CHAPTER 11

When we arrived, the people from the large manor had scurried out as if warring tribes would soon be upon them, rather than their own protector, Sir Forelli. They looked frightened and stayed well clear of us as they left on wagon and horse for the safety of the castello. We huddled together in the main room of the house, weapons at the ready, guards at the perilously short walls, all night. And we’d given up on keeping the “most exposed” away from the rest, since in the battle, we’d all intermingled in order to survive.

I was just dozing off at sunrise, my head dropping to Marcello’s shoulder like a thousand-pound weight, when a guard banged open the door. Marcello and Luca and a couple of others were immediately on their feet but eased when they saw Pietro’s face. “M’lord, a thousand pardons,” he said, “but the Sienese contingent has arrived. They ask to speak to you.”

“Good,” Marcello grunted, following him out. I could hear the relief in his voice. He motioned to me and took my hand, but we left Lia where she was, sleeping in the corner.

We climbed narrow steps—short half timbers stuck in the mud of the wall—to the top and looked out upon a brilliant Tuscan morning. Warm light glowed across the thick forest and grasses of the hill before us. The Sienese knights were a hundred feet away, keeping their distance.

“M’lord,” one called, lifting a hand toward Marcello. “I am Captain Alberto Bicchieri. The Nine have sent us here to provide protection as you and your company regain your health.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Marcello called back. “We are greatly relieved you are here. We suffered an attack by Lord Greco of Firenze en route here. He may linger yet.”

“We shall make certain he returns to his side of the border,” the captain pledged with a cocky grin as his horse danced beneath him. “You are in good health, m’lord?”

“Indeed,” Marcello returned. “As of yet, none of us show any symptoms. We were forced to leave Signore Giannini, from the vineyard south of the castello.”

“May God protect you all. We shall set our ranks in groups of thirty men, on all four sides of the manor, sir, with scouts on all sides as well. If anyone is coming our way, we’ll know of it.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Marcello called. “There are more reinforcements on their way?”

“Fret not, m’lord,” the captain returned. “We are well aware of your…vulnerabilities.” He gazed at me for a second. “Reinforcements have been sent for and should arrive by sundown.”

“Very well,” Marcello said. “Thank you, Captain.”

We left after the captain pledged to get us any supplies we found lacking, and returned to the main hall of the manor. Now that our meager walls were guarded, we felt safe enough to retire to separate quarters instead of huddling together like a bunch of refugees. I was just thinking longingly of settling atop a straw tick—I was so tired that I thought I might be able to catch a few z’s, even on a bed of nails—when Lia appeared at my door. “Gabi! Come.”

I followed her to a room on the first floor. She was going too fast for conversation. When we reached the doorway, she glanced back at me, and the terror in her eyes filled me with a deep dread.

Oh no. No, no. NO.

Luca was by the fire, shivering, sweating profusely, Marcello by his side.

Lia shook her head worriedly in my direction, daring to hold his hand in hers after feeling his pulse. “It’s fast,” she said. “So fast, Gabi.” She looked like she was about to faint herself.

“You really shouldn’t be in here, Lia.”

“None of us should,” she muttered, looking at Luca. “What’s the point?” she said. “We’ve clearly all been exposed.” One maid had refused to leave with the others, claiming she was too old to die anyplace but Villa Orci. She arrived with a bowl of water and rags but then stepped back.

I knelt beside Luca and wondered what I could do. I didn’t really know about treatments for bubonic plague, though I’d stumbled upon information about it once when my lymph nodes had been swollen. The size of his nodes had tripled in hours, making his neck look gross, bulbous. I reached for his hand; at least there was no sign of the gangrene that Signore Giovanni had suffered. Yet.

He was panting, his eyes unfocused. Delirious. There was no trace of the Luca I knew.

“Marcello, can you remove his shirt?” I asked. But as soon as we saw his bare chest, I wished I hadn’t.

Lia gasped. All around his armpits were spiderwebs of broken blood vessels.

“Water,” I muttered to a knight behind me, who was hovering in the doorway, though I asked more to appease my dry throat than to force any down Luca’s. I knew why I was freaking. This plague was as horrible as the stories said, taking down one after another. Luca. Not Luca, Lord. Please…

He was beautiful. His chest was well muscled, perfectly formed. But I could not keep my eyes from the purple webs. “Please, Marcello, raise his arms,” I said.

“Are you certain?”

I nodded, and he moved to reluctantly do as I bade.

Lia and I leaned back when we saw it. Lymph nodes, the size of grapes when they were normal, were now as big as eggs, one beside the other. And the smell—one of the nodes had burst, leaving an odd pit beneath the skin where it once had been.

I shook my head, trying to get my mind around it. “He was perfectly fine just hours ago, right?” I looked to Marcello, then Lia, and they both nodded back at me.

How would we fight such an aggressive monster? How, God, how?

Luca’s belly was not distended, but below his belly button, there was more discoloration. Lymph nodes in the groin, too, I dimly remembered.

Wincing, Lia turned away from Luca. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“We must bleed him, m’lady,” the maid said to me. Over her shoulder, a knight arrived with the requested water pitcher and clay goblet.

“Bleed him?” I asked, hoping I’d misheard her.

“The buboes,” she said, nodding toward Luca, referring to the swollen lymph nodes. “We must cut them open, let them bleed out, then stuff them with eggshells and lily root.”

“Eggshells and lily root,” I repeated.

“Mischiato con uno stronzo,” she added, as if I should know this.

Stronzo. Great. Fan-freaking-tastic. The woman actually wanted me to mix eggshells, lily root, and some of our business from the chamber pot, and pat it into his open wounds. I was no doctor, but I was as good as they were going to get. And I was pretty sure that putting poop on a wound was a bad idea. In fact, I was pretty sure that cutting open the buboes was a bad idea to begin with.

“Some say that if you put a red hen beside the buboes at night,” the maid added, “that it’ll drag out the poison.”

I stared at her. She was serious. I remembered a story my dad had told me. About the priests in Siena taking down the statues of Venus and other goddesses and gods in the piazza, certain that the plague was the result of God’s condemnation. They chopped up old Venus and then sneaked bits of her into the mud of Firenze’s new wall, hoping it’d transfer the Divine’s attention from Siena to their enemies.

Even the educated had become desperate, steeped in superstition.

This is gonna get really, really ugly.

At that moment, I wished I’d said yes to Lia. That we’d made a run for it. Grabbed Mom. Hightailed it home.

But with one look at Marcello, patiently waiting on my direction, then Luca, so bravely fighting this dreaded disease, I knew I had to stay here, with them, to the bitter end. Fight it out.

For them. For us, somehow, too.

I knew it looked grim for Luca. Bursting buboes couldn’t be a good sign. Or could it? Was it like a blister busting open, the skin tearing away and then healing?

I scratched a tiny bite on my arm and wondered if I’d been bitten, if a tick or flea had infected me, too. But I knew that was silly—that I was more likely to have gotten it from Signore Giannini when he kissed my hand.

I’d once happened upon a medical show where they demonstrated how far spit flew when someone coughed with their mouths uncovered. During a particularly gross-out segment, they had a child blow out candles on a birthday cake, and then they shined a blue light on it. It was covered. I mean covered. I hadn’t eaten a piece of birthday cake since.

“Vinegar,” I said to the maid in the corner. “See how much you can find and bring it here, to this room.”

I turned to a knight. “Hot water and rags. We’ll need a lot of it.”

There was little we could do for Luca, other than try to make him as comfortable as possible. But my mind was turning to the rest of us. And vinegar and hot water—the only means we really had toward cleaning up the germ-coated room around us—was as good as we were going to get.

Luca stayed out-there, not-with-us, and I was relieved. Every minute he was in la-la land was a minute he wasn’t in misery. Five guys arrived, heavy jugs of vinegar in their arms. “They are heating water in the kitchen, m’lady.”

I nodded. “Is that all of it?” I asked, gesturing toward the jugs.

“There are six more in the kitchen.”

“Good,” I said. I turned to Marcello. “Might you assemble our people, m’lord?”

He ducked his head and called out to everyone to gather. I met them in the main hall.

When they were close, I said, “I do not know how to treat the plague any more than you do, but in Normandy, our doctors maintain that it is passed in several ways—fleas, coughing, and touch.” I glanced back at Marcello, who offered me a tentative smile. “It is likely that we all already carry the disease. Please…” I looked each of them in the eye. “If you are feeling symptoms—fever, headache, the runs, the sweats—you must not hide it.”

“Has anyone felt any of those symptoms?” Marcello asked.

No one had. Or at least, no one admitted to it. I sighed and assigned another round of baths and our clothes to the fire pit. “There is clothing in the wardrobes and chests of the people who live here.” After we were washed, we’d scrub down the main hall.

“I will go to the chapel,” the maid said to me, referring to a tiny grotto in the corner of the mansion’s courtyard. “I will pray to God that He will have mercy on us all.”

She looked to me for, what? Confirmation that that was a good call? I knew for a fact that in a few years, God would stand by watching while a third of Siena’s population died. Would He be looking out for Luca and us now?

I had no idea. I hoped He would.

The maid’s lips clamped shut as she read the fear in my eyes. She wiped her cheeks and nose with the back of her hand. “God will not abandon that knight or us. Mark my words. We shall not be abandoned.”

Lia, freshly scrubbed, came near, a pile of clothes in her arms, and looked over her shoulder at the departing maid. “Making more friends, I see.”

“Whatever.”

“I found a couple of gowns for us to wear,” she said, handing me one. “Yours will be short, but at least it’s clean.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do you feel all right?” she asked, all concerned.

“Fine, fine. Just depressed. I wasn’t cut out to be a nurse. I’m no good at it.”

She squeezed my hand. “Neither was I,” she said. “But at least we’re together. We’ll get through it, Gabi. Somehow. And Luca…” She numbly gazed toward his shut door. “Gabi, do you think he’ll make it?”

“I hope so, Lia. I hope so.”

“M’lady?” said a knight, ducking out of Luca’s room. The men were determined to be by his side, in turns, regardless of how I pleaded with them to steer clear. “Come. He’s lucid.”