The House of the Wolf

17

Chantal opened her eyes and then groaned softly. She had endured many such awakenings now, and they had a familiar feel: the weariness, the unfamiliar surroundings, the memories that were too vivid for a dream yet too terrifying and strange to be real. She got up and looked out the window at the view of the Citadelle's low stone wall topping the snowy hill. Old cannons perched atop the battlement of the sunken fort – no ruin, she knew, but an active base. There were soldiers in there, and officers, and red-liveried sentries like the ones at Buckingham Palace. Thinking of these things helped to ease her fears. She felt secure in this fortress-city, enclosed and protected within its walls that for centuries had sheltered her kind. Her own father included...

She glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table. Four PM! Exhausted and stressed, she had slept the entire day away. The house seemed strangely still. When she went downstairs there was no sign of Raoul or of M. Dubois, but in the Salon she found the Métis woman Josephine. It was even stranger to see her in that elegant setting than in the cluttered shack.

"Hello my dear, so we meet again!" Josephine greeted her. "Honoré is not here just now. He's had some bad news. An old friend has died suddenly. But he asked me to look after you." She stood up. "Why don't you come with me to the lower town, Chantal, and we'll get my truck? There is a place I would like to show you, not far from here, where many of our kind will be gathering this evening."

They bundled up against the cold and walked out together into the Old City. A bitter wind blew off the St. Lawrence, with its drifting pans of ice. But people were still out enjoying themselves. There was a skating rink set up on the Terrasse next to the Château Frontenac, and at the far end of the boardwalk was a giant toboggan run. She watched as the sleds, some carrying three or four people, careened down the wooden track with the riders squealing and clutching at each other. Chantal had not gone sledding since she was a little girl: she recalled swooping down frozen hillsides with her cousins, the wind singing in her ears and stinging her cheeks. It was like remembering another life.

Josephine led her down to the Basse Ville, the lower town that lay by the riverside, below and outside of the main fortifications. It could be reached by a long zig-zag stair at one end of the Terrasse, which the locals called the Escalier Casse-cou (literally the Break-neck Stair), but on feeling the keen edge of the wind they opted for the funicular instead. It descended the cliff's face at a leisurely pace and at its foot passed through a gap in the roof of the lower station; from there they walked out into the Basse Ville. It, too, was plainly very ancient, its structures all built of grey weathered stone; above its roofs loomed the granite rock-faces of the Cap Diamant, limned with snow and dominated by the huge castle-like façade of the Château. The narrow avenue along which they walked, the Rue Petit Champlain, was according to Josephine the oldest street in all of North America, and not far away lay Place Royale, the site of the original settlement. This was little changed from the days of its initial construction: a broad cobbled square surrounded the little stone church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, and around its perimeter stood the old stone houses of the settlers, converted now to shops that sold everything from jewellery to wood carvings to hand-knit sweaters.

Josephine took her to one that displayed native art and animal furs in its windows. The painted wooden sign hanging over its door sported the carved figure of a northern loon and the words Atelier du Nord. This was the shop where she and her northern native friends sold their wares.

But it was much more than that, apparently. As they went in Josephine said, "This is a safe house for loups garous, a backup for when the Dubois place is not available. Upstairs we have spare rooms with beds, clothing and other necessities. We also keep lots of ready cash for those who need it. Many of our kind hang out here." Chantal threw a quick glance at the young native man sitting at the counter, his long black hair caught back in a tidy ponytail. He didn't even glance up from his computer screen. "Oh, don't you worry about Jean-Louis, he's one of us," laughed Josephine, seeing her look.