Waterfall (21 page)

“M’lady,” Marcello said. “M’lady,” he whispered, gripping my forearm and stilling my incessant circling.

He looked to Luca with a help me expression, and the other man came and took my arm. We left Marcello behind. Over and over he said mi scusi, edging us closer to the well. Once there, he flipped a coin to a man, and he pulled out a bucket and ladle. “Drink,” Luca demanded of me, brooking no argument.

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 itthere 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 with 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.