The Silver Wolf (25 page)

The broken ends of the branch caught and the fire flared. And, through the flames, he saw that in the place where a wolf stood only a moment before … a woman.

A beautiful woman, clad only in a magnificent nakedness and a necklace of silver and pearls.

The young shepherd bowed down, pressing his forehead to the earth. He choked out the words, “Oh, queen of the night, why do you come to me?”

Though woman in body, Regeane’s mind was still dominated by the wolf and she was filled with the wolf’s boldness. The plan had been a crude one, only half thought out. She had hoped to bribe the young man with the necklace. And if that failed, turn wolf and terrify him into submission. Finding herself worshipped was disconcerting.

But, she decided, worship was not all that bad. She had been afraid of what she might have to do to compel him to her will. Now her task seemed much easier.

She stepped toward him, keeping the low fire between them. He peered up at her through his fingers.

The wolf-woman laughed, something the wolf wouldn’t have thought of and the woman wouldn’t have dared to do. “Aren’t you afraid that if you stare, the nakedness of a goddess will blind you?”

To her surprise, the boy raised his head and gave her a look of adoration. “They say he who looks upon the mistress of the night will be desired by all women and remain fair of face all his days. And he who touches her …”

Something in Regeane’s expression must have changed because the boy’s courage deserted him, and he threw himself into a full prostration saying, “Have mercy! Don’t kill me!”

Regeane was cold. The bitter night air was hostile to her naked flesh as she became more woman by the moment. She fought the urge to desert this perilous situation, turn wolf again, and run. She gritted her teeth, tried not to shiver, and thought,
You are the goddess now. Use your power!

“Fear not,” she said, unclasping Lucilla’s necklace. “I don’t seek your life. I want you to protect one I love and shelter him.”

The boy raised his bemused face from the ground, then took the necklace from her hand. He didn’t have the courage to stare at her face again. Instead he gazed at the small, soft woman’s hand that held it out to him. A hand that might be the hand of any young girl.

Regeane stepped back into the grass.

“Wait,” the boy said hoarsely. “Nothing like this night will ever happen to me again.”

Regeane hesitated. She hovered on the verge of change. She could almost feel the cascade of moonbeams in her flesh. “Why?”
she whispered softly. The fire was very low. She could barely see the boy’s face.

“Oh, mistress of the night, only touch me once that I may never fail in love.”

“Close your eyes and lift your face to me,” Regeane said.

The boy’s eyes closed. He was trembling. The cloud of her moon-tipped hair fell around his face, and her lips brushed his in one soft, sweet kiss.

Regeane stepped back and realized Antonius stood beside her. His face was covered by the coarse, black mantle, but his eyes stared, wide and astonished and frightened. Then the moon darkness flowed through her and she was wolf again.

The young shepherd bowed down, closing his eyes tightly, but Antonius stood staring down into her eyes.

“Why, Lupa?” he asked softly. “Why?”

But Regeane was already away, a silver shadow racing over the Campagna for home.

DETERMINED NOT TO BE CAUGHT AS SHE HAD BEEN the night before, she held herself to a punishing pace until she saw the city’s lights and smelled again the usual tang of woodsmoke and garbage she associated with human habitations. She dropped to a lope and sought Lucilla’s villa.

As she jumped the orchard wall, she saw a faint streak of white on the eastern horizon. She trotted to the atrium and, unable to wait any longer, lowered her muzzle to the pool.

In the growing light she saw the reflection of her face in the water—the deep, yellow eyes buried in silver-tipped fur, the thick ruff that framed her face—then abruptly a tremor of darkness flowed over her and she found herself kneeling before the pool looking down at her human face, at the dark hair flowing over her shoulders and her own strange, sad eyes.

Regeane remained kneeling among the irises and cascades of autumn daisies, transfixed by her own weariness and the beauty of the silent garden in the first light.

The pool reflected the sunrise colors, transparent blue, then rose. The flowers, heavy with the night dew, were beginning to let down their fragrance into the cool, morning air. The aromas of mint and chamomile bruised by her knees hung around her.

Regeane closed her eyes and took a long breath.

“Oh, my God,” a voice gasped. “Oh, my dear, sweet, merciful God. No wonder you were afraid to marry.” Lucilla sat on one of the benches beside the pool.

“You saw,” Regeane whispered. “You know.”

“I saw …” Lucilla’s hand flew to her cheek and she turned her face away from Regeane. “Oh, God, I saw … I don’t believe what I saw.” She turned back to confront the younger woman.

Regeane rose slowly to her feet and walked along the flagstone path toward Lucilla, asking, “Would you lend me your mantle? The air is cold and some of the servants might come out. I’m naked.”

“So you are,” Lucilla said, staring at her with unbelieving eyes. “So you are, naked as a nymph. For a moment, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. They do that, you know, as you age,” she babbled. “I thought, ‘A wolf. How does a wolf come here? I must call my servants to drive it away,’ and then in a moment it came to me. ‘Old woman, that’s no wolf, but only a garden statue kneeling among the flowers,’ and then …” Lucilla drew back from Regeane, her face stiff with terror. “And then … and then … you moved.”

Regeane stood only a few feet from Lucilla. She stretched out her hand. “The mantle, please. I’m cold.”

Absently, still gazing open-mouthed at Regeane, Lucilla unwound the mantle from her shoulders and placed it in Regeane’s hand.

Regeane wrapped herself in the heavy cloth. “Thank you.”

“Don’t stare at me so,” Lucilla said. “Not with those eyes. I know I look a ragged hag, but I have my pride, and … I have passed a sleepless night.”

“Are you going to denounce me?” Regeane asked.

“Denounce you?” Lucilla asked, her mouth snapping shut. “For what?”

“For being a witch, a sorceress.”

Lucilla laughed. The short peal of laughter was shrill and slightly hysterical. “Of course not,” the older woman said. “I never denounce anyone except those who plot against Hadrian.
Everyone knows that I’ve lived too long outside the law to sympathize with those superior judges, the iron-fisted soldiers who …”

Regeane sank down on the bench.

Lucilla took her in her arms. “Oh, dear. Oh, you poor dear.” Suddenly she stared down at Regeane in horror. “Have you been out on the Campagna all night?”

Regeane sat up. “Yes, with Antonius. He’s safe. I left him in the care of a shepherd.”

Lucilla buried her face in her hands. She sighed deeply, then let her hands drop to her lap and stared out across the reflecting pool. Then she let out a quick, little chuckle that surprised Regeane. “You think you’re a witch, eh?” she asked.

Regeane said, “I don’t know what I am.”

“Can you do … what I saw you do … at will?” Lucilla asked.

“No,” Regeane answered. “I mean, I don’t know.” She began to flounder. “I never thought about it. My mother and I never talked about it.”

“No, but then she wouldn’t, would she?” Lucilla said. “It does explain the hold your uncle had over you. Why she let him and that dissolute son of his dress her in rags while they went out and spent her money.”

“No,” Regeane gasped.

“Yes,” said Lucilla. “And it explains the hold they have over you, too.” She sat quietly for a moment, gazing down at her lap. Her fingers played idly with the folds of the gown.

“I can just see that idiot mother of yours,” Lucilla said. “A saintly woman, otherworldly. Isn’t that what you told me? She locked you up, didn’t she? Hid you away like some dirty little secret. And in between bars, bolts, and narrow little cells, all you got to see were the wax candles of churches and shrines decked with the decaying, wasted flesh of purported saints and holy men.”

Regeane gagged and whispered, “Stop.” She took a deep breath. “Stop. Don’t remind me. Sometimes she got pieces of dead flesh, little splinters of bone. She pounded them to a powder and tried to make me drink them.”

“Ugh,” Lucilla said. “Just like that lack-wit physician with his hippopotamus dung.”

Regeane gasped again. “I used to try to take her potions.” She began to cry, tears coursing down her cheeks. “She suffered so much. I wanted to try to ease her pain.”

Lucilla jumped to her feet. “Seems to me you were the one doing the suffering,” she snarled. “All because she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, accept the situation and try to protect you.”

“Yes,” Regeane admitted uncertainly, “but who could, who would?”

“I can,” Lucilla said. “I will. I just have. And so could she if she had any backbone at all.”

“Lucilla,” Regeane cried. “Please stop. I loved my mother.”

“Child, child,” Lucilla said. She strode up and down before the bench. “We all loved our mothers. I loved mine, too, but she was like yours. Whimpering and groveling before Christ and his saints, and all the while living in mortal terror of my father’s fist and boot. Bearing child after child. I can’t remember how many. So often they died, most before the poor little mites ever got a chance to know what life was. Perhaps they were fortunate.”

Her face was set in a mask of bitterness. “The life of a farmer in the Abruzzi is cruel enough to deaden the hardest spirit. I know it nearly did mine. But no matter. It’s your life and your spirit we’re speaking of here. Your life and your future. First, how did this … change come upon you?”

“I …” Regeane said, “I … don’t …”

Lucilla stopped pacing and stood tapping one sandaled foot. “Come, come,” she prompted. “When did it first happen?”

“When I became a woman at the time of my first bleeding. I …” Regeane sighed. “I changed.”

“So,” Lucilla’s eyes narrowed. “So,” she repeated, “this skill of yours is like that so beautiful hair, not a thing of art, but of nature herself.”

“I seem to have been born with it,” Regeane said. “My father was also afflicted.”

Lucilla’s good-humored chuckle surprised Regeane again. “My pretty, I’ve known a witch or two in my time. More than two if the truth be known. A woman in my profession involves
herself in all kinds of shady dealings. And let me tell you, your powers would drive any of them mad with envy. Smelly old women, dabbling in drugs, caught up in the most revolting superstition and trickery. But you. No, real power is what you have, my girl.”

“Power?” Regeane asked. “Or a curse?”

“Power if you will have it, a curse if you deny it,” Lucilla said. “Come. Come. I saw you read the past in a piece of cloth when we first met. You can change your shape and become a creature of the night. Tell me, what else can you do?”

Regeane stood up, clutching the mantle around herself, her mind in a whirl. “Power,” she murmured.

Suddenly she staggered and Lucilla’s face seemed to recede into a great distance. Her gorge rose and her throat filled with bile. She felt sweat break out all over her skin.

When she came to herself, she was seated on the bench, her head between her knees. Lucilla’s arm was around her. She lifted her head and rested it on Lucilla’s shoulder. “I need food,” she said to Lucilla. “Food and sleep. The change … the moon darkness drains me.”

“The moon darkness,” Lucilla said. “Is that what you call it? The moon darkness?”

“Yes, because the pull is strongest at the full moon. I can seldom resist it then, and though my mother fought it with fasting and prayer, I always changed.”

“I take it you did the fasting,” Lucilla said dryly, “and she did the praying.”

“Yes, but it didn’t work.”

Lucilla nodded, She embraced Regeane. Her hand pressed Regeane’s face against her shoulder and she stared out over the garden.

The red and blue dawn was turning to gold as the light from the new sun reached down into the atrium. The air resounded with birdsong and jewel-like hummingbirds darted about, sipping the sun-warmed nectar from the flowers.

“Imprisonment, beatings, starvation, noxious messes forced down your throat, all in the name of purification,” Lucilla mused. “All futile. Not much of a preparation for life. But
come, I think I can remedy your hunger and thirst. In the evening Susanna places a tray for one in my study.”

Regeane stopped and was about to pick up the dress and sandals she’d discarded last night.

“No,” Lucilla said sharply. “Leave that whorish thing where it is. Follow me.”

Lucilla led her through another garden. This one was stiffly formal with an ornate marble tile walkway and clipped boxwood hedges. It was dotted with numerous pedestals. No statues, just pedestals.

Regeane gaped at them.

“Yes,” Lucilla said. “Once this garden was filled with beautiful bronze statues. The previous tenant, one Bishop Maxtentus, said he found them shockingly pagan and had them melted down.”

“Oh,” Regeane gasped. “How sad.”

“Don’t waste any tears on the statues, little love. Hadrian feels, and so do I, that Maxtentus found them shockingly valuable and sold them one and all for high prices to a Greek merchant who sailed away to Constantinople with them.

“He gave Hadrian the rather glib story about paganism, but when Hadrian asked him what he’d done with the bronze, Maxtentus developed a terrible stammer. When Hadrian looked into his other affairs, he found most valuable things he touched tended to stick to his fingers at least long enough for him to sell them at a profit.”

“What did he do?” asked Regeane.

“Maxtentus?” Lucilla asked.

“No, Hadrian,” Regeane said.

Lucilla chuckled. “Maxtentus is holding down a see in some nameless place among the Saxons. He’s up to his rear end in big, hairy, beer-guzzling warriors and busty blond women who never bathe and dress their hair with butter. He speaks only Latin. His flock apparently finds him a very satisfactory shepherd. He cannot remonstrate with them about any of their bad habits. They continue to worship trees, wells, and rivers. He continues to exhort them to abandon their ancient ways in a language of which they speak not one word. And he continues to
believe they could understand him if they would … only … try.”