The Wolves of Paris Read online

“No, please. Sit down. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  She stepped up to Martin and whispered in his ear. He scowled and shook his head and at once she relaxed.

  “They’re not here for you, my lady,” he said. He pointed at Lorenzo. “They’ve come for this young man.”

  Lorenzo was bewildered. “For me? Are you sure?”

  But Martin had already turned and left the room. Lorenzo gave his brother a questioning look. Marco’s expression returned the answer to his question.

  “When I arrived,” Marco said, “and I heard the unsettling news that Lucrezia had received not one, but two letters from the Boccaccio last night, I realized that you had once again succumbed to temptation. Proven, of course, by your indulgence at the baths this morning. Hardly fitting a repentant sinner.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sent a courier to the prior, of course. It appears that he answered my plea and sent help at once. Are you carrying your cross? If I were you, I would pin it to my breast. And hurry.”

  Lorenzo didn’t look at Lucrezia as, humiliated, he removed the cross from his coin purse with fumbling fingers. He struggled with the pins and pricked his thumb.

  “Here, let me help,” Lucrezia said, hurrying over. Heavy feet sounded on the steps outside. “One moment, Martin!” she called.

  Lorenzo staggered to his feet, face burning. Lucrezia leaned in, fingers working at the pins. She smelled of flowers, but he barely noticed. He began to shake.

  Martin entered with two men dressed in white gowns and scapulars with black cloaks over top. They pulled back hoods to reveal tonsured scalps, and lined, scowling faces. The Inquisition had arrived.

  Memories of cold iron and hot tongs swam up from his memories like toothy, bulging-eyed fish.

  “Lorenzo Boccaccio di Firenze?” one of the men said.

  Lorenzo presented himself and bowed his head.

  “Come with us.”

  Afraid to speak, Lorenzo followed them from the room.

  Chapter Six

  “The world is a dangerous place, Brother,” the prior said in Latin. His breath steamed into the open air. “Filled with snares and pitfalls. Even the pious may be deceived. A friar, bathing in a mountain pool, is surrounded by nubile young girls and succumbs to their gentle caresses. Sleep overcomes him. He slips beneath the water, first to drown, then to awaken in the forges of hell.”

  “Yes, Father,” Lorenzo said.

  Henri Montguillon, the prior of the Dominican monastery of Saint-Jacques, sat on a hard stool, wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist. His robes and a hair shirt lay on one of the stone benches lining the corridor that passed beneath the arcades of the monastery’s central courtyard. A young friar with large brown eyes and smooth cheeks, as pretty as a girl, held a lancet in one hand. Montguillon held his right arm out, where blood dripped from a cut and fell in fat drops to congeal on the cold flagstone.

  Montguillon was middle-aged, slender, with ropy muscles. Stripes of old scars ran down his back, and his ribs stood out, as did his hollow cheeks. It was a body devoid of gluttony or self indulgence. He didn’t appear bothered by the chill open air.

  “A maiden dreams of a comely young boy and copulates with him in her sleep,” the prior continued. “The devil’s seed takes root in her womb. When the time is given that she deliver, she gives birth to a cloven-hoofed offspring. You know this is true, you believe this?”

  “I have heard such stories.”

  “Stories? You think they are stories?” Montguillon said, an edge to his voice.

  “I have heard these stories second hand,” Lorenzo said quickly. “But I have not witnessed them myself. That is all I mean.”

  “Do not doubt them. That which affirms the faith is true. That which confuses, clouds, and causes doubt, is ipso facto, error and sin.”

  The younger friar leaned in with his lancet and made a second cut in the prior’s arm. Montguillon closed his eyes and sighed, a sound that was midway between ecstasy and torment. Blood welled to the surface, then fell. Plop, plop, plop.

  After leaving Lucrezia’s house, Lorenzo had followed the two Dominican friars through the streets of the Cité. The two men chanted loudly. People stared. Old women crossed themselves. In front of Notre Dame, he spotted the pretty bread seller. The girl stared at him, wide-eyed. The yellow cross seemed to burn on Lorenzo’s breast with the light of a hundred candles.

  Here passes a heretic. His thoughts are a plague of the mind. Shun him.

  The Dominicans marched, chanting in Latin, across the bridge and onto the right bank. Heading north, they passed into the fields of the monastery of Saint-Jacques.

  The Dominican priory marked the start of the road to Santiago de Compostela, and a handful of pilgrims had gathered in front of the gates. They were on foot, trailed by two donkeys laden with their provisions. A friar chanted in Latin to bless their journey. The pilgrims stared at Lorenzo as he followed the two friars through the gates.

  Lorenzo was tired, but the march had given him time to reflect. It was penance, it wasn’t a second heresy trial. If he faced it with courage, he could emerge strengthened in his faith, not weakened. That was its purpose.

  But any hopes that Lorenzo would fall into the hands of an enlightened prior, a fellow student of Cicero and Virgil, a reader of Petrarch and Dante, fell away as the friars admitted him into the presence of Henri Montguillon in the midst of a bloodletting.

  The prior opened his eyes and must have seen the unsettled look on Lorenzo’s face. “The blood flows too quickly in the heat of the fire. If my humors must be balanced, then do not let it pass too quickly.”

  “Have you been ill, Father?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He glanced down at the wound, then looked up “Tell me, why have you come?”

  “To do penance. I was a Dominican initiate, but I . . . ” He hesitated, choking on the confession extracted under torture. “I fell into error, Father.”

  “I am aware of your sins. And I am aware that you did not complain as you accepted your sentence under the Holy Inquisition.”

  Complain? As they hung Lorenzo in a gibbet for thirty-six hours? As he walked fourteen times around the city walls of Genoa, once for each station of the cross, the last time naked and flagellating himself until blood ran in rivulets down his thighs? What would complaint have done, but increase the weight of the cross on his shoulders?

  Complaining was not Lorenzo’s problem. His problem was pride. He had never belonged, had disparaged the rules and rituals of the monastery. When they wanted him awake, he wanted to sleep. When they wanted him asleep, he wanted to be awake. He didn’t want to copy old texts, he wanted to read them, to study them. The old pagans fascinated him. The theologians and church fathers, rather less.

  For the most part he managed to suppress these feelings until he traveled north with the Inquisition. His first trial, of a Venetian burgher under cross-examination for the man’s rude public statements about the bishop of San Pietro, had seemed too trivial for prosecution. There was no denying the man’s crime—more than fifty people heard his oaths and blasphemies—but the punishment seemed rather harsh. Thirty lashes, five hundred Venetian lira to the bishop, and two days in the stocks?

  Lorenzo dismissed the statements as a poor attempt at humor. To the bishop’s rage and his prior’s grudging acceptance, he convinced the tribunal to reduce the fine to fifty lira, four hours in the stocks, and no public lashing.

  It wasn’t until Genoa when he ran afoul of the Inquisition himself. A Franciscan monk had been caught with the wrong pagan texts, marked by the church prohibito libro—a forbidden book. A noble might have escaped judgment, but not a monk. Before the trial, Lorenzo found himself in possession of the forbidden manuscript. He locked himself in his cell at the monastery and read the texts, then commenced to copy the pages. When caught with the forbidden work, he sent it off to a friend in the curia in the Vatican rather than surrender it to the fire.

  And just like
that he became a target of the Inquisition and not one of its enforcers.

  Lorenzo was no stoic. The first time he saw the red-hot pincers taken from the fire, he babbled an immediate confession and retraction. Everything since had been the unfortunate consequence of his initial pride.

  “What I am asking,” Montguillon said, “is why you came to Paris, not why you have presented yourself to the monastery for penance, as commanded by the Inquisition.”

  “We have lost one of our agents. My father sent us to investigate, and to hire a replacement if it turns out the man fell ill and died.”

  “Ah yes, your man Giuseppe Veronese, last seen on the road to Troyes.”

  “You’ve heard of this?”

  Montguillon smiled. He rose and took a piece of cloth from the younger friar, which he used to dab at the cuts on his arm. The stones at his feet lay colored with blood, drying and freezing now into a speckled burgundy, like paint flicked across a filthy canvass.

  “Thank you, Simon,” Montguillon said to the friar. He turned to Lorenzo. “The world is filled with evil. Witches celebrate midnight mass with the flesh and blood of innocents. Men become wolves at night. Even in the crypts below Notre Dame you will find demons.”

  He held out his arms and Simon slipped the hair shirt onto him. Montguillon’s jaw tightened momentarily, but he didn’t wince. Soon, he was dressed in his robe and cloak, with his cowl over his head. The younger friar kept his gaze deferentially on the prior in a way that began to grate on Lorenzo. An inquisitor in training.

  Lorenzo spoke more carefully. “Have you heard anything about Giuseppe? What happened to him? Is he dead?”

  “Your agent fell on the road to Troyes, that much is true. Whether he is dead is another story. Come, let us take this discussion to more sacred ground.”

  Montguillon walked beneath the arcade and Lorenzo and the young friar followed him around the courtyard toward the chapel. They passed two friars headed in the other direction. The others didn’t speak, but stepped to the side to wait for the prior to pass.

  They passed through the scriptorium, where friars sat at desks copying psalters through the light of two plain windows made of several dozen individual panes of glass, leaded together. One could not copy with numb hands, so the fire was roaring in the hearth, turning the room into a sort of calefactory, which left it much warmer than the chamber beyond, or the chapel beyond that. Montguillon told the younger friar to wait behind, then led Lorenzo into the chapel alone. He stopped in front of painting, dark with soot, of an anguished Christ upon the cross. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

  “You say Giuseppe isn’t dead?” Lorenzo said, when he could no longer stand the waiting. His voice echoed in the large, open room. Stone arches ribbed the chapel, holding the ceiling eighty or ninety feet overhead. “Tell me how to find him.”

  “He passes from your concern for the moment,” Montguillon said, turning his face from the painting. “You have more pressing matters to consider. The question of your penance, foremost among them.”

  “I’m afraid I must disagree.”

  “Oh?” An unpleasant note entered the prior’s voice.

  But Lorenzo stood on firmer ground now, and pressed on. “Giuseppe’s disappearance unraveled a great many contracts. Not only Boccaccio family fortunes are entwined with his enterprises, but those of other families of the Florentine Signoria. As well, we loaned a large sum to King Charles to prosecute his wars against England and Burgundy, and the Lord High Provost is eager to sign new contracts with our company.

  “My brother and I came to Paris to resolve the matter of Giuseppe’s disappearance and to assign a new agent if necessary,” Lorenzo continued. “But if our man is still alive, this obviously alters a great many things. I must speak to him at once. Where is he?”

  In principle, the Holy Inquisition under the command of the Dominican and Franciscan orders had no limits to its jurisdiction, save the pope himself and the cardinals. They could, and often did, direct their attentions to lords of the cloth and lords of the sword alike. Great landowners, wealthy moneylenders, professors of philosophy in the universities—all were subject. Stamping out heresy was a more urgent concern than the business of trade and finance.

  Practically speaking, powerful friends could turn all but the fiercest inquisitors. And even if the Inquisition marched toward its final, glorious crusade to purify Christendom, individual inquisitors may fall in battle.

  A shadow passed over Montguillon’s face. The same thoughts seemed to be passing through the prior’s mind.

  “Ah, but you see,” the man said, “Giuseppe has fallen under suspicion.”

  “He’s a pious man,” Lorenzo said. “Celibate since the death of his wife. He has completed pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela, and of course Rome and Assisi. Orthodox in behavior and belief.”

  “We burned two witches last week,” Montguillon said. “Killed a man in a wolf’s coat, slew another that was changing from wolf to dog to hide himself. Captured two more and gibbeted them on the city walls.”

  “Yes, I know. I passed beneath the gibbets on my way to the Cité,” Lorenzo said. “But what does this have to do with Giuseppe Veronese?”

  “After taking the devil’s communion, the witches lay in wait on the old Roman road, where once there stood a temple to the pagan gods. For thirteen days they lured travelers into a secret grove of trees, where they placed them under a spell and performed bizarre, obscene rituals. When they were finished, they had created a pack of man wolves. Loup-garou, they call them in French.”

  “This story sounds . . . unusual,” Lorenzo said. “Who told you this?”

  “We put the witches to the question, right here, in this priory. I heard it with my own ears. The witches confessed.”

  Yes, no doubt they had confessed to this and many other crimes. When put to the question, everyone did.

  “We didn’t catch all of the wolf men,” Montguillon continued. “But with their mistresses dead, they became wild, mindless things, unable to regain human or any other form. Once they escaped into the forest, I expected them to become savage beasts, and eventually meet the end of all such creatures. Last night, however, the dead man in dog form returned to life, tore his cage asunder, and escaped. The other two escaped as well, their cages empty, but locked.”

  “The gibbets are empty?”

  Montguillon scowled.

  Lorenzo said, “Apologies, Father, but I’m trying to understand how this could happen. You said you’d burned the witches. And yet these creatures escaped? Including the one who was a dog—who looked like a dog, I mean. Could there be some other explanation?”

  “Yes, of course. There is a third witch. We did not capture her.”

  “I see.”

  “And now let us return to the question of Giuseppe Veronese,” Montguillon said.

  “Yes, what of him? He’s alive? Is he healthy?”

  “Alive, yes. Perhaps not so healthy. Right now he’s languishing in the dungeon of the Lord Gilbert de Nemours, the king’s provost.”

  Lorenzo started. “And when did this happen?”

  Montguillon turned toward the shadows at the heart of the chapel. His hands rested inside his sleeves, and in the flickering candlelight, his cowled face took on a dark, brooding air.

  “A few weeks ago,” he said. “They caught him running naked through the woods. Nemours has a chatelet twenty-five miles north of Paris, near the royal forest.”

  Something pinched his voice. Fear, Lorenzo thought. Why?

  “At first, Nemours didn’t understand what had come over the man,” Montguillon continued. “Madness, perhaps. Or some virulent new plague unleashed by the Turks. The trespasser was raving about the blood of a child. Strange, wiry hair covered his chest and back. His eyes were yellowed, teeth elongated. He walked with a hunch, and his breath came in wheezing gasps. Yet he possessed an unnatural strength. It took four men to subdue him. Nemours threw him into the dungeon, then retu
rned to Paris, giving the matter no more thought. That is, until this morning, when word spread of the escaped prisoners.”

  Lorenzo stared. “And you think that Giuseppe is one of these wolf men?”

  “Not yet, but almost. I believe Nemours captured the man midway into a transition to a loup-garou. We burned his mistress, arresting the transformation. God willing, enough remains of his mind to reveal the identity of the remaining witch. He won’t give it up easily. We’ll force it out of him.”

  The prior believed this preposterous tale. That much was clear from the fervor in his voice. The fear in his tone.

  “Father,” Lorenzo began, “the king is indebted to the Boccaccio for 11,000 florins. Lord Nemours is demanding we loan him another 10,000 to finance his wars. I have no doubt that should I appear at the provost’s chatelet, I will find Giuseppe starved, in a foul mood, and completely sound of mind. Nemours will no doubt agree to release him—once we have notarized a contract for 10,000 florins at favorable terms of interest.”

  Montguillon removed his hands from his sleeves and steepled them in front of his face.

  “My young penitent, I am not so single-minded in my pursuit of justice that I am unaware of the workings of Mammon. I was apprised of this history between the two men. Indeed, I was initially suspicious, having learned that your agent announced his very intention to stop at Nemours’s chatelet after his return from Troyes. Presumably, to negotiate another loan.

  “However,” the prior continued, “the king’s provost never identified his prisoner as Giuseppe Veronese. The man’s appearance was greatly altered. To this moment, Lord Nemours has not made the connection, and I have no intention of telling him.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Because in my investigation of the Troyes road in searching for these wolf men, I came upon a destroyed wagon train, together with several bodies. Local thieves had already made off with clothing, goods, money, but left papers scattered in the mud. I was able to identify the dead men as certain merchants and their retainers who had left the city in the company of your agent.”