PART THREE
Anno Domini 1353
XX
Maria stayed silent throughout the story. Her heart ached for Lucina, and she could see her fate written even as Hanna described Lucina’s first meeting with Karl. Maria’s mother had been doomed from the start, and it was all the more heartbreaking because Lucina didn’t even understand why.
Her stepmother wiped her cheeks and said, “We had lost a daughter, less than a month before. She would have been barely older than you. You took her place at my breast. I know where you came from, what gave birth to you. But you were my husband’s child, and you became mine.”
“I had sisters,” Maria whispered.
Her stepmother gave her a long look and said, “Come with me.”
She led Maria along the stone fence marking the edge of the field, to a trail into the woods. The trail ended in a clearing marked on opposite sides by two piles of stone, one somewhat smaller than the other. The rocks were weedshot and reflected bone-white in the moonlight.
“This is where we placed them to rest.” She pointed to the larger of the piles and said, “Lucina is here.”
Maria walked up to the rocky pile and tried to picture what Lucina had looked like, what her voice might have sounded like, what she might have told her about what she was.
And as she did, she felt twin stabs of shame. The first came from not having spared the time to think about her mother before now, before she’d had cause to question what she was. But worse than that was the shame of having doubted her stepmother. The woman who’d raised her had shown her more grace, more loving forgiveness, than Maria had thought the human heart was capable of.
She knelt by Lucina’s cairn and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re right. You deserve to know your own history, whatever it is.”
Maria turned to face her stepmother. “Thank you for being my mother.”
“How could I do anything else?”
“When I hurt Władysław, you could have let my father take me away.”
“I—” Her stepmother sucked in a breath and turned her face away. Maria realized that Władysław had told the truth when he’d said that their parents never knew he had overheard them.
“And you gave me this.” She touched her cross.
“It was to keep you safe. We weren’t trying to imprison you. We didn’t want …” Her shoulders shook as she wept, and Maria stood to place an arm around her.
“You didn’t want me to end as she did,” Maria said, holding her still. “I understand it now.”
Her stepmother hugged her, and Maria realized that sometime in the last few years, she had grown taller than her.
“Don’t hate your father,” Hanna sobbed into Maria’s shoulder. “He made mistakes, bad ones. But he loved his family, and all his children.”
“I know.”
“Please, whatever happens, always remember that you have a family, and that we love you.”
“I know,” she whispered quietly, as her own tears came.
She returned to her own bed, with her stepmother and her brothers. And for the first time since her father had died, it felt like home to her. Yet through some evil sleight of hand, the feeling made her situation all the worse. Could she hang on to this, knowing what she did about herself? Knowing that the Order hunted her kind?
Curled up on her bed, in the loft above her brothers, she lay without sleep. Her nerves strung themselves tight beneath her skin, her muscles tense with unexpended energy. She felt as if she could jump out of bed and run into the woods, and keep running and running, away from all of this.
She ran her fingers over the dagger she had set next to the bed, the inscription rough and cold against her skin.
Josef …
What about Josef? She could explain things to her mother. All children leave home in the end, and she was no different in that respect. But could she explain things to Josef so that he understood?
Why had he given her this? Why had he kissed her so tenderly? Why did he incite the evil hope that there could be something more between them?
He belonged to the Order, and she was the demon they hunted. By all sane measure, he was her enemy—and a deadly one. So why did she care what happened to him?
And, as far as he knew, she was a lowborn bastard servant. Why should he care what happened to her?
I’m defying everything I’ve trained to be to tell you this.
She thought of him saying that, and her heart ached. He had no idea he was trying to aid the very thing he fought. Should he do anything else to help her, he might lose everything. She couldn’t let him sacrifice himself for a lie.
If she truly cared for him, she had to tell him what she was.
By the time she left, it was after dawn. When Władysław chose to escort her, she didn’t object. They walked for several minutes in silence, as birds sang under a cold, overcast sky. After a long time, Maria stopped and said, “I am sorry I hurt you.”
“What?”
“When we were children.”
“Oh, it wasn’t serious—”
Maria placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, Władysław, it was. I love that you care enough for me to pretend, even to yourself, but I might have killed you.”
Władysław chuckled uneasily. “You were only three years old.”
Maria looked at him and said, “Would it be so remarkable for a three-year-old wolf to kill a five-year-old child?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mother explained things to me.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Maria squeezed his shoulder. “Just remember, whatever happens to me, I love you and I’ll never do anything to hurt you or our family.”
“I know that—”
“I swear it, Władysław,” she said. “I swear on the graves of both my parents that I would give my own life before that happened.”
He stared into her eyes and asked, “What did Mother say to you?”
“She said I take after Father’s mistress.”
Then she told him what she was.
Władysław, of course, didn’t believe her. “Do not make such jokes, not on our father’s grave.”
“Here,” she said, and handed him the silver dagger.
“What is this?”
“You are the head of the household; you need to protect our home. There may come a time when you need this. I don’t think I will.”
They reached the edge of the woods and stepped into the shadow of Gród Narew. He still seemed half angry, half confused. “Why do you spin such a tale? And give me this?”
“Tell Mother that I am doing what I can to keep our family safe.”
And she left before he could ask her more questions.
When she came with Josef’s meal, he was dressed and standing by the window, staring out over the stables. She set down his breakfast and said, “You are looking well.”
He nodded, his expression grave. “I am healing, and I wish to be able-bodied when we ride forth again. You should stop coming here, even in daylight.”
“Josef—”
“The Wojewoda Bolesław led a band of men out yesterday, looking for signs of the beast. The Duke has sent more men to search for them. They haven’t yet returned.” He looked at her, and the concern she saw there made her want to weep. “I need to know you’re safe.”
“What do you know of these beasts you hunt?”
Josef frowned, as if her words confused him for a moment.
“You know what kills them. You know they can look like men.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever spoken to one?”
“What?”
“If they become human, then they can talk, explain themselves …”
“Don’t speak such nonsense.”
“Nonsense?”
“These are demonic monsters that have no conception of—”
“This is not nonsense!”
Josef’s expression froze.
“How is it you know that these creatures are demonic?” Maria asked, “What makes them so much more horrid than any wolf in these woods?”
“Have you not seen what it has done? To me, my brothers? You haven’t seen the ones it has killed—”
“Worse than men have done?”
He opened his mouth to answer her, but a shadow played across his expression.
“What you hunt, Josef—is it because of what it has done, or because of what it is?”
Josef grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “What do you mean by this? Why do you speak of such things?”
She looked at the growing terror in his face and felt her heart sink. “I pray to the same God you do,” she said. “Doesn’t Christ offer forgiveness to all who follow him?”
He stopped, as if she had struck him.
“Is it what this creature has done, or what it is?”
He let her go. “It is different. This thing is not human.”
“But it walks abroad in human skin.”
“Maria, you don’t understand—”
“Is there such a difference between a wolf who becomes a man and a man who becomes a wolf? Does a man lose his soul because of such a thing?”
Josef shook his head and said, “Such things have no souls.”
Maria had to restrain the impulse to strike him. Instead, she backed away from him. “So you know God’s mind on this?”
“It is a demon, a spawn from the fiery pit—”
“And you beat upon it with swords? Where are your priests, your rites of exorcism?”
“I shouldn’t have told you. You don’t underst—”
He was interrupted by calls from outside. “Make way! Make way!”
Josef turned toward the window and looked out. He took a step back and muttered something in Latin, his face draining of color.
Maria stepped to the side so she could see past him. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She reached up and clutched her cross so hard her hand hurt.
Past the stables, she could see the inner wall and the main entry gate. Rolling through the gate were a pair of wagons drawn by shaggy plow horses. In the carts she saw indistinct lumps covered by rust-spotted canvas. But the spots weren’t rust. Even at this distance, the scent of blood stabbed through the earthy smell of the horses below them.
She saw Bolesław’s nephew, Telek, run out to the lead cart and jump on board with an urgency that belied his girth. He reached down and cast aside one end of the canvas to view what was beneath.
Bolesław, she thought. It is Bolesław himself.
Even at this distance, she could see the expression freeze on Telek’s face. Her own breath seized as she watched him stare down at his uncle’s body. Time stopped as neither she nor Telek moved.
The men who had gathered the bodies had been respectful enough to place the lord’s head back in proximity to his body, but there was no hiding the fact that there was no connection between the two anymore. There was only an awful dark hollow where Bolesław’s throat should have been.
A hush had fallen across everyone in the courtyard. Even the horses fell silent enough that Maria could hear Telek speak. The words came quietly, almost as if he were conversing with his uncle: “This shall not stand.”
“Reinhart,” Josef muttered. He whipped around toward her. “There! Do you see? This is the work of the Devil himself. Can it be anything else?”
Maria backed up, unable to find the anger that had been driving her just a few moments ago.
“Eight men. Eight men …” His legs wobbled slightly, and he pressed his fist into the bridge of his nose. “I should have been able to kill it.”
“Kill it?”
“If only I had more strength—”
“Josef? What did you do?”
“I stabbed it in the eye with a crossbow bolt,” he said. “A mortal wound to any other creature, but for this—”
She was suddenly aware of an awful knowledge she had been harboring, unwilling to articulate, even to herself.
“Which eye?” Maria demanded, though she didn’t want to know.
“What?”
“Left or right?”
“Are you mad? What point is there to—”
She grabbed his shirt. “Left or right?”
“Left, but—”
She ran out of the room, leaving him with his question. Only one word filled her thoughts.
Darien.