The Silver Wolf (39 page)

“Indeed,” Cecelia said. “Perhaps Dulcina is right. The philosophers haven’t the remotest understanding of love.”

“Of course they haven’t,” Dulcina said. “Any woman who’s ever borne a child, nourished it at her breast, cleaned it, protected it through all the years knows more of love than the most intelligent of those fools. But why are we going on about love? Look at your precious Propertius. He was killed by it, or so they say. I’m disgusted by it.” She pointed to Regeane. “She’s afraid of it, and your life was destroyed by it.”

Cecelia flinched and Dulcina clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve had too much wine. It must be loosening my tongue.”

“Not at all,” Cecelia said. “Don’t apologize, my dear. I always
encourage my pupils to speak freely to me. I like to know what they really think when they read Livy or Cicero. I like to hear about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations. They often come and bring their troubles to my ears. Sometimes they ask my advice about their own lives. Nothing they say ever leaves this room. I, in turn, often confide in them. I have told them more than once my story. If it hasn’t come to your ears, then they must have been more discreet than I supposed.

“You must understand my family is an ancient one. I even number a few Caesars in my line. It is said we are the purest blood in Rome. We trace our ancestry back to the imperium. But we are poor now, our great estates in Gaul and Britannia long gone, our Latin lands confiscated by the Lombards. All that remains of our once-vast wealth is a villa on the Via Latia and a few vineyards and castalia near Nepi.

“However, given our distinguished position in society, we were not surprised when one of the wealthiest men in Rome asked for my hand in marriage. He was a good thirty years older than I, but I knew my duty. He offered to restore the family fortunes.”

“Yes,” Dulcina said, “distinguished ancestors won’t repair the leaks in the roof, replace threadbare clothing, or put bread on the table.”

“Only too true,” Cecelia said. “I was married in my great-grandmother’s wedding dress, the only truly magnificent garment our family still possessed, a gown of old-fashioned silk and gold thread embroidered with citrines and seed pearls. The only reason it hadn’t been sold was because citrines and seed pearls simply don’t fetch enough. Semiprecious stones, you know.

“After the wedding I had no scarcity of magnificent garments or beautiful jewels. Indeed, I was surprised at my husband’s generosity toward me, for he was notoriously tight-fisted with everyone else.

“Until one day he presented me with a large black pearl. That night at a dinner party, I failed to wear it. And when the tables were taken down and the guests were gone, I felt the weight of
his hand. Then I understood. I wasn’t a wife to him or even a human being, but another of his possessions like his huge villa, his horses, or his dogs. I was there to crown his success. To provide the proper setting for his magnificence.

“When I picked myself up off the floor, I told him that I was sorry I hadn’t fulfilled my part of the bargain. I told him my omission of the pearl from my finery had been quite inadvertent. It simply didn’t go with the dress I planned to wear. He hit me again and said, ‘Wear a different dress.’ At that moment I understood my worth to him.

“Very well, I told him. I will make you the envy of Rome. Your house will be a showplace, floored with the finest marble. The wall paintings and furniture will evoke gasps of admiration. I will never fail to set myself as a showpiece for your wealth. My attire will always be impeccable. My behavior toward your sometimes dubious business associates will be anything you direct, from the cold to the cordial. But never, never touch me again … in any way … either in love or in hate, or I will leave on that very day, and no matter what you say or do, I’ll never return.

“Suffice it to say, I kept my part of the bargain even as he kept his, though I can’t think being deprived of my company was burdensome to him. I was a grown woman, a drawback where he was concerned. I noticed on those rare occasions when he chose to amuse himself he almost always picked something quite a bit younger than I, either boy or girl.”

Regeane saw that Dulcina froze for a second, her face stiff with revulsion; then she hugged her slender body tightly and her teeth embedded themselves in her lower lip.

“As for myself,” Cecelia continued, “my life became one long loneliness. I hid my misery behind a mask of wit and excruciatingly well-bred politeness. But most of the time, I felt as alone as that unchaste vestal must have, when the earth was sealed over her head and she was condemned to expire in her solitary living tomb. At least, until Rufus appeared at our table.

“He was not especially handsome, but he was strong, well-built, with an infectious grin. He was full of fun, always good humored, and ready with a jest at all times. Whenever I looked
into his green eyes, I forgot my sorrows and my loneliness. From the moment we met, he paid close attention to me. At first, it was all very innocent. Small gifts, flowers, a book of poetry, short visits when my husband happened to be away attending to business. We were, you understand, closely chaperoned by my many servants.

“I wasn’t about to compromise myself for a barbarian. That’s what Rufus was—a Lombard lord—however wealthy or powerful he might be.

“But, as time passed, the visits became longer and longer. We spent whole afternoons together, lost in the fascination of each other’s company. You see, Rufus was not like my husband—interested only in increasing his wealth. The whole world was his province. I could be myself with him. He found amusement in the trivialities of running a large household. I often had my hands full with mine. We gossiped for hours about the tangled politics of this great city and the all-too-human personalities behind the politics.

“He had many correspondents in distant lands and never arrived without some new and engrossing tale of the doings of kings in Gaul or Britannia and the intrigues of their barbarian courts, of men made and unmade, and battles won and lost. For you must understand, my dears, when I spoke of these things to my husband, I met with either mockery or anger. But Rufus was never angry with me. And he never mocked me, even sometimes when I think I might have deserved it.

“His gifts, too, became more elaborate and expensive. Priceless, really. Yards of fancy lace made in Byzantium, normally unobtainable in Rome; a packet of some precious fragrant spice from the Far East never found on the spice seller’s table in the market here; a psalter illuminated with exquisite knot work made by those Celtic monks who sequester themselves in beehive cells by the stormy northern seas. He brought the world to my door. My shriveled, frightened soul began to open as a flower does to the morning. In short, I began to love him.

“Finally, in desperation, I asked my husband if he was completely indifferent to the connection between Rufus and myself. He answered me in a word: ‘Completely.’

“A week later, Rufus invited both of us to visit his villa in the country. The day after we arrived, we all rode out to hunt. My horse pulled up lame. Rufus remained behind with me.”

Cecelia paused, turned, and looked at a bouquet of roses in a glass vase at her elbow.

Her attention drawn to them for the first time, Regeane realized they must come from somewhere else than the garden below the window. The roses blooming in the convent garden were mostly single and either pink or white. These were double and so red they seemed almost black in the shadowed room. They showed their true colors only when medallions of broken sunlight found their way between the heavy shutters and brushed the soft petals. In its rays they smoldered like the scarlet coals of a dying fire, glowing as though illuminated from within.

Cecelia reached over and caressed a velvet-soft petal with her fingers. “I have often thought if one could impart the doings of humankind to a rose, the only thing it would understand would be the sweet, drawn-out lovemaking of a drowsy afternoon. The long grass is a bed draped in emerald velvet for lovers. Bees dance drunkenly through a peach orchard. The only clock is the sun moving silently across the sky … as it slips toward the cool, blue shadows of a summer twilight.

“When my husband returned from the hunt, I was an adulteress. Rufus and I were lovers. My husband continued to pursue wealth relentlessly. Rufus and I pursued each other. We were lovers by day, by night, under the moon and the stars, at dawn we found each other and at dusk. Whenever we could escape and spend a moment alone, we delighted in the mingling of our bodies and minds. For we were fast friends as well as lovers. The sight of his face and the touch of his hand were enough to fill me with an almost unimaginable joy.

“The years slipped away, one by one, very quickly it seemed then. Until one day I returned home one rainy afternoon and found a man waiting at my door. A supplicant. He begged me to receive him and listen to his plea. I listened at first willingly, and then only because he drew a knife from his sleeve and threatened to cut out his own heart in my presence if I didn’t hear him out. So, to my despair and my everlasting sorrow, I did.

“I can’t reproduce his speech here. It was rambling, incoherent at times, but the gist of what he told me was this. Many wealthy families draw their income from lands they lease from the church in the countryside around Rome. They pay their dues in kind to the church. The diocese of Rome uses the produce to feed pilgrims and the poor. If the Lombards raid across the border during the harvest, they could not pay in kind, and so must borrow to pay in cash. Should more raids occur, then the landowners go bankrupt and lose everything.

“Now, my husband was a great moneylender. Many important families were in debt to him. My lover was a Lombard count. Need I say more?”

“Your husband was using your lover to systematically ruin his creditors one by one,” Dulcina said.

“Just so,” Cecelia answered, “and I had been bought and sold like the lowest whore in Christendom and my happiness founded on a quagmire of misery and deceit.

“I can’t remember much of what happened in the few hours after this revelation, but the servants ended by hiding all the knives and sharp objects from me. When I tried to hang myself from the ceiling beams in my bedroom, they cut the rope and pulled me down. When I was calm enough to think, I knew what I had to do.

“I summoned all of my husband’s creditors I could find to the house and emptied the contents of his strongboxes into their hands. We had wonderful things at our villa. I had the discrimination and good taste to pick the very best. My husband had the money to assure acquisition of anything I desired. I piled everything in the atrium. Tapestries, rare and precious glass, antique statuary, illuminated manuscripts, sumptuous clothing, in short the lot and let them take their pick. When my husband returned home, well … there really is no more to be said.”

The sun was low now. Long rays were pouring through the louvered windows. The furniture in the room cast heavy shadows, thick and dark amidst the flares of orange brightness.

Regeane stared aghast at Cecelia, a grim suspicion forming in her mind. “You did it to yourself,” she accused and she saw the beautiful lips move in a smile under the veil.

Cecelia didn’t deny the accusation. “Why yes,” she said. “You are quite perceptive, my dear. Very few guess. May I ask how you knew?”

“Your husband wouldn’t have done it. Rufus really loved you. He’d have killed Maximus. He was too cold, too crafty to have mutilated you.”

“Yes,” Cecelia answered, “he was. All I had done had barely injured him. Most of his wealth was invested in his many enterprises in his broad lands, the produce of his vineyards and orchards.

“No, he laughed at me and said, ‘What! Tantrums! And from you of all people. Don’t be a fool. In the morning, you’ll return to him.’ But I didn’t. I couldn’t and I never will. You see, to do so would have made me their accomplice and that I couldn’t face.”

“So you had your revenge,” Dulcina said. “Who can say you were wrong?”

“Strange you should say that,” Cecelia said. “Abbess Hildegard used much the same words when I came here seeking shelter from a world that had in one awful day become so unkind. She said, ‘You will have a long time to meditate on your revenge.’ And I have.”

“What happened to your husband?” Regeane asked.

“Rufus saw to that. My husband’s estates were as combustible as his creditors. He died a beggar. He was found one morning beside the steps of the Lateran palace where the poor draw their ration of bread and meat for the day. He was dressed in rags, the rain falling into his open eyes.”

“And Rufus?” Regeane asked.

Cecelia turned to the roses at her elbow. “How strange,” she said. “The moment they go into bloom all over Rome in the spring, they come and keep on coming until the cold autumn wind finally sends their ragged brown petals fluttering to earth. Almost every day, bunches and bunches of them come to the convent door. At first, letters came with them. Of course, I always burned them unopened.”

“Of course?” Regeane exclaimed, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Of course,” Cecelia repeated firmly, “but the letters stopped some years ago. Now there are only the roses. And I remember, as he remembers, I’m sure, that for six beautiful years I was the happiest woman on earth.”

“I hope to God,” Regeane whispered, her hands covering her eyes, “that I never love or hate anything as much as that.”

“You will, and I have,” Dulcina said thickly, raising the wine cup to her lips. “Only I haven’t Cecelia’s courage or perhaps I’m simply not sure my destructiveness would hurt the whore-master who raised me to sell myself in the streets, or the tavern keeper who starved me. My best and only revenge is success.”

“And mine,” Regeane sighed, “a victory over death.”

Cecelia turned to the roses on the table again. “Without love,” she said, “we are as the painted images on the glass windows of a church are without the sun, only shadows. Love illumines our lives. When its rays cease to shine into our days, we are nothing.