"Yes." Maeniel did not smile. "Matrona remembers."

Regeane was resting on her back on the stone, her head in his lap, letting the warm water flow over her.

It was, with the air around them still bearing a bit of winter chill, a sensuous delight. She reached up and touched his face.

"We have made love as man and woman often, but we have never loved, not in our other form."

She looked a bit apprehensive.

He bent over and kissed the tip of her nose. "You weren't old enough. As a woman, you are full-grown, but a she-wolf avoids desire until she is at the height of her powers. You have not reached yours yet, but know, if you are thinking it is like dogs, it is not."

"No?"

"No. When the time comes and you are ready, I will guide you. Until then, be content."

She reached up, wound her fingers in his hair, and pulled his face down to hers for a kiss. The sun was warm, his body was warm. The sunlight was a dazzle on the water and the very air around them was redolent of springtime. When they broke off the kiss, she found she was no longer resting against his body. He was on top of her, and she was in his embrace.

"Again?" she asked in mock annoyance.

"Yes."

"Well," she said. "I don't mind if I do. Or rather, I don't mind if you do."

"I will," he said, "do."

She gave a little start. "I think you have."

"I'm only just beginning."

"If that's the beginning, what is the end like?"

"Concentrate-and I'll make sure you find out."

After that, neither of them was interested in words any longer.

When they were finished, she fell asleep in his arms. He was too much the wolf to sleep. He lay there and held her. The sun sank lower in the sky. All he heard was birdsong and the sweet rushing sound of falling water. Sometimes the wind muttered as it ruffled the treetops and changed the aspens bordering the lakefrom green to silver with its breath. Far away, a wolf howled. And he wondered if the pack still gathered at the pool above before the hunt; but then the wolf cry turned what had been pleasant languor into discomfort.

She awoke, opening her eyes. He slid into the lake near the falls, and she followed.

"There's a pack hereabouts, and we'd best be going. To them, all we are is other wolves. They won't want us in their territory."

She nodded and turned to swim to shore, but he caught her arm. "Quiet." He put his finger to his lips.

The wolf song was beginning again, and he wanted to listen. "They are talking about a human camped not far away."

They were resting together in the water, their arms on the basalt platform near the falls. He looked at her.

"Oh," Regeane said. "The Saxon. I forgot to mention him. He came with me, just in case."

"What is this?" Maeniel said. "A state procession? Who will pop out of the bushes next? Matrona?

Gavin? Antonius? Barbara?"

"Gavin," she said. "He hasn't really been seen since we made camp with the king."

"Naturally," Maeniel replied. "His opportunities for de-bauchery are limited in the mountains. When he discovered the 'refreshment' wagons accompanying the king, he probably went wild."

Regeane dove, turned, and began to swim toward shore.

Maeniel followed.

A few hours later, they came upon the Saxon's camp. He was hunched morosely over a fire. The two wolves emerged from the timber, ghosted down silently toward a tent pitched near the forest. When they entered and found it empty, they changed form and dressed in human clothing, then came out to greet the Saxon.

He'd set snares and they all had a fine dinner of rabbit stew, accompanied by bread, a flat bread he had made by simply heating a rock and throwing the dough on it. It had been a long time since Maeniel had seen anyone make bread that way.

They spent the night in comfort. Regeane and Maeniel took the tent; the Saxon rolled up in his bearskin and slept be-neath the stars.

The quarrel erupted before dawn.

"You have had a fine day in the forest," Maeniel told Regeane. "Now you're slowing me down and keeping me from my real work."

It was not yet even dawn and a silver mist flowed through the forest, feeling its way among the trees with long, wispy tendrils. It had begun to fall from the peaks just after sunset until it filled the hollows and valleys lower down and shone like mother-of-pearl in the lambent moonlight.

Then, just at daybreak, before the sun reawakened in the notch beyond the pass, it had seemed to hold the whole world in its soft thrall.

It had entered the tent then, so softly, silently, that even Maeniel, the gray wolf, didn't sense or feel it. But Regeane waked, swam up out of the depths of the dark water that rests at the bottom of consciousness.Perhaps it haunted the silver wolf-as it haunts us all-because that is where the first an-cestor, neither plant nor animal, coalesced out of nothingness and crossed the infinite, unknowable barrier between animate and inanimate, and life was born. Life knows water before anything else. It fills our lungs in the womb as a reminder of what we came from and who we are; it rests as a pool beneath consciousness and farther down below dreams; and in the deepest sleep, the mind-brain rests in it and is renewed so that it may attain consciousness when it awakens.

And from that deepest pool, the well beyond the world, from the mist, the voice had called to Regeane, If you love him, don't let him go alone. Then the voice was torn to tatters by the winds of time as the mist faded in the dawn wind, and she sank down into sleep and didn't remember.

Maeniel now kissed her on the forehead and pushed her toward the Saxon. "Go home," he commanded.

"From now on I must travel fast-in the shadows by day and the darkness by night. I've no mind to worry if you cannot hold your shape, or defend you from other wolf packs, or teach you how to live in the wilderness, snap down whatever you can catch, and avoid leaving traces for other wolves or men.

You don't know enough to follow at my heels, and it will be many years before you do. This is not a daytrip on my land or a hunt orga-nized for your amusement, and I haven't time to tutor you in the skills you will need to survive. A mistake on your part might get me killed in the best case, or us both in the worst. This is war-and war is no place for fools.

"And as for you." He turned to the Saxon. "I can charge you with the task of getting her home safely. In all the time you've been with us, you have never really seen me angry, but if I find you've aided and abetted her folly any longer, you will feel my wrath. That I promise. And you will suffer it for a long, long time.

"Possibly you think your Lombard masters were hard, but what they did to you is nothing compared to what I can do. I will track you down wherever you might flee and exact my due, and if anything happens to her-" He broke off.

"Regeane," he said. "His life is in your hands. Do you under-stand?" Tears were pouring down her cheeks. "There is no earthly force that could ever bring me to touch one hair of your head, but I can't say the same for him. Do you understand?"

"Y-y-yes," she stammered.

"Good."

For a second a fleeting gray shadow was visible in the morning mist and then was gone.

Lucilla and Dulcinia met a few days after Silvie imparted her big news.

"How in the hell did Silvie get pregnant?" Dulcinia asked.

Both women were in Lucilla's garden resting after dinner. Neither one felt like moving too much. Lucilla simply rolled her eyes toward Dulcinia.

"Either I've completely neglected your education or-"

"I know, I know, but half of Rome has marched over Silvie's body. If she didn't get pregnant then, why in God's name now?"

"She may have," Lucilla said, "and taken a potion or lost it. Remember, she endured a great deal of privation before Regeane took her in hand. Now she has plentiful meals at regular intervals, and she's stopped drinking that godawful stuff she used to.""Now she serves it to her customers," Dulcinia said.

Lucilla shook her head. "What they serve in the lowest grade of taverns is a lot worse than the stuff she sells. I won't say the potions she hands out over the counter are good for your health, but she's oddly honest in that way. The whole neighborhood resorts to her for drink, and she treats a lot of illnesses with her mixtures."

Dulcinia looked surprised.

"The poor often go to the tavern when they are sick. She has potions for the ague, recurring fevers, sickly children, and even colicky babies. Little can help the falling sickness, but a few herbs mixed with wine can somewhat limit the ef-fects. And then, of course, the woman whose period hasn't come, and whose husband is out of town-mayhap she's just late but..."

"Ahh, yes," Dulcinia said.

"And then there are those with the wasting disease of the lungs, not to mention others simply old and troubled with aches in their bones."

"What she doesn't know," Dulcinia said, "Simona probably does. She advises Silvie frequently."

"Simona?" Lucilla asked.

"Posthumus's mother," Dulcinia said. "It was to her Silvie ran first after she escaped Hugo. Simona sent her to me and then..."

"You brought her to me," Lucilla said.

"What about the child?"

Lucilla took a deep breath in through her nose. "Well, she wants it; otherwise, with her skills, she wouldn't be carrying it. So I sent her home with Susana, my maid, and gave her strict orders to do everything Susana says."

"The father?"

"She hasn't the slightest idea."

"Probably just as well. Given the nature of Silvie's friends, if she knew, it might only cause trouble."

Lucilla nodded. "Likely when she begins to show, her cus-tomers will all be looking at each other."

"Yes, and they will probably all have good reason to do so."

"Not a doubt of that."

A few days after Hugo's story to Armine, Chiara was foolish enough to let him catch her alone in the garden. She'd done her best to avoid him since she'd heard the tale, even going so far as to take a tray in her room when the family dined with him, but the garden had to be tended. This was simply a prac-tical matter. True, the courtyard garden was one place to take the air and receive visitors, but it extended around the back of the fortified house and contained a small orchard of fruit trees: quince, peach, pear, and pomegranate. A large herb garden supplied seasonings and greens for the household, not to mention medicines for Madonna, who was-much to Chiara's sorrow-not doing well at all. The physician had bled her again, but her lady mother was so frail, Chiara had been appalled by the cruelty of the procedure.The physician had reeked of drink that day and cut her in a half dozen places before he found a vein to his liking. When at last her mother's arm was extended over the basin, the blood kept clotting, and the physician had to keep reopening the wound until, at last, Chiara drove him from the room in a fury and consoled her mother. While she lay weeping in Chiara's arms, Chiara promised she would get rid of the man, no matter what her father said.

Chiara was in the garden collecting herbs for her mother's medicine cabinet and considering how to accomplish this feat. There were, she knew, several things growing right here...

Then Hugo had her in his arms and was breathing in her face. His breath stank like swamp water. Chiara twisted away in pure revulsion and clawed at his eyes and came rather close to blinding him. This roused his guest, who slammed him back, hard, into an iron arbor used to grow table grapes.

"Leave her alone or I'll knock the shit out of you."

Chiara backed away from the reeling Hugo, her face per-fectly white. Both the guest and Hugo knew she'd heard him speak.

"Idiot," the guest roared. He clipped Hugo on the ear. Hugo fell to the ground. "You'll ruin everything, you stupid lecher. In a city full of courtesans, you have to pick on a re-spectable girl. How big a fool can you manage to be?"

"No," Chiara said. "Don't hit him again. You might kill him."

"Does that worry you?" Hugo's guest asked.

"Not in the least," she said, "but I'd never be able to explain it to my father."

"True." Hugo's guest laughed, an unpleasant peal of mirth.

Chiara's skin crawled. "What are you? A daemon?"

"Probably. I'm surprised."

"At what?"

"That you can hear me at all. Most can't."

"Yes, it's a gift," Chiara said. "When Aunt Stella died, I saw her climbing the stair to my mother's room.

I didn't know she had died. I thought she'd simply come for a visit, but when I asked my mother about it she burst into tears and told me Stella was dead. But don't worry about me telling. I won't. I... I... I think I understand better what's going on- that strange story. Did he sell his soul to you?"

"What would I want with his rotten, filthy little soul? His body is bad enough. No, I just want use of him for a time."

Hugo was sitting up, holding his head.

"I wonder if you could help me with a problem of my own?" said the guest.

Hugo started to rise.

"Sit," his guest said. "Stay."

Hugo sat."What would you want?" she asked tremulously.

"Your influence with your father. Has he written the king?"

"Yes. As soon as he heard the story he-" She pointed to Hugo."-told. But I persuaded him not to be too credulous."

"Try to get him to write and sing dear Hugo's praises."

"Yes," she said, and nodded as if to reinforce her words. "Yes, I certainly will."

"Now, what's your problem?"

"I want to get rid of the physician treating Mother. I think he's killing her."