Silence settled around us like a misty fog.
“You shall go, then,” Marcello said, a note of hope entering his voice. “And be our emissaries? Would you do that for us? Take supplies to the villages, rather than bring the infirm to our gates? We would supply you weekly and—”
“You cannot allow this,” Luca sputtered, turning to him. “This is my sister we speak of! And our brother!”
Marcello’s jaw tightened. “’Tis not my decision. Castello Forelli is our sanctuary, not their prison.” He gestured toward Tomas and Adela.
Luca let out a groan and paced away, rubbing his face, his head. I wrung my hands, knowing I could give him little comfort.
Adela went to him, though, and again, took his hands. “Please, brother. Send us forth with love and hope and prayers of blessing and protection. You think we do not fear? We are human yet,” she said, with a small smile. “As apt to fail as any other. But please, Luca. Please. Send us with your love and blessing.”
Luca stared at her, then folded her into his arms, holding her for a long moment. “Adela, Adela,” he whispered, kissing her head. “I shall miss you. And your idiot of a husband,” he said, reaching out his arm to him.
Tomas took it. And again at the gates as they departed.
But when the gates closed, I wondered if I’d ever see them enter through them again.
***
They survived for months, out beyond our walls. At first, staying close to us, in and around the Forelli villages. Then farther afield, among the blood brothers who still lived. They had promised to stay away from Siena, their only concession, finding more than enough to minister to beyond the city gates.
Everywhere they went, they cared for them. Fed them. Buried them. Moved on.
And then a week passed, with no word from them.
Then two.
Then, the hardest of message of all came from Conte Lerici.
Plague was upon their house.
Half were dead.
Adela and Tomas among them.
GABRIELLA
And so it went.
People came.
People left.
Some were well, whole.
Others ill and spent. Dying.
In time, we could smell the stink of the dead even from within our walls. At first, I dared to walk the parapet, taking in the image of men, women, even children, outside our gates, dying or dead. The bodies thrown into horrifying heaps. The living, begging to be let in, as if we held the secret to healing. To freedom.
Which we did, in a way.
Quarantine.
No one in, or out. It was the only way. The only hope for us to weather this storm. This was why we had laid up provisions.
Marcello—with the aid of wine consumed until he could fall into desperate slumber—ignored the summons to Siena, as a former one of the Nine. Stories from there were horrific. So many dead within days that the morticians and grave diggers were overwhelmed, many dying themselves. There were too many to remove, far too many.
And so the dead rotted.
In the streets and in palazzos alike.
Death came hunting, consuming entire flocks and with no discernible pattern.
Ravaging our people over and over.
And over.
Month by month.
Year by year.
PART IV
INFILTRATION
Spring, 1350
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EVANGELIA
I would say, later, that we sought each other out as comfort.
A respite in the storm.
Luca and I took ease in each other’s company, fiercely, defiantly. Claiming life, love, in the face of so much death and destruction. We found solace within one another’s arms. With him I knew peace and satisfaction and such deep connection…and glimpsed life, as it should be.
But two years into the plague, when I knew I carried Luca’s child, I wept.
Because all I could see before me was devastation.
Disaster.
Disease.
Destruction.
Death. The antithesis of this new life, tingling within my womb. I cursed God. Cursed him for bringing this to us, when he knew, he knew what we faced. Why taunt us with hope? Delight? When we well knew what was before us.
For two years, the plague had ravaged Toscana. We were all but cut off from Siena, the messengers arriving farther and farther apart. Today we’d heard news from the city that Siena’s priests had decreed the Roman statues within Il Campo—the main city piazza—a pagan curse, and the ancient, priceless figures had been destroyed and chopped to bits in order to be secretly added into a supply of building material for Firenze’s walls. Because Firenze had not yet been hit as hard as Siena.
Such was the thinking.
Pass off our curse to our enemy.
And now, Il Campo was denuded of the statues that had once given her such countenance, such grandeur, stature. A simple, barren shell of what she once was, I figured, remembering it from modern times. I’d wondered what had happened to all of those beautiful marble figures. Now I knew. They’d been chopped to bits.
“Such superstitious fools,” Marcello groused, deep in his cups that evening. Luca and I shared a worried glance. We’d watched the depression slowly take hold of him. It wasn’t good for a man like my brother-in-law to be cooped up in a castle for so long. In fact, it seemed bad for all of us. A pall hovered over the entire castello.
“Thinking they might play God,” Marcello grumbled, lifting his glass and draining it.
“You cannot truly blame them,” Gabi said with a sigh. “They’re desperate.” I thought about the Forelli palazzo on Il Campo, sitting empty, the furniture all covered with linens, the servants long since let go.
At their feet, Fortino chased two oddly shaped dice, shaking them in his hand and letting them loose, motivated by the knights around him who idly betted on his toss.
“And now the Nine are but Four,” Luca said, pouring more wine for himself. He eyed Marcello carefully, twisting his goblet between his palms. That had been in another message. A new, desperate call for Marcello to resume his seat, resume leadership.
Marcello lifted red-rimmed eyes to look at Gabi, the question unspoken.
“You cannot,” I whispered, knowing it wasn’t my place to enter the conversation, but finding I could not remain quiet. “You cannot go,” I said, louder this time.
Because if Marcello went, I knew Luca would go with him.
Beneath the table, Luca took hold of my hand and squeezed it.
Marcello swung his legs over the back of the bench and rose, shuffling over to the hearth. He put a hand on top of the mantle, as if hanging on for strength, and the firelight danced across his handsome—though weary—face as he sipped again from his cup. Looking as if she’d aged ten years, Gabi went around to bundle little three-year-old Fortino up in her arms and hand him to his nursemaid.
Mom and Dad rose, tension evident in every line around their eyes and mouths. The Great Hall cleared out, every knight and maid aware of the stress building between us. I knew they’d likely stage eavesdroppers outside the door, but they’d give us the illusion of privacy. Every one of them had agreed, once the plague arrived in Italia, to keep to the castle. To not see friend or family until the last known victim was buried for three months. We hadn’t even seen the Grecos, who were attempting a similar quarantine across the valley. To a person, everyone in the castello had agreed to it, but I knew it was difficult for them, as it was for us, two years in. They were probably half hoping that this would break our steadfast desire to keep our gates so stubbornly shut. Despite the terror outside our walls, most medieval minds could not quite get their heads around the concept of how disease passed from one to another.
When it was only the six of us, Marcello spoke. “I must go to them. They are devolving to madness. Who knows what else is happening in the city and the Republic?”
“Nay, Marcello, nay,” Gabi said, ta
king his arm. She lifted a hand to turn his face toward her. “You cannot. You know what it could mean.”
“I know what turning my back on my kinsmen means,” he said. “Look at me!” he said, lifting his arms to her, his face full of self-loathing. “I cower here, day by day, and only manage to welcome another because of this,” he said, lifting his cup. With a sneer he threw it into the massive hearth, where it broke into pieces, the red wine sizzling against the back of it.
We all stood there, in silence. Relieved it was out in the open, at last. That Marcello was willing to face it. But now what?
“What can you do for them?” Gabi asked. “There is no nobleman with the power to keep them from this pestilence. It strikes where it wishes. They’d be safest in their country homes, outside the city.”
“As it was for Castello Gallo and Castello Rizzo?” he bit out, and I felt the pain in my gut over that again, even as Gabi recoiled. Two of Marcello and Luca’s blood brothers and their families, decimated by the plague. Both messages had been unclear if there were any survivors—only a plea for prayer, and a tone to each note that felt like a farewell. We could do nothing but send food and medicines to the survivors.
That aspect had been the worst part of this whole deal. Keeping the guys from telling all their brothers—men who had ridden to our aid, saved us from certain death. If we’d told any more, it surely would have significantly changed the outcome of these horrific four years. Our friends would likely have lived, yes, but history would be irrevocably shifted. It had been bad enough that we knew, that Gabi let Rodolfo know. No others could be told.
Today, along with news from Siena, there was a note from Sir Mantova—the man who had arrived with the catapult in the last battle here, to save us—that his house, too, had been struck.
This was what weighed so heavily on Marcello, what drove him to drink so much, night after night, and what was pushing him over the edge now. He was clearly haunted by the specter of his brothers going down, one by one…when he’d been in a position to potentially save them. Haunted by giving up his seat on the council of Siena, as one of the Nine, in the face of the worst crisis they’d ever seen.
“Tell them,” Luca said.
We all looked to him. Tell us…what?
Marcello sighed heavily and looked around, as if he sought a new goblet of wine.
“Tell them,” Luca repeated.
Marcello scowled at his cousin but then seemed to give in. “There is more,” he said at last, clearly working the words over in his mind. But I noticed he elected to stare into the fire rather than look at any of us. “These last months, Firenze has rallied. The plague seems to have left her gates and not returned. While our beloved city is finding it difficult to bury her dead.” The words came out of his mouth in a tortured mix of agony and bitterness.
We were all silent. How could this be fair? Why would God not strike them as he had us? Maybe the priests hadn’t been so far off, smashing their statues of gods and goddesses as both a token offering and a curse…he seemed to be judging on a whim anyway.
Luca crossed his arms and faced us. “Siena is at her weakest in decades. And Firenze is feeling her strength return…”
I shook my head. “You don’t think…They wouldn’t…”
His worried green eyes shifted to me. “I do. And they would.”
“It’s madness!” Gabi cried. “If they attack Siena, they might gain a city, but they’ll return home with an enemy that would take them down from within.”
“But do you not see, Wife?” Marcello said dully, staring unblinking at the fire, gesturing at it as if he could see the Fiorentini within the flames. “They do not understand that.” He finally turned toward her. “They only see opportunity. Think. Think of Lord Barbato and Lord Foraboschi. The lengths they went to in Venice to strike at you and yours as a means to engage in battle again. And now…this. Siena practically open for the taking.”
Gabi swallowed hard. “Then she shall fall. But we remain. Safe. Here.”
He shook his head, a tiny movement. “You do not understand. If Siena is attacked, and I do not to go to her aid, we shall be labeled bigger cowards than we already are.”
“And far more threatening,” Luca said, “as traitors. Punishable by death.”
“But he…But he is not of the Nine!” Gabi protested.
“But he is still a loyal son to Siena,” Luca returned gently. “And expected to act as such. For if he doesn’t, it shall not go well for him. And therefore, us.”
“So one way or another,” Gabi said, so quietly that I almost missed it, “Siena claims you.”
Marcello tried to take her elbows in his hands, but she wrenched away, shaking her head. “Nay, Marcello. Nay.”
“I am sorry, Gabriella. Truly, if I saw another way…”
She backed up as he advanced, his face a mask of apology. “You cannot,” she insisted, shaking her head. “You know you cannot.”
“I go now and attempt to lend aid, and hopefully live through it, or I remain here, a coward waiting for them to come and retrieve me so they can cut off my traitorous head. What say you, Gabriella? Which is better? Which is better for our son?”
She shook her head and stopped her retreat, giving in to tears, then. Mom and I cried with her. Luca put a strong, bracing arm around my shoulders and curled me into his chest. Over his shoulder, I watched Marcello wrap Gabi in his arms.
“I must go,” he said, kissing her hair as he wept, too. “I must go and do what I can to shore up the city.”
“But what of us?” Gabi cried, desperate.
“What of you?” he repeated softly, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “This is as much for you and yours, beloved, as ’tis for me and mine. If Siena falls, if Firenze owns us, whom do you think she’ll come after first? Who shall be the first prize she claims? You? Evangelia? Our little Fortino?”
He shook his head, his hands dropping into fists.
“Nay. I must keep them as far from our gates as possible. And that begins by making certain Siena remains strong. Soldiers must be hired, trained to replace those who have died. Commerce must resume, as much as possible. Strategic relationships with Roma, with Venezia, with Pisa, must be built. Those are tasks for a man who has done them before. And I must teach the sons of the men who have died to take their fathers’ places.”
Gabi wasn’t a crier, but the wrenching sobs that emerged from her throat ripped me to shreds. She cried as if he were dying in her arms already. As if every dream had died. And it tore at me, made me fight for breath, even as bile rose in the back of my throat.
I looked up to Luca, forcing myself to determine what I suspected was true. And with one glance, I knew.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EVANGELIA
I wrenched away from him, making it only a few steps before I vomited across the floor.
“Oh, Lia, Lia,” Mom soothed, coming over to me. “My goodness, I know this is hard news, but to be this upset?” she asked.
She helped me straighten and then seeing my face, understood. I’d not just upchucked because I was stressed out about Luca going—though I was—it was more due to my pregnancy, which I hadn’t told any of them about. Not even Luca.
Mom swallowed hard. “Oh, honey,” she said, pulling me into her arms. I cried harder then. “Oh, honey,” she repeated, rubbing my back.
“What?” Dad asked. “What is it?”
I looked at him and then at the others, focusing on Luca. “I am with child.”
Luca’s eyes widened, and then a smile broke out across his face. He came over to me and lifted me in his arms, turning me in a slow circle. But it gradually dawned on him. Why I wasn’t excited now. Slowly, he let me slide back to the floor, but held on to me.
“’Tis difficult news, Evangelia, to be certain. In these times, with what we face…” He reached up to wipe my tears and cup my cheek. “But ’tis good news too. Do you not see?” he asked lowly. “’Tis a sign from God. Hope for us
. Could there be anything sweeter than another tiny Forelli about the castello?”
“Nay,” I said, still crying. He ducked and widened his eyes, making me laugh through my tears.
He kissed me, my cheeks, my forehead, pulling me close. “’Twill be all right, sweet Evangelia. Trust me. Trust the One who brought you to me. The One who has seen fit to begin a new life,” he said, placing a warm hand across my stomach, “even as we face so much death.”
I swallowed hard, trying to get a grip. “Do not go,” I said, clenching a handful of his gold tunic. “Please do not go, Luca,” I whispered.
“I must,” he said. “My place is with Marcello. And I agree with him—his place is in Siena. We shall not stay away long. And when we return, we shall stay in the hunter’s hut for a time, to make certain we carry nothing foul back with us.”
I thought of him in Siena. I thought of him so close, at the hunter’s cabin, and yet not able to return to me. I thought of being pregnant—never so closely tied to him—and yet soon, to be so far from him.
And then I started crying in earnest.
“Is this how the She-Wolves of Siena truly want to see their husbands off?” Mom asked, after it’d gone on for a couple minutes.
I think after all the many months of being strong, and both being so scared and sad, that my tears were basically fed by my sister’s and hers, mine. I’d get a grip and then hear Gabi choke on a sob, and then I’d lose it again, and vice versa. But thank God we had Mom to pull us together.
“Now, girls,” she said, taking a swift breath, collecting herself. I saw her own face was tearstained too. “While Marcello and Luca collect what they must for the journey come morn, we three must pack some things to help them while they’re away. Come with me.”
We swallowed hard and followed her out, our husbands looking grateful to her. They probably hoped their mother-in-law would fix us up and return their normal wives to them, not these crazed, hormonal, despondent, sniffling messes. And we did have to pull it together. I knew that. I just couldn’t seem to do so.
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