Waterfall (4 page)

He laughed, lowly, and was now close enough for me to see he had green eyes. And really bad teeth. He lifted his sword tip, studying me as it reached my throat. There was no rounded nub, as with the fencing swords my father and I used. This was broad and so sharp I feared he would actually cut me. I stayed as still as possible. But it was hard. I was shaking pretty badly.

He asked me something in Italian, but in a dialect that made me pause for a moment. Slowly, my mind translated. “Are you a witch?”

“A…a witch?” I returned in Italian, frowning.

“A witch,” he repeated. “I saw you. Saw you come out of there. And your clothing…” He moved forward, changing the sword from tip to side at my throat in order to keep me in place, and allow him closer. He reached a hand up to my hair. “Your hair. No one allows their womenfolk to parade around as such. Are you a witch or are you a Norman?” He spit out Norman as if it were a foul word, referring to the French to the north.

“I am no witch. I am from-” I clamped my lips shut. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. “Look, you big jerk,” I said in English, finding strength in my frustration. “You don’t want to know where I’ve come from. It’d freak you out. It’s freakin’ me out!”

He leaned back, as if surprised by my anger and confused by my odd language. But then he turned, sensing the man stealthily approaching him from behind. I’d tried to distract him-had been moderately successful-but these men were trained soldiers. That was clear enough. He met the knight’s heavy strike, barely deflecting it from slicing his head like a melon.

I had to get out of here.

A hand clenched my forearm, and I let out a yelp, but then quickly swallowed it. It was the first knight in gold that I had seen. Even more handsome up close. But his eyes were no longer soft in wonder. They were hard, staring down at me in consternation. “Venga,” he said gruffly in Italian. Come.

I looked across the field and saw the crimson knight, wounded, his arms draped around two of his men. He glared at me and the knight beside me, then shouted. The man, my attacker, immediately broke from the other golden knight and retreated to join his comrades. My protector’s knights let him pass, unhindered, other than sending him verbal taunts. The battle was over, for some reason. The others mounted their horses, all draped in scarlet, gave us long looks, and then rode away.

I looked to the men who now surrounded me, staring at me. Suddenly I felt weak-kneed. I was now under the protection-or was I the prisoner?-of the dudes from the gold castle.

“I hope you’re the good guys,” I muttered.

“Where are you taking me?” I cried in Italian, wrenching my elbow from the young man’s firm grasp as we walked away. “And why are you all dressed like someone out of a Shakespearean play?”

The leader turned and eyed me, his handsome face a mass of confusion. “What is Shakespearean?”

What is Shakespearean? Who doesn’t know Shakespeare?

“I could ask the same of you,” he continued, hands on his hips. “Why are you out in such curious underclothes? Is this how the Normans send out their womenfolk?”

Normans? I glanced over to the two young men behind their leader. They were all in their late teens, early twenties. They’d been in battle-not mock medieval battle, but real, hand-to-hand, I-wantto-kill-you battle. And the dialect of Italian… the same as that emerging from my own mouth… Dante. They-I-sounded like Dante’s Divine Comedy. My parents had made us read and recite portions of The Inferno last summer, in Italian. Apparently their efforts paid off, because I could now suddenly speak in Dante’s dialect, the first unified Italian the country had ever known, but a bit different from the modern version.

I looked to my left, through a gap in the trees that allowed me to see out into the thickly wooded valley. My hand came slowly to my mouth as my eyes scanned the slant of the hills again and again, trying to make sense of it, make sure I knew where I was looking. Because there in the distance, edging out of the trees, were the refined, perfect stones of another massive fortress wall. The tip of a waving golden flag dangled above it, visible one moment, retreating the next. That castle-the one we’d passed every day en route to the site, the one that Lia and I had tramped through one day, bored out of our minds-it had been nothing but a pile of rubble. It looked as if it had just been built, just like the one we could see from the tumuli campus. Impossible. Impossible!

I dragged my eyes to meet the young man’s. “You don’t know Shakespeare. Do you know Dante?”

He laughed, a scoff that didn’t even move his handsome features. Such dark, piercing eyes, as if he could see through me. Laced with wide lashes. He had a man’s chin, even though he couldn’t be much older than me. His voice was low, rumbly, curiously warm despite his cold tone. “Who among the aristocracy has not heard of Dante? My father was privileged to host him in our home shortly before his death.”

I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. Dante had been dead for six-no, seven hundred years.

My captor grabbed my arm again, wrenching me forward.

“What are you going to do with her, Marcello?” asked a man behind me, to my left.

“I do not know.”

“How will you explain her to your father?”

“I do not know.” The guy named Marcello glanced at me again. “You are from Normandy, yes?”

Again, with the Normandy business. The people of the north, sometimes allies, sometimes enemies. It might be dangerous to answer this. But how else to explain my curious arrival? “You have guessed well,” I said, pulling back my shoulders, lifting my chin. There was only one way to play this. The superior, don’t-mess-withme route. “I am Lady Gabriella Betarrini. I am in search of my mother, and now, my sister, too.”

“Lady Betarrini,” Marcello said, his face softening a bit at my false title. “How is it that you have become separated from your kin?”

I paused, my mind fumbling through several believable explanations. “My sister and I came here searching for our mother. She had traveled here on business, but has not responded to our correspondence”-never mind that she couldn’t if she tried-“and we feared something terrible had befallen her.”

Befallen? When did I ever say befallen? Maybe I had some sort of illness that messed with the language part of my brain as well.

He helped me over a fallen tree, and I silently congratulated myself for my fast thinking. This way, if Lia or my mom showed up, we’d have a story. And he might even help me find them. Across a clearing, I spotted eight horses.

“She traveled alone?”

I hesitated. I could tell by his tone that that wouldn’t have been very likely in his time. “With an escort, of course.”

He frowned. “Her men were trustworthy?”

“Very much so.”

The lighter-haired knight, apparently Marcello’s right-hand man, gestured for the others to go ahead to their mounts, leaving the three of us alone. I heard Marcello call him Luca.

“And your own men?” Marcello pressed. “What became of them?”

I thought fast. “Disappeared in the night, with all our possessions.”

“Your horses, too?” Luca asked.

“Gone,” I said. Like they’d never existed.

“Blackguards,” Marcello said. “If we come across them in Toscana, rest assured they will pay for their crimes.”

I nodded, holding back a smile. But he was still on a roll. “What is your mother’s name? Perhaps my father and I can assist you in finding her. And you said you’ve now become separated from your sister?”

I frowned. Where was Lia? She had been there in the tomb with me; had she made it through this time warp too? And if so, why hadn’t she been there in the tomb? “We…we became separated. Lost in the woods, I found shelter last night in the tomb. I must’ve fallen asleep… the sounds of your battle woke me.”

“A tomb of the ancients is an odd place to shelter,” Luca said, eyes filled with confusion.

“It was dark,” I returned. “I didn’t know it to be a tomb.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” said Luca, with a mischievous look in his eye. “Or you might not have slept a wink. The ghosts might have kept you company all night.” He lifted his eyebrow and grinned.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the guy. Was he trying to scare me? Or be my friend?

“In any case, these woods are hardly the place for a gentlewoman to be roaming about,” Marcello said. “Had you fallen into the hands of our enemies…” He inhaled and looked at me sharply. “The Paratores are hardly kind to strangers.”

His voice dropped, and he glanced away as if remembering some other, tragic soul. A shiver ran down my back. He returned his warm, chocolate eyes to me, and, somehow, I gained comfort.

“Forgive me, m’lady. I’ve forgotten proper introductions. I am Sir Marcello Forelli,” he said with a slight bow and gesture of hand.

“Future lord of Castello Forelli,” said his friend, gesturing with his chin at the castle with the golden flag.

“Do not listen to Luca,” Marcello said, shaking his head. “My elder brother is destined to inherit the title.”

We’d caught up to the others. Judging from their faces, the men behind him clearly doubted this statement, but I ignored them. There would be time enough to find out what they meant. For now, my eyes were on Marcello, and he was turning toward his men. “These are my most trusted men. My cousin and captain, Luca Forelli,” he said, gesturing toward the sandy-haired one with laugh wrinkles about his eyes. “Giovanni Cantadino,” he waved toward a dark-haired, pudgy guy, “and Pietro di Alberto.” This last one was the biggest of the bunch, nearly as big as the guy who almost nabbed me back at the tomb.

Marcello paused, put a boot on a large stone, and then let his eyes look me over from head to toe. I struggled not to try to hide myself, as if I were suddenly naked. “We cannot bring her home in such clothes. The servants would talk about it endlessly.”

“I could go ahead, borrow a dress from Celeste.” Giovanni looked me over too, but his eyes seemed more like those of a tailor, merely sizing me up. Not quite so…warm. “She’s about the same across the shoulders, but the skirt’s bound to be a bit short. I’ve never seen a woman so tall.”

I clamped my lips shut. I didn’t appreciate these four, staring at me like I was a cut of beef from the butcher. I could feel the fourth, behind me.

Luca leaned forward with an impish grin. “If I fetch you a gown, will you do me the honor of supping with me this evening, Lady Betarrini?”

I hesitated, wondering what to do with his attention.

“That’s enough, Luca,” Marcello barked. Did he sound a little protective? “Such forward talk is the way of the Paratores, not the house of Forelli.”

“M’lord,” Luca said, immediately bowing his head, his smile fading. It was clear who the alpha male was in this group. But despite the no-nonsense tone, I could tell they all respected him; there wasn’t some odd power-hungry thing going on like with the guys at home.

“Please, Giovanni, do as you suggested and borrow a dress from Celeste, suitable of a lady of some station. Tell her I’ll order her two more in Siena in the coming week, in return for the favor. We’ll wait for you here.”

“I shall see it done, m’lord.”

Eager to avoid any more of his questions or probing looks, I wandered a bit away from Marcello as he and his men talked of the battle. Apparently the land where the tumuli sat was disputed, claimed and won repeatedly by the Paratores and then the Forellis again.