Torrent (21 page)

“You do not know how glad I am to be with you again, Gabriella,” Marcello said over his shoulder, between pants.

“Only half as glad as I, m’lord,” I said. I grinned, feeling crazy—like we were running through a field of daisies, instead of for our lives. That insanely
invincible
kind of thing. Except on steroids. We ran for ten, then fifteen minutes, at a distinctly downward angle, until we abruptly met a closed door. We only narrowly stopped in time, so fast were we going. It had to be dark on the other side—there was no illuminated edge.

Marcello traced the frame of the door with the torch and then cursed under his breath, wiping his upper lip of sweat.

“What?”

“I can’t find a latch. It may be locked on the other side,” he said, giving it a shove with his shoulder. But it didn’t budge.

Luca and Father Tomas limped into our circle of light. We could see Mom’s bouncing torch, fifty feet beyond them. Luca unlooped Tomas’s arm from around his shoulders and led him to a seat, ten feet back into the tunnel. “Shall we?” he asked Marcello.

“I supposed we must,” my man said with a grin. He drew me back to Father Tomas, then pulled a sword from a sheath on his back. “I believe this is yours, m’lady,” he said.

I was almost as glad to have my broadsword back in my hands as I was to be with my people. I instantly felt stronger, more capable of taking on what was ahead. Whatever. I was happily buying the lie. Mom, Dad, and Lia arrived, and we heard the clang of the heavy door behind us. Mom glanced at me and hurriedly stomped out her torch. Not that it mattered much—Marcello still had his. We all moved to the edges of the tunnel, knowing an archer would try to send his first arrow down the center.

Marcello handed me the torch. Lia and I stood behind our guys, who stood shoulder to shoulder.

Judging from the noise behind us, we’d only have one chance at this.
Please, God, please, God, please, God…

“One, two, three,” Marcello said. They ran toward the iron door at the end, and struck it together, Marcello with his left shoulder, Luca with his right.

The door immediately collapsed outward, with them on top of it.

Lia and I ran past them, all tough and SWAT-like, into a tiny piazza with a well at the center, searching in all directions for knights who would attack. But we only saw a tiny old woman, a cured ham in her hands. Her toothless mouth dropped open as she stared at us. But Marcello and Luca were already on the move. Clutching his shoulder as if it pained him, Marcello took my hand as Father Tomas, Mom, and Dad emerged. Luca resumed his position under Tomas’s arm, and Marcello looked back at him. “Do you know where we are?” he asked the priest, glancing about the piazza. All around us were two-story houses, making it impossible to guess our location.

He shook his head. “I am a man of Firenze and the countryside. I’ve spent precious little time in Roma.”

“We must get to Piazza Vesuvius,” Marcello demanded of the little old woman. “How far is that?”

She drew up to her full height of perhaps four feet, ten inches, and gave him a Don’t-You-Be-Impolite-With-Me look. In Italia, no young man spoke to older women in such a manner. I heard him groan, and he left my side to look down each of the four ways out of the piazza, seeking a landmark.

“La chiedo scusa, ma siamo in pericolo,”
I tried.
I beg your pardon. But we are in danger…
“Can you tell us how to get to the Piazza Vesuvius, please?”

She gave Marcello another grandmotherly look of reproach and then glanced at me, in my crazy toga gown and hair down, sword in hand. “
Amdiamoci.”
That way,
she said in a tone that said
enough with the crazy, rude kids these days,
hooking a thumb over her shoulder, toward one cobblestone street. She narrowly stepped aside to watch us all head out in a rush.

Dimly I wondered how long it would take her to connect the news of the second escape of Lady Betarrini from a forced wedding ceremony with the people she’d seen this night. I shivered as we reached the end of the street and saw the Tiber River. With one glance Marcello had his bearings, and after tucking my sword in his second sheath, he abruptly pulled me left.

We hurried as fast as we could, walking single file—except for Luca and Tomas—down the road that bordered the river.
How far?
I wondered. But I dared not ask. We were staying silent, trying not to attract any more attention than necessary.

But the bells behind us were ringing in alarm, and I kept getting curious looks at my dirty toga and hair—I was drawing entirely too much attention.

“We have to find you new clothes,” Marcello said.

“A decoy,” I returned. “Let us find a woman about my height, with dark hair. You have gold with you?”

He smiled back into my eyes, figuring out my plan. “I do. You intend to spend it?”

“I hope to.” We hurried along, but few women were out at this hour, and those that we met were too short, too fat, too thin…until we met one that looked about right. “
Perdonami,”
I said.
Excuse me.
I touched her arm, and she glanced at me in such alarm and distaste, I took a breath in surprise. It was then I realized that everyone on the street believed I was a prostitute.

Marcello took over. “
Ho una proposta per lei.
”
I have a deal for you.
“I’ll give you two gold florins if you trade your gown for my lady’s costume.”

She laughed as if he were crazy and looked me up and down, then back to him. “Her costume is worth nothing to me.”

“But it is worth a great deal to us. Please, sell us your dress. Exchange it with my lady, and I shall pay you.”

“Nay. If my neighbors, my friends were to see me in such a dress—”

“Three florins.”

A gold florin had to be enough to feed a large family for what? A month? A year?

“Five,” she dared.

“Four,” he said, nudging her into a shop, me right behind. “But you must swear you’ll wear the toga until morning.”

“For four florins? I’d wear about anything,” she quipped, looking back at him in the doorway.

Marcello smiled and told Luca and Lia to take the others to the stables and wait for us there, and then he followed us in. He slipped a coin over the merchant’s counter, lifting a finger to his lips, and held a curtain aside to the narrow back storeroom, urging me to hurry. He let it drop closed behind me. In the gap between the curtain and door casing, I could see his back as he turned to guard us.

The girl turned to me and I hurriedly unhooked a line of twenty buttons down the dress, then untied the rope at my waist, smiling as I saw that it had left a line of white where it had protected the dirt-stained cloth.
I really was the dirtiest bride on record.
…

“What happened to you, m’lady?” she whispered, as we traded gowns.

“’Tis better for you if you do not know. All you shall say, if you are discovered, is that you were paid handsomely for your old dress. No one shall blame you for accepting such an offer.”

She smiled, curiosity alive in her eyes, as she turned and slipped on the toga, while I did the same with her gown, nearly gagging at the scent of BO. I concentrated on breathing through my mouth, not my nose.
Not that she’s getting a precious, laundry-fresh dress, herself…
She’d have to burn it when she got home. With four gold coins she could purchase five new dresses and still have a total stash left over.

While she buttoned me up, I wound my hair into a knot and took the carved pins she offered me. When I turned back around, I smiled at the sight of her hair down around her shoulders. “Frightfully similar,” I said.

“It’s an honor to resemble Lady Betarrini,” she guessed in a whisper.

“Remember,” I said, shaking my head in warning, but smiling a little, “I never said so. And we were gone before you could sound an alarm.”

“Like poof! Phantoms, or wolves,” she said with another smile.

“Come,” Marcello said, reaching through for my arm. “We must be on our way.” He nodded to our friend and the merchant, and we left the store. It was then I noticed the neatly wrapped package beneath his arm. With my hand on his as we paraded down the street, we appeared the average Roman merchant and lady, returning home after a market stop. I froze as I saw a patrol of twelve Roman knights cantering around the corner ahead of us, but Marcello urged me on. “Continue to walk, Gabriella,” he said lowly, smiling and leaning closer to kiss my temple. “We belong here. I am staring at you, showing the world how in love with you I am,” he coached. “And you are watching the guards approach with interest, as if there’s nothing to hide.…”

I dragged my eyes from the cobblestones at my feet.

“Interesting, the commotion,” he whispered, as the knights neared, “first the bells, now the soldiers, searching.” He looked up with me then, to watch as the knights rode by, checking us out, then dismissing us, exactly as he had planned.

“Next time I get to be the girl in love, too distracted to watch,” I complained.

He laughed, and we picked up our pace. After we passed two more streets, we turned left and then directly right, into an alley that stank of manure.
The stables must be ahead.

We emerged on the small square, with feeding and watering troughs on either end, and I saw that my parents, Lia, Luca, and Tomas were all mounted. “Up you go,” Marcello said, lifting me to my mount and handing me the reins as I slipped my feet into the stirrups. The saddle had a scabbard, and I slid my sword into it, hiding it quickly under my skirts as the stable master came outside. He was chewing on a loaf of bread, watching us go.

“For your silence,” Marcello said, flipping a coin into the air toward him.

He caught it, eyed Marcello, and smiled a close-lipped smile.

Chapter Nineteen

“All we must do is make it to the city walls,” Marcello said, leading our line out.

No problem,
I thought. The city walls were still a mile or two distant, and now other bells were ringing. How long until word reached every citizen that we had escaped? Lord Vivaro had to be as mad as the Red Queen in
Alice in Wonderland,
and Lord Barbato…well, I could seriously see him mouthing the words
heads will roll,
at that very instant.

Yeah, good luck, losers.
In the company of my homies, I’d wager my chances any day. Even with Dad—so new to this time and their rough ways—and Father Tomas, weak from blood loss, together, we were strong.

And it was different from escaping Firenze that fateful night; most of Roma’s citizens took idle interest in us but really didn’t care one way or another if we lived or died. And they wouldn’t likely risk their own necks to capture us—we were Firenze’s enemies, not theirs.

Unless word of a reward spread. I sighed. If there was one thing Lords Barbato and Vivaro had, it was a seemingly endless supply of money. To throw lavish parties. Rebuild Roman baths. Hire mercenaries. And, surely, offer rewards. Lord Barbato knew he could ill afford our escape from Roma. Once we were gone, we’d be ten times as difficult to capture. And his dreams about making me the conquered bride of Firenze? Yeah, that was already down the drain.

But he’d have a better chance of killing us than capturing us. After what I’d been through, there was no way they were taking me alive again. And I guessed my family and friends felt the same way. What was better? To fight to the death? Or to be put to the stake after all kinds of humiliation or torture?

Death, every time. Not that I was up for the whole dying thing. I wanted to live. I’d be willing to fight to the death in order to live—in freedom, with Marcello, with my family. I suddenly understood all the campaign talk from home, of fighting for what you believed in, fighting for rights, fighting for freedom, fighting, paradoxically, for peace.

Peace
sounded like a delicious dream to me right then, sucking me inward, backward, toward the utter weariness at my core. We were drawing long looks from those still on the street, our band of men and women, so many of us in matching robes and capes, stolen from the lords of Roma. But we ignored them, trotting down one street and then the next. Marcello paused up ahead, circled his horse, and silently waved us back. We turned and all made it into an alley before a Roman patrol of a couple dozen men passed. Marcello dismounted and sneaked to the corner to find out what they were up to; he returned and reported they were pausing to speak to those on the streets, asking questions. Looking for us. Trying to pick up our trail.

“Must make haste, now,” he said under his breath. It’d only be minutes—maybe even seconds—before they crossed one of the streets from which we’d come, and someone tipped them off, told them we’d been seen.

We rode at a fast clip, under a raised, crumbling aqueduct and past the countless brick arches of Emperor Caracalla’s old public bathhouse.
Almost there,
I thought, knowing the wall wasn’t far. The knights of Roma would not pursue us beyond the wall, and Lord Barbato’s and Vivaro’s mercenaries made up only a fraction of their number. If we could make the wall, we’d break from most of the men who hunted us.

We turned the corner, glimpsed the repaired wall that marked the main entrance to the eternal city, had just taken a breath of hope, glory, when I saw them.

Men closing ranks, on horseback, fifty strong. Blocking our exit. Preparing to hunt us down. But they still hadn’t seen us.

“This way,” Marcello growled. We followed him into Caracalla’s old structure—once a sprawling, public bathhouse that could handle a thousand customers at once—ducking under lower doorways, marveling at the massive rooms they led to. When we were into the third room, Marcello turned to Luca and lifted his chin. “Take Lia with you. I’ll take Gabriella. We’ll leave two horses here and make the Romans think we’re here somewhere, so they’ll scour every rabbit hole in the place.”

I slid over to his mount and wrapped an arm around his waist. He reached for my sword from the saddle of my horse. “You may need this,” he said grimly.

Our freed mounts whinnied and hurried into the next room, which was roofless. The floor bloomed with winter grass, and they waded into it like they’d found a field all their own. We rushed on, hit a dead end, and doubled back, then moved to a new segment of the old bathhouse’s ruins. The complex was massive, one of Roma’s hot spots back in the Empire’s heyday. But as Marcello turned one corner and then the next, I felt like we were going in circles. We’d left the central structure with its towering hundred-foot walls and entered a complex maze to one side.

Then, all at once, we were out, and I took a deep breath, glimpsing stars just beginning to glitter overhead. Marcello abruptly turned and waited for the rest of our party to catch up, then led us back into the bathhouse. “Scouts,” he grunted as explanation.

We walked down another massive, crumbling hallway, and I grimaced at the sound of horse hooves against the mosaic tiles, imagining the sound echoing down to those who now ran through these old halls, swords in hands, shouting,
Hey, they’re over here!

My eyes went down every dark passageway, and I squinted, trying to see if there was an enemy coming our way. A couple times, squatters, Roma’s homeless, rose, making me catch my breath—once an old man, then an entire family. But they only stood to see who we were, what we were up to, alarmed by our after-dark intrusion.

We paused and then dipped down through a trough where a column must have fallen and been removed, and then another. I looked back, trying to see the three horses behind Luca and Lia, but it was getting too dark.
Stay with us, Mom and Dad!
I wanted to call.

Marcello abruptly stopped and stayed deadly still, staring to our left, just past the wall, beyond where I could see. From what I
could
see, we’d emerged a third of the way back, on the city wall side of the complex.
How’d he get us here through that maze?
I wondered in admiration. Maybe he’d played here as a child.

Satisfied, or maybe seeing some knights move away, he edged forward, peeking left. “You look to our right,” he said quietly.

I did as he asked, staring so hard down the dark road that I began to see things in the dark. Over and over he paused when I tensed. Over and over I said, “
Non c’importa.
”
It’s nothing.
When the rest of our party was out of the bathhouse complex, we moved down the road to our left, the city wall on our right side. We were heading toward Circus Maximus and the next gate, still a quarter mile distant. We rode hard, half-expecting troops to come after us. But after another couple minutes I dared to believe that Marcello had done it—that he’d fooled them into thinking that we were still inside the complex, hiding away.

He unexpectedly veered left and rode into the old arena, where the road began to slope down and we could clearly see a scary, dual-towered, double-walled gate, opening and closing. We were still in shadow so we were certain they could not see us. There were four knights along the wall at the top of the gate, two on each round tower and four on the ground. “These gates are never guarded,” Marcello muttered to Luca, pulling our horse to a stop and waving at the knights in disgust. “They search for us.”

“We could ride until we find a portion of the wall that’s fallen down,” Luca said.

“I don’t remember many such sections on this side of the city, do you?”

Luca thought about it a moment and then shook his head. “On the other side, it’s mostly down. This side?”

His eyes said
notsomuch
.

“We must be away,” Marcello said grimly, as the others pulled in closer. “If we are discovered—we’ll have more than we can handle. Here,” he said, gesturing toward the gate again, “we know the number we must battle. Are you willing?”

He eyed them all, and in the dark we could see their bobbing heads. “Gabriella?” he asked over his shoulder.

In answer I dropped to the ground beside his horse, as Lia had done from Luca’s. “Go, m’lord. I shall follow.” He’d be twice as effective if I wasn’t on the horse with him. And Lia needed more room to wield her bow and arrow.

“How many can you take down?” I asked her.

“Two, before they know we’re here,” she said, eying the towers. Two riders had come in, hard, from the direction of the bathhouses, paused, then moved on, apparently gathering reports.

“That’ll leave ten,” Mom said.

“And I’ll have time to take down two more, once they know we’re approaching,” Lia added.

“Which leaves eight,” Dad said.

“It’s as good as done, then,” Luca said with sarcastic enthusiasm. “Shall we?”

Marcello moved ahead, watched for a moment, and then waved us onward. Lia and I crept forward, through knee-high grass, bent over. On foot we wanted to be farther ahead. The horses would pass us when they saw the first two guards fall, then they would hold the gates until we were through.

We were a hundred yards away, then fifty. The knights appeared to be watching for horses on the road, to their left and right, rather than anyone in the grass before them. It looked funny to see guards facing the city rather than any who might be approaching from beyond—guarding the exit more than the entrance. Lia licked her finger and lifted it, testing for breezes. “They’d kill us if they had the chance, right?” she asked, aiming at the first one.

“Without a second’s hesitation,” I said, knowing well why she hesitated. “It’s us or them. And if we don’t get out of here fast, it’s likely to be us.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” she said, letting the first arrow fly and, without stopping, drawing another and releasing it. We rose and ran toward the gate, yelling like banshees. The men, startled, looked scared, and then, as we entered the farthest reaches of their torchlight, about thirty yards away, they laughed and pointed, thinking it was merely two crazy women. No Roman man in his right mind would ever admit to fear of a woman, be they She-Wolves or not.…

Three strode toward us, grinning in anticipation.

But their smiles faded as Lia bent to aim again and I kept coming, just as the four on horseback came charging past me.
Four.

It gradually registered with me that one was missing.
Where is Tomas?
I paused just as I met the first knight, who had dodged Luca’s strike. He kept coming toward me. Distracted, I belatedly raised my sword just in time to meet his, and then turned to bring my sword around in an arcing strike; I put everything I had into it. He deflected it easily and advanced on me.

I frowned in surprise.
I must be more tired than I thought.
It’d been a few days since I’d slept, really slept…since before Sansicino. And now, at the very worst time, I was feeling it.

I met his strike, ducked another, deflected the last.

And then Dad was there. “I’ve got this,” he said through clenched teeth. “Go, Gabi.”

Dad. My dad. Saving me. I took a few steps back, sword dragging along the ground, suddenly weighing a thousand pounds, and I panted, wondering at what exactly had transpired. In the last two weeks we’d gone back in time, saved my father before he died, brought him back nearly seven hundred years, and now he was saving me. It was enough to make my head burst.

I glanced back. Father Tomas neared, but only because his horse was following us. Somewhat. He got close enough, and I could see he was slumped over in the saddle, unconscious. I forced myself to run toward him, took the reins from his slack hands, pulled his boot from the nearest stirrup and mounted behind him. I looked over his shoulder and quickly felt for a pulse.

Alive, he’s alive, Lord. Help me save him. Save us all.

I saw that Marcello had opened the gate, while Mom, Dad, Luca, and Lia still battled the last four knights. I glanced right and saw a patrol of Roman guards charging down the road toward us. I kicked Father Tomas’s gelding with my heels and held on to him, knowing that to do so meant I couldn’t defend us on the way through. It was either Father Tomas or the sword. And we’d never be this far if it wasn’t for the priest. I wasn’t leaving him behind.

Marcello saw me coming and opened the gate wider.

I pulled right, narrowly missing Luca as he took a blow and took several staggering steps backward. I then tugged left, just missing getting hit by Mom’s staff as I passed. And then I was passing Marcello. “Patrol, approaching fast!” I cried, pushing through.

I steeled myself for the strike of an arrow in my back and did not pause until I was out of the reach of any torchlight. Only then, when I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing, did I pull our galloping horse to a stop and wheel him around. The gates were still partially open, and in that span of about four feet, I could see glimpses of my loved ones still battling their attackers. I saw Marcello’s guy go down, saw Marcello leap over the body and then disappear.