Cascade (10 page)

Not that we had a lot of privacy. Even with the temporary peace agreement negotiated by Lord Greco and the men of Firenze who had been with Lord Rossi, twenty soldiers still rode beside us. My man was careful, vigilant, if a little over the top on that front. I took off on my mare, teasing him with a smile as I passed by. He urged his gelding into motion and soon was beside me, head down, pounding down the lane, keeping time with me. I looked over my shoulder; ten men were right behind us, the rest with Lia and Luca, who seemed intent on keeping their leisurely pace.

Marcello’s grin made me smile too. In minutes, we reached the hilly farm and pulled up, panting, in a cloud of dust. I saw Signora Giannini outside her cottage, the children playing at her feet, and raised my arm in greeting. But she did not look our way. She was staring intently to the north.

I followed the direction of her gaze down the hill. A man was dismounting, hobbling toward the cottage.

Signora Giannini cried out. I frowned and gripped Marcello’s arm. “Marcello—”

“No,” he said, his voice alight. “It’s all right. It’s Signore Giannini, her husband.”

The woman cried out again and then broke free of the children and ran down the hill, skirts flying. Her husband made his way toward her, grappling with a crutch but hurrying as best he could. They met midway, and he reached out his arms as she slammed against him. They turned and turned, kissing, embracing, crying.

The men around us cheered and called out bawdy things I thought only pirates in movies said. But they meant well.

“You did that,” Marcello said.

“What?”

“That,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist, nodding toward the Gianninis. “You reunited them.”

I remembered then. Figured out what he was saying. This man was one of the hundred that had been traded for Paratore. I grinned, thinking of this scene being replayed in ninety-nine other villages. How had I considered anything
but
this option?

The children ran up to him, and he embraced them, lifting the smallest above his head, laughing. After a few moments, they looked our way, waving us forward as Lia and Luca and the other ten soldiers arrived. We went, eager to hear his story.

But as soon as we drew near, I knew something was dreadfully wrong. The man’s eyes were ringed with purple and his leg was clearly injured. He was so bruised and swollen under his jaw, it looked like someone had tried to choke him. What suffering had the men endured in Firenze’s prisons?

“M’lady, I owe you my life,” he said, bending to kiss my hand.

I tried to be polite, smile and look into his eyes, but I had to fight the urge to pull my hand from his. His fingers looked liked they’d been dipped in oil, black from the last joint down. Stained, almost. As he moved away, I studied his neck. He hadn’t been choked—he had massive, discolored, swollen glands, one of which looked like it had burst. Marcello was shaking his hand, introducing him to Lia and Luca, when I finally figured it out.

“Nay! Stop! Hasten away from him!” I cried. I bodily pulled Marcello several steps backward.

The Gianninis stared at me, confused.

“He’s ill! You’re ill, aren’t you?” I asked, forcing the edge of totally-freaking-out-ness from my voice.
Calm down, Gabi. Calm down. Maybe it’s not what you think.

“I have been through a great deal, m’lady. Certainly, I am not at my best—”

I glanced at Lia and saw that she was worried too. “Mr. Giannini, what ails you?” she asked gently.

“A fever,” he said reluctantly, reaching up to wipe his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. “But it comes and goes. Only the night sweats can be counted upon daily.” He forced a smile. “I simply need to be home, eating my wife’s good soup, cuddling with the children. I’ll be well and among the vines in a few days’ time, you’ll see.”

But he was wrong, seriously wrong. Frowning, I looked to Marcello.

“What is it, Gabriella?” he asked, his brown eyes hooded by his worried brow.

“Plague,” I said.

CHAPTER 10

A knight near me overheard. “He has the plague?”

“Plague?” cried another.

The first knight backed up, and others moved back with him. There were certainly no more deadly words than those in this day and age.

It was far worse than war.

I looked to Lia and whispered, “I thought we had some years, yet.”

“It probably didn’t all happen at once,” she whispered back. “Maybe an early strain that died out?”

Waves of it.
Right
. Like colds and flu at school—you just got over one bug, and another came around.

“Nay, nay,” said Signora Giannini, bringing a fist to her mouth and taking her husband’s arm. “He has no such thing. No such thing,” she repeated angrily, as if it would make it true. Like
No. Such. Thing.

The children sensed the mood shift, and one begged to be taken up into his father’s arms. Automatically, the man bent and lifted her.

“You must not touch them!” I shouted, figuring out I had to see this through, as much as I hated to. How much had we all been exposed, already? I shoved away the memory of him kissing my hand. “Forgive me,” I said sorrowfully, trying to quit shouting and adding to the chaos. “I loathe this more than you can imagine. I know how you’ve longed to be reunited, but Signore Giannini,” I said appealing to him, “your illness, if it is not plague, will still need to be treated as such. Consider your family. You do not want to endanger them, do you?”

He paused and then shook his head as if it pained him.

“Nay!” his wife cried, looking like she wanted to claw my eyes out for suggesting it. “I shall not leave him!”

I wished I knew more about the plague…was there any sort of treatment other than treating the symptoms? Anything in our medical kit that might help? Were we all exposed already? Or only those of us who’d neared the man? If only Mom had come along…But then she’d have been exposed too.
Thank You, God,
I said to Him, in my head.
Keep her safe. Please, please keep her safe.

I looked to Lia, and she understood my unspoken question. “I read once,” she said, “that it is best to quarantine. And burn all the clothes. It takes seven to ten days to find out if those exposed will…exhibit the symptoms.”

I glanced at Marcello.

We were in a world of hurt.

Trapped outside the castello.

Needing to be quarantined ourselves.

A target for enemies.

And unable to attend the wedding festivities of Fortino and Romana.

Lots and lots of people were going to be seriously cranky.

Three knights had mounted up. “M’lord, we must retreat, back to the castello,” said one.

“Marcello,” I hissed, “they must remain.”

He turned to them and barked, “Dismount! At once!”

Reluctantly, they returned to the ground, holding their reins in their hands.

Marcello turned to face me and Lia and Luca. “What is our best course?”

All three of them looked at me. “I know only a little. Lia’s the one that’s read something on this—”

“A novel, Gabi. Fiction. I know not how to treat the plague.”

“If it is plague. We’re guessing.” I looked at Marcello. “Have you heard reports of it, out of Firenze?”

He shook his head. “But few cities would be apt to herald such news. All commerce stops for a city battling such illness.”

“So instead they simply export the pestilence,” I said bitterly. “The men of Firenze must have laughed under their breath when they sent sick Sienese soldiers home.”

“Might not the knights that arrived with me and Lia return to the castello?” Luca asked, glancing back. “They were a good distance apart from us.”

I shook my head. “Others have mingled with them.” I splayed out my hands, then checked out a fleck of black on my pinkie. Only dirt. “
We’ve
intermingled. That is the difficulty of this disease. It’s so rapidly passed along…we have to be certain.”

“But if they remain with us, they risk exposure again,” Marcello said.

“We can try—keep them separated. Tell them, quickly.”

Luca turned and shouted to the men, “Those who arrived with me, separate yourselves. Go down to that oak at the bottom of the field until we give you further direction.” He lifted a warning finger. “No one,
no one
is to depart without my leave.”

He looked fierce, like he’d hunt down and kill anyone who tried to escape. There was none of the customary happy glimmer in his eye.

“We need seven days, mayhap more,” I said to Marcello. “There are twenty-eight of us. Where can we go? Someplace where few others travel. We’ll need shelter, food, access to some supplies.”

Luca eyed Marcello. “We could go to the old Orci villa.”

Marcello shook his head. “We cannot defend her.”

Luca cocked a brow. “It’s as defensible as we’ll find. Off the main roads. And only ten or so servants to displace.”

Marcello studied him a moment and then looked to me. “He may be right. It’s an old walled villa on a hill. It once belonged to my mother’s parents and has been somewhat maintained by my father. But it takes us closer to the border. And it’s hardly the castello. We would not be able to repel an outright attack.”

“If we all become ill, it will hardly matter,” Luca said.

“Might we wait until dusk and make our way under cover of darkness?” I said, shoving down the thought of us all stricken with plague, with no one to care for us. It was enough to send the hypochondriac in me into full-on panic. I was already fighting the urge to go running to the tiny Giannini cottage and dip my hands into a cauldron of scalding water. “If we reach the Orci villa with no one seeing us, we can swear the ten servants we displace to silence.”

“Or we may have to insist they remain,” Marcello said grimly.

I frowned. If we were to become ill, we would be condemning ten more to a similar fate. “Our secret will not remain one for long. We cannot miss the nuptials in Siena without everyone in Toscana asking where we are. It will have to be known that we were exposed and have separated ourselves to keep the disease from spreading.”

“And anyone with any knowledge of your family will soon figure out where we’ve gone,” Luca said.

Marcello heaved a sigh and paced back and forth a moment, thinking. “It will take them a few days. We will ask Lord Rossi to not make it public until the day of the festivities. That’s yet five days away. Then we only have five more days to wait it out, see if any of us becomes ill, right?”

I stared back at him. “It’s worse than that. If any of us becomes ill, then we all must be considered exposed again. We essentially have to remain apart until all illness has been stamped out for ten days.”

“Or we’re all dead,” he said, voice low.

I nodded, grimly. “Or we’re all dead,” I repeated. I couldn’t believe such words were coming out of my mouth like it was no big deal. It seemed impossible.

“Gabriella. You, Evangelia could…
return
,” Marcello said carefully, staring into my eyes. “In
Normandy
, they have a cure for this illness?”

A cure for the bubonic plague? I didn’t really remember, though I had done a school report on ground squirrels and skunks that occasionally showed up with it. But few humans seemed to get it in the Western hemisphere. Was it like HIV, passed by blood?

“Do you remember, Lia? Is it passed by blood? Saliva? Touch?”

She looked up to the sky, trying to remember, and my heart skipped a beat. Her blue eyes matched the skies. What if those eyes became still, in death? I could not tolerate losing her. After a moment, she shook her head. “I cannot remember. Was it not fleas or ticks or the like?”

That jarred a memory, and I nodded. “Mayhap. We need Signore Giannini and everyone he’s touched to be bathed in hot water, their clothing burned.” I looked to Marcello. “Send Pietro to the castello to fetch us all several changes of clothes—clothes we won’t mind seeing burned. And he must remain a hundred paces from the castello.”

“He can tell them what has transpired,” Marcello returned. “But Gabriella, you did not respond. You and Evangelia—”

“We shall remain,” Lia said, surprising all three of us. She glanced at Luca, blushed, and then hurriedly to me. “Gabi will be impossible at home. She’ll only fret on and on about your health,” she said, nodding in Marcello’s direction.

But was she covering? Using me as an excuse when perhaps she’d be worrying over Luca? I thought so. By the tiny grin on Luca’s lips, I believed he did too.

The messenger—and two others to help him transport the clothing—departed, and we all moved up the hill to the Gianninis’ tiny house. Signore Giannini was settled onto a mat and given a blanket under the trees, a hundred paces away, to keep us all from further exposure. In the house, we placed several pots of water over the crackling fire, and began the process of bathing ourselves and burning our clothes. Too tall and broad-shouldered to fit in one of Mrs. Giannini’s dresses, I was one of the last to bathe behind the screen, after the messenger had returned.

I put on a simple day dress, feeling a pang at the loss of the lovely green gown that was about to go up in flames, and Lia helped comb out my hair. Neither of us were much good with the pins, so after a few tries, we bailed and just left it down. When we came outside, Luca rose, mouth half open, eyes solely on Lia, then rapidly knelt at her feet and took her hand. “M’lady, you look like a bride on her wedding day. Since we might not live through a fortnight, shall we marry this very eve?”

She laughed at him and tried to pull her hand from his, shaking her head. She was blushing though, not angry. “Luca. Must you always be the court jester?”

He cocked one brow and rose. “Ahh, but I do not jest.” He still held on to her hand and stared down at her, as if they were the only two in the clearing. Some of the knights caught sight and laughed, welcoming the break from the gloom and doom that had settled over us.

Eyes bright, she pulled away and looked to me, the pretty tinge of pink still at her cheeks. “Get me outta here.”

“You’ve got it,” I said, and walked toward Marcello. For a few minutes, I was able to forget that we were on the brink of death, and it felt good. But the look on his face brought it all back. He strode over to me.

“Gabriella,” he said, leading me a few steps away. “I will say it again. I wish to send you and your sister home, away from harm.”

I reached up and touched his face, feeling the appealingly masculine stubble there. “Marcello, I am not going anywhere without you. We will face this together.”

His lips clamped shut as if he was upset, but he held my hand as he turned to address the two groups, each a hundred feet from the other. “Come dusk, we shall ride to Villa Orci, leaving the road just past Castello Pisi and moving through the trees. With the Ladies Betarrini in our company, our goal is to remain unseen. To be less obvious, we will travel in groups of fourteen. As I’m certain you all know, outside the protection of the castello, we will become a prime target for every one of Firenze’s sons.”

“What of the peace treaty?” Luca asked.

“It is due to run out the day after my brother’s nuptials; it is a nod to Lord Rossi, nothing more. And no loyal Fiorentini would skip such an opportunity as this,” he said, eyeing me and my sister. I shivered.