This story is inspired by historic events.
1. The Hidden Life
A shift in the dawn light pried Rowan’s eyes open. He lay perfectly still in the tangle of sheets, letting his waking gaze sweep over his chamber. It was small, but well-appointed—a jewel box where every item spoke of tastes beyond his means.
He watched the shaft of light catch on a shelf of Venetian glass. He noted the silver inkwell gleaming beside a single, exquisitely bound volume of Pliny’s Natural History. His eyes drifted to the far wall, where a pair of narrow marble slabs stood—few would guess their purpose. Beside the washbasin sat a harsh pumice stone, an ugly necessity he used nightly to scrub the stubborn calluses from his palms.
Only then did he turn his attention to the warmth beside him. A boy stirred—a hired hand from a nearby household. Handsome, lean, his bloom not yet worn by menial work—he was nearly Rowan’s age but without the benefits of his education.
It was 1603. Barely five years had passed since Rowan emerged from his studies. In that time, he’d worked to suppress the cadence in his speech that still, on occasion, betrayed his Gaelic origins. His new life—leveraged by a few family connections, diplomacy, and the currency of his own beauty—was young and tender.
The advantages had been adequate to open doors in the Church's sprawling bureaucracy, but not enough to live in comfort without occasional, carefully chosen patronage. Maintaining the favor of men like Archbishop Valois, and the discreet assignments that came with it, was essential.
A soft groan escaped the boy’s sculpted lips as Rowan’s hand traced a bare shoulder. Dark, curling hair tumbled over the pillow, a striking contrast to Rowan’s meticulously tied-back copper strands.
He leaned in, inhaling the scent of the boy’s skin in the hollow of the throat. The boy’s eyes fluttered open.
There was a rush to these pairings—an understanding that certain appetites were best indulged in hushed hours as the city slept. But with the new day intruding, Rowan felt a fresh surge of desire.
“Not yet,” he murmured. He rested a hand on the boy's hip, kissing his chest, then latching onto a nipple.
Rowan shifted, turning the boy onto his side. His cock pressed into the cleft of the lad’s arse. A quick reach for the porcelain jar of rosewater pomade—an innocent luxury to any observer, but kept expressly for this. He scooped two fingers deep, smeared the slick into the boy’s hole, then pushed in without ceremony.
The boy gasped—his body yielding, certainly tender from the night before—a sound too loud for the hour. Rowan’s hand clamped over his mouth, feeling the flutter of the boy’s moan, the hot breath against his palm. A spark of domination flared in his chest.
He moved in urgent, stifled friction—skin slapping quietly, the wet squelch of pomade easing each thrust. Sweat broke across both their bodies, making Rowan’s chest smack against the boy’s back. The boy’s fingers twisted in the tangled sheets, his hips pushing back to meet the drives, his hole tight around Rowan’s cock.
Rowan groaned through clenched teeth as the pressure built, driving deep. And then it spiked. He spilled with a shuddering grunt, his pulses flooding the boy’s arse as his fingers dug into the flesh.
He pulled out and collapsed onto his back, his chest rising and falling in harsh, silent pants. The damp heat of their tangled bodies began to rapidly cool in the drafty morning air.
He reached down to tend to the boy’s erection.
A sharp rap on his chamber door shattered the intimacy of the moment.
Rowan’s body tensed, but the boy flinched as if struck. His eyes darted toward the door.
Rowan pressed a finger to his lips—an unspoken command—and tilted his chin toward a shallow alcove, draped with velvet, just big enough for hasty concealment.
The young man scrambled, disappearing into the shadows, as Rowan donned a heavy dressing gown that masked the lingering flush on his skin. He moved with the cold pragmatism of a man who knew these intimacies, if discovered, meant not just ruin, but the fire.
He opened the door to a waiting acolyte, instantly recognizable by the cassock and surplice he wore.
“His Grace requests your presence, Master Rowan, with utmost urgency.”
The summons pulled him away from the shadowed sanctuary of his chamber, back into the perilous light of the Archbishop's service.
2. The Archbishop's Briefing
Rowan moved quickly, dismissing the young man with a coin and a nod before making himself presentable. He did not make a habit of leaving powerful men waiting, and the journey to the Archbishop’s residence in Sens would consume the better part of the day.
At the grand entrance, he was met by a different acolyte—this one older, with a solemn air—who led him through now-familiar, hushed corridors, past tapestries of saints in ecstatic agony, and into the Archbishop’s antechamber. The cool air smelled of beeswax and old paper.
Valois sat behind a massive oak desk, his face drawn as if held in a perpetual sigh. His drooping eyes took in Rowan’s appearance. The fair hair was tied back to frame a sharp, angular jaw; Rowan’s gray eyes were cool and calculating. Though he lacked the imposing height of some, he carried himself with a quiet authority that belied his stature, a lean strength evident beneath fine fabric and leather.
Rowan was accustomed to such scrutiny. He understood the unspoken appraisal and met the gaze with practiced composure.
“Rowan,” the Archbishop began, his voice a low murmur. “I trust your... private studies do not entirely consume your intellect?”
A flicker of something—amusement, or perhaps a subtle warning—passed across the old man’s eyes.
Rowan offered a deferential nod. “Never, Your Grace. My mind remains at your service.”
Valois sighed—a deeper exhalation this time—and pushed a stack of rough parchment across the desk. “Good. I have a matter, quite vexing, that requires precisely your discreet approach. It comes from La Roche-Chalais, in the Dordogne region, of all places.”
Rowan reached out, sliding the top sheet toward him. He scanned the cramped, frantic handwriting of a local magistrate.
“There have been wolf attacks in the area,” Valois continued as Rowan read. “Infants taken in their sleep, disappearances blamed on wild beasts.”
Rowan’s eyes narrowed. “It says here an eighteen-year-old boy named Jean Grenier approached two servant girls,” he noted, tracing the ink.
“Indeed,” Valois said. “Filthy, by all accounts, and dressed in tattered hides. He 'coarsely complimented' them, asking which would marry him. When they called him dirty, he replied it was because of the 'wolf-skin' he wore. He claimed to be a priest’s bastard, too, if you can imagine.”
Rowan raised his brows, feigning shock, turning to the next page.
“It gets worse,” Valois continued, tracing a withered finger in the air. “The boy spun a truly abominable tale. He claimed to be a loup-garou. A werewolf. The very one who had attacked the maids recently. Later, when questioned by the local magistrates, he claimed that he and his 'master'—a man named Pierre Labourant—don pelts and, with magical salves, 'course the woods and fields as wolves.' He even spoke, quite calmly it seems, of lusting for the flesh of newborns. Said he’d consumed—fifty, was it? Yes. Fifty.”
Rowan felt a prickle of curiosity. Why? Why would a boy volunteer a confession to such monstrous, self-incriminating fantasies? To speak of such horrors was to invite a death sentence. True or false, what could motivate a young man to make such an admission?
“The local magistrates, predictably, are in a frenzy,” Valois observed, pulling Rowan from his thoughts. “Every wolf-killed child in years is now laid at the boy’s feet. A trial is set; the villagers are clamoring for blood. But, Rowan, it is 1603. We are in an enlightened age. This primitive superstition... it is a stain upon the Church, upon reason itself. It must cease. I want you to go to Dordogne.”
He pushed a folded letter across the desk. “This bears my seal. It may open doors for you, but remember: Dordogne is not my see. Use it sparingly—and discreetly.”
Rowan took the parchment, his brow furrowed at the weight of the task. Dordogne was a grueling journey south. A fortnight trapped in a rattling coach with nothing but his own thoughts and a driver for company. Valois was not merely asking for his intellect; he was commanding a considerable stretch of his life.
“Find the truth, Rowan. Find the rational explanation for this wretched boy’s confession. Make this werewolf nonsense go away.” He waved a thin hand, fixing Rowan with his milky gaze. “I do not wish to see another pyre lit for a man who is merely mad—or worse, merely human.”
3. The Descent
The journey south was a slow drift away from the comforts Rowan had long taken for granted. For the first two days, the road remained well-maintained, the inns clean and welcoming. But as the days bled into one another, the paved roads gave way to rutted tracks of dirt and mud. Cultivated fields yielded to wild forests, thick with shadow.
The small towns they passed through grew grim—houses of rough stone, residents with weathered faces who watched the coach with wary, hollow eyes. A constant, damp chill clung to the air like a warning.
Each jolt of the rattling coach reminded Rowan just how far he was from the ordered world of the capital. He missed the city’s measured pace, the opportunities for fleeting pleasures, the hum of life beyond his window.
He adjusted the collar of his cloak—a garment perhaps too refined for the untamed lands looming ahead. He was acutely aware of his own pale, unblemished skin in a landscape of weathered stone and mud.
He reached out, unfastening the heavy leather curtain to let in the damp air. He saw the rider beside the lead horse: the postilion. The man was broad-shouldered and sun-browned, his reins steady in strong hands.
Hearing the snap of the stiff leather, the man turned in his saddle, his gaze meeting Rowan’s through the open frame. It was a look Rowan knew well—the sharp, assessing glance of a man measuring another's nature.
The postilion’s lips curved in a faint, knowing smile. His eyes narrowed just a fraction before he turned back, urging the horses onward, the muscles of his back shifting beneath his wool coat. Rowan felt that peculiar thrill of possibility mingled with danger—the risk that accompanied every such encounter. One had to be an expert in reading the signs.
As the heavy coach rattled on, his vision blurred, and his thoughts drifted back to his own travels years before—leaving his father’s home in Ireland for the Irish College in Paris. He had known, even then, that he would never return to the land of his birth. In France, he had found a new life, a measure of anonymity, and the patronage of powerful men. And work, after a fashion—assignments such as this.
Just last winter, Valois had dispatched him to investigate a frantic Parisian nobleman whose vast fortune had supposedly been swallowed by an alchemical demon. The priests had prayed and feared dark magic. Rowan, however, had not looked for brimstone. He had looked at the sudden, suspicious wealth of three young male courtesans in the district, and the terrified sweat of a duke desperate to hide his true appetites.
There had been no demon. There was only blackmail, and a man using the supernatural as a shield to mask his sins.
That assignment had at least kept him within the boundaries of Paris. This grueling errand into the mud of the Dordogne felt like a descent into an entirely different world.
Still, he resolved to treat the mission as a similar scholarly expedition. The grotesque details of Jean Grenier’s confession—the cannibalism, the magical salve, the transformations—were little more than bizarre curiosities, distractions in a case as strange as any he’d faced.
He knew enough natural philosophy to dismiss werewolves as peasant superstition, relics of a darker age. These people wanted monsters to blame for the mundane horrors that plagued their lives. Ignorance and poverty—these were the true wolves.
Still, he thought, confess to the wrong thing, and the world will burn you. He understood that intimately. Though he’d kept away from the spectacle at Place de Grève, he remembered the smoke drifting down the cobblestone streets. It was a fate reserved for heretics, beasts, and men like him—if they were fool enough to be caught.
He set the memory aside to focus. He would need to peel back the layers of delusion to expose the simple human frailty beneath. Comforted by his own sense of reason, he settled back as the coach pushed deeper into the wild heart of the Dordogne.
4. The Boy in the Box
The Archbishop’s seal opened doors—Master Martin, the local magistrate, and finally the jail itself. Rowan followed the official down a dim passage to a bolted wooden door that groaned as it swung open. The cell was nothing but a stone box—cold, damp, and reeking of sour straw, urine, and unwashed bodies.
Rowan stopped in the doorway. He wore a doublet of tooled leather, the fine tailoring flattering the hard lines of his chest, his lean waist. His silver-braided cloak catching the torchlight. The stiletto at his belt—Florentine, polished—spoke to his station, though its blade was sharp enough for real defense.
All these signals of status, he realized at once, were lost on the creature inside.
Jean Grenier crouched on a pallet, filthy and wild-eyed, his dark hair matted into thick tangles. Rowan lowered himself onto a splintered stool, careful not to breathe too deeply. The boy watched him from the corner of one eye, muscles tensed.
Rowan pulled a piece of dried meat and a hard biscuit from a leather pouch, setting them on the floor at arm’s length—as one might entice a stray dog. Jean sniffed, quick and feral, then snatched the food and tore into it, oblivious to his visitor for a few frantic moments.
Rowan studied him, pity and revulsion tangled with curiosity. The boy’s body was compact, wiry, with the raw energy of youth. Beneath the grime, there was a rough handsomeness, if one had the eyes to see it. He was not the clawed and fanged oddity the accounts described. He might have been a fine-looking lad once—if properly cared for and tended to.
“Jean Grenier,” Rowan began, his voice calm, asserting authority without intimidation. “My name is Rowan. I have been sent by the Archbishop to understand what has happened here.”
Jean nodded, lips twitching, eyes flickering to life.
Rowan recounted the accusations—the story Jean had told the magistrates. “They say you approached two young women. That you called yourself a priest’s bastard. When they called you dirty, you said it was because of the wolf’s skin you wore.”
Jean leaned forward, launching into his tale before Rowan could finish. “Yes! It was given to me as a boy. Our neighbor took me deep into the woods and introduced me to… to the Lord of the Forest. He signed me with his nail and gave me a wolf skin. My master, Pierre Labourant, keeps it for me. He wraps it around me, and one about him, with a… special salve…”
He choked on the word, then recovered. “At dusk, we become wolves.” The words tumbled out, precise and practiced.
“Only the two of you?” Rowan asked. “The Archbishop’s notes say your first confession mentioned your father.”
Jean blinked, then shook his head rapidly. “No, no—just me and Master Pierre. Only us.” He said it with conviction, then hesitated, as if mentally re-reading a script.
“And what do you do as wolves?” Rowan pressed.
“We do things men may not do,” Jean answered.
Unprompted, the story grew darker—hunting by moonlight, lusting for the flesh of small children—“tender, plump, and rare”—killing dogs and lapping their hot blood. He described, with chilling detachment, biting “great collops of fat, luscious brawn” from the thighs of young boys. The vocabulary was too refined for a feral boy in a dirt-floored cell. At one point, he stopped to rephrase a term, backtracking to correct himself.
Rowan leaned back, letting the boy talk. The self-corrections, the strict adherence to rehearsed lines, and the vocabulary itself—far beyond the lexicon of a peasant boy—reminded Rowan of amateur performances at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
This was no interrogation; it was theater. The boy was reciting a tragedy the wolf-fearing locals were all too willing to hear.
It was clear Rowan would learn no new truths by asking the same questions. The magistrates had asked what he did. They asked how he killed. They were obsessed with the mechanics of the sin.
But Rowan knew the part of the story they had missed. He knew that when a man sheds his skin to do the forbidden, the most dangerous part isn't the act itself—it is the feeling of release.
He let Jean finish, then leaned forward, catching the boy’s evasive gaze. He asked the one thing a righteous magistrate would never think to ask.
“Jean,” he said softly. “Tell me how it felt. When you did those things men may not do. How did you feel?”
The performance stopped at once. Jean’s eyes dropped to his lap. He twisted his hands, the knuckles white through the dirt. The energy vanished from his voice.
“I… I do not know,” he stammered. “I was a wolf then. Not in my right mind. Not a man, with a man’s feelings.”
A sudden wave of pity washed over Rowan. Despite the horror of the tale, Jean was just a boy caught in a trap, likely one not entirely of his own making. Rowan reached into his leather pouch and pulled out the last piece of dried meat, holding it out not as a lure, but as a comfort.
Jean burst forward. He didn't just take the meat; he grabbed Rowan’s hand with both of his own, gripping tight. He pressed his grubby face against Rowan’s palm.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, the intimacy sudden and uncomfortable. “Thank you, master.”
Rowan froze, feeling the rough stubble and heat of the boy's skin against his palm. He gently withdrew his hand.
Stepping outside moments later, Rowan drew a long, greedy breath. The cell’s filth lifted, but the weight in his chest remained.
His thoughts turned to the puzzle. Jean’s story was a lie—of that Rowan was sure. A comforting lie for simple folk who had lost children to real wolves, and perhaps a necessary lie for Grenier himself. But why this particular fiction? What truth was so terrible that this wretched boy would rather condemn himself as a monster?
Whatever the answer, it would not be found in a cell. Rowan squared his shoulders and turned from the jail, looking toward the dark line of the forest in the distance. He needed to find this Pierre Labourant—if the man existed at all.
5. The Earth and the Iron
The man, it turned out, did exist. A terse exchange with the local magistrate confirmed Labourant was a tenant holding a few leagues outside the village.
Rowan arrived at Pierre Labourant’s small farm the following afternoon. It was a hardscrabble plot where a bare living was wrung from the earth through endless toil.
Rowan’s fine boots sank slightly with every step, the earthy scent of wet soil tinged with the sulfur rising from the limestone beneath. It was a stark contrast to the perfumed air of the capital, no matter what odors Paris tried to mask.
Labourant was there, sleeves rolled, forearms corded with muscle as he drove a fence post deep into the wet Dordogne clay. He straightened slowly at Rowan’s approach, broad shoulders spreading, weight shifting on sturdy legs built for heavy loads.
Rowan had once stood in the piazzas of Florence, studying the precise, mathematical perfection of sculpted men. Even at a distance, he could see the man’s form was chiseled by labor—a rougher, but no less impressive, sculptor than the great masters.
As he drew closer, Rowan saw how the sun caught the sheen of sweat on the farmer’s tanned skin. The man looked to be around forty, weathered by sun and wind, roughly handsome in a way that had nothing to do with court fashion.
Rowan’s gaze traced the contours of Labourant’s body—the thick neck, muscles flexing beneath damp linen, mud clinging to the fine hair on his forearms. Calloused hands gripped the post with steady authority. His eyes squinted as they met Rowan’s approach.
Labourant said nothing at first, simply wiping his brow on his forearm. A tightening gripped Rowan’s chest—and lower—at the presence of a man unlike any he’d met in his cultivated circles.
“Master Rowan,” the man said at last, his voice low and rough, like gravel under worn boots.
Of course the man knew who he was. A Parisian in velvet asking questions of the magistrate—the local grapevine had delivered Rowan’s name to the farm long before his boots hit the mud.
“Master Labourant,” Rowan replied, his voice measured. He offered the title deliberately—a touch of deference meant to disarm, a habit born of navigating courts where his own authority was only ever borrowed. “I have come to inquire about Jean Grenier. The boy mentioned you.”
His gaze flicked to Rowan’s lips, then drifted lower, assessing. He took a slow, deliberate breath, drawing in the lingering scent of pomade and soft leather, before returning to meet his eyes. “Did he now?”
Rowan’s velvet cloak and woolen hose felt soft, even his leather doublet seemed garish, beside a man who lived by the strength of his back. Authority here was muscle, not silk.
Heat rose to his cheeks. “He claims you gave him a wolf pelt. That you and he applied a salve and… became wolves together.”
The farmer chuckled softly. “A wolf pelt? The boy’s imagination runs wild. Maybe he found a scrap of fur. He’s a foolish lad. I told the magistrate as much.”
“He said you wear an iron chain about your neck, which you are always gnawing,” Rowan pressed, struggling to maintain his composure under the man's amusement. “That you live in a place of gloom and fire.”
Labourant shook his head. Without breaking eye contact, he reached up and pulled open the laces of his loose tunic to bare his chest. It was a calculated, arrogant display—the shadowed cleft between the firm slabs of muscle, the fine down of dark hair.
Rowan’s breath caught, but he swallowed it, forcing his eyes to not look deeper.
“Do you see an iron chain, master? And this… a place of gloom and fire?” He gestured toward the simple, sunlit farmhouse.
“The lad says he fled his father and was taken in by you,” Rowan went on, his voice level as he deliberately dragged his gaze up from Labourant’s exposed skin. “That he was marked by the Lord of the Forest—”
“You’re far from home, master,” Labourant interrupted, his dark eyes unreadable. “Where are you from?”
“Paris,” Rowan answered quickly.
The farmer shook his head slightly. “No. That’s not it.” He tapped his own ear. “The countryside has its own ways, Master Rowan. Ways the city folk cannot understand. And ears that hear what is hidden.”
Rowan froze. The accent he had spent five years burying had been unearthed by a peasant in seconds.
“Why would he confess to such things?” Rowan asked, his voice dropping.
Labourant rested on the post, leaning in. “Sometimes boys tell stories they think others want to hear. Sometimes they tell stories they wish were true.” His voice lowered, intimate. “And sometimes, they confess things that are true, but not in the way they seem. We should be cautious in making dangerous charges, don’t you think?”
Rowan’s pulse hammered. “I only seek the truth.”
Labourant nodded slowly, taking a half step back, suddenly looming taller. “The truth? Boys tell wild tales. You understand how boys can be, Master Rowan.”
For a moment, Rowan felt that gaze pierce past the scholar and courtier, right through to the parts he kept hidden in the dark. The line between hunter and prey blurred.
Labourant turned back to his work, dismissing him without a word. The heavy thud of the mallet resumed.
Rowan hesitated, then turned to leave, his boots sucking at the mud. He walked until he rounded the corner of the stone farmhouse, stepping gratefully out of Labourant’s line of sight.
Screened by the shadow of the back wall, the unanswered questions pulled at him. He scanned the rear yard, his eyes landing on a low, rickety pigsty tucked in a shadowed corner.
If a man needed to dispose of the gruesome remains of a crime, a hungry sow was the perfect solution. Pigs left almost nothing behind.
As he approached, the air thickened with the acrid scent of manure. Catching sight of something that could be scattered, weathered bones, he stepped straight into the sty. He crouched among the snorting pigs, ignoring the filth ruining his clothes, and sifted through the debris. He brushed dirt from the fragments. Not human, surely. His fingers traced the ground, catching on tiny tufts of coarse hair—dark, wiry—possibly remnants of a wolf’s pelt.
The stench rising from the churned earth overwhelmed him. A sudden wave of nausea hit, and he bent forward, dry heaving into the mud.
A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder.
Rowan jerked back, heart pounding, hand flying to his stiletto. He hadn't heard a single footstep.
“Master Rowan,” the rough voice murmured, right at his ear. “You’ll find no secrets in the filth of pigs.”
He looked up to find Labourant standing over him—towering, solid, blocking out the sun.
For a breath, the farmer said nothing, merely holding Rowan’s gaze, the unspoken warning clear.
Then, with a slow nod, Labourant stepped back, his heavy hand dragging slowly, deliberately down Rowan's arm before finally releasing him.
6. The Evidence of Things Unseen
The visit with Pierre Labourant weighed on Rowan’s mind as he returned to the village. He needed to examine the physical evidence taken from the boy—specifically, the wolfskin he was found with.
The local magistrate had been pressured into showing his prisoner, but Rowan knew the deep superstitions of the countryside. Items of suspected dark magic were rarely kept in a secular jail; they were usually handed over to the Church to contain the rot.
He sought out the local parish, finding the village priest—a frail, nervous man named Father Luc—hunched over a worn breviary in the damp, shadowed nave.
Rowan approached, his boots echoing slightly in the stone silence.
“Father,” he began, keeping his voice smooth, offering the polished diplomacy of the capital. “I am Master Rowan. I carry letters from Archbishop Valois regarding the Grenier matter. I need to examine the profane evidence taken from the boy. The pelt.”
Father Luc blinked, his eyes taking in Rowan’s fine leather doublet and silver-braided cloak, clearly unsettled by the arrival of high-ranking church business in his quiet nave.
After a moment’s hesitation, the priest rose and led Rowan toward the sacristy.
He unlocked a small, iron-bound chest. Inside, nestled among a few mundane items, lay a ragged piece of fur. It was not a grand pelt, merely a mangy fragment stained with a greasy residue that caught the dim light.
Rowan traced the coarse fur with his fingers, noting the dark, sticky substance. He brought his fingers to his nose and recoiled.
It smelled of rancid bacon—a far cry from anything magical.
“Was Labourant’s farm searched?” Rowan asked, wiping his fingers on the ragged thing. “For salves, bones… anything unusual?”
Father Luc nodded. “The magistrate’s men looked. They found nothing. No sign of forbidden potions or remains.”
Rowan’s voice hardened. “And Labourant? Why was he not detained? Why is he free while the boy rots?”
The priest shifted, startled by the accusation. “Labourant? He was questioned, of course. But he knew nothing of the matter.” His hands wrung nervously. “He has no stain on his name, Master Rowan. No record of grievous sin or madness. He is a simple man of the land, present at Mass, never a whisper of trouble.”
“And the boy’s father? What is known?”
Father Luc’s fingers traced the worn edges of his breviary. “A widower. He lived alone with the boy for a time…”
“When Jean claims they ran as wolves together—but then recanted?”
“Jean Grenier was turned out of his father’s home when his stepmother found the boy… odd. The father and new wife deny any knowledge of wolves—only that the lad was peculiar. A relief when he left, I suspect. He passed through several masters before Labourant took him in.”
Rowan’s mind turned over the image of a runaway boy searching for footing in a harsh world. An odd boy. Peculiar.
And Labourant. No stain on his name, never a whisper of trouble.
But Rowan knew the rules of deception better than any priest. He knew how monstrous appetites could be cloaked by shows of respectability.
Returning to the small inn, the burden of the assignment pressed down heavier than before. Rowan longed for the ordered safety of his chambers, the narrow streets of Le Marais, far from these tangled, dirty lives.
The rented room offered no comfort—just a drafty hearth and a mattress that smelled of old smoke. That night, sleep came fitfully.
In the heavy drift of dreams, Labourant’s muscular form moved through the half-light of the fields, his skin rough and ruddy. His bare feet hit the soil with soft thuds. His eyes were dark and knowing.
Beside him, a figure stirred on all fours—Jean Grenier, Rowan assumed—until the features sharpened in the moonlight. The dirt-streaked face wasn’t the boy’s. It was Rowan’s own—pale skin, full lips—staring back at him.
Rowan awoke with a gasp, sweat beading on his chest, his body betraying him—his cock hard and heavy beneath the coarse sheets.
He lay there as his breathing slowed, the lingering terror of the nightmare clashing violently with his body's dark arousal. But as the dream faded, a cold certainty settled within him: the answers lay not in dusty tomes of demonology or scraps of rancid fur, but in the twisted recesses of the human heart.
At dawn, he dressed quickly and returned to the priest, his resolve set like iron.
“Father,” he said, stopping Luc at the church door. “I intend to return to Master Labourant’s farm for a more thorough inquiry.”
There was nothing incriminating in what the man said, but Rowan knew better than most how to read the unspoken language of men—the glance that lingered, the shift in posture, the subtle inflections. He’d learned to observe these signals with a precision others lacked.
For one such as Rowan, to misread a man’s nature could be dangerous. Even deadly.
“I will return by evening,” Rowan said, holding the priest’s gaze a moment longer than necessary.
It gave Rowan no comfort knowing that if he did not return, the priest would know exactly where to look.
7. The Law of the Wild
The farm lay quiet beneath a grim morning sky when Rowan dismounted, looping the reins over a weathered fence post. The countryside stretched around him—harsh, untamed, indifferent.
The farmer’s cottage was little more than mud and rough-hewn timber, nestled in a hollow where the air hung heavy with woodsmoke, damp earth, and the musk of animals. A scrawny dog barked once, then slunk away, tail between its legs.
Pierre Labourant emerged from the low doorway. His sleeves were rolled back, tunic open at the neck, exposing the hard planes of his chest. The sight of him sent a traitorous jolt through Rowan's blood, a sharp echo of the night's dark dreams.
“Master Rowan.”
No greeting, no welcome—just that steady, unyielding presence. He was a complete man, utterly absent the deferential stoop Rowan was accustomed to. He sought neither approval nor favor.
“Master Labourant,” Rowan replied, his voice stripped of pretense. "The polite inquiries ended yesterday in the mud. Let us not play games. We both know why I’m here. The boy, Jean Grenier, made confessions—vulgar and self-damning. I don’t know why, but I believe you are the source of his monstrous tale.”
Labourant’s mouth curved into something like a smile, flashes of uneven teeth catching the light. “You seem quite taken with the boy’s tales.”
He wiped his hands on his breeches, his eyes running over Rowan—assessing, measuring—before he turned on his heel and vanished into the gloom of the hovel.
Rowan followed, his hand drifting near his dagger.
Inside, the room was spartan. A rough table and stools, a cold hearth, a corner strewn with straw—presumably where he slept. It smelled of old sweat and cured meat. Rowan instantly longed for the sterile safety of his own chamber.
Labourant gestured to a stool. Rowan sat, immediately regretting the concession; it lowered him, forcing him to look up at the man who towered over him.
“The boy,” Rowan tried again, striving to regain control as Labourant paced with an easy stride, circling him. “He claims you taught him to put on wolf skins and commit unspeakable acts. But he is no werewolf. Why invent such lies? Why condemn himself to the fire?”
Labourant stopped just behind him. His voice was low, rough as gravel. “Perhaps for the same reason people believe such tales at all. The frost takes the crop. The fox takes the hen. The wolf takes the babe from its bed. It is not cruelty, master. It is just the way of things.”
“Fear… needs a face,” Rowan whispered, looking down at his clenched fists. “It’s easier to blame a monster than reckon with the indifference of nature. The devil is a villain you can name…”
“But the sins of men—those are harder to bear,” Labourant finished.
Rowan shifted uncomfortably, the weight of those words settling like a stone.
“Oh, we put on the pelts, Master Rowan,” Labourant whispered. Turning to the hearth, he opened a pot of cold, hardened kitchen grease. He dug two fingers into it, pulling them out coated in the white, opaque fat. He held it up, letting it soften in the warmth of the room.
Rowan’s breath caught. The porcelain jar of rosewater pomade on his Parisian nightstand flashed in his mind. The vessels were worlds apart—fine porcelain and crude clay—but the hidden utility was exactly the same.
“And a magical salve,” Labourant murmured.
He smeared the thick grease deliberately across the front of his breeches, right where his heavy cock rested. He wiped the excess onto a rag, forearms flexing, jaw working. “And we’d lose control. Do wild, sinful things no Christian man can do. Things men burn for, if they’re caught. But wolves…”
The farmer approached from behind, bending low, hands planted on the table beside Rowan—close enough that his breath brushed the skin at the nape of Rowan’s neck.
“Wolves mark their place in the pack. They mount one another. Not a sin, but nature’s own law.” His voice against Rowan’s ear carried a strange, almost fond pride. Rowan tensed, muscles tightening involuntarily under the farmer’s nearness. “That story—the wolf pelts—was mine. Jean’s favorite.”
Rowan’s throat tightened. He closed his eyes. “He tells that story to make sense of what was done to him,” Rowan whispered. “His father… you…”
Labourant’s face was right beside his—a smile deepening in his voice, dark and tender simultaneously. “And others before me. He came to me shivering with it, Master Rowan. The shame. What his father did, what the priests told him it meant. The boy was drowning in guilt, certain he was damned to the fire.”
Labourant pulled back slightly, his eyes burning with a strange, dark righteousness.
“So I gave him the pelt. I gave him the grease. I told him, when we put these on, we are no longer men of the Church. We are creatures of the wood. We were wolves together. That his father was just a wolf in the dark, same as him. And wolves don't sin. They just hunger.”
Labourant stepped back, his broad chest rising and falling. “I did nothing the boy didn’t beg for, Master. I set him free.”
“A wolf does what a wolf will,” Rowan breathed, the realization bitter on his tongue. “It knows no sin. Sometimes you give someone a story so they can survive.” He looked up to face the farmer. “Until it no longer worked.”
“Nature favors the strong,” Labourant added.
Rowan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. His mind flickered to his own whispered excuses offered to boys in Paris after urgent, fleeting couplings—too much wine, the cold night, a moment of weakness. Whatever story was needed for those without his strength to face the world as it was.
Labourant’s gaze lingered on Rowan, reading him. Seeing him.
“You understand.”
Rowan swallowed hard, something aching in his chest. “The world is not kind to those who are different.”
Labourant nodded once, pushing off the table to stand at his full height, the understanding passing between them—ancient, dangerous, needing no words.
Rowan’s chest seized, heart pounding. He stood and turned, meeting the farmer’s dark, glittering eyes.
“You made your denials to the magistrate. Why admit these things to me now?”
Labourant reached out. His calloused thumb, still slick with a trace of grease, brushed the rich fabric of Rowan’s sleeve, leaving a dark, shining stain on the pristine velvet.
“This fine… velvet, is it? The soft wool,” he murmured, voice a low growl. “It’s a skin in its own way, isn’t it? Sometimes the skin we put on reveals, sometimes it hides… what’s truly underneath.”
Rowan opened his mouth to protest—a desperate, scholarly objection dying in his throat. “It’s not the same,” he croaked.
“No?” Labourant’s gaze never wavered. His lips curled into a feral smile.
“Why do I admit these things to you so freely? Because,” he whispered, his finger tracing Rowan’s sharp jawline, “I see a wolf in you.”
8. The Wolf’s Skin
Labourant’s hands closed in a fistful around the velvet of the cloak and the leather of the doublet beneath it. With a single, effortless heave, he hauled the scholar to his feet. Rowan offered no resistance.
A rough, calloused hand immediately clamped onto the back of Rowan’s neck. He pulled him in—not tenderly, but with the surety of a man who never needed to ask.
The kiss was all teeth and tongue, hungry and wet. Nothing like the careful games of Paris. Rowan’s hands scrabbled at the farmer’s shoulders, desperate for something solid in the blur of sensation.
Whatever the boy, Jean, had known, Rowan felt desperate to know it himself. That was the answer he’d come looking for, was it not?
The farmer tore at his cloak, yanking it aside. His thick fingers made blunt, careless work of the doublet’s buttons, snapping one free, then another, before impatiently ripping the garment open with brute strength.
Rowan’s fingers grazed his stiletto’s smooth handle—then let go.
Labourant grabbed the waistband of Rowan’s breeches. With a violent downward yank, the intricate laces tying them to the doublet snapped. He dragged the breeches and silken hose down together.
Rough fingers shoved the hem of the fine linen shirt up. Rowan’s bare skin met the chill air, muscles taut and exposed. Labourant’s hand grazed across his flat belly and chest, feeling the definition there, then lower, gripping his cock roughly and giving one slow, possessive stroke.
“Not the body of a scholar,” Labourant rumbled, dark eyes narrowed. His rough palm rasped over Rowan’s ribs. “You work on this. For the lords in Paris? To catch men’s eyes?”
Rowan tensed, a spark of vanity flaring beneath the humiliation. “Yes,” he breathed, as the farmer bent to gnaw and suck at his teat, teeth bruising the muscle beneath.
He’d forged this body in secret, lifting marble slabs in his chamber, sculpting flesh beneath silk and wool. In Paris, it bought him glances, favor—a currency of his own. Here, it was simply meat to be taken.
Labourant’s other hand reached behind Rowan, the fingers prying into the sweat-damp cleft between his cheeks. He pulled the scholar flush against his broader frame, his mouth curling against Rowan’s forehead. “You’re a sweet thing—pretending at piety, all the while aching to be split open like a bitch in heat.”
Labourant’s hand moved to the back of Rowan’s neck. With a single, heavy shove, he forced the scholar down into the dirt.
Rowan hit his knees hard, his breath punching out of him.
Above him, Labourant grabbed the hem of his rough tunic and jerked it over his head, tossing it aside. The cold light caught the cords of muscle across his chest and belly, the dusting of dark hair, the sheen of sweat. He was a beast unbothered by the chill.
Labourant reached down to his own breeches, tearing the rough buttons free and shoving his coarse leggings down. His heavy sex hung in the air, thick and dark, stiffening. He gripped Rowan’s copper hair and forced his head back.
“That’s it. Take it. Open up, pretty.”
Rowan’s mouth opened, and the farmer fed it straight between his lips.
Rowan tasted the musk and salt, tongue tracing the thick vein, just briefly before the farmer pushed in deeper. He gagged as the fat head battered the back of his throat. Labourant’s breath caught, fingers threading into Rowan’s copper hair.
The farmer’s hips flexed lazily, using the wet heat of Rowan’s mouth with calm authority. “That’s it. Choke if you have to.”
Rowan’s nose pressed into the coarse hair at the base, breathing in the ripe smell of a day’s sweat and unwashed skin. Labourant’s hips gave shallow, insistent rolls that forced another gag and a thick string of spit to spill down Rowan’s chin onto the gritty earth.
“Good,” Labourant grunted, voice low and rough, as Rowan’s hand reached blindly for his own cock. It throbbed in his fist as the farmer fucked his face. “That’s a proper wolf’s mouth. Swallow it all.”
When Labourant’s hips jerked back, a long rope of spit connected Rowan’s swollen lips to the glistening cock. Rowan, eyes watering, moved to take him again, but the farmer grabbed his shoulders.
“Not yet,” Labourant growled, voice thick with lust. “Not like that.”
He spun Rowan roughly, forcing him down until his hands hit the ground.
Rowan was on all fours—the posture of a beast. His shirt bunched at his shoulders, breeches and leggings tangled at his knees—enough to bind him. Defenseless, exposed.
The farmer stepped back to the hearth, reached for the crock of kitchen grease, scooped a thick dollop, then returned and dropped to his knees behind Rowan. Two blunt fingers smeared the cold fat between his cheeks, pushing inside without warning, stretching him open with crude efficiency. The cold fat made Rowan gasp; the farmer’s fingers crooked, searching, until they found the spot that made his vision white out.
“Will you call for help?” Labourant asked, daring.
Near trembling, Rowan managed only a small shake of his head. No.
He raised his haunches.
The farmer pulled his hand back, wiping the filth from his fingers on his hip. He positioned himself, grabbing Rowan’s waist to lock him in place. With a single thrust he buried to the hilt, deep in Rowan’s heat.
Rowan cried out—half sob, half prayer—the stretch burning, the violation obscene. His fingers clawed at the dirty floor, but Labourant’s hands anchored him, pinning him as he withdrew—a brief respite—and then shoved in again.
The cock filled Rowan entirely, making him curse. But as it withdrew and shoved in again, his guts welcomed it.
Labourant’s hands slid up to grip his chest, fingers digging bruises into the muscle Rowan had secretly sculpted in his chamber. “Not a scholar’s body,” he growled again, pounding deeper. “You’re made for this.”
Rowan fell forward, down on his elbows. The pain ebbed, replaced by a sense of fullness and a dark, terrifying relief. Labourant fucked him hard and steady. The slick squelch of grease and spit echoed with every thrust. Each drive dragged the hard head and shaft over that trigger inside Rowan, forcing desperate, leaking spurts from his own cock onto the dirt below.
There was no need for comforting stories between them. Only this. The friction and heat and the smell of grease and dirt.
Rowan’s arms gave out. He collapsed to his shoulders—face in the dust, arse still raised and offered. Labourant followed him down, blanketing him, hips snapping relentlessly. The farmer’s balls slapped against him with every thrust.
“That’s it—squeeze me,” Labourant ordered, his thrusts growing more frantic. “Milk it out of me like a good bitch.”
Then he drove in one final time and stayed there, grinding deep. The thick cock inside Rowan seemed to swell even larger—a knot of pressure locking them together.
A guttural grunt tore out of him as he came—hot, heavy pulses flooding Rowan’s guts.
Rowan’s world narrowed to the hardness of the farmer in him and the frantic beat of his own hand. “Fuck me—fuck me—!” he gasped, the words torn from his throat.
His body arched, his hole clenched around the farmer’s cock and with a loud, croaking groan his own seed surged out over his fingers, hot and wet on the dust.
Labourant ground out the last shudders of release, Rowan’s cheek pressed to the dirt, his heartbeat thudding against the earth.
When he finally pulled free, the loss of him left a hollow ache in the scholar.
The farmer rested back on his heels and then rose to his feet. Rowan turned and dropped onto his rear, dazed, breathing hard. His tunic dropped, covering his shame.
Labourant stood over Rowan, chest heaving, breath heavy. His sex was smeared with the evidence of their act—dark, stark, undeniable. He made no move to clean it.
He crouched, bringing his face close to Rowan’s one last time.
“Go tell your Archbishop what you found, Master Rowan,” Labourant said, in a rough, low murmur. “Tell him there are no werewolves. Tell him what you saw. What you felt.”
There was no hint of shame in his gaze as he looked down at Rowan’s prone form, and no mockery. Just a dark kinship.
“But remember—the world has little love for men who hunt alone in the darkness. What is the penalty for sodomy, Master Rowan?”
There was no need to answer. They both understood.
Labourant stood back up, pulling his leggings up, fastening the rough buttons of his breeches. “Go,” he said, the word a dismissal. “Run back to your careful life. And leave the wolves to the woods.”
Rowan lay on the dirt floor, the sweat cooling on his skin, the secret he now knew curdled deep inside him.
9. The Report
Rowan found his horse where he’d left it, the reins loosely tied to the fence post. The beast snorted, indifferent to the changed man who untied it.
The ride back began with a dull ache in his gut, but the sensation soon twisted sharply—a violent spasm that forced him to dismount in haste. He barely made it to a roadside ditch before his body betrayed him.
He crouched, gasping as a hot, humiliating release of his own feces mixed with the seed Labourant had left inside him. He wiped himself with a handful of dock leaves, shivering.
The rest of the journey blurred into a haze of fatigued limbs and rough breaths. His fine clothes hung loose. The innkeeper gave him a wary glance as he stumbled through the common room, but Rowan barely registered it. His world had narrowed to a grinding knot of shame and exhaustion.
In his chamber, he shed the ruined garments, letting the velvet and wool fall into a heap. They smelled of earth, grease, and sweat.
He washed with cold water from the basin, his hands shaking. Bruises were already blooming beneath his skin—silent witnesses to the night’s violation. Yet, beneath the pain stirred something else: the echo of Labourant’s musk still clinging to him, the memory of pleasure tangled with humiliation.
He barely made it to the chamber pot before another wrenching spasm seized him. He knelt, gripping the rim, gasping for air—on his haunches, like a beast, voiding itself in the dark.
When the spasms finally passed, Rowan dressed in a fresh, simple shirt. He moved to the small writing desk and sat.
His hands trembled only faintly as he uncapped the inkwell. The quill felt foreign in his grasp, a fragile relic of a world that now seemed distant. He dipped it into the black ink and watched a single drop fall onto the parchment, spreading like a dark stain.
He began to write, his script regaining its elegant, deceptive curve.
He knew the laws of France as well as he knew the scriptures. Lycanthropy was a grievous sin—but a sodomite was a heretic who had committed a crime against nature itself. There was no mercy for that.
And he knew what came first, before the fire—la Question. If Jean were charged with the Italian Vice, they would put the boy to the rack until he named Labourant. Then the farmer, until he named the scholar. It would not take long.
To write the word Sodomy was not just to light the boy's pyre; it was to strike the match that would inevitably burn Rowan himself.
To His Grace, Archbishop Valois,
I submit this report regarding the inquiry into the peculiar circumstances of Jean Grenier, as commanded. My investigations have been exhaustive, including interviews with the accused, clergy, witnesses, and an examination of physical evidence.
Despite all reasoned inquiry, I find myself at an impasse. The boy’s testimony, while detailed and disturbing, resists explanation by any known human motive or manipulation.
As for the farmer named in the boy's ravings, Pierre Labourant, I found him to be a mere simpleton, of such limited intellect that he is utterly incapable of the diabolism the boy describes, let alone orchestrating its concealment. He is entirely unworthy of Your Grace’s further notice.
Therefore, with the greatest reluctance, I must conclude this matter lies beyond the reach of natural philosophy or secular judgment. The evidence, anomalous though it is, aligns most closely with the conclusions of the local magistrate—loup-garou, or werewolfism.
Though such a conclusion pains me in this age of enlightenment, I find no alternative to reconcile the accounts and observations. I confess my inability to penetrate this particular darkness with the lamp of reason, and therefore, must commend the case back to Your Grace for such spiritual or judicial determination as you deem fit.
With profound respect and continued fealty,
Rowan
The quill scratched sharply as he signed his name.
He folded the parchment, held a stick of red wax to the candle flame until it wept, and pressed his signet ring into the hot pool. The seal hardened instantly, locking the lie in place.
He had found the truth—that monsters are merely men with appetites, and that the weak are consumed by the strong. But that was a truth more dangerous than the superstition.
So he would lie.
The boy would remain a loup-garou. There was no better verdict Rowan could offer him. But the lapping flame, if it came to that, would be staunched there. Most importantly, Rowan would be safe.
He stood and caught his reflection in the small polished mirror above the basin. The face staring back was pale, composed. The face of a scholar.
It was a perfect disguise.
Pierre Labourant had been right. Sometimes, you put on a skin to reveal who you are. And sometimes, you put on a skin just to survive.
Rowan turned away from the glass, leaving the wolf staring out from the mirror, and prepared to return to the world of men.
10. The City of Wolves
The journey back to Paris was a fortnight of rutted roads and coarse inn fare. Rowan watched the countryside slip away, carrying the ruined clothes with him.
He disposed of the evidence practically, league by league. The soiled linen shirt and ruined breeches went into the muddy currents of a river crossing, sinking beneath the churning water. The velvet cloak he abandoned in a dense thicket off the post-road while the coachman changed the horses.
By the time the city spires pierced the horizon, the only remnant of the farm was the fine doublet in the bottom of his trunk, waiting to be mended.
The coach bumped onto the cobblestones of the Marais district. The familiar noise enveloped him once more—the cries of hawkers, the rattle of wheels, the smell of the Seine.
The final postilion of the last leg of the journey swung down from his horse, reins slack in one hand. His ruddy cheeks were roughened by the harsh wind of the road. Thick lashes framed dark eyes, steady and unreadable beneath a heavy brow. His jaw was strong, dusted with stubble, and a sturdy leather belt cinched his worn riding coat.
Their eyes met—sharp and assessing.
Rowan searched the postilion’s gaze, looking for the untamed heart that might beat beneath the steady exterior. He offered a faint, deliberate smile.
“A long journey,” he muttered.
Rowan stepped closer, his heart hammering a familiar rhythm against his ribs. He lowered his voice, letting the refinement slip just enough to reveal the hunger underneath.
“Perhaps you would care for a respite? My rooms are comfortable, and the wine is excellent.”
The postilion’s gaze flicked to Rowan’s lips, then lower, assessing the cut of his clothes, before returning to his eyes. Time held its breath between them.
Then, the man nodded, his eyes darting briefly toward a passing merchant.
“I have horses to stable, master,” the man replied in a rough drawl—a perfect, mundane alibi offered to the open street. Then he lowered his voice to a gravelly whisper. “But a man builds a thirst. I will come for that wine within the hour.”
No other words were spoken, but the promise in the silent exchange was clear.
Rowan stepped away, and the city’s noise roared back. He was home.
His chamber awaited as he had left it—a jewel box of order and refinement. The matter with Valois would require smoothing. The Archbishop would not welcome Rowan’s report, but the wolf he sought was no longer mere superstition. It was a secret to be carefully contained, a fire to be tended.
He poured the wine and waited.
Within the hour came a knock.
Rowan opened the door to the postilion, allowing him inside. The door clicked shut, sealing out the world. Without a word, Rowan reached out and began to unbuckle the man’s belt, letting the velvet slip from his own shoulders.
Some months later, the boy, Jean Grenier, was tried and sentenced to death.
On review, the Parlement de Bordeaux, seeking an enlightened yet firm resolution, spared him the gallows, citing his youth and ignorance. Instead, they ordered his strict confinement to the friary of Saint Michael the Archangel. There, the friars noted he often fell to all fours, moved with unusual agility, spoke longingly of wolves, and rejected plain fare for raw offal—held in thrall to his self-condemning delusion until the end of his days.
Pierre Labourant was questioned by local authorities. He maintained his innocence, claiming no knowledge beyond the boy’s ravings. With no prior stain on his name and no evidence beyond Jean Grenier’s wild testimony, Labourant was released.
He remained free to return to his farm, to the silence of the woods, and to his wild, unburdened existence.
END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The case of Jean Grenier is a matter of historical record. A runaway who served several masters after fleeing his father’s home, Grenier voluntarily confessed to transforming into a wolf using a pelt provided by a local farmer named Pierre Labourant.
The ruling of the Parlement de Bordeaux was a landmark decision in French law, marking a shift where lycanthropy began to be treated as a medical delusion rather than a supernatural crime punishable by death.
Conversely, sodomy remained a capital offense in France until the late 18th century. Often referred to as the "Italian Vice," it carried the penalty of burning at the stake. Executions were frequently carried out at the Place de Grève in Paris, and the courts routinely used judicial torture (la question) to force the condemned to name their accomplices before the fire.
Following the commutation of his sentence, Grenier was confined to the friary for the remainder of his life—another seven years. He claimed to have been approached twice more by the "Lord of the Forest" while under the friars' care, though he successfully fended him off.
Pierre Labourant was questioned by authorities but never charged.
The Irish College in Paris was the first of its kind in France, established in 1578 following the suppression of monastic schools in Ireland.
Jean Grenier’s age has been adjusted for the purpose of this story. Both Master Rowan and Archbishop Valois are inventions of the author.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
