form.”
“The dead one? The dog?”
“That’s no dog.”
“Looks like a dog to me,” Lorenzo said. “But I haven’t seen many wolves in Italy.”
“It changes its shape, you understand. You can’t tell by looking at it.”
“So there are wolf men inside the walls?” Lorenzo asked. “Are there more of them?”
Lorenzo looked at the two condemned men, who had turned their heads at the conversation. They fixed the young Florentine merchant with hollow stares, but neither spoke.
“Henri Montguillon ordered two known witches burned at the stake,” the toll collector said. “No doubt one of them was responsible for this sorcery. One loup-garou remains, but not to worry. We’ll find him. His pack is captured, his mistress dead. There’s nowhere to go.”
The last of the wagon train had passed beneath the raised portcullis and was tromping on the paved streets of the Cité on the other side. Anxious to be away from the awful sight of the condemned men in their gibbets, Lorenzo urged his horse forward to catch up.
Henri Montguillon again. Why would the prior be involved in this bit of superstition? The Dominicans generally focused on bigger crimes of heresy, and Paris suffered persistent rumors about secret Jews, Cathars, even Templars—if remnants of those wicked knights still existed after all these years. Lorenzo imagined a credulous sergeant at arms or night watchman reporting a—what was it called?—a loup-garou to the bishop or to one of the learned doctors at the college. Then, when ignored by right-thinking men, he might appeal to Montguillon in desperation. And then what? What evidence would make Montguillon pursue the matter?
Lorenzo caught up with his brother at the head of the train. Two roads came together and their men were trying to muscle through a group of pilgrims on their way to the cathedral, while drovers leading sheep tried to fight through in the opposite direction.
Marco was waiting for him with a scowl. “Problems?”
“Not for us, no.” He explained what he’d seen and heard.
“ Loup-garou ?”
“A bunch of superstitious nonsense.”
“I agree, it sounds like nothing.” A half smile on the older brother’s face. “Perhaps it means Montguillon will be too busy to see to your penances. But you’ll present yourself to the inquisitor tomorrow all the same.”
“Yes, I know,” Lorenzo said. “You’ve reminded me of that twice a day for the last fortnight.”
Chapter Three
A servant let out a squeak when he answered the insistent banging to see the brothers from Florence standing in the undercroft before Giuseppe’s front door. His eyes widened at the carts and their muleteers coming down the narrow lane, where houses sat shoulder to shoulder. The corbelled upper stories leaned so far over the street that a man on one side could throw open his shutters and shake hands with a man on the opposite side.
After so long on the open road, the tunnel-like alley had made the horses skittish, and Lorenzo and Marco had dismounted. Lorenzo held their reins and let his brother step forward. This early business with Giuseppe might be ugly.
“Don’t stand there gaping,” Marco told the servant in a rude tone. “Send for the stable boy. And two men to unload these carts. Where are your stables anyway?”
“We don’t have stables,” the man said. “I rented them from the monastery, and—”
“And who the devil are you?”
“Luc Fournier, my lord.”
He was a short, nervous man, no older than thirty but already completely bald, except for a little tuft at the back and a fringe above his ears. He’d appeared on the undercroft without a hat.
“Well, Fournier, I want your master. Where’s Giuseppe? Summon him at once.”
“I don’t. I mean . . . ”
“Hurry up, man. Do you want a flogging?”
Lorenzo cleared his throat. “Gentle, Brother. Be easy on the man. We’re unexpected.”
“That is to say,” Fournier said, addressing Lorenzo in an anxious