The Silver Wolf (51 page)

The young girl who had answered the door reappeared, looking suitably abashed. She took Elfgifa by the hand as if to lead her away, but Maeniel sank to one knee beside Elfgifa and looked up at Regeane. To his relief, her waxen pallor had faded and color flooded her cheeks.

“You will be a good lord to Regeane, won’t you?” Elfgifa asked. “My father told me that if a man is the head of the house, the woman is its heart. And a man without a heart is no more than a corpse.” Elfgifa spoke quickly but clearly, as if to make sure Maeniel understood.

“Yes,” he promised. “I will. I could never forsake my heart, little one. So go with an easy mind. I will welcome you to my home as one of my lady’s attendants.”

The girl sped Elfgifa away. And Regeane stood face to face with Maeniel. She saw a tall man. He was a little over six feet, thick bodied. His bare arms rippled with muscle, massive and powerful, that clothed his frame.

He wore trousers with cross-gartered leggings and over that a heavy white linen shirt, long enough to be a tunic. Over that a cuirass of chain mail. His brown mantle was secured to his shoulder with a golden brooch, a lion’s head with large ruby eyes.

His face was the most striking of all, powerful, with a strong nose and cleft chin, and an air of seeming sternness. But the deep laugh lines around the mouth and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes indicated that this man smiled often and loved laughter. Overall, a kind face, sure and strong.

His hair was thick, dark, and coarse. It curled freely at his neck and forehead. It was roughly cropped, short. Long hair was a hindrance to a warrior and wouldn’t fit properly under a helmet. It was clear he was a fighting man. He wore a long sword, very plain, utilitarian, suspended from a heavy ox-hide belt and baldric.

Fascinated, Maeniel stepped toward Regeane as if they were alone. She’d been in the kitchen garden with Lucilla, and was wearing a tabard of brown wool over her simple white gown. She was holding up the skirts of the tabard. In it were pouched a few late peaches from Lucilla’s trees.

Her hair was drawn back in a loose fall from the top of her head, streaming down her back, the silver ends shining in the sun. The wolf in Maeniel rose and smelled the perfume of the peaches, sun-warmed flesh, the clean wind.

Thus
, Maeniel thought.
Thus I was captured long ago. I was a wolf, but Blaze made me into a man and a warrior. So I was captured then and, in the same way, now by a fair woman
.

Maeniel took another step closer. Regeane’s hands were locked in the tabard, and she thought absurdly as Maeniel’s arm went around her wrist,
I can’t let go or the peaches will fall
.

His kiss was a chaste one, closed soft lips on her own, but there was such an immense naturalness in the strength of the arms around her and her presence in their embrace, that Regeane quivered all over. Afterward, she was never sure whether she trembled in fear or desire. She relaxed against a body so strong it seemed made of sun-warmed stone.

Her lips parted slightly and her mouth opened. But Maeniel didn’t press his advantage. The kiss eased and he took a step back, releasing her both from his arms and his spell.

“Happy,” he said, “are the words of the poet. ‘She is,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘a fair gem from the realm of sun and wind, a cup of honey. A man might drown himself in such sweetness.’ May I have a peach?”

“A what?” Regeane asked, bemused. She came back to herself with a shake. She stretched the tabard out toward Maeniel. “They are touched by frost,” she said.

“Like your hair, exquisite one,” he answered as he selected one
of the velvet-covered fruits. He ate it in a few bites, holding Regeane’s eyes with his own. He tossed the pit into a flower bed.

“Rich, ripe, and rare,” he said. “Like she who gave it to me.” The juices gleamed on his lips.

Regeane permitted herself a little shake as she tried to regain her wits. Somewhere she knew the wolf was lying on her back in a bed of flowers, all four paws in the air, wiggling with delight. Regeane shot a thought at her dark companion,
You’re thoroughly disgusting
. The wolf really didn’t care.

Lucilla stared at them both in something like horror. Gavin stared too, his mouth open.

“Shut your mouth, Gavin, before your brains fall out,” Maeniel said. “And fetch the presents we brought the lady.”

Lucilla quickly removed the peaches from Regeane’s tabard and brushed soft wisps of curling hair from around her face. “We didn’t anticipate seeing you so soon,” she said.

“Yes,” Regeane said. “I expected to meet you at the feast tonight.” She looked down at the brown tabard and the white dress. “I’m afraid I’m not properly attired. I’m sorry …”

“Don’t apologize, please,” Maeniel said. “It is I who should be contrite, coming unannounced.”

“Ahem,” Gavin said. He emptied the saddle bags on the marble table top.

Even Lucilla, who was used to wealth, gasped to see so much gold of every kind spill out of it. There were necklaces, rings, coins, pendants, torcs of twisted gold and silver, brooches of every kind. Gems, precious and semiprecious, glowed among the gold. Rubies, deep red, sapphires blue as the sky at twilight, the clear water of aquamarines, and sun-colored topaz all lent fire to the mass of riches.

“A wedding gift for my future wife,” Maeniel said.

Lucilla gave him a quick narrow look. “You’re a generous man to make your wife independently wealthy before your wedding day.”

“She is,” Maeniel said, “a lady most royal and must properly support her state.”

Regeane stood, simply gazing at the wealth spread out in front of her. She bit her lip, uncertain what to do. She looked up at Maeniel. When she was in his arms, she had felt as if she had
known him for a thousand years, but now he seemed a stranger. A pleasant stranger, to be sure, yet still a stranger. And then it was borne upon her that this was a man she might one day have to kill.

He would, she knew, dress the woman in gold. And the woman would find all desire quenched by ecstasy in his arms. But what had he for the hunter, the silver hunter of midnight? No, he could never know the wolf.

She looked at the pile of wealth on the table and the wolf thought of the shimmer of sunlight on a mountain lake at dawn, or a waterfall wreathed in rainbows, seen through the cool green gloom of a summer forest. And the jewels seemed like the cheap trinkets offered to serving girls in the thieves’ market. No, the wolf was not so easily bought or sold.

Maeniel looked at her with a fixed, speculative expression. He stirred the deep heap of gold with his hand, carelessly. “Please,” he said, “select something to wear tonight. As a compliment to me.”

“Of course,” Regeane said mechanically.

He lifted a beautiful pure gold necklace from the pile. It was clear to both Regeane and Lucilla that the thing was very old and of such fine workmanship that it must be precious even above the intrinsic value of the shining metal it contained. A confection of tiny pitchers interspersed with flowers of amethyst suspended from a thick flat golden chain.

Regeane touched the necklace, her hand closed around it, and the day vanished as it had when she touched the brocade dress, the day she met Lucilla. She was in a long hall, brightly lit by torches. Feasting and revelry surrounded her. The guests occupied couches stretching the length of the room. In the center acrobats capered and leaped. A boy played a double flute. Its music sent a thrill of abandoned desire along her veins. She sat near her love.

He occupied the high-ended curved couch opposite hers. How strange is the heart, the girl who was Regeane and was not Regeane, thought. He was hardly an impressive man. He had a short, curly, dark beard and equally dark, tightly curled hair. His skin had the weatherbeaten look of a sailor. The gold and amethyst necklace was his gift. She fingered it gently as she
looked deep into his eyes. There was a proud, knowing look in them as he gazed on her and she was serenely aware he would share that knowledge with her as they lay together on his couch before dawn.

He lifted a cup, a thing of beauty, black-on-red ware, its bottom, half obscured by the wine, was a picture of Venus lying with Mars, trapped by Vulcan’s net. Their bodies were locked in a frenzy of desire indifferent to the meshes containing them.

He crooked his arm and raised the cup to her lips. She lifted her cup and offered it to him. Arms entwined, they drank together. The scene vanished. Regeane almost screamed as raw-edged pain crashed through her mind and body like a storm surf.

Regeane was somewhere else. Now, she lay on a bier. She was decked for a burial. She was not yet dead. She was wearing her finest white gown, embroidered with rosettes of gold, the necklace, and a diadem. She couldn’t see the diadem, but she was sure she would know its shape. A crown of finely wrought golden willow. She didn’t move because she knew instinctively that even the slightest movement would bring her intolerable pain. She must have broken nearly every bone in her body when she fell.

Through the window, she could hear the thunder and crash of the sea against a rocky shore. But here in this dim chamber only darkness surrounded her. Someone spoke in the darkness. The utterances were thick with tears.

“She has awakened. I had hoped she wouldn’t.”

The girl who was Regeane and not Regeane recognized her mother’s voice.

The woman stepped out of the gloom. She was veiled in black, her face pale against the darkness. Beside her stood a priestess, who also wore black and carried a staff. The priestess wore a gorgon mask with mouth twisted in fury, snakes dripping from her hair. The staff she carried was surmounted by the poppy goddess. She wore the crosshatched pods as a crown and her eyes were closed.

“The flower of sleep,” Regeane whispered.

“You shouldn’t have walked so near the rocks,” her mother sobbed. “Not in your condition. You fell.”

“I didn’t fall,” Regeane heard the girl say, weakly.

“No,” the priestess said, her voice muffled by the mask. “I thought not. Well,” she continued, “it is now as you wished. The man you loved is no more, the child you carried is no more, and soon you will be no more.” She extended a cup toward Regeane, the same black-on-red ware. The picture on the side of the calyx was of the genus of sleep, a beautiful youth. His eyes were closed and he had wings on his shoulders.

“Drink now,” the priestess said, “the water of Lethe and find rest.”

The girl closed her eyes and tightened her lips. “Carry me to the hearth,” she said. “I would not die here with the sea sounding in my ears. The sea took him from me. Her waves beat him down, the water strangled him, leaving only a rag of flesh tumbled by the surf. I would not hear her rage in triumph as I sink into night.”

They carried her on her bier to the center of the red-pillared hall. The hearth was high and round, plastered and painted around its border. The fire flared and leaped toward an opening in the ceiling. The flames painted the faces of men and women as they gathered round. Some wept, some glared in stony-eyed disapproval, but each raised a hand, one by one, in farewell.

Then the calyx touched at her lips. Smoke from the hearth fire filled her nostrils and its light blinded her eyes.

Regeane watched from afar as the funeral cortege wound in and out along the roads, through the patchwork of ripening grain fields. The heads tossed yellow-gilt, rustling like whispers of grief under a mild blue sky.

Darkness … a long darkness.

The tomb robbers’ torch broke through the roof. Where once there had been beauty, there was now only bone blackened by an age under the earth. The teeth were still white, though, and the thief knew as he reached for the glimmer of purple and gold at her throat that she must have been young.

He jerked at the necklace and the dark skull went flying, shattering, leaving a scattering of teeth on the floor. Then the necklace was his, but one hand had been placed on her breast as he leaned over to grab it, braced one palm on the stone couch. The bone hand fell, the long nails caught his arm, and it gashed to the bone. His scream rang in Regeane’s ears as she tore her
hand from the necklace and backed away, gasping, trying not to show either Maeniel or Lucilla the shock and horror in her face.

“I … I … think not.”

“No,” Maeniel said. He was still holding the necklace. He dropped it with a clatter among the rest of the gold.

Regeane stood, shivering with the terror of her vision. She got another look at Maeniel’s face. She was being tested, probed.

Maeniel reached down and lifted a torc, simple but made of heavy gold with inlaid knobs at its ends. “What do you think of this, then?” he asked.

Regeane braced herself, stretched out her hand, her fingers closed around it.

Again there was darkness and the sound of the sea. A pyre flared on a headland. All around Regeane were the sounds of anguished grief. The wind blew the flames aside for a second and Regeane saw the dark figure within. And she knew, with the perishing of this woman, all her world perished also. In the night vigil of her mourners she understood darkness was the elegy, the violent sea a dirge not for one woman, but for a whole people.

Regeane drew her hand away very quickly. “No,” she whispered, stone-faced.
What is he doing to me?
she thought.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said as he laid the torc down gently. “It is said to have belonged to a mighty queen never defeated in battle.”

“It would not be suitable for me,” Regeane said.

Maeniel reached down and lifted a mass of golden chain by one crooked finger. It emerged as another necklace made of fine golden chains in red, yellow, and white gold secured by fruiting grape vine with each grape picked out in pearls.

Tentatively, Regeane took hold of it, wondering what sort of trick he might be playing now. This time the vision she saw was of morning. Maeniel himself lay on a stone in the center of a circle of menhirs. He was naked. His youthful flesh was beautiful in the gentle light. His face was that of a much younger man, the long muscular limbs stretched out in voluptuous relaxation were those of a stripling youth.