"Yes, yes, I did; probably one of my more useful and vir-tuous actions. I cannot regret it." Then he laughed. "I doubt if Hugo does either. I think he was more pleased than not to be rid of his bad-tempered, drunken, scheming sire. He was probably overjoyed to snatch up whatever wealth the vile old scoundrel was hoarding and flee the city. If you must know, the pope and I looked high and low for him, and he could by no means be found. He probably only discovered his bereave-ment when he woke up sober one morning and realized he had no more money. By all means, keep him near you. I would rather caress a viper."

The king chuckled. "You are indeed a master of dissimula-tion. He warned me about that. But I, as you, digress. What is the trick of it? How do you become the wolf?"

"I do not-as you say-become the wolf. I ^m the wolf, only sometimes I seem to be a man. And in the interest of both truth and brevity, I will say now I cannot teach you how to skin turn because I don't know how I do it myself. I simply do, and she who gave me my name and power didn't provide an explanation."

"It is from the demonic then? This power of yours?" The king sounded eager to have Maeniel incriminate himself.

"I know nothing of daemons. I have never met one. Nor do I quite know what you Christians mean by the word. I do say that if you label everything you don't understand demonic, the world you see will be filled with evil."

"You are not a Christian, then?"

"No."

"Would you accept baptism, if given the opportunity?"

Maeniel was about to reply with a snarl of fury when his human side reined him in sharply. This chance was too good to miss. He'd already concluded there was no good way out of this cell. If he could persuade this king to believe he might be converted, the process of instruction and baptism might offer an opportunity to escape. Once without chains and in the open...

"Why?" he replied.

"To save your soul, of course."

No, he didn't like this, and he didn't trust the king's inten-tions. He'd been tricked once. This had the overripe odor of another trick. "Don't make me laugh," he said. "My head is still sore and it hurts my nose. The best you will get from me is a ransom, your majesty. I have a lot of money; content yourself with that. When Charles crosses the Alps, you will need it."

He heard an indrawn breath from beyond the iron screen.

"You reject my offer of an opportunity for salvation? What contumacious obstinacy! Consider youreternal soul."

"It's not my soul I'm worried about," Maeniel said.

Beyond the screen he heard a door slam, and then the slow creaking of a gate being raised. Maeniel called the wolf but only for a few moments. The beast offered strength and resig-nation. A look into the eternal dark that held no human ter-rors, no heaven, no hell. Long ago he had simply seen himself as part of the world, his behavior for good or ill determined by what he was and not by any code imposed by others, and he found strength in this knowledge.

The man would struggle. The man didn't know how not to struggle. But the wolf would center him with the knowledge and confidence of the night hunter's peace with the changing world and his eternal assurance of his place beneath the stars and among them.

I have lived as well as I can. I am content. Then he aban-doned the wolf because water cold as death was pouring in through the grating and beginning to fill the cell.

Regeane pulled the tattered mantle from around her body and became wolf. The Roman said she'd summoned him. She was not sure what that meant. Once before she'd traveled in the land of death and another man had left her a token. So she be-came woman again and folded the mantle carefully, pushed it into a deep crack in the stone.

She looked out over the water and took a deep breath. The air was fresh and cool, too cool. She rubbed her arms uncom-fortably. They were broken out in gooseflesh, but she clung to the woman shape for a few moments longer, drinking in the beauty the dream had denied her. How terrible to be sealed forever in darkness.

The water mirrored the changing morning sky, gold at the sun-struck center, then green and blue at last at the edges. Reeds, brush, cattails, and willow were black silhouettes against the burgeoning light.

Sometimes we must build with boundless sorrow.

Remingus-that was his name. She knew but didn't know how she knew; that's what Remingus had said. The phrase haunted her. He had spoken to her across the surely impene-trable barriers of time and death.

If you call me, I will come.

The whisper was so soft she could barely hear it. Paper rustling against paper, or a serpent's scales moving over rock. She looked toward Pavia. Against the violet red and purple of the dawn, those few pinpricks of light still glowed, already al-most extinguished by the breaking day.

Then she was wolf, warm coat glowing, burnished by the new light. Within a few moments she had found a fish, break-fasted, and was already on her journey. She spoke to Maeniel. Be alive. Wait for me. She tried to will it as she hurried on.

In Rome Lucilla breakfasted with Dulcinia. A buttermilk cream cheese with fruit and boiled eggs in a pepper and onion sauce; a well-watered white wine accompanied it.

"You're being very unpleasant, sister mine," Dulcinia told her gentry after a few moments' conversation about the weather, spring vegetables appearing in the market, and those families still able to withdraw to country estates to escape the oncoming hot months.

"How so?" Lucilla contrived to look surprised."Don't you dare!" Dulcinia said. "Half of Rome knows. No, not half-all of Rome not senile, below the age of two, or severely brain sick knows that he visited you and where he spent the night. What happened?"

Lucilla stirred in her seat, looking away from Dulcinia and out over the morning green. They were just inside, and the folding doors to the triclinium had been pushed back. Sudden tears appeared in her eyes.

Dulcinia drew in a deep breath. She'd known Lucilla a long time and loved her. "No. Don't tell me he behaved... badly."

"No. He didn't. He said he loved me, would always love me, and then I'd say from the amount of ardor he brought to our lovemaking, he proved that nothing that happened made the slightest bit of difference to him."

"Yes, at the Lateran Palace they said he'd returned all smiles and seemed very happy."

"Yes, my dear, and so am I. But he did acquaint me with one disturbing fact. Gerberga has vanished."

"Politics again." Dulcinia sighed.

"When I met him," Lucilla said, "politics was one of his chief interests, and I quickly became enamored of the game. If I hadn't, I don't think our relationship would have pros-pered. Even then the pro-Frankish party was beginning to groom him for high office, and I could see any woman who wanted to gain his love and keep it must take her place at the table. We rose together.

"And I cannot say I regret my ambition, when I remember my father's farmhouse with its endless work, filth, screaming children, half-starved livestock. My mother died of overwork and childbearing before she reached your age, Dulcinia.

"The minute one of us girls' hips began to spread and her breasts started pushing out the front of her dress, my father began looking to sell her to the highest bidder even if it were to the slave dealers from Ravenna. My sister went that way, and... and... yes: so, my dear, did I. And considering what I saw of those leering friends of my father's-" Lucilla broke off. Her eyes had taken on a hardness that frightened Dulcinia. Her fists were clenched. She looked down at her hands, relaxed her fingers. In a few places her nails had bitten into her palms and drawn blood. "I must find Gerberga and that son of Desiderius, Adalgisus."

"All I can see is that you are betting heavily on Charles doing some very difficult things... Bringing an army across the Alps, for instance. Even under the Romans, that wasn't child's play," Dulcinia said.

"Yes, well, he has his part and we have ours. I prefer to concentrate on what I can control than on what I can't. Are you still in demand among all these barbarians?"

Dulcinia threw up her hands. "Yes, but-"

"No buts. I've already spoken to Rufus-"

"Lucilla, I can't help but be spotted as your agent. Our re-lationship is so well known no one even bothers to gossip about it any longer. I won't hear any news about Gerberga and her lover. No one will tell me anything."

"Yes, yes, yes, but your tiring woman, my dear, that's an-other matter. Oh, these women from every town and village will be dying to know what's new and all the rage at the courts in Constantinople and Rome. They will flock to have their hair done the way the Empress Irene does hers and find out whatcombination of oil of violets, myrrh, with a touch of rose, is current among the Greek ladies of easy virtue; and are stays made best of yew or hardened sinew, and how are they best sewn into silk to give minimum discomfort and maximum lift. Very complex, this business of being a woman, my dear, very complex.

"And credit me with being an expert in these matters of hair dressing, the uses and occasional exquisite abuses of face painting, and the lesser art of embellishment where paint does not belong. And I have a hundred recipes for perfumes, powders, and fragrant oils. I can even value jewelry, tell if it is silver, silver gilt, or gold-pure or alloyed-and have an excellent eye for stones, both precious and semiprecious. I can weigh a broach in my hand and say whether it is silver, gold, or plated pewter or even that impostor of impostors, gilt lead. I do believe I'm going to enjoy myself very much indeed."

"Yes," Dulcinia sighed. "Again this adventure is made for you. Did you say the lord Rufus is to accompany us?"

"Oh, no, Cecelia wouldn't let him out of her sight. Do you know he's made her a mask with a silver nose? And she wears it all the time.

"But he will lend us an escort of twenty-five stalwart sol-diers, all tied to him by oath and holding lands in return for service. A bit better quality men than paid mercenaries. I didn't wish to take any chances with the safety of your person, either on the roads or in the cities."

Dulcinia nodded. "I'll go home and speak to my secretary about what invitations I've received and what inducements I've been offered to travel to the Lombard kingdom."

Lucilla's plan was fraught with danger for Lucilla. Dul-cinia didn't like to think about what might happen if she were recognized or caught, but she had seen Lucilla move around Rome incognito and arouse little interest. Women's dress lent itself to disguise.

A woman wearing silk, gold, and expensive perfume was assumed to be one sort of person, while the same woman wearing a worn dress, a dark veil, and mantle was assumed to be another. People rarely questioned those assumptions.

Clothing was used to indicate social position, degree of wealth, and rank. It would be considered mad for someone not to use it for this purpose.

Women for hire, prostitutes, wore their own distinctive dress and painted their faces. They advertised their profes-sion. As would the tiring women and personal maid to an artist like Dulcinia. She would find herself in almost as great a demand as her mistress, and Lucilla, with her skill and fa-miliarity with all classes of people, would have no difficulty in passing herself off as such a woman.

She was going gray now, and Dulcinia knew if she put aside the vanity of hair coloring, expensive perfume, makeup, and corsets, Lucilla would seem almost another person.

Every city had its court notables and ruling family, and the women among them starved for gossip, fashion advice, news of the barbarian kingdoms and the Greek east; they would talk freely in front of her tiring woman. And they would tell her everything they knew. Oh, God, would they ever.

If her tiring woman couldn't find out where Gerberga was, no one could. And that was probably why Hadrian had given Lucilla the job of finding her. It wasn't the first time he was in a pinch and didn't care to let the right hand know what the left was doing.

Lucilla broke in on her thoughts. "My, what a disappointed face you're wearing.""One thing we haven't talked about," Dulcinia said as she rose, "is what we are going to do about the queen of Francia if we do find her."

"Don't borrow trouble," Lucilla commanded. "Charles, as you astutely pointed out, has got to cross the Alps. We will have to make that decision when the time comes."

Chiara woke with her bed being violently shaken. "Help me, damnation on it. You must help me. They are killing him."

"Who? What? What him? Who is being killed?"

"The wolf."

Chiara recognized Hugo's guest, and she had been in the church with Hugo when Maeniel was tricked into revealing himself. "I'm not sure I want to save that creature," she began.

That was as far as she got. Hugo's guest flipped the bed on its side, dumping her on the floor. Chiara stifled a shriek. Her maid, as usual, was sleeping in an alcove nearby and her fa-ther was in the next room. She scrambled to her feet and began pulling on her shoes, soft leather things, almost san-dals.

Something took her by the hair and began to drag her through the door into the darkened corridor.

She got a good grip on the doorpost and spoke through her teeth. "You stop that. Now."

He did. She knew he had limitations on his strength. She wasn't sure what would happen if she set her will against his, but she didn't really want to find out-at least not now.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'll help you, only you've got to be-have decently."

"I will, but you'd best come quickly because he won't last much longer."

Chiara snatched up her mantle and wrapped herself in it. "Where is Hugo?"

"In his bedroom gibbering with fear, a broken man. He is sure the wolf will kill him. That was why he arranged that filthy trick to get the creature to declare himself. I have news for that piece of dung. If the wolf doesn't kill him, I will," Hugo's guest raged.

"You don't want to do that," Chiara said as she ran quickly down the stairs, trying to be as quiet as she could. "You must need him for something, as well as the rest of us, otherwise you wouldn't restrain yourself. Where is Gimp?"

"Drunk in a taverna near the river. Just when I need him most."

In a few seconds they were out of the building. Chiara paused for a moment. The street was dark and deserted.

"My heavens, what is the hour?"

"Late," came the reply. "Hurry. I cannot comprehend what you silly humans do to time, which is after all more like a river than a segmented-"

"Don't lecture me. Where? Where do you want me to go?"

"To the forum. Run!"

Chiara ran.Pavia was not a big city. A few moments later she was approaching the cathedral. "What if we meet the watch?" she gasped out.

"That will be his misfortune," Hugo's guest said grimly, "but we won't. He's at the same taverna with Gimp, also drunk."

She flew up the cathedral steps. The big bronze doors were closed and locked. "What now?"

"I go inside, lift the bar, and let you in." In less than a second he had done so. The bar was on a pivot.

Once inside, Chiara let it fall back into the socket. Then she turned and faced the large, dark, empty church. "Oh, oooohhhh," Chiara said.

"As far as I can tell, we are alone," Hugo's guest said.

"Are you sure?"

"No, but if you see something, you will no doubt complain- as is your wont-and whether it be living or dead, I can chase it away. Hurry."

She was pushed forward. She hurried past the altar. Only one faint light burned there, a flickering sanctuary lamp. Hugo's guest snatched it up. An impressive feat, since it was suspended by chains from the vaulted ceiling. It seemed to fly down toward where Chiara was standing, then go before her, leading down into the crypt where the Lombard kings were buried.

Various gates and doors barred her way, but they all opened before her. She scurried across the crypt, a fairly dull place. The people of these times didn't go in for effigies or even exciting sarcophagi, as the Romans had. The Lombard lords and ladies were encased in plain stone boxes, all taste-fully engraved with the name and rank of their occupants.

Chiara rolled her eyes a time or two, but the members of the Lombard nobility stayed put. When they reached the back of the crypt, another stair led down deeper into the ground. It was damp here. Damp and cold.

The sanctuary lamp hovered in the air before her, about five feet in front of her face. "Put it lower," she said. "You're blinding me. I have to see where to put my feet."

"Plague take all women," Hugo's guest said, but the lamp dropped down a few feet.

The steps were very narrow and seemed to be carved from the high rock that supported the cathedral.

Chiara negotiated them cautiously, helped along by the fact that things grew brighter as she neared the bottom.

The gate wasn't very big, so water didn't fill the chamber quickly. The river by rights ran through the cell rather than into it; the other grating was connected to a passage that re-turned the water from whence it came. But Maeniel soon saw the nature of the trap. Because the main hole that sealed the cell shut at the top was open, the swirling water rising mo-ment by moment would bring him to the top, and when the water reached the top it would enter a short wellhead, a tube that led to the basement above, and rise almost but not quite to floor level. It would rise up and out of the cell but he wouldn't because it was covered at the top with an iron grating. The water would rise past the grating, and he would be trapped beneath it. And he would drown.

He had a few moments yet, riding the swirl of rising water, until he reached the grating. A few moments to contemplate his fate and wonder in passing who constructed this vicious trap. It allowed an observer above to watch the struggles of the individuals below the grating, watch them drown. He was calculatingrather coolly that it wouldn't take long when he found himself looking up at the face of a girl staring down at him.

She was on her knees near the opening of the cistern. She knelt for a second, trying to find a way to release the grating, and quickly realized there was no way. It was latched; the bolt that opened it extended up the wellhead and was secured at ground level with a stout lock and chain. She pulled at it vigorously.

"No," Hugo's guest shouted at her. He forcibly turned her head to the right.

The gate that opened and closed the pipe that allowed the river to fill the cistern was raised by a simple pulley arrange-ment attached to a lever on the wall. Down, it lifted the iron plug that shut the pipe. Up, the heavy plug fell back of its own weight and sealed the pipe.

A simple, elegant arrangement, the fill pipe was high, the drainage pipe was low. Lift the iron plug, the river flowed in. It took two men to lift it. Release the lever from the down po-sition, the iron plug dropped back in place and the chamber drained. Not as quickly as it filled, but it drained. And though it took two men to lift it, a child might drop it back.

Whatever this man might be, Chiara didn't want him to meet such a horrible end. She began to scramble to her feet.

Hugo's guest pushed her back down. "No," he said. To Maeniel, he said, "Can you hear me?"