The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt Page B

piazza were opening. A young woman stood in one of them. Her long hair was hennaed bright red, showing black at the roots. She might have been pretty, but for the big hole in one cheek through which two rows of her teeth could clearly be seen.
    A hand lifted Regeane’s skirt. Something giggled. She looked down.
    It hopped along on the stumps of its legs. The arm attached to the hand was long and simian. The face was dished as if it had been bashed and flattened by a giant club. Mucus flowed from the nose, and drool spilled from a grinning mouth filled with the stubs of yellow teeth.
    Regeane gave a stifled shriek and backed away.
    The thing followed, reaching, chanting, “Pretty lady. Pretty lady.”
    She backed into another, but this one only stared at her solemnly, a boy so deformed by his humped back that he scuttled on all fours. His eyes had a vacant stare. She realized as she twisted away from the thing’s hands that this one was blind.
    They were everywhere, all around her. Every doorway and balcony held one or another twisted obscenity. Some bore the marks of torture and mutilation—noseless, eyeless, ears cropped, hands or feet stumps. Were they alive? Had she fled somehow into a quarter peopled only by the dead?
    Regeane felt something clutching at the other side of her skirt. Her body jerked violently; then she realized it was the child clinging to her desperately, face buried in the folds of her gown. She put her arm around the little girl.
    “She doesn’t like us,” the red-haired woman shouted with a shrill laugh. “Who asked you to bring your pretty face here and remind us of what we’ve lost? Get out.” She picked up a piece of broken flowerpot and threw it at Regeane.
    They clustered around Regeane, hemming her in, their voices a cacophony of idiot babbling, giggling, and here and there, most frightening, a cry of hatred or rage.
    Regeane felt a strange weakness. The wolf was trying to claim her. She sensed the quivering readiness to change, a frisson between the day-to-day world and the drifting wraiths of moonglow.
    “For shame.” The voice was hoarse, yet commanding. It came from the first one Regeane had seen, the one who had bemoaned the ruin of his garden. He came forward, leaning on a long staff. The lower part of the hood was held up more tightly over the ruined face and now all she could see were those two oddly beautiful eyes gazing at her over the black cloth.
    “For shame,” he repeated angrily. When he reached Regeane’s side, he swung the staff in a wide circle, driving back those who had crowded most closely around Regeane and the child.
    “Here is a stranger come among us, seeking courtesy and protection.” The hooded head turned and looked at the soldier still lying in a heap on the stones of the street. “Whatever we are,” he said quietly, “we cannot be dead to all compassion or humanity. If that passes from among us, what will we become?”
    The crowd fell silent. The gentle rebuke of the hooded one seemed to carry great weight among them.
    “You, Drusis,” he spoke to the legless man, the one who had been trying to lift Regeane’s skirt. “Go fetch my brother.” He went on sternly. “Wash the rheum from your face. You’re not fit for the eyes of a gentle lady.”
    To Regeane’s surprise Drusis looked abashed, hung his head, and hopped away quickly.
    Then Antonius turned to Regeane. The clear, calm eyeslooked into her own. “Drusis will bring my brother,” he assured her, “and he’ll be able to lead you out of here. You must pardon the bad manners of my friends. It’s not often that an outsider strays into … the house of the dead.”
    The little Saxon girl peered past the folds of Regeane’s skirt up at the hooded figure. “Are you then a dead man?” she asked fearfully.
    The eyes shifted from Regeane’s face to the child’s. “Not quite,” he answered, “but the next thing to it. I am a leper.”
    Regeane felt her knees grow weak, not with