DELUGE (7 page)

 “Surely it’s not as bad as all that,” Lutterius said, approaching so quietly I’d missed him. I jumped, and he smiled and lifted his hands to apologize for alarming me.

“Oh, Lutterius,” I said, bringing a hand to my breast and shaking my head. “Forgive me. I was in my own little world.”

“Well, permit me to escort you out to the bigger world,” he said, bowing slightly and offering his arm with a waggle of his bushy eyebrows. It was good to see him in such high spirits, giving me his wide, crooked-toothed grin. Since his twin Georgii had been hanged by the horrible Fiorentini assassins, I’d rarely seen it. I accepted his offer and placed my arm and hand atop his as we walked back through the corridor and into the yard, remembering how the brothers had been together as new scouts for Castello Forelli, and how Georgii’s death had hardened Lutterius.

“I confess I am most eager to see Venezia,” he said. “The other men are envious of our duty to attend you and yours.”

“As would I be, if I were not going too.”

Lutterius grinned and opened the door to the stables for me. “No doubt the doge will wish to see Siena’s favorite She-Wolf with her bow. I hope you’ve been diligent in your practice. I’ll have a fair number of coins riding on your prowess.”

I laughed under my breath. “Why, Lutterius, that’s positively ungentlemanly,” I said, pretending to shake my head at him as I took hold of my skirts and stepped over the threshold, into the stables.

“One must do what one must when times of peace make a knight’s life dull.”

I grinned up at him, glad that I might give him a reprieve, and secretly glad that he so believed in me that he was willing to place bets on my skills. It was then that a man coughed, and we both looked up to see Luca, tightening the straps of his mount’s saddle.

“Pardon me,” he said a moment later, moving between us and over to another horse, running his hand over the golden blanket, the saddle straps, the stirrups.

I knew I was blushing, feeling caught, even though Lutterius and I were nothing but friends, and Luca and I were…well, who knew what we were at the moment. Housemates? Friends? Quarreling lovers?

He said nothing more to us, all rigid, simmering anger—
Over what? That I’d allowed Lutterius to escort me? So silly…
But then Luca abruptly left the stables to the courtyard, with hardly a nod in our direction.

Lutterius stared at Luca’s back, then to me, clearly puzzled by Luca’s cool demeanor. I shoved aside Luca’s slight and forced a smile. I’d thought that Luca’s anger might have cooled by today, given that he was willing to help me last night at the Grecos’ with mounting my horse. But apparently not.

“It appears that Sir Luca and I are not on the best of terms at the moment. I hope you shall save me a dance in Venezia, Lutterius.”

His face broke out in a wide grin again, and he nodded slowly, even if there was a hint of concern behind his eyes. “You can count on me, m’lady,” he whispered, leaning toward me. “We’ll shake some sense back into the captain. Mark my words; he won’t leave you free to accept dances for long. Especially when those Venetian fellows find out you might be open to invitation.”

He waggled his bushy brows again, and I smiled with him. “Thank you, Lutterius.”

“No, thank
you
, m’lady,” he said, sauntering a few steps off, a new spring in his step, his thumbs hooked along the wide armholes of his tunic. “You just promised I’d be the talk of the whole castello.”

CHAPTER SIX

~GABRIELLA~

As soon as I heard Mom and Lia’s plan, I was in, of course. So was Dad. “The tombs are right here, a stone’s throw from Rodolfo’s walls,” I said, as we hovered inside the main dome of Tomb Two, in the Etruscan tomb field. “And he’s clearly spent some time in them. Let’s figure out what he thinks I could explain, shall we?”

“The only thing I can think of,” Mom said, moving past the other paintings inside the big dome, back to kneel at the entrance, “are the figures at the mouth of this tunnel. The angels, the Greek, and the Roman legionnaire. We’ve long suspected they signify time travel. Maybe Rodolfo’s clever enough to realize the legionnaire post-dates the Etruscans.”

We nodded with her. It made sense that he’d seen it, pondered it. A memory of him chasing us through the woods, the tracker with him, studying each broken twig, each pile of disturbed leaves, came to me. In a way, he was tracking down this path of ours, too. And the stories of our emerging from the tomb had brought him here.

Repeatedly, I guessed.

“But there’s nothing here that
definitively
ties us to that,” I said, looking around.

“Nah,” Dad said. “All the guy has is conjecture. And if we don’t give him anything definitive, it can stay that way. I’m with Marcello and Luca on this. The fewer who know the truth, the better.”

“But if we go after those boys in Venezia, Ben,” Mom said, “if they somehow tie us together, and they’ve said too much….” She paused and rubbed her forehead, leaving an adorable smudge on her fair skin. “They could seriously compromise our position.”

“That’s why it’s so important that we get to them fast,” Dad said. “Convince them to stop talking, to pretend that they are actors and that it all was an elaborate ruse to entertain the doge or something.”

“They’ve gotta be scared out of their minds,” Lia said. “I was.”

I nodded. Until I found my sister, I’d been convinced I was living some sort of awful, extended dream. Had the boys been separated too? It sounded like they arrived together.

“There
were
Fiorentini who saw us leave this tomb,” I said. “Me, when I first arrived.” I gestured toward the mouth of the tunnel. “I had to shove aside the gravestone to get out. And I was in the middle of a whole Forelli-Paratore battle. More than a couple Fiorentini saw me. Dudes who did not die that day.”

I thought of the big, hulking knight who almost killed me on several different occasions. How he leered over my skinny jeans and cami, my hair down. Mentally, I clicked through all the men there that day.

“Most are dead now, I think. But who knows? And I’m sure they shared their story every time they could. Can you imagine? The tales of the She-Wolves are fantastic enough, but that had to have been some serious fodder for their gossip fires.”

“What about the Forelli knights who were here that day?” Mom asked gently.

I thought back, and it made me sad, wistful. Most of them had died too. In fact, all but Luca and Marcello.
They died, DIED. Many in defense of me…or Marcello. Or Siena. Sweet Pietro. Happy Georgii. And Alanzo. And Valente…

“There was also that lone scout who got away the day I arrived with you,” Dad said, chin in hand. “He might still be alive.”

“Our story has always been that we slept here, took shelter here,” I said, trying to regain my defenses, my strength. I rubbed away a tear.

“Which sounds pretty creepy,” Lia said.

“And then we have a mother with a fascination for the tombs,” I said reproachfully. “Which is all-kinds-of-weird to them.”

“Our dealings in Etruscan artifacts is good enough as a cover story,” Mom said, flipping her blond braid over her shoulder.

“Is it?” I asked. “With these new Betarrinis in town? Dudes who said they came through a tomb, too? And probably wearing clothes that couldn’t be explained?”

We were all silent for a moment. Marcello had burned the jeans, cardigan, cami and flats I’d arrived in, God bless him.

“Lia,” I said slowly, a sudden horror growing inside, “what happened to your clothes when you first arrived?”

She looked at me helplessly. “I don’t know. Paratore gave me a gown to change into. But I’m not sure what happened to them.”

My eyes met Mom’s, and I felt a little sick. We’d buried hers and Dad’s in the woods, and covered them with rocks. They weren’t likely to be found. But Lia’s…It would’ve been just like Paratore to hide them away to use at just the right point and time.

“What’d you have on that day?” Mom asked.

“Jeans. A t-shirt. And my purple sneakers.” She bit her lip and looked around at us worriedly.

Dad sighed heavily. “Where’d my clothes go again?”

“We buried them as you changed into that knight’s uniform.”

“And we left that guy fairly naked,” he said, pacing now. “If that word got out too…” He rubbed the back of his neck. We’d all thought of these things over the last year and more. We just hadn’t dared to talk about it.

“What else could incriminate us?” Mom asked.

Dad resumed his pacing. “I flung my flashlight into the forest. Stupid, I know. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Where?” I asked. “Do you think we could find it?”

“I doubt it.”

“You have that First Aid kit,” I said to Mom.

She shook her head. “I hid it too, once I figured out how dangerous it was to have it around.”

I frowned. “You’re sure no one will find it?”

“I’m sure.”

I took a deep breath. “There’s no way we could explain it away.” I thought of the plastic box—
plastic!—
the imprint and color, the slots and bottles and individually-wrapped products inside. Yeah, if that was found by the wrong peeps, we’d be toast.

“Was there anything else?” Mom asked. “How about when you and Lia came back the second time. Did anyone see you leave?”

I flung out my hands. “It’s possible. We were in the middle of a freakin’ battle. I think everyone was behind us, you know,
fighting
and everything. But who knows! There were a ton of people in this valley. Did you see anyone?” I asked Lia.

She shook her head. “We were running, distracted. I don’t
think
anyone saw us…”

“But you can’t be certain,” Dad said quietly.

We heard the horses outside whinny. They must have sensed another approaching. I immediately ducked and crawled out, yanking at my pesky skirts all the way. As I rose, my hand instinctively ran across the sheath that held my sword, comforted by its weight. All four horses stood, ears pricked forward in the same direction. Toward the road that led to Castello Greco.

Toward Lord Greco, it turned out, as he languidly entered the tomb meadow, astride an elegant, black gelding.

My family gathered around me, brushing themselves off. We waited for Rodolfo to near, and he paused, leaning down to casually stroke the neck of his horse and then pat it. He smiled at us. “Now why did I suspect that I might find the Betarrinis here, come morn, after our discussions last night?” he asked, his eyes resting squarely on me.

“It’s a lovely morning,” I said, overly bright and cheery. “We found ourselves restless. So we elected to take a ride.”

“To the tombs,” he said drolly, lifting his far leg and easily sliding to the ground. He turned and opened a big, leather saddlebag and pulled out a fabric-wrapped package tied with string, tossing it to me. I narrowly caught it.

“You can open it,” he said, crossing his arms. “But I suspect it belongs to Lady Evangelia.”

My heart faltered, and his eyes narrowed.

He knew.
He knew.

I turned and handed it to Lia, not wanting her to open it, just trying to buy time to think. We all knew what was inside. I’d felt the familiar weight and give of a rubber sole, her tennies.

“There are only two solutions, as I see it,” Rodolfo said gently, evenly, looking from one to the next of us. “Either you’re witches and warlock, or there’s some strange truth to what the Ravenna-Betarrinis espoused. That you hail not from Normandy or Britannia, but rather from a different…time.”

My mouth was dry, my mind spinning. I didn’t want to lie to Rodolfo. He was our friend. Our ally now. And yet it endangered him to know. To be in on our secret.

“Come now, Rodolfo,” Dad said, stepping forward. “Have you been so deep into your cups this early in the day? I’ve never known you to speak like a superstitious old man or madwoman. You know our story.”

“I know part of your story,” he corrected. He moved over to Lia and looked down at her. “Open it.”

Casting me a helpless look, she untied the twine and spread apart the corners. A shoe rolled out and onto the ground, practically bouncing. We all stared at it like it was kryptonite, leaching us of any power, any energy.

Rodolfo bent and picked it up and examined it, as if for the first time. “I have been to the finest trading ports of Italia, of Normandy and Greece, but I have never seen anything like this.” He lifted the sneaker a bit higher, turning it over to examine the contoured shape of a gripping sole, the stitching across the purple mesh fabric, the neon-green laces. Then he looked at Lia. “Cosmo Paratore told me he’d found you in shoes that reminded him of my family’s colors.”

“He was a liar,” Lia protested.

“He was,” Rodolfo agreed. “But in this, he was not. And you, my dear friend,” he said, leaning toward her, “are
not
. Please do not begin now.” He studied her a moment. “Paratore had decided you were a witch, but you were too lovely to give up; and you displayed no other powers other than the power to beguile a man—a power to which he was willing to be subjugated. So he elected to forget the clothes. Remake you into a proper woman of our lands. Make you his. Until your sister came to save you,” he said, nodding at me. “I never heard him say another word about it. But he left the clothes beneath the floorboards of his room. Which I happened upon when we returned from our travels.”

He gestured to the other clothes in Lia’s hands. “Any one of those pieces would identify you as not only foreign, but…
other
.” He handed the sneaker to my dad and crossed his arms. “So tell me. All of it. Where are you from?” He asked the last of it slowly, emphasizing each word, clearly abiding by no further debate. Again, he looked at each of us, one at a time, and I felt like I was in the principal’s office.

Dad stepped closer, directly in front of him, and looked in his eyes. “What Marcello said was true. Sometimes, it’s best to not know everything. Can you not let this go? Allow us to burn these clothes? Forget you ever laid eyes upon them?”

Rodolfo stared at him. “Forgive me. I cannot. I’d rather know of potential danger than not. Even if it puts me in greater peril.”