This time he blushed. "I wouldn't care to be caught with the king's mistress."

The woman-the black wolf-was wearing a necklace, a magnificent cloisonne dragon with scales of ruby, amber, topaz, and sapphire. Matrona gave a throaty laugh. She was wrapped in his best embroidered woolen mantle now, so he could look at her. She walked around the fire and stroked his rather bristly cheek with one long-fingered hand.

"Listen, you beautiful brute-and you are beautiful-I am no man's mistress and no man's, not even a king's, posses-sion. I do what I like, with whom I like, and whenever I like. I always have and always will. Yes, I lay with Charles; the lord Maeniel requested it. The king enjoyed the experience and so showed me his favor. And he opened his mind to me. That's why I am here. Where are they? Charles is on the march across the mountains, but he entrusted the lord Maeniel with an important task. If he has failed, I am to undertake it, and if I fail, you are to finish."

"What?"

Matrona picked up a stick and drew a crude map. "Charles comes," she said, and made a line indicating one pass through the mountains. "His uncle Bernard follows another route. Here!"

"He split his force?""Yes, but so did Desiderius. One half is based at Ivrea, the other at Susa. If Charles attacks at either place, he feels sure Desiderius will pull his force from the other. Tell me the re-sult. You have commanded men. You will see Charles's plan."

"Yes, I do," the Saxon answered. "When the attack comes, Desiderius will believe Charles's main force is there. For in-stance, if Charles attacks at Susa-because, were I Charles, that is where I would go-Desiderius will strip Ivrea of its strongest warriors. Then Charles's uncle, commanding the force at Ivrea, can attack the weakened garrison, punch through, and make a flank attack at Susa. Attacked from be-fore and behind, Desiderius's forces will flee back toward Pavia. He dare not lose his army to Charles, but will hope to stand a siege."

Matrona nodded. "But," she said, "there are no maps of the land between Ivrea and Susa. When Charles's uncle reaches the garrison, the force at Ivrea must ride swiftly to Susa. The countryside is forested, wild, without clear roads or tracks.

The wolf was to find the quickest way from Ivrea to a point at Desiderius's flank at Susa. Now I ask you, where are they? They both should be back by now."

"I don't know. They quarreled."

Matrona heaved a deep sigh. "He feared for her."

"Yes. But she followed, traveling in some way I cannot comprehend."

"The Lady's Mirror?"

"Yes. I promised to wait for her. As you see, I am here."

"Yes," Matrona said. "I know where it is. I traveled here with my people long ago, but it won't do me any good, at least not before morning. That place is dangerous by starlight."

The Saxon looked away from her into the dark forest. His imagination kept presenting him with a picture of what he'd seen before she'd wrapped herself in the mantle. All of a sudden he found he wasn't the least bit tired. But he did feel a need to get away from her before he made a complete fool of himself.

"I will conduct you there in the morning," he said. "The countryside hereabouts has changed over time, and I will continue to-"

Matrona stroked his cheek again. "Aren't you tired of waiting? How long has it been?"

"Since I got here?"

"No," Matrona said, and kissed him.

Lucilla was caught and she knew it. A second later Ansgar's son had the doors closed and his back against them.

"Stay there, Ludolf," Ansgar ordered, "until I find out what this is about. Lucilla?" he asked his wife.

She sneezed again. "Oh, God, yes, this is Lucilla. Pope Hadrian's... friend. Damn it, Lucilla, you tell me what you're doing here and don't stand there trying to look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. I know you. And you wouldn't be here unless you were up to something."

"Lucilla?" Ansgar repeated. "The name is well known.And no, don't tell me what you're up to. I don't want to know. Stella," he addressed his wife, "no more questions."

Stella looked half-sick but outraged. "Just the same... husband, I tell you-"

"No, you have told me enough. Don't say any more. I don't want to be privy to some plot. I don't care to know of some-thing that would require me to take drastic action. My lady Dulcinia, how could you allow yourself to be used in a way as to create such an embarrassing situation? I am a liege man of Desiderius, the Lombard king. I hold my lands according to his appointment as my father did before me, and I owe good faith and loyalty to my lord.

"Now, Lucilla," he continued sternly. "Are those men, the escort you brought with you, are they pledged to you?"

Lucilla gathered her wits. "No," she said. "No, they belong to Count Rufus of Nepi. Please, please, Ansgar, no blood-shed. Allow me to pay them for their services and dismiss them quietly."

"Very well, but no tricks. And nothing passes between you that my son cannot hear or see, and your friend, Dulcinia, re-mains here as surety for your good behavior while you go about this business. Son, accompany her, alert your uncle, but do nothing that will alarm the town."

Lucilla withdrew on Ludolf's arm.

"Dulcinia, you tell me what's going on," Stella said sternly.

"No, Dulcinia, don't, and Stella, you be quiet."

Stella sneezed three times and blew her nose in her hand-kerchief. "Oh, God, I feel awful and now this.

Husband, she's up to something and you should find out now what-"

"Shush, dear," he said, embracing Stella. "Go back up. We will talk at supper. You're ill and need your rest now."

"My sweet," she said, "don't kiss me. You'll get whatever I have."

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Every spring like clockwork-and sometimes in the autumn-it comes upon you. Only Ludolf ever seems to suffer the way you do, though not so badly, thank heaven. And since he's your son, I can't think it's contagious. Now do as you always do, be an obe-dient and sensible wife. Go rest and we will talk later at dinner."

Stella climbed the stair, still muttering to herself. "Obe-dient and sensible, indeed." Ansgar could be so maddening. Lucilla's presence alarmed her and her darling husband didn't seem to have the slightest idea how upsetting this par-ticular development was. To tell the truth, Stella thought, I am afraid. Instead of going to her own room, she turned into her husband's. It overlooked the square.

A group of servants were clustered at the window when she entered. All except her maid, Avernia, scattered. Avernia was a privileged character. She'd been with Stella since she took her first lover in Rome, at Lucilla's behest. Stella joined her at the window.

"Is that who I think it is?" Avernia asked.

"Yes," Stella snapped.

"As I live and breathe. Lucilla. Ah, well, you have nothing to fear. He knows all about you."Stella gave her a withering look. "Any woman is a fool who lets any man know all about her.

"I told him when we met that I was practically a virgin- that Aldric was my first lover."

Avernia's eyes rolled. "No! You never said that."

"I was the star attraction in a brothel and, pregnant or not, he'd never have married me if he hadn't believed I was a wronged woman."

"What are you going to do?" Avernia looked frightened.

Stella licked her lips. "I don't know, but she can't stay here. Sooner or later she will pay me back for naming her to my husband by telling him all about my little adventures in Rome."

"He still won't repudiate you," Avernia said. "You are the mother of his children. Surely he wouldn't.

No, it would be impossible-"

"Shut the door," Stella said between her teeth. "What, do you want to tell the whole household?"

Avernia ran, pulled the heavy oak door shut, and shot a big iron bolt.

Stella sat on the bed, clenching and unclenching her fists in her silk gown. "Damn Lucilla," she whispered.

"Damn that scheming whore. What is she doing here? How dare she in-terfere in my life again. How dare she chance causing Ansgar trouble."

Avernia shrugged. "I can't think that what she's doing here matters. The problem is how to get rid of her."

"God," Stella whispered. "God. Ansgar is the best thing that ever happened to me. Why does she come here now and ruin everything? I'll kill her if she makes me look a common strumpet to him."

"Well, that's what you were."

The crack of the slap echoed in the room. Avernia shrieked so loudly that Stella was certain it had been heard in the street. Avernia burst into tears and began to run toward the door. Stella jumped up and threw her arms around Avernia. "No, no, don't. Don't run out there and create a scene. You have as much to lose by this as I have. You must stay here and help me think of a way out of this."

Avernia wanted to have hysterics, but there was so much truth in what Stella said that she brought her anger and hurt under control at once. She had a husband also, the town blacksmith. She'd borne him five children, all living and prospering in the new city. She couldn't afford scandal about her past, either. "All right, but don't slap people who are just telling you the truth. Put your mind to solving this. Losing your temper with me won't help."

"Yes, yes. Be quiet and let me think." Stella began to pace up and down. Her second circuit of the room brought her to the window. She looked down at Lucilla in the square below. She paused, then strode quickly over to her husband's desk against the far wall opposite the bed, sat down, found a wax tablet, and laboriously began to write.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't think Lucilla will want to interfere in my life if I give her a few problems of her own to worry about."

"How will you do that?"Stella didn't answer but instead asked, "Are your sons still riding to Florence to purchase scrap iron?"

"Yes."

"Then they can carry a letter."

"They will if I tell them."

"You had best tell them, and not one word to Ansgar. Hear me? Not one word."

"I don't-"

"I do." Stella looked up. "You had best keep your mouth shut. Do it for both our sakes. Or that big, strong, bad-tempered husband of yours will find out how you earned your dowry."

Avernia gasped. "No." She made the sign of the cross. "I am silent as the grave, and so are my sons. I swear it."

Sometime just before dawn the Saxon asked Matrona, "How did you know I was not a peasant?"

She laughed. "What peasant knows how to clean the rust from mail, pick a fine warhorse and battle train him, sharpen a sword so expertly that it will shave a boar's bristles but leave the blade polished like a mirror? In the matter of the sword, I watched you with the weapon you picked up at that hideous place where you and Regeane tried to shelter. The thing had the look of a fire poker and, indeed, I believe someone probably used it for that purpose, but within a week you had it clean, sharp, and glowing like moonlight."

"Though mistreated, a fine weapon," the Saxon agreed. "I had to sacrifice some steel to clear the corrosion and rust from the blade, but since it was finely crafted in the first place, it was not harmed in the process. All sharpening takes steel from a blade; a good smith allows for that."

"Spoken like a true farmer," Matrona said. "They always worry a lot about their edged toys."

"In my country, sometimes they do," the Saxon replied. "I cannot be sorry for being taken for a son of the soil."

"Yes! Is that why you let them use you as a mule when you were sold across the mountains?"

"How did you know?"

He must have blushed; Matrona felt the heat in his skin. "Your body is marked by both the harness and the lash," she said. "Why didn't you let your kin ransom you?"

He was silent.

"Why?" she asked again.

"Am I sharing your bed or are you sharing mine?"

"We are in the forest, there are no beds," Matrona answered.

He absorbed this for a moment. "No promises between us."

"None. Mutual pleasure, that is all."

"I was too proud. My lady mother was dead. I would not have men point at me and say, there goes aman with a known price, and then hear women laugh. I would rather do the work of a mule."

Matrona sighed. "Men, the things they do in the name of honor."

"I think you cannot know. Many nights I confess I lay weeping in the vile cowshed where we were chained, wishing desperately for my home, my horses, hawks, and hounds. They would have killed me in some slow fashion had I been recaptured. I killed two men when I escaped, but better death than everlasting slavery, everlasting exile."

"Yes," Matrona answered.

"Even you?"

"Yes. Once, a time or two, I made the choice; but I'm falling asleep."

He replied by embracing her more tightly. He didn't know if he clung to her or she to him, but after so long alone, the feel of a woman's body was comforting.

He owed Regeane and her people everything. He dreamed of them, the wolves in the mist. Graceful, confident, moving down at nightfall ghostlike through the trees. Above, the sun was slipping into shadow as the clouds moved down from the mountains. He had been going down to his camp. Also, he was carrying a gutted deer carcass over his shoulders. He'd wondered if they would attack, try to take the deer from him. But they didn't.

One by one, they appeared, so like the patchy snow on the forest floor, gray white with glowing eyes, that he was not aware they were present until movement drew attention to them. He saluted them and watched them pass, the massive leader and his she the last. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that they had been watching him, able to attack and kill him easily had he made any move against the rest, but they respected the coiled power they saw in him, as he in them. So they had a truce, one dangerous predator to another.

And when he was in the greatest danger of his life, they had come to offer protection and comfort, and they had shel-tered him and set him free.

When she woke the sun was casting shafts of light between the pines. He was up; she smelled fresh bread. She rose, pushed the blankets aside. He averted his eyes and offered her his mantle. Matrona chuckled.

"What? You are not cured yet?"

"Looking at you makes me want to begin again."

"Make sure your wife is a warm-natured woman, other-wise I pity her. There is nothing better or worse than being constantly pursued about the house by a panting husband."

"Better or worse?" He got no reply and when he turned, she was gone.

The golden dragon lay among the folds of his mantle on the forest floor.

The virgin wolf is the fastest of all, the most dangerous. The wind and driving rain were in Regeane's face, but the rain didn't bother her. The wolf is a wonderful bad-weather animal and the wind told her in which direction the killers were fleeing among the narrow, twisting streets of the town. The Roman grid pattern had long been superseded by the me-dieval mileage of tangled footways leading to miniature plazas. The chase was complicated by the fact that in their terror, the fugitives ignored walls, fences, andeven dwellings block-ing their way to freedom. Led by the warrior with the scratched face, they kicked down the door of one house, exited into a walled garden, and jumped the wall-it was covered with spikes-when Regeane, hot on their heels, ex-ited the house. She had two seconds to decide whether she would follow. Since she'd had no occasion to find out how high she could jump as a wolf, she was gratified to learn she could clear seven feet, but one of the spikes brushed her stomach, sending a chill of terror through her whole body. As soon as she landed in the stony street beyond, she understood why they had undertaken a maneuver hazardous even for a human. The dismay in their faces was almost comical. Al-most. She could have been impaled on one of those spikes and killed.