DELUGE (48 page)
Authors: Lisa T. Bergren
She paused, wheeled her mount around—ignoring his whinny of complaint—pulled her bow from her shoulder, nocked an arrow, and let it fly. It pierced the flag just ten paces before Fortino reached it, and drove it into the trunk of the tree.
Fortino wheeled his horse and glared at her as she rode up, smug. “Are you mad?”
“Not as mad as you, likely, given that you just gave me that extra dessert.”
“Nay, I mean are you off in the head?” he said, gesturing toward his own, flicking fingers away from his temple. “You could have killed me!”
“Come now,” she said, the tickle of a grin teasing up the corners of her mouth, “you know I haven’t missed a target in over a year. Have you forgotten who my mother is?”
He shook his head, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweating brow. “Tisn’t truly fair, Tiliani, using your bow,” he complained.
“You could’ve used your dagger,” she said, easing past him and pausing near the tree to rip down the flag. “A She-Wolf—or He-Wolf—uses every weapon at their disposal.”
The Greco children rode up then too, Giulio groaning when he saw the flag in Tiliani’s hand. “Again? I do not know why I try,” he said. But there was a grin hidden behind his tone of mock-defeat.
Tiliani smiled. He was a handsome boy, just now showing the promise of manhood, with lengthening limbs and a face growing more angular by the day. His big sister, Chiara, was really too old to be out here with them. She should be back at the castello, entertaining suitors. As Tiliani herself should be, within the year.
But when Tiliani gazed out over the hills—Forelli land as far as she could see—up until it gave way to Greco land—and to the horizon, where the sun set in an extravagant display of corals and golds and rosy reds…she knew there was time enough to enter adulthood.
She would live this day for all it was worth.
Just as her parents and aunt and uncle and grandmother had taught her.
I’ll leave the morrow for the morrow. Today is enough and more.
Her brothers, just eight and nine, arrived then, both on one horse. They scowled and groaned at the flag in her hand…as if they had ever had a chance.
“’Tisn’t fair,” complained Dante. “Making us ride together.”
“Did she use her arrow?” asked Rocco.
“She did indeed,” Guilio confirmed, folding his arms.
“Never mind how I won or how
fair
it was,” Tiliani said. “The victory is still mine. But I shall give you one last opportunity to redeem yourselves,” she said, already turning her gelding toward the castello. “The last one home has to help Cook and the kitchen maids with washing up.”
It didn’t take a word further to send all five of the rest of them tearing back toward the castello.
Tiliani paused, holding back her gelding, wanting the thrill of coming from behind and passing them all, knowing that even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t be a victory if it hadn’t been a challenge to begin with. And when the other three were halfway down the hill, she finally released her horse’s mane, leaned down, and became one with him, each churning motion felt deep within, until they were going faster…
And faster…
Until time seemed to stop.
And joy enveloped her.
As far as I can tell, most marriages happened in side chapels and were fairly private events. But given their location and the doge’s interest in making a spectacle of Lia and Luca’s wedding, and their widespread fame, I made it a front-and-center event in the basilica—built as the doge’s chapel.
Details on how they docked in Venice, and of the doge’s palace, were out of my imagination and based on conjecture. I could find no definitive source on either of those subjects, in English.
The term
quarantine
did not come into usage until later in the 14
th
century, as the Italians began to figure out that they should keep sailors from other countries isolated for forty days before entering their city, to make certain no illness emerged. The Italian word
quarante
, for 40, is where it comes from. The historical record in Dubrovnik notes keeping people isolated on an island for 30 days in this time too. So while they were slow to figure out that it would be a good means of keeping a lid on a disease’s power to spread, and didn’t officially use “quarantine,” many nobles fled the city for their country houses, aware that to remain in the city seemed far more dangerous.
Oil of Thieves seemed to be mostly used by gypsies the second time the plague came hunting. But given Adri Betarrini’s understanding of herbals and natural remedies, I thought it a logical addition to their cadre of tools to fight it.
Many thanks to the team who made this book possible: Lindsay Olson for a solid edit; Kristin Hamm and Rachelle Rea for proofing; Julia Grosso for the help in Italian; and my “volunteer proofers”—Jenny Showalter, Celia Walkowitz, Trista Sue Price, Jaclyn Waymire, Madeline Johnson, Jacque Barton Spintzyk, Marylin Furumasu, Callie Wyles, Giovanna Durante, Alysia Maxwell, Andrew Spadzinski, Lisa Olsen, Jamie Garrett, Stephanie Hortiales, Caroline Marks, Ailish Gillespie and Hannah Vincent. Melinda Cote did the e-magic to bring this to e-reader screens everywhere, and my faithful hubby, Tim, took care of the cover, and interior for the paperback version.
Voi ragazzi sono fantastici! (You guys are awesome!)
Thanks so much for reading another chapter of our She-Wolves’ tale. If you want to connect with me, Lisa, please do so on my web site,
LisaTBergren.com
, on Twitter
@LisaTBergren
, or on
Facebook.com/RiverofTimeSeries
.
Do you have the rest of the series in e? If not, here are the links:
You might also like my new dystopian,
Remnants: Season of Wonder
. There’s a lot of adventure, romance and soul-searching in that tale too!
Enough with the pitching…I truly appreciate you, River Tribe. You are loved. Life your life to the FULLEST. Gabi and Lia are cheering you on…and so am I.
~Lisa
P.S. The pics that follow are from my last trip to Venezia with my daughter, Emma. Thought you’d like to take a peek! Funniest memory…we took a gondola ride and I almost fell in the canal, trying to get in. Scared the gondolier to death…Most treasured memory: bonding with my sweet daughter from Roma to Venezia.
Here's Emma, pretending to be scared of a creepy plague doctor's costume. Physicians didn't wear these until the 1600s, so therefore, no appearance in DELUGE (bummer, huh?). The long nose was filled with aromatics to ward off the awful smell that often accompanied the disease.
This is the courtyard INSIDE the Doge's Palace (it's huge!). San Marco (the church on right with domes) was originally the doge's private "chapel." The palace itself is stunning, and has changed a lot since the 1340s, but I found plenty of inspiration for DELUGE here.
Inside the Doge's Palace...looking toward San Marco.
I was thinking about THIS kind of proximity to the lagoon when I was visualizing Lia and Luca up top, looking over the water...
This is from the top of the basilica, looking out over Piazza San Marco, over which Lia "flew" as the angel...Emma's looking a tad angelic herself, with the sun in her hair!
*sigh* The Grand Canal, Emma and our gondolier. It was along here that the Forellis and Bettarinis came down and then entered a side canal to stay with Caterina. Don't ask me how I almost fell out of a gondola this wide...It was tippy, okay? I hadn't even had a glass of wine yet.
A mama and her girl...such happy memories! She's grown a lot since we took this trip in 2011, both inside and out.