Chapter Seven
Lucy realized it was pointless to dwell upon the reasons of Ioan’s absence. It was her own fault she had married him, and she had done it with her eyes open, out of sheer, blinding lust. And now that she was thinking clearly, she had to salvage what was left of her life.
She resumed her lessons with Alexandra. She would spend time with the child and be a mother to her, and help her fulfill her potential. As for the rest—she refused to envisage how the rest would be. She could not bear to think on it now.
She felt grateful for Alexandra’s presence. It gave her existence purpose and meaning. The child made her feel she was needed, and she already seemed to care about Lucy.
“Don’t be sad,” Alexandra told her later that day. “Papa will be back soon.”
Lucy smiled. Her distress must be obvious. And the child was offering her comfort, when she should be the one to do that.
“I’m sure he will,” she said, keeping a bright smile. “But we should amuse ourselves in the meantime. What else do you think we should do?”
But before Alexandra was able to answer, another voice came into the conversation. “You should bind the scissors you’ve been using. It’s best you use a red piece of string.”
Ana. Lucy had not even felt her presence in the room. But she’d come in almost stealthily. Then Lucy remembered the scissors she still held in her hand. They’d been using them to cut a dress they wanted to sew for Alexandra’s favorite doll.
Alexandra rolled her eyes and said something in Romanian to her nurse.
Ana narrowed her gaze. “The child says you don’t believe in such things,” she told Lucy in an almost accusing tone.
“What things?” Lucy asked, uncomprehending.
Alexandra sighed. “She does it every year,” she said in an exasperated voice. “And Papa leaves her be. He says she can do whatever silly things she wants, as long as it’s harmless.”
“But what are you talking about?” Lucy asked, still not understanding.
“On the 30th of November, she rubs the front doors with garlic to keep away the evil spirits. And she binds all the sharp objects in the house with string. She says red string is best,” Alexandra said, in the same exasperated voice.
“Oh,” Lucy said.
Superstition, of course. Obviously harmless, since the boyar did not seem to mind. But it was the 21st of December today. She didn’t get to ask why this day would be also special, though.
“Give me the scissors,” Ana said urgently, and it seemed to Lucy she was cross with her. “I’ll bind them for you.”
Inexplicably, Lucy felt offended by her tone, and it wasn’t in her nature to take offense quickly. “Why do you need to bind them?” she asked, without relinquishing the scissors.
Ana glared at her and Alexandra smirked. “She says it binds wolves’ mouths. It prevents them from biting,” the child said.
Lucy winced. Wolves again. Somehow this place was all about wolves. No wonder she’d been dreaming so much about them.
Alexandra was being dismissive, and the nurse frowned. Lucy decided she was being uncharitable. The old woman was obviously feeling replaced in Alexandra’s affections. The child had spent most of her time with Lucy, and Ana probably felt Alexandra no longer cared for her.
Lucy decided to be generous. She handed Ana the scissors. “You can bind them, if it’s tradition,” she said smiling.
She watched Ana as she fetched a piece of red string from the sewing basket. The old woman rolled it tightly around the closed scissors.
“I guess we’ll finish the dress tomorrow,” Alexandra said, rather disappointed.
“We have plenty of time,” Lucy reassured her.
Still, Ana would not leave the room. She was gazing at Lucy with a sullen expression.
“But why should we also bind the wolves’ mouths today? It’s December,” Lucy decided to ask, not knowing what else to say.
“Haven’t you heard them? They howled worse than ever last night,” Ana told her grimly.
Alexandra shrugged. “They always howl,” she said, in a terse tone that reminded Lucy of her father.
“Wolves are vicious,” Ana said, ignoring the child and pointedly staring at Lucy. “And their bite is vicious.”
Lucy almost shuddered. She’d seen a wolf only once, at an exhibition in London. She recalled it distinctly, because she’d felt sick to see the animal caged. So sick that it had made the room spin around her. The scent of pain had been nauseating. She’d been Alexandra’s age at the time.
“Papa, can’t we do something? He’s suffering,” she’d whispered in her father’s ear.
And she remembered her father’s answer. Very cold. Angry.
“You should not care. Wolves are vicious.”
She’d not seen or heard a wolf again, until she’d heard wolves howling that night she’d arrived here. The 30th of November, she recalled.
“But why the 30th of November? Why do you have to bind their mouths then?” she asked.
“Indreiu lupilor,” Ana replied cryptically.
“St. Andrew of the wolves,” Alexandra translated. “They say it’s the day of the wolves, also the night of the strigoi.”
Strigoi—the undead again. Lucy almost sighed. And her skepticism must have been apparent, because the old woman glared at her again.
“You don’t believe, do you?” Ana said. “Indreiu lupilor...that’s when evil spirits walk the earth. The saint protects us from them.”
“But why are you afraid, then, if the saint is supposed to protect us?” Lucy could not help asking, and instantly regretted baiting the old woman.
“You don’t believe, do you?” Ana repeated contemptuously. “But that’s when you first met your husband, isn’t it?”
She then stormed out of the room.
Alexandra did not seem concerned. “She’ll get over it,” she told Lucy. “She gets like that sometimes, around Papa. She doesn’t like him. But to me she’s always been nice.”
The 30th of November, Lucy thought in puzzlement. “What did she mean? Why would it be important that I first met your father then?”
Alexandra raised her eyes. She was silent for a while, as if pondering what she was about to say. “They also say that’s the day when you can ask the saint to show you the face of the man you’re destined to marry,” she eventually said.
Destiny? Destiny had nothing to do with it. Lust. Blinding lust had everything to do with it.
Her eyes fell on the bound scissors. Pagan charms of the old gods. Did Ana have any idea that the charms she used were actually every bit as pagan as Florica’s?
Lucy smiled. She’d have no more of wolves, the undead or evil spirits. Her own spirits were dampened enough. So she proposed a game of hide-and-seek, to lighten the atmosphere. The manor was ideal for the game. And she didn’t give a damn if Ana was going to frown upon this.
* * *
He knew he’d been gone for too long. He’d been selfish. But he’d been too drunk on what was happening to him to let go. It was like a powerful drug that had taken hold of him.
Freedom. Exhilarating.
He was breathing it in. And how beautiful the world seemed in this new guise he was seeing! His senses had always been keen, and besides, he had been sometimes able to share his mind with Sharp Eyes and even with the others.
But now he was seeing Things with his own eyes. Hearing Things with his own ears. Tasting Things. Living Things. And Dead. Because, after all, he could see now; there wasn’t such a big difference between Life and Death, as people believed.
There, behind a snowy copse of trees, Ioan could glimpse antlers and soft, quivering flesh. He was young, not yet a Stag. And for a moment, he felt sorry for the young life which was going to end soon. But only for a moment.
There was not such a big difference between Life and Death, as people thought. And things didn’t truly end, did they? They just went on, differently.
He heard Sharp Eyes’ voice. Take it easy, little brother.
He felt vexed, although Sharp Eyes had always called him little brother.
I’m bigger than you, he countered arrogantly.
But Sharp Eyes did not answer the taunt. He just lifted his head indifferently. You are younger.
That’s not true, Ioan started to say, but then he smiled to himself. Because, in his own way, Sharp Eyes was right. In human years, he was older than Sharp Eyes, but he hadn’t spent those years as a Wolf. Besides, there was no time for arguments. They both knew what they wanted. It was right in front of them. And Sharp Eyes had a point. Things should not be rushed.
So they waited patiently. And, of course, waiting was deliciously exciting. Almost as delicious as the kill itself.
It felt good to be free. Exhilarating. Almost as exhilarating as sex with Her. Almost.
She’d been so tight and warm when he’d entered her, pleasure and pain mingling. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, but it was meant to happen. It had been their first mating. The mating that would finally allow them to become what they’d always been. So it had been painful. More so for her. Much more so, and not only because she was female. Not only so because she’d made love for the first time.
In truth, when they’d first mated, he hadn’t felt much pain in his own body, or in his soul. He’d really expected it would hurt when the wolf fully awakened—it was meant to unleash something that had been deeply buried. However, for him it had been just liberating, not painful at all. He’d welcomed the whirl of sensations that was upon him.
Soft, female flesh. The sultry taste of her sex as he licked it. Her scent mingling with his own. Teeth sinking into the sweetness of her shoulder. Mine. Why didn’t you really come to me? Why didn’t you...why? Don’t you know you’re mine? All mine. My Mate.
She wouldn’t come to him, and it hadn’t felt right to go to her. Instead, he’d gone away, to find the pack. They were there for him. Their nearness was intoxicating. He was no longer alone, but connected to his brothers and sisters, and to the unnameable flux that held this world together. Had it been hours since he’d first joined the pack? Days? Weeks? Time had seemed to stretch endlessly, but now, as he recalled the taste and scent of her, he suddenly regained the awareness he’d lost. Days—three days since he’d left home.
And then he realized painfully how lost he’d been within his new self, too lost to realize what had been there inside him all along. A thing that he had not taken the time to grasp, because freedom had been such a potent drug. Because it had felt so good to be finally free of the burden he’d been carrying for so long.
But it was there. It had been there all along. The ache which had now replaced the real pain that had consumed him before he’d met her.
He missed Her. And he understood that it was high time he returned.
* * *
Alexandra was gazing through the window with a wistful expression on her face. This was the third day of her father’s absence. She obviously missed him.
Lucy did not want to think about what she really felt about her husband’s absence. What was important now was to cheer the child up.
“Shall we play a card game?” she offered.
Alexandra shook her head. She suddenly turned her gaze toward Lucy. It seemed very serious. “Remember the story I wanted to tell you? About the Great White Wolf?”
Lucy nodded. Strangely, it was a story she felt she did not want to hear. But she did not want to disappoint the child again. “Why a white wolf?” she asked.
Alexandra seemed to brighten. “At first, he was not really a wolf, but a priest. He served the great god Zamolxis. He’s the god of the people who lived here before the Romans came. He was wise and old. But when the time came for the priest to die, Zamolxis did not want his great wisdom to die with him. So he turned himself into a wolf, a guardian wolf to watch over his people.”
Lucy could very easily picture him. The grizzled wolf she’d dreamt of before, not the black wolf that had been howling in her dreams at night—the black wolf seemed very real. The white one was only a shadow. More like a mythical ancestor, really.
She shook her head, dismissing these peculiar thoughts. They did not make any sense, of course.
Alexandra resumed her story. “But somehow his people lost faith that he would protect them. And when the Romans came, a great battle came. And the people here felt very afraid and thought the white wolf would not come to their aid. And because they lost faith in their guardian wolf, they were defeated.
“But you know all was not lost,” Alexandra added. “Because, you see, it’s said that he will one day return, when people start believing in the Great White Wolf again.”
“Where did he go?” Lucy asked, surprised that her heart was thumping.
Alexandra smiled. “Nobody really knows. But some say he went back to his god.”
“Oh,” Lucy said, somewhat disappointed. “I thought there was also a goddess...”
She did not really say why she’d uttered that. But it was logical, of course. A god needed his goddess. The two of them were complete only when they were together.
Alexandra gave her a peculiar look. Lucy sighed. The child could see she was not making sense. But Alexandra eventually said, “That’s what Papa says too.”
“Does he?” Lucy asked, puzzled, but also seized by a strange sort of excitement.
“He says that the story of the Great White Wolf isn’t that old after all. That there are older, darker stories that go back to the dawn of our times. There was a time when many guardian wolves walked the earth. A Dreamtime, really. That was probably even before Zamolxis. When the sun god was still married to his sister, the moon goddess.”
“And the tree of life was the symbol of their union, binding sky and earth...” Lucy whispered.
It was as if she already knew the legend. After all, the tapestries in the hall downstairs depicted glimpses of it. The marriage of the sun and moon, and the wolf that had sprung out of their union. Biting into the tree of life.
Alexandra nodded. It seemed that she wanted to say something more, but then she gazed at the expression on Lucy’s face. “Has the story upset you?” she asked.
“No. Of course not,” Lucy lied.
She decided to dismiss what was troubling her. These were only legends. They had nothing to do with the present. It was the present and her husband’s behavior that were really upsetting her. Ioan’s absence was also worrying Alexandra. After all, they both needed to forget what was troubling them.
“Maybe we should go down to the village. Would you like that?” She had not been there before and felt that a breath of different air would be exactly what they both needed. She was, however, astounded by the child’s reluctance.
“It’s not a good idea to go the village,” Alexandra told her, an anxious look crossing her face.
“Why ever not?” Lucy asked.
Alexandra fell silent, but then she seemed to pluck up courage to speak. “They don’t like us there.”
“Are the villagers upset because of something your father did?” Lucy inquired.
She was beginning to fear the worst. Boyar Marcu was, after all, according to the laws of this country, absolute lord and master over his villagers. He seemed an enlightened man, but she did not know him at all. Perhaps he had been unnecessarily harsh or cruel to the people.
“They used to like us,” Alexandra sighed. “But not anymore.”
“Tell me why.”
“It’s the priest in the village and the monks in the monastery across the valley. They say the devil is inside Papa and won’t come out. And that everyone who joins him in his wicked ways will go to hell.” She paused, unwilling to say more.
The child was obviously frightened. “This is utter nonsense. You shouldn’t let such nonsense upset you,” Lucy told her firmly.
At first she thought it would be better to abandon the idea of going to the village, since the child was so frightened, but she thought better of it when she later saw the wistful look on Alexandra’s face. The girl obviously wanted to go, but felt too worried to do so. Maybe it would be better to confront the child’s fears now and be done with it. She would most certainly see that there was nothing to be really frightened about, only superstitions.
Lucy’s decision was made. She called Mitru and asked him to make arrangements concerning their visit. She expected opposition from him or some kind of previous order from the master, expressly forbidding her to visit the villagers. There was none. Mitru just cocked an eyebrow and sighed. He did not voice any kind of protest, though.
“To the village we shall go then, mistress. I’ll set the sledge ready to take you there,” he told her.
He accompanied them, together with no less than five of the able-bodied men who had attended the wedding.
The day was cold but bright, the snow glistening in the rays of the sun. The houses and clothes of the villagers looked exotic and unfamiliar to her. But the place seemed cheerful and prosperous, and she was relieved to see that the peasants on her husband’s lands did not live in grim poverty. Still, she remembered, they and their priest resented him. She decided to find out why.
Her thoughts were soon diverted by a spectacle of children and youths dancing and singing around a bonfire. It was, Alexandra explained, the time before Christmas when something similar to English carolling was taking place. Later on, for New Year’s Eve, there’d be even more carolling. The children would then use their sorcova to bring good luck to the adults.
“What’s a sorcova?” Lucy asked.
“Here. I’ve already brought mine, although it’s not New Year’s Eve yet,” Alexandra said proudly, showing her a little wooden stick, decorated with multi-colored ribbons and paper flowers. “Papa and I made it together.”
Lucy examined the toy. It looked like a miniature tree, but not a Christmas tree, really. One that, strangely, reminded her of that drawing with the tree of life. The tree of life...but she did not want to dwell upon this. Instead she concentrated on what she saw and heard around her. The people were staring at her, but they did not seem hostile or unfriendly, and it seemed normal that they should stare. She was, she thought with a smile, the boyar’s strange English wife, after all.
The visit passed without incident. They ate nuts and warm pretzels with the children who came to talk to Alexandra. It was a relief to finally see her more animated and it was plain that some of the children were playmates the girl hadn’t been able to see lately. She’d obviously missed them.
While Alexandra was with her friends, an old woman approached Lucy smiling, gesturing to the bonfire the children had been dancing around earlier.
“What does she want me to do?” Lucy asked, when the woman placed a long switch in her hand.
Mitru smiled. “Just switch into the fire with it, mistress. You’re newly married—it’s good luck for a young bride to do this.”
Hesitantly, Lucy did as she was told, conscious that many villagers’ eyes were upon her. The old woman nodded in approval, beckoning Lucy to throw her switch into the fire when the switching was done. She then sang what seemed to be a couple of verses, in a soft voice.
“She’s singing to the fire.” Mitru answered her unspoken question. “Asking it for sheep to shear, cows to milk, horses to ride.”
“A Romanian Christmas custom?”
He shrugged. “An old custom. The boyar says it’s older than Christmas.”
“Many old customs in this place...” she murmured.
“We—the people here, I mean—there are things we haven’t forgotten,” Mitru said, and his words reminded her of what her husband had told her about pre-Roman times.
Clearly there were ancient things that would always be honored and remembered here. Perhaps this Christmas would really bring prosperity to the villagers. Maybe the magic in the fire would make sure that the New Year would bring more joy than the past one.
Lucy fervently wished that all the dreariness she’d been feeling of late would go away. Watching Alexandra with her friends made her hope that the girl had forgotten her anxiety. All would be well, Lucy thought, attempting to reassure herself. She did not dare to think of her husband, though—she didn’t feel ready yet to make him part of this wishful thinking.
It was when Lucy decided that it was high time to go home that she scented the dark priest. Dark—because it seemed a shade that suited the scent. She smelled him before she was able to see him. Since she came here, her ability to discern scent had become far more acute than in England.
When she raised her eyes, she saw a bulky man with a long beard that looked unkempt, dressed in a black robe, with a large wooden cross hanging by a chain around his neck. The people around them had fallen silent and the music had stopped. The priest was accompanied by a gaggle of old women dressed in somber black who kept muttering under their breath and making the sign of the cross.
He halted in front of her and spoke in a booming voice.
She instinctively wrapped her arms around Alexandra, prepared to protect the child if necessary. Oddly, she felt ready to lunge at the clergyman’s throat.
“What is he saying?” Lucy asked, realizing that she felt angry rather than astounded or afraid.
“Mistress, let us go,” Mitru whispered in her ear.
She noted that he and the other men accompanying them had rallied around her and Alexandra, as if to guard them. The villagers started muttering and she felt horribly frustrated that she was unable to understand what they were saying. She would have to learn this language one day, she realized.
“No,” she said firmly. “I would like you to translate what he’s saying.”
But it was not Mitru who complied with her request, but Alexandra herself, who told her in a quivering voice, “He’s saying that you’ve married the devil. That he’s going to rip your throat and leave you in a pool of blood...the same way he did with his wife...with my mother...”
The last words were spoken in a barely audible whisper and Lucy clutched the child firmly in her arms. She had been wrong to come here. So wrong to have exposed the child to this.
“Take us away from here. Right now,” she told Mitru.
She lifted Alexandra in her arms and almost ran for the sledge, not letting go of the child even when they were safely within the vehicle. She started speaking soothingly, not really knowing what she was saying, but assuring the child that what that hateful man had been saying was not true. Not true at all.