Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Apollonia helped me back upstairs to my bed, while Cecco sought to fetch the midwife, who slept three blocks away. I was in too much pain to protest Apollonia’s help, though I wanted to scream and damn her for betraying me. I held to her arm like a child, terrified of the searing pain as blood dripped on my feet with each step.

By the time Cecco arrived home with the midwife, a short and bawdy woman named Stefania, I didn’t need to catch her sharpened expression through the dim candlelight to know something was wrong.

“Please,” I begged her, though I couldn’t articulate another word.

Blood continued to seep out between my legs, and with each drop, my certainty grew. An hour of Stephania’s feeble instructions ended with the birth of a small boy delivered stillborn.

I begged them to let me hold and kiss him. I wanted to whisper words of love to wake him, but Stefania covered the dead infant and ordered Apollonia to remove him from the room.

From the hallway, I heard her scream and fall to the floor. Moments later, Apollonia returned to help clean me. Her face was flushed, and she wouldn’t look at me.

Cecco had struck her; I was sure of it.

Silence lingered between us for another hour until dawn arrived, when my bleeding finally stopped, and the midwife could leave the house.

“Why?” I whimpered at the traitor, but Apollonia never responded to my plea. She would not explain why she had betrayed me. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

Nor would Cecco, who waited two days before entering my room, though I had called to him again and again. Despite my hurt, I desperately wanted to see him. I wanted Cecco to hold me and comfort me as I wept. I wanted to grieve with him over our loss. But all I received were silent declines, delivered from him by the simple shake of Apollonia’s head.

When he did arrive in my room, I had become a different person. The fragile tenderness of my wounds had hardened, and I bore nothing but venom for him, certain I could never forgive his cruelty. And as he sat down on the bed beside me, I wanted to spit at his face.

“Father Piero delivered the eulogy, and we buried Adelchi this morning,” he said with a defeated, somber voice.

I struggled to understand what Cecco meant.

“The father will be around sometime tomorrow to tend to you—to hear your confession.”

“Who has died?” I asked with a sharp shake of my head.

For the first time, Cecco looked me in the eye. He seemed confounded by my question.

“Adelchi,” he said, “my son.”

My mind suffered more at his answer than all the pain of childbirth, of the loss of the baby, or of Stefania’s refusal to let me hold him.

“You named my boy?” I whispered in agony.

“I named my son!” Cecco roared at me.

His words, filled with such unexpected rage, startled me, and I became frightened of him.

“I named my son so he might return to God and not suffer eternity in Limbo, where you’ve condemned him to!”

I had never heard the word, ‘Limbo,’ but the way he spat it at me filled me with dread.

“What is that? What do you mean?” I pleaded.

Cecco didn’t answer my questions, even when I repeated myself.

“Father Piero will come to the house to hear your confession,” he answered without emotion, his change baffling me again.

“Confess?” I asked. “What have I to confess? Shouldn’t he come to hear your confession? You and that miserable—”

Cecco’s hand flew to slap me in the face. The swift violence stunned me, and before I could reach to shield my face, he moved to strike me twice more.

“You will confess for murdering my son!” he screamed wildly.

Cecco left the room in anger and slammed the door shut behind him.

Father Piero knocked on my door and softly entered my room. With no greeting, he sat down in the same spot at the edge of the bed where Cecco had slapped me. Making the sign of the cross, he cleared his throat.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. What sins have you to confess?”

Before his arrival, I’d thought long on what I might say, but the gentle melody of his voice stifled any indignity waiting behind my words.

“Did you see him?” I whispered.

The priest looked to me, seemingly unsure of what I’d asked him. I could tell he was uncomfortable at looking upon the eyes of a confessor, or at least unaccustomed to it. It was perhaps a ritual so shrouded in privacy and shame that the priest would rather not look upon the sinful even in quiet confidence.

“What do you mean, my child?” he grumbled softly.

“My baby,” I answered. “Did you see him before they buried him?”

Father Piero’s eyes faltered, and he shook his head gently.

“They wrapped your son in a shroud, Signora,” he said, “but yes, I saw him.”

The priest’s words were final and straightforward, revealing an unpronounced wish I bore that my son was still alive. Tears returned to my eyes, and I trembled from the pain in my mind, more terrible than any wound my flesh could incur.

“What is Limbo?” I pleaded. “Cecco says I have damned my son.”

Father Piero scowled briefly and then shook his head.

“There’s no need for you to concern yourself with that, not now while you recover,” he answered with a gentle murmur. “Another day, perhaps, I will discuss that with you. For now, it is enough that you trust in the grace of Christ and his sacrifice to cleanse the faithful of sin. Now, what sins have you to confess?”

“I hate my husband,” I said. “I hate him and Apollonia. I caught them fornicating like beasts in the kitchen. That’s when I started—”

“Signore Alfonsi has already confessed his sins and received absolution. I will hear only your sins during this confession,” he said with patience.

“I never want to see him again,” I hissed. “I wish he was dead. I wish they both were.”

Though I said this boldly, it was untrue.

“It’s not for you to decide what punishment God holds in store for his children. Nor is it righteous for you to hold contempt in your heart for your husband. There should only be forgiveness for all people who cause you injury, but especially for your husband. All men make mistakes, Signora. Like Christ prayed for forgiveness, so does your husband, and so should you.”

The sentiment rang with me, and I stopped myself from protesting, not wishing to insult the man who offered me the first hint of comfort since the miscarriage.

“Do you think I killed my boy?” I asked in quiet desperation.

He would not answer me for some time but eventually sighed.

“Do you think you killed your son? he asked.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t admit the truth to Father Piero.

In time, he told me to say one Rosary and followed with a quiet absolution, invoking the melodic Latin words that bore such cleansing power. Finally, he made the sign of the cross over my head.

“Amen.”

My body healed itself faster than I expected, but I still felt insane. Alone for the first time, I found the confined sensation harrowing. The traitors surrounded me, the sound of their voices taunting me in my self-imposed isolation, reminding me of where I stood.

Mella, the junior maid, took her commands from Apollonia and never engaged me in conversation, even though we were much closer in age. I was not to speak to the men in my husband’s employ unless Cecco himself was in the room with us. And Father Piero, as comforting as he might intend for his words to sound, left me with little more than shame.

I had only one place left to turn, though I expected nothing of it. Dressing in black clothing, I covered my hair underneath a simple hat. I slipped out of the house past turned heads and walked two blocks away to one of the few doors I knew by sight in Morbegno.

“My dear, what are you doing out?” Sofia Vervio asked in a hushed voice.

Her majordomo had led me to her sitting room when I showed up at the door, recognizing me before I announced myself.

She gestured for me to come away from the window. Her voice sounded as if she thought being seen with me was undesirable.

I tried to answer her straight away, smiling as cheerfully as I could manage.

“Forgive me,” I said, but the rest of my words would not leave my lips. I shook my head and felt tears ready to break.

Without imploring further, Signora Vervio took my hands and kissed them.

“Gabriella, you should be resting in bed,” she whispered with kind affection.

“I apologize for bothering you like this—”

“You’re no bother, dear,” she stopped me.

“I have no one else I can turn to,” I pleaded. “I’m desperate for your help.”

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked. The woman seemed baffled by my statement.

“My husband is unfaithful to me,” I whispered, speaking the miserable words as quietly as possible.

Sofia’s eyes darkened and shot away from mine as if she’d seen something foul.

I couldn’t tell if I had offended her or if the subject itself upset her.

“I found Cecco and our housemaid in the kitchen on the night... on the night I lost the baby,” I admitted. “The moment my heart raced with anger, I bled out onto the floor.”

The woman’s eyes returned to me with undisguised horror.

“And he was born dead,” I shuddered. “I don’t know what to do. Cecco believes I killed his son. He sent Father Piero to my bed to hear my confession. He beat me when I told him to visit the priest himself.”

Sofia released my hands and rose with a controlled startle to move about the room. Her eyes were lost, pointed at the surrounding space, though they fell on none of it.

“I hate him,” I said. “Won’t you tell me what I should do?”

The statement seemed to pull the woman’s mind to the present, and she returned to sit beside me on the sofa.

“What do you mean?” Her expression seemed puzzled.

“Should I leave?” I asked.

“Where would you go?” she returned.

“I could go home, back to my parents,” I suggested. “I’ll walk back to them if I must.”

“Your parents paid a dowry to Signore Alfonsi to marry you. It was their gift, their blessing, so he would take you away from them to start a family of your own. They will not take you back now, certainly not while he lives. Besides, you’re a wife now. Your place is in your house at your husband’s side.”

Sofia delivered her sobering opinion as calmly as if she were discussing the color of the sky.

Her words stunned me. Devoid of the slightest comfort, they offered nothing but a cruel mirror to reflect my situation’s truth.

I nevertheless pleaded in vain.

“Should I take revenge? Should I kill Apollonia? Slice her face and throw her in the street?”

Sofia remained silent for several moments, the horror in her eyes returning.

“You should do no such thing,” she whispered with controlled urgency. “What good would that do? Expose yourself, your misfortunes— turn it all into a scandal to humiliate your husband and yourself? You must do nothing of the sort.”

“Then what? What should I do?” I pleaded again.

“Go home, ask for your husband’s forgiveness, convince him of your loyalty, and provide him with a healthy son. What better choice is there to make?”