Waterfall

by Lisa T. Bergren

  I did as I was told, suddenly very thirsty, realizing I hadn’t had a thing to drink since morning. I dipped the ladle again, drinking the sweet water.

  “Now, splash your face,” the man demanded.

  I hesitated.

  “Do as I say,” Luca said, no trace of humor in his voice.

  I dipped my hands into the bucket, bent, and splashed my face twice, then wiped it with my palms and flicked the water again.

  He ducked his head and peered at me. “Better?”

  I nodded, coherent enough now to be embarrassed by my behavior. “Forgive me. I just thought…”

  “It is well,” Luca said, dismissing my apology. “Do you see her, m’lady? Your sister?”

  I looked slowly around. “Nay.”

  He crossed his arms and pointed upward. “See that palazzo there?”

  I followed his upward gaze and gaped at the building, three times the size of its neighbors. “The Rossi family?”

  “One and the same.”

  When the girl had promised a room with a view, she hadn’t been joking. I glanced over at Marcello and then back to Luca. “Send him ahead of us. We will follow. Reputation is important, yes?”

  “Indeed,” he said grimly. He moved off to speak to Marcello. Marcello gazed at me a second, as if to make sure I was all right, then turned his back and disappeared among the crowd. I took another sip of water and offered Luca the ladle. He drank from it, gave the well man another coin, and then offered his arm. “At least you know now. Take comfort, m’lady, rather than despair. You are to receive the aid of one of the most powerful families in all of Toscana. If anyone can find your family, the Rossis can.”

  We walked a bit. “Did I offend her, do you think? Running after that girl, when we were so near her home?”

  “Nay, she has her own sisters. I imagine she has a fair measure of empathy for your situation. Does your sister truly resemble that one?”

  I nodded. “In hair, stature. But she is far more beautiful than that woman we saw.”

  His green eyes widened with wonder. “I will assist you all the more in your quest, m’lady,” he said.

  “She is but fifteen,” I protested.

  “More than old enough to find her beloved,” he returned with a grin. “Or would your family not entertain a knight with no money?”

  I considered my response with a grin. “I think you would find my mother the understanding sort.”

  Dad would’ve been a different story. A pang of pain poked at me. I stared at the cobblestones disappearing beneath my slippers. This last Etruscan find promised to put an end to our ever-present need for more cash, for living expenses, to fund the next dig. If Manero didn’t succeed in blocking her path, finding the fabled settlement and its riches would put my mother on the map; land her book contracts, speaking gigs, funding—from the Italians as well as Americans.

  But at what price? The disappearance of one or both daughters?

  I needed to get back to the tomb with Lia. It was our only logical way back home. But my two encounters in the woods that bordered the castello told me I couldn’t get there alone, sword or not. I needed an escort. And that would take some serious finagling.

  I picked up my head as we reached the horses. The rest had moved off, but a knight held our two mounts, waiting on us. Luca lifted me to the saddle and helped me slide my feet into the stirrups. “We’ll find her, m’lady,” he said. “I promise.”

  I gazed down into his earnest face and longed to believe him. But at that moment, every part of my reality seemed so far from reach that I seriously doubted he could deliver.

  We arrived at the palazzo and were immediately shown upstairs, to the grand salon that took up the entire length of the building on this level. Marcello and Romana were beside a small, gray-haired man who sat in a thronelike chair, apparently regaling him with tales of our journey. He frowned in fear and then clapped in glory when he heard of his daughter’s climb to safety. Romana looked up then, and caught sight of me.

  “And this, this, Father, is the heroic woman who came to my aid.” She rushed over to me and dragged me to him. I felt like a giraffe next to her, being inspected by a new zookeeper. “She pulled a sword from her saddle and wielded it like some fierce Viking queen.”

  He studied me, then rose and took my hand. He looked up at me. “Lady Betarrini, I am indebted to you,” he said. He bent and kissed my hand, then held it in both of his. He was nowhere near as tall as my father, coming only to my shoulder, but his movements were familiar in their fatherly nature. It brought sudden tears to my eyes, just as being with Lord Forelli had. “My daughter tells me you have become separated from your family,” he said. “In gratitude to you, my sole goal will be to see you reunited.”

  There was no way we’d be reunited. Not all four of us, ever. But maybe, Lia and me. Somehow, with Mom, in time. “Thank you,” I managed, tears spilling down my cheeks. I wiped them away, embarrassed, but unable to keep them back. It was too much. It was all too much.

  He patted my hand. “You are exhausted. The day has clearly taxed you. Someone shall see you to your room, and we will speak more of it this evening, or if you prefer, on the morrow. Good?”

  “Thank you,” I repeated. Why did the man give me such hope? Maybe it was just the sight of a man with his daughter that moved me. Lady Rossi bent to speak in a servant’s ear, and the woman came over to me. “Come, m’lady. I shall see you to your quarters.”

  I followed behind her, so tired I could barely force myself up the stairs. At the top, the woman pulled a ring of keys from her belt and unlocked the first along the hallway. I peered down it—there appeared to be about eleven more. She opened it and gestured inward. “Please.”

  I walked forward and went directly to the window of the narrow room. There was little more than a double-sized bed, a chair, a table, and this, the window, overlooking the piazza. I pushed open the shutter and looked down on the well. People swirled about it, but no blondes among them.

  “Do you have need of anything, m’lady?” She fiddled with her ring of keys. “I will send a girl up with fresh water, or would you favor a hot bath?”

  I could feel the grime of the road on every inch of me but knew that if I sank into a hot tub, I might never emerge again. And I needed to stay alert. “On the morrow, a bath would be grand. But this day…I fear I do not feel my best. Perhaps a bit of bread and cheese along with a pitcher of water? Then in the morning, the bath, along with the sun?”

  “I’ll see it done, m’lady,” she said, nodding toward me. Quietly, she disappeared out the door. I dragged a chair over to the window and sank into it, absently rubbing my aching thigh. I leaned my head on the edge of the sill and stared down at the well, watching people come and go for hours. I had given water little thought in my own day; when I turned on the faucet, it came out. What would it be like to fetch every ounce I needed and more?

  I studied the well and the statues that dotted the piazza—long gone, in my day—until my eyelids grew too heavy to fight. Even though there was still daylight, I allowed them to droop, pushing them upright once, then giving in. I awakened to moonlight streaming through my window, into the room. I rose fast, alarmed, trying to place where I was and when I was, and dizzy. I slumped against the wall before the tall, thin window.

  The three-quarter moon reflected in the still waters of a pail at the window’s edge. Two men walked past the Palazzo Pubblico at the bottom of the piazza, deep in conversation. No one else appeared, a stark contrast to the afternoon’s activity. I sank back to my chair and rested my chin on my hands, staring out at the plaza beneath me, a constant stream pouring into it at one side, sending ripples through the moon’s reflection.

  No Lia.

  Evangelia, where are you?

  I looked out across the plaza, across the skyline, so foreign wi
th all her towers. Siena was vast, with thousands inside her walls, many more outside. Why had I thought that if I just came here, I’d find my sister? What was I thinking?

  I rubbed my head, massaging my scalp, trying to ease away the tension. That was when I felt it—the thick coils that had fallen from Giacinta’s careful arrangement that morning. Had I really met the head of the Rossi family, one of the Nine—one of the most powerful men in all of Tuscany—looking like I’d just rolled out of bed?

  I groaned. It was testimony to his character that he had come to me and looked at me with nothing but admiration. He must really love his daughter.

  “Testimony to you, too, Romana,” I said, flicking fingers off my brow in silent salute. Two more points for her.

  Staring at the water below made me realize how badly I had to go to the bathroom. I’d avoided it as much as I could at Castello Forelli, but there, as here, I could do nothing other than what the rest did—go in the pot. I rose and winced—half from the pain in my thigh and half from worrying that I’d never find Lia. Then, raising my skirts, I squatted over the bucket and did my business, dragging a piece of wood across the top when I was done to contain the smell. “My kingdom for a flush toilet,” I muttered. For all our whining, Lia and I really had no idea how good we had it, even in an apartment decorated in seventies favorites.

  I glanced at the wooden chair by the window, and then the bed, so inviting with its mound of down-filled covers, and immediately abandoned my post. I was so tired…and Lia was not likely to show in the dark of night.…

  I awakened to maids arriving, carrying a deep tub between them. Four others followed behind, and in the deep shadows of morning, I could hear them pour their steaming liquid into the tub. Two others arrived, adding four more buckets. One moved to the corner and picked up my chamber pot—oh my gosh, it was so embarrassing, like she was changing my diaper or something—and paused at my bedside. “Is there anything else, m’lady?”

  “Nay,” I mumbled, wanting to pull the covers over my head. I wanted it all to go away. To wake up in my time, my place.

  Then the maids disappeared, quietly closing the door behind them, and I got up and bent over the bath. It was hot, too hot to sink into yet. But the rising steam reminded me of Fortino, and I wondered how his regimen was going, if he was still faring better. How good it felt, to do some good, here and there. Perhaps this was what it meant to be an adult. To grab the opportunity at hand, make the most of the day, regardless of what it looked like.

  I sighed and stared out the window, at the cityscape becoming as rosy in hue as the sun that climbed in the sky. I was sitting in the middle of one of the most famous medieval towns of all. What will you do with the opportunity? I heard my father ask.

  Every summer he asked us the same. “What will you do with this? Do you know how few get this opportunity? To be in Italy, of all places, for the summer? You don’t have to dig with us. The summer is your own. Make it yours. Seize the day, my girl. Seize it.”

  For the first time, his words took hold for me, moving out of the monotone, wordless litany of a parent’s diatribe to true wisdom.

  Seize the day. What could I do, to make the most of this day, whether I was in my own day, or this one? What amazing history was I seeing firsthand? Would I embrace it, instead of crying and whining? Was it in me to be grateful for my situation? Truly in me?

  I pulled off my clothes and tentatively sank into the hot water, wincing at first at its heat, then melting into the edge of it, staring out at a corner of sky covering a plaza that would be marveled at for centuries. Here I am. Now. What would my parents do? What would God have me do? It had to be God who’d done this. Or allowed it. I am here for a reason. This is no haphazard mistake. What good can I do with what I have?

  These were big thoughts. Grown-up thoughts. I sank beneath the surface, and felt the water close above my head. I stayed under there as long as I could, liking that my lungs burst with longing for air, confirmation that I was truly alive, living this, not merely dreaming it. You want me to seize the day—Mom, Dad, God, whoever. I will.

  I broke the surface and gasped for air, feeling the cool of the morning breeze against my hot, wet skin. I reached for the square bar of soap and rolled it in my hands, watching as strands of dried purple lavender broke free of it. There was some sort of fat in it—it was immediately more soothing than the soap they had at Castello Forelli. Maybe it wouldn’t destroy my skin like that had.

  I lathered it into my hair, then ducked beneath the surface, driving it out with my fingers. I was suddenly eager to see what the day held. And if Lia might be in it.

  I finished with my task, lounging in the warm waters for a precious minute longer, then rose in the cool air to reach for the cloth that served as a towel. I could make a fortune discovering Egyptian cotton, I thought. Was that how I was to seize the day? To become the killer importer maven, rich beyond my wildest dreams, because I knew what people wanted next? “Nah,” I muttered, rubbing my head as best I could. There was something more for me here, something bigger.

  I dried the rest of my body and then flipped open my first valise, expecting to see my extra gown.

  I sat back, gaping at what I saw. Wrapping the towel more tightly around my body, I tucked the edge and then bent and pulled out what I could only equate with a wedding gown. Except it was a vibrant, russet red. I kept pulling it out of the small case, and it kept coming, yards and yards of fabric. With the same colored beads sewed to the bodice. I spread it across the bed and then stood back to marvel at it. It was the finest silk I had ever touched, an explosion of softness. It had a square neckline, wide and low. Its waist was so narrow I wondered if I might actually get into it. This was Marcello’s mother’s?

  Dimly, I remembered Giacinta saying something about how it had been meant for Fortino’s nuptials. A wedding forgotten. I doubted Marcello’s father complained when she took it from their dressing room. It represented promises lost. Hope turning into sorrow. Celebration becoming mourning.

  Could I really wear it? Truly? Would Marcello remember it? Remember its true purpose? Turn away from me with sorrow in his eyes?

  It didn’t matter, I thought, running my hands over it. I knew it was the perfect color for my eyes. And what else was I to wear to a ball? It was probably outdated. But it was so gorgeous, no one would dare to remark on it. “Now, to work in the ten-mile run that will allow me to sweat off enough weight to wear it tomorrow.”

  I eyed the narrow hourglass of a bodice and shuddered. I wasn’t going to be able to breathe all night, let alone dance. Suddenly, I wished Marcello’s mother had been a large matron instead, given to tent dresses rather than tight-fitting gowns designed to draw the eye of every man in the room. I shook my head in wonder. “You must’ve been amazing, Mrs. Forelli. Wish I’d known you.”

  A knock sounded at my door, and I hurried over to the other valise. “Just a moment!” I called, shaking out the second, known dress I’d worn at the castello, then the underdress. Hurriedly, I pulled it over my head and across my still-wet, sticky skin, then moved to the door. “Yes?”

  “It’s the maid, m’lady. I’m here to aid you with your hair.”

  I lifted my brows and opened the door a crack. “That is a good thing. My hair is a…leviathan,” I said, coming up with the most ancient form of monster I could. And indeed, without conditioner, it was. What a mess, I thought, feeling up to the mass on top of my head.

  “It’s of no concern,” the girl said, checking me out. “I’ve dealt with far worse.”

  I raised my eyebrows and then sat where she indicated. “Actually, do you mind if I sit by the window as you work?”

  “Nay,” she said, gesturing toward the window.

  I moved over to the chair, and sank into it, staring to the well below. “Tell me, do you know everyone who visits the well below?”

  She
looked over my shoulder. “Most by sight, at least. All but the visitors, anyway.”

  “Have you seen a blonde stranger, a visitor, in the last few days?” I inquired.

  “Blonde?” she asked, as if unfamiliar with the word.

  “Si, the color of straw in the high noon light,” I said, letting my chin sink to my crossed arms again.

  “I’m sorry, m’lady, there are few with hair the color like that. Is that the sister you seek?”

  “Indeed.”

  She paused and then resumed her work, detangling my long tresses. “I might ask my papa. He is a vendor below, selling vegetables. He will know if the woman you seek passes by.”

  “Thank you,” I said, sighing heavily. It was a long shot.

  That she was here. In Siena.

  Now. With me. Hanging out beside an old well, when Fonte Gaia was not even designed yet, apparently.

  I shook my head, knowing how impossible it was.

  “M’lady,” complained the maid.

  “I’m s—forgive me,” I said. I remained still, my eyes trained on the square below, watching as the pace increased, as the sun grew higher in the sky. The noise echoed from beneath us. Dudes selling fish, calling out to shoppers, trying to sell their smelly wares, days old. A man selling vegetables, far more enticing. Others selling meat, pushing fly-infested beef and lamb that made me shudder, glad to not know exactly where my last meal had come from.

  Hundreds entered the lineup to reach the well. But none of them was my sister.

  “The master shall find her,” said the maid in confidence.

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “What the master sets out to do, he does,” she said. “Cast your mind to Lady Rossi’s betrothal to Lord Forelli.”

  I caught my breath but gave her a tiny nod, hoping she’d go on. My mind was suddenly focused on little else.