DELUGE (35 page)

Four knights passed us, with nods of greeting, and I remained silent until we were beyond them.

“Back home,” I continued, “People get home from school and work and just drive inside their garages, barely waving at neighbors. Never taking the time to get to know them. Remember? We hated that. But now, how are we any different? You and I both know that we’re staying off the wall because we can’t stand it. Turning away from everyone out there. It’s easier for us to stay down here, pretending they don’t exist.”

She shook her head. “You think I don’t live with that guilt every day? My husband’s guilt? No one feels this weight more than Marcello. No one. Have you seen him? It’s eating him alive.”

Her eyes told me it frightened her far more than I knew.

“We simply have to weather this, Lia. Make it through. No, it’s not how we want to live. But if we want to live, we have to stay the course. Remain strong. Keep our eyes on the horizon and keep setting our feet toward it, day by day, month by month, year by year. Not just enduring, but waiting with expectation for a reprieve. For change.”

“This is only year one,” I whispered, more a thought I was digesting than telling her anything she didn’t know.

Gabriella just bent and scooped up squirming Fortino and kissed his neck, then held him up to me. “This is what we will concentrate on through the year and beyond. New life, even in the face of death.”

I took Fortino in my arms. He patted my cheeks. “Awww, Via,” he said, unaccustomed to me not greeting him with a smile and assuming something was wrong. “It’s okay,” he said in English, having learned our automatic comforting words. “It’s okay.”

I stared at his big brown eyes, the glossy curls that looked like they’d come off of big rollers. Felt the comforting, compact weight of his little body. Knew that I’d die to save him, as I would any of the rest of my family.

“It’s there, Lia,” Gabi whispered, slipping her arm around my waist. “Life. It’s just going to be a little less
obvious
for a few years.”

***

Whereas I came to accept it, Tomas and Adela only became more agitated as the months passed.

Quietly married just as the plague began, they looked like anyone else in the castello in simple garb, but inside, they remained the holiest people I knew. And it was that pull toward grace and mercy that called them outside the walls.

Time and again they approached Marcello and Luca. Together. Apart. Begging them to open the gates to those who were in need. Citing Scripture. Citing basic moral code. Citing civility. Humanity.

Until they gave up and one day, were in the dining hall, bags packed, asking to be let out. “We cannot remain,” Tomas said, lifting his chin and sad eyes to Marcello. “We can no longer turn our backs on our sisters and brothers.”

Adela wrapped her hands around his arm, but she looked as resolute as he was.

“Leave us,” Marcello growled, speaking to every knight and servant in the hall, but only looking at Tomas and Adela. I tensed. He’d already been drinking for a while. I knew, from experience, that it was never best to approach him at this hour of the day.

In two minutes, only family remained, and the heavy door was shut. Only the fire crackled in the massive hearth. All else was silent for several heavy seconds.

Luca stepped down from the dais and went over to them, trying to intervene. “You cannot leave. ’Tis the only way to weather this storm—to remain in the shelter of this castello. You know this.”

Adela moved to take his hands, looking up at him. “But we are called to enter the storm, brother. The Lord calls us to those in need.”

Luca shook his head. “’Tis not the way of wisdom,” he said. “Look what happened to our men we sent out with supplies! Do you wish to invite death to visit?”

“We shall not fear it,” she said. “The Lord shall protect us or he shall smite us, but whatever comes,” she paused to take Tomas’s hand, “we are ready to accept it.”

“What we cannot accept is remaining here,” Tomas said. “No matter how great our love and respect is for you, brothers,” he said, nodding to Marcello and Luca and Dad, “and you, my sisters,” he added, looking to me, Lia and Mom, “we cannot ignore the need of those outside the walls.”

“We are not ignoring them,” Marcello said, rubbing his face, his eyes ringed and bloodshot, “we simply cannot aid them in the way you wish to see.”

“You are not aiding them at all, beyond some food and supplies,” Tomas returned. “I do not understand this and cannot live with it. They need us out there, Marcello.”

“They need to see us and feel our touch,” Adela said.

“You cannot!” Luca cried. “You shall wish death upon yourselves!”

“Our own blood brothers may have taken ill by now,” Tomas said, methodically rolling up his sleeve to show the triangular tattoo that he, Luca and Marcello all carried. “We shall go to each of them, shelter with them for a time, and minister to those in need around each of their homes.”

Luca was shaking his head. “I forbid it,” he said, angry and desperate. “As Adela’s last male relative, I forbid it.”

Adela’s grip on Tomas’s arm tightened. “I answer only to my husband and my God.”

“You are a fool!” Luca said to her. “You nearly died, that day, when you were in the hands of the Fiorentini. We saved you! And now you toss away your life?” His face and tone turned to pleading. “I know this makes no sense to you. I know it feels wrong. But I beg you, sister, brother, to trust us in this. ’Tis the only way to preserve our lives. To stay away from those who ail.”

“Those who give away their lives shall gain it, and those who cling to life will lose it,” Tomas said, and I assumed it was Scripture he quoted.

Luca stared back at him. “Are you so ready to give away your life? And my sister’s? Do you care so little for the gift and beauty of your bride’s life?” The last words came out in a sneer, and he stepped closer to the shorter, pudgier man.

Tomas did not react. “I would give my own life to save your sister’s,” he said. “I love her with everything I have in me. God has graced me mightily,” he said, looking down at her, “with the gift of a wife. But he has spoken to us. And he calls us not to remain here, but to go out, to where there is need. He has called us not to minister to the healthy, but to those who ail.”

Luca sighed heavily and stepped away, lifting a hand. “Cease. No more of the Holy Writ. Please.”

“You object to it,” Tomas said gently, “and you refuse to look upon our marking, because you know what we do. You know truth. You know righteousness. You know what you are called to do…to serve. But you are at war with your own hearts.”

Marcello shook his head, his eyes hollow and distant. “You do not know the whole of it.”

I stared hard at him, wondering if he would cave, tell them at last what it was that we faced. How the plague would last. And last, and last…this battle against the unseen enemy.

But he did not.

“We do not know the whole of it,” Adela pressed, looking not to him but to Luca, “but you will not tell us all that you know.”

“Or believe you know,” Tomas said. “Only the Lord knows what lies ahead of us.”

Or those who come from the future,
I thought. But it caught me, that thought. Did I know, truly know, all? We only knew a portion, really. The main, overwhelming, scene-stealing storyline. But what sorts of subplots might go on beneath in the next few years, adding texture and depth? The thought gave me an odd surge of hope. Could the plague be our backdrop, but not the stage itself?

“We shall not keep you here as prisoners,” Marcello said, his face slack with weariness and defeat. “But just as I begged you to not go to Rodolfo Greco because I feared the worst—and you ended up on the wall, with a noose about your neck—so, now, do I beg you not to go out there.”

Tomas stared back at Marcello, remembering. He had been so close to death that day. One push away from strangulation atop the wall of Castello Paratore.

“We all were spared that day, were we not?” Tomas asked softly.

I thought about it. Dad taking the sword through the chest. Gabi hanging over the edge of the precipice. The rocks launched from the catapult, so narrowly missing us. The knights who came against us, thirsting for our blood.

And yet we had been spared. Every one of us.

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. ’Tis never ours to hold, regardless of how we like to pretend it is,” Tomas said.

Silence settled around us like a misty fog.

“You shall go, then,” Marcello said, a note of hope entering his voice. “And be our emissaries? Would you do that for us? Take supplies to the villages, rather than bring the infirm to our gates? We would supply you weekly and—”

“You cannot allow this,” Luca sputtered, turning to him. “This is my sister we speak of! And our brother!”

Marcello’s jaw tightened. “’Tis not my decision. Castello Forelli is our sanctuary, not their prison.” He gestured toward Tomas and Adela.

Luca let out a groan and paced away, rubbing his face, his head. I wrung my hands, knowing I could give him little comfort.

Adela went to him, though, and again, took his hands. “Please, brother. Send us forth with love and hope and prayers of blessing and protection. You think we do not fear? We are human yet,” she said, with a small smile. “As apt to fail as any other. But please, Luca. Please. Send us with your love and blessing.”

Luca stared at her, then folded her into his arms, holding her for a long moment. “Adela, Adela,” he whispered, kissing her head. “I shall miss you.
And
your idiot of a husband,” he said, reaching out his arm to him.

Tomas took it. And again at the gates as they departed.

But when the gates closed, I wondered if I’d ever see them enter through them again.

***

They survived for months, out beyond our walls. At first, staying close to us, in and around the Forelli villages. Then farther afield, among the blood brothers who still lived. They had promised to stay away from Siena, their only concession, finding more than enough to minister to beyond the city gates.

Everywhere they went, they cared for them. Fed them. Buried them. Moved on.

And then a week passed, with no word from them.

Then two.

Then, the hardest of message of all came from Conte Lerici.

Plague was upon their house.

Half were dead.

Adela and Tomas among them.

~GABRIELLA~

And so it went.

People came.

People left.

Some were well, whole.

Others ill and spent. Dying.

In time, we could smell the stink of the dead even from within our walls. At first, I dared to walk the parapet, taking in the image of men, women, even children, outside our gates, dying or dead. The bodies thrown into horrifying heaps. The living, begging to be let in, as if we held the secret to healing. To freedom.

Which we did, in a way.

Quarantine
.

No one in, or out. It was the only way. The only hope for us to weather this storm. This was why we had laid up provisions.

Marcello—with the aid of wine consumed until he could fall into desperate slumber—ignored the summons to Siena, as a former one of the Nine. Stories from there were horrific. So many dead within days that the morticians and grave diggers were overwhelmed, many dying themselves. There were too many to remove, far too many.

And so the dead rotted.

In the streets and in palazzos alike.

Death came hunting, consuming entire flocks and with no discernible pattern.

Ravaging our people over and over.

And over.

Month by month.

Year by year.

PART IV

INFILTRATION

Spring, 1350

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

~EVANGELIA~

I would say, later, that we sought each other out as comfort.

A respite in the storm.

Luca and I took ease in each other’s company, fiercely, defiantly. Claiming life, love, in the face of so much death and destruction. We found solace within one another’s arms. With him I knew peace and satisfaction and such deep connection…and glimpsed life, as it should be.

But two years into the plague, when I knew I carried Luca’s child, I wept.

Because all I could see before me was devastation.

Disaster.

Disease.

Destruction.

Death
. The antithesis of this new life, tingling within my womb. I cursed God. Cursed him for bringing this to us, when he knew, he
knew
what we faced. Why taunt us with hope? Delight? When we well knew what was before us.

For two years, the plague had ravaged Toscana. We were all but cut off from Siena, the messengers arriving farther and farther apart. Today we’d heard news from the city that Siena’s priests had decreed the Roman statues within Il Campo—the main city piazza—a pagan curse, and the ancient, priceless figures had been destroyed and chopped to bits in order to be secretly added into a supply of building material for Firenze’s walls. Because Firenze had not yet been hit as hard as Siena.

Such was the thinking.

Pass off our curse to our enemy.

And now, Il Campo was denuded of the statues that had once given her such countenance, such grandeur, stature. A simple, barren shell of what she once was, I figured, remembering it from modern times. I’d wondered what had happened to all of those beautiful marble figures. Now I knew. They’d been chopped to bits.

“Such superstitious fools,” Marcello groused, deep in his cups that evening. Luca and I shared a worried glance. We’d watched the depression slowly take hold of him. It wasn’t good for a man like my brother-in-law to be cooped up in a castle for so long. In fact, it seemed bad for all of us. A pall hovered over the entire castello.

“Thinking they might play God,” Marcello grumbled, lifting his glass and draining it.