We had a few minutes, at least. I hurried back, for the first time recognizing that it was winter. The trees and brush were barren. The question was, what winter? The winter following the autumn I left, making it now 1344? Or another year entirely? It was late afternoon; we’d soon be swallowed by the dark. It could be cold and wet in these high hills of Toscana. Higher up, farther east, it was even known to snow on occasion.
I hurried over to my family and the unconscious, bleeding knight, now in nothing but his filthy leggings, the medieval version of long johns. “Let’s go,” I urged. “Dad can change when we’re someplace safe.”
“And where is that?” Dad muttered, grasping his bundle of stolen clothing more firmly.
“I’m hoping ahead, outside the next castle.” I reached down and picked up the fallen knight’s dagger. I’d already taken the pearl-handled dagger out of the tree trunk and resheathed it in my calf strap. “Here,” I said, handing it to Dad. “It’s good to have a backup.”
He took it from me, staring into my eyes as if I were some foreigner speaking a language he didn’t know. As if the medieval Italian wasn’t enough…his daughter was speaking a warrior dialect.
“Come on, Ben, trust us,” Mom said, taking his hand. She held the staff on her opposite shoulder. I moved in front to take the lead. Lia dropped back to keep an eye on our rear flank.
“When did you learn to wield that, Adri?” Dad asked, after a few minutes of walking.
“The last time we were here.”
“And why don’t I remember that?”
“You weren’t with us,” Mom hedged.
“You’ve never been interested in sparring before. I thought you were a pacifist,” Dad said to her.
“I was. Until my daughters were fighting for their lives.”
He didn’t respond to that; perhaps he was considering what he’d just witnessed. We entered the woods to the south, those once claimed as Forelli territory. Was it back in the hands of the Sienese? I shivered and rubbed my arms, feeling the chill of the late afternoon as we slipped beneath the shadows of the forest.
We paused near where Marcello had allowed me to change into a gown the first time I arrived. I remembered the way his eyes had crinkled up at the corner in a mass of laugh lines when I emerged wearing it backward. I remembered the feel of his hands, calm and efficient, as he helped me button it up the back. I remembered his expression, so warm and intrigued…
Trust me when I say I’d never captured a guy’s attention from the start.
And no guy had ever so captured me.
Dad emerged, wearing his new clothes, wrinkling up his nose. “Do these guys ever shower?”
“Not as often as we’d like,” Mom said with a smile. She reached up and straightened his collar. “You might not smell so great, but you look hot.”
“Ewww, Mom,” Lia said. “We’re right here.”
“Cut me some slack,” Mom said under her breath to us so Dad couldn’t hear. “I’ve been without him for a while.”
“I know, I know,” Lia said, groaning.
I smiled and pushed forward. I’d only been away from Marcello for what—a half a day?—but I thought I knew a little of what she felt. I couldn’t wait to be reunited with Marcello. To have him beside me, taking my hand in his, meeting my dad…
The idea of that brought me up short. But just for a second—Dad had to love Marcello. He had to.
I pushed forward, reaching the riverbed, the reeds dry and crackling in the breeze, the brush nothing but spires of stalks awaiting spring’s greening. After pausing a moment to listen and look for enemy patrols, I scurried across the rounded stones to the other side, my family right behind me. We watched for a few seconds, but no one seemed to be around.
The path eased onto the road, the road where, last time, I had run across Marcello. But not this time. Three birds flitted around the giant, barren oaks above us, craning their necks to watch. Other than that, there was no sound but the crunch of the rust-colored leaves beneath our feet.
I glanced back at Lia when we passed the boulder and trees where we’d taken shelter last time, worried that Marcello’s troops were enemies. We paused there now, catching our breath. Lia watched the road in one direction, and I watched the other.
Dad looked like he belonged in medieval Tuscany, with his long curls that brushed the edge of his collarless shirt. His olive skin and dark eyes were meant for this place, all earthy and wholesome and alive. I couldn’t help myself; I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tight.
“Wow, what’s this for?” he asked.
“I’m just glad you’re here, Dad. With us.”
“Adri?”
I glanced at Mom; she was tearing up. “Later, Ben. I’ll tell you later.”
“O-kay,” he said slowly.
Lia looked over at us, her eyes filled with confusion. “Why aren’t they after us yet, Gabs?”
I shook my head. “Maybe you got the sniper and they haven’t found the guards at the tumuli yet.”
“But when they do—”
“Yeah, I know; we need to keep moving.” I turned and set the pace again for us, a soft, padding, steady clip. In half an hour we reached the crossroads, and ten minutes later I slowed, hunched down, and eased toward Castello Forelli, careful to remain hidden.
My breath caught when I saw the rebuilt walls and gates, the movement of guards at the top of the walls. Hoping, wishing, I half stood before Lia whispered harshly. “Gabi, get down.”
That was when I saw it. The long, white banner with the red cross on it, waving above Castello Forelli.
The Guelph cross.
Firenze’s symbol. Not Siena’s. Not Marcello’s.
The question was now, if Firenze still held Castello Forelli, where would I find Marcello?
CHAPTER 2
Lia pulled back on my arm, easing me farther into the brush, thoroughly hidden from the guards high above.
I thought about what it was like when we’d left—hours before for us but apparently much longer for those here. I had so hoped that our men were on the verge of recapturing Castello Paratore and Castello Forelli. They’d had an opening…there were so many of our guys in this valley between the castles. Castello Forelli had been in shambles, her gate and front wall decimated. And now she was whole, repaired, stronger than ever. How long had that taken?
“How long have we been gone?” I asked Lia.
She read the fear in my eyes. Had we been gone years, decades? It’d be difficult to find out the date here. There were no newspapers, no computers, no watches, no cell phones keeping track of it. But we had to find out before we were too far from the tomb and our time tunnel. And yet if we were caught in enemy territory…I shuddered at the memory of being thrown into the cage in Firenze and hauled upward, left to die. How much worse would our punishment be this time?
“What if we try to make it to Signora Giannini’s?” Lia asked.
I frowned. It was maybe a few miles from here. But Siena was a good half day’s journey. “If she’s alive.”
“If they are there, they’ll hide us, let us stay overnight,” Lia said.
She was right. We hardly had a choice but to go and see. I nodded once. “But let’s head over those hills. We’d be idiots to keep to the roads.”
“Good plan.”
I turned toward Mom and Dad. “We’ll go to a friend’s cottage to learn what has become of the Forellis—”
“And find out the date,” Lia put in.
“Do you think the Gianninis are still there? If this has become Fiorentini territory?” Mom asked. She’d come with us, once, to assist the young mother with her harvest while her husband was away fighting.
I shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?” I glanced at the sun that was obscured by gray clouds.
“I don’t think we can make Siena before nightfall.”
“Someone’s coming,” Dad said.
For the first time, I heard the rumble of horses’ hooves. “Patrol,” I growled. We rushed backward, easing farther into the forest, and took positions behind rocks and trees. The twelve men galloped past on the road, their eyes casually scanning the forest. On duty, but not yet on alert. Their demeanor oozed the confidence of men who’d been in control for a while, not threatened in the least. And their captain was one I recognized: one of Lord Paratore’s most trusted men. My eyes met Lia’s, remembering how Paratore had captured her, threatened to torture her. How he’d nearly brought us down in Siena. How he’d threatened me when he captured me the next time, leered at me. If Lord Greco hadn’t been in the mix…
A shiver ran down my back, and I looked around, feeling the chill of the woods overtake any sense of warmth. How far back had the Fiorentini pushed the Sienese? How long ago?
At the crossroads we heard them divide and glimpsed one group heading toward Castello Paratore. Where were the others?
“With good luck they’ll bypass the tumuli on the road below,” I said.
“With bad luck they won’t,” Lia returned, “and they’ll find the dead knights we left behind.”
And then the hunt will be on, I finished silently.
“We cannot be captured here,” Mom said.
“Let’s go, Gabi,” Lia said, moving out.
I shook my head. Going to Signora Giannini’s took us a couple miles deeper into enemy territory. It felt wrong. And yet we didn’t really have an option. We needed someone who owed us, someone we could count on. We needed a friend. And the Gianninis were the closest thing we had.
We were about a quarter mile up the hill, having just found a deer path, when we heard the alarm bells of Castello Paratore.
Lia paused, glanced back at me, and then doubled her pace. They’d check the main roads first. But the bad part was that every enemy knight would now be on heightened alert, looking for us. Not us-us, necessarily. But anyone out of the ordinary. Anyone who would be capable of cutting down a patrol of knights. Luckily their first thought would not be a family, especially a family with three women dressed as nobility. Unless that sniper had escaped Lia’s return fire and reported back…
One option would be to take to the road and pretend we were just travelers heading from one city to the other. But it’d be odd for us to be on the move without horses or luggage. And if just one person recognized us—
Best to stick to the deer path, I thought with a shudder. Besides, there were more places for us to hide in the woods, should they broaden their search. It would take us much longer to reach the Gianninis, but it’d be safer.
We reached the other side of the hills a couple of hours later. While my parents and I rested, Lia moved ahead of us, scouting the area. My stomach rumbled with hunger, and I knew we were all in some serious need of water. Please let us spend the night with the Gianninis, I found myself praying. Please, please. The sky was growing thick with gray clouds. The last thing we needed was to be caught out in the rain.
“So…why exactly did you want to come back here?” Dad asked, sitting on a mossy rock and picking a dried weed apart with his fingers. “Why not stay in our Toscana, where people aren’t out to kill us?” He glowered over at me.
“So…right. This isn’t the best situation,” I admitted. “But it’ll get better. I just need to find out where Marcello is.”
“Who’s Marcello?”
“The guy she’s in love with,” Mom said.
Dad’s mouth dropped open and he looked over at her. In his mind I was still about fifteen years old, not almost eighteen. Not that three years would make a huge difference to a dad.
“So we’re here because of some teenage infatuation—”
“Not infatuation, Dad. Love.”
His mouth clamped shut.
“Lia, too,” Mom said. “She’s on the verge, anyway.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it love yet,” I said, seeing the alarm in Dad’s eyes.
“And that…that’s okay with you?” Dad asked, staring at Mom.
She stared back at him, a rueful expression in her eyes. “They’re pretty amazing young men, Ben. I think you’ll like them.”
“And…they couldn’t find amazing young men back in our own time?”
“Probably,” she said with a nod. “I mean, I’ve seen you staring, noticing. Our daughters have become young women.”
“Yeah, about that. I can’t figure out how—”
She reached out and caught his hand. “Sweetheart, the biggest thing I discovered, last time I was here, was that I didn’t want to be anywhere without our girls. I discovered I’d been missing them for a long time. And I don’t want to miss them again. Just like I don’t want to miss you.”
He dragged his eyes from Mom to me. “You could take us back?” he asked. “Leave us in our own time?”
“Maybe,” I said carefully. I looked to Mom, wondering when she would explain.
“Ben…” she said, hesitating, her light brown eyebrows furrowed.
He remained still, waiting.
“The reason the girls are so different, so grown up, the reason you weren’t with us the last time we came, is because we came back in time to save you.”
“Save me.”
“Save you.” She bit her lip, obviously choosing her words. “About eight months ago”—she paused, choking up, then she cleared her throat and went on—“you were in a terrible accident. On a road near our excavation site. It was mid-December—we’d come during the girls’ vacation—and it was raining.”
He shook his head. “Did I get a concussion? Because I don’t remember that. We’ve never come to Toscana in the winter—”
“You don’t remember it because you haven’t yet lived it.” Remembering, she looked up to the gray clouds, and I saw that her skin was about the same color. “A farmer came around the bend in the narrow road, about the same time you did, and you swerved to miss him. You were killed instantly.”
He straightened. “Killed,” he said dully.
“We buried you, Dad,” I said, my voice cracking. Tears immediately welled in my eyes.
“And then, the following summer, we found the new tumuli site, up on that hill,” Mom said, gesturing back behind us. “And within Tomb Two, the girls discovered the time tunnel. They went back, came here, without me. Then returned. I went with them that second time. And then we knew we had to try a third trip—to try to save you.”
“You came back for me,” he said, his tone numb. “And it worked.”
“Yes. But what I don’t know is if we can ever go back now,” Mom said. “We’ve seen that we’re modifying history by being here. Castello Forelli—in our own time, it was in ruins. But when we returned for you, it was whole, a tourist attraction. So…buildings can be saved. History can be changed to some extent. But a life, once gone…Can that be changed too?”
“We could go back, to right before…” He couldn’t seem to make himself say it. “Not even come to Tuscany that Christmas.”
“If we can get to that year,” I said. “There’s a fair amount of luck involved.”
“Or is your time done then, regardless of where you are?” Mom asked. “Will you meet some accident on a Colorado highway instead of a Tuscan road?”
“But the same logic could be applied here, Adri. If my time is up, then will I die here? Some arrow find my gut? A knight cut me down?”
I shuddered. “I hope not. But don’t you think…Dad, we think we might have a better chance here, in this time, to see you live. Don’t you see? We’ll never have to face that horrible day in our lifetimes. Not if we’re here in the fourteenth century.”
He studied me, then Mom. “So, then, we jus
t give up our lives as we know it? Everything we’ve worked so hard to accomplish, gain?”
“Would that be so terrible?” Mom asked in a whisper, reaching out to touch his thigh. “Benedetto…” she whispered, “you don’t know what it was like, seeing you dead.” She swallowed hard. “Living life without you. Pushing forward, knowing my best friend was gone forever.” Her big eyes grew teary, and Dad wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. “This place, Ben, that time tunnel has given us a second chance. Maybe we’re meant to be here, all together. Meant to discover life anew, as a family.”
“I wasn’t convinced at all either, Dad,” Lia said, rejoining us. “But trust me, this place, this time, grows on you.”
I smiled at her, then nodded in the direction she’d just walked from. “What’d you see?”
“We’re about a quarter mile from the Gianninis’,” she said, pointing northward. “Let’s stay to the woods, though. There are Fiorentini patrols on the road.”
We waited until it got darker before we dared leave the woods and head down to the Giannini cottage. I remembered the last time we had been there, when Signore Giannini had returned home so ill with the plague. I wondered again if they were all dead and gone by now. Or had he recovered, as Luca had, before any of the rest got it?
As the rain began to fall, we hurried down the back path, and I knocked on the door. Lia stood behind me, arrow drawn but hidden, in case an enemy answered.
Signore Giannini came to the door, and I took a breath of awe and relief. Friends, at last.
“M’ladies,” he said with a gasp, looking as though he was going to pass out at the sight of me and Lia. His eyes moved beyond us, to our parents. “Entrate, sbrigatevi,” he added, drawing us in. Come in, quickly. He stared toward the empty road for a long moment before closing the door. “What are you doing here? It is not safe!”
Inside, Signora Giannini immediately set to bustling around us, handing us lengths of cloth to dry our hair, sending children to the fire to fetch us cups of warm stew. I introduced my father to the family, noting that the kids looked like they’d grown an inch or two. Had it been a year? Three?
The River of Time Series Page 63
