The Wolves of Paris Page 4

  “Will he do it, do you think?” she asked.

  “Let’s hope not.”

  Lucrezia turned and looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “Martin?”

  “I am very sorry, my lady. You keep asking questions and sometimes the real answer slips off my tongue.”

  The guards passed through their cycle three times, first two men, then one, and so on, and she grew desperate. A man walked through the streets a few blocks over, clanking midnight on a bell. A dog howled on the opposite side of the Seine, and the hairs rose on Lucrezia’s neck, remembering the harrowing events of three nights past. Her narrow escape.

  The guard appeared alone again, walking slowly with his pike clacking up the line of gibbets next to the river wall.

  “If he doesn’t stop this time,” Lucrezia said. “We’ll try harder measures.”

  “And if he’s warned them? If they’re waiting to set on us? Are you willing to face the gibbet yourself?”

  “They wouldn’t put me in the gibbet,” she said. “They’d burn me at the stake.”

  Before Martin could respond, the young guard stopped, turned toward the river and stood his pike straight up. Lucrezia let out a low breath. “We must go.”

  They hurried up to the wall and helped the young man swing the poles holding the gibbets until the cages hung over the walls and not the river. One of the men groaned and shifted in his cage, but the other didn’t move.

  Lucrezia handed her purse to the guard as the man set down his pike. He tied the purse to his belt, then pulled off a heavy iron ring with a key the size of her palm. His hands fumbled and it fell to the ground with a clank. He groped in the darkness to retrieve it. Lucrezia and Martin joined him in the search. The ground was cold and damp and slimy. Her fingers brushed the fur of something dead, shoved up next to the wall. Most likely a rat. But she found the iron ring.

  The guard was a nervous mess, so she took the key herself and turned it in the lock of the first cage. It opened with the creak of rusting hinges. Martin caught the prisoner in his arms as he came out, groaning, and helped him to the ground. Martin pressed the flagon of wine to the man’s lips. He drank twice, coughed, then crawled to the wall and struggled to his feet.

  “Have you suffered injury?” she asked.

  “What, my lady?”

  “Did anything bite you?”

  “Bite, my lady?”

  “A wolf,” she said, impatiently. “Have you been bit or scratched?”

  “You talking about the loup-garou? I’m innocent. I don’t know nothing about it. The Blackfriars just grabbed me from my bed one night and said I done it.”

  Lucrezia turned to the second lock. It was stiffer and took her a moment to open. When it did, Martin brought this man down too. The prisoner didn’t move. Martin slapped at the man’s face, then, when that didn’t work, put a hand beneath his shirt to feel his chest. Her servant rose with a shake of the head.

  “Dead.”

  “Quick, put him back in the cage,” the guard said.

  “And leave him to rot?” Martin said. “The river is better.”

  Together, he and the guard took the man by the feet and arms, swung him twice, and hurled him over the wall. The body splashed into the filthy black waters and sank at once, one more piece of refuse in a river filled with all manner of dead and castoff things.

  “Now go,” the guard said, locking up the empty cages. “I’ve got to get this key back and hope nobody notices until morning. God help me if they discover it was me.”

  “First the dog,” she said.

  “You mean the wolf?” the guard asked in a confused tone. “What do you want with that?”

  “Are you blind?” Martin said. “It’s a dog—a mastiff. Anyone can see that.”

  “Sorry, master. Yes, of course. It’s only that . . . if I take it down, they’ll think it escaped and came back to life. And I won’t be able to tell them, see. Not with this.” He jingled the purse at his belt.

  “You have your pay,” Lucrezia said. She put an edge in her voice. “Take him down at once.”

  Martin drew back his cloak to show his sword. “You heard what the lady said, now hurry.”

  They got the last gibbet open, and Lucrezia helped Martin bring her dog Cicero down. He was heavy, the weight of a man himself. It would be no easy task for the two of them to get the body back to the house.

  The poor animal’s body was stiff and cold and she thought of the times she’d held him in her arms, faithful friend that he was. She would be stiff and dead right now if he hadn’t come to her rescue. Her throat closed and tears welled at her eyes.

  The guard locked the last cage, snatched up his pike and hurried back toward the gatehouse with a quick, nervous pace. They let him go. He had his silver. He had done his mercenary duty.

  “What about the prisoner?” Martin said, turning.

  Lucrezia followed his movement, wondering if she could hide the other man too, but he was up and moving. Walking, then trotting, the man’s pace quickening as he ran along the edge of the river wall. Two days in a gibbet in the chill of winter, starved and without water. His companion had died, and yet this man had the strength to break into a run. It was unnatural.

  His back bent when he reached the alley and his knuckles touched the ground.

  The realization hit her like a slap to the face. A single word came to her lips as he disappeared down the alley.

  “No.”

  Chapter Five

  Lorenzo called on Lucrezia’s house an hour later than he’d promised in his note. As he’d passed the Hôtel Dieu, a boy came running through the streets, breath steaming, crying out that the baths were hot. Lorenzo followed a small crowd of burghers and prosperous craftsmen to a stone building a few blocks from the cathedral, where he cleaned off four weeks of road grime with a soak in the communal pool, scrubbing with a soft, astringent soap made of lye and tallow.

  Italians, in general, were cleaner than northern Europeans, but Florentines bathed in private. Here, forty or fifty people bathed at a time, with only an indiscreet lattice separating the men’s side of the stone-lined pool from the women’s. Husbands and wives seemed to think nothing of chatting through the divider.

  Lorenzo came out feeling almost like a civilized man again. He was not wearing the yellow cross of the Inquisition (it was folded in his coin purse for later), and as he hooked the gold clasp of his cloak and stepped onto the street, he caught a young woman watching him. She was a peasant, selling loaves from a basket, and not of his station, but comely, with cheeks red from the cold and intelligent, blue eyes. He gave her a smile.

  “Good day, my lady.”

  “Good day, my lord,” she stammered.

  She blushed and turned away. With a smile on his lips, he gathered the hem of his cloak to keep it from the filth, and hurried down the street, ready to face Lucrezia.

  When the manservant answered the door, Lorenzo announced himself and asked to see Lady d’Lisle. The manservant was about fifty, with a faint scar that ran from his left eyelid to his lip. He studied Lorenzo with a penetrating eye. That look reminded Lorenzo of a scowling bull, staring him down after he’d climbed a wall and stepped into its pasture.

  “Is the lady here, good sir?” Lorenzo tried again. “She should be expecting me.”

  “She’s here,” he said at last. “Come in.”

  The man brought him inside and left him in the dimly lit, high-ceilinged foyer without another word. Portraits of four generations of d’Lisle lords scowled down at him. The last, Rigord Ducy, the Lord Duke d’Lisle, was a handsome man with thick black hair and dark eyes. It was probably Lorenzo’s imagination, but he saw an arrogant gleam in the man’s expression that inspired instinctive dislike. But the duke could have been painted in a manger scene overlooking the holy family with a halo above his head, and Lorenzo still wouldn’t have liked him. This was the man who had carried off Lucrezia from Italy.

  Don’t be a fool. You’d have done the same thing. A
nd the man is dead anyway—drowned. It wouldn’t hurt you to be charitable.

  From all appearances he’d treated her well, surrounded her with wealth and beautiful things. Forget nursing an old jealousy; what was he going to do now? And so Lorenzo practiced what he would say. Tell her about the road, but don’t complain. Give her some gossip about goings-on in Tuscany.

  And whatever else he said, he should pass through the entire conversation without mentioning Lucrezia’s beauty. Not her smile, her lustrous black hair, her perfect, fair skin. And certainly nothing about her figure.

  Mention her command of Latin, her fine penmanship, her ability to recite Ovid from memory—yes, these would please her. But no comments of any kind about her appearance. If the men of Paris were anything like the Italians, she would appreciate his discretion.

  The manservant returned. “My lady says to pass you her regrets, but she is indisposed at the moment.”

  “Indisposed?” Lorenzo repeated, stupidly, as if he hadn’t understood the word in French.

  “Busy. Occupied.”

  “Yes, I understand, but . . . didn’t she receive my note?”

  It hadn’t occurred to him that Lucrezia wouldn’t see him. Hadn’t she loved him? The marriage to a French noble—he’d assumed it was a political and financial alliance, for God and profit. But now, she was widowed. So why wouldn’t she?

  “If you will return this afternoon,” the servant replied, “she will see you then.”

  “Oh,” Lorenzo breathed with relief. “There is a small problem with that . . . your name, good sir?”

  “Martin, my lord.”

  “Martin, could you please tell your lady that this afternoon is impossible. I must present myself at—” The words caught in his throat. “—at the monastery of Saint-Jacques.”

  “The Blackfriars?” Martin asked.

  Something touched the man’s voice. Irritation, maybe, or fear. Lorenzo warmed toward the touchy older man. If he didn’t like the Dominicans, he couldn’t be all bad.

  “That’s right,” Lorenzo said. “I may be there for several days or maybe only one night. I don’t know. If I could only see her for a moment.”

  “Unfortunately—” Martin began.

  “Please, Martin. Tell her. If she still won’t see me you will have done your duty.”

  “Very well, my lord.”

  Martin disappeared. He was gone for some time. Lorenzo was settling into a glum attitude of resignation, when to his relief, Martin returned and said that Lucrezia would see him. He followed the man down the hall and up a twisting wooden staircase, his heart flopping. Five and a half years since he’d seen her and he still felt like a lovesick pageboy.

  Lucrezia met him at the doorway to a paneled drawing room. She took his hands and smiled warmly as she welcomed him in. He didn’t want to move yet, he wanted to stare.

  He had pictured her so many times in his mind that he was surprised, now that he was looking at her, to notice there were flaws in the marble statue of a goddess that he had constructed. Standing close, he could see faint lines at her eyes, tiny hairs on her cheeks, even pores on her nose. And there was something no longer youthful in her eyes, almost like sorrow or world-weariness.

  She was beautiful, of course. But for a moment he felt like he was truly looking at her for the first time.

  “Come in, then,” she said in Italian. “Let me offer you a drink. I’m afraid we don’t have Tuscan grapes here, but the bishop shares with me the best of his vineyard and it’s not bad at all.”

  “Yes, thank you.” He found his voice as he followed her in. “I’m sorry for arriving late. I passed the baths and I was so filthy and sore that I couldn’t resist a soak and a good scrubbing.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “And I’m sure my house will smell the better for it.”

  “You will have to forgive Martin,” Lucrezia said. “I retired early last night with a headache and so I didn’t receive the Boccaccio letters until this morning. I wasn’t entirely ready for company.”

  “Letters?”

  “I was under the impression,” an unpleasantly familiar voice called from the opposite side of the room, “that the Very Reverend Father Montguillon was expecting your presence this morning. Or has the Inquisition lifted its edict without my knowledge?”

  An ugly, devouring worm squirmed in Lorenzo’s bowels as he turned to see his brother Marco sitting in a great chair by the marble-lined fireplace. Three-foot birch logs roared on the hearth, reflecting in red and orange off Marco’s face, which wore a devilish smile. He held a crystal goblet in one hand, and played with the gold and blue enamel medallion hanging from his neck with the other.

  “What are you doing here?” Lorenzo asked coldly.

  “That is my affair.”

  “And yet you’re perfectly happy to meddle in my affairs.”

  “I’d rather not, believe me,” Marco said. “But alas, I’m responsible for your behavior. Look at you, not even wearing the cross of penance. How will this reflect on the Boccaccio honor? I sent a letter to the prior. Will you make him carry you to the monastery reclining on a litter, with nubile young girls casting rose petals in your path? Or will you go when you are summoned?”

  “You are an insufferable tyrant,” Lorenzo said.

  “And you are an arrogant twit.”

  “Please,” Lucrezia said, her voice pained. “Weeks together on the road and you still have energy to argue?”

  “Excuse us,” Marco said. “You know how brothers are. Sometimes we forget. Little brother, my apologies. Here, sit next to me.”

  He sounded almost sincere, and as he rose and poured Lorenzo a glass of wine and offered a silver tray of dried Damascus apricots, the younger brother was inclined to forgive him. He had a harder time fighting down his jealousy. Marco had risen early, off to settle accounts, he claimed. In reality, he’d sped off to visit Lucrezia.

  Lorenzo sat. His gaze lifted. Frescoes covered the ceiling with a spring scene of Venus frolicking with naked nymphs, while Bacchus looked on. Moving from one side to the other, the scene then changed through the seasons, with the movement of the celestial bodies crowding the edges.

  “That’s excellent work,” he said. “It reminds me of de Rerum Natura.”

  “You’ve read it?” Lucrezia sounded impressed.

  “Portions. I’d like to have a book made if I can find a good scribe and a manuscript to copy.”

  “I have one here. My father sent it. You are welcome to read it if you’d like.” She gathered her skirts and sat in the chair opposite the two brothers. “Of course, the French know nothing of Lucretius, but I hired a young Italian to do the frescoes. Do you know Piero della Francesca?”

  “Of course. He frescoed Sant’Egidio in Florence. That must have cost you something.”

  “Two hundred florins, including expenses. Worth the cost, I think.”

  “It’s beautiful. Very sensuous.”

  Marco cleared his throat. He looked irritated and Lorenzo kept the smile from his face. Marco lived by the motto written at the top of every account book: For God and Profit. To that end, he often neglected the higher studies. His Latin was weak and he couldn’t quote a single classical poet from memory. Meanwhile, Lucrezia seemed to have increased her appreciation of the great pagan thinkers.

  “Tell me,” Lorenzo said, pressing his advantage, “do you think it right to condemn Epicurus, or is there something to be learned from his philosophy?”

  “We can accept some and decline the rest. For example—”

  “Do you have time for such idle talk?” Marco asked. “The prior—”

  “Has been waiting for weeks,” Lorenzo said. “What’s a few more hours?”

  “Are you in trouble with the Blackfriars?” Lucrezia asked.

  “Nothing serious.”

  “It was serious enough last spring,” Marco put in. “The family spent large sums hiring advocates and notaries. Only by the grace of God did we keep little brother from the stake.”
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  “The stake?” Lucrezia exclaimed. “Sweet virgin.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as that,” Lorenzo said, somewhat untruthfully.

  “Please be careful,” she said. “An accusation of heresy is no small matter. My sister told me you’d spent time wearing the black and white. She couldn’t explain why.”

  He didn’t know whether to be intrigued that Lucrezia and her sister had discussed him in their letters, or horrified that his shame had followed him all the way to Paris.

  “Lorenzo,” she pressed. “Why did you try to join the Dominicans?”

  “You know how it is. The monastery is a good place to stow away the family idiot, the cripple, the embarrassment.”

  Lorenzo caught himself before the bitterness swept over him and he laid out all of his complaints.

  Marco laughed. “A regular Greek tragedy. No, it was nothing like that. Father had the idea that we could get Lorenzo a cardinalship some day. That would be useful for the family. You understand.”

  “My father thinks the same way,” she said. “It’s how I ended up in Paris. For my part, I think it’s a shame when a young man is pushed into the church when he doesn’t feel a calling.” She turned to Lorenzo. “And you didn’t? No, let’s not dwell on that. Tell me, has the chancellor of Florence settled his dispute with my beloved Lucca? I’d hate for there to be war between our two great republics.”

  Understanding the politics and maneuvering within the states of northern Italy was Marco’s strong point, and he leaned forward, eyes lighting up. Lorenzo wondered how to turn the conversation back to Epicurus or de Rerum Natura.

  But before Marco could opine too deeply on the machinations within the Signoria, Martin appeared at the door and cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Martin?” Lucrezia said.

  “There are two men at the door. I tried to send them away, but they are insistent.”

  Her face paled and a hand went to her throat. The calm, measured look disappeared, replaced by a sudden fear.

  Lorenzo exchanged a look with his brother. Was she in some sort of trouble? The two men rose to their feet.