Page 1 of Wolf's Return
Prologue
Frankia (France)
Year 990
Constance Voyante pushed inside her mud brick cottage and slammed the rickety door behind her, bringing dust and bits of straw fluttering down from the thatched roof. She leaned against the rough timber planks, grateful the room was empty, and let her tears flow.
How could I have been so blind?How did I not see this coming?
She had seen everything else. The baker’s wife giving birth to twins. The failed uprising against the new tax five years previous. Comte Lothair’s swift and terrible retribution. Little Emilie’s fall from a tree and her broken arm. What use was her second sight if it never helpedher?
Constance choked back a sob. The stares, the laughter, and the not-so-subtle mutterings of ‘witch’ reverberated in her mind. At the forefront of the crowd, his lips twisted in silent mockery, had stood Tristan, her only friend and confidant. In a village full of suspicious fools, he had been her one stalwart supporter. Until he hadn’t been. She clutched her hand to her chest, her dream of a happy life with him no more than ash from a cold fire.
Constance brushed away her tears with the heel of her hand and shoved away from the door. She should have known better than to dream of a life no different from everyone else. She sniffed. A foolish,foolishhope. Now she must pack up and leave.Again. She should have grown accustomed to it.How many huts have we called home now?But she and her mother had spent more time here than in any other place. It was not much—a single room, a dirt floor, two sleeping pallets, a table with a bench seat and a fire to cook over—but it was home. She had thought, for the first time… Her and Tristan could…
With a shaky breath, she snatched up her spare dress and stuffed it into a sack along with her apron, her coat, her darning needle and the pretty colored rocks she kept beside her sleeping mat. She hesitated over the hawk’s feather. Tristan had given her that. He had found it in the field and had thought she would like its pretty stripes. She had. She did. But taking it with her would surely only be a reminder of the life she was leaving behind. A life not meant to be hers. Pity her visions had not warned her before she had so trustingly given him her heart and her…
Constance shook her head, banishing the memory of their tryst by the millpond, and turned her back on the hawk’s feather. She thrust bowls, mugs and cooking pots into her sack. She wanted everything of importance, anything she and her mother might need, packed and ready to go when they came to force them out. Irate villagers cared naught for your worldly goods, nor your feelings, when they were desperate to see you gone.
The door creaked open as Constance grabbed another sack and began filling it with her mother’s meager things and any stored food they had.
Her mother’s pinched face was a picture of confusion. “What are you doing, Constance?” Barely four decades old, her worn skin stretched tight over her thin body and her eyes, once likened to the pretty blue of cornflowers, had dulled.
“We are leaving, Mother. The aumônier will be along at any moment. The villagers want us gone.”
Her mother’s lips thinned a little more, and she ran her fingers through hair long faded from a golden blonde to wisps of white. “Have you been telling stories about the Black Wolf again?”
Constance jerked around. “What? No.”
She shoved the last of their salted meat, barely enough for one more meal, into the bag. People were superstitious by nature, and they could be cruel. It took little for their distrustful gaze to turn on a woman alone with her daughter. A daughter with two different colored eyes. They soon forgot the woman had tended their illnesses and healed their wounds. Herbal tinctures and poultices so easily became the work of the devil in the minds of the suspicious. No, she had not understood then, that tales of the man who could turn into a wolf, that sharing her visions of future events, would be cause for alarm.
Constance was no longer that child, and she had learned that lesson well. Years had passed, and she had not spoken of the Black Wolf to anyone since. Nor shared her visions. Not with Tristan. Not even her mother. She had not had a vision of the Black Wolf for a long time.
“The Marchand boy took a turn for the worse yestreen. He died not long before sunrise.” Constance’s fist clenched at the injustice of it all. “And the tanner swears his cow’s milk dried up this morning.”
She stuffed a coarse, blackened loaf of bread the baker—in an act of charity—had given her only yesterday into the bag. This morn he had stood behind Tristan, his round face no longer jovial, and hatred burning in his usually merry brown eyes. Her mother healed people. Why would she want to curse the tanner’s cow with a dry udder when the people of Langeais were their only source of coin and food? It made no sense.
“As villagers are wont to do, Mother, they are looking for an explanation.” Constance did not mention Tristan. Her bond withhim was over, and her naïve, romantic imaginings of a life with him served no purpose but to goad her anger.
“Come, Mother. Help me pack all that we can carry. I doubt anyone will be kind enough to lend us a horse and cart for our travels.”
Her mother sagged, shrinking inside herself. “Where are we going to go?”
As clear as the interior of their hut, Constance’s vision struck—a small meadow with a cottage and a freshly piled mound of dirt decorated in flowers. Constance stood beside it, her head bowed. Alone. She sucked in a breath, tears smarting her eyes again.
“Due east about five leagues, there is a cottage.” The words flowed, and she knew the truth of them before she had finished speaking. It was often the way of her visions, of her second sight. Knowledge was simply there. “It is where we are meant to be, Mother. Where I am meant to be.” She stopped her packing and stared at her mother, knowing her next words would only anger her, but no more capable of stopping them than she was of ignoring her visions. “The Black Wolf will find us there, and we will once again have his protection.”
Anger flared in her mother’s faded blue eyes. “The Black Wolf isdead.” She snatched the sack from Constance’s hands and shoved the remains of their scant supplies in it. “Jacques d’Louncrais died in battle a year ago. And with him, his protection.”
“I know, Mother, but his son—”
“Has abandoned us to our fate.” Her mother’s shoulders sagged, and she let the sack slide to the floor. “We are no longer in reach of their gaze, Constance. These little girl fantasies will only bring you heartache.”
“But, I have—”
Her mother huffed out a breath. “You are young and untrained and are yet to learn how to separate true visions from that which your heart longs for.” Her mother picked up the sack and squared her shoulders. “Come, Constance. It is best we are gone before the aumônier arrives. I have no wish to face another crowd armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.”
Constance pressed her lips together and kept her silence. There was no point wasting precious time arguing with her mother. She hoisted her sack over her shoulder and grabbed their most prized possession from the table. A book, old, the edges of the pages stained with ingredients from the herbal preparations it detailed. Centuries of knowledge passed down through this one book. And in its pages, hidden within the swirls of their secret language, the legend of the Black Wolf and the spells the coven used to aid them.
