Rose Red

by Speer, Flora

  Gradually, the shouts and screams moved off into the distance. Bianca could still hear the noise, but it sounded farther and farther away. Save for a few groans, all was silent when she finally dared to step out from her velvet hiding place for a second time. She found the once lovely room in a state of terrifying disarray. Her father’s chair was tipped onto its side and many of the curtains had been slashed or pulled down from their poles. The gold-embroidered green velvet hung in long strips that trailed across the polished floor. In places the green was stained with a red that was still wet. In addition to the guard lying near her, there were several other men on the floor, all of them unmoving.

  Bianca saw that her father was on the floor, too. He was lying very still, with a dagger buried up to its hilt in his chest. After wiping her wet cheeks and runny nose on her sleeve, Bianca went to him, walking through rivers of blood, tripping over unmoving arms and legs, ignoring the last moans of the one guard left alive. Those moans trailed off into silence as Bianca crossed the room.

  “Father?” With her eyes now dry and burning, Bianca sank to her knees, not noticing the sticky wetness that seeped through her skirts. “Father, please speak to me.”

  Bianca laid her head on her father’s shoulder, hoping for some response from him. There was none, and when she opened her eyes wide, all she could see was the gold hilt of the dagger that had ended his life. She stayed where she was for a long time, unable to move, her dress soaked in her father’s blood, the only creature alive in a room filled with death.

  “Merciful God in heaven!” Bartolomeo’s voice penetrated Bianca’s languor. “I could not believe the terrible news, but now I see it’s true.”

  “The child was here.” The second speaker was a guard whom Bianca knew. “Bartolomeo, she is so still. Is she dead, too? Or have her wits fled at the awful sights she has beheld in this room?”

  “Dead or alive, she comes with us.” Bartolomeo swooped down on Bianca, gathering up her small form, cradling her against his shoulder.

  “The duke is dead,” said the guard, bending over the red-robed form.

  “I can see as much, Lorenzo.” Bartolomeo’s voice cracked, as if he wanted to cry, but couldn’t. “Come along. We have no choice but to leave him. There isn’t much time before those bloodthirsty mercenaries return. They only left the room because they thought everyone here was dead. We have to get Madonna Eleonora and her children to safety. It is what Girolamo would tell us to do if he could still speak to us.”

  Only when Bartolomeo started to carry her out of the reception room did Bianca stir.

  “Father!” Bianca stretched out her arms toward her unmoving parent. “I’m sorry. I tried to help, but the sword was too heavy.”

  “Thank God she’s alive,” Lorenzo said. “But keep her quiet or we won’t get out of the city.”

  “Bianca,” Bartolomeo said with quiet authority, “you are too small to lift a sword. You could not help your father, but you can help your mother by being a good girl. You must be very quiet, and very good, and do without question everything you are told to do. Can you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Bianca whispered. “I promise I will be good.”

  “I know you will. Your mother will be depending on you in the days ahead.”

  The last image of Bianca’ s dream was always the same, of Bartolomeo carrying her out of the reception room, while she looked over his shoulder at her laughing, active father lying so still, with a gold-hilted dagger in his chest. Her small arms stretched out to him as she wailed her apology and her grief – but silently, as Bartolomeo had ordered. For she knew, with the absolute certainty only a child’s heart can hold, that her father’s death was her fault. If she had not been naughty and run away from her nurse, if she had not interrupted him, and most of all, if only she had been brave enough and strong enough to pick up the sword of that fallen guard and join the fray, she might have saved him. If not for naughty little Bianca, her father might have lived.

  The grown-up Bianca understood in her mind that this was a child’s fantasy, that nothing could have saved Girolamo Farisi from the well-armed men who were determined to kill him for their own advantage. But deep inside her heart, in the place where all grown-ups remain children forever, Bianca recognized her own guilt. The only way she could make reparation for her naughtiness on that terrible day was by obeying Bartolomeo’s orders, by being a good girl, a quiet girl, a girl who caused no trouble to anyone, for the rest of her life, and by never, ever again giving her mother cause to worry about her or be annoyed with her.

  * * * * *

  Bianca sat shivering in her cold bedroom while the last, clinging tendrils of her nightmare dissolved. What was it about this night’s dream that was different? Was it really different, or was it just that something she had seen in it had struck a new chord in her memory? Was such a thing possible after so many years, after countless repetitions of the same scenes?

  “I cannot stay here,” Bianca whispered. “Not in this room. I have to talk to someone else. I need to touch another person.”

  She could not wake her mother. For years Bianca had hidden the fact of her repetitive dream from Eleonora, afraid the revelation would disturb her mother and make her unhappy. Bianca knew her mother was living with entirely too much unhappiness.

  Nor could she go to Bartolomeo or Valeria. Both of those loyal friends got such sad looks on their faces whenever the assassination of Girolamo Farisi was mentioned or even hinted at.

  There was only one person to whom Bianca could unburden herself. Rosalinda knew about the dreams. There had been many a night when Bianca had crept into Rosalinda’s bed, to huddle there against her sister’s warmth, to cry as quietly as she could while Rosalinda stroked her hair and whispered to her that it was only a nightmare and all would be well again as soon as the sun rose.

  Bianca slipped out of bed. She did not bother with either a candle or a shawl, for it was only a few steps along the corridor to Rosalinda’s bedchamber. She stepped into the dark, silent corridor and, keeping one hand on the wall, made her way to her sister’s room. Rosalinda was not there.

  “Where can she be?” Bianca drew back the window curtains to make certain. Moonlight spilled into the room, revealing the only sign of Rosalinda to be the tumbled bedclothes, tossed aside as if she had left the room in haste. The candle that was kept by her bed was gone. Obviously, something was amiss. Her own troubles forgotten in concern for her sister, Bianca headed for her mother’s room, in case Rosalinda had gone there.

  Then she saw a glimmer of light farther down the corridor. Thinking that Rosalinda might have gone to Bartolomeo because she had heard a threatening noise that Bartolomeo ought to investigate, Bianca moved toward the light. She soon realized that it did not come from Bartolomeo’s rooms, but from the open door to the servants’ stairs. What could Rosalinda be doing in the unused servants’ quarters, in the dead of night?

  Bianca paused on the landing, looking up toward the light, which she now saw was cast by a single candle held in her sister’s hand. Rosalinda was not alone. She was with a man, a man whose bare legs and feet extended below the shirt that was his only garment. The candlelight flickered on the man’s face and Bianca recognized Andrea. But Andrea ought to be miles away from Villa Serenita.

  Immobilized by shock, Bianca stared at the pair as Rosalinda tilted her face upward and Andrea kissed her on the mouth. The kiss went on and on and Bianca, watching, felt a peculiar warmth gathering inside herself, a sensation that made her yearn for someone to kiss her as thoroughly as Rosalinda was being kissed. Only when Rosalinda and Andrea drew apart to gaze tenderly into each other’s eyes did Bianca recover her own good sense.

  They must not see her. She retreated along the corridor, moving as quickly as she could in the dark. She heard the faint click of the latch on the door to the stairs, and then Rosalinda’s hurried, quiet footsteps. Bianca had reached Rosalinda’s room and she slipped inside, to press herself against the wall behind the open
door.

  Light from the candle Rosalinda carried revealed her sad, tear-streaked face. Not seeing Bianca standing in the shadows, Rosalinda pushed her bedroom door shut and went to set the candlestick on the bedside table.

  “Would you care to explain to me what you have been doing above-stairs with Andrea?” Bianca kept her voice to a whisper but still Rosalinda jerked, gasped, and spun around to face her.

  “What are you doing here?” Rosalinda’s eyes were huge and dark with pain, and full of tears.

  “I had the dream again and came looking for you, but you weren’t here so I searched for you. I saw you kissing Andrea, and he wearing naught but his shirt. I think you are the one who owes an explanation.”

  “I love him,” Rosalinda said.

  “That is no excuse for visiting a man in your nightgown, while he is all but undressed. What will Mother say?”

  “Mother knows he is here, and so does Bartolomeo. Bianca, please don’t tell anyone you saw Andrea and me together.”

  “Mother knows he is here?” Bianca repeated.

  “He is leaving in just an hour or so, and heaven alone knows when he will be able to return. I had to see him. I had to hear him say he has not forgotten me.”

  “Andrea comes and goes in secret, only Mother and Bartolomeo knowing of his movements? Dear God, what are they planning?”

  Into Bianca’s mind a picture flashed, of a dagger stabbing Andrea in the chest, as a dagger had once stabbed Girolamo Farisi. The image lasted only an instant, before Bianca blocked it out, unable to accept the possibility that someone else she knew might meet a similar, bloody fate. Immediately, the terrible picture was replaced by blind fury. “Do you realize how angry Mother will be when she learns of your visit to a man whose presence here she wants kept secret?”

  “She won’t know unless you tell her,” Rosalinda said.

  The two sisters stared at each other for a long moment before Bianca nodded once and turned away, determined to regain her self-control. She took a long, deep breath. It did little to calm the anger that filled her heart and her mind. A fair portion of that anger was directed at herself; only part was against her sister.

  “Bianca,” Rosalinda said softly, “I do love him. He has promised to return to me.”

  “If he lives long enough to return.”

  “Don’t say that!” Rosalinda cried.

  “Hush, you foolish girl, or you’ll wake the others.” Bianca stepped nearer. Her words might have been dipped in acid before they left her lips, so unerringly did they sear the close ties between the sisters, burning and hurting both of them. “How can you be so thoughtless, so careless of Mother’s feelings? While I – I have tried so hard to be good and never to cause any trouble or to worry Mother. I do everything she asks of me. I never complain. And for all my efforts-” Bianca broke off, choking back bitter sobs.

  “Mother loves both of us.” Rosalinda’s arms went around Bianca’s shoulders, holding fast even when Bianca tried to pull away. “Dearest sister, you cannot think that Mother loves me more than you. If it sometimes seems that way, it may be because I do get into trouble and worry her, while you do not, so I require more of her attention than you do. Mother knows she can always depend on you.”

  “Dependable, quiet, good little Bianca! Unnoticeable Bianca! Invisible Bianca!” With that, Bianca tore herself out of her sister’s arms and left Rosalinda’s room, where she could not bear to stay a moment longer.

  Chapter 9

  “Well?” Niccolo Stregone glared at the man standing before him. “Where did he go?”

  “Signore, forgive me.” The man’s teeth chattered in fear, though he was far larger and physically more powerful than his master. “These mountain trails – I am a man of the city, signore. I lost my way and lost the person I was following.”

  “Lost him?” Niccolo Stregone repeated, as if he could not believe what he was hearing. “Lost him?”

  “I beg you, forgive me, signore.”

  “Imbecille! Cretino! Incompetente-!” Stregone’s hand rested on his dagger. He would have liked nothing better than to slit the throat of the man who was now kneeling before him. But they were presently housed in a monastery, in a pitiful little cell with none of the luxuries to which Stregone was accustomed. He detested everything about the monastery and could not understand why Luca Nardi should make a habit of visiting

  it two or three times a year.

  Unless, of course, there was some reason other than the state of his soul that brought Luca Nardi to such a desolate location. Since Nardi himself was far too valuable to the Guidi rulers of Monteferro to be dragged to the castello and interrogated under torture, as Stregone wanted to question the head of the House of Nardi to obtain all his secrets, then another way must be found.

  Stregone had set his spies to watch Luca Nardi day and night, to discover all they could about his opinions, habits, and activities both social and political. Having learned enough interesting details to make him even more curious about Nardi, Stregone had then directed a supposedly trustworthy spy to trail the mysterious young man who had recently paid several clandestine visits to Nardi’s house. From the description furnished by his people, Stregone thought he knew who the young man was. He considered the matter important enough to prompt him to leave Monteferro and venture into the mountains on the heels of his own spy, who had now most ineptly lost the young man.

  “Signore?”

  The wretched spy looked up at him, a situation Niccolo Stregone found entirely pleasing. It was always a delight to force others to their knees – or onto their bellies or backs – so he could look down on them. Being of abnormally short stature himself, Stregone cherished a deep resentment against big, strong, handsome men.

  “Signore,” the spy said, his voice quavering in fear, “shall I return to the place where I lost the man I was tracking, and try to find him again?”

  “Of course not, you fool. He is long gone from that location by now. No, I want you to carry a message for me.”

  “A message, signore?”

  “Yes, a message, you dolt. What kind of a spy are you, that you cannot understand a simple statement? Don’t worry, you won’t have to remember what I want to say. I will write it down and you will deliver it only into the hands of Marco Guidi himself.”

  Stregone found parchment and quill on the small table in the room. Quickly, he wrote the message. When he was finished he folded and sealed it, wishing he could be present when Marco Guidi read it, so he could see the smile on the face of that most bloodthirsty nobleman. The river that ran through Monteferro was deep and swift in early springtime. Dumped into that river, a man’s body would be carried out to sea before he was missed, and no one would be the wiser about his fate.

  The spy who remained on his knees, looking distinctly relieved to be sent away from the mountains and the presence of Niccolo Stregone, would never make another stupid mistake like the one he had made this day. Only at his journey’s end would he realize that the message he carried to Marco Guidi contained in its postscript his own death warrant.

  “Before you go,” Stregone said, handing the sealed parchment to the spy, “I want you to tell me exactly where you tracked that young man you were following. Give me every detail you can remember about the last place you saw him and the direction you believe he was taking.”

  “Are you going to track him yourself, signore?” asked the spy.

  “Indeed, I am. I could not possibly do a worse job than you have done, could I?” Stregone said. “Besides, I have other business to conduct while I am in this area. I can kill two birds as easily as one.” Stregone smiled at his own words.

  Seeing him smile, the spy shuddered.

  Chapter 10

  As the spring weather grew warmer, relations between Bianca and Rosalinda grew steadily cooler. No matter how often Bianca might hint that she would listen without indulging in any further criticism and would keep her sister’s confidences, Rosalinda steadfastly refused to revea
l the entire story of what had happened on the night when she had met Andrea in the servants’ quarters. Bianca had some idea of what had occurred, but she did not like to think about it, for every time she did, she became aware of disturbing emotions of her own that she would prefer not to feel. All too often during those lengthening days, while she watched the earth turn green with the promise of fresh growth and eventual fruitfulness, Bianca found herself hard pressed to maintain her quiet, polite demeanor.

  Always before when she was upset she had been able to talk to her mother. That source of comfort was no longer available to her, for Eleonora was increasingly distracted and, on occasion, short-tempered. Bianca was sure the change in her mother had something to do with the secret plans that involved Andrea. Again, as with Rosalinda, Bianca could draw no information out of this other beloved relative. Never had Bianca been so lonely, never had her desire to be a good and perfect daughter and sister seemed so unattainable. She did not know how much longer she could contain her anger or that other, unidentifiable, emotion that sometimes threatened to choke her.

  “I am going riding,” Rosalinda announced one sunny afternoon. “Mother, you cannot object. Bianca and I have finished our lessons and our household chores for today. The snow has melted except in the highest passes, and I promise I will not go near them. I will stay in the valley and the lower hills.”

  “I wish you would remain at home,” Eleonora said.

  “If I do, I am certain to get into trouble,” Rosalinda said, only half joking. “I am so bored that I hardly know what to do with myself.”

  “Then take one of the men-at-arms with you. I do not like you to ride alone.”

  “No, I don’t want a man along.” Rosalinda paused, regarding her sister with a speculative gleam in her eyes. “However, I would enjoy Bianca’s company. Tell her to go with me, Mother. You know if we are together, I won’t venture into rough territory.”