement.

  “Hire a maid,” Gundabald said in a louder voice. “Get your cousin Regeane a maid.”

  An old woman came into the room. She was small, bent, and twisted with the disease Regeane had observed lingered among the narrow dark streets of cities. Her face was pockmarked. She had a bent nose and a cauliflower ear. Gray hair straggled down from under her veil.

  She cursed Hugo for making a vile mess on the floor. She also cursed Gundabald, apparently for the crime of existing. She ignored Regeane. She spoke the rough argot of the Roman streets, a language Regeane found obscene, fascinating, expressive and, at times, almost beautiful, but definitely not Latin any longer.

  Gundabald didn’t understand her, but he got the message. “What are you yammering about, you old hag?” he roared.

  To Regeane’s surprise, the woman’s speech slowed. She spat out a very imaginative description of some of Gundabald’s probable ancestors.

  He took a step toward the tiny woman, his fist raised.

  In an eye blink, a dagger appeared in her hand. The blade was black and pitted with rust, but the edges were honed fine and glittered wickedly.

  Gundabald stepped back quickly. “Everyone’s in bad humor today,” he grumbled. Glancing down at the fallen Hugo, he dropped a few more pieces of silver beside him. “Are you listening?” he shouted.

  Hugo nodded vigorously. He was in no position to defend himself against his father’s wrath.

  “You will hire a maid for Regeane. You may rape the maid if she will let you. You may not touch your cousin. You may not put your hand under her skirt or on her leg. If you lay one finger on her, I will cut that finger off. Show any further signs of ‘affection’ for your cousin, and I’ll put you out of action painfully and permanently. Understood?”

  Hugo nodded vigorously again.

  Gundabald wrapped a ratty velvet mantle around himself and strode toward the door.

  The old woman was mopping the floor. As he passed, Gundabald with deliberate malice drove the toe of his boot into the side of the bucket. Dirty water flew everywhere.

  The old woman’s knife appeared again. She described a sexual perversion Regeane didn’t know existed and attributed it to Gundabald. He laughed and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Hugo began moaning and crying for help. Regeane ignored him and sat down.

  The old woman glanced at her, then left. In a few moments, she returned with a sausage and gave it to the girl. The wolf visited Regeane briefly when she bit into the sausage, but even the beast’s hyperacute senses couldn’t identify what type of meat filled the thing. For all she could tell, it might have been a previous visitor to the lodging house—one who attempted to leave without paying his bill. Thyme, fennel, and garlic overpowered all other odors, but she was ravenous. She wrapped the malodorous thing in bread and gobbled it. When she was finished, she felt better. The old woman continued to clean with surprising efficiency.

  Hugo pulled himself up from the floor and sat on the chair, holding his head in his hands. Regeane was finishing the last piece of bread. He dropped his hands, glared at her and said, “Bitch! You’ve eaten everything.”

  Regeane’s chin lifted. The wolf paced slowly out of darkness, head lowered, lips wrinkled back from her teeth in a smile of killing rage. She, not Regeane, met Hugo’s eyes. He bore her stare for a few seconds, then turned away.

  Between one thing and another, Gundabald had dropped a good bit of silver on him. He gathered it up quickly from his clothing and the floor. Then he rose and, giving the old woman a wide berth, was g
one.

  The old woman muttered several obscenities at the closing door, then chuckled, saying something else in the local dialect.

  “Don’t do that,” Regeane said. “I speak the Roman—” She broke off, not knowing what to call the local idiom.

  The old woman chuckled. “I don’t care what you know. He fears you. I can’t say why, but he does. The old devil needn’t worry. The little puddle of puke wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you.”

  “Gundabald likes hitting people,” Regeane said dully.

  The old woman nodded assent as if this were a given. “Best hope, he tries it again with me. I’ll slice off the hand that touches me.”

  “Do you have any water?” Regeane asked hesitantly. “I’m so thirsty and the wine …”

  “Is hog piss.” The woman finished the sentence for her. She dropped the mop with a clatter and shambled out. She returned a few minutes later with a large brown earthenware cup. “Most often,” she said, “I would say don’t touch the water in Rome. Even the lowest grade of wine sold at the tavernas is safer. But last night torrents of rain fell. They flushed and cleansed the cistern.”

  When Regeane’s lips touched the water, she and the wolf drank. It was cold with a faint undertaste of lime plaster and smelled of the winter sky: chilly gray, hung with rain or mist filling the hollows among the hills before sunrise, bearing an icy dew thick enough to drench the garments of early risers on winter mornings. Somewhere on a hilltop, long grass swirled, danced, and bowed to the storm winds while above transparent gray clouds fleeted across the sun.

  When the cup was empty, Regeane closed her eyes. She and the wolf communed in the darkness of her soul. The wolf snarled. She was ready to tell Regeane how much she hated Hugo, Gundabald, and the life she was leading. She was ready to fight back, escape the trap she was in. Better death than the world they inhabited.

  Regeane felt, for the first time by day, the faint dislocation brought by the wolf as she approached by moonlight. The woman jerked back in terror. She feared the consequences of rebellion. She didn’t want to know how much she hated Gundabald, how deeply she feared him. Vile as her family was, she clung to them. They were better than the alternative.

  The punishments visited on witches sickened and horrified her. Her mother had whispered into Regeane’s ears tales of the last agonies of those women doomed for practicing unnatural arts. Naked in a barrel studded with nails, the barrel rolled until the screams stopped. Fire and the stake; sewn into a sack with a rat, a dog, and a snake and thrown into the river. Punishments worse than those designed by fiends from hell to torture the damned were devised by men of God to confront what they saw as evil.

  “No, no,” Regeane said to the wolf. “I’m too afraid. I can’t. Go away. Please, please go away.”

  The wolf gazed at Regeane solemnly, then she made a soft sound of regret and vanished into the darkness.

  “What’s wrong?” the old woman asked. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” Regeane said. “Only tired. Thank you,” she said to the woman. Then she went into her room and barred the door.

  The narrow stone cell was icy, but brightly lit by the sun on the walls. Regeane lay down on the bed, wrapped the mantle around herself, and slept.

  HUGO HIRED THE MAID. HE BROUGHT HER HOME IN the early hours of the morning.

  Regeane was awakened by the commotion.

  Gundabald was up late. He was entertaining a guest. Whether boy or woman, Regeane couldn’t tell. She might have summoned the wolf. No one could fool her nose, but the wolf was a virgin and a fastidious one. Regeane couldn’t face dealing with her disapproval and downright disgust. The night creature believed humans were oversexed and felt her human partner was too preoccupied with prurient curiosity.

  The air drifting under the door reeked of raw sex. Regeane fell asleep to the grunts and snorts of passion.

  She was awakened not by sound, but by scent. The wolf was present. Something, no not something, a snake was hunting among the vines near her window. If the reptile musk disturbed the wolf, it gagged the woman. Regeane rose to her feet in the darkened room.

  Even this slight sound was enough to frighten the slender predator sliding among the vines. The scent weakened. She heard a thump and a swish below her window as the interloper departed.

  Hugo crashed through the door in the next room.

  Someone shrieked.

  Hugo screamed, “Sodomite!”

  Evidently, the visitor had been a boy.

  This was followed by the sound of running feet.

  “God damn him!” Gundabald roared. “Now, see what you’ve done. The little ass fucker took my purse with him.”

  The sound of a blow followed.

  Hugo howled.

  A feminine screech followed, then four screams, in rapid succession.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Regeane gasped and backed away from the door. She recognized this sound. The landlord below was pounding on his ceiling.

  A volley of curses followed, along with threats to throw them out into the streets now if the noise didn’t stop.

  The voices in the other room dropped.

  Hugo cursed Gundabald.

  Gundabald cursed Hugo.

  The girl’s voice sobbed.

  “Shut up, you stupid little cunt,” Gundabald whispered hoarsely. “I’ll twist your other tit if you don’t stop caterwauling. Strike a light, damn it. It’s black as a mole’s ass in here.”

  Regeane heard the snap of flint and steel.

  “Merciful God, who is this?” Gundabald asked.

  “Regeane’s maid,” Hugo answered. “I found her in a tavern.”

  “Where in a tavern? Down the cloaca? In the shithole? She makes most nanny goats look bewitchingly beautiful.”

  REGEANE REALLY DIDN’T CARE TO SIDE WITH GUNDABALD, but in this she had to agree with him when she met the girl the next morning.

  Her name was Silve. She was bowlegged, skinny, buck-toothed, walleyed, and sallow-skinned, which might not have been too bad if she’d been intelligent, kind, or even hardworking and well-intentioned. She was none of those. When she was not sleeping in her alcove off the main room or being violently and noisily ridden by Hugo, she joined with him in harassing Regeane.

  As her mother had done, Regeane tried to bring some measure of order into their lives. She took over the chores Gisela had once performed. She did her best to stretch the little money they had. She cooked simple one-pot meals for the four of them, saw to the washing when she could persuade Gundabald to pay the washerwoman, and helped the old woman—Regeane never knew her name and always thought of her as “the old woman”—clean up after the other three.

  The old woman was the only one who could get any work out of Silve. She accused her of such vile obscenities that Silve, afraid to attack her, would be so galvanized by rage that she scrubbed and washed with a will.

  In her spare time, Regeane would retreat to her narrow room and, with cold, numb fingers, try to put her scanty wardrobe in order. She had no decent sewing needles. The few she had were made of bone and their points blunted quickly. She had no thread so she unraveled rags to get enough thread to alter her dresses.

  Her mother had been buried in her one good mantle and gown. Regeane had seen to that, even though Gundabald and Hugo cursed her for a fool, saying Gisela wouldn’t need warm clothes where she was going, only a winding sheet. What remained of both her mother’s and her wardrobes was shabby beyond belief.

  Regeane accepted the situation. Most women had the same problem. Cloth was expensive. With a loom, she could have woven her own, but a loom was a large, costly piece of equipment. Few families had access to one, so women spent their time often as not resewing what few clothes they had, trying to decently cover their nakedness.

  As autumn slowly wore into winter, Regeane’s despair deepened. The lodging house was part of an old ruin. Even the proprietor had no idea of the purpose it once served. The icy winter wind sobbed and moaned through t
he stone rooms by day and by night. A charcoal brazier heated the air for only a few inches around the coals. The walls and floors remained bitterly cold to the touch.

  Gundabald and Hugo were more than happy to eat the food Regeane prepared, though they denigrated it as coarse peasant fare. They scattered bones under the table, spat gristle on the floor. When they pissed, they missed the pot and left reeking yellow puddles everywhere. After eating, Gundabald wandered off to a tavern in search of further entertainment.

  Hugo and Silve went to bed and exercised the webbing under the mattress. They fucked each other blind, drank themselves incapable, then into a sodden coma.

  Gundabald usually returned in the small hours and—depending on his luck with the dice box, boys, or women—he might or might not wake Silve and Hugo and chase them ‘round and ‘round the room, flogging their screaming, naked bodies with his leather belt. The landlord’s fury usually put an end to these entertainments, whereupon they all retired.

  In the morning, someone would wake early, usually Silve—she was most easily ejected from a warm bed—would open Regeane’s door so she could come out and clean up the mess.

  To compound Regeane’s problems, the rain moved in.

  The wolf loved it. The winds moving through the city blew the human stench away. Freshets swelled the Tiber, flushing out the raw sewage seeping into the river. Downpours cleansed cobblestones and walls. Briefly, in the watery winter sun, the city became a place of light and color. Marble gleamed. Orange stucco walls glowed. Long wands of red valerian grew in brickwork, and crumbling pediments waved red and pink banners against the cloudy gray sky.

  The Romans loved flowers. Window boxes and pots on balconies flamed with late blooming blue sage, golden yarrow, fragrant dusty white chamomile, and yellow autumn daisies.

  A few sellers of iris, lavender, and late blooming roses clustered in the city’s squares and piazzas. Usually, the vendors huddled around fires or charcoal braziers, warming their hands, the flowers looking incongruous against the cold black and gray cobbles, their petals nipped and tossed by the icy wind.