Waterfall

by Lisa T. Bergren

  I heard Lady Rossi giggling. I shivered and kept moving. Of course it was a room decorated for a lady; it was for the future Lady Forelli. The other rooms in this wing were probably for her ladies-in-waiting.

  I couldn’t get through the hallway fast enough. I raced to the door, relieved when I unlatched it and escaped. I ducked into the next corridor, expecting another row of rooms. But it was a massive, dimly lit room.

  In the corner, a fire smoldered in the hearth, having chased away the morning’s brief chill. Two big windows let the morning light in. I had stepped into the inviting room before I spotted him, lounging on a large horsehair settee, staring back at me with mild interest.

  “Oh! M’lord!” I said, horrified to be discovered snooping. Fortino’s sickroom.

  “No, no,” he said, gesturing at me as if to say calm down. “It is quite all right, Lady Betarrini.” He lowered his book to his lap, and when he smiled, I realized just how down he looked. I wondered if he was thinking about Marcello, galloping off to a battle that should have been his own, if it wasn’t for his sickness. He may as well have been a patient in the cancer wing of a hospital, simply biding his time.

  I forced a smile and shoved away a shiver of fear. He was obviously a sweet guy, and not much older than me. “I will leave you to your reading.” I started to back away.

  “I would much prefer your sitting with me for a moment. Please.” He gestured to a chair beside his.

  I met his gaze and realized that despite his frail appearance, he had the bearing of a young lord. There would be no arguing with him.

  I moved to the chair and folded my hands in my lap, staring at him as boldly as he was staring at me.

  “You wonder why I don’t ride with my brother?” he said, each word a sigh of long-held frustration.

  “Nay. I mean…you are plainly sick—ailing.”

  “Indeed I am.” Even in those few words, I could hear the wheeze in his breath. He was far worse than he had been, even a couple days ago.

  “May I ask…what is it that plagues you?”

  “Are you educated in the art of medicine?”

  Yeah, the art of Walgreens and Urgent Care. “A bit,” I hedged.

  “Lung trouble. The doctors say that I am full of water. My humours are off balance. But they cannot right them again.”

  “Ahh,” I said, as if I understood what the heck he was talking about. Humours. Dim recollections of a medieval museum and a diagram of a body segmented into four segments called humours flitted through my mind. They thought that if the body was off-kilter in one area, it set you off in the others. There was probably some logic in the midst of it that actually made sense. They hadn’t been total idiots. But they had some pretty wild remedies, too.

  “If you don’t consider it prying, m’lord, can you tell me what your symptoms are?”

  He smiled and laid his book on a small table beside him. “Surely a lady as comely as yourself wouldn’t want to speak of such things.”

  “Try me.”

  He stared at me, confusion lowering his brow.

  “Nay, m’lord,” I translated. “I am most interested to know. Mayhap I might find some small way to aid you.”

  He looked at me hard then and shook his head a little. “I am not seeking a bride.”

  He thought I was after him? For what, his money? I raised my brows. “That is of great relief to me since I am not seeking a husband.” Dad always joked that I had to wait until I was twenty-one to date.… Was this guy even twenty-one himself? I had pegged Marcello as about nineteen, a couple years older than me. I was guessing Fortino was a couple years older than that, but his thin, bony structure made him appear younger.

  His brows lifted, and he smiled a little, as if he had never heard such a thing from an unattached female. Perhaps he hadn’t. Not seeking a husband? What else did the girls have going for them? No studies, no working. A girl’s total worth was in whom she could marry and how many boys she could birth. It made me feel a little sorry for Lady Rossi. Maybe I should cut her some slack.…

  “I awaken in the morning, barely able to breathe,” he labored to tell me, staring back at the fire again, “and my servant has to thump my back, break up the mucous, at which point I cough so hard that I confess I wish for death. At times, in the middle of the night, I labor so that I fear I’ve reached the end.”

  Hmm. Sounds a bit like the asthma I had as a kid. I remembered well the horrific feeling of suffocation.… I shook my head at the memory, glad that I’d outgrown it years before.

  He leaned back and returned his gaze to me, as if that might be enough to make me take my skirts in hand and run from him. But I simply stared back.

  “As the morning goes on,” he finally went on, “the coughing eases, but this dreaded wheeze stays with me, reminding me of my illness with every breath of every day.”

  “Does your nose run? Do your eyes water?”

  He nodded, clearly puzzled by my questions. His eyes were ringed with deep purple, testimony to his nightly battles to breathe—and possibly to allergies that set him off in the first place. Or it might have been caused by his sleep being so disrupted.…

  “Do you run a fever? Are you hot?”

  He shook his head, then shrugged one shoulder. “I perspire, when I cough so violently. But it is not a fever.”

  “And your appetite? Do you want to eat?”

  “At times, but my breathing makes it a chore.” He lifted an arm and studied it, as if seeing for the first time how bony he had become.

  “What have the doctors told you to do?”

  He glanced to the fire. “Precious little. Though they are more than happy to take my father’s gold florins for every visit.”

  “Does steam help at all?” I thought of my mom, tenting our heads with a towel and making us sit over a bowl of boiling water when we were all stopped up. It was uncomfortable, but it did get things moving again. And in dry country, like Toscana tended to be in the mid- to late-summer, it helped with things like allergies, too.

  “Steam?”

  “Yes, breathing in the vapors from scalding-hot water?”

  “Nay,” he said, studying me with an edge of crazy hope in his eyes. “They never suggested such a thing.”

  I eyed the chair on which he lounged. “How often are you on that settee each day, m’lord?”

  He raised one brow. “Most of every day, I’d wager.”

  “Do your symptoms change depending on where you are? Do they get worse when you come in here from your bedchamber?”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket as he thought my questions over. “My nose and eyes tend to run. But I assumed it was from the smoke.”

  I glanced at the fire. “That is possible. Or you might be allergic to horses. And lounges covered in horsehair,” I said with a small smile.

  He glanced down at the settee with some understanding. “Allergic?”

  Hmm, maybe that word isn’t in use.… “It simply means that being near horses or couches made with their skins might interfere with your…humours.”

  His eyes opened wider with understanding.

  “One can be allergic to horses, or hay, or cats, or pollen.”

  “Pollen?”

  “Mm, that fine dust from the trees that is so thick this time of year. Even grass or weeds. Mayhap in Toscana, your doctors have not yet heard of this. It is quite common in Normandy.” I was lying through my teeth, of course, but I wanted him to give my words some weight in case I could actually help him.

  I rose and went to the small bookshelf, running my hand over the thick, odd goat-leather bindings and trying to remember enough Latin to read the titles. It had been a pet peeve of Dad’s, that most kids never learned any Latin. He’d insisted we learned the basics. You can imagine what that did for my
rep at Boulder High. Total Geek Alert, when you have to meet your Latin teacher at the library on Saturdays—

  “Do you read, Lady Betarrini?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.

  “Well, yes,” I said, before I thought it through. I dragged my eyes toward him. Being schooled enough to read in this era was probably rare, even for the guys.

  But he was smiling in delighted surprise. “Books are my constant companion. Father has little use for them. Marcello can read only a few pages before he falls asleep each night. He tolerates a reading in the Great Hall each eve, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Tell me, have you read the poet?”

  The poet, the poet, I thought, wracking my brain. “Dante. Of course.” That’s what all Italians called their most famous writer.

  “Wonderful,” he said in approval. “We shall have to discuss The Divine Comedy at your earliest convenience.”

  Everywhere I go, I can’t seem to escape that thing…but if it turns your crank—

  He regarded me and then took a slow, wheezy breath. “Pray tell, Lady Betarrini, how does one avoid daily things such as horses when one lives in a castle? Or dust from the trees?”

  I smiled at him. “It is difficult. But I think I know of some measures that might bring you some relief. Might I hope that you would try one or two of them?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Great!” I said, then seeing that my exuberant response shocked him a little. “I mean, very well. We shall begin on the morrow.”

  “Why not now?”

  I blinked in surprise. “Well, all right. Please, m’lord, summon a servant.” We’re gonna need a little help in here.

  He reached behind himself and pulled a rope. My eyes followed it to the ceiling, where it disappeared through a small hole. In a few moments, a footman appeared.

  “Enzo, Lady Betarrini is of the mind to aid me this day.”

  The servant did not react. Perhaps that was what they strived for—no reaction, just obedience.

  “Be at ease, Lady Betarrini. Tell him what to do.”

  I tapped my lips, thinking. “Is this where you like to spend your days? Is there another room with more air? More windows?”

  “Nay, I’m afraid this is the best. And I confess, my favorite.”

  “All right, then. I’ll need you to do exactly as I say for a week, no matter how mad it sounds. Are you willing to give me that much time?”

  He gave me a lopsided grin. “I might be dead on the morrow, m’lady. But what time I have left is yours.”

  I returned his subtly flirtatious smile. We weren’t serious about it, of course. It was just fun. “Good. Then Enzo here better fetch some help. I need this room cleared out, from top to bottom, and then the maids will need to come and wash every inch of it, from top to bottom, with hot, hot water, and some sort of cleanser.… What do you use to disinfect?”

  Both men stared at me blankly. “I mean when there’s been something foul, what do the maids use to clean, make it safe again?”

  “Ah, lye is what you’re after. And vinegar.”

  “Excellent!” I said, remembering. Lye was still the main ingredient in a lot of soaps. “Yes, hot, hot water, vinegar and lye. The same for your bedroom, m’lord. I beg you to empty it, and bring back only the barest of essentials.” I began to pace. “The horsehair settee has to go, for example. You’ll need to find a hardwood chair for the week.”

  “Be this a treatment or a punishment?”

  I smiled. “I’m attempting to help you. Remember that. Please do not bring any of these woolens back in. Let’s remove the tapestries, just for the week,” I added quickly. “I saw women working upon a loom in the courtyard. Bring that new blanket in, fresh from the loom.” I leaned closer to him. “Our doctors believe that things like dust get lodged in linens, and therefore, if that is what irritates your lungs, you are beneath one, huge irritant.”

  He nodded as if he understood me, but I could see a little of the This Chick’s Crazy look in his eyes. Whatever.

  “And me, m’lady. All this is well and good for the room, but I thought your aim was to aid me.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, that flash of flirtation and humor there again. In that moment, I could see the resemblance to Marcello, the glimpse of the young man he was supposed to be. I paced, thinking about Mom poking around the sites, pointing out herbs used in remedies for centuries.

  “Peppermint,” I told the servant. “More hot water. The finest, thinnest cloth you can obtain.” I turned to Fortino. “In the meantime, I need you to bathe, head to toe, and wear a dressing gown, again, of the finest possible cloth.”

  He flashed me a grin. “Will you be seeing to my bath yourself, m’lady?”

  “Nay,” I said, lifting my eyebrows and smiling back. “I believe that Enzo is more than capable of seeing you through that.” I liked the color our game brought to his cheeks, even if we both knew it was futile. When he said he might be dead by tomorrow, he wasn’t joking. His skin was so ashen, his bones poking at his flesh that he looked like he belonged in hospice. But in the meantime, I could give him some hope.

  Fortino disappeared on the arm of Enzo, moving slowly, and I assumed it was to see to his bath. I dared not ask; I didn’t want him to think I was truly flirting. He needed to see me more as nurse than Potential Girlfriend Material. More servants were brought in, and the room was quickly emptied. Tapestries were rolled up and removed. Furniture was carried out. The books, the precious books, so rare in these times—priceless, were they to survive until my own—were lovingly wrapped in linens and placed in trunks.

  “Saints in heaven, what is going on here?”

  I turned to see Cook enter the room, and smiled at her rounded eyes and pink cheeks. “Hello, Cook.” I moved over to the older woman and said, “I learned a bit of doctoring in Normandy, so Lord Fortino has asked me to do what I can for him.”

  “Ach, you watch that one, now,” she said lowly, waving a finger. “He was quite the randy one before the illness got the best of him.”

  Randy? Did she mean he was a player or something? He felt far from any kind of Romeo to me. I mean, if he wasn’t on the verge of death, it might be different.…

  But I nodded in understanding. “I’ll take care. May I ask you for something for him?” Her brow furrowed. “I wonder if we might give him good soups in a clear broth for the next week. Chicken would be best. Lots of vegetables and meat. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “Certainly,” she said, as if offended. “I could do that in my sleep.”

  “Wonderful. The more simple and hearty, the better. Let’s feed him five times a day.”

  “Five times a day?” she blustered. “He barely eats once!”

  “Yes, well, I will see an end to that.” No one could get better on such rations. And Mom always said that chicken soup had healing properties…if I could get him to even eat a cup of it every few hours, it’d give his body the energy to fight whatever was slowly killing him.

  “If that’s what the master has asked for…”

  “Yes,” I said simply, speaking for him.

  Five maids arrived, steaming buckets of water in each hand. I looked about the empty room. “First, let’s sweep it out and put out that fire. Can you fetch some brooms? I will aid you.”

  They glanced at each other, and I knew I’d crossed a weird line. “Fine, fine,” I said in irritation. “Do it yourselves. We must hurry, though. I want the water to stay hot.”

  Two scurried out and returned in short order. In minutes they’d swept the room with their crude straw brooms, piling the dust and then carrying it outside. Another poured water on the fire and cleaned the embers from the fireplace and carried it out. I gazed around. “All right, now. Let’s start up high. Like this.” I picked up a bucket and threw the water in a massive arc, so it w
ent to the top of the ten-foot walls, even reaching a portion of the ceiling. The maids twittered and giggled, but I ignored them. They were just nervous. “Like that. Every wall. Then the floor.”

  They went about their business. In half an hour, lye had been spread, more buckets of water had been splashed, and all of it had been sopped up and carried out. I returned from the hallway and surveyed their work, hands on hips. “Nice work, ladies!” I crooned.

  They looked at me, wide-eyed.

  “Grazie, grazie,” I said. “This is perfect. Now I need those wooden chairs for Lord Fortino, and a bucket of boiling water and clean, clean cloth. Can you fetch that for me, please?”

  “Yes, m’lady,” they all said, bobbing and moving out like a line of housekeeping soldiers. I was beginning to like this Lady business. I paused to enjoy the wonder of it. Where else might I have enjoyed such power as a typical seventeen-year-old? I could get used to this, I thought, crossing my arms, watching the women do as I bid.

  The furniture returned, two simple wooden chairs, a table, and a more elaborate wooden settee. They hardly looked comfortable for reclining, but there was no way around it. If we were after a non-allergic room, this was it. They brought back the tapestries and crates of books, but I held up my hand. “Forgive me,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But, for a week, could you put those in another room?”

  Eyes wide with confusion, the servants turned and left, speaking in hushed Italian to those behind them, passing on the word. “Sorry, Fortino,” I muttered. “It’s hardly a cozy den without them, but you wanted my help.…”

  Fortino himself returned then, looking more pale than before. He was in a thin white dressing gown, shivering, even though it was a good seventy degrees. It was going to be a hot one today, but he, obviously, was not yet feeling it. I went to the opposite side of him and helped his servant get him to the chair.

  “What have you done with my possessions?” he asked.

  “It’s all in your own quarters for now. Remember, you gave me a week. I’ll fetch any book you wish, but we need to be careful what we add to this room. The goal, of course, is to make you feel better.”