My shoes clicked against the stone of the colonnade as I walked its length for what felt like the millionth time. Where were they? They’d said they’d be here in the morning, and it was practically afternoon.
I clutched at my hands.
It wasn’t difficult to suspect that the massaro had lied to Florindo and didn’t actually intend on sending any of his sbirri to help us. The man hadn’t even allowed my husband into his home, after all, but had made Florindo speak of the thievery that we’d fallen prey to without allowing him out of our carriage. I supposed if I’d been the one to go request his help, he’d have sicced his hounds on me.
The irritation I’d felt when Florindo had returned and told me everything surged up again. The massaro sending his subordinates instead of coming himself to handle matters for a family of our ranking was an affront. It was not done. And I didn’t believe for one moment that he was leaving the region with his wife and child this very morning, as he’d claimed.
The mill’s wheel creaked, pulling on my attention.
I turned to look at the few men still carrying sacks of the new grain into the area we’d prepared for its storage. Dry and off the ground and large enough to hold the rest of it, when we managed to purchase it later this week. As soon as the sbirri left, if they came at all, Florindo would have to send a note to the lender to let him know the workers had cleared the boulders and that the oak trees were now accessible for his inspection. We could afford no more delays.
Laughter drew my eyes back to the path leading out of the property. Two men on horseback approached.
Finally.
I hurried to the front door and opened it just as Giacomo lunged, scopperel raised like a lance at Ugo. The blue and red pinwheeled end struck my youngest in the stomach and he made a show of clutching at it as he swooned, gasping and gurling, while his siblings and Florindo clapped. Even Giusto was smiling.
The moment she saw me in the doorway, Marcellina made a quick motion to Francesco and Vincenzo and they pulled up the blankets they had allowed to fall to the vestibule floor. Willful beings, my children. But at least the twins had remained in the armchairs I’d had brought out, resting. A wise decision, for they knew very well I would have had them march up the stairs back to bed if they’d done otherwise. Until it was completely eradicated, an illness like the bloody flux was always waiting for a chance to claw its way back to roaring strength.
“Florindo, they’re here,” I said.
He nodded and started toward me, tapping the convalescent twins’ heads as he passed and mouthing the word “behave” at them.
I could feel his nerves when he gave my arm a squeeze and walked out of the villa. He waited until the men had ridden right up to the stairs before raising a hand in greeting, one which neither of the sbirri returned. Not the best of beginnings.
“Messer Caparalia,” one of them said, pulling on his horse’s reins as Florindo made his way down the steps, “we were told you had concerns about trespassers.”
Were they not planning on dismounting? Would they force my husband to speak up at them?
Florindo seemed to follow the path of my thoughts because he came to a stop a few steps off the ground. Level with the men. We’d been married for decades and his astuteness still managed to catch me by surprise.
“Yes, that is what I told the massaro,” he said, “but, as I also told him, it has not only been trespassing.”
“What else, then, messer?” The man’s voice was without inflection. Certainly without a hint of interest.
“Intruders, a group which includes a man we employed named Antonio, have destroyed personal effects of my wife’s. And, our most pressing concern, they’ve stolen lumber from our oak forest. Please,” he said and motioned for them to descend, “if you’d follow me, I can show you exactly what the problem is.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the man said. “The visit is really just a formality, messer, because there’s nothing we can do to help.”
What nonsense was this, now? I grasped my skirts and started down to join Florindo.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“It’s quite simple. There’s no way to prove who has been stealing something like lumber. I assume there are no markings on the trees that might differentiate the ones on your property from someone else’s?”
“No, but—”
“Then even if we scour the region for piles of oak, we will not be able to charge anyone with theft, for we won’t know its provenance.”
I felt all of me ruffle up. This was too much.
“Messers,” I said, “that is a frightfully simplistic way of looking at things. No one is requesting you search the area for our lumber. We are asking that you help us catch the culprits in flagrante delicto, as it were. Surely that is not beyond your capabilities.”
The sbirri exchanged a look. The one who’d been silent so far sighed and looked at me. I recognized him then. He’d been at my cena, sitting at the table to our left. I remembered the white scar on his cheek. “You suspect they’ll be back, then?”
“Yes, of course. If you’d do as my husband suggested, as it is your duty to do, you would see the tools they’ve left behind, the logs they still have to bring down the mountain. You may even get a sense of who could be working with Antonio to accomplish such a horrid thing.”
The man shook his head. “We are too busy this morning, madonna.”
“Afternoon,” I said. “You’ve arrived late.”
“Exactly my point. There’s too much to do with half the region abandoning their homes because of the flooding and the illness.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m sure you know about all of that.”
I felt my stomach dip as if I’d just dropped from a great height. They blamed us, too, like everyone else.
They’d not help us.
“Then perhaps you could order a couple of sbirri to keep watch at night,” Florindo said. “That would be enough to frighten the people responsible and keep our property safe.”
“No,” the first man said. “I’m afraid that is impossible, as well, messer. We’ve had losses in our own ranks and do not have the number of men needed to handle private complaints.”
It was my husband’s turn to flare up with irritation. “Robbery tends to be a private complaint. Would you say the same thing if the massaro’s property had been stolen? The chancellor’s?”
“But it wasn’t.”
This was pointless. They’d not come to do anything but smirk at our circumstances.
“And Antonio?” Florindo said. “Will you not at least do something about him?”
The first man shrugged. “Do you have proof that he is involved? Did you actually witness him doing any of the things you claim?”
If I hadn’t felt like screaming my throat to ribbons, I might have laughed. Because I realized now that even if we had seen him, elbow deep in my jewelry box or swinging one of the axes at a tree himself, these men would never have believed us. No one in the region would have.
“Come, sposo,” I said, and touched Florindo’s arm. “They will not help us.”
“But what are we supposed to do? Just allow them to keep robbing us and destroying our property?”
The first man shrugged again before tugging on the horse’s reins, turning the beast in anticipation of departure. “Perhaps you should return to Genova, where you belong.” He made a sound in the back of his throat and the horse started forward. “It would be the best thing for everyone.”
The other sbirro followed, tossing only one more look over his shoulder at us before cantering off.
Like someone had flung oil into flames, rage blazed within me. I’d had enough.
This was a land of laws, wasn’t it? We were as deserving of protection under those laws as anyone else.
“I won’t accept this,” I said and turned, racing up the steps.
“What are you going to do?” Florindo called after me.
“I’m going to see the chancellor again and he will have to listen. Someone has to take some responsibility!”
I had the first servant I came across fetch the carriage, and after a beat of hesitation, the two flasks of tonic I had left. It wouldn’t hurt to try to help Silvia once more. Perhaps her husband had thought better about her health now that he knew she was with child.
Yes, logic had to prevail even here.
But as the carriage struggled with the muddy road, taking me once more to the chancellor’s villa, the certainty, the blaze in my thoughts began to fade. If he refused to help us, what would we do? Anyone would be able to do as they pleased on our land without fear of consequences. How long would it take for that information to spread, for us to become the target of all manner of violence?
My hands shook as I knocked on the door and waited through an even deeper silence than I’d experienced yesterday morning. My skin tingled with the stillness of the place.
Seconds passed, then a minute, and no one approached. I knocked again.
Only silence met me.
Something was wrong here, I felt it like a film clinging to my skin. I did hesitate for a moment, but if there was a chance I could get the chancellor to see me, to help us, I would take it.
Pressing my handkerchief to my nose and mouth, I gripped the handle, expecting the cough of a lock but not hearing it. I pushed the door open.
“Scusatemi,” I called as I walked inside. “Is there anyone?”
Once more, I waited to hear rushing steps, to see a breathless servant ready with apologies, but no one came. And I couldn’t waste any more time.
I followed the path I’d taken yesterday, my heels too loud against the villa’s pulsing silence, my heart almost matching them. Every door I passed, I expected someone to come through it, I prayed someone would, but they remained closed. The hallways remained empty.
Of people, at least.
As I walked deeper into the house, it was difficult not to notice the rats that had found their presence through the grand hallways unimpeded and had grown bold. I had to walk around a chittering group of them as they lapped up the remains of a puddle I didn’t care to investigate too closely.
But the smell that grew with each step I took was the worst thing. A mixture of rotten food and unemptied chamber pots. Of bile. It cut through the rose water with ease and it carried a tinge of something beyond illness in it. It was a smell that would linger.
Santissima Madre, how had this happened? How had this household buckled so rapidly?
If Silvia was strong enough, she needed to leave the villa. She’d never find health within these infested walls.
At last, I saw a set of marble stairs that were grand enough to belong in the sections of the villa that the owners would use. I started up, keeping my hands from the smooth banister. Thinking of the fire I’d have to request from my servants so that I could burn every stitch of clothing I wore.
The sound of a door opening made me suck in a rose-tinted breath.
“Silvia? Salvatore?” I said, hurrying down one of the passages toward the sound. “It’s Maddalena Caparalia. I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I need your assistance.”
I turned a corner just as the same servant from yesterday stepped out of one of the many doors. He struggled to keep hold of a deep bowl and a few washing cloths.
“Madonna, you can’t be here.”
“It’s urgent that I see the chancellor. It’s . . .” The words scattered and I grabbed at them at random. “We’re in danger of losing everything and not even the massaro is listening. Could you let him know I’m here?”
“It won’t be possible, madonna.”
“But we have no one to turn to. We’re all alone.” I shook my head. “I don’t even have to bother the chancellor. Perhaps, if she’s feeling any better, I could at least talk to Silvia. She can intercede for us.” And I could give her the tonics without anyone knowing. “Is she in there?”
I started for that door.
“No, madonna—”
But I was already slipping into room, sighing with relief at the sight of the gaping windows, curtains swaying in the cleansing breeze. This was what the entire house needed. Fresh air.
I crossed the private sitting room and stopped only long enough to tap lightly on the bedroom door before stepping inside. It was unseemly to walk in like this, but this could be the only chance I had.
“Forgive my barging in this way, Silvia.”
Oh, but I wasn’t intruding. Instead, I was too late.
Silvia lay pale and still in her dressing gown, hands folded in prayer on her chest. The silver cross she held gleamed in the afternoon light that rippled through the gentle movement of the curtains. She hadn’t been dead long, but she was dead, nonetheless.
“The doctors bled her again and she was much too weak to withstand it,” the servant said from behind me.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Salvatore should have listened to me.
And I should have pushed harder to see her.
“The chancellor ordered me not to even speak with you if you came, madonna, to have you thrown out if you walked in. I’m afraid he won’t help you, even though . . . even though I know you tried to save his wife.” He exhaled sharply. “She spoke well of you, madonna.”
I glanced at him, blinking away the first few tears. He looked a shade paler than yesterday, his face tinged with yellow. “She was a friend, the only one I had in the area.”
He nodded. “Madonna Cestarello was a generous and gentle person, always welcoming, and she will be missed greatly.” He cleared his own tears from his voice. “But you really must go, madonna. The chancellor cannot find you here.”
He started to turn away.
“One moment,” I said, fighting against the fist of grief in my throat as I reached into my satchel. “You are ill.”
“No . . . I . . .”
“I recognized the symptoms yesterday and you look worse today. Here.” I held out the two flasks. “I don’t have any more, but these doses will go a long way in clearing the flux from your body.”
“No, madonna, I couldn’t.”
“Please. Why suffer through the illness when help is right here?” I held his gaze. “Let me help you. I couldn’t do it for Silvia but I can do it for you.”
Something in him shifted, for all at once he looked older and so tired I didn’t think he’d be able to remain upright. He was more ill than he’d appeared. Lowering his eyes, he gave me the smallest of nods.
I handed him the flasks. “Half in the morning and the other half at night, and drink plenty of water but only that which you boil.”
“Thank you, madonna.”
“And leave this place. Tell the others to do the same. The current condition of the house can only breed sickness.”
“There are no others, madonna. Everyone who didn’t die left days ago. Besides the chancellor, of course.”
I frowned. The poor man had been dealing with this on his own?
“But I must stay to see to Madonna Cestarello’s burial preparations,” he continued. “I won’t leave without seeing her laid to rest.”
I would have liked to place a hand on his arm, offer him some gesture of comfort, but I dared not. He was too ill and my children too vulnerable. “Drink the tonics and boil all water.”
“Yes, madonna.”
With a last look at Silvia, I made myself turn away. There was nothing more I could do here.
The chancellor wouldn’t accept my condolences even if I managed to get him to see me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of another argument. Of having more cruel words flung at me and my family. Not today.
* * *
“You did all you could, Maddalena,” Florindo said.
I forced myself to nod despite my own doubts on the matter, gripping the balustrade tightly, and stared out at the expanse of our land. The night was tight around us, stars and moon folded in clouds, the first tendrils of mist creating a haze around the flickering oil lamp resting at the top of the colonnade stairs.
“It’s just the injustice of it, sposo. That’s what eats away at me. She was not yet thirty and she was so very happy.” I sighed. “None of this would have happened if that atrocious young man hadn’t spread lies through the countryside.”
But I wasn’t even certain of that. Was that where it had really started? Or had it been at the cena where I’d made my first enemies? Or even earlier, on the day we’d arrived?
It was all an entangled chaos of events. Though I supposed everything was.
Florindo wove his fingers through mine and squeezed.
Blinking away tears that were entirely useless, I looked over at the two men standing at the door of the mill. They sat in the glow of their own lamp, twisting cords of hemp into rope.
“Are they reliable?” I said.
“Entirely. Ilario, whom you’ve met, and Nino, are the two best workers I have. I would trust them with my life.”
And that wasn’t too removed from what we were asking from them, for if anything happened to that grain . . . no, it was too distressing to even think about.
“I don’t see Giacomo. Where did he go?” Florindo said, frowning. “He was right there a moment ago.”
“He went into the mill. I’m certain he imagines I’ll forget he’s out here if I can’t see him, that we’ll go inside to retire, leaving him free to keep guard alongside the men.”
He’d been trying to convince me of this through the entirety of our cena, urging his father onto his side as well, somehow thinking that Florindo would have considered such a preposterous idea any more than I.
He chuckled. “He should know better by now.”
“Yes, he really sh—” I narrowed my eyes. Something was moving out there. “What is that?”
“What?”
I opened my mouth but the words vanished as a figure, no, two figures, shaped out of the night itself slipped from the shadows. They raced toward the sitting men.
I had just enough time to gasp before one of the shapes swung something against Nino’s head, the man dropping from his chair, crumpling to the earth with nothing more than a grunt.
Ilario leaped to his feet.
There was a rush of air from somewhere beside me and then two hands were shoving me forward, onto the stairs. I yelped, the heels of my shoes slipping against the marble, the force of the strike ripping my hands from the balustrade. I felt myself tip forward as a shape darted past me.
“Maddalena!” Florindo shouted, lunging.
His fingers latched on to the lace around my neckline and he pulled, the fabric groaning in protest but holding. He gripped my arms and pulled me back, against his chest.
A scream rose from below us, from the mill, and it was now Ilario who folded to the ground with a gut-twisting crack.
I could feel Florindo’s shouts rumbling against me as he called for help, but none of it really touched me now, because Giacomo appeared at the mill’s entrance.
He’d run out at Ilario’s screams and he stood there, in front of those figures. I held my breath.
A gust of laughter dark with mockery swept through the night.
Then the figures started running, back the way they’d come, back into the trees, and our son gave chase.
“No,” I said. “Giacomo!”
He didn’t look at me, didn’t stop or even slow, but raced right into the woods, right out of my sight.
I was careening down the steps before Florindo realized what was happening. My heart was trying to crack my chest open, Ilario’s pain-soaked shrieks, my husband’s calls, all of it muffled by fear.
They’d kill him. If he caught up with them, if he confronted them as he was bound to do, I would never see him with life again.
Every fear I’d ever had was compressed into this one horror. I plunged into the forest.
“Giacomo!” His name flew from me, wind-stolen, pine branches snapping at my face. The darkness was smothering. “Giacomo!”
I followed his voice like I had when he’d been an infant, trailing through the dark of the house to reach him before his wet nurse did, pressing him to my breast despite every cold glance the woman, heavy with milk, flung my way.
I could see him now, my brown-eyed cherub.
This wasn’t happening.
“Please, Dio, please,” I murmured and shoved branches aside, feet stumbling over rocks and roots. I heard a snapping and crashing behind me, and I knew Florindo was nearby but I felt more alone than I’d ever felt. Searching for my son through a lightless night.
“Giacomo!”
There was a laugh from somewhere ahead of me. “Your mamma is here, boy. Go hide behind her skirts before it’s too late.”
It was Antonio’s voice.
“Leave us alone!” Giacomo shouted. “You have no right to do this!”
“Come say that a bit closer, boy, or are you as much of a coward as you look?”
My son made a sound of pure rage and there was the crunch of branches and dried leaves. Holding my breath, I raced toward the noise, my gaze digging into the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything.
A metallic snap echoed through the woods.
Giacomo’s first agonized scream could have been a hammer to my knees.
My legs stopped on their own, refusing to take me farther, and I began to shake under the onslaught of a drenching cold sweat.
“That is unfortunate. What now, boy? Have you learned your lesson or do you need another one?”
Giacomo screamed again.
And I was just standing here, uselessly.
“Stop!” I called, ripping myself out of my paralysis like ripping a plant from the earth and running once more toward the violence. “Leave him alone!”
Antonio laughed again and the sound was all at once close. Too close.
A hand latched around my wrist and squeezed, fingernails cutting into my skin. “Or what, madonna? What do you plan to do to me?” He drew closer, until I could feel his breath on my face. “Who exactly do you think you are, woman?”
Ahead of me, Giacomo’s raw scream split in two and I heard the clatter of a falling body.
A growl clawed its way out of my throat and I shoved my elbow into Antonio’s side, rushing forward, all of me leaping toward my now silent child.
But he pulled on my arm and swung me to the side with ease. My back slammed against a tree trunk and I groaned as the pain rippled through me.
“Oh, you’ll learn your place soon enough,” Antonio said, releasing my wrist. “You all will.”
Through the furious pounding in my head, I heard him move away and start walking deeper into the woods. In seconds, the crunch of his steps faded, silence falling like a weight on me.
“Giacomo,” I whispered.
My legs quivered as I lurched forward and forced them to obey me, to lead me to my firstborn.
The tip of my foot struck something heavy.
Holding my breath, I bent and touched it, my hand jerking back at the chilled metal that it found under my fingers.
“Maddalena!”
“I’m here.” I squinted against the blackness and traced the shape of what was in front of me. It was large and solid. Had I seen anything of this size the last time I’d been in the woods?
My shaking fingers trailed up and brushed against warm wetness. Its viscosity made my temples start to pound but I continued up.
The metal, narrowing to points, ended in flesh whose very feel I recognized. Iron teeth were buried in Giacomo’s calf.
“Florindo,” I called, or tried to because my throat was filled with sand-like fear. “Florindo, he’s here.”
I knelt beside my son and scrambled up his body until I found his chest, the rise and fall of it wrenching a sob from my own. My hands clenched around his tunic.
“Maddalena, where are you?”
“I found him! He’s injured but alive.”
Florindo hurtled through nearby branches and then he was there, his silhouette a shade darker than the night.
“Is he all right? What happened?”
“It’s an animal trap. He lost consciousness.”
“They led him right to it.”
I tightened my grip on my son. Antonio had provoked him, taunting him forward. The trespassers had placed this trap here. “Yes.”
I felt the flare of Florindo’s rage as it met mine. I half expected the pine trees around us to catch fire under the force of it.
“We need to release his foot,” he said, kneeling on the opposite side of our son.
“How?”
I saw him shuffle, the shadow of his hand wiping at his face. “I think we have to pull down on both sides of the trap, at the same time, to release the springs. But I’m . . . I don’t know for certain.”
I heard what he was thinking in the tremor in his voice: that any of the men he’d been acquainted with in Genova, those who had tossed invitations for hunting parties at him for years and which he’d always declined, would have known what to do. “I can’t stalk and kill animals for sport, Maddalena. It’s brutal,” he’d always said.
But brutality was what we now faced.
Beneath my hands, Giacomo began trembling. The loss of blood and the pain were pummeling his thin frame.
I gripped Florindo’s arm. “We have to try. We need to get him back to the house, quickly.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and shifted, placing his hands on the trap. “Can you find the top of the jaw, the one on your side?”
I touched the teeth wet with my son’s blood and followed them up, feeling the contours of the metal monstrosity. “Yes, I have it.”
“We have to push both sides away from his leg.”
I could feel his eyes on me.
There was no time to hesitate and think about what could go wrong if that wasn’t how the trap was sprung. “I’m ready, sposo.”
“On three, then, yes?”
“Yes.”
“One.” I heard him swallow. “Two.”
My entire body tensed.
“Three.”
I pulled on the metal jaw with every bit of strength I had and then stole more from the air itself. Something in my arm twinged in protest as the trap screeched with a voice full of rust, but I would have torn myself to strips of flesh if it’d been necessary.
It began to open.
“It’s working, Maddalena. Keep pushing!”
Grunting, I pressed down. More and then more.
The spring clinking into place as the trap opened wide was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. Without allowing myself more than a breath, I gripped my son’s mangled leg and shifted it away from all of those steel teeth. My hands were already slick with his blood.
“He’s free,” I said.
Florindo leaped to his feet and hurried to my side. I felt him slide his hands under our son’s arms and legs, lifting him as if he were an infant again, fallen asleep far from his bed.
I held Giacomo’s injured leg so that it would not bounce with the movement as we started off back to the house at as near a run as either of us dared, for we didn’t know what was broken or shattered. What could be further destroyed by the jostling of terrified parents.
“They set this up, all of it. They goaded him,” I said. “They were looking for violence, to hurt as many as possible.”
“Creatures from the very bowels of hell,” he murmured.
Giacomo stirred in his arms, letting out a whimper that at once began tipping over into a wail.
“We’re taking you home, amore. You’ll be all right.” I gripped one of his hands. “Just hold on a bit more.”
“I sent for the doctor, Giacomo,” Florindo said. “He’ll be on his way to the house by now, too, and he’ll help you.”
The same doctor who had bled Silvia to death. I gritted my teeth and tried to shake that thought from my mind. Tomorrow, I’d have a servant fetch another physician, from Torino or Alessandria, but for tonight, the man stewed in superstition would have to do. Neither my husband nor I would allow him any absurdities.
Florindo stumbled over something in his path and Giacomo let out a howl. He tried to reach down to his leg, grasping for it like he could piece the bones and flesh back together, but I stopped him.
“Mamma,” he cried, clutching at my hand.
He didn’t sound fourteen but four, and I could have eaten the people who had done this to him whole. “I know, amore. It’s just a bit more and then I can give you something for the pain.”
Finally, the glowing oil of the lamps cut through the darkness.
“There!” one of shapes waiting for us said, pointing our way.
Flames bobbed toward us, servants appearing and reaching out for Giacomo, muttering among each other, women rushing off to boil water without requiring a word from me. It was all a flurry of perfect activity that I knew I should have been part of, but couldn’t be, for I didn’t know how to separate myself from our suffering child.
We took him to the kitchen and Florindo and I eased him down onto one of the kneading tables, but still I couldn’t release his hand. He was breathing rapidly and his wide eyes, glowing with fear, couldn’t find a place to land on.
A groan drew my gaze across the room, to where Ilario lay on another table, his face crumpled with pain as he clutched at his own mangled leg.
“And the other man, Nino, what happened to him?” I said to one of the women stoking the hearth’s fire. Her name slipped away from me.
“He’s all right, madonna. He received a blow to the head, but he’s already conscious.”
I sighed with relief. There had been no deaths, then. Not tonight.
But there was plenty of pain, and that was something I could remedy. “Do you know where my cucinetta is?”
The woman nodded.
“Would you please fetch a glass bottle that has ‘Poppy Pods’ written on it?”
“Of course, madonna.”
“Thank you.”
She hurried off and I turned back to Giacomo, who was biting his lips to keep from screaming as one of the men carefully cut off the left leg of his breeches. For the first time, I took in his wound.
The trap had locked onto his ankle and calf and had twisted the foot as it clamped shut. There was the white gleam of bone jutting through skin, puncture marks already puffing up in purples and blacks as blood pooled on the table and dripped down to the floor.
“The doctor will need to set it, Mona Maddalena,” Giusto said beside me. “The other man’s leg, too, and the wounds will have to be kept clean, but I saw plenty of these injuries when I assisted my father. Do not fear, mona. They can be remedied.”
Words like candle-glow in the darkest night.
I placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Giusto.”
With the slam of a door, the head steward rushed into the kitchen, still becloaked, smelling of winter air. He strode toward Florindo and me. “The doctor has fallen ill with the flux,” he said, panting. “He cannot come to help.”
My husband stepped away from our son. “Does he not have an assistant he can send?”
“No, messer. He says the entire household is ill, including the son who helps him.”
“Santa Madre,” I hissed and tightened my grip on Giacomo’s hand. He was the nearest physician in the area. Even if we sent the steward out right this minute in search of another in the somewhat closer cities of Acqui Terme or Novi Ligure, it would all take too long. At least three hours, and likely much more.
“What do we do, Maddalena?” Florindo said.
I shook my head.
“Mona,” Giusto said, softly, “if you’ll permit me, I can try to help. I can try to shift the bones and then splint and bandage the wounds. At least so that they’re not out in the open like this.”
I looked up at him. I should perhaps have felt reluctance at the offer, and I probably would have if anyone else had made it, but Giusto had known and cared for my son since the boy was five. He’d not endanger his well-being any more than I would. If he suspected he was doing him more ill than good, he’d stop.
With one glance at Florindo, I nodded. “Please try. With Ilario, as well, if he agrees.”
Giusto bowed his head. “Then I’ll need a few things, bandages of some kind, the purest alcohol available, and something to use as splints for their legs. Anything rigid will work. In a bind, my father always used sticks.”
Florindo motioned to the steward, who set off at once to fetch them.
The woman I’d sent to my cucinetta almost crashed into him as she returned with the bottle full of dry, bulbous pods, which she held up to me. As Giusto crossed the room to speak with Ilario and the servants began gathering the supplies required, including a small demijohn of grappa that the cuoco provided, I uncorked the bottle and reached inside for two medium-sized bulbs.
“Place these in four fingers’ breadth of water and let it all boil,” I said to the woman, whose name came to me in a clap of sound—Assunta. “When it is ready, strain it and serve Ilario a quarter of a cup of the liquid and my son an eighth. No more than that.”
“Yes, madonna.”
Assunta made to turn but I stopped her. “Actually, bring me the drinks first.”
It was better never to take the potency of poppy seeds for granted.
She bowed and headed to do as I’d told her.
Giusto was back at my side, strips of clean linen hanging from his arm. “We’re ready to begin, I think, mona.”
I swallowed, willing the water and poppy pods to boil as quickly as they could. “Yes.”
Giacomo hissed as the first cloth soaked in the grappa touched his calf. His leg jerked away from the pain, which only managed to send him howling again as his ankle’s bare knob of bone shifted against ruptured skin.
“Scusatemi, Messer Giacomo, but we need to clean the wound.” Giusto pressed his lips so tightly they disappeared from his face and wrung the newly soaked cloth until a splash of grappa covered the calf.
My son’s eyes fluttered. Yes, unconsciousness would be better.
But the next of the ministrations sent him screaming once more. And then again. Next to me Florindo flinched at each of our son’s cries, for they felt like lashes of a whip against our skin.
“The tea is almost ready, madonna,” Assunta said, from where she stood by a small cauldron.
“Good.” I held tighter to my son with one hand and wiped my tears away with the other.
From across the room, Ilario’s contained cries told me he was receiving the same treatment, the same liquid scorching of flesh.
Assunta was all at once by my side with two cups. I took the one that had the most tonic in it, closed my eyes, and listened past the whimpers and cries of pain around me, past all of the human noises. The slow voice of the poppy swirled up like steam. I nodded at its sedate words and handed it back to Assunta before taking up the other cup, the one meant for Giacomo. It was a bit more potent than I’d expected, but the plant’s voice recommended the deeper sleep for his injury.
“Please give that one to Ilario,” I said and Assunta obeyed without wasting a moment. I’d have to remember to reward her diligence when this was all over.
“Giacomo, amore,” I said, stroking his damp hair. “I need you to drink this, all right? It’s for the pain.”
I blew on the liquid and then helped him lift his head. I pressed the cup to his lips.
He grimaced at the bitterness but drank it all in one trusting gulp. In a moment he’d begin feeling the effects, the soporific weight of the poppy.
“Mona,” Giusto said, lowering his voice and wiping at the sheen of sweat on his forehead, “I have to shift the bone in his ankle now, before I splint it. I’m afraid he’ll have to be held down.”
I looked at my child and already saw the slackness of sleep beginning to fall over his features, the tight grasp of pain loosening its hold. But even the poppy wouldn’t be potent enough to mask the grinding of rearranged bones.
I stepped away from the table and pulled on Florindo’s arm so that he’d do the same. We’d be useless trying to hold our child down as he struggled against what was about to befall him. “Do what you need to do, Giusto.”
He nodded and motioned to four of the larger men who had been helping with the cutting of bandages. With a few soft words, he positioned them around the table, urging them to take hold of Giacomo’s arms and healthy leg, one of them to weigh down the thigh of his injured one.
My poor child.
“Tomorrow morning,” Florindo began next to me, his words almost inaudible against the pounding of my heart, “I’ll take as many men as I can up to the mountain. We’ll wait for the trespassers all day if we have to, but we’ll end this, sposa. They will not harm our children again.”
I fixed my eyes on the blood that was spreading across the center of the kitchen and kept them there as our son began to scream once more.
The memory of another, smaller pool of blood leaped into my mind then. Francesco’s, settling on mud and shattered glass on the morning we’d arrived. And then another, blood bright against the white of chamber pots.
A cold breath raced down my spine.
For it almost seemed as if fate had laid claim to one of our children’s lives from the moment we’d stepped on this land. And fate had a habit of getting what it desired.