“This way,” he said, pointing to the altar.
I frowned at him in confusion but walked with him. Marcello came over to us. “Allow me, Gabriella.” He nodded to Tomas. “He is your friend?”
“He is,” I said, but I was eyeing Rodolfo as we passed him. Did he want out? Wish to come with us, leave Firenze behind? What would he endure there, when he returned, having betrayed Lord Barbato?
“’Twas but an idle dream, m’lady, you and I,” he said with a gentle smile, but his eyes bore a measure of pain. “’Tis your truest path, to be with Lord Marcello.” His brown gaze shifted to his old friend. “By your life?”
“By my life,” Marcello returned, fist to his chest. “Gabriella shall reach safety.” He paused. “Come with us, Rodolfo. I’d see you well rewarded in Siena.”
“Go with him, traitor,” Barbato called out from ten feet away. “I shall see you hanged!”
Rodolfo looked over at him with tired eyes and then back to Marcello. “I cannot. Firenze holds my heart, as it has all along. The only treasonous act I’ve committed is refusing to claim a woman’s heart.” His eyes flicked to me, then back to Marcello. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I do not believe my brothers in Firenze shall hold that against me. Not for long, anyway.”
“My debt to you has doubled,” Marcello said, clasping his arm.
“There are no debts between brothers,” Rodolfo said.
The two men shared a long look, then we turned and Marcello helped Father Tomas to a staircase, directly behind the altar, then down the steep steps. We weren’t far behind—me, Mom and Dad, Lia and Luca. The last thing I saw of Rodolfo was a glimpse of the broad expanse of his back as he strode down the center of St. John’s, Lords Barbato and Vivaro yelling after him, while Captain Ruisi, the cardinal, and five other men struggled to get free.
I hoped Rodolfo would find love someday. I hoped he’d be safe.
The temperature dived with each step we took down into an ancient grotto. We gaped for a moment at the ancient face of rock—the two crypts, ornately carved of purple granite, and a line of limestone crypts. The graves of popes? Kings? Saints? But then Luca was tearing down the stairs behind us. “Our escape has been discovered. We must be off.”
Marcello turned toward Father Tomas. “Where?”
“That way,” said the priest, panting, looking a ghastly shade of gray.
We all looked toward a door with a big lock on it. Another tunnel.
“Where does it lead?” Marcello asked.
“Does it matter? ’Tis the only way!”
“You do not know,” Marcello said.
Father Tomas shrugged. “I had only heard of it from another who once served here. The clerics who serve here like to have a way out, should they be threatened.”
“Sounds like an escape route to me,” Luca said, glancing upward. We could hear the shouts of men.
Lia moved to the staircase, our shield, and drew an arrow. “I can give you a few minutes’ lead.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Dad said, giving Luca no opportunity. Luca turned, a knowing smile on his face. If Dad was protective over me, he was twice as protective over my little sis. Dad pulled out his sword, standing behind her.
Luca took Tomas’s arm over his shoulder to help him walk. “Do not fret, Father. This group has good experience hauling ill men through long, dark tunnels.”
I laughed under my breath. It was good, so good to be with all of them again. Together, I felt like we could do anything—face any enemy, make any escape.
I heard the thrum of Lia’s bowstring. A man cried out behind us, then rolled halfway down the steps, dead.
“Go!” Lia cried.
Marcello struck the iron lock, again and again, with the hilt of his sword, until it finally broke loose. He swung open the heavy door and then glanced back.
“Here,” Mom said, handing him a lit candle. She must’ve grabbed it from the altar upstairs. Always thinking, my mom, planning ahead…
Marcello took it gratefully, lit a torch at the end of the tunnel, broke off the candle and handed it back to Mom to light hers, as he tossed aside the gold candlestick. “Let it be said that the only thing we took from a church was a bride and some beeswax.” With a wink he took my hand in his, and we ran down the tunnel, with Luca hauling Tomas behind us, followed by Mom, then, finally, Dad and Lia. About fifty meters in, we came to another door.
“See if you can bar it once we’re on the other side!” Marcello called, rushing headlong down the tunnel. We knew that if Lia had given up her post, knights were surely already making their way in after us. A good archer might be able to pick off those of us at the back, even in the dark. The shaft was that straight.
We rushed through the doorway. I took half a breath when we heard the clang of it shut behind Lia and Dad.
“You do not know how glad I am to be with you again, Gabriella,” Marcello said over his shoulder, between pants.
“Only half as glad as I, m’lord,” I said. I grinned, feeling crazy—like we were running through a field of daisies, instead of for our lives. That insanely invincible kind of thing. Except on steroids. We ran for ten, then fifteen minutes, at a distinctly downward angle, until we abruptly met a closed door. We only narrowly stopped in time, so fast were we going. It had to be dark on the other side—there was no illuminated edge.
Marcello traced the frame of the door with the torch and then cursed under his breath, wiping his upper lip of sweat.
“What?”
“I can’t find a latch. It may be locked on the other side,” he said, giving it a shove with his shoulder. But it didn’t budge.
Luca and Father Tomas limped into our circle of light. We could see Mom’s bouncing torch, fifty feet beyond them. Luca unlooped Tomas’s arm from around his shoulders and led him to a seat, ten feet back into the tunnel. “Shall we?” he asked Marcello.
“I supposed we must,” my man said with a grin. He drew me back to Father Tomas, then pulled a sword from a sheath on his back. “I believe this is yours, m’lady,” he said.
I was almost as glad to have my broadsword back in my hands as I was to be with my people. I instantly felt stronger, more capable of taking on what was ahead. Whatever. I was happily buying the lie. Mom, Dad, and Lia arrived, and we heard the clang of the heavy door behind us. Mom glanced at me and hurriedly stomped out her torch. Not that it mattered much—Marcello still had his. We all moved to the edges of the tunnel, knowing an archer would try to send his first arrow down the center.
Marcello handed me the torch. Lia and I stood behind our guys, who stood shoulder to shoulder.
Judging from the noise behind us, we’d only have one chance at this. Please, God, please, God, please, God…
“One, two, three,” Marcello said. They ran toward the iron door at the end, and struck it together, Marcello with his left shoulder, Luca with his right.
The door immediately collapsed outward, with them on top of it.
Lia and I ran past them, all tough and SWAT-like, into a tiny piazza with a well at the center, searching in all directions for knights who would attack. But we only saw a tiny old woman, a cured ham in her hands. Her toothless mouth dropped open as she stared at us. But Marcello and Luca were already on the move. Clutching his shoulder as if it pained him, Marcello took my hand as Father Tomas, Mom, and Dad emerged. Luca resumed his position under Tomas’s arm, and Marcello looked back at him. “Do you know where we are?” he asked the priest, glancing about the piazza. All around us were two-story houses, making it impossible to guess our location.
He shook his head. “I am a man of Firenze and the countryside. I’ve spent precious little time in Roma.”
“We must get to Piazza Vesuvius,” Marcello demanded of the little old woman. “How far is that?”
She drew up to her full height of perhaps four feet, ten inches, and gave him a Don’t-You-Be-Impolite-With-Me look. In Italia, no young man spoke to older women in such a manner. I heard him groan,
and he left my side to look down each of the four ways out of the piazza, seeking a landmark.
“La chiedo scusa, ma siamo in pericolo,” I tried. I beg your pardon. But we are in danger… “Can you tell us how to get to the Piazza Vesuvius, please?”
She gave Marcello another grandmotherly look of reproach and then glanced at me, in my crazy toga gown and hair down, sword in hand. “Amdiamoci.” That way, she said in a tone that said enough with the crazy, rude kids these days, hooking a thumb over her shoulder, toward one cobblestone street. She narrowly stepped aside to watch us all head out in a rush.
Dimly I wondered how long it would take her to connect the news of the second escape of Lady Betarrini from a forced wedding ceremony with the people she’d seen this night. I shivered as we reached the end of the street and saw the Tiber River. With one glance Marcello had his bearings, and after tucking my sword in his second sheath, he abruptly pulled me left.
We hurried as fast as we could, walking single file—except for Luca and Tomas—down the road that bordered the river. How far? I wondered. But I dared not ask. We were staying silent, trying not to attract any more attention than necessary.
But the bells behind us were ringing in alarm, and I kept getting curious looks at my dirty toga and hair—I was drawing entirely too much attention.
“We have to find you new clothes,” Marcello said.
“A decoy,” I returned. “Let us find a woman about my height, with dark hair. You have gold with you?”
He smiled back into my eyes, figuring out my plan. “I do. You intend to spend it?”
“I hope to.” We hurried along, but few women were out at this hour, and those that we met were too short, too fat, too thin…until we met one that looked about right. “Perdonami,” I said. Excuse me. I touched her arm, and she glanced at me in such alarm and distaste, I took a breath in surprise. It was then I realized that everyone on the street believed I was a prostitute.
Marcello took over. “Ho una proposta per lei.” I have a deal for you. “I’ll give you two gold florins if you trade your gown for my lady’s costume.”
She laughed as if he were crazy and looked me up and down, then back to him. “Her costume is worth nothing to me.”
“But it is worth a great deal to us. Please, sell us your dress. Exchange it with my lady, and I shall pay you.”
“Nay. If my neighbors, my friends were to see me in such a dress—”
“Three florins.”
A gold florin had to be enough to feed a large family for what? A month? A year?
“Five,” she dared.
“Four,” he said, nudging her into a shop, me right behind. “But you must swear you’ll wear the toga until morning.”
“For four florins? I’d wear about anything,” she quipped, looking back at him in the doorway.
Marcello smiled and told Luca and Lia to take the others to the stables and wait for us there, and then he followed us in. He slipped a coin over the merchant’s counter, lifting a finger to his lips, and held a curtain aside to the narrow back storeroom, urging me to hurry. He let it drop closed behind me. In the gap between the curtain and door casing, I could see his back as he turned to guard us.
The girl turned to me and I hurriedly unhooked a line of twenty buttons down the dress, then untied the rope at my waist, smiling as I saw that it had left a line of white where it had protected the dirt-stained cloth. I really was the dirtiest bride on record.…
“What happened to you, m’lady?” she whispered, as we traded gowns.
“’Tis better for you if you do not know. All you shall say, if you are discovered, is that you were paid handsomely for your old dress. No one shall blame you for accepting such an offer.”
She smiled, curiosity alive in her eyes, as she turned and slipped on the toga, while I did the same with her gown, nearly gagging at the scent of BO. I concentrated on breathing through my mouth, not my nose. Not that she’s getting a precious, laundry-fresh dress, herself…She’d have to burn it when she got home. With four gold coins she could purchase five new dresses and still have a total stash left over.
While she buttoned me up, I wound my hair into a knot and took the carved pins she offered me. When I turned back around, I smiled at the sight of her hair down around her shoulders. “Frightfully similar,” I said.
“It’s an honor to resemble Lady Betarrini,” she guessed in a whisper.
“Remember,” I said, shaking my head in warning, but smiling a little, “I never said so. And we were gone before you could sound an alarm.”
“Like poof! Phantoms, or wolves,” she said with another smile.
“Come,” Marcello said, reaching through for my arm. “We must be on our way.” He nodded to our friend and the merchant, and we left the store. It was then I noticed the neatly wrapped package beneath his arm. With my hand on his as we paraded down the street, we appeared the average Roman merchant and lady, returning home after a market stop. I froze as I saw a patrol of twelve Roman knights cantering around the corner ahead of us, but Marcello urged me on. “Continue to walk, Gabriella,” he said lowly, smiling and leaning closer to kiss my temple. “We belong here. I am staring at you, showing the world how in love with you I am,” he coached. “And you are watching the guards approach with interest, as if there’s nothing to hide.…”
I dragged my eyes from the cobblestones at my feet.
“Interesting, the commotion,” he whispered, as the knights neared, “first the bells, now the soldiers, searching.” He looked up with me then, to watch as the knights rode by, checking us out, then dismissing us, exactly as he had planned.
“Next time I get to be the girl in love, too distracted to watch,” I complained.
He laughed, and we picked up our pace. After we passed two more streets, we turned left and then directly right, into an alley that stank of manure. The stables must be ahead.
We emerged on the small square, with feeding and watering troughs on either end, and I saw that my parents, Lia, Luca, and Tomas were all mounted. “Up you go,” Marcello said, lifting me to my mount and handing me the reins as I slipped my feet into the stirrups. The saddle had a scabbard, and I slid my sword into it, hiding it quickly under my skirts as the stable master came outside. He was chewing on a loaf of bread, watching us go.
“For your silence,” Marcello said, flipping a coin into the air toward him.
He caught it, eyed Marcello, and smiled a close-lipped smile.
Chapter Nineteen
“All we must do is make it to the city walls,” Marcello said, leading our line out.
No problem, I thought. The city walls were still a mile or two distant, and now other bells were ringing. How long until word reached every citizen that we had escaped? Lord Vivaro had to be as mad as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, and Lord Barbato…well, I could seriously see him mouthing the words heads will roll, at that very instant.
Yeah, good luck, losers. In the company of my homies, I’d wager my chances any day. Even with Dad—so new to this time and their rough ways—and Father Tomas, weak from blood loss, together, we were strong.
And it was different from escaping Firenze that fateful night; most of Roma’s citizens took idle interest in us but really didn’t care one way or another if we lived or died. And they wouldn’t likely risk their own necks to capture us—we were Firenze’s enemies, not theirs.
Unless word of a reward spread. I sighed. If there was one thing Lords Barbato and Vivaro had, it was a seemingly endless supply of money. To throw lavish parties. Rebuild Roman baths. Hire mercenaries. And, surely, offer rewards. Lord Barbato knew he could ill afford our escape from Roma. Once we were gone, we’d be ten times as difficult to capture. And his dreams about making me the conquered bride of Firenze? Yeah, that was already down the drain.
But he’d have a better chance of killing us than capturing us. After what I’d been through, there was no way they were taking me alive again. And I guessed my family and friends felt
the same way. What was better? To fight to the death? Or to be put to the stake after all kinds of humiliation or torture?
Death, every time. Not that I was up for the whole dying thing. I wanted to live. I’d be willing to fight to the death in order to live—in freedom, with Marcello, with my family. I suddenly understood all the campaign talk from home, of fighting for what you believed in, fighting for rights, fighting for freedom, fighting, paradoxically, for peace.
Peace sounded like a delicious dream to me right then, sucking me inward, backward, toward the utter weariness at my core. We were drawing long looks from those still on the street, our band of men and women, so many of us in matching robes and capes, stolen from the lords of Roma. But we ignored them, trotting down one street and then the next. Marcello paused up ahead, circled his horse, and silently waved us back. We turned and all made it into an alley before a Roman patrol of a couple dozen men passed. Marcello dismounted and sneaked to the corner to find out what they were up to; he returned and reported they were pausing to speak to those on the streets, asking questions. Looking for us. Trying to pick up our trail.
“Must make haste, now,” he said under his breath. It’d only be minutes—maybe even seconds—before they crossed one of the streets from which we’d come, and someone tipped them off, told them we’d been seen.
We rode at a fast clip, under a raised, crumbling aqueduct and past the countless brick arches of Emperor Caracalla’s old public bathhouse. Almost there, I thought, knowing the wall wasn’t far. The knights of Roma would not pursue us beyond the wall, and Lord Barbato’s and Vivaro’s mercenaries made up only a fraction of their number. If we could make the wall, we’d break from most of the men who hunted us.
We turned the corner, glimpsed the repaired wall that marked the main entrance to the eternal city, had just taken a breath of hope, glory, when I saw them.
Men closing ranks, on horseback, fifty strong. Blocking our exit. Preparing to hunt us down. But they still hadn’t seen us.
“This way,” Marcello growled. We followed him into Caracalla’s old structure—once a sprawling, public bathhouse that could handle a thousand customers at once—ducking under lower doorways, marveling at the massive rooms they led to. When we were into the third room, Marcello turned to Luca and lifted his chin. “Take Lia with you. I’ll take Gabriella. We’ll leave two horses here and make the Romans think we’re here somewhere, so they’ll scour every rabbit hole in the place.”
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