DELUGE

by Lisa T. Bergren

  “Come here, Wife. If I am to tell tales rather than think of other things, I shall at least have you close by my side.”

  I smiled and eased over to him, settling my cheek in the crook of his arm and chest. It felt good to be beside him, to reach my arm across his torso and hold him even as he held me. His right arm, beneath my head, left his hand free to curve up and around my head. He stroked my temple as he stared at the ceiling of our room. Unlike Gabi and Marcello’s, it was naught but rough wooden slats and beams. But it felt warm to me, welcome.

  “They knew we trailed them, of course,” he began. I remained silent. “They took shelter in the first town they could, convincing some within to provide cover for them and serve as guards when they left. It wasn’t a heavily fortified town, but there was a decent wall and too many men for the twenty-two of us to conquer. They tarried for days, mayhap hoping that we would give up and depart. But we did not simply sit there. We became familiar with the road they would need to cross when they finally tried for Firenze. And we laid in wait for the unwise boys they sent with missives to their comrades in Firenze, hoping for reinforcements.”

  “You killed them?” I asked in consternation.

  “Nay, nay. We simply unhorsed them and relieved them of their responsibility. They were told to hide in the woods until it was all over. Our quarrel was not with them, but the men their town harbored. After a couple of days, the Fiorentini knew their letters had not made it through. If they had, men would have answered their call. And the townspeople, agitated when the fourth of their sons did not return, likely were ready to cast them out. They emerged yesterday.”

  A slow smile spread across his face, and his eyes glinted. “I must say, it was rather delightful. We sprung one trap after another, and within an hour, it was only Barbato and Orazio left.”

  “Foraboschi is dead?”

  “Indeed,” he said, practically spitting the word as if he were spitting out the aftertaste of the foul man. “We surrounded them, and Barbato had a knife to Orazio’s throat. Your poor cousin was in such poor form that I fretted he might collapse on the evil little man’s dagger.”

  “Orazio?” I said. “He’s wounded?” I sat up, my hair falling around my shoulders. I remembered he’d been battered and bleeding days ago on the beach…had they continued to harm him?

  “Wounded, yes, but he will recover,” Luca said, his eyes drifting down and over me. “Especially once we get him to the tunnel today, right?” He lifted a hand to my face and traced my cheek and neck and shoulder with an uncommonly light touch. “You know how a turn in Normandy can fix a body.”

  I took a deep breath, remembering it well. Gabi, so near death…

  “Still,” I said, turning away from him and reaching for my shift. I pulled it over my head and body, ignoring my husband’s groan of complaint. “He might need to get there now.”

  Luca reached out to clasp my wrist. “Now-now?”

  “I don’t know! We need to find out. You told me all were whole and hale last night!”

  It was Luca’s turn to sigh. “Very well,” he said, rubbing his eyes and face. “We’ll see off your Norman cousin. But then we return here. To this very room. Agreed? Marcello has relieved me of three days of duty to celebrate our wedding, and I intend to make the most of every hour.”

  I grinned. “Agreed.” I tossed him his shirt and leggings and went off to find my own overdress.

  It turned out that Orazio was worse off than Luca thought. We found Mom and Dad attending him in the den. He was stripped to the waist, and we could see the dark, ugly bruising that covered his belly like a cloud of poison.

  I whipped my head toward Luca. “I thought you said he would be all right!”

  “He was! At least he was last night when we returned!”

  “He bleeds within,” Mom said under her breath as two maids left the room. Luca crossed himself.

  “He lost consciousness an hour ago. We’d hoped we could stabilize him overnight, to make it easier today,” she said, giving me a meaningful look, “as well as talk to them both a bit before…” Her words trailed off, but I understood. We hadn’t had time to make a plan. As much as you could plan time travel.

  “We’ll just have to tell Galileo,” I said, my eyes moving to Orazio’s brother, looking as if he’d remained up all night, his eyes heavy and hooded.

  “Lia,” Mom said, grabbing my wrist as I moved toward them. “I’m not certain that Orazio will make it,” she whispered in English.

  “Then we need to get them to the tunnel,” I whispered back. “Immediately.”

  “And how do we do that? Explain that to me. Carrying him out on a stretcher and returning an hour later without him?”

  Gabi and Marcello arrived then. “What’s up?” she asked in English, joining our circle. Her dark brows arched in concern.

  “Orazio’s bad,” I said. “We’ve gotta get them to the tunnel. Stat.”

  “But how will he…” Mom began. “He cannot even stand!”

  “Lascia,” Marcello said to a knight on guard by the door and another maid, asking them to leave. Both immediately did so, quietly closing the door behind them.

  “Cease your use of the foreign tongue,” Marcello said to us, lifting a hand to rub his forehead. “Speak in ours.”

  “We need to get them to the tunnel,” Gabi said. “Send them. It shall heal Orazio as it once healed me.”

  “Were you as bad off as Orazio?” Dad asked doubtfully.

  “She was,” Marcello said steadily. “Frightfully near death.”

  I nodded. “He had to put her hand on the print himself.”

  Dad turned new eyes of respect toward Marcello. “You sent my girl on blind faith?”

  “It was our only option,” he said, a hint of misery in his eyes at the mere memory.

  “She arrived in Normandy,” Mom said, “with nothing but a scar that looked three years old and a blood stain far fresher.”

  Dad blanched. He looked to Orazio as Galileo rose. “Then let us get them to it. We’ll tell the others we’re taking him to a healer.” He eyed us all. “It’s the truth, of a fashion.”

  Marcello and Luca shared a look, both with hands on their hips. “What shall we tell the men?”

  Luca shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, shrugging. “We owe them no explanation. We shall send scouts ahead of us, as far as Castello Greco, making certain the road is clear. Then I’ll send patrols out with the instructions that anyone not belonging to the castello is to be escorted out of Forelli territory.”

  “The tongues shall wag,” Marcello said with a snort.

  Luca shrugged again. “The tongues shall wag, regardless.”

  “We need to move. Now,” Dad said, his fingers resting on Orazio’s neck, feeling for a pulse. “He fades while we discuss it.”

  Luca waited on Marcello, and when Marcello nodded, he moved. I looked at Gabi. Could we really pull this off? Get him to the tombs, unseen? And get home and come up with some sort of story that everyone would buy? I doubted it. But with another look at the fear on Dad’s face, I knew we had to try.

  I began covering Orazio up and opened the door to the hall to ask the maid to fetch an additional cloak for Galileo. “We are taking our cousin to a traveling physician we met,” I said. I turned toward the knight. “Tell the squires in the stables to saddle nine horses.”

  “Yes, m’lady,” he said. I didn’t miss that there was just a tiny bit more deference in his tone. Was this what came of becoming Captain Forelli’s bride? I didn’t know. But I liked it.

  We moved Orazio to a hastily made stretcher and Marcello and Luca carried him to the stables themselves. There, Celso and Otello helped them secure it between two horses, a set-up I hadn’t seen since the day we brought Gabi home from Roma. Captain Pezzati was arguing softly in a corner with Marcello, clearly perplexed by our plan.

  “Enough!” Luca said abruptly, his hand slicing through the air. “It’s decided. Simply see it done!”

&nb
sp; The elder Pezzati stared at Luca, the ranking captain, his jaw muscles clenching with tension. “Yes, sir,” he said, a half second later than was normal. “I shall see it done. May I at least assign four men to attend you?”

  “Nay,” Marcello and Luca both said at once.

  Captain Pezzati eyed one after the other, clearly aware that something odd was up, and then turned on his heel and left.

  Marcello sighed. He looked to the two knights still in the stables with us. “See that those patrols are thorough in their task,” he said.

  “Yes, m’lord,” said Falito, tense.

  Marcello and Luca helped me and Gabi mount. I knew they’d rather we remain here, but they knew we’d never stay. Not when what was about to come down was comin’ down. Mom and Dad led the way, exiting the stables and then the outer gates. The entire castello had fallen silent, word obviously spreading that our cousin was nearing death, and we were on a mad, odd quest to get him to an unknown physician. Tomas and Adela watched us go, his arm around her shoulders, questions running across their foreheads like a ticker-tape. We ignored even them, pretending not to notice.

  Outside the gates, Marcello looked up. “We shall return by nightfall.”

  “Yes, m’lord!” called Otello. “Go with God and may the young Lord Betarrini be saved.”

  Marcello nodded, and we headed out. As we traveled the well known path toward Castello Greco, once Castello Paratore, I found myself praying for Orazio. It was nothing more than a simple petition—Please save him, Lord. Please let the tunnel work for them as it worked for us. Please, please, please… But it gave my heart a focus even as my mind whirled.

  The half-mile to the riverbed and the climb up the hill to the tombs seemed to take longer than ever. It was cold, our breath fogging before our mouths and from the horses’ nostrils. I tugged my cloak closer, shoving away the sensation that it was the cold of death rather than the cold of winter upon us.

  But finally we were there, and it appeared as if the Forelli patrols had done well in clearing the way. We’d not encountered another traveler or villager upon the road, and timed our entry to the tomb meadow so that the guards on the wall of Castello Greco did not see us. Swiftly, we rolled away the rock at the mouth of Tomb Two and entered, one by one. Luca dragged Orazio in, his hands beneath the man’s armpits. Marcello was last. “No one else in sight,” he confirmed in a whisper as he straightened inside the narrow passage.

  We all looked up to the handprints. “Do they look like the others?” Mom asked Galileo.

  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Nearly exact.” Faltering a little, he approached them and reached up to the larger print on the left.

  I held my breath.

  We all held our breath.

  “It’s warm,” he said after a tense moment, relief sending wrinkles to his brow as if he might cry. “Hot,” he amended.

  Mom and Dad went to him. “You know what to do,” Mom said. “We’re counting on you.”

  I squinted, wondering what she meant. Counting on them? For what?

  “Do not forget all we spoke of,” Dad added.

  “I will not,” Galileo pledged. “We owe you our lives.” He took Dad’s arm and pulled him closer to kiss both his cheeks. “You can count on us.” Quickly, he moved to do the same with Mom. I knew they’d been spending some time together these last days as we awaited the men’s return, but what exactly had transpired between them?

  “We must make haste,” Luca said grimly, his hand on Orazio’s neck. “He is fading…” He rose, and together with Marcello, they each took an arm over a shoulder and lifted Orazio between them. Marcello took his right hand in his own and lifted it above the print, just as he had Gabi’s. Chills ran down my body at the memory.

  “Wait!” I cried. “How is it that you did not go with Gabi, last time you held her?”

  Everyone froze.

  “How is it that you did not travel back in time with us, as Mom and Dad did when they held on to us?” I pressed.

  Marcello frowned and looked to Gabi, searching his memory. After a moment, his dark brows lifted. “I believe I held her…but it was as if I offered her.” He shook his head, eyes locked on his wife. “I offered her to God. I didn’t try to hold her. Keep her.”

  Gabi nodded slowly, her eyes running across Orazio, who was inhaling in a rasping gasp now. “That’s it,” she said. “Hold him upright, but do not hold him tight,” she said. “We don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “Nay,” I said.

  “I understand. Are you ready?” Marcello asked Galileo.

  “Thank you, everyone,” Galileo said, looking each of us in the eye. “For everything.”

  “Just go. Live to old age. And speak not of it,” Luca said gruffly. “We need no other visitors from Normandy.”

  Orazio began to convulse, a terrible gagging sound coming from his throat. The men struggled to hold him.

  Galileo looked to Marcello, panic in his eyes. “Ora.” Now.

  Marcello dragged Orazio’s hand down, fingers splayed, as he had once done with Gabi’s.

  A blinding light flashed, and we all were pushed back, as if a sonic wave had come through. The sound was like a deep-timbered burst, making our ears pop.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness again.

  The Betarrini boys were gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  GABRIELLA

  We all took a collective breath. Lia had hold of my arm, as if she’d feared I’d fall, but I felt oddly steady on my feet. A smile spread across my face.

  “We did it.”

  Dad tucked his head and lifted a hand to the prints where, seconds before, Orazio and Galileo had stood.

  “Well, they did it.”

  He stepped forward and peered at the handprints from inches away, as if there’d be some clue as to their odd power.

  “Do you think it will save him?” Marcello asked, turning grave eyes on me. He looked a bit wan, and I understood that he was remembering me disappearing from his arms, as Orazio had just done.

  I went to him and wrapped my arms around his strong torso. “I hope so. I think…I think because they were able to…travel, because Orazio yet had that strength in him, he’s likely to survive. I imagine even now they’re emerging from the tomb, trying to sneak by archeological site guards.”

  The Betarrini boys had told us that in their time, decades after we’d left, there was nothing inside the tombs. Everything had been removed by archeologists to museums and labs to be examined. But the frescoes had remained. And those prints…They’d not seen them in any other Etruscan tomb find, other than the one they’d used and this one.

  “Think they made it back to their time? To the future?” Lia asked. “Or ours?”

  Dad scowled at her. “Wonderful. They might not only mess with one era’s history, but another.”

  “They’ll take care,” Lia said. “You drilled it into them, right?”

  “At least they yet live,” I said with a sigh. “The rest is in God’s hands.”

  Dad gave me a long, thoughtful look. “Indeed.”

  “What now?” I asked Marcello. “If we return right away, everyone will wonder about a physician we trust, so close to the castello. People far and wide might set out after him, in search of a cure for what ails them.”

  “We tarry a while,” he said. He looked around the dome-like tomb. “But not in here. Let us ride a few hours. We shall place rocks on the stretcher so that it appears as if a man is still atop it. If anyone sees us, mayhap they shall not remember we were still one too few in number.”

  It was as good a plan as any. I knew we were in pretty sketchy territory. We just needed a story we could all stick to.

  I gathered up my skirts and crawled out the tunnel and emerged outside, blinking in the bright light of a frigid November morning. While it was still cold, the sun was climbing, doing its best to dispel the worst of the chill.

  But I started when I saw him
.

  Because once again, Lord Rodolfo Greco stood there, arms crossed, waiting for us to exit the tomb.

  “Rodolfo,” I began.

  He held up a gloved hand, shushing me as effectively as a stern principal. Marcello crawled out to join me, but Rodolfo looked past him, waiting, waiting…

  I knew, then. He’d seen us enter. With Orazio and Galileo. And now exit without them. I sighed, not really in the mood for another Greco inquisition.

  Mom and Dad exited. Then Lia and Luca.

  Rodolfo shook off his hand and ducked his head into the entrance, hand atop the doorway, peering into the dark. He looked back to us. “So ‘tis done? They’ve gone? Back from whence they came?”

  “’Tis best you not know the specifics, brother,” Marcello said slowly.

  Rodolfo moved closer, inches from his face. “I,” he said, “of all people, have proven worthy of knowing specifics. Brother.” He practically spat the last word. But I knew it was fear that drove his fury. “Tell me all of it,” Rodolfo grit out. “Those men? I assume they were your Betarrini cousins?” This time he looked to me.

  I gave him a slow nod. He already knew of the tomb’s capability, but why was I reluctant to share more?

  His dark eyes returned to me and my family. “So it is something within your blood that enables this witchcraft?”

  “’Tis not witchcraft,” I said, starting to reach out to touch him and then thinking better of it. “We said no spells. Indeed, we had no idea what would happen when we first laid our hands upon the prints. All we know is that it takes two of us, and the right two of us. My mother and father cannot do it. Only Lia and I, together. Only Galileo and Orazio, together.”

  “Then how does it occur? What is your explanation?”

  “I know not,” I said, with a slow shake of my head.

  “The light I saw, the sound…”

  “The moment it occurred,” I said. “The moment that Orazio and Galileo left us.”

  “They simply disappeared, as if struck by lightning?”

  It was as good an explanation as any. I nodded.

  “The one was injured,” he said, mumbling, as if overwhelmed by a cascade of thoughts. Then he straightened, head cocking toward me. “As you were once. After your injury. After you’d been poisoned…”