The Time Contessa (The Time Mistress Book 3)

by Georgina Young-Ellis

  “Contessa,” said Lauro, “I would like to help the sindaco.”

  “Why does he call you Contessa?” Giulia asked.

  “I’ll explain another time,” Cassandra replied. “Anyway, I’m sure we can find a way for Lauro and Jake to help you. But we must discuss it in private.”

  Lauro took Giulia’s hand and kissed it. “Arrivederci,” he said to her.

  “Tanto piacere,” she returned with a flutter of her eyelashes. She placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “And it’s also a great pleasure to meet you. Please, speak with my secretary and figure out when we can meet one evening this week to look at Giuliana’s diaries. I doubt they will give a clue about what happened to the painting, since they were written four centuries before it disappeared, but they will be interesting to all of you, I am sure, especially you, Dr. Hershowitz.

  “Call me Jake.”

  “Very well, Jake. And I’ll have supper prepared.”

  He nodded, a look of bewilderment on his face. Cassandra thanked her, and ushered the two men out the door.

  Chapter Four

  “Contessa,” said Lauro as they stood outside the mayor’s office, “do you think we might be able to travel to San Gimignano? It seems we can’t meet this Franco Marino yet anyway, and if it wouldn’t interfere with the investigation into the painting, I would very much like to go.”

  “Of course, Lauro, but what makes you want to go there?” Cassandra asked.

  “In Signorina Brogi’s office, there was a mural on the wall of the view across the countryside, with San Gimignano in the distance.”

  “I didn’t notice San Gimignano in that mural.”

  “Murals were my livelihood. I couldn’t help but examine those in the sindaco’s office while we were talking.”

  “Well, they are very ornate.”

  “I could have done much better. As a matter a fact, I helped restore those wonderful murals of Lorenzetti’s in the Sala della Pace over there, though they must have been done again sometime later.”

  “You were one of the original restorers of Lorenzetti’s murals?” Jake said. “To think we personally know the man who worked on the famous allegories of Peace in the City and Countryside and Good Government—”

  “Yes, true,” Cassandra broke in. “But, Lauro, tell me why you want to go.”

  “I want to see what’s become of my aunt’s home.”

  “San Gimignano!” Jake suddenly cried.

  “What?” Cassandra asked.

  “Maybe we could send Lauro directly back to San Gimignano. If we moved the portal lab there, he could materialize directly into the town and hide out at his aunt’s house until the Guerrini clan give up looking for him.”

  “And then what? You can never move back to Siena, Lauro, am I right? Guerrini’s brothers will be after you for years and years,” Cassandra pointed out.

  “They will never forget. Even generations later, they will seek a vendetta against members of my family.”

  “It must be why your uncle sold the house. He couldn’t live there himself, nor could your daughters.”

  “He must have made the transaction quickly and furtively,” Lauro declared. “However, maybe…maybe I should do that very thing before my uncle has a chance to. I could sneak back and get my inventions, and I could sell the house to Ottavia. I could buy her silence too. Then, I could flee Tuscany altogether. I could travel to another country and continue with my work.”

  “Yes, that way, you may be able to avoid the typhus that was supposed to have killed you in—”

  Cassandra yelped.

  “Killed me?” Lauro stopped and stared at Jake. “What are you talking about? What do you know about my death?”

  “Jake, this isn’t how I wanted him to find out!”

  “When is this typhus supposed to have killed me?”

  “1511,” Cassandra said quietly.

  “Just two more years,” cried Lauro. “If I hadn’t come into the future with you, I would have died in two more years. That’s why my inventions never came to anything, why my name wasn’t known in the future.”

  “However,” Jake went on, “if we follow this plan and send you back to San Gimignano, and you get your inventions and flee Tuscany, you may not ever contract typhus. You may go on to live a long life and discover many more things.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be, Jake,” said Cassandra. “It may alter history significantly for Lauro to live longer than he was supposed to.”

  “Don’t talk about me as if I’m some kind of specimen you are studying. I want to have a say in my own future.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. Besides, you are our first priority, Lauro,” said Cassandra, “before the painting or Franco Marino or anything else, and we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that getting you home, wherever that is to be, comes before anything else. I think Jake’s plan is a reasonable one. It will take a while to transfer the portal lab there, but we can plan to visit whenever you like.”

  “Thank you, Cassandra.” He took her hand.

  “You two go to San Gimignano without me,” said Jake. “I’m going to look into the transaction that was made between the Marino family and the Museo Civico. The museum is right here in the Palazzo Pubblico. Maybe the director can shed some light.” He walked away.

  Cassandra looked after him a moment, then led Lauro out of the building. They walked just beyond the Campo, and she raised her hand to stop one of the transports that traveled the road to Villa Girasole.

  “Wait,” cried Lauro. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting the bus to go home.”

  “I’m not getting in that thing.”

  “Oh, I forgot. Are you sure you don’t just want to try it? It’s completely safe.”

  “No, no. I’m not ready for that. I will go how God made me to go: on my feet or on the back of a horse.”

  “Well, since we have no horse, I guess we’ll have to go by foot. I was just hoping to be spared the walk.”

  “Please, Contessa, it’s nothing. I’ve done it for years and years.”

  “You have to stop calling me Contessa. You must know by now I’m not really a countess.”

  Lauro smiled. “I began to realize that when you told me you were a scientist. I don’t know many contessas who are also scientists. As a matter of fact, I never knew any women at all who were scientists. It doesn’t matter though. You will always be my contessa.”

  Her heart skipped a beat as they continued walking, and the transport silently sped past them on the narrow street. “If you don’t want to ride in a bus or a car, how are we going to get to San Gimignano?”

  “How did we go the last time?”

  “Lauro, I don’t know where we can get horses.”

  “Let’s ask Signorina Schiatti. She may know.”

  “Really? You want to ride a horse there?”

  “Let me have some of my old ways. It’s difficult for me to adjust to the idea of being hurled about in these automated vehicles.”

  Back at the villa, Rosa was full of information about renting horses for a day. “Oh, the tourists do it all the time. They love to go out around the countryside by horseback. Of course, usually they go with a guide.”

  “A guide?” said Lauro. “How ridiculous. I could go from Siena to San Gimignano blindfolded.”

  “Yet the roads have changed,” Cassandra pointed out.

  “If the stable lets you go without a guide, they could definitely show you how to get there by trail. The countryside is so lovely. The horseback rides are one of the favorite pastimes of our guests.”

  Lauro and Cassandra easily convinced the stable owner of their ease on horseback and their confidence in getting to San Gimignano. She and Lauro were pleased with the horses they tried, and reserved them for the next day.

  That morning they rose early, made themselves a lunch to take along, at Rosa’s behest, and walked back to the stable. Cassandra wore trousers for the occasion, the first time she had put them on since r
eturning with Lauro. The tan slacks were slim fitting from just below her waist to her ankles, and she wore narrow boots of a slightly darker hue that came up over her calves. She wore a tailored white blouse, a wide brown belt, and a tan bowler hat on her head with her hair tucked up inside. The effort she’d put into the outfit proved worthwhile when Lauro’s eyes traveled over her body appreciatively, even when he shook his head with a smile, wondering out loud at the phenomenon of a woman dressing like a man.

  Should she tell him how handsome he looked in his saddle? He was wearing the riding clothes they’d purchased for him: dark brown corduroy pants with heavy-soled boots and a blue cotton shirt. He’d asked if they could find him a cape for the ride, but Cassandra informed him they were no longer easy to come by. Jake, however, had discovered a pair of vintage sunglasses in a shop in Siena and given them to the Italian, who was fascinated by the ingenuity of tinted lenses to protect the eyes, as well as by the craftsmanship of the folding supports. He’d spent several minutes examining their construction before putting them on. Jake explained that modern people had no need of them anymore, because everyone’s eyes were treated to protect them from the sun’s UV rays from a very young age. Regardless of how low-tech they might be now, Lauro was very dashing in his glasses, and made even more so by the broad-brimmed hat he wore. The muscles of his arms were exposed under the short-sleeved shirt, his broad shoulders were proud and straight, and his strong legs grasped the sides of his horse firmly. He seemed to be getting more attractive every day.

  The trail they set off on wound through the hills and avoided the roads. Many of the same fields that had burgeoned with wheat six hundred years in the past were still golden with the waving fronds. Acres of sunflowers still turned their heads to the summer sun. The poppies were past their season of bloom but white and purple wildflowers replaced them on the hills and amidst the grape vines and olive trees. Cypress trees still stood on hilltops, tall and twisted.

  They were within five miles of San Gimignano by the time the sun was directly overhead.

  “My God,” said Lauro, “normally I would be sweltering, making this journey so late in July, but I am cool and comfortable. It’s these miracle clothes you have procured for me, yes?”

  “Yes, and even the exposed parts of your skin are protected by the shield your clothing emits so it won’t burn.”

  “My skin will never burn. I was born to thrive under the sun.”

  “Well, it was discovered the sun’s rays can be damaging to anyone’s skin. Many people once died from a disease that was known as cancer, caused by this very effect of the sun.”

  “Do you mean like the black death?”

  “Not exactly. But cancer was so prevalent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that it was like a plague. However, just as scientists came to understand the causes of the plague and were able to cure and prevent it, they eventually cured cancer.”

  “Tell me. What causes the black death? Is it bad air? Rotten food? Unclean conditions?”

  “It’s fleas.”

  “Gesu, Giuseppe, Maria. They are everywhere!”

  “Well, actually, it comes from rats, but the fleas spread it. The fleas bite the rats and then bite people, and that way spread the disease.”

  An expression of horror fixed on Lauro’s face. “So when we put rushes on the floor to improve the odor of a home, and the fleas come and live in them….”

  “It creates an atmosphere for plague to breed.”

  “If we’d had this knowledge, my family could have been saved,” he said quietly.

  “Well, yes, but you also would have needed a cure for anyone who became infected. We have this cure, as well as a preventative inoculation which I received before going to your time. When you returned with me, we were both swept by a decontamination ray that killed any bacteria, infection, or virus we might have carried with us.”

  “I don’t really understand.”

  “It’s difficult to explain.”

  Lauro appeared to be deep in thought as they rode on. “Could you give me this cure and this prevention?” he eventually asked. “Could you send me in your ‘time - travel’ machine to before my family died? I could give them the prevention and they could be saved.”

  “No, Lauro,” she said sadly. “We cannot change history in that way. People who died made way for others to be born, others who went on to do great things or have children who did great things, or grand children and so on. We are playing a delicate game, those of us who travel to the past, as you pointed out. We must tread lightly. As it is, we don’t know if we created some cause and effect by setting up the situation wherein Guerrini died and you ended up coming here. And was Giuliana supposed to help all those people as the benefactress she turned out to be? We can’t know, and we can’t change it now.”

  He turned to her, his face serious. “If I go back, I will have to take my chances with plague, typhus, any number of horrible things you have managed to conquer.”

  A kernel of an idea formed in Cassandra’s mind. What if they inoculated Lauro against those diseases?

  “Your silence tells me yes. How long before the black death was brought under control?”

  “I believe it continued to kill in Europe and Asia for another three hundred years at least, after your time.” Her words caught in her throat. “Millions and millions died.”

  “Don’t send me back, Cassandra.”

  She brought her horse to a halt and he did too. “This conversation is going to require a lot of minds. It’s not my decision alone, nor yours.”

  “However, I must be a part of the decision.”

  “Yes. And you should be.” She took the sandwiches from her saddle bag and handed him one. She urged her horse on and he followed suit. “But can you really imagine living the rest of your life in this time, everything so unfamiliar and strange, having to learn about so much technology, always being considered a kind of fascinating oddity?”

  “No. I can’t. This moment of calm, here in the countryside, is the first time I haven’t felt frightened in days. Though those horrible flying machines hurtling along up there in the air strike me as quite terrifying.”

  Cassandra had forgotten to notice them. “Now that I think of it, if we send you back to a time period later than when you left, even several years later, very little will have changed. There were no great leaps made in industry and technology in Europe and the U.S. until the mid-nineteenth century. That’s something to consider.”

  “The ‘yew-wess?’ What is that? This is the first time I’ve heard this term. Do you mean the new world? The place where you come from?”

  “Yes, the ‘U’ ‘S’. It means the United States. It is part of the land that Columbus discovered.”

  “I would like to see it.”

  “I’m not sure if that can happen. Also, it involves getting into one of those horrible flying machines.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. In that case, I will stay here. I suppose it takes several months to go by boat, besides it being such a perilous journey.”

  Cassandra decided to keep the reality of this to herself for the moment. “Look! There are the towers of San Gimignano.”

  “No, that is not the town of my birth. There are only…I see just a few towers. No, that can’t be.”

  “I forgot to tell you. Many of the towers have fallen over the years. These are all that are left.”

  He stared at the town on the hill as they approached. They stopped at a stable outside the city walls and left their horses with the man who shared the business with his counterpart in Siena. They continued on foot, through the main city gate, walking along the narrow road where cars cautiously came and went.

  “What are all these people doing here?”

  “They’re tourists.”

  “I don’t understand this concept of ‘tourists.’ These people don’t have business here?”

  “Not really. I mean, they’re shopping.”

  “For?”

  “C
rafts, pottery, clothes, food, wine—mostly things that are typical of the region—things made by artisans. And they’re interested in the history of the town.”

  “And San Gimignano has no particular value other than that.”

  “Not really.”

  “Why are all these people waving their hands in the air?”

  “They’re taking pictures. Like the ones you saw in the books. Photographs, like Elton explained to you.”

  Lauro shook his head. “You’re right, Cassandra. I will never understand all the modern ways. But this, this ‘tourist’ phenomenon, this I truly do not understand. People have no other business in their lives other than to travel for pleasure and look at where other people live?”

  “Or once lived.”

  “When do they work?”

  “They have jobs, but they’re on a vacation: leisure time. All the inventions we have now give us much, much more time than people had in your lifetime to do whatever we want. So we travel. I know that people in your lifetime also traveled for pleasure.”

  “Only the very rich. These people in their short pants and thin shirts—they don’t look rich.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  It didn’t take long to locate where Lauro’s aunt had once lived. It was now a shop that sold gelato. Cassandra took him in to try some.

  “This is one of the few positive things about the modern San Gimignano,” he commented when he’d tasted it. He said little else as they walked through the town.

  For Cassandra, it was just as beautiful and charming as she’d found it in the past. More so, because it was clean and the foul smells were gone.

  “Let’s go, Cassandra,” Lauro finally said. “This is making me too sad.”

  They went back to the stable and got their horses. They rode without speaking much. As the trail crossed through a field of wheat, Lauro stopped. “Shall we rest our horses a little while?”

  There was a pond, and they led their mares there to drink. He walked a ways out into the field. The sun was beginning to set, turning the yellow stalks almost orange. Cassandra went to join him. She took off her hat and shook out her hair.