by Anna Gracie
magnificent husband. And she was almost in Italy, where she should be
able to discover the truth about her mother's death. And she was going
to have a baby. The cold mountain air prickled at her eyes and she had
to grope for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It was odd how easily
she cried these days, she reflected, when really she had nothing to cry
about.
She finished wiping her eyes, then, noticing one of the porters
watching her, began to clap her cold hands in time to the music,
humming along to the tune. With the singing, the time passed more
quickly, until at last the porters stopped and Magnus came to lift her
out of the basket.
"Could you hear the singing from up ahead? Wasn't it utterly
wonderful?" she said, stretching her cramped limbs.
"Very nice," he responded.
"Are you warm enough?" He took her small cold hands in his and began
to chafe them gently. His hands were not exactly warm themselves, and
she became concerned when she saw he looked rather heavy-eyed and
preoccupied.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"Picked up a bit of a chill, I suspect. Nothing to worry about. Now,
I think those fellows have brandy, or some such local brew. I want you
to have a little--keep the cold out."
She looked around.
"Magnus, what are they doing?"
The porters were unloading the mules. Magnus went to discuss it with
them. He came back, a faint grin on his face.
"This is as far as the mules go. And now, my dear, you will have to
resign yourself to being carried."
Sure enough, the men had brought out some rough-looking woven wicker
litters attached to crude poles. They gestured to Magnus, and Tallie
went forward reluctantly.
In minutes she was installed in a litter, tied down--for safety, they
said--and packed in straw, as well as bearskins, for warmth.
"I feel ridiculous," she said. Magnus chuckled and wound a thick
woollen shawl around her face.
"You look quite delightful, my dear."
Tallie could hardly move, so she directed an almost invisible glare at
him.
"Monsieur?" said a porter. Magnus turned. The porter gestured to
another litter, sitting beside Tallie's.
"Please, monsieur, we must hurry."
"What? I don't need a blasted litter!" said Magnus, outraged.
The porter shrugged.
"It is the only way, monsieur. The way we move, no one who was not
born in these mountains can keep up with us. You must go in the
chair."
A muffled giggle came from the bundle that was Tallie. Magnus
hesitated, stiff with annoyance.
"An inexperienced person will slow us down. And there are wolves,
monsieur, and bears."
Magnus didn't budge.
"And madame, she is getting cold, monsieur."
"Oh, very well--damn your eyes!" said Magnus, and allowed himself to
be strapped into the litter. Tallie watched in glee as her immaculate,
elegant husband was bundled into a litter and wrapped until he looked
like a pile of old washing. Two porters hoisted his litter onto their
shoulders with a jolt. They moved forward.
"Oh, Magnus?" called Tallie as he came alongside her. The porters
paused.
Magnus glared across at her.
"What?" he snapped.
"Sometimes we must sacrifice dignity for expediency, my dear," she said
solemnly.
Magnus swore and ordered the porters to move on.
"Don't worry, my dear," she called.
"You look delightful in your litter, too."
He swore again, and her laughter followed him up the steep pathway.
The porters must be part mountain goat, Tallie decided breathlessly
after an hour of climbing. There were four for each litter and they
leaped up impossibly steep slopes at a pace which Tallie doubted she
could maintain on flat ground for more than a minute.
On one side, the narrow, winding path dropped away to a bottomless
precipice, on the other were violently soaring peaks and huge vertical
slabs of rock. There was no room to manoeuvre; the slightest misstep
would have them plunging hundreds of feet over the precipice, to perish
on the ragged rocks below. The porters didn't even pause or blink when
Tallie heard what she was sure were wolves howling in the not very far
distance. She hardly dared to breathe.
Tallie heaved a sigh of relief when they came to the top of the pass
and stopped for a break of perhaps a minute or two. The view was
superb. In every direction lay mountain peaks-some glittering with
snow--sharp against the crisp vivid blue of the sky. On one side of
them was France, down there somewhere below was Italy, and across in
the distance were the peaks of Switzerland. It was a moment to
remember, she thought excitedly, a moment to tell her children. She
laid her hand on her flat stomach, marvelling, still unable to believe
that there was a baby growing inside her.
With a sudden jolt, she found herself on the move again, this time at a
breathtaking pace. The bearers ran, rather than walked, taking tiny
little steps where the path was most perilous and great bounding
strides when it levelled out or widened.
Tallie clung on like grim death, bouncing and swaying.
Finally they came to a tiny village, which clung to the side of the
mountains in apparent impossibility. The panting porters set down the
litters and one of them came forward to lift her out. She looked for
her husband. He was still in his litter. She hurried over on stiff
legs.
"Magnus was that not the most terrifyingly thril?-Magnus, are you all
right?"
His face was death-pale, his eyes closed. He did not move.
She pulled her gloves off and felt his forehead with her hand. Despite
the chill in the air, his forehead was hot and clammy.
"Magnus!"
Slowly he opened his eyes.
"Oh, there you are," he said, and fumbled to get out of the litter. She
helped him out, but when he tried to stand he reeled, and would have
fallen if one of the porters had not grabbed him. Tallie was greatly
alarmed.
"He's ill! Is there a physician nearby? Maguire!"
Maguire and the head porter came over and there was a brief
discussion.
"He's ill," Tallie repeated.
"He needs a physician. Can we take him to an inn or somewhere?"
The porter shook his head and glanced significantly around. Tallie
followed his gaze. The village consisted of a half-dozen tiny
cottages. Certainly there would be no doctor here. Anxiety gripped
her throat.
"I must get him to the nearest physician," she insisted.
"I'm all right," muttered Magnus thickly.
"Just a bit woozy, that's all."
Tallie ignored him and fixed the head porter with a determined stare.
"Please transport us with all haste to the nearest place where I can
get help for my husband," she said firmly.
"At once, if you please!"
The porter nodded, then smiled and patted her on the shoulder, saying
something in a dialect that Tallie coul
d not understand. He called out
to the others, and to her relief they soon had a vaguely protesting
Magnus safely stowed back in his litter and were moving off down the
mountain. This time Tallie saw nothing amusing in the sight.
"Hurry," she urged the bearers.
The trip down the mountainside was a nightmare to Tallie. She wished
she could see how her husband was faring, but the path was still too
steep and narrow for them to go in anything except single file.
They passed several more tiny hamlets, but Tallie didn't even consider
them. She had to get to the nearest town big enough to support a
proper physician. Whenever they slowed, even for a moment, she urged
them on.
"Hurry, oh, please hurry!"
Finally one of the porters pointed and mumbled something. Tallie
followed the direction of his arm. Far, far below, she could see a
town, a tiny sea of terra cotta rooftops and the spire of a church. Her
heart leapt. It was still a long distance away. She nodded.
"Doctor?"
The man nodded back.
"Dottore."
Tallie caught her breath.
"Oh, thank the Lord. Now, please hurry."
The men jogged onwards. Tallie noticed nothing of the scenery; her
eyes went from the bundle that was her husband, then down to the town,
then back again.
Suddenly shots rang out. Tallie was jerked to a sudden halt. She
blinked, and was almost thrown out of her litter as her bearers dropped
it. They had stopped on a corner. Above them on both sides were steep
rocks. She could see nothing ahead, nothing behind. All around her
was sudden silence.
"What is it?" she called.
"Pray, what is the matter? And why have we stopped?"
"No questions," an unfamiliar voice shouted in rough Italian above her.
She looked up and saw a tall, dark-haired man with a large moustache
pointing a gleaming silver pistol in her direction. He was thin, but
broad-shouldered, and dressed in a ragged uniform; there were battered
traces of dull yellow embroidery on his jacket, which she supposed
might once have looked gold. Was he a soldier? But the war was over,
surely.
There was a sudden flurry ahead and a single shot rang out. Tallie's
heart almost stopped. Magnus! But she could hear or see nothing. The
man above called something to someone unseen and then nimbly leaped
down onto the path ahead, bringing a scattering of small rocks down
with him. Immediately a dozen more men appeared, all dressed in some
sort of uniform, one in braided trousers, another in a waistcoat, all
ragged, none of them matching. Each one of them brandished a knife or
a pistol or both.
"What is it? Who are they?" Tallie whispered to the porter standing
nearest her.
He turned to look at her, his eyes sombre.
"Banditti," he said.
Chapter Thirteen
Banditti? gasped Tallie.
The porter jerked his head significantly up to the left.
"Bad men.
Live up there. " His lip curled and he spat in scorn.
"Not our people."
More orders rang out in dialect and the porters moved slowly forward.
The ragged collection of armed banditti watched every move from their
lofty positions on the rocks above. The party reached a small
clearing, bordered on three sides by rock walls and on the fourth by a
plunging precipice along which the narrow track passed. It would be
impossible to escape; only one person at a time could move along that
path. This was obviously a well-planned ambush.
The bandits had already disarmed the guards and Tallie could see that
two porters were injured, although it didn't seem as if they were badly
hurt; they could still walk, though with some difficulty. The hired
guards, luckily, seemed untouched.
The tall dark man in the ragged gold braid uttered a sharp order and
two bandits with pistols shepherded the porters and guards to a shallow
cave in the rock, and forced them to sit, hands on heads.
Tallie breathed a sigh of relief. The bandits did not mean to kill
anyone--yet.
Several ruffians hovered over the prisoners still in their litters, a
variety of firearms and gleaming knives and stilettos pointed
menacingly, while the rest fell upon the bundles of baggage, emptying
their belongings onto the mountainside with careless greed. They
removed everything of value, even Magnus's fine leather boots.
Bundled in her litter, Tallie waited helplessly. The bindings that had
been for her security now kept her imprisoned. She wondered how Magnus
was faring, and struggled inconspicuously to escape her bonds.
The bandit leader thrust his silver duelling pistol through his belt
and swaggered towards them.
"Aha, what have we here?" he said in oddly accented but surprisingly
urbane Italian.
"A lady--no, two ladies," he added, lifting a rug to discover Monique
cowering underneath.
"And four gentlemen." He glanced at the litters containing Magnus,
Maguire, John Black, and Guillaume, Magnus's valet.
"Which one is the English milord?" His vivid green eyes examined each
man narrowly.
The English milord? How did he know one of the travellers was an
English milord? wondered Tallie anxiously. Their majordomo, Luigi
Maguire, had stressed that they should appear as ordinary travellers.
"Naturally, while no foreign traveller is precisely poor," he had said
in his unique accent, 'it is not a good idea to advertise wealth, so if
you will accept my advice, Lord d'Arenville, you will travel as plain
Mr. d'Arenville. Or even Mr. Smith, if you like. And in your
plainest coat and boots. Your good lady, too, in her plainest, most
serviceable gown and cloak. "
And they had taken his eminently sensible advice. So how did this
bandit know there was an English lord in the party?
"Come, gentlemen, I know one of you is an English milord, and a fine
fat pigeon for my plucking."
No one said a word.
The bandit leader strode forward, and with a rough oath he dragged
first Maguire, then Guillaume, then John Black from their litters. He
examined each man briefly, then thrust them towards his men, who
stripped them of any valuables they found.
Behind her Tallie heard Monique shrieking as she was robbed of her
finery. A slap rang out and a bandit laughed. John Black swore in a
litany of solid English curses and surged forward. A scuffle broke
out. There was a loud crack and John Black fell to the ground,
groaning and clutching his head. Guillaume and Maguire did not stir.
Guillaume looked terrified. Maguire seemed unmoved. After a moment,
to Tallie's relief, John Black struggled to his feet, shaken but
apparently still in one piece. A bandit tied his hands.
The bandit leader turned and dragged Magnus from his litter.
"Leggo of me, damn y'r eyes!" muttered Magnus, swaying as he stood,
trying to fend off the bandit.
"Aha, our arrogant English milord, I presume," said the bandit leader
in excellent French, and he bowed mockingl
y as he drew the money belt
from Magnus's waist.
Tallie's eyes widened. This ragged villain was no simple peasant.
Magnus swayed again, and the bandit grabbed him by the coat,
laughing.
"Is it drunk you are, my fine English milord? Or are you a coward,
like the rest of your kind?"
"He's nothing of the sort! He's ill," shouted Tallie furiously,
struggling to clamber out of her litter. She freed herself, scrambled
out and rushed over to her husband, thrusting her body between him and
the bandit.
"Leave him alone. He's ill. Can't you see?"
The bandit snorted. His green eyes narrowed.
"He is, otherwise he would have shot you dead, you villain!" Tallie
said fiercely, wedging her shoulder under Magnus's to support his
swaying form.
The bandit looked at Magnus again and spat on the ground.
"Pah, look at him! He's shaking with fright!"
"He's shaking with fever Tallie retorted angrily, wiping her husband's