Torrent (12 page)

Paratore was departing, speaking in low tones with Lords Barbato and Greco. With one last sneer in my direction, he wheeled his horse around and headed east, with two men on either side of him. Back home. To Castello Paratore, most likely. Perhaps to be ready as Marcello neared.

“So,” said the captain, “you still believe it is safest for us to travel to Roma?”

I frowned. What was this?
Roma?
Why would we go to Rome?

Rodolfo looked at each of the men but refused to look at me. “Marcello and his men shall expect us to ride toward home. They will be sorely disappointed to not intercept us on the road to Firenze. Once my nuptials with Lady Gabriella are complete, we can travel without fear.”

My heart stopped for a sec and then beat twice as hard, making me actually bring a hand to my chest. I stared hard at him, but he still didn’t look my way. Lord Barbato smiled over at me. “I have arranged every detail with our friends in Roma,” he said. “It shall be a day you will remember forever.”

Right. Like I was worried I wouldn’t have a wedding straight out of the latest issue of
Brides
magazine.

They’d planned it all out. Known, from the start, that it was me they wanted. And they’d come up with a way to ensure it would happen.

As the sun climbed in the sky, my heart sank lower and lower. None of Marcello’s men charged after us. They were probably as many miles north now as we were south. I wondered, briefly, why they just hadn’t made sure we got hitched in Sansicino, but then I knew why: Had word reached Marcello, there would have been no way that our men would have left without battle, weapons or not. This way, with only the word that I was gone, Marcello would be driven to pursuit rather than upheaval inside Ascoli’s precious city walls. Ascoli had neatly washed his hands of all of us and undoubtedly kept a sweet Fiorentini finder’s fee for my capture.

Even now the priest rode with us. Why not do the whole outdoor wedding thing here?

Then it came to me. The people of medieval Tuscany would only recognize a wedding performed in a church. It was something holy to them. Required. No vineyard or oceanside weddings in Italia in this day and age. No way.

It was shortly before noon when Rodolfo shouted out to his captain and the men allowed their horses to head toward a meager stream beside the road. I didn’t miss the fact that two rear scouts had just returned, wearing expressions of confidence and ease, and that two others were sent out to take their place.

I was led by Lord Greco and two men, who all turned their backs when I went behind a tree to relieve myself. I stayed there a moment, finally unfolding the note, which by that time had become a damp ball in my palm.

Your deepest desires shall be met. Trust me.
—
R

I read it, over and over again. His handwriting was elegant, almost like calligraphy. But that was not what so captured me. It was the promise. My deepest desire was to be with Marcello, forever, of course. He was promising to get me to him, to safety. Right?

But what was this turn toward Roma? And while I could excuse the words as simply code, something that the Fiorentini would dismiss as a love note, I saw as having different levels, different meanings.

No, I won’t go there. He’s reassuring me. Roma is south of Siena, farther away from Firenze than ever. He intends to use our location to help me escape.

I hoped. I refused to believe anything else. That he would actually use me to betray his friend or his pledge as one of the brotherhood. If he were willing to do that, would it have not been far easier to let me die in the cage?

I emerged from my hidden perch, and Rodolfo led me to the stream, where he scooped cold water with a small wooden bowl and let it flow over my hands. I rubbed my face, loving the wet on my dusty skin, and then when I blinked my eyes open, he was offering me a handkerchief to dry. So thoughtful…so ahead of me at every moment.

We broke bread and ate the hard pecorino cheese in silence, while the men chatted and laughed around us. What was there to say? Only one question came to my mind. “How long shall it take us to reach Roma?”

“Two days,” he said casually, “if we can keep this pace.” He was sprawled out on his side on a blanket, leaning on one arm, facing me as if we were out on a romantic picnic and had been hanging out together a lot.

Two days. Two nights on the road.

“Fig?” he asked, offering me a dried orb.

“Grazie,” I said, reaching for it.

He held on, teasing me, and I laughed in confusion. He smiled, making him look more the Roman god than ever.

Okay, so he was cute. Like movie-star cute. And his interest was flattering, but I loved Marcello. Right? Right. But I found myself kind of overwhelmed with all the attention—what was the deal, anyway? I’d never had a boyfriend in my life, and here, the guys seemed to line up…

The two guards nearest us moved away, as if to give us a moment of privacy. I shoved the fig into my mouth, knowing it was too big for one bite but wanting a measure of distance and distraction from Rodolfo.

He turned and lowered himself onto his back, putting his hands behind his head, as if he knew I didn’t want him to make any move. He was just playing with me, toying, flirting, like every other Italian male.

He stared up into the trees. “So tell me, Gabriella. What is it that you long for most?”

I hesitated and swallowed my fig.
Huh?
“What do you mean?”

“Is it a grand palazzo? Fine gowns? Children? What would bring you happiness?”

My eyes shifted to the trickling river. Come spring, it would be ten times as wide and just as deep. On and on it went, rushing toward the distant horizon. Like time. Like life. Sometimes gently falling from one pool into the other, other times fast and cascading, and still other times narrowing into a funnel, a torrent of knots and waves.

I returned my gaze to my hot-as-all-get-out captor.
Marcello’s friend,
I reminded myself, centering my thoughts on Marcello. I looked up to the wide, barren branches of the oak above us and then closed my eyes as I felt the tiny bit of warmth from the sun on my face. “What most of us want, I think. Love. Family. Friends. Laughter.” I smiled and dared to look at him again. “Adventure.”

He laughed and nodded. “Hardly a surprise.”

I looked up again, my eyes trailing from the old trunk of the tree to where it split into several limbs. “Wisdom. I want to become one of those old women everyone seeks out because she’s figured it out.”

“Figured it out?” he asked, confused by my contemporary phrase.

“Learned. From my mistakes, as well as my good decisions, so that I make better and better choices. So I can more clearly see the path best taken.”

He nodded, covering me in a gaze that made me feel as known and appreciated as Marcello made me feel.

Which was…decidedly awkward. I rose. “Should we not be on our way?”

He rose too, looking at me quizzically. “Indeed we should.” He had a piece of dried grass in his hands, and he picked it apart, methodically. “Do you not wish to know what I long for most?”

My resolve was crumbling. I looked up at him, seeing the sorrow and the longing in his big eyes.
“What is it for which you long, Rodolfo?” I asked softly. Why was I feeling so defensive, tensing in preparation for his answer? He was my friend. Marcello’s. He simply needed someone to confide in.

“Peace,” he said, shaking his head and looking to his men, packing their things on their horses. “Between Siena and Firenze and beyond.” He took a step toward me, seemingly lost in thought. But I took a step back, toward the tree.

“Like you, wisdom, but to assist my people.” He shook his head again. “There are people, Gabriella, peasants. But peasants with dreams bigger than any nobleman I know.” His dark eyes lit up with excitement, and he clenched his fist before his face with a smile of excitement. “I long to have the time to help them take a step toward those dreams. And another. And yet another.” He took a second step toward me, as if to emphasize what he was saying. And I did too, bumping into the broad trunk of the oak tree behind me.

He stared down at me, and I dared to look up into his eyes. I had to know now. If I could trust him, truly trust him. “What else?” I asked.

He stilled, staring down at me so intently that he breathed in short huffs, as if he was holding his breath for a second at a time. He shook his head again. “Do not tempt me, Gabriella,” he whispered. “I am doing all I can.” He leaned closer and truly—it was like someone else was controlling my body—I lifted my face closer to his.

His eyes searched mine. And then he leaned in to kiss me, entwining his fingers into my hair, his other hand around my waist, pulling me to him.

I gave in.

Traitorous, two-timing, skanky wench that I was, I couldn’t help myself. Seriously, I just didn’t have it in me. He had me totally, completely confused.

And his kiss was far too sweet. I wanted it to be like poison on my lips, sour, killing. But it was far from that. Oh, so far from that…

Dimly, I heard the men cheering, and I pushed Rodolfo away, gasping for air like he’d taken it all from me. Like I could reclaim who I’d been seconds before, reverse the flow of the river, of time. And once again be only one thing: Marcello’s own.

Which was far better than being this.

His betrayer.

Chapter Ten

I awakened the following morning feeling like I seriously had a Scarlet A sewn to the bodice of my gown. It didn’t help that Rodolfo was just a few feet away, even if he slept with his back to me.

Every man in camp was well aware that I’d allowed Lord Greco to kiss me; the fact that I’d shoved him away after would be quickly forgotten. They considered me Greco’s. Traitor to Marcello. In their eyes, the battle was over.

You deserve it,
I told myself.
Loser.

I doubted Marcello had ever even looked at another girl once I returned to him, let alone kissed one. I doubted he’d even glanced their way. Not since Romana was gone. Not since we’d exchanged the
L
word. He was that kind of loyal, that kind of faithful. That kind of loving. My love. My one, true love.

If a two-timing, treasonous jerk-o-rama of a girl can actually have one, true love…

I wearily made my way among the sleeping forms to the creek bed, ignoring the two guards who hastily rose and hovered behind me.

At the riverbed I sighed, crouched, and splashed my face. I rubbed it as if I could wipe away the nightmare I’d begun the day
before, staring at the dark sky above, still lit with stars, though they faded with the approaching light of day.

I cupped my hands beneath a small flow of water and waited for them to fill.

“Sometimes we are more harsh with ourselves than we are with others,” a man’s voice said, surprising me so that I ended up splashing my dress more than my face.

I squinted in the dim light, and the priest was laughing. The priest from the dungeon, who had administered Fortino’s last rites.

“Oh, ’tis you. I confess, Father, I didn’t even see you there,” I said. But then I’d been totally distracted with thoughts of Rodolfo and my own stupidity.

He laughed again, crouched on the other side of the stream, and looked up. “Yes, ’tis my common experience. Being somewhat invisible. I doubt you know much of what I speak, being a She-Wolf and all. Everyone seems to take note of your every move, do they not?”

I cocked my head and stared over at him. “What is your name, Father?”

“Tomas. Father Tomas. Or just Tomas.”

“Just Tomas?” I repeated. I knew few priests in ancient Tuscany who didn’t demand the full respect of the title.

He hesitated, dipped his fingers into the water and watched them drip into the stream. “I was excommunicated two years past.”

I let that sink in a moment.
I think excommunicated means cut off from the Church. Even…condemned.

“You no longer serve the Church?”

“I serve my God,” he said, poking a stick into the water and watching water divide on either side. “But no, my Church no longer allows me to serve in her name.”

“But you…with Fortino, you…”

“Performed the rite of Extreme Unction.” He cast me a small smile that I could just barely make out in the dim light. “God heard it. He is bigger than the Church. You saw it yourself—Fortino was on his way home to the Maker.”

Ah, so it was a power thing.
Tomas was some sort of rebel not up for supporting the concept that the Church was All That. The High Church boys didn’t like that sort of thing. Especially in this era. I remembered that much of my medieval history lessons. We were only a couple hundred years away from the Reformation, when Luther would kick into gear and the Church would totally divide. Become Catholic and Protestant. I knew some kids back home who went to a mega-church, who didn’t think Catholics were even Christian. It was still ugly, five hundred years after the fact.

Religion. I thought it was all stupid. It was enough to be on The Path, right? Getting closer to God? Wasn’t the Christian faith kind of like an ice cream store, with a bunch of different flavors? You had your Baptists, your Lutherans, your Episcopalians, your nondenoms, your Catholics. They were all after Jesus as their head Dude, right? What did it matter?

After witnessing Fortino’s death, his vision, I was more than a little freaked out by the faith thing. But I wanted more of it. To know a little more of the Big Guy before I was on my own deathbed. And hopefully be greeted through those opening gates that Fortino saw when it was my turn to go. Which might be sooner than later in this place.…

“What did you do?” I asked Tomas. “To get…dismissed?”

“Excommunicated?” he returned without flinching.

“Yes, excommunicated. And Rodolfo, Lord Greco—he knows?”

“He knows.” He dropped his voice. “But Lord Barbato does not.” He stared at the water for a moment and then held my gaze. “I killed a man.”

I paused, trying to get it in my head that this big, roly-poly man, just a little older than I, was a killer. Murderer. But then, who was I to talk? I’d done the same in battle. Over and over again. “Why?” I asked.

“Because he was about to kill a woman. His wife.”

I think I blinked a few times. I’d heard it on the news. On shows like
Dateline
.

I finally found my voice again. “Why were you not hanged?”

“The villagers knew the man to be a tyrant. They knew I acted only because I had no other choice.”

“And did you?”

He repositioned his stick in the water. It was getting lighter out. I could make out more of his face as he looked at me. “I could have given up my own life. But I did not,” he said, with just a tinge of shame, dropping his gaze.

So that was what he had meant, about us being more harsh with ourselves than others. He’d wrestled with his own guilt.

“The woman…was she grateful?”

“Nay,” he said. “She cursed me.” He shrugged. “She no longer had a man. Someone to put a roof over her head, bring her food as well as a beating.”

I paused, trying to absorb such an idea. He saved her, and she cursed him for it? But I remembered Signora Giannini, battling to make it without her husband. He was no abuser, but it was hard in these times to make it alone. Especially as a woman. I thought of the old woman outside of Firenze who’d saved me and Lia. It was the same thing with her, scraping by, watching the crop rot on the vines.

“I’ve run over the memory, time and time again. But trust me, Gabriella, when I say to let it go, move on. Endeavor to make a better choice next time if you can, especially if you made a choice in error. And if you didn’t…” He shrugged again. “If God confirms you’re in the right, embrace it. Let it change you and the course of your stream. Your future.”

He rose and, with surprisingly light steps over the largest of the stones, crossed toward the men and horses. I saw that Rodolfo was up, stretching, and I quickly looked back to the water. I watched where the water wound around stones and reconnected below. That was what Tomas was talking about. The stream as life.

Had I made a decision that would forever divide me from Marcello? Or was it merely a stone in the river, a temporary obstacle, something to get past?

After taking a drink, I forced myself to rise and join the Fiorentini. If Marcello and his men hadn’t overtaken us in the night, I doubted they would. Clearly they’d headed north toward Firenze, as expected. Why would they suspect that we would head south?

“Did you manage to sleep?” Rodolfo asked as I neared, cocking his head in an endearingly caring and attentive manner.

“For a few hours,” I said. I gave him a small smile. After all, the kiss wasn’t entirely his fault, and I’d all but ignored him all afternoon and evening yesterday. “’Tis better than none at all.”

“Indeed.” He bent, took a loaf of crusty bread from his sack, and offered me half. We stood together, choking down dry pieces for several minutes as the men removed saddles—left on in the night in case we had to flee—rubbed down the horses’ flanks and then replaced them.

“No freedom for long for them,” I said. I bit my cheek, knowing he’d probably think I was referring to myself too.

Maybe I was.

“Gabriella,” he said quietly, tossing the rest of his loaf to the brush and facing me. He wiped his lush lips with the back of his hand and finished chewing. “Forgive me for yesterday.”

I looked over his shoulder. The nearest man was more than twenty feet from us. “’Twas as much my fault as your own,” I said. “You did what you had to.”
You know, to continue this charade.
At least I hoped that was what it had been. That it’d all been in my head—

He searched my eyes and then looked away, to the rising sun, then back to me, searching my face. My heart was pounding.
What is wrong with me?

“I’ve tried to forget it. Getting to know you, the first time. Coming to see why Marcello admired you so. But I fail, every time. I know your heart belongs to him, my brother. And I barely slept this past night, given my self-recriminations.”

But might there not be a spot in your heart for me, too?
his big, brown eyes silently asked me. So it was as I feared; there was something real, something living, growing between us, tying us together. It hadn’t all been a show for him, as it hadn’t been for me. I had to end it. Cut from this direction of the river. Fast.

“I am meant for one man, Rodolfo,” I whispered. “And that is Marcello.”

The men were looking our way, then sharing raised eyebrows and smiles, thinking it was yet another romantic moment. It was good they thought that. It would help us keep up appearances a while longer.

“I mistreated you while you were in my care last,” he said with a sigh, as if that explained my allegiance.

“Nay. I know that you did what you had to do, to preserve your role. Had you not, had they figured it out…Rodolfo, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I owe you my life, several times over.”

He was still for a moment, considering my words, and then he nodded, kicking his toe into the loose dirt as if he was trying to kick free the stone in the ground. “Since he has not yet arrived, I assume Marcello is a good bit behind us.”

“As do I,” I admitted.

“Do you have it within you?” he asked, leaning closer to my ear. “To continue this farce, even straight to an altar? We shall need every hour we can give him. And our companions…Gabriella, they have one goal.”

I looked at him until he met my eyes. “As far as an altar. But no vows,” I whispered fiercely. “I shall never exchange vows with anyone other than Marcello.” It felt good to take a stand for what I knew was right, true. But there was a breath of tearing, too. A moment of thinking,
I can’t believe I’m turning this guy down.
I didn’t like it. It shamed me, acknowledging it. But there it was.

He blinked his long lashes, then nodded. “I shall see you to freedom before that. Now we will straighten and you shall allow me to embrace you. As if you are falling for my charms. As many other women in Firenze have.”

I didn’t doubt it. He was reminding me that he was Mr. Hot-o-rama when I didn’t need the reminder. But I’d probably hurt his pride. So I did as he’d instructed.

He straightened, gave me a lingering smile, and touched my chin with the knuckle of his forefinger, looking into my eyes. After a breath he gently placed his hands on either side of my face, then closed his eyes and kissed my forehead. Then he pulled me into a warm embrace, so warm, that I felt the chill of the morning anew when he released me.

When he offered his arm, I took it, allowing him to lead me to my mare.

He was a good man. A fine man.

Almost as good as Marcello. But he was not Marcello.

Not him,
I reminded myself sternly.