CHAPTER 8

I awakened, not to the sound of a rooster, but to men preparing for battle. Horses whinnying, leather creaking, metal clanking together.

I threw back my covers and bent to retrieve my overdress laying across the bottom of my bed. I wanted to curse the buttons and loops, but then she was there, my miraculous maid Giacinta, who seemed to sense when I was rising. Perhaps she was pacing the hall, eager for me to get up, so we could get to the courtyard and see what the fuss was all about.

“G’day, m’lady,” she said, edging around me and rapidly tending to my buttons.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, and she combed my hair. “Let’s see if we might have the best of this hair today, shall we?” she muttered.

I smiled. Good luck with that.

She braided it for a few rows, then wrapped it in a coil. She shoved eight pins into the knot, scraping my scalp, but I resisted complaint. The faster she was done with it, the faster we could be outside. “What’s happening?” I asked. “Who is preparing to ride?”

“Our knights. For once it’s not the Paratores, but some other band of ne’er-do-wells. They took a small manor under the protection of the Forellis, not far from here.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound good. Who were these guys, some sort of gang, making the most of this latest Florentine-Sienese conflict? I sighed and blew out my cheeks. No matter the era, there were always guys ready to swoop in and take advantage of a situation.…

“There you are,” she said, finishing with the hair net around my massive bun, and stepping away.

“Thank you,” I said. “It feels much more secure today.”

She bobbed a curtsy, and I moved past her and down the corridor with her right on my heels. “Giacinta,” I said, speaking to her over my shoulder, “tell me about the Forellis’ ongoing battle with the Paratores. Is it really their loyalties to Siena and Firenze that keep them in conflict?”

“Ach, it’s gone on for years,” she said, slightly out of breath. “And sure, the Forellis’ loyalty to Siena and the Paratores’ loyalty to Firenze keeps a constant tension between us. But there is a tract of land that has been forever in dispute. More than twenty men have died in trying to capture it. One week it is in the Paratores’ hands, the next, the Forellis’. This week it is ours. The Paratores are set on reclaiming it, of course. Lady Forelli—God rest her soul—begged Lord Forelli to give it to them. She was done with the death, the heartache. But you know men and their infernal pride. Both houses claim ownership. Neither house can bear to let it go.”

We arrived in the courtyard just as the men had mounted up. Marcello was leaning down, accepting a flower from Lady Rossi, then he straightened to bark orders at his men as she backed away. The horses, excited by the scent of battle on the wind, circled endlessly, fighting their masters. Marcello wheeled his gelding around and caught my eye, held it for a moment as if silently asking, You’ll stay here, right?

I gave him the barest of nods. The last thing he needed right now was to be worrying over me.

Marcello returned his attention to the men. He raised his arm, fist closed, and the men came into formation. Two by two, all eighteen of them galloped out the gates, and I felt the ground beneath my feet rumble.

Two guards closed the mammoth doors, sliding a massive metal beam across to lock it. Above them, two other guards had their backs to us, obviously watching as the men disappeared down the road. Were they sorry they had been left behind? Or secretly relieved?

I turned and hurried back to my wing’s corridor and the tower stairs that led to the allure. I wanted to be up top, watching the men go, all fired up on testosterone. Wasn’t this what boys in my own time longed to do? Go off to protect the land, the women, stand up for right? I wanted to see real men in action. It…stirred me.

So I rushed up the stairs and came through the little door, and practically ran into a guard—one I hadn’t seen before—who headed in the opposite direction. My presence obviously shocked him; he took a half step back and stared at me with wide eyes. “M’lady, this is no place for a woman!”

“B-but,” I stammered, hating my sudden high-schoolish response, but unable to stop it. “I was here last night!”

“The day has brought us different circumstances,” he said, rising to his full height, nose to nose with me. “You must get back to the safety of the keep, where no archer might maim one of our birds.”

He wasn’t going to back down. So I turned and walked away, wondering if I should be offended by the whole “bird” reference, and then shrugged it off as a fourteenth-century version of “chick.” I glanced back, considering an attempt at sneaking past the other guard, but he was staring right at me, arms crossed in front of him, and he shook his head as if reading my mind.

“All right, all right,” I muttered, ducking back through the short turret door. And swept down the stairs, wondering what the day might hold for me. Without a search for Lia in Siena, without a chance to stare out across the forest, what? Hang out with the dreaded Lady Rossi?

Not if I could help it.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, glanced down to where my bedroom door was, and quickly decided I couldn’t spend another day cooped up in there. I walked in the opposite direction, deciding to explore a little, get an understanding of what was where around the castle. I tentatively knocked on a few doors, but it was as I suspected. This wing of the castle was empty save for me. “What?” I muttered. “Do I have the plague or something?”

I was actually glad for the privacy. The last thing I needed was Lady Rossi hanging out with me, jumping on the bed like we were going to have a sleepover or something, asking me what I thought of her boyfriend. No, that wouldn’t be good. When I reached the turret, I came into the courtyard, entered the next door, and continued on down the next segment of the corridor. The castle was laid out like a pentagon, with a tall, crenellated tower at each corner. Each corridor had a fortified door. Luca had informed me it was for defensibility. One wing might fall to attackers, but chances were, the castle’s defenders could hold them off somewhere. I ran my hand across the pockmarked limestone bricks, wondering how long ago the castello had been built. It was no wonder she was important to Siena; she was like a tight little ship on the far edge of the sea.

What had left her dismantled, totally leveled, by the time Lia and I explored her ruins? And when? Other medieval buildings survived. What had happened here?

I moved into the next segment and immediately saw and heard more action. Here, maids were at work, and I could see massive trunks and many dresses across the two large beds in the first, big room, with tapestries on the wall and a small fire crackling in a corner hearth. It was nothing like my own austere room, suitable for a nun.

I heard Lady Rossi giggling. I shivered and kept moving. Of course it was a room decorated for a lady; it was for the future Lady Forelli. The other rooms in this wing were probably for her ladies-in-waiting.

I couldn’t get through the hallway fast enough. I raced to the door, relieved when I unlatched it and escaped. I ducked into the next corridor, expecting another row of rooms. But it was a massive, dimly lit room.

In the corner, a fire smoldered in the hearth, having chased away the morning’s brief chill. Two big windows let the morning light in. I had stepped into the inviting room before I spotted him, lounging on a large horsehair settee, staring back at me with mild interest.

“Oh! M’lord!” I said, horrified to be discovered snooping. Fortino’s sickroom.

“No, no,” he said, gesturing at me as if to say calm down. “It is quite all right, Lady Betarrini.” He lowered his book to his lap, and when he smiled, I realized just how down he looked. I wondered if he was thinking about Marcello, galloping off to a battle that should have been his own, if it wasn’t for his sickness. He may as well have been a patient in the cancer wing of a hospital, simply biding his time.

I forced a smile and shoved away a shiver of fear. He was obviously a sweet guy, and not much older than me. “I will leave you to your reading.” I started to back away.

“I would much prefer your sitting with me for a moment. Please.” He gestured to a chair beside his.

I met his gaze and realized that despite his frail appearance, he had the bearing of a young lord. There would be no arguing with him.

I moved to the chair and folded my hands in my lap, staring at him as boldly as he was staring at me.

“You wonder why I don’t ride with my brother?” he said, each word a sigh of long-held frustration.

“Nay. I mean…you are plainly sick—ailing.”

“Indeed I am.” Even in those few words, I could hear the wheeze in his breath. He was far worse than he had been, even a couple days ago.

“May I ask…what is it that plagues you?”

“Are you educated in the art of medicine?”

Yeah, the art of Walgreens and Urgent Care. “A bit,” I hedged.

“Lung trouble. The doctors say that I am full of water. My humours are off balance. But they cannot right them again.”

“Ahh,” I said, as if I understood what the heck he was talking about. Humours. Dim recollections of a medieval museum and a diagram of a body segmented into four segments called humours flitted through my mind. They thought that if the body was off-kilter in one area, it set you off in the others. There was probably some logic in the midst of it that actually made sense. They hadn’t been total idiots. But they had some pretty wild remedies, too.

“If you don’t consider it prying, m’lord, can you tell me what your symptoms are?”

He smiled and laid his book on a small table beside him. “Surely a lady as comely as yourself wouldn’t want to speak of such things.”

“Try me.”

He stared at me, confusion lowering his brow.

“Nay, m’lord,” I translated. “I am most interested to know. Mayhap I might find some small way to aid you.”

He looked at me hard then and shook his head a little. “I am not seeking a bride.”

He thought I was after him? For what, his money? I raised my brows. “That is of great relief to me since I am not seeking a husband.” Dad always joked that I had to wait until I was twenty-one to date.… Was this guy even twenty-one himself? I had pegged Marcello as about nineteen, a couple years older than me. I was guessing Fortino was a couple years older than that, but his thin, bony structure made him appear younger.

His brows lifted, and he smiled a little, as if he had never heard such a thing from an unattached female. Perhaps he hadn’t. Not seeking a husband? What else did the girls have going for them? No studies, no working. A girl’s total worth was in whom she could marry and how many boys she could birth. It made me feel a little sorry for Lady Rossi. Maybe I should cut her some slack.…

“I awaken in the morning, barely able to breathe,” he labored to tell me, staring back at the fire again, “and my servant has to thump my back, break up the mucous, at which point I cough so hard that I confess I wish for death. At times, in the middle of the night, I labor so that I fear I’ve reached the end.”

Hmm. Sounds a bit like the asthma I had as a kid. I remembered well the horrific feeling of suffocation.… I shook my head at the memory, glad that I’d outgrown it years before.

He leaned back and returned his gaze to me, as if that might be enough to make me take my skirts in hand and run from him. But I simply stared back.

“As the morning goes on,” he finally went on, “the coughing eases, but this dreaded wheeze stays with me, reminding me of my illness with every breath of every day.”

“Does your nose run? Do your eyes water?”

He nodded, clearly puzzled by my questions. His eyes were ringed with deep purple, testimony to his nightly battles to breathe—and possibly to allergies that set him off in the first place. Or it might have been caused by his sleep being so disrupted.…

“Do you run a fever? Are you hot?”

He shook his head, then shrugged one shoulder. “I perspire, when I cough so violently. But it is not a fever.”

“And your appetite? Do you want to eat?”

“At times, but my breathing makes it a chore.” He lifted an arm and studied it, as if seeing for the first time how bony he had become.

“What have the doctors told you to do?”

He glanced to the fire. “Precious little. Though they are more than happy to take my father’s gold florins for every visit.”

“Does steam help at all?” I thought of my mom, tenting our heads with a towel and making us sit over a bowl of boiling water when we were all stopped up. It was uncomfortable, but it did get things moving again. And in dry country, like Toscana tended to be in the mid- to late-summer, it helped with things like allergies, too.

“Steam?”

“Yes, breathing in the vapors from scalding-hot water?”

“Nay,” he said, studying me with an edge of crazy hope in his eyes. “They never suggested such a thing.”

I eyed the chair on which he lounged. “How often are you on that settee each day, m’lord?”

He raised one brow. “Most of every day, I’d wager.”

“Do your symptoms change depending on where you are? Do they get worse when you come in here from your bedchamber?”

He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket as he thought my questions over. “My nose and eyes tend to run. But I assumed it was from the smoke.”

I glanced at the fire. “That is possible. Or you might be allergic to horses. And lounges covered in horsehair,” I said with a small smile.

He glanced down at the settee with some understanding. “Allergic?”

Hmm, maybe that word isn’t in use.… “It simply means that being near horses or couches made with their skins might interfere with your…humours.”

His eyes opened wider with understanding.

“One can be allergic to horses, or hay, or cats, or pollen.”

“Pollen?”

“Mm, that fine dust from the trees that is so thick this time of year. Even grass or weeds. Mayhap in Toscana, your doctors have not yet heard of this. It is quite common in Normandy.” I was lying through my teeth, of course, but I wanted him to give my words some weight in case I could actually help him.

I rose and went to the small bookshelf, running my hand over the thick, odd goat-leather bindings and trying to remember enough Latin to read the titles. It had been a pet peeve of Dad’s, that most kids never learned any Latin. He’d insisted we learned the basics. You can imagine what that did for my rep at Boulder High. Total Geek Alert, when you have to meet your Latin teacher at the library on Saturdays—

“Do you read, Lady Betarrini?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.

“Well, yes,” I said, before I thought it through. I dragged my eyes toward him. Being schooled enough to read in this era was probably rare, even for the guys.

But he was smiling in delighted surprise. “Books are my constant companion. Father has little use for them. Marcello can read only a few pages before he falls asleep each night. He tolerates a reading in the Great Hall each eve, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Tell me, have you read the poet?”

The poet, the poet, I thought, wracking my brain. “Dante. Of course.” That’s what all Italians called their most famous writer.

“Wonderful,” he said in approval. “We shall have to discuss The Divine Comedy at your earliest convenience.”

Everywhere I go, I can’t seem to escape that thing…but if it turns your crank—

He regarded me and then took a slow, wheezy breath. “Pray tell, Lady Betarrini, how does one avoid daily things such as horses when one lives in a castle? Or dust from the trees?”

I smiled at him. “It is difficult. But I think I know of some measures that might bring you some relief. Might I hope that you would try one or two of them?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Great!” I said, then seeing that my exuberant response shocked him a little. “I mean, very well. We shall begin on the morrow.”

“Why not now?”

I blinked in surprise. “Well, all right. Please, m’lord, summon a servant.” We’re gonna need a little help in here.

He reached behind himself and pulled a rope. My eyes followed it to the ceiling, where it disappeared through a small hole. In a few moments, a footman appeared.

“Enzo, Lady Betarrini is of the mind to aid me this day.”

The servant did not react. Perhaps that was what they strived for—no reaction, just obedience.

“Be at ease, Lady Betarrini. Tell him what to do.”

I tapped my lips, thinking. “Is this where you like to spend your days? Is there another room with more air? More windows?”

“Nay, I’m afraid this is the best. And I confess, my favorite.”

“All right, then. I’ll need you to do exactly as I say for a week, no matter how mad it sounds. Are you willing to give me that much time?”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “I might be dead on the morrow, m’lady. But what time I have left is yours.”

I returned his subtly flirtatious smile. We weren’t serious about it, of course. It was just fun. “Good. Then Enzo here better fetch some help. I need this room cleared out, from top to bottom, and then the maids will need to come and wash every inch of it, from top to bottom, with hot, hot water, and some sort of cleanser.… What do you use to disinfect?”

Both men stared at me blankly. “I mean when there’s been something foul, what do the maids use to clean, make it safe again?”

“Ah, lye is what you’re after. And vinegar.”

“Excellent!” I said, remembering. Lye was still the main ingredient in a lot of soaps. “Yes, hot, hot water, vinegar and lye. The same for your bedroom, m’lord. I beg you to empty it, and bring back only the barest of essentials.” I began to pace. “The horsehair settee has to go, for example. You’ll need to find a hardwood chair for the week.”

“Be this a treatment or a punishment?”

I smiled. “I’m attempting to help you. Remember that. Please do not bring any of these woolens back in. Let’s remove the tapestries, just for the week,” I added quickly. “I saw women working upon a loom in the courtyard. Bring that new blanket in, fresh from the loom.” I leaned closer to him. “Our doctors believe that things like dust get lodged in linens, and therefore, if that is what irritates your lungs, you are beneath one, huge irritant.”

He nodded as if he understood me, but I could see a little of the This Chick’s Crazy look in his eyes. Whatever.

“And me, m’lady. All this is well and good for the room, but I thought your aim was to aid me.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, that flash of flirtation and humor there again. In that moment, I could see the resemblance to Marcello, the glimpse of the young man he was supposed to be. I paced, thinking about Mom poking around the sites, pointing out herbs used in remedies for centuries.

“Peppermint,” I told the servant. “More hot water. The finest, thinnest cloth you can obtain.” I turned to Fortino. “In the meantime, I need you to bathe, head to toe, and wear a dressing gown, again, of the finest possible cloth.”

He flashed me a grin. “Will you be seeing to my bath yourself, m’lady?”

“Nay,” I said, lifting my eyebrows and smiling back. “I believe that Enzo is more than capable of seeing you through that.” I liked the color our game brought to his cheeks, even if we both knew it was futile. When he said he might be dead by tomorrow, he wasn’t joking. His skin was so ashen, his bones poking at his flesh that he looked like he belonged in hospice. But in the meantime, I could give him some hope.

Fortino disappeared on the arm of Enzo, moving slowly, and I assumed it was to see to his bath. I dared not ask; I didn’t want him to think I was truly flirting. He needed to see me more as nurse than Potential Girlfriend Material. More servants were brought in, and the room was quickly emptied. Tapestries were rolled up and removed. Furniture was carried out. The books, the precious books, so rare in these times—priceless, were they to survive until my own—were lovingly wrapped in linens and placed in trunks.

“Saints in heaven, what is going on here?”

I turned to see Cook enter the room, and smiled at her rounded eyes and pink cheeks. “Hello, Cook.” I moved over to the older woman and said, “I learned a bit of doctoring in Normandy, so Lord Fortino has asked me to do what I can for him.”

“Ach, you watch that one, now,” she said lowly, waving a finger. “He was quite the randy one before the illness got the best of him.”

Randy? Did she mean he was a player or something? He felt far from any kind of Romeo to me. I mean, if he wasn’t on the verge of death, it might be different.…

But I nodded in understanding. “I’ll take care. May I ask you for something for him?” Her brow furrowed. “I wonder if we might give him good soups in a clear broth for the next week. Chicken would be best. Lots of vegetables and meat. Do you think you can manage that?”

“Certainly,” she said, as if offended. “I could do that in my sleep.”

“Wonderful. The more simple and hearty, the better. Let’s feed him five times a day.”

“Five times a day?” she blustered. “He barely eats once!”

“Yes, well, I will see an end to that.” No one could get better on such rations. And Mom always said that chicken soup had healing properties…if I could get him to even eat a cup of it every few hours, it’d give his body the energy to fight whatever was slowly killing him.

“If that’s what the master has asked for…”

“Yes,” I said simply, speaking for him.

Five maids arrived, steaming buckets of water in each hand. I looked about the empty room. “First, let’s sweep it out and put out that fire. Can you fetch some brooms? I will aid you.”

They glanced at each other, and I knew I’d crossed a weird line. “Fine, fine,” I said in irritation. “Do it yourselves. We must hurry, though. I want the water to stay hot.”

Two scurried out and returned in short order. In minutes they’d swept the room with their crude straw brooms, piling the dust and then carrying it outside. Another poured water on the fire and cleaned the embers from the fireplace and carried it out. I gazed around. “All right, now. Let’s start up high. Like this.” I picked up a bucket and threw the water in a massive arc, so it went to the top of the ten-foot walls, even reaching a portion of the ceiling. The maids twittered and giggled, but I ignored them. They were just nervous. “Like that. Every wall. Then the floor.”

They went about their business. In half an hour, lye had been spread, more buckets of water had been splashed, and all of it had been sopped up and carried out. I returned from the hallway and surveyed their work, hands on hips. “Nice work, ladies!” I crooned.

They looked at me, wide-eyed.

“Grazie, grazie,” I said. “This is perfect. Now I need those wooden chairs for Lord Fortino, and a bucket of boiling water and clean, clean cloth. Can you fetch that for me, please?”

“Yes, m’lady,” they all said, bobbing and moving out like a line of housekeeping soldiers. I was beginning to like this Lady business. I paused to enjoy the wonder of it. Where else might I have enjoyed such power as a typical seventeen-year-old? I could get used to this, I thought, crossing my arms, watching the women do as I bid.

The furniture returned, two simple wooden chairs, a table, and a more elaborate wooden settee. They hardly looked comfortable for reclining, but there was no way around it. If we were after a non-allergic room, this was it. They brought back the tapestries and crates of books, but I held up my hand. “Forgive me,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But, for a week, could you put those in another room?”

Eyes wide with confusion, the servants turned and left, speaking in hushed Italian to those behind them, passing on the word. “Sorry, Fortino,” I muttered. “It’s hardly a cozy den without them, but you wanted my help.…”

Fortino himself returned then, looking more pale than before. He was in a thin white dressing gown, shivering, even though it was a good seventy degrees. It was going to be a hot one today, but he, obviously, was not yet feeling it. I went to the opposite side of him and helped his servant get him to the chair.

“What have you done with my possessions?” he asked.

“It’s all in your own quarters for now. Remember, you gave me a week. I’ll fetch any book you wish, but we need to be careful what we add to this room. The goal, of course, is to make you feel better.”

“Goal?”

Seriously? He didn’t know that word? “Uh, desired outcome.”

He nodded. Cook arrived with the first of his soup, and I explained to him my hope—that he would try to eat constantly through the day, at least a cup of it, five times. He began the task gamely, but after a few bites, sat back, looking at me as if he might throw up.

“All right, all right. Next time,” I said, looking to Cook, “let’s just do the broth.” She nodded and departed, and another servant arrived, with a fresh bucket of boiling water, a dancing coil of steam rising from the sloshing top.

“Right here.” I gestured toward Fortino’s feet. She set it down and handed me a yard of clean, gauzelike silk cloth. “Do you have access to more of this? A lot of it? It’s perfect for the master, unlikely to disrupt his health.” We could use it to pad the wooden settee. He was already shifting uncomfortably, probably because he had so little fat or muscle. And I could use more to block off the windows, allowing air in but hopefully keeping some of the pollen out.

She bobbed a curtsy and set off to do as I bid, but I walked over to the table and the basket of supplies they’d brought me from the kitchen. I cut a lemon in half and selected some peppermint from a basket of herbs. Fortino regarded me with suspicious, worried eyes, as did his servant.

“Cease your fretting,” I said. “I do not aim to harm you.”

“Nay, just remove any comfort I have left.”

“My desire,” I said with scolding eyes, a little irked with him, “is to see you to better health. Try to remember that, all right?”

“I’ll remember…with every creak of this bench,” he said, waving at me tiredly.

I squeezed the lemon into the water and then let the rind float atop it. I tore the oblong mint into the steaming water, watching the pieces drift across the surface for a moment until the water at last stilled. I had no idea if these would do anything more than make it smell good. Was I remembering it right? That mint had calming properties? Whatever. At least it’s something.

I looked up at him. “Do you still feel sick to your stomach?”

He shook his head weakly.

“Here,” I said, waving him forward. “You must sit with your head above the steam, so you feel it upon your face. Breathe it in as much as you can. I’m going to use this,” I said, reaching for the yard of cloth, “to stretch across your head, making a form of tent, which will keep the steam coming your way. All right?”

The servant looked at me with distrustful eyes and then around the room, as if catching himself. I ignored him and placed a hand on Fortino’s back. “How do you fare, m’lord?”

He nodded in response.

“If it gets too much, if you’re feeling faint, please sit back and take in some fresh air, all right?”

He nodded again.

He was so terribly weak. If we were in my time, he’d definitely be in the hospital. He probably needed a transfusion or something. An IV, for sure. I needed to get as much liquid into him as I could. Water. Tea. Broth. That would go a long way in making him feel better. And hopefully my weak attempt at a breathing treatment would help him too. If only I had access to a nebulizer and inhalers, I could fix you right up.…

He sat back, the cloth about his head and shoulders, panting, but within fifteen minutes the steam had brought some color to his cheeks. “Good, good,” I soothed. “You’re doing well.”

“It makes my nose run faster, but I think it aids my lungs.”

“Yes,” I said with a smile, encouraged. “That’s what we want. To loosen the phlegm inside your lungs so you can breathe better.” I considered him for a moment. “M’lord, in your library, do you have a book by the nun named Hildegard? She is from Bingen, a place far from here, but she is known for her healing, her fame spreading to even my country. She might have some recipes to aid you.”

He shook his head, and I sighed in disappointment. Maybe the woman hadn’t even been born yet.

“How many more times will we do this?”

“As much as we can; all day if that’s what it takes,” I said. “Then, if you improve, less. But it’s worth a try, yes?”

He nodded again, so tired, and then bent forward over the bucket, determined to keep at it.

What would it be like to be twenty-one and think you could die any day?

 

The thunder of hoofbeats and the muffled shouts of men told us that Marcello and his men were back.

I hesitated, but Fortino said, looking out from beneath his tented cloth, “Go. But kindly return and tell me of their victory.” His words held none of the question in his eyes.

“Indeed.” I moved out of the room and out the corridor door to the courtyard. The men swirled, like leaves caught in a whirlwind, still hollering about their victory as if they’d won the World Cup or something. I quickly counted. All eighteen of them were back, plus two captives.

“They put up a brief fight, then scattered like dogs,” Marcello said proudly to his father as he dismounted. I struggled to hear over the noise, but I didn’t want to get too close, to interfere. It wasn’t my place. And Lady Rossi was already on the move, heading to her man. I wasn’t going to get in the middle of that.

“We captured these two,” I heard him say.

“Well done, son, well done,” Lord Forelli said, patting him on the back. “Have they spoken yet of the man who would back such a nefarious venture?”

“Nothing, yet.”

“Well, stake them here, in the courtyard. We shall get it out of them soon enough.”

I turned to study the elder Forelli. Stake them? Surely I hadn’t heard him correctly.

Marcello paused and then nodded. Had anyone but me seen his moment of hesitation?

Lord Forelli moved in front of the two prisoners. “I am Lord Lorenzo Forelli, master of this castle. You attacked a manor under my protection and killed a man. You shall pay for your crimes, but it will go better for you if you tell me who your master is.”

Refusing to do as he bid, both men looked anywhere but at the older man.

Lord Forelli waved his arm and then leaned forward to say so lowly I barely caught it, “You will tell me of your master, sooner or later.”

The knights, save for Luca, Giovanni, and Pietro, moved out and around the main building, to the back, where I assumed the stables were. Servants brought stakes and ropes, and in quick order, the three remaining knights had the prisoners staked to the ground, spread-eagled on their backs.

I took a step back, trying to cover my horror and probably not doing a very good job of it. I had heard him right, after all.

“Are you all right, m’lady?” Cook asked, coming beside me.

“What will they do with them?”

“A fair bit of torture, I’d wager, if they don’t tell the master what he wants to hear.”

I remained silent and Marcello came near, Lady Rossi beside him. Behind him, Giovanni kicked one of the prisoners.

“Why not throw them in the dungeon?” I said bitterly, unable to stop myself. “Push bamboo shoots beneath their fingernails? Put them on the rack?” I never was good at standing idly by when someone else was being harmed.

Everyone turned to look at me, mouths hanging open. “Mayhap it is different in Normandy,” Marcello bit back. “However, I ask you to refrain from your judgment, Lady Betarrini. You clearly know nothing of how order is kept in Toscana.”

“Clearly,” I repeated, feeling Lady Rossi’s triumphant gaze but not daring to glance at her.

“If this troubles you, m’lady, mayhap you should return to your quarters.”

“Maybe I shall,” I said, feeling a sense of numbness come over me.

Lord Forelli strode over to us. “Once we have their master’s name, we shall get them to Siena,” he said to Marcello, ignoring me and Lady Rossi. “The Nine can see them—and their master—to justice. But we must first have a name.”

“It shall be done, Father.”

“Siena?” I said, seizing upon the word, worried I might’ve just blown it. “Lord Marcello, may I go with you? I may have better fortune there, finding my family.” I thought of the rectangular Fonte Gaia there again, in the piazza, Lia looking for me—

He shook his head. “The woods are rife with bands of robbers like these, capitalizing on the unrest between Siena and Firenze—to say nothing of the Paratores.”

“That could go on for weeks, months!” I cried. “Please,” I said, reaching out to touch his forearm, feeling the dagger glance Lady Rossi shot me, “I must try to find Lia. Please.”

“Lord Marcello,” Lady Rossi said, turning to flutter her eyelashes at him. “I do agree with Lady Betarrini. If I were separated from my mother and a sister for so long, not knowing if they lived or died, I’d be beside myself. And as I’ve expressed, I, too, would like to return to Siena. Our nuptials are not very far away, and there are many plans I must turn my attention to.”

“So you wish for me to see two women to Siena?” he asked in irritation. “In the midst of the worst strife we’ve seen in a decade?”

We both stared at him, waiting him out. Who’d have guessed I’d ever be on the same side as Lady Rossi?

“Fine,” Marcello said, throwing up his hands. “We shall leave on the morrow. But only because my father wishes us to see these men to Siena. And only if they give us the information we need.” He turned on his heel and walked off. And I turned away, resisting the urge to see if Lady Rossi shared my feeling of victory.

 

Upon his invitation, and eager to be apart from the rest, I took my supper with Fortino. I spent an hour urging him to eat some more.

“Please, m’lady,” he said, leaning back, eyes shutting, shoving away the wooden bowl, “will you not read me a bit of the poet?”

I picked up the volume from the table between us, fingering the parchment pages. The pages weren’t smooth and uniform like modern books—they were deckled and rough on the edges. I opened it carefully, feeling as though I should have on white gloves like my parents wore when handling artifacts. But of course, that wasn’t quite possible.

“What is it about the poet that you love so dearly?” I asked.

Fortino’s brown eyes slowly opened. “You do not care for his work?”

“I did not say that.…”

He studied me a moment. “He is very wise. When I was a boy, I remember him coming to stay, a fugitive from Firenze. The pope was very angry with him, and my father was an avid supporter. So he lived with us for several weeks. Important men came from far and wide to listen to him.”

I watched him as he looked to the window, remembering.

“Did that make the pope consider your father his enemy too?” I ventured.

Fortino cocked a brow. “It certainly did not endear him. But Father did not care. The lines were already being drawn, between Firenze and Siena.” He reached for the book, and I handed it to him. “Dante gives us wisdom in regard to the faith as well as politics in this work. I find new insights every time I read it…or hear it read.” He opened it and turned a few pages. “Please, begin there.”

It was my turn to cock a brow at him. “I will read it if you will eat another bite as I read.”

He smiled. “Tyrant.”

“Truly, m’lord, you will feel better, the more you eat.”

“I’ve already eaten more today than I have all of last week.”

“Which is why you feel a bit better. Please. Just half that bowl,” I coaxed.

“Very well,” he said, not at all pleased with my bargain. He lifted the bowl to his lips and eyed me and the book.

I began to read. “‘Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.’”

I paused. Dark woods. Right road lost.… Perhaps the poet had more to say to me than I thought. But that was when I heard the men screaming. I half rose, letting the book fall. It freaked me out, hearing grown men scream like that.

“Lady Betarrini—” Fortino cautioned as I picked up the book and set it on the table again. But I was already moving toward the door. “You mustn’t go out there.”

“Why?” I said, looking at him over my shoulder. A man screamed again, and I faltered, as if I’d been hit.

“Because of that,” he said. “It is not a lady’s place to witness the base work of man.”

I swallowed a snort and turned toward the door when I heard yet another cry. “I shall return in a moment.”

I ignored his call, banking on the fact he was too weak to follow. But I had to know what was happening. It had to be the men who had been captured. I knew them to be mercenaries, Castello Forelli’s enemies, perhaps even killers themselves, but what was happening to them? I strode out into the courtyard and pushed my way between a line of soldiers, then came up short.

The two captured men were still splayed out on the ground. The first man had an arrow in each leg, literally pinning him to the soil beneath. He writhed in pain, as did the man beside him.

I looked in horror to Lord Foraboschi, who stood over the second man, drawing his arrow back to drive a second arrow into his leg too.

“If we tell you,” cried the man, writhing as if he could free himself, “we are dead already!”

“Remain still,” said Lord Foraboschi, “or I might nick an artery.”

“Stop!” I cried. A knight near me grabbed for my arm, but I dodged him. “Stop!” I shouted again, stepping past the first man.

Lord Foraboschi glanced at me and then back at his target, pulling the bowstring farther back. I was enraged, and before I could think more clearly about it, stepped forward and lifted his arrow just as he released it. It went flying across the courtyard, narrowly missing a servant.

“Lady Betarrini!” Marcello cried. I could hear the men behind me collectively suck in their breath, and it finally registered that perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.…

Lord Foraboschi turned toward me, his eyebrows knitting in hatred. “What are you?” he seethed, stepping toward me, raising his hand. “A filthy Florentine sympathizer? A Guelph?”

He was about to backhand me, but Marcello caught his arm mid-strike. “M’lord, that is quite enough. I will see to Lady Betarrini.”

Lord Foraboschi, was thinner, older, and several inches taller than Marcello, but there was no way he could overpower him. He looked at Marcello and then to me and back again, his anger clearly growing. But Marcello’s men, Pietro, Giovanni, and Luca, were right behind him, waiting to aid him if a fight was to ensue.

“Bah,” Lord Foraboschi spat out, wrenching his arm from Marcello’s grasp.

One of the prisoners groaned, and I turned toward him. Tears were lacing down the side of his face, and he gritted his teeth, doing everything he could to keep from screaming. “Please,” I muttered, forgetting the mess with Foraboschi, feeling my heart race even faster, “we must get these arrows out,” I said. I knelt beside the man, thinking through how to remove the arrow, bind the wound—

And that was when I felt Marcello’s hand on my arm, Luca’s on the other. They lifted me and hurried me past the circle of men, back toward my quarters. My feet barely touched the ground. “Stop! We must help them! Marcello! Luca—”

We entered the hallway, and the door shut behind us. Then the men released me. “You,” Marcello thundered, pointing at me, “shall not go out there again!”

“Somebody must stand for decency!” I spat back. “What kind of barbarians are you?”

“We?” he said, eyes awash in confusion. “We?” He shook his head, shared a look with Luca and paced back and forth a couple of times. “Do you know who those men out there represent?”

“No doubt, your political enemies.” My tone was full of sarcasm. Big. Freakin’. Deal. Wasn’t life more important? Every time?

“Those men,” he spat out, “killed a good man. A man I considered a friend,” he said, tapping his chest. “We were boys together. He married a fine woman two years past—someone I also considered a friend—and fathered two beautiful sons, one barely walking, one still a babe in his mother’s arms.” He stepped closer to me, inches from my face. “Those men,” he said, nodding his head toward the courtyard, “those men you are so eager to defend, made my friend watch as they burned his family alive. Then, and only then, did they kill him.”

My mouth was dry. In the last five days, I had seen men in battle, men wounded. But a woman? Two tiny children? A husband, a father, forced to watch such horror? My knees weakened, and my head swirled.

Oh, Mom. Lia. I’m so far from home. So, so far—

“M’lady!” I heard Marcello dimly grunt, as if he were far away.

But I was falling.

Blacking out…

 

When I awakened, I was in my room, Marcello beside me, looking miserable. Luca was standing by the door, as if on guard, trying to stare straight ahead. Failing at it.

“Forgive me, m’lady. I forgot myself,” he said before I could speak.

“It’s…it’s all right,” I said, lifting a hand to my head and staring at the ceiling, piecing together what had happened. I’d fainted. Unbelievable. Since when did I become a fainting sort of girl? I’d passed out only once before, when I was sick.

“You were overwrought,” he said, standing, bringing a hand to his own head, as if it ached. “As was I.”

I sighed and sat up, swinging my legs to the ground. The guy was really beating himself up over this…and I realized now that I had deserved his earlier words. I didn’t have a handle on how things worked yet, here. Now.

I mean, duh. I was living in medieval times. People were monsters in this era. I had only come across a tiny piece of what was going on out there. Marcello was simply using the tools he had at hand to try to get the information he and his father needed…not that I thought Lord Foraboschi was okay. He was a major creeper. He clearly liked shooting those guys. I shivered at the thought of him.

Marcello bent and touched my shoulder lightly. I shivered at his touch. “Do you have a chill?” he said. “Perhaps a blanket—”

“Nay,” I said, laying my hand on his and looking into his eyes. “I am well. Truly. Please. Fret no more over me.”

Our faces were overly close, and in that moment something more passed between us. I’d never felt this kind of thing with a guy—such a connection. I knew, in my head, that we were practically strangers; but this thing—whatever it was—made me feel known. Seen. Acknowledged and appreciated and admired.

I shivered again and dropped my hand. He pulled his back and stepped away, staring at me as if he couldn’t figure out what had just happened. “I…I must see to the men,” he said, gesturing with his head. “You will remain here?”

I understood his question.

“I shall not interfere again,” I promised. On any level…