Free The Wolves of Paris by Michael Wallace

the protective walls of the enceinte . But it was quiet, not a sound on the road but the clomp of the two horses.
    Martin sat on the perch, flicking his whip periodically when the horses slowed. A pair of lanterns with horn panes flickered on poles thrusting from the carriage over the heads of the two horses. Lucrezia sat in the carriage, wrapped in blankets and sharing Tullia’s warmth. The mastiff was calm at first, but grew restless as they put distance between themselves and the safe confines of Paris.
    The ground was hard and they made good time for the first few miles. If the roads were not too rutted, they might reach Saint-Denis ahead of schedule, and could press on another few miles to the next village. Leave first thing in the morning, they would be in and out of Gilbert de Nemours’s chatelet before the prior was halfway there. Then return to Paris via a more circuitous route.
    But Lucrezia hadn’t counted on the snow. Protected within the carriage, the first thing she noticed was their pace slowing. Within half an hour, Martin was cursing, whipping, and the carriage was sliding along the road whenever they turned. Martin hunched forward, his head and shoulders like a great snowy mane. Snow thickened the air, left the lanterns twin pinpricks of swirling light, unable to illuminate the road. The landscape ahead was like a white sheet. Fields and road blended together. The road was a slight indentation, quickly disappearing beneath the onslaught.
    “Martin!” she cried, suddenly terrified. “We have to turn around.”
    The storm had caught them out in the open. She’d ignored that hint of snow in the air as they left the city. It was rare to see more than a few inches in Paris and she meant to fight through it. But she could feel a change in the air. This storm was only now drawing its strength.
    He flicked his whip at the horses and shouted over his shoulder. “It’s too late. We have to press on.”
    “But Martin!”
    “Another mile. There’s a way station for pilgrims at a monastery up ahead. We’ll seek refuge for the night.”
    As Lucrezia fell back into the carriage, Tullia lifted her head. A rumble started deep in her chest, like the sound of distant thunder. Her ear cocked to one side.
    “What is it, girl?”
    A growl this time. Her ears twitched side to side and she turned her head as if to get a better angle on whatever she heard. The growl grew and Tullia drew back her lips.
    And then Lucrezia heard what had caught the mastiff’s attention. In the distance, a sound to curdle milk in a babe’s belly.
    It was the long, wailing howl of a wolf.

Chapter Eight
    When morning came at the monastery of Saint-Jacques, the chapel bells ringing for matins, Lorenzo moaned and struggled to a sitting position. The cold ached to his bones, and he kept the blanket around his shoulders as he groped to the other side of the cell in search of the chamber pot. His feet throbbed at every step. When he’d finished passing water, he sank back to the straw mat with a groan.
    They’d chained his hands and winched him off the floor by his wrists. When his feet were dangling above the stone floor, a bent old friar took a cane and beat the soles of his feet. From there, the cursed old bastard worked his way up the bare calves, thighs, and all the way to the naked flesh on Lorenzo’s buttocks. The blows were steady, methodical, pitiless, delivered with all the passion of a peasant threshing wheat. But with his measured pace, the old man didn’t tire. He went on and on and on, until Lorenzo couldn’t stop the groans, until he was begging for mercy. The old man never answered. Maybe he was deaf.
    Beaten by Methuselah. Then forced to pass around the frozen monastery wearing nothing but rags on his feet and a loin cloth, carrying a beam of wood like Christ on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Then he’d crawled into the chapel on hands and knees—he couldn’t have walked any more anyway—and prayed in front of the