I poked at the burning wood in the hearth, allowing the fire new breath. It flared the red of poppies, in gratitude.
A quick peek into the cauldron told me there was only five or so minutes left before the simmering tonic would be ready. The smooth, warm smell of cinnamon filled my cucinetta, almost masking the bite of the motherwort. Which could mean . . .
I closed my eyes and listened to the voices fluttering against each other, the cinnamon’s lute-string ping threatening to smother its softer companion. As I’d thought. It was not quite right, yet.
I walked to my worktable and took another sprig of the dried motherwort, placing it in my iron mortar. I’d have to purchase more soon if Silvia required many more weeks of tonics, though I’d not the least idea if the apothecary in Ovada had the kind of supplies I needed or if I’d have to bring them in from Genova. To think that just a couple of months ago, I could have had the apothecarist himself delivering anything under the sun to my very doorstep!
I’d just touched the pestle to the motherwort when I felt the sharp tug of another voice. It was an unfamiliar one, coming from the glass containers sitting on the shelves on the wall beside me. I turned.
“All right, I’m listening. Which one of you is it?”
Frowning, I looked from container to container, waiting for that coffee-dark voice to reveal itself.
There. The sellenis.
No small wonder I didn’t recognize it, for I’d never had much need for these oat-colored berries. They’d been silent for so long I’d thought them mute. Or useless.
Florindo had bought them for me years ago, off a Barbary pirate who had boarded the wrong ship and had ended up commandeering a hold full of spices. And not even the kind of spices that my father would have paid gold for. There’d also been sacks of dried herbs with all manner of names on them, some unpronounceable, and after sharing a glass of wine with the man, Florindo had handed his purse over to purchase them for me. I smiled at the thought of my husband laughing and speaking of his family with a pirate, for he could converse with anyone about anything. He could find common ground with a serpent, if allowed. I’d just been surprised he’d not invited the man to cena.
I took the jar and unstoppered it.
“What is it, then?”
Fixing my eyes on the brick-red vines of ivy I’d had painted on the wall before me, I cocked my head and listened.
It was a matter of seconds before I understood. It wanted to help.
I hesitated. It was not my habit to offer someone anything I wasn’t entirely certain about, and I’d no experience whatsoever with these berries. They had never offered themselves before, not for any of the other women I’d assisted in conceiving. Still, I sensed no malice in them, not even the weaving singsong tease of the belladonna.
As I always did with indecisions, I focused on where my instincts were tipping me and followed them.
With a nod, I mixed a few of the dried berries into the mortar and ground them together with the motherwort.
There was a knock on the door.
“Enter,” I said, walking back to the cauldron.
“Scusatemi, madonna, but dinner is ready.”
I glanced up at the male voice, entirely out of place here. “You should not be on this floor, Antonio.”
“I apologize, madonna. I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Were you not?” If I knew my kitchen stewards, which I did, I knew very well that would have been one of the first things they’d have told him. “But now you are, so I’ll expect you to remain on the ground floor.”
He bowed his head. “Yes, madonna.”
I finished adding the crushed herbs and berries to the tonic and glanced at the servant. “Now go and tell Alba to come up here. I need her to clear up some things in here.”
“She’s indisposed, madonna. Fever, I think, since last night.”
I exhaled sharply. “I should have been told.” I grabbed a pouch of willow bark shavings from where it hung on the wall. “Here. Take this down to the kitchen and have one of the women make her a strong tea out of its contents.”
He bowed his head again. “Yes, madonna.”
“And then, I suppose, tell Maria to come tidy up.”
“I could do it, madonna. Since I’m here already, I mean.”
As if I’d leave the care of my herbs and of my father’s alembic to a boy with hands that were covered in scrapes, that were scuffed and bruised. Even his tunic had something untidy about it, like he flung it off him at night and let it rest where it landed.
“That will not be necessary, Antonio,” I said. “Just do as I’ve told you.”
“As you wish, madonna.”
I smoothed my skirts and headed for the door.
Out in the corridor, the scent of the stew filled every cranny, rising from the main kitchen in waves, like steam. Such a familiar smell, pulled up from the depths of my childhood, that for the first time in many months the need to embrace my mother was almost painful.
She’d been the daughter of grain merchants, and her household had observed the fall Embertides every year with a week of austerity at the table and extravagance in prayer. Even when she’d married Father, whose fortune rested on ocean waves and not on golden fields, she continued the tradition, the week culminating in a dinner of vegetable and eel stew that had been slowly boiled for hours, and nothing but prayer for cena. My father had observed with her despite his aversion to eel.
Florindo had no such compunctions and welcomed the yearly stew I, too, had tacked on to my household traditions. Though he did have a tendency to doze after the second or third hour of vigil.
I took the stairs to the first story, running my hand over the banister and checking for granules of dust before descending. Not one.
Excellent.
This year, everything had been more rigorous in the preparation for the fall Embertides. I’d had the house scoured, days and days of cleaning and opening windows to allow the snapping September air full run of the villa. Marcellina had made wreaths of corn husks, bramble, and dried apples, and even the boys had been able to delay pelting each other with pinecones and hazelnuts for long enough to thread a needle through their centers and hang them with silk from the mantle in the sala.
The praying, too, would be more arduous, beginning earlier this year and lasting until midmorning tomorrow. And although the children would not have to spend the night in vigil, they would help us for the first couple of hours. We couldn’t afford to offer less than out best. Humbled before our Dio and His seasons, we would raise our devotion, syllable by syllable, to the very gates of heaven.
“Mona Maddalena,” Giusto said, stopping on the landing and bowing his head.
“Buon pomeriggio, Giusto. Are the children ready?”
“Yes, mona. I was just heading to fetch them. They have all washed and dressed.” A spasm of exhaustion swept across his face. “Messer Ugo had complaints about the water being too cold.”
I started down the steps to the ground floor. “I gather it wasn’t cold when it was brought up from the kitchens.”
“No, Mona Maddalena. He was . . . reluctant to wash and allowed it to grow cool.”
“Then Ugo only has himself to blame.” I glanced back at Giusto. “I’ll speak with him.”
He bowed his head.
Yes, I’d have to show my youngest how much work went into preparing his bath, perhaps have him carry a brimming bucket up to his bedroom a few times, and maybe then he’d not be so cavalier with his actions.
But that would have to wait until tomorrow.
On my way to the sala, I stopped at the small chapel to see that everything was in place for this afternoon. The polished wood of the prie-dieu glimmered under the light coming in through the stained-glass window, the rosette turning the sun’s rays a rich, luxurious red. Behind them, the kneelers for the children had been readied, as well.
Good.
I reached the sala just as Florindo did, his hair still wet from his own wash. He smiled in that way that always made warmth pool deep in my center and gave me a courtly bow.
I chuckled. “What is all this, then?”
“I am just expressing my admiration for you, that is all. Because each year you surprise me a little more.”
With a shake of my head, I drew closer and pressed a kiss on his cheek.
“You are even more beautiful now than when we married,” he said.
“Now I know without question that you are addle-minded.” I smacked his arm lightly. “There is no comparison between a woman of forty and one of fifteen.”
“Oh, that is certain. No girl of fifteen would stride into a room as you do, as if a crown belonged on her head.” He pulled me even closer. “I thought you were beautiful the day we met, of course, but now you are exquisite.”
There was nothing I could say to that, so I didn’t. I kissed him instead.
“All right, enough nonsense,” I said, pulling away and clearing my throat. “A servant might see us.”
“Heaven forbid a servant see spouses who have had five children together kissing.”
Yes, and where were those children? I’d just realized the conspicuous lack of noise and chaos.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, Florindo nodded to the door. “They’re in their seats already. I ushered them in while you were, I’m assuming, looking in on the chapel. The silence concerns me, as well, and I can’t vouch for Giusto’s well-being, but I know they are in there.”
Leaning against him, I took a deep breath.
It was time to begin, then.
Together, we walked into the sala and took our places at opposite ends of the stone table. The children were in their seats, though Vincenzo and Francesco had switched places. As if I’d not notice. As if I’d not be able to distinguish their very essence, their very smell, when they’d been formed within me.
All it took was one of my lifted eyebrows to set them scrambling for their correct seats. When he’d realized what they’d done, Giusto hissed a warning at them.
The steward brought in my grandmother’s clay stew pot and placed it in the center of the bare table. Our bowls, too, were clay, our spoons wooden, luxury struck from the dinner. There wasn’t a gleam of silver, not even in the credenza across from us.
Fragrant steam veiled the steward’s face as he began ladling stew, which was a sign that the whole thing had been timed correctly. For this recipe, which looked deceptively simple in my grandmother’s curling handwriting, was, in fact, a test of organization. It had to be cooked, covered, left at a low, steady fire for ten hours, and it had to be served as soon as it was done, for it lost all its flavor if cooked for too long or if reheated. That meant a sleepless night for our cuoco, Martino, and one or two other servants if they wanted to be able to serve the stew in its perfect state for our dinner at one.
Martino had done it for the past twenty years, with only one misstep that had required the addition of a last-minute roasted eel to substitute some of the lost flavor. Florindo had had to hold the man up to stop him from falling to his knees as he begged for my forgiveness. It had never happened again, and it looked like this year could be added to his list of successes. I’d have to remember to give him my compliments.
The steward filled every bowl and every water glass and stepped away from the table. I nodded to Florindo.
He stood and opened his father’s gilded prayer book to the psalm he read each year while I placed my hand on the gold cross around my neck. I made certain that all my children’s heads were bowed before I, too, bowed mine. The words began to twine themselves around us, verse after verse, his strong voice as warm as the steam coming off the stew.
I closed my eyes and breathed. May our labors have pleased our Dio.
“. . . benedic anima mea, Domine. Amen.”
“Amen,” we said in unison.
I crossed myself and took up my spoon, the signal the hungry creatures along the table had been waiting for. As if they’d not eaten a full meal in days, they practically dove headfirst into their bowls.
With a smile, I glanced beside me at Giacomo, his eyes wide as he had the first taste of the stew. I saw the years fall away from him for a moment, leaving an infant so precious I’d spent the first few months of his life in a rosy daze. Like a cherub had fallen from the heavens and landed in my arms.
And then the memory of him standing beside me in the forest came, all bristling anger as he spoke to the trespassers. Those men a dozen of our workers had not been able to find trace of.
Anything could have happened that afternoon.
I shoved the memory aside and brought a spoonful of stew to my lips. This was not the time for dark thoughts.
Something lodged into the back of my throat as I tried to swallow. I tasted the metal of blood in the midst of sweet squash an instant before the pain began. I flinched, my spoon clattering to the table.
“What’s the matter, sposa?” Florindo said.
I tried to speak but something was pressing against my palate.
“Maddalena.” He rose from his seat.
“Mamma?” Giacomo said.
I stopped the room’s mounting panic with a hand that, despite myself, I couldn’t prevent from shaking, and reached into my mouth. My eyes watered as I took hold of what was embedded in my skin. I pulled.
I recognized what it was before I saw it.
A small feather. Its quill red with my blood.
“Stop eating,” I said with a wince, my chair screeching as I stood. I circled the table and reached for the ladle in the clay pot, lifting it full and allowing the liquid to spill out. There was another feather. And another.
“Giusto, stay with the children,” I said at the same time that Florindo came to my side.
“Of course, Mona Maddalena.”
“And don’t let them eat another mouthful.”
Florindo followed me out of the sala, down the corridor to the main kitchen, and past the flurry of exclamations when I stormed through the door, toward the hearth.
The extinguished logs still smoked under the cauldron where the remainder of the stew sat. I could feel my heart beating in my throat as I snapped a cloth from a nearby table and used it to lift the searing cauldron lid.
The liquid bubbled lightly. It looked just as it always did.
“The stirrer,” I said.
The cuoco stepped forward. “Madonna, is there someth—”
“The stirrer,” I said, my voice a whip of sound.
Martino handed it to me with a bow and I plunged it into the stew. A swirl of feathers floated to the surface almost at once but I kept stirring, the truth of what I’d find already biting at me.
Birds’ bodies rose past the squash and pumpkin lumps, tender meat sliding off their bones with the movement, leaving behind beaks and ribs and empty skulls. Familiar metal rings encircled the steaming feet of the carcasses.
These were our doves. And they’d been tossed into the cauldron, whole.
“What is this abomination?” I hissed.
Martino hurried to my side and looked in. He pressed a hand to his mouth in an unsuccessful effort to contain his shriek. His knees buckled under him and it was one of the younger stewards who had to move to catch him this time.
I turned until I could see every soul in the kitchen. Florindo, wisely, made no attempt to corral my anger but instead took his place beside me.
“Who is responsible for this?”
All eyes were fixed on the floor.
“Which of you helped with the cooking last night?” I clapped my hands. “Come, I need an answer. I need to know who dared desecrate this sacred day.”
Martino found his feet, though he did not straighten himself. “Madonna, I’m responsible for the cooking and—”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I helped, madonna,” Antonio said, stepping forward. “But I did not do that and neither did Messer Martino. I know it.”
“Did you see who did?”
“No, madonna.”
“You mean to tell me you were both here the entire night, watching the stew, and saw no one? Heard nothing?” I motioned to the cauldron. “Am I supposed to believe the birds flew themselves into the pot?”
There was a beat of tight silence.
And then Martino let out a half-strangled sob.
“Oh, madonna, I’m so ashamed.” He paused, clutching at his hands. “I fell asleep. I slept through the entire night. I’ve never done such a thing before, I swear to the Santissima Vergine, and I knew the moment I woke that I’d shamed the entire household, but I never dreamed that . . . that anyone would . . .”
His voice unthreaded into weeping again.
Now we were getting to the crux. I turned to Antonio.
“Why did you not wake Martino?”
He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Because I wanted to leave my post, madonna.”
Madre di Gesù, did no one do as they were ordered to do in this house? I exhaled sharply. “Was it pure willfulness or did you have a reason for your disobedience?”
“I went to inquire on Alba, madonna. She had been poorly.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You thought it your responsibility to do so? You felt it appropriate to step foot in the women’s quarters?”
“It was just a moment, madonna, and I stood in the corridor. Octavia can vouch for me.”
I glanced at the woman, who nodded.
“Most unusual.” I held his gaze. “This atrocity could not have been done in that short amount of time, which means you are not telling me everything.”
The boy pressed his lips together. For an instant, I could have sworn he was trying to hide a smile.
I shook my head. This was all too much. “The little patience I have is seeping away second by second, so if you have any intention of remaining in service, mine or anyone else’s, I urge you to speak.”
Florindo did shift beside me now. But if it were up to him, there would never be any consequences for anything, and that was not how the world worked. Nor my household.
“On the way back to the kitchen, madonna,” he started, “I stopped by the music room.”
I frowned. “Whatever for?”
He wrung his hands together, and for that instant he really looked just like one of my sons in the maelstrom of punishment. Another disobedient boy.
“Speak.”
“I wanted to see the clock, madonna. I’ve heard the girls speaking about it, how it has little figurines in it that move, and I wanted to see it for myself.” He bowed his head. “Scusatemi.”
Father’s Bavarian clock with the dancing peasants. I rubbed a hand against my forehead and swallowed down the sharpest words I wanted to say, for they were not appropriate, even in these circumstances.
“And how long do you gather you were in the music room?” Florindo said.
“Perhaps twenty minutes, messer. I was waiting for the hour to strike so I could see the figures appear.”
“Plenty of time for someone to break the necks of the doves in the dovecote, come in through that door, and stuff them in the pot.” I shook my head. “How did you not even notice that they were in there? Did you not look at what you were stirring?”
He clenched his hands. “I didn’t know if I had to stir the stew, so I didn’t, madonna. It was my first time and I didn’t want to do the wrong thing.”
“And yet, you did not wake Martino or stay at your post.” I glanced about me until I caught sight of the head steward. “To make up for this, take the cost of the ingredients for the stew out of Antonio’s pay—”
“Oh, madonna, please!” the boy said.
“—and relegate him to menial kitchen duties. I don’t want to see him anywhere else in this house. If he makes another error in judgment, you may dismiss him without consulting me.”
The steward bowed his head. “Yes, madonna.”
“Scusatemi, but I’m to blame,” Martino said, still not daring to look up at me. “Please, take the costs out of my pay and dismiss me.”
“I’ve made my decision, Martino. You’ve served us loyally for twenty years, and I’m not going to punish you for falling asleep. It was not a conscious choice you made to disobey, while Antonio chose, unequivocally, to leave his post. Besides, I know that what has happened is punishment enough for you and that you will never allow it to occur again.”
“On my life, I won’t, madonna.”
I waved to the cauldron behind me. “Remove the stew and scour the pot until every trace of this filth is gone. It is a good thing you managed to sleep some, Martino, because I’m afraid you will have to prepare another meal for our dinner.”
The man’s face mottled with red.
And still none of this told us who the actual culprit was, for despite everything, I did believe Antonio in that respect. He didn’t look the sort to have done something so brutal. So then who could have?
“Maddalena,” Florindo said, turning to me, the tightness of his face revealing that his thoughts ran along similar paths as mine. “Didn’t we hire a man to care for the doves when we arrived?”
My eyebrows shot up. I’d entirely forgotten about him.
“Why did he not raise the alarm this morning? He would have seen the missing birds first.”
“You’re entirely right, sposo. We should have known about this earlier.” I nodded to the silent cluster of people in front of me. “Someone find him and bring him here.”
There was a murmur among the servants as the head steward made rapid inquiries from each of them. Florindo motioned to one of the men before crossing the room and flinging the door to the garden open. The two of them hurried to the dovecote near the forest.
“No one has seen him since last night, madonna,” the head steward finally said. “He didn’t come to break his fast this morning at the servants’ kitchen.”
Had the man seen what had happened and hid for fear of being blamed? Because anything else would be nonsensical. What need did he have to do something of this sort? Why make his own position obsolete? He was a local man, someone who would not have many other prospects available, certainly none that would pay as well as this one did.
Florindo returned a minute later, shaking his head. “He’s not at his post and his room in the stables is empty. None of the grooms have seen him. It seems he’s left.”
I exhaled. Had the entire world gone mad?
“The dovecote will need attending to,” Florindo said to the steward. “There’s . . . uh . . . a lot of feathers and . . . and blood.”
My hands clenched to fists at my sides. It was true that we’d always planned the birds to be food, but they deserved better than this vicious, cruel, wasteful end.
I’d have to keep the children away until everything had been cleared. And I’d have to prepare a purifying solution to help remove all that violence from the garden stones. As soon as possible.
The steward was already giving orders to a few of the servants who were arming themselves with water buckets and rags, and even Martino had found enough voice in him to direct three women to the cauldron. They crossed themselves before swinging the iron arm out of the hearth and reaching for the pot.
Florindo came to my side. “We’ll have to alert the massaro about all of this. Not just about today, either.”
I hesitated. The news would make it all over the region in half a day.
“You know this is about more than the doves, Maddalena.”
Yes, of course I did. The very thought of an intruder slipping so easily into our home, even if it had been someone in the fringes of our employ, chilled me. Besides, hadn’t I just objected to Florindo’s tendency to sidestep consequences? We’d already allowed the incident with my grandmother’s tablecloth to go unpunished and perhaps that had emboldened this man to do what he did.
Unless I’d been wrong in my suspicions and he’d been behind the tablecloth too.
I closed my eyes, feeling as if this day had lasted for years, and gave myself permission to lean slightly against my husband’s arm. What a disaster this had been. The worst Embertide I’d ever gone through.
Something in my chest squeezed. I felt a flutter of fear.
“I don’t like this, sposo.”
“I know. I’ll send for the massaro and then we’ll do the vigil, just as we planned,” Florindo said, his voice a caress. “We won’t have the stew, but everything else will be the same.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. I tried to stop them, but they were waves, pulling me under.
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “Our Dio understands and so would your mother. It’ll be all right.”
How could I explain that it wasn’t the stew or my mother’s memory or even the fear of divine retribution that left me with a sob locked in my throat? It was the feeling growing second by second that this was an omen no amount of prayers would touch. A carcass-strewn warning for what lay ahead.
* * *
The massaro didn’t come. Not that day or the next.
And then the rains began.
Three days after the horror of the Embertide, the blue started to leach from the sky, taking the sun with it. Clouds the color of slate formed and spread as far as we could see from the villa, flattening into a lid over us until there wasn’t a single patch of clear sky. The rain that started was almost invisible and so light it hardly shifted the leaves on the trees. At least until that afternoon.
Florindo and I were watching the children race on one leg across the courtyard, the thuds of their hopping syncopating with their laughter, when the first roll of thunder rippled along the walls. The crystal of our wineglasses tinkled.
We hurried to the nearest window and looked out just in time to see a blade-scratch of lightning. Like it had been waiting for just that signal, the threads of drops gave way to a heavy gray curtain of rain.
I glanced at Florindo and he took my hand. “It’ll exhaust itself soon,” he said.
But it didn’t. The rain and lightning continued, indifferent to the sun’s setting, to the extinguishing of our candles, to the silence of a house attempting to sleep through what could have been cannon shots.
I stared up at the folds of our bed’s canopy as Spuma screamed in the stables, waking the other horses, whipping them up into a froth of panic. Hour after hour.
By the second afternoon, I found myself drifting to windows every few minutes, the knot of nerves growing each time I saw no sign of the storm lifting, until my chest ached with the weight of worry. I gripped my cross and the acorn talisman hanging from my chatelaine and said every prayer I knew.
“The fields can withstand a good amount of rain,” Florindo said, coming to stand beside me as we waited for the call to cena.
“But the wheat is so young.” I shook my head. “It’ll rot in all of this.”
“No, no. Not yet. All it’ll need is a few days of sun.”
I looked at him, at the dark pouches under his eyes and the lines that had appeared around his mouth in what seemed to be just the last couple of days. It all belied his words.
“What will we do if this doesn’t stop, Florindo?”
He eased closer, wrapping his arms around me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed him to do exactly that.
“It’ll stop, amore,” he said. “I spoke with one of the workers earlier, and he said that this is normal for the region at this time of year. He’s lived here his entire life, so he’s bound to know.”
The words should have eased a bit of the pressure in my chest, but they didn’t. The feeling I’d had since the last day of the Embertide, like a pulse in the back of my mind, surged forward.
As if in sympathy, the torrent behind the mill gave a rumble. Its steady stream had turned savage with the rain and pushed against its banks a bit more each hour. The water had to be pouring into the millrace.
“Is the wheel safe?”
“Perfectly.”
“What about the dam?” I said. “Will it hold?”
“Oh yes, you do not need to concern yourself with that. I had it reinforced and raised the very first day we got here, remember? It would take something akin to the Great Flood to break through.”
I bit my lip but nodded against his chest.
“Would you like me to check on it again?”
The man knew me much too well. I looked up at him. “Would you?”
“Of course, Maddalena.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I would swim across the torrent itself to hold the dam in place if you wanted me to.”
I lifted an eyebrow and tapped the bulge of his stomach. “And you’d sink right to the bottom.”
“It is not my fault that I am substantially built.”
“What you are is substantially filled with crostate.”
His laughter shook the fear off me for an instant, like birds spooked off a tree. It’d be back, I knew that, but for now, I’d just remain as I was, still in the refuge of his arms.
* * *
The crash wrenched me out of my doze. My eyes flew open at the same time the horses began to shriek.
“Florindo,” I said.
He groaned but made no attempt to rise.
I sat up and shook him. “Florindo, wake up.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but something’s wrong.”
A roar of surging water drowned the sound of the horses. For a moment, that rushing, thundering sound was all we could hear.
Florindo jerked up, the end of his nightcap thumping me in the nose as he pulled the curtain open. I did the same, shoving my feet into my slippers, snatching my robe from the chair by the bed, and slipping it on as I hurried across the room.
Giusto stepped into the corridor an instant after we did, his own cap askew, blinking in the trembling light of a candle.
“Go to the children,” I said as I passed him.
“What is happening, mona?”
“We don’t know yet. Keep them calm and inside!”
“Yes, mona.”
Florindo and I raced down the main stairwell, just a sliver of moonlight and the horses’ screams guiding our way.
Servants in various degrees of disarray began to slip out of their wing of the villa and into the courtyard, the housekeeper and the first steward holding candelabras high, the glow illuminating the fear and confusion in all their faces.
“Men, come with me,” Florindo said.
Without hesitation or questions, the men started after us as we left the house and ran down the colonnade and its steps. Stones could have been coming down instead of waterdrops from the force that pelted us the instant we were out from under cover.
Thunder boomed, the vibrations rippling across a pool of water and mud that glimmered in front of the last marble step and Florindo stopped, turning to me.
“I’ll carry you. Come.”
“I can walk through it, sposo.”
“Maddalena, the water is freezing and you have on a pair of bed slippers. Don’t be stubborn.”
Barely waiting for me to nod in agreement, he tucked an arm under my knees and another against my back and lifted me as if I weighed about as much as his pillow. I held on to him, feeling more than a little foolish as he stepped into the pool of muddy water. It reached halfway up his calves.
It was when he set me down on the opposite side that I first heard the change in the land. The distance hadn’t allowed me to realize from inside the house that the resonances were all wrong.
My teeth chattered with the sudden wave of cold understanding that racked my body.
The river wasn’t where it should have been.
“Oh, no. No, no,” I murmured and forced my legs to move.
“Maddalena!” Florindo called after me, but I didn’t stop.
I broke into a run, moving so quickly the momentum kept me from falling when my feet slid time and time again in the mud. It splashed cold against my robe and seeped into my nightdress, like it was trying to weigh me down. Keep me from seeing.
I ran past the towering mill and across the dirt road, the shrieking horses, the hammering rain, the calls from behind me, none of it managing to drown out my heart or my mind, which roared along with the river.
I slipped as I began climbing the hill overlooking the fields and landed with a shock to my knees. My slippers found no purchase in the wet grass. With a wince, I dug my fingers into the cold earth and started crawling up.
“Please,” I said, unable to say the rest.
My knees trembled so much I thought I’d fall again as I began to stand, but I didn’t.
And then my own wail rooted me in place until I thought I’d always be there, on that hill, staring down at our fields.
There was just enough moonlight to see the great rippling blackness in front of me.
The dam had broken.
Our wheat lay, drowning, under folds of violent water.