Authors: Alice Borchardt
The man reached the entrance. The door opened by itself— or rather without the assistance of any human agency—and the physician exited as if propelled forward by a good, hard kick. He cleared the steps and landed on his nose in the street, followed by a shower of golden coins. The man got to his knees and began snatching them up as quickly as possible.
“What?” Chiara asked.
“His fees,” Hugo’s guest answered. “Gold is a powerful motivating force with you humans. His stay with your family has been a lucrative one. I thought I’d best send the money with him. You don’t want him back.”
“Yes,” Chiara said. “I mean no.”
The man heard her voice and looked up to where she was standing. Chiara met his eyes with her own stare. It burned into his brain. “Go,” she said. “Go. And never return.”
The man had collected all the gold and was on his feet, departing at a dead run, before she got the door closed. She dropped the bar into the socket and turned around. “Thank you,” she said.
“Nothing to it,” was the reply.
When she returned to the dining room, servants were cleaning up the spilled oil. Her sister, Phyllis, and the boys were vastly entertained. Her father was shaken, her mother looked relieved.
Chiara returned to her seat.
“What happened?” her father asked.
“He drinks too much. He’s seeing snakes,” Chiara told him. “They tell me it wears off in time.”
“Too bad,” her father said. “Now I’ll have to find another—”
“No, you won’t,” his wife said.
Armine looked shocked. In the entire time they’d been married, she’d never contradicted anything he’d ever said.
“Never again will I allow anyone to treat any illness of mine. I cannot describe the torments I endured at the hands of that miserable, drunken fool. I may live or I may die, but whatever I do, I will have my own way about it. Chiara is perfectly capable of caring for any of my needs, and she is the only physician who will attend me.
“One more day of that fool and I would have hired an assassin. Is that clear?”
“Yes, my dear,” Armine said.
A few days later Hugo left Florence on the road to Pavia, accompanied by Chiara and Armine, to be presented to the Lombard’s ruler Desiderius.
Armine’s wife was much improved and recovering nicely.
Maeniel moved forward through the mountains, as he told Regeane he would. Traveling largely by night and hunting at dawn and dusk, he managed to feed himself sparingly, until at last he reached the opening of the final pass and looked down from the lower slopes of the mountain on the well-watered river valleys of the Po.
The river valleys at the mountain’s foot were the gateway into Italy. The Romans had garrisoned the two river towns that offered the easiest passage. This country route was not simply the best passage, but in many ways the road through the two river valleys was the only one. Defensive positions had been taken in the gorges of both Ivrea and Susa. Not only taken but fortified, and the Lombard king had committed enough troops to hold both strongly.
From his perch on the mountain slope, Maeniel looked at the earthworks stretching across the narrow neck of the gorge and thought this Desiderius was no fool. This was, of all places in the mountains, probably the best place to stop Charles.
The gray wolf lay down, resting his head on his paws, to wait until nightfall. He had already inspected Ivrea and felt that it was the worst place to challenge Desiderius. Even if Charles could force the neck of the earthworks across the gorge, there were two or three excellent fallback positions for Desiderius’s force. Attacking there would be like running a gauntlet.
But here, here
, the wolf thought,
there were possibilities
.
He was careless that night. He was dealing with humans and was used to having his way. The wind was at his back and there was still a lot of daylight left when he started down. In fact, it wasn’t even sunset yet but the sun was behind the cliffs overlooking the valley. The river and the road lay in deep shadow, and the wind from the mountains at his back was turning cold.
Yes, there were the ancient Roman ramparts overlooking the river, the trace no more than a rocky footpath that ran down to the river’s edge and followed the water below the stone-built towers. An army trying to get past would have to march almost single file between high cliffs next to a river that, now fed by snowmelt from the heights, was a raging torrent. But unlike the fortress, the road only narrowed for a short distance before it widened out again. The river tumbled over rapids past the Roman fort; and then beyond the fort, a town stood. Not a very large one, it was the sort of place that grows up near army depots, offering the services both desirable and necessary for military men.
The town was fortified also. It clung to a spur of rock jutting out into the river. It consisted of a clump of limestone buildings with red tile roofs, a stout wall, and a heavy gate to the landward side that protected it from any marauders. The position of the remaining buildings, surrounded by a raging ice-cold river, was in and of itself enough to discourage anyone bold or foolish enough to try to break in.
Beyond the town the valley widened and continued downward toward a pleasant-looking fertile plain. The wolf, however careless he was, wasn’t foolish enough to use the road. He eased along next to it, through the thick growth of brush, tall weeds, and trees that bordered the narrow track, until he got so close to the fortress that he realized he was in danger of being seen. So he turned and began to climb the slope behind the walls.
Yes,
he thought.
This one can be flanked
. The place must have been unassailable in the time of the Romans. The fortifications dominated the first point in the valley, the town the second, but during the years the high walls between the fortress and the town had begun to erode.
A landslide had come and created a steep ramp precisely between the town and the fortifications where once only sheer walls had stood on either side. An attacking force could circle the fortress and come down behind the defenders. The town as it stood would offer few problems to a determined group of warriors. Yes, it would be almost impossible to get into, but then its defenders would have no easy way out, either. Simply seal the gates while Charles’s main army passed and leave a small garrison, and within a week or two the people inside with no way to provision themselves would surrender.
Charles would be coming from two directions, Mons Jovis and Mont Cenis. The part of the army bypassing Mons Jovis, Maeniel’s alpine stronghold, could feign to be frustrated by the defenders at Susa, while the rest circled and flanked the Roman fortification.
Something like this, he was sure, had been in Charles’s mind when he determined to split his army, sending one by Mons Jovis and the other at Cenis. The overall strategy was mapped out in Charles’s mind already, but Maeniel or someone else familiar with the terrain would need to suggest tactical approaches to him.
Maeniel paused on the almost impossibly steep slope overlooking the fortifications closing the neck of the gorge. Here he could climb no higher, but he was able to reconnoiter inside the Roman walls.
Yes, they were not closed from the rear, though the parts facing into the valley had been improved. New wooden scaffoldings had been added behind the battlements, and fresh earthworks had been thrown up in front of the walls. These earthworks had been armed with sharpened stakes to repel a cavalry charge, if necessary.
The earthworks on either side of the river extended beyond the walls all the way down to the river. From the front it looked formidable enough, and in a way even more so from the rear because it was obvious from the number of horses Maeniel saw grazing in the open valley that a considerable reserve force was present to hold the line should the attackers fail to give up easily.
The light was going now, the sun setting beyond the western peaks. Maeniel fluffed his fur. It was still cold at this altitude after sundown. He sat, head resting on his front paws, waiting for darkness, and enumerated the things he still needed to do before he could rejoin the king: draw close to the curtain wall and inform himself about how many troops held the strongpoint; make sure the town didn’t contain any nasty surprises for the king; map out a path that would allow the second part of Charles’s force to flank this fortress.
He felt a sharp pang of guilt about Regeane, but no doubt at all about his decision. It was sufficient to allow himself to be put in danger; if something happened to him, well and good. He could deal with it. He’d had a good, long life and had experienced many joys and sorrows; but to put a period to the prospects of one as young as she was would be intolerable. Deep in his heart, he knew the wish to protect her was as much selfish as loving. He was certain, in the deepest and most secret part of his soul, that once having possessed her, he would simply not ever be able to live without her and that her loss would destroy him as surely as death. And so the determination to prevent her from accompanying him on this dangerous journey was a forgone conclusion.
She would forgive him. In the time they’d lived together, he’d found her loving, kind, and anxious to please him. She was not one to cherish a grudge. So he would make peace as soon as possible. Then he sighed, wishing this business, even more foreign to his nature than to hers, was finished so he could go home and revel in the company of his beautiful wife and good friends without interference or interruption. His eyes closed, and in true wolf fashion, he napped while waiting for nightfall.
Hugo was a big hit at the Lombard Court in Pavia. He’d picked the right person to help. Armine was the king’s representative in the cloth trade. Kings have to eat. The Lombard ruler was supposed to supply himself financially from his estates, but the market for the wine and oil those estates produced was hit or miss at best. Most food was consumed within a few miles of its production.
Times were too unsettled for shipping; bulk items such as agricultural produce yielded little more than sporadic profit. The cloth trade was another matter. Despite poverty, church teaching, war, and civil disorder, the appetite for ostentatious apparel had only grown among the new barbarian aristocracy. There were few other ways to make a splash and show off how successful a man was than to dress to the teeth, and everyone who possibly could did.
The silk that arrived from Constantinople at the already rising port cities on the Adriatic Sea flowed through Pavia, over the Alps, into Europe. Desiderius took his cut and Armine managed his supply routes.
Hugo was introduced as a man of ancient wisdom with much knowledge of the arts for which the ancients were renowned: a polite way to put the fact that he was learned in divination and sorcery. And while the Lombard court wasn’t deficient in so-called wise men, Hugo’s guest made sure that his predictions were correct and his occasional minor miracles, such as identifying hidden objects and reading messages concealed by envelopes, were genuine.
His guest did not trust Hugo with all the information he gathered. Some of it he imparted to Chiara in the garden.
“The king is not faithful.”
“I don’t think they are expected to be,” Chiara answered. “Kings, I understand, are very much a law unto themselves, at least where women are concerned. Everyone will either pretend not to see or, if there is an acknowledgeable issue, congratulate him.”
“Ahhh,” Hugo’s guest said.
“Where is Hugo?”
Hugo’s guest began to laugh.
Chiara shivered. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. It gives me chills.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I will have to examine my feelings about it.”
“Hmmm, how odd. I didn’t think your species was at all analytical.”
Chiara frowned, bent over, and pretended to be smelling a rose. “You talk as if you are not of our species.”
“I’m not. You, yourself, called me a daemon.”
“I know,” Chiara whispered. “But I thought daemons were only damned souls who worked for the devil.”
Again a peal of raucous laughter rang out, at least to Chiara’s ears.
“I know nothing of the devil, daemons, and such, though a late priest of mine was fond of driveling on and on about such things. He, too, believed I was a daemon, especially since I allowed him to indulge his taste for cruelty and a perverse desire for sexual congress with the dead.”
“God!” Chiara whispered. “I wish you would talk of something else.”
“I know nothing of God, either,” Hugo’s guest replied. “And yes, you are right, I came to believe that particular servant of mine was a madman. In the end he wrought his own death because he challenged one who was strong enough to face his attacks, turn them back on him, and kill him.
“But mad or not, I kept faith with him and even with that half-wit Gimp and that pig Hugo. And also, my fine persnickety lady, I kept faith with you. When you asked for help, I gave it. When you had no other help, I was there.”
“Peace, peace. It’s true. You did. And I owe you more than I can ever repay, and I thank you. And I do believe you are faithful to your friends. But have you never thought about a higher good?”
“No.” The reply was a rather resounding one. “Nor do I believe such a thing exists. No. Not since my people were destroyed and
you
, of all creatures, were allowed to take their place. No, the universe is simply the result of random forces set in motion by some unknowable cause, and I look to my own survival and the prosperity of those who serve me, and if you’re smart, you will do the same.”
Then he was gone.
Chiara didn’t know how she knew when the creature vanished, but as she sensed his presence, she also felt his absence and was surprised by the emotional response his angry departure roused in her heart.
She realized she liked him. This slightly horrified her, but his conversation intrigued her and she could say anything she liked to him. For instance, she’d asked him about her mother’s illness, and been told, “She bleeds too much when she has her women’s courses.”
“Is that all?” Chiara had asked.