Free The Wolves of Paris by Michael Wallace Page B

tools in a bundle slung over his shoulder and his hand outstretched. Montguillon stared at Marco until the older Boccaccio brother reluctantly handed over the silver.
    The men shook the snow from their cloaks, brushed off the seats, and climbed back into the sleigh. Moments later, Simon had them moving again, sluggishly at first, then picking up speed.
    “Can we still reach Lord Nemours’ castle by nightfall?” Lorenzo asked.
    “Yes, of course,” Montguillon said.
    Lorenzo hadn’t been speaking to the prior, but to Fournier, who had watched the wheelwright work with a gloomy expression. Fournier shook his head.
    “Doubtful. We’ll be lucky to reach Villepinte.”
    “I tell you we’ll make it,” Montguillon said. “Be patient.”
    “I’m not looking forward to spending another night on the road,” Lorenzo said in Italian to his brother a few minutes later when they settled in.
    “There are all sorts of villages along the way,” Marco said. “The priory probably owns half this land. We could stay with a tenant if we really get caught out. No, we won’t be spending the night out of doors.”
    “You’re assuming the prior will let us stop at all.”
    The two brothers sat in the back row with Fournier, with the prior alone in the front row, behind Simon on his perch, driving the team. The sleigh was not enclosed, and there was no canopy overhead to keep out snow. The four men and their driver wore heavy cloaks, and wrapped themselves in gray wool blankets taken from the priory. They rose periodically to shake the snow from their cloaks and to brush out the snow at their feet or collecting in the gaps on the benches.
    The four horses pulling them were tall, stout animals that forged through the snow with relative ease. Every fifteen or twenty minutes they would pass a smaller, slower sleigh, or occasionally, a man on horseback. The nearest Lorenzo could tell, they were making better than three miles per hour. To his surprise, he determined they would, in fact, reach the chatelet near to or shortly after dusk.
    In late afternoon, they drew upon a sleigh struggling in the snow. The problem was not the sleigh itself, which wasn’t much bigger than a farmer’s hay sledge, but the animals. They were two short, stocky horses, well-suited for drawing a carriage, but not the best choice for pushing through the snow, which was eighteen inches high now, and up to twice that in isolated drifts. The animals struggled to get their hooves clear and so were pushing the snow aside instead of stepping through it like the animals pulling the prior’s sleigh.
    A man in fine riding clothes drove the two animals, while a lady in a fur-lined cloak sat behind. She held something in her lap that Lorenzo didn’t recognize at first. Even with the hood around her face, her tense posture gave away her anxiety.
    Lorenzo leaned forward and tapped Montguillon on the shoulder. “The lady is struggling. Offer her a ride into the next village. She can send someone for her animals and the sledge.”
    “It will slow us down. We’ll lose an hour, maybe two.”
    “We can spend the night and continue in the morning. Her horses will never make it.”
    “No,” the prior said.
    “A wealthy duchess or countess might endow the priory if she were grateful enough.”
    “I said no.”
    Marco tugged on Lorenzo’s arm to pull him back into place. “Leave it alone. This one is immune to the charms of a lady in distress.”
    Fournier, too, looked disgusted and muttered something in an incomprehensible village dialect.
    “I have no idea what that means,” Lorenzo told him, frustrated at the prior. “But I’m sure I agree with you.”
    “Faster,” Montguillon told Simon at the reins. “We’re slowing down.”
    “It’s the snow,” Simon said. “The horses can only go so fast.”
    “We must reach the castle by nightfall. Drive them on.”
    Simon cracked his whip. The horses struggled.
    Lorenzo watched the sledge with a frown as they swung