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.”
&nbs
p; 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 midstrike. “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, Lucas 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. An 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…
“How do you fare, m’lord?” I asked, pausing in the doorway the next morning.
Fortino looked toward me. He had more color, despite his surly glance. “That was the most uncomfortable night I’ve ever spent. But I must say, I feel better than I have in weeks.” He patted his chest. “Today I am able to breathe again. Truly breathe.” He smiled, and I thought again about how much he looked like Marcello, just thinner. The spark in his eye made him resemble his brother even more.
“‘Tis truly a miracle of sorts,” he said. “I am most grateful for your ministrations, m’lady. You’ve done more for me in one day than all the doctors my father has ever summoned.”
“That is wonderful, m’lord,” I said, unable to suppress my grin. The hope on his face filled me with joy. I’d never done anything that had really helped someone like that before. It made me feel bad about what I had to tell him. So I just plunged forward with, “I am to take my leave of the castello today-“
“Leave? You cannot leave! I am just now on a mending path.”
“And I am so happy that I could aid you in some small way. But I am beside myself with fear for my family. I must be off to find them. I’m certain you understand.”
He clearly didn’t. I could see it on his face. He looked like a pouty little boy about to be abandoned by his mother. I shoved away a pang of guilt.
“What does Marcello say of this plan?” he asked. “It was my understanding that the woods were full of bands of mercenaries.”
“He says much the same, but he and your father feel it’s important to report to the Nine about these mercenaries-and the man who hired them.” I shuddered, remembering again the screams tha
t picked up again after Marcello left me, then abruptly ceased in the middle of the night. I had not dared to peek my head out into the courtyard to see what had become of them.
“Who is it that set them to such a task?” Fortino asked.
“I have not yet heard,” I said, shaking my head.
“But surely Marcello wouldn’t subject a woman to such-“
“Do not fret over me, m’lord. Once we catch sight of Siena, we will be safe.”
“Siena is six hours’ ride from here.”
“So we will have to ride fast enough to make it in three, faster than any mercenaries,” I said, more jauntily than I felt. I didn’t want him to worry. It might send him into an asthma attack or something. “I am fairly good with a sword,” I said, walking to the only adornment to the room I’d allowed back into the room, six swords crossed in Xs on one wall. I ran my hand along one edge.
“Do not tell me that you can wield a sword as well as read.”
“I can,” I said, grinning at him over my shoulder.
“They raise women in Normandy quite differently than in Toscana.”
“Quite. Fortino, might I borrow this one? I’d feel better, if I was armed in these woods. And anyone who dared to attack me would be as surprised as you to find my bringing a sword against them. It would give me an advantage.”
“Those are uncommonly heavy,” he said. “They were my grandfather’s.”
“Better than nothing,” I pressed. After last night, I dared not try to steal into the armory and recover the short broadsword and dagger I’d worn before. “I could return it to you with Marcello.”
“If you must,” he said doubtfully.
I took it gingerly from its hooks and moved it in a slow arc, with both of my hands on the hilt. It was heavier than the one I had held two days earlier, but I felt instantly stronger with it in hand.
“You shall get yourself killed,” said a voice from the door.
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