Tributary (River of Time 3.2 Novella) (7 page)

“Let’s deal with it when we have to. Right now we’re just borrowing trouble, as Dad would say. And you…you have all kinds of fun ahead of you.”

“Like what?” she asked, shoving herself up to a sitting position. “Having a baby without an epidural? Varicose veins? Stretch marks?” She frowned and massaged her head. “What am I gonna do about prenatal vitamins? To say nothing of prenatal care…Do you know how many things can go wrong in a pregnancy?”

I laughed, under my breath. “There’s the hypochondriac I know and love.” I covered her knee with my hand. “It’s going to be okay, Gabs. Thousands upon thousands of women had babies in this era. And you’re going to be one of them. We have Mom with us.”

“Just don’t tell her yet. Or Dad. I have to figure out the right way to tell them.”

“Okay. But Mom will find the best midwives to bring in; together they’ll handle anything you and this baby throw her way.”
Please Lord, let it be true
. A servant had died in labor just last year. Another had died right after giving birth because Mom and Gabi couldn’t stop her bleeding. I shoved away a shiver, not wanting my sis to see it.

Gabi leaned back against the headboard, lost in thought.

And then Marcello was there, striding in, his face awash in worry. “Gabriella,” he said, coming directly to the bed, on her other side. “I was told that you have taken ill.”

“Nay, Marcello. I am well.”

“But Dario said you were sick, outside the kitchens…” He took her hands in his and I moved to go, to give them their privacy.

“Nay, Lia, stay,” she said, and I reluctantly sank back to the foot of the bed. “Trying to keep it a secret is futile.” She looked back to her husband. “Marcello, I am not ill. I am going to have a baby.”

He stilled, his eyes shifting back and forth across her face to see if she was joking. “Truly?”

She nodded, her eyes so earnest and hopeful, it hurt to look at her. “Truly.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he gathered her into his arms, and then tenderly kissed her forehead, her cheeks. “It is grand news, Gabriella,” he said, still holding her close. “Grand. I know it is not what we intended, not now, before…but we must trust in our Lord. All will be well.”

“I hope so,” she said, her voice cracking again.

“A baby,” he said in wonder. “A baby! Baby Forelli.”

Tears were streaming down Gabi’s face again, fear alive in her eyes.

I slipped off the bed then, and out of the room. Together, I knew my sister and brother-in-law would find their way through this. But I was anxious about the challenges it would bring, too.

Because things that affected the lord and lady of Castello Forelli, affected us all.

***

After looking in on Alessandra, dozing away under Mom’s watchful eye, I accepted Luca’s offer of going to the new construction site and for a short ride beyond. I was eager to avoid any prolonged conversation with either of my parents; ever since we’d returned here together, we shared a bond we’d never had before. It wouldn’t take long for them to detect that something was up with me…and I’d crack.

Despite my pledge to Gabs not to tell our parents about her pregnancy, there was no way I could deal with Mom or Dad peppering me with questions. I’d never been able to stand long, against them; I was always the first to cave. But now, here…I was pretty much worthless. We’d been through too much to be anything but totally honest with one another. I hoped Gabi would tell them soon.

Luca gave Dario strict instructions to follow Alessandra anywhere she went—and to never allow her outside the castle walls—then offered his arm and I laid mine over it, letting my fingers rest on his chapped hand, as we walked to the stables. For weeks now, the men had been at work, clearing and plowing new fields, and building the foundation for an expansion of the castle wall that would increase the size by half, and include a vast, new warehouse, as well as apartments and latrines for more people. No one had been told why. They all assumed it was merely strategic. What nobleman so near the border would not wish to be able to better survive a sustained attack?

Only Luca and Marcello had guessed what was ahead of them, with the plague. But my parents had insisted they keep it to themselves. Every move we made here, in this era, was undoubtedly changing the future. We’d seen it ourselves, in our visits back and forth. When we left at first, Castello Forelli was little more than rubble. When we returned the second time, it was in amazing condition, a tourist site. I didn’t remember this extension being there—but maybe it just hadn’t been in view when we swung through. All we knew was that our presence in the past had impacted the future. And Dad constantly preached that we had to limit that.

But even he couldn’t avoid the desire to try and spare us all through what was to come—and in this time and place, the threats came, one after another, from a variety of sources. Marcello’s intent was to have enough room, and enough supplies, to keep us all for a year. Mom and Dad reasoned that if we could remain inside, and keep the world out, essentially living in quarantine, that we had a good chance of riding it out. A good chance…

“Ready?” Luca asked softly.

He looked down at me and I shyly looked back up into his eyes. I nodded, and he placed his hands on my hips. But he didn’t lift me up and into the side saddle as expected. “Luca…” I said with a grin. “This is hardly the place.”

He smiled back at me, and lifted a teasing brow. “Nay. It is not.” He took my hand and pulled me into a horse stall, shielding us from two knights chatting at the stable entrance. Then he caressed my face and bent to kiss me, softly at first, then deeper, pulling me close. I gave in willingly, as glad to be in his arms as he was to have me. There, I felt guarded, safe, comforted, even as my heart was threatened with news of Gabi’s pregnancy. I didn’t want to think about her. I wanted to think about him. The spicy, clean smell of him. All leather and crisp linen and juniper soap…

He closed his eyes and groaned, pulling slightly away, after we’d kissed for a long minute. “It’s been far too long since I was able to kiss you, Evangelia.”

I laughed under my breath. “A day? Two?”

“Any day without a kiss from you, beloved, seems as weeks.” He leaned in for one last kiss, sighed and then led me back to the horse, quickly lifting me to my saddle and settling my feet in the stirrups. He lingered, staring at my slippers.

“What? Is there a hole in one of them?”

“Nay,” he said, pulling one foot back out of the stirrup and lifting it, baring my ankle. “Even your feet are lovely.” Then, making sure he was unseen, he bent to brush aside the hem of my skirt and kiss the top of one foot in an act of reverence. As if I were a princess and he my loyal subject. “Luca!” I whispered. If he were seen doing that… Such silliness from the captain of the Forelli guard! The men would tease him forever about it, and worse, me too.

He tossed me an impish smile, gave my foot one last, longing touch, and then mounted his horse. I shook my head and took a deep breath, relieved we were on the move, and had been undiscovered.

The knights had left from the front entrance. A young squire, perhaps eight years old, opened the doors for us, his expression doleful as we passed. He was all about seeing to his task as instructed. Every squire was assigned to a knight, who saw to his training, so that he might someday become a knight himself. Many poor families offered their children as we passed, holding them up, their cries desperate. Because, while they had to give up their kids, they knew their children would receive a bed, care, food, and a future within the castello walls. In the year that we’d been here, eight had come to live with us, and they followed my dad around like puppies, recognizing that he loved children, and wasn’t as rough on them as the knights.

Guards opened the heavy front gates and we rode through, an older teen at the top shouting, “Mind yourself with the lady, Captain!”

“Watch
yourself
, whelp,” Luca called back with a grin, “or I’ll assign you latrine duty.”

“Lady? What lady?” called back the boy, without hesitation. “All I saw was my cap’n, heading out!”

Luca laughed, the sound of it joyful and welcome to my ears. I loved how the guy smiled and laughed over everything, even in the face of severe difficulty. I mean he could be serious when he needed to, but he often reminded me not to be too serious.

“Latrine duty is a most effective threat,” he said.

“For good reason,” I said with a smile.

It hadn’t taken Mom long, with all the people who now lived at the castello, to convince Marcello to dig a rudimentary sewage system. We still used chamber pots in the night, if necessary, but now, toward the back of the castle, where the hill fell away, were eight latrines, as well as a way to dispose water, straight from the kitchen, without hauling it out in buckets.

The latrines were like a castle’s version of outhouses. I groaned at the memory of how cold those stone seats were in winter. They were bad enough as the weather warmed. But at least it was something. Dad had worried about the long-term repercussions of one of the Nine introducing something like it in this time period, but Mom was pretty clear—it was a non-negotiable. Her rationale was that the Romans had something like it in empirical days—why couldn’t we? We were not introducing something new, we were resurrecting something that had already been. At least that was her reasoning, which Dad had debated endlessly as faulty logic.

But Mom had won.

And it had become a favorite threat among the men—to be assigned cleaning duty, since Mom also required they be washed out several times a day in order to avoid spreading disease and infection.

“Mayhap the guard was right,” Luca said over his shoulder, bringing my attention back to him. “Mayhap none but me exited the castello gates, minutes ago.”

I smiled. “Forgive me, good sir. My mind is in a tangle this afternoon.”

“Is that the source of your tears?”

I looked toward him, but he wasn’t looking back at me. Was it so obvious on my face? Or was he merely that attentive?

“In part.”

“And Gabriella? Dario said she was ill…” This time, he glanced back at me over his shoulder, as he swayed in his saddle, following the easy gait of his mount.

“She is well. Just feeling a little sick to her stomach. It shall pass.”

His green eyes pierced mine and then he looked away. “Glad am I to hear it.”

I knew I’d probably not fooled him. Luca was uncommonly keen, picking up things that I often missed. It was part of what made him a brilliant captain for Marcello. Between the two, they were pretty amazing in battle, and even in just leading the people of the castello, day to day. Managing the knights alone was tricky; all that testosterone in one place was like a simmering volcano, especially with the relative peace that had settled upon us the last fifteen months. That’s why this current building campaign was brilliant. The men sparred all morning, and worked on the wall, warehouse or in the quarry all afternoon. The heavy, physical work only made them stronger, a more fearsome fighting force. By nightfall, they were too weary to do anything but shove ample amounts of good food and wine down their throats and drag themselves off to bed, which kept them out of trouble.

We edged around the second corner of the castello and the work site opened up. The forest had been cleared from about a city-block’s worth of land. I was sad for the trees to go, even though I knew that the growth posed tactical dangers, and we needed this space for what was to come. The men had cut the trees’ branches off and stacked the logs in enormous piles. The wood would be further cut, in time, stacked and dried—used all winter and winters to come, in Cook’s kitchen. “And we’ll cut the best of it into beams for the new apartments,” Luca explained to me.

Here on this edge, the hill began to fall away into a second valley, and the plan was to make rooms, three stories tall. The Romans had housed guards and firemen in such a way, and the plan had Dad’s fingerprints all over it. As an archeological specialist in Etruscan and Roman topography, he’d dragged us around to every site possible. We’d hung out at Hadrian’s Villa, south of Rome, for a full week, the summer before he died.

Before he died
. It was weird to think about that, seeing Dad come into view now, so alive and well. He was beneath a small tent, open in the front, only there to shield them from the wind, rain and sun. Chin in hand, he studied a parchment, tacked to a table, beside Father Tomas, pointing to a section.

I knew I couldn’t deny it—I’d do it all again to get Dad back. Go back in time. Stay here, even if it only meant we got to keep him. He looked up, then, and smiled at me and Luca as we approached. Whereas I favored Mom in looks, Gabs totally looked like Dad, all Toscana, from head to toe.

Before…back home, we’d have to jump up and down to get his attention. Here, we always came first. As we did with Mom. That, too, was a cool thing about living here. It was another thing that would make me take the leap again.
The Path to Improved Family Dynamics
, I envisioned a title on a modern book.
By Evangelia Betarrini
. And inside, there’d be one sentence:
Find a time portal and travel back to medieval Italy.

“Buon giorno, figlia mia,”
he said, coming closer.
Good morning, my daughter
. He still got a nerdy kick out of the medieval, formal phrasing we used around others.

“What’s up, Coolio?” I returned, in English, smiling back at him.

He chuckled. “Good to see you out of the confines of the castello.” He helped me free my feet from my stirrups and reached for me, easily lowering me to the ground.

“So, your task is about done here, Lord Betarrini?” Luca said, laughter in his eyes. All around us was chaos, the very first stages of raw construction.

Dad smiled back at him. “Undoubtedly. We might even have it completed tonight.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Luca said, taking Dad’s outstretched arm of greeting in his. He turned when Father Tomas waved him over, and after silently asking my permission to leave my side, strode over to the priest and three men, pondering a wagon full of three mammoth, freshly hewn limestone blocks.