I have developed likes and dislikes regarding major cities over time, and one thing I’ve learned is you have to pick your spots. For example, Caesar’s Rome was a fine place to be, as was Aristotle’s Athens. But Paris and London up until the World Wars were almost completely intolerable, as was early New York and early Berlin. Basically, Paris in 1346 was one gigantic smelly sewer, which made some sense, as neither the flush toilet nor deodorant had been invented yet. And the plague only compounded the problem. Nobody knew quite what to do with plague victims, so they usually lay where they dropped and just added to the overall bouquet.

Altogether, I was pretty happy in my drafty old castle on a hill overlooking nothing in particular. It was quiet, not nearly as smelly, and the plague rarely made it to us. (Not that I personally had to worry about it, but stinky dead people are stinky dead people and I’d just as soon rather not have to deal with them.)

Strictly speaking, I was a servant. I don’t like to put it that way because Lord Coucy was a generous man who treated most people he met with a reasonable degree of respect, so I never felt much like one. And my singular talent, the one that got me the room in the castle instead of the hay loft in the stable, was that I was literate. Coucy could read and write as well as the next man but nobody else in the place could, which made me, simple peasant that I was, extremely valuable, especially when he was away.

And he was away all the time. This period was later known as the Hundred Years’ War on account of France and England kept fighting each other over French sovereignty. (Or something. They just didn’t like each other. Still don’t.) While he was off fighting various noble battles—which France invariably lost—I kept up correspondences and maintained the books, looked after Mme. Coucy, and basically hit on the staff whenever I could.

The castle was built on the peak of a hill, with thirty-foot walls that made three quarters of the keep virtually impregnable to everything except the march of time. The fourth side was open to a small village, itself surrounded by a low wall, with gates at the far end that were lightly guarded on most occasions and not at all in times of war. One might be led to believe the opposite, except that nobody bothered to attack us during war. Most of the battles took place in Southern France, in places like Poitiers and Crecy. There were no guards because all able noblemen went to battle. I was an able man but I was not noble. I wasn’t even French. I claimed to be a Jew from Venice. (I did not look particularly Jewish, per se, but nobody in Picardy had ever seen one so I got away with it. Intolerance reared its head on occasion, but I had the protection of the lord of the castle, so I stayed pretty well out of trouble.) What noblemen remained were advanced in age and had already seen too many battles in their lifetimes, so busied themselves with maintaining order in the Coucy-le-Chateau in the lord’s absence.

One such man was an old codger named Lord Francois Etienne de Harsigny, who for some reason, liked to be called Lance. Lance was fifty-two and should not have been alive. He only had one foot and one eye, suffered from gout, and always smelled of gangrene and poppies. The foot he lost in the Battle of Crecy. I don’t know when he lost the eye, but I suspect its absence was indirectly what caused the loss of his foot. To compensate—for the foot at least—he would strap the boot from his armor onto the stump. It didn’t do him a damn bit of good when he walked but it helped when he rode. Harsigny served as castle regent in 1356 while Lord Coucy was yet again away to battle.

On one disturbingly cold winter’s morn, Lord Harsigny bade my presence in the main hall for a matter of grave importance. The hall was where the lord of the castle served as de facto judge and jury for local disputes among the peasantry. When I arrived, I found a local smithy weeping over the body of his wife.

“Lord Venice,” Harsigny called when I entered. He called me Lord Venice in public out of respect, for I had no actual title. Serge was my common name at the time. “Attend.”

I went straight to the smithy, a pleasant man named Albert with whom I’d had many dealings in the past. Albert was a tanner. He made an excellent leather waistcoat, one of which I was wearing. “Albert,” I asked, “what has happened?”

He looked up at me, mute with grief, and lifted the cloak from his wife’s body. Something had torn her throat out.

“What say you, Lord Venice?” Harsigny asked.

It has been said that the Dark Ages were the worst time to be an intellectual, and while the argument has some merit, I’m living proof that there will always be room for the learned, provided one shops one’s talents long enough. Harsigny called for me because I was the only man in town who was well versed in logic, and because I knew my history better than most, for obvious reasons. Not that Lance was a fool by any stretch.

“Where did you find her?” I asked Albert.

“Outside the walls,” Albert whispered. “She had gone to the well near dusk at my behest. When she did not return…”

“Albert, the well lies within the walls. And you found her outside?”

“Yes, Lord Venice.”

“When was this?”

“We found her this morn after looking within the keep for much of the night.”

I examined the wound more closely. Her head lay at an unnatural angle, tilted to her left. There were teeth marks. Some kind of animal had done this. But there were no other marks on the body, which made no sense. Animals don’t kill for sport; they kill to eat. Why hadn’t she been eaten?

“What would have made her leave the walls at dusk?” I asked Albert.

“She would not have!” he insisted.

“No,” I agreed. “I suppose not.”

It would have been easier on all of us if she had, but he was right. Only the foolish or the extremely well armed drift beyond the keep walls at night, especially in winter when the wolves are hungry and desperate enough to consider going after a person. But no wolf had ever dared stray so far inside as to reach the well, and no wolf was strong enough to drag an adult woman such a distance—by the throat—alone. Nor, I suspected, would any wolf have the inclination to do so.

“We need to see where she was found,” I told Harsigny. To Albert, I asked, “Can you show us?”

*  *  *

We rode to the gates, in part because Harsigny rode everywhere (he’d stable his horse in his quarters if he could) but also because of the air of importance men on horseback tended to carry. It was a serious inquiry and the villagers—all of whom were by then well aware of the murder—needed to understand that we were taking it seriously. Otherwise I’d have gone alone and walked, which is what poor Albert had to do. His wife’s body was left in the care of the castle staff, where a priest had been called and the preparations for her funeral pyre were being made. (It was too cold to bury the dead in the winter in Picardy.)

Before we reached the gates, I stopped at the well.

We were fortunate that it hadn’t snowed during the night. I dismounted and left Albert to hold my horse. Harsigny remained on his steed and walked along beside me. “Wolf?” he asked quietly.

“I can’t imagine how,” I admitted. A crowd had followed us through the town, forcing us to speak in hushed tones.

“I agree,” he said. “Perhaps were it a child…”

I crouched down near the well. A lone bucket rested on its side, next to an area of kicked up snow.

“There,” Harsigny said, pointing. “The imprint of a head.” I saw no such imprint. “You are too close to the ground to see it, Serge.”

I went to the area he described and brushed back the kicked-up snow to find a fresh bloodstain, frozen and glistening.

I looked in the direction of the gates. There was no trail, or rather, not the right kind of trail.