DELUGE

by Lisa T. Bergren

  Giacinta moved forward to clean Gabi’s skin and help Mom bandage the wound, quickly covering her with a blanket against the chill. The fire was still working hard to drive away the winter’s cold that seemed to permeate the castello. Or was that the specter of death I felt, in every hall and every room?

  Even now, Sienese knights were dragging out the Fiorentini dead, hauling them to wagons and driving out the castello gates. I didn’t know if they planned to burn or bury them, but there were hundreds, and many of them exhibited the last throes of bubonic plague. Mom rose, washed her hands in the basin, and then turned to the doorway. Gabi had been her priority, but I knew she had a long day ahead. Wearily, I rose to assist. There were still many inside our walls that were wounded, our own brothers and sisters who might have a chance to recover and…what? Then battle the plague?

  We’d been infiltrated by hundreds of men carrying live bacteria.

  We’d survived one battle only to face a far bigger one.

  “So…” I said, walking beside Mom through the courtyard. “So much for the quarantine.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “It’s out of our hands now. Let’s say that you and I just do what we can for the people we love, and see what the morrow brings? Are you with me, Lia? Can you see this through? Or do you need a few hours’ rest?”

  I shook my head. While I’d collapsed in the tunnel when I was at last with Luca again, I felt a surge of energy after seeing Gabi stitched up. I was just glad it hadn’t been me, this time, to do it. Once was enough…Still, I braced myself. It was likely that I’d have to lend my hand to other stitching this day.

  Two Sienese knights lifted a dead Fiorentini from atop another of our knights and I did a double-take. “Celso? Celso!” I hurried over to him. He was so covered in blood that the golden Forelli tunic was more of a burgundy. His or his enemy’s? I leaned down and felt for a pulse. It was there, steady and strong.

  His beefy hand whipped up and gripped my wrist with frightening strength. I was both scared by his sudden action and elated.

  His eyes bore into mine, the pupils wide and blank, unseeing.

  “Celso, ’tis me, Evangelia.”

  “M-m’lady,” he muttered, his head sinking back to the ground. “Saints be praised. You live.”

  “As do you!” I said with a smile, searching his body for the wounds that had downed him, as Mom began to do the same. “Where are you hurt?”

  “Yes, where are you hurt?” Luca asked, behind me. “Because if my wife is going to have her hands all over a man, I would prefer it was me.”

  I laughed under my breath, and Celso grinned wearily, and then winced as Mom found his wound, at the back of his head. “Easy, easy,” he cried.

  “Forgive me, Celso,” Mom said lowly. She looked up at Luca. “Head wound. We’ll bandage him, but he needs to stay as still as possible. Don’t let the men lift him. We need blankets and cloth. Water.”

  “Yes, m’lady,” Luca said, raising an arm to gesture to a girl carrying a bucket of water and strips of cloth for bandages. He grabbed a squire, Iacopo, and pointed to Celso. “Once the lady has him bandaged, tell anyone who approaches to leave him where he lies until we return, yes?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy, his eyes ringed with exhaustion. The squires had been amazing last night, supplying us as they had.

  I called to a maid carrying a pile of woolen blankets, and we took one and tucked it around Celso’s body to try and keep him warm.

  “Stay still, friend,” Mom said. “Don’t move. Only rest. We’ll return to check on you.”

  Celso did not respond. Again, I felt for his pulse.

  “I think you’d best check for further wounds, m’lady,” he said with a sly smile, peeking open one eye not to peer at me, but my husband.

  I sucked in my breath, not sure whether to laugh at him or slap him.

  “Keep toying with my wife, Celso,” Luca said, leaning in, “and once you’re up on your feet again, I’ll gladly take your legs from under you.”

  Celso only grinned and laughed under his breath.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  GABRIELLA

  I awakened later that day, my belly throbbing, but it seemed that there wasn’t any internal bleeding. Mom was all about that, and I tried to act like I was happy too, but it still felt like…well, like I’d been stabbed with a dagger. Nothing like a knife to the belly to ruin a girl’s day.

  Chiara and Fortino came to visit me, each holding Mercede’s hand. Rodolfo had set off with six knights to search for Alessandra. It turned out that the family had been out for a ride when the castello was attacked, and they’d hidden in the woods for a time. When the Fiorentini had discovered they weren’t within the walls of Castello Greco, they set out to hunt them down. As they closed in, fearing capture more than death, they sent Chiara running to the village and turned to fight alongside the few knights that accompanied them. In the midst of that, Alessandra had gone missing, and only Rodolfo lived to join Marcello and Luca and their Sienese reinforcements in turning the tide against the Fiorentini.

  I prayed that Alessandra still lived. That she hadn’t been captured and taken to Firenze. That Chiara would have her mama back, and Rodolfo, his wife. I didn’t think either of them could handle the grief of losing her…

  Men continued to carry wounded on stretchers past my door, out to the western segment of the castello, where Mom and Dad were now treating anyone with the plague. They’d fallen back to a “mini” quarantine strategy, knowing it was fairly futile now, but determined to try anyway.

  A terrible smell of roasting flesh filled the air. “What is that horrible smell?” I asked Mercede.

  “The ground is too hard to bury so many,” she said. “Instead, they burn them. It shall go on for days.”

  I winced over her words. Just the thought of so many dead, whether Fiorentini or Sienese, pained me. “Where?”

  “That small eastern ravine. Lord Forelli has instructed that they build a tremendous fire and keep feeding it, in between the bodies, until there is nothing left but ash for the spring rains to wash away.”

  I shook my head. It was all so…cavalier, in a culture that traditionally made a big deal of honoring life and death with ritual and rites. “They couldn’t use more of the Etruscan tombs?”

  Mercede shook her head too. “There were too many for that, m’lady. Far too many.”

  Far too many. Sienese. Fiorentini. In the end, all the same, just men and women leaving the world with as much as they had when they entered it—nothing. Death, the Great Equalizer, Dad called it. Poor or rich. Beautiful or plain. In the end, we were all the same.

  I sighed heavily, and then gasped, even that exaggerated breath making my wound feel like it was breaking open. “What else goes on outside my door?” I asked Chiara, desperate to think of anything else.

  “Cook is making soup!” she said, eyes wide with excitement.

  I tried to concentrate on that a moment and wished I could walk to the kitchens to smell onions and garlic sautéing in oil rather than the putrid odors of the funeral pits.

  Mercede looked at me with eyes that saw me, truly saw me, and said simply, “We’ll find a nosegay for you.”

  “Thank you.” They left me, then, intent on setting up a new sleeping space in the old den, with my blessing. The nursery was too close to the new plague infirmary.

  Lia came in just as I started to nod off and knelt by my bed.

  “Heya,” I said.

  “Hi. How do you feel?”

  “Like I got stabbed in the gut. You?” She had a shiner under one eye and a cut on her jaw. Likely she had as many bruises and pulled muscles as I did.

  “Like we battled for our lives last night.” She took my hand. “But we stood our ground, Gabi. We stood with our people.”

  “That felt good, didn’t it?”

  “It did.”

  “Any news about Alessandra?”

  She shook her head, eyes bleak. “No word from Rodolfo either.�
�

  “Think they got her?”

  “I hope not.”

  I turned to look at the stars on the ceiling. Because this time, there would be no stealing into our enemy’s city to set free one of our own. There were too many ways we could die, and too many counting on us to live.

  EVANGELIA

  I could see Gabi was fighting to not cry from the pain and fear. Sweat beaded on her forehead, even though the castello was pretty cold. “Lia…” she began, as I moved toward the door.

  “I’ll check on him,” I said, knowing she was worried about Fortino.

  “Thanks,” she said, closing her eyes.

  I shut the door and almost wished I was the one who was injured and safely away, because what I faced in the courtyard was utter chaos. The stench of blood filled the air. A group of knights, their own various wounds bandaged, passed me, carrying another between them on a blanket, heading toward the Great Hall. He was moaning, his face a mask of pain and tears.

  After a quick check on my nephew, who was sleeping peacefully, his nursemaid playing a dice game with Chiara to keep her distracted and quiet, I went up to the wall to find my husband. Luca was directing men, making certain there was a mix of experienced knights and younger men keeping watch, ready for any further attacks. Patrols were out, our own knights augmented by reinforcements from Siena.

  I waited until he finished talking to a guy around my age, thinking how, back home in Boulder, we’d be planning a biking trip on Saturday, not strategizing castle fortifications and enemy expulsion from our territory. My life was so different here, but this was totally where I was supposed to be.

  Luca turned to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, leading me a bit away. “Are you well, love?”

  I nodded. “What can I do? How might I best help?”

  “Be ready to return to the wall if we’re attacked again. Other than that, see what you can do to assist your parents with the sick and wounded.” His brows lowered. “The Sienese…they saved us, the castello, but there are sick among them too.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  His eyes covered my face, as if wanting to touch me, but reluctant, here in this public space, with men passing back and forth. “Evangelia,” he whispered, “if you become sick…the baby…”

  I shook my head. “We cannot think of such things now,” I said. “The only way through is through, true?”

  “True.”

  “Any word from Rodolfo or Alessandra?”

  He lifted his head, his lips falling slightly open. “You haven’t heard?”

  My breath caught. “No. What is it?”

  “Rodolfo believes that Alessandra went across the border. To her father. It was the only thing he could think of.”

  I stopped breathing. Alessandra’s father had disowned her. Believed she had betrayed the Fiorentini and ruined her good name during her stay with us. Even though it was the farthest thing from the truth. I knew she had been so hurt from all of that…only Rodolfo’s constant love and attention had brought her to healing. And Chiara’s too. But her dad…would he turn her over to the Fiorentini?

  “Luca, where are the Fiorentini troops? Those whom you drove back?”

  He held back, because why? To protect me? Because I was pregnant? “Luca,” I whispered. “I’m pregnant. Not incapacitated.”

  “Clearly,” he said. “You showed me that last night. But still…you must take care. Your mother told me that further battle, trauma, may risk you and our babe. There are many, still, who pose a danger to us. But you shall be safe, here. Now that we have reinforcements.”

  So they lingered on the border, just a few miles distant. “And Rodolfo? He went after her?”

  Luca swallowed. “With twelve of his best men. If anyone can get in and out, it’s Greco.”

  I sighed heavily and looked north, toward the woods. I knew those woods. I’d hunted alongside Alessandra. She’d shown me the path she’d taken, chasing the boar on that fateful day. I could find it…

  Luca took my hand and stood beside me. “Do not even think of it, Evangelia. I know how you and your sister feel about Alessandra. But leave it to Rodolfo. We need you here. I need you here. Understood?”

  His pleading, frightened tone wilted any Gabi-like thought I had entertained for a moment of charging out there, saving Alessandra. One look over my shoulder to the courtyard, teeming with people, affirmed what he said. And with Gabi down, Chiara and Fortino needed me too. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  Looking relieved, he pulled my hand up for a quick kiss. “Take care, beloved.”

  I took hold of his tunic and pulled him closer. “You too.”

  I turned to leave the wall and was heading down the circular stair to the bottom, passing several Sienese knights when I first heard it. Strega. Italian for witch.

  I searched for who had said it, but all I saw were boots trudging upward. Had I misheard it?

  But out in the courtyard, passing through two patrols of Sienese, I heard it again. Saw several men cross themselves and stare at me, half in open curiosity, half in distaste. I felt the blush and rushed forward, not liking the first feeling I’d ever had that some of my Sienese brethren were anything but supportive.

  “Almeno lei é la nostra strega,” said one. At least she’s our witch.

  That brought me full round, fist clenched. I looked from face to face, trying to figure out who had said it. I strode up to them and looked each one in the eye. They all deferred to me, bowing their heads as I passed, saying, “M’lady.” But I said nothing in return. Only, “Who said that? Who made such a foul claim?”

  One man feigned confusion. “What is this you speak of, m’lady? No one said such things.”

  “Yes. Someone did. I shall know which of you did so. Now.” I still strode before the six of them, arcing around me.

  “’Twas I,” said a burly man just an inch taller than I, but twice as big across the shoulders. His eyes narrowed in challenge. A Sienese knight.

  “You are dismissed,” I said. “Go back to the city with your lies. You shall not remain here.”

  “You have not the authority to send me to the wall, let alone Siena,” he said with a scoff. “I do not answer to you.”

  I acted without thinking. I grabbed his wrist, turned and flipped him to his back, knocking the wind from him. Kneeling on his shoulder and bringing a dagger to his throat to keep him still, I leaned close. “You shall answer to me. We have much to contend with in this castello. Death, disease! Lies, we have no time for. Now get out, or I shall tell my husband, who most assuredly has authority over you. But believe me, if he learns of this, he shall not be as merciful as I.”

  A crowd was gathering around us, some loyal Forelli knights among them, all poised to aid me.

  I rose, shoulders back, head high, and sheathed my dagger, waiting for him to get to his feet. He lumbered upward, still struggling to get his breath, face red with rage. Forelli knights took hold of his arms. He tried to shake them off, but they held firm.

  “M’lady?” Captain Pezzati asked, at my elbow. “What is this?”

  “This is a traitor among us,” I said, making certain my words sunk in for his compatriots too. “Spreading lies about me. I have told him to return to Siena. He is not welcome here.”

  “Indeed, he is not,” the captain said, edging in to face the man, chest to chest, and stare him down. “Escort him to the gates. Give him a horse. We shall leave it to God to see if he makes it or not.”

  “But, Captain,” the man sputtered. “I was only joining in with the others!”

  “Is that true?” Captain Pezzati turned to eye his companions, dressed in rather ragged remnants of what once were fine uniforms. “Are there others who would dare to utter anything but praise for Lady Forelli?”

  The others looked away to the wall or to the ground, all shaking their heads. They reminded me of chastened schoolboys.

  “Lady Evangelia has risked her life, time and again, to protect this ca
stello and beyond it, the city. If any of you dare to speak against her again, I shall personally see to it that you are banished from the Republic. Understood?”

  They all nodded.

  “You Sienese shall remain here. I need another group to assist in carrying the dead to the pits and feeding the fires.”

  I could feel the stifled groans among them, but they remained outwardly silent.

  Captain Pezzati turned to the Forelli knights. “See it done.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  EVANGELIA

  The men turned to drag the Sienese knight toward the gates. “Nay, please! Please!” he cried, clearly terrified. There must be more Fiorentini between us and Siena, I decided.

  “M’lady!” he cried. “Forgive me!”

  “Halt!” I called. I walked over to the three of them and again faced my adversary. “What is your name?”

  “Zanobi Viridis, m’lady,” he said, sweat streaming down his forehead.

  “Do you understand now that I have any authority I need within these walls?” I asked.

  “Yes, m’lady,” he said, all quick contrition.

  “Is it the way of a witch,” I whispered, leaning closer, “to be merciful, Zanobi?”

  His eyes widened, as if he was caught. “Nay, m’lady,” he whispered back.

  “Do you give me your word that from here on, you shall do nothing but defend my name and my reputation if I show you mercy?”

  “Yes, m’lady. Yes.”

  I stared at him for a long moment. “Release him.”

  Captain Pezzati was again by my side, listening to it all. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  The men looked to him, and seeing he had no argument, did as I asked.

  “Thank you, m’lady. Thank you,” he said, bowing repeatedly as he left us and returned to the others.

  My eyes moved to Captain Pezzati. “How many Fiorentini are between us and Siena?”

  His lips moved into a grim line. “More than five hundred.”