Cascade

by Lisa T. Bergren

  “Uh oh,” Lia whispered. “Day Seven.”

  Our mom wasn’t one of your average, cozy, hovering, wanna-know-it-all kind of moms. She was more of a communicator on an as-needed basis. She had discussions with me and Lia. And sure, we knew she loved us with a crazy kind of passion. But we’d grown up with her mostly distracted, six out of seven days a week. She had an intensity of focus that I hadn’t really seen in many others; maybe it was the scholar in her. But once in a while, she’d pop into what we called Day Seven—even if it was literally Day Five or Day Ten—and act like she was trying to make up for lost time.

  Lia pulled back and rode beside Luca for a while, while Mom pulled up next to me. She glanced around at the hills, the grass brown and fading but still holding a thick sheen, like a doeskin-colored velvet. “Think we’re safe, Gabriella?”

  I glanced around and shrugged. “As safe as we can be with a hundred men ready to lay down their lives for us.”

  “That’s pretty cavalier.”

  I wasn’t really sure what cavalier meant, but I could guess from her tone. A Whatever sort of mode. “Yeah, go through a few battles where you almost lose your life and this seems like a vacation,” I said. “Or just like every other time we’ve been in Toscana. I mean, beyond…well, you know.”

  Her eyes grew distant, and she bent to pat her horse’s neck.

  I felt a pang of guilt. She was thinking of Dad. I knew she was. Of him dying. And I’d made her think about it. Nothing this year felt like “any other,” even before we were leaping through time. Maybe it was uncool of me, acting like I didn’t really care. “I, uh, can’t really think about it, much. I mean, I stay ready all the time. But if I obsess about death, then I can’t enjoy being here, now.” My eyes flicked toward Marcello, and she followed my gaze.

  “Is that what this really is, Gabi? The ultimate opportunity to run away?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t do this to get away. It just happened. But now that I’m here…now that Marcello is a part of my life…It’s hard to describe. But I’d say it’s more like running to something than running away.” I glanced at her. “Would I have brought you and Lia along if I wanted to run away?”

  “Not that you had much of a choice.”

  I smiled with her. “That’s true. But Mom, even if I didn’t need Lia to get here, if I had a choice, I’d never choose to leave you guys behind.”

  She looked out across the countryside, and we rode in silence for a bit. “Your dad lived in the moment,” she said, her tone heavy with an unexpressed sigh. “He’d be proud of you, Gabriella. You know that, right?”

  I thought of him and choked up unexpectedly. I blinked fast, not wanting to cry. But it hit me then. I wished he were here. With us. Just as I had wished a thousand times, back in our own age. It was just that…for a while, I’d been able to put him aside. Put the sadness aside. It was all so different…and now, suddenly, it was back, that freakin’ heavy blanket of grief.

  She reached out and touched my arm, making it worse. It was always worse when I was feeling vulnerable and then someone showed me compassion. I had to look away, focus on the horizon, think of anything but Dad for a minute. Then, when I knew she wasn’t letting me off the hook, I managed, “I know, Mom.”

  She seemed eager to lift my tension. “He’d be especially pleased to see your skill with the sword.”

  I smirked in response. Never in all my training had Dad considered I might need a sword as an actual weapon of defense—

  “Although I’m not certain he’d approve of what you did last night.”

  So…she’d heard. From Marcello? I let that sit a moment. “And you?”

  “I think you did what you had to.”

  I nodded. “You should know, Mom…that man would not have hesitated to slit my throat or Lia’s, if he’d had the chance.” I shivered, remembering how he’d leered at Lia when she’d been his prisoner.

  “Marcello told me.”

  I nodded, swallowing hateful, angry words. Just the thought of Lord Paratore made me want to throw up.

  “And he won’t be a threat to you now that he’s free?” she asked.

  “Marcello thinks he’ll be banished, sent away from Firenze forever. He’s as good as dead.”

  She paused. “I hope so.” I could see that she was again looking at Marcello. “Tell me of Marcello, Gabi. What you know of him.”

  I lifted a brow and then smiled, feeling suddenly shy. “He’s pretty amazing, Mom.”

  “I can see that. From what I’ve gathered in a week, anyway. But tell me, Gabi. Why do you think you might be in love?”

  I blinked a few times, a little taken back by her direct question. She didn’t say it in the dismissive way Lia said it. She was taking it seriously. I knew she was thinking, She’s too young…How can she know? But day by day, it became clearer and clearer to me. I loved Marcello.

  “Because he’s…Marcello Forelli,” I said lamely, as if that explained everything.

  A small smile turned my pretty mother’s lips upward. “And who is Marcello Forelli? Tell me. Pretend I’ve never met him.”

  I looked at him again and sighed. “He’s…so much, Mom. Brave. Strong. Dedicated. Smart. Tender, sometimes, in a way that always surprises me. Loving. And this is the wild thing…” I waited until she met my eyes again. “He’s totally into me.”

  Her smile grew wider, and she nodded. “It was only a matter of time. Before a guy finally worthy of my girl came her way.”

  My heart lurched. “So you’re okay with it?”

  She paused, and her smile faded a little. “I’m okay with it, Gabi. But in this place, they take romance very seriously.” She looked into my eyes. “Marcello has intimated…clearly, he assumes this romance is leading toward something very serious. Very permanent.”

  Marriage, she meant. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.” He kinda risked political suicide, opting for me over Romana.

  “Marriage,” she said with a sigh. “That, I’m not ready for.” She looked my way again. “You’re seventeen, Gabi—”

  “Almost eighteen,” I said. “In a few months.”

  “Even at eighteen,” she said, shaking her head. “Far too young to make a forever kind of promise.”

  My mouth got all dry. Half of me hoped she would block Marcello’s we-gotta-get-married pursuit. Or at least slow him down.

  The other half of me shook at the thought. Nothing, nothing could stand between me and Marcello! Not here. Not now. I couldn’t tolerate the thought of not being with him, every day, for as long as I could.

  “Just, please. Think about it,” Mom said. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  I remained silent. I was not so convinced. In fact, with every morning I awakened here, now, I wanted to stay more. But making my mom and Lia stay too? That wasn’t very fair.

  She studied me. “He means that much to you?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much,” I said miserably, feeling totally caught.

  “Then…at least take it slow, kiddo, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, eyebrows raised. “People around here seem to be all-in when it comes to settling down young.” It didn’t take an anthropologist to figure out that a lotta girls my age already had a kid or two at their hips. The castle and countryside were riddled with them. Giacinta, my redheaded maid, was already a young mother herself.

  “Well, with an average life span of forty years,” she mused, to herself mostly, slipping back into scientist mode, “they have to.”

  Forty years. That meant that Marcello’s life might almost be half over. He might only have twenty years left, if that. It made my heart pound a little. Twenty years used to seem like forever to me. This time-travel business was messing with my head.

  But one thing was clear to me: Any day I had with Marcello was something I was willing to fight for.

  The scouts told Marcello that there were no enemy troops about, and with a temporary peace treaty in place and a contingent of the Sienese betwee
n us and Florence, we again set out to check on Signora Giannini. Luca and Lia traveled with us, but Mom elected to ensconce herself in Fortino’s library, reading the texts in Latin as if she was committing each one to memory. It kind of irritated me, that she’d choose the books over us. But I was thankful for the reprieve, too. Already, my mom and I had spent more concentrated time together here in the last week than we had in the last three months at home. A little space felt good.

  Not that we had a lot of privacy. Even with the temporary peace agreement negotiated by Lord Greco and the men of Firenze who had been with Lord Rossi, twenty soldiers still rode beside us. My man was careful, vigilant, if a little over the top on that front. I took off on my mare, teasing him with a smile as I passed by. He urged his gelding into motion and soon was beside me, head down, pounding down the lane, keeping time with me. I looked over my shoulder; ten men were right behind us, the rest with Lia and Luca, who seemed intent on keeping their leisurely pace.

  Marcello’s grin made me smile too. In minutes, we reached the hilly farm and pulled up, panting, in a cloud of dust. I saw Signora Giannini outside her cottage, the children playing at her feet, and raised my arm in greeting. But she did not look our way. She was staring intently to the north.

  I followed the direction of her gaze down the hill. A man was dismounting, hobbling toward the cottage.

  Signora Giannini cried out. I frowned and gripped Marcello’s arm. “Marcello—”

  “No,” he said, his voice alight. “It’s all right. It’s Signore Giannini, her husband.”

  The woman cried out again and then broke free of the children and ran down the hill, skirts flying. Her husband made his way toward her, grappling with a crutch but hurrying as best he could. They met midway, and he reached out his arms as she slammed against him. They turned and turned, kissing, embracing, crying.

  The men around us cheered and called out bawdy things I thought only pirates in movies said. But they meant well.

  “You did that,” Marcello said.

  “What?”

  “That,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist, nodding toward the Gianninis. “You reunited them.”

  I remembered then. Figured out what he was saying. This man was one of the hundred that had been traded for Paratore. I grinned, thinking of this scene being replayed in ninety-nine other villages. How had I considered anything but this option?

  The children ran up to him, and he embraced them, lifting the smallest above his head, laughing. After a few moments, they looked our way, waving us forward as Lia and Luca and the other ten soldiers arrived. We went, eager to hear his story.

  But as soon as we drew near, I knew something was dreadfully wrong. The man’s eyes were ringed with purple and his leg was clearly injured. He was so bruised and swollen under his jaw, it looked like someone had tried to choke him. What suffering had the men endured in Firenze’s prisons?

  “M’lady, I owe you my life,” he said, bending to kiss my hand.

  I tried to be polite, smile and look into his eyes, but I had to fight the urge to pull my hand from his. His fingers looked liked they’d been dipped in oil, black from the last joint down. Stained, almost. As he moved away, I studied his neck. He hadn’t been choked—he had massive, discolored, swollen glands, one of which looked like it had burst. Marcello was shaking his hand, introducing him to Lia and Luca, when I finally figured it out.

  “Nay! Stop! Hasten away from him!” I cried. I bodily pulled Marcello several steps backward.

  The Gianninis stared at me, confused.

  “He’s ill! You’re ill, aren’t you?” I asked, forcing the edge of totally-freaking-out-ness from my voice. Calm down, Gabi. Calm down. Maybe it’s not what you think.

  “I have been through a great deal, m’lady. Certainly, I am not at my best—”

  I glanced at Lia and saw that she was worried too. “Mr. Giannini, what ails you?” she asked gently.

  “A fever,” he said reluctantly, reaching up to wipe his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. “But it comes and goes. Only the night sweats can be counted upon daily.” He forced a smile. “I simply need to be home, eating my wife’s good soup, cuddling with the children. I’ll be well and among the vines in a few days’ time, you’ll see.”

  But he was wrong, seriously wrong. Frowning, I looked to Marcello.

  “What is it, Gabriella?” he asked, his brown eyes hooded by his worried brow.

  “Plague,” I said.

  CHAPTER 10

  A knight near me overheard. “He has the plague?”

  “Plague?” cried another.

  The first knight backed up, and others moved back with him. There were certainly no more deadly words than those in this day and age.

  It was far worse than war.

  I looked to Lia and whispered, “I thought we had some years, yet.”

  “It probably didn’t all happen at once,” she whispered back. “Maybe an early strain that died out?”

  Waves of it. Right. Like colds and flu at school—you just got over one bug, and another came around.

  “Nay, nay,” said Signora Giannini, bringing a fist to her mouth and taking her husband’s arm. “He has no such thing. No such thing,” she repeated angrily, as if it would make it true. Like No. Such. Thing.

  The children sensed the mood shift, and one begged to be taken up into his father’s arms. Automatically, the man bent and lifted her.

  “You must not touch them!” I shouted, figuring out I had to see this through, as much as I hated to. How much had we all been exposed, already? I shoved away the memory of him kissing my hand. “Forgive me,” I said sorrowfully, trying to quit shouting and adding to the chaos. “I loathe this more than you can imagine. I know how you’ve longed to be reunited, but Signore Giannini,” I said appealing to him, “your illness, if it is not plague, will still need to be treated as such. Consider your family. You do not want to endanger them, do you?”

  He paused and then shook his head as if it pained him.

  “Nay!” his wife cried, looking like she wanted to claw my eyes out for suggesting it. “I shall not leave him!”

  I wished I knew more about the plague…was there any sort of treatment other than treating the symptoms? Anything in our medical kit that might help? Were we all exposed already? Or only those of us who’d neared the man? If only Mom had come along…But then she’d have been exposed too. Thank You, God, I said to Him, in my head. Keep her safe. Please, please keep her safe.

  I looked to Lia, and she understood my unspoken question. “I read once,” she said, “that it is best to quarantine. And burn all the clothes. It takes seven to ten days to find out if those exposed will…exhibit the symptoms.”

  I glanced at Marcello.

  We were in a world of hurt.

  Trapped outside the castello.

  Needing to be quarantined ourselves.

  A target for enemies.

  And unable to attend the wedding festivities of Fortino and Romana.

  Lots and lots of people were going to be seriously cranky.

  Three knights had mounted up. “M’lord, we must retreat, back to the castello,” said one.

  “Marcello,” I hissed, “they must remain.”

  He turned to them and barked, “Dismount! At once!”

  Reluctantly, they returned to the ground, holding their reins in their hands.

  Marcello turned to face me and Lia and Luca. “What is our best course?”

  All three of them looked at me. “I know only a little. Lia’s the one that’s read something on this—”

  “A novel, Gabi. Fiction. I know not how to treat the plague.”

  “If it is plague. We’re guessing.” I looked at Marcello. “Have you heard reports of it, out of Firenze?”

  He shook his head. “But few cities would be apt to herald such news. All commerce stops for a city battling such illness.”

  “So instead they simply export the pestilence,” I said bitterly. “The men of
Firenze must have laughed under their breath when they sent sick Sienese soldiers home.”

  “Might not the knights that arrived with me and Lia return to the castello?” Luca asked, glancing back. “They were a good distance apart from us.”

  I shook my head. “Others have mingled with them.” I splayed out my hands, then checked out a fleck of black on my pinkie. Only dirt. “We’ve intermingled. That is the difficulty of this disease. It’s so rapidly passed along…we have to be certain.”

  “But if they remain with us, they risk exposure again,” Marcello said.

  “We can try—keep them separated. Tell them, quickly.”

  Luca turned and shouted to the men, “Those who arrived with me, separate yourselves. Go down to that oak at the bottom of the field until we give you further direction.” He lifted a warning finger. “No one, no one is to depart without my leave.”

  He looked fierce, like he’d hunt down and kill anyone who tried to escape. There was none of the customary happy glimmer in his eye.

  “We need seven days, mayhap more,” I said to Marcello. “There are twenty-eight of us. Where can we go? Someplace where few others travel. We’ll need shelter, food, access to some supplies.”

  Luca eyed Marcello. “We could go to the old Orci villa.”

  Marcello shook his head. “We cannot defend her.”

  Luca cocked a brow. “It’s as defensible as we’ll find. Off the main roads. And only ten or so servants to displace.”

  Marcello studied him a moment and then looked to me. “He may be right. It’s an old walled villa on a hill. It once belonged to my mother’s parents and has been somewhat maintained by my father. But it takes us closer to the border. And it’s hardly the castello. We would not be able to repel an outright attack.”

  “If we all become ill, it will hardly matter,” Luca said.

  “Might we wait until dusk and make our way under cover of darkness?” I said, shoving down the thought of us all stricken with plague, with no one to care for us. It was enough to send the hypochondriac in me into full-on panic. I was already fighting the urge to go running to the tiny Giannini cottage and dip my hands into a cauldron of scalding water. “If we reach the Orci villa with no one seeing us, we can swear the ten servants we displace to silence.”