In boy’s shape, too, he hardly noticed the incense in the air. It was just part of how churches smelled. As a wolf, though, the bitterness of myrrh and frankincense’s sharp spicy scent made his nose twitch and tingle. He gasped, then sneezed once, twice, three times.
A priest was walking up the aisle to the altar. He carried a long staff with a crucifix on the end. At the sneezes, he whirled around in surprise. “Good health to-” he began, then stopped in horror when he saw who-or, rather, what-had sneezed.
Dieter trotted toward him. He opened his mouth to ask the priest’s blessing. That showed him the one flaw in his plan. As a wolf, he could not tell the man what he needed.
The priest saw only a great hairy beast rushing at him with gaping jaws. “Lieber Gott!”he gasped. With no other weapon he could reach, he swung his staff at the wolf.
The crucifix was silver. The blow hurt Dieter as much as if he had been human. Howling in pain and dismay, he whirled about and fled from the church, tail between his legs. “A wolf! A wolf!” the priest shouted behind him.
Some of the hunters were just drawing near Saint Cacilien’s. They yelled and pointed when they saw Dieter streak out. They ran after him. His savage growl, though, made them think twice about coming close. Having been hurt already, he now acted and sounded fiercer than before.
But the men did cut him off from the new market square. He growled, deep in his throat. So many streets led off the square, he would have had his choice of escape routes. Instead, his pursuers were forcing him away-and the priest’s hue and cry would only bring more people out after him. Already he could hear new voices, smell new scents among those who chased him.
He was halfway down a street before it jogged to show him it had only the exit down which he had come. A tall, barred gate of stout timbers blocked the other end. He yelped and whimpered. Too late to double back now; his pursuers had plugged the way out.
They knew it too. “We have him now!” one shouted. “He can’t get into the Jews’ quarter at night. Come on!”
Dieter snarled, this time at himself. He should have remembered that the Jews were closed off from the rest of the city between sunrise and sunset. The men were coming closer fast. He could not go back through them. He stood there, panting. Part of him, the exhausted part, wanted to lie down and give up.
The he thought of the flames again. No, he could not let the hunters take him. He ran for the gate and flung himself upward.
He had imagined himself easily clearing the timbers, landing lightly on the far side. His head and forelegs cleared, sure enough, but his belly slammed against the gate hard enough to drive half the wind from him. He hung there a moment, stunned, his hind feet scrabbled for purchase. The wood was rough; his claws bit. Leaving skin and hair behind, he dragged himself over, fell like a stone to the ground.
His undignified scrabble had let him be seen. “There he went!” a man yelled from other side of the gate. The fellow pounded on it with his fist. “Here, you damned Jews, open up!”
Dieter raced away. Now he had time to find a hiding place without any of his pursuers liable to spot him diving for cover. He would not keep that chance for long. Several men were battering at the gate, one, by the sound of it, with an axe. “Open up!” they shouted at the top of their lungs. “You damned stupid Jews, there’s a werewolf loose among you!”
That would make the gates open if anything did, Dieter thought. He knew he never hurried to do anything for people who cursed him and called him names. He suspected the Jews were no different from him in that, no matter that they had their own strange faith. But he would run if someone screamed, ”Fire, you fool!” The Jews might swallow insults for the sake of hunting him down.
He rounded a corner and almost ran into an old man crossing the street. They both stopped, staring at each other. The old Jew did not run shrieking as many had.
Behind Dieter, clamor grew. Either someone would come open the gate or soon the men who hunted him would break it down.
The frozen tableau that gripped Dieter and the man could not last, not with shouts of “Werewolf!” flying thick and fast. Dieter was about to run when the old Jew spoke: “Come with me, and quickly!” He opened a door, gestured urgently.
Dieter hesitated. All the wild, wolfly instincts in him rebelled at trusting any man. The boy he still was had trouble believing anyone would want to help him in his present state. But the old man had not known he was coming. No trap could be waiting for him inside that house. And even if one somehow was, what could a frail graybeard do against any wolf, let alone a werebeast?
The sound of the gate creaking open decided him. His hunters were in the Jewish quarter, and the Jews likely would be after him, too. Everyone was against him save, this one old man. He grabbed at that like a drowning man grabbing for a log. He darted inside.
The old man shut the door behind them.”Get under the table there,” he said. When Dieter had, he draped a cloth over it that hung down to the floor on all sides. Then he lit a couple of candles at a little brazier and set them on the table. Dieter’s world, the little square of it he could see, went from black to gray. The old man rustled about for another couple of minutes, then sat down. His knees pushed at the tablecloth.
“Now we wait,” he said. Dieter whined softly to show he had heard.
They did not wait long. A knock came at the door. “Avram, are you there?” a man asked.
“Where else would I be, with the candles lit?” the old Jew said. “It’s late, David. Why do you come around asking foolish questions?”
“Avram, will you please open up?” the other man, David, asked. “Some of the good folk from outside the gate are with me. They are searching, they say, for a-a wolf.”
The stool creaked as Avram rose. Dieter heard him open the door. “A wolf? In Cologne?”
“So they say,” David told him. “They seemed most urgent. We thought it wiser to let them come in, no matter the hour.”
“Is that the commotion I heard?” Avram sounded grumpy and disapproving. “It was loud enough to disturb my studies.”
“Too bad, old Jew.” Dieter shivered at the sound of the new voice-it belonged to the man who had dared swing a club at him. “When a werewolf is loose in the city, we don’t care what we disturb to find it.” Others shouted agreement.
“Well, I have seen no wolves, were or otherwise, gentlemen. I’ve been at my books since sundown. May I go back to them?”
“Since sundown, you say? Why are your candles so long?”
Dieter had to clamp his jaws shut to keep from whimpering in terror. Not only was this hunter a brave man, he also was no one’s fool.
Avram just shrugged; Dieter heard his robe rustle. “Because the last pair guttered out not long ago, and I lit these from them. Why else?”
“Hrmmp. You’ve seen or heard nothing out of the ordinary, you say?”
“Not till you came,” Avram replied sharply.
“You watch your mouth, Jew, or you’ll watch the few teeth you have left go flying into the mud.” But after that the man turned back to his comrades. “If this old bugger’s been here all night, the cursed beast can’t have sneaked in. On to the next house.” Dieter heard them tramping away.
Avram shut the door and walked back over to the table. He did not lift the cloth. Very softly, he said, “I’ll stay down here reading until these candles fail. Don’t come out till then. I’ll leave a dish of water for you. You’d be wiser to stay the night here, I think. In the morning, in your proper shape, you’ll have an easier time getting back to your own affairs.”
Dieter wished he could answer in words. He thumped his tail against the floor. Avram grunted. The old Jew sat down, began turning pages and, every so often, muttering to himself.