Rose Red (17 page)

But she never did hear her father’s laughter.
His arms tightened around Bianca until they began to hurt her. Then
he stood her on her feet, pushing her behind his chair with a rough
gesture very different from his usual treatment of her.

“Go away, Bianca,” he said in a low voice he
had never used to her before. “Run to your nurse. Find your mother.
Do as I tell you. Go!”

Bianca stumbled, catching at the back of his
chair. She knew she had been naughty, but she did not understand
why her father should welcome her and lift her onto his lap and hug
her, and then suddenly change his mind and send her away as if he
was angry. Because his order made no sense to her child’s mind, she
did not obey it. Instead, she scurried across the room and ducked
behind one of the green velvet curtains. Thus, she was present to
hear the shouts, the clash of weapons, and her father’s roar of
rage.

“Traitor! Villain!” Girolamo Farisi shouted
at someone Bianca could not see. “To think I trusted you!”

Always in her dream, as on the day when it
had actually happened, Bianca began to cry at this point. Always
she looked down to see a trickle of red seeping beneath the edge of
the green curtain and oozing toward her toes. Bianca twitched aside
the curtain. One of her father’s guards lay upon his back at her
feet. He was staring up at her with wide, open eyes, but she did
not think he could really see her because he did not smile as he
usually did for her. His right arm was flung out, with his sword
lying beside his hand.

Elsewhere in the room men were sticking
swords and daggers into each other. Bianca’s father was using his
dagger, holding off another man who also had a dagger.

Bianca did not think they were playing a game
because her father looked so angry.

Bianca knew she ought to pick up the fallen
guard’s sword and go to help her father. She reached down to the
sword, but it was so heavy she could not lift it. She tried again
and got both of her hands around the hilt, but the sword slipped
out of her small fingers to make a loud clattering noise when it
landed on the floor. Afraid someone would see her and stick a
dagger into her, Bianca jumped back behind the curtain.

Gradually, the shouts and screams moved off
into the distance. Bianca could still hear the noise, but it
sounded farther and farther away. Save for a few groans, all was
silent when she finally dared to step out from her velvet hiding
place for a second time. She found the once lovely room in a state
of terrifying disarray. Her father’s chair was tipped onto its side
and many of the curtains had been slashed or pulled down from their
poles. The gold-embroidered green velvet hung in long strips that
trailed across the polished floor. In places the green was stained
with a red that was still wet. In addition to the guard lying near
her, there were several other men on the floor, all of them
unmoving.

Bianca saw that her father was on the floor,
too. He was lying very still, with a dagger buried up to its hilt
in his chest. After wiping her wet cheeks and runny nose on her
sleeve, Bianca went to him, walking through rivers of blood,
tripping over unmoving arms and legs, ignoring the last moans of
the one guard left alive. Those moans trailed off into silence as
Bianca crossed the room.

“Father?” With her eyes now dry and burning,
Bianca sank to her knees, not noticing the sticky wetness that
seeped through her skirts. “Father, please speak to me.”

Bianca laid her head on her father’s
shoulder, hoping for some response from him. There was none, and
when she opened her eyes wide, all she could see was the gold hilt
of the dagger that had ended his life. She stayed where she was for
a long time, unable to move, her dress soaked in her father’s
blood, the only creature alive in a room filled with death.

“Merciful God in heaven!” Bartolomeo’s voice
penetrated Bianca’s languor. “I could not believe the terrible
news, but now I see it’s true.”

“The child was here.” The second speaker was
a guard whom Bianca knew. “Bartolomeo, she is so still. Is she
dead, too? Or have her wits fled at the awful sights she has beheld
in this room?”

“Dead or alive, she comes with us.”
Bartolomeo swooped down on Bianca, gathering up her small form,
cradling her against his shoulder.

“The duke is dead,” said the guard, bending
over the red-robed form.

“I can see as much, Lorenzo.” Bartolomeo’s
voice cracked, as if he wanted to cry, but couldn’t. “Come along.
We have no choice but to leave him. There isn’t much time before
those bloodthirsty mercenaries return. They only left the room
because they thought everyone here was dead. We have to get Madonna
Eleonora and her children to safety. It is what Girolamo would tell
us to do if he could still speak to us.”

Only when Bartolomeo started to carry her out
of the reception room did Bianca stir.

“Father!” Bianca stretched out her arms
toward her unmoving parent. “I’m sorry. I tried to help, but the
sword was too heavy.”

“Thank God she’s alive,” Lorenzo said. “But
keep her quiet or we won’t get out of the city.”

“Bianca,” Bartolomeo said with quiet
authority, “you are too small to lift a sword. You could not help
your father, but you can help your mother by being a good girl. You
must be very quiet, and very good, and do without question
everything you are told to do. Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Bianca whispered. “I promise I will be
good.”

“I know you will. Your mother will be
depending on you in the days ahead.”

The last
image of Bianca’ s dream was always the same, of Bartolomeo
carrying her out of the reception room, while she looked over his
shoulder at her laughing, active father lying so still, with a
gold-hilted dagger in his chest. Her small arms stretched out to
him as she wailed her apology and her grief – but silently, as
Bartolomeo had ordered. For she knew, with the absolute certainty
only a child’s heart can hold, that her father’s death was her
fault. If she had not been naughty and run away from her nurse, if
she had not interrupted him, and most of all, if only she had been
brave enough and strong enough to pick up the sword of that fallen
guard and join the fray, she might have saved him. If not for
naughty little Bianca, her father might have lived.

The grown-up Bianca understood in her mind
that this was a child’s fantasy, that nothing could have saved
Girolamo Farisi from the well-armed men who were determined to kill
him for their own advantage. But deep inside her heart, in the
place where all grown-ups remain children forever, Bianca
recognized her own guilt. The only way she could make reparation
for her naughtiness on that terrible day was by obeying
Bartolomeo’s orders, by being a good girl, a quiet girl, a girl who
caused no trouble to anyone, for the rest of her life, and by
never, ever again giving her mother cause to worry about her or be
annoyed with her.

* * * * *

Bianca sat shivering in her cold bedroom
while the last, clinging tendrils of her nightmare dissolved. What
was it about this night’s dream that was different? Was it really
different, or was it just that something she had seen in it had
struck a new chord in her memory? Was such a thing possible after
so many years, after countless repetitions of the same scenes?

“I cannot stay here,” Bianca whispered. “Not
in this room. I have to talk to someone else. I need to touch
another person.”

She could not wake her mother. For years
Bianca had hidden the fact of her repetitive dream from Eleonora,
afraid the revelation would disturb her mother and make her
unhappy. Bianca knew her mother was living with entirely too much
unhappiness.

Nor could she go to Bartolomeo or Valeria.
Both of those loyal friends got such sad looks on their faces
whenever the assassination of Girolamo Farisi was mentioned or even
hinted at.

There was only one person to whom Bianca
could unburden herself. Rosalinda knew about the dreams. There had
been many a night when Bianca had crept into Rosalinda’s bed, to
huddle there against her sister’s warmth, to cry as quietly as she
could while Rosalinda stroked her hair and whispered to her that it
was only a nightmare and all would be well again as soon as the sun
rose.

Bianca slipped out of bed. She did not bother
with either a candle or a shawl, for it was only a few steps along
the corridor to Rosalinda’s bedchamber. She stepped into the dark,
silent corridor and, keeping one hand on the wall, made her way to
her sister’s room. Rosalinda was not there.

“Where can she be?” Bianca drew back the
window curtains to make certain. Moonlight spilled into the room,
revealing the only sign of Rosalinda to be the tumbled bedclothes,
tossed aside as if she had left the room in haste. The candle that
was kept by her bed was gone. Obviously, something was amiss. Her
own troubles forgotten in concern for her sister, Bianca headed for
her mother’s room, in case Rosalinda had gone there.

Then she saw a glimmer of light farther down
the corridor. Thinking that Rosalinda might have gone to Bartolomeo
because she had heard a threatening noise that Bartolomeo ought to
investigate, Bianca moved toward the light. She soon realized that
it did not come from Bartolomeo’s rooms, but from the open door to
the servants’ stairs. What could Rosalinda be doing in the unused
servants’ quarters, in the dead of night?

Bianca paused on the landing, looking up
toward the light, which she now saw was cast by a single candle
held in her sister’s hand. Rosalinda was not alone. She was with a
man, a man whose bare legs and feet extended below the shirt that
was his only garment. The candlelight flickered on the man’s face
and Bianca recognized Andrea. But Andrea ought to be miles away
from Villa Serenita.

Immobilized by shock, Bianca stared at the
pair as Rosalinda tilted her face upward and Andrea kissed her on
the mouth. The kiss went on and on and Bianca, watching, felt a
peculiar warmth gathering inside herself, a sensation that made her
yearn for someone to kiss her as thoroughly as Rosalinda was being
kissed. Only when Rosalinda and Andrea drew apart to gaze tenderly
into each other’s eyes did Bianca recover her own good sense.

They must not see her. She retreated along
the corridor, moving as quickly as she could in the dark. She heard
the faint click of the latch on the door to the stairs, and then
Rosalinda’s hurried, quiet footsteps. Bianca had reached
Rosalinda’s room and she slipped inside, to press herself against
the wall behind the open door.

Light from the candle Rosalinda carried
revealed her sad, tear-streaked face. Not seeing Bianca standing in
the shadows, Rosalinda pushed her bedroom door shut and went to set
the candlestick on the bedside table.

“Would you care to explain to me what you
have been doing above-stairs with Andrea?” Bianca kept her voice to
a whisper but still Rosalinda jerked, gasped, and spun around to
face her.

“What are you doing here?” Rosalinda’s eyes
were huge and dark with pain, and full of tears.

“I had the dream again and came looking for
you, but you weren’t here so I searched for you. I saw you kissing
Andrea, and he wearing naught but his shirt. I think you are the
one who owes an explanation.”

“I love him,” Rosalinda said.

“That is no excuse for visiting a man in your
nightgown, while he is all but undressed. What will Mother
say?”

“Mother knows he is here, and so does
Bartolomeo. Bianca, please don’t tell anyone you saw Andrea and me
together.”

“Mother knows he is here?” Bianca
repeated.

“He is leaving in just an hour or so, and
heaven alone knows when he will be able to return. I had to see
him. I had to hear him say he has not forgotten me.”

“Andrea comes and goes in secret, only Mother
and Bartolomeo knowing of his movements? Dear God, what are they
planning?”

Into Bianca’s mind a picture flashed, of a
dagger stabbing Andrea in the chest, as a dagger had once stabbed
Girolamo Farisi. The image lasted only an instant, before Bianca
blocked it out, unable to accept the possibility that someone else
she knew might meet a similar, bloody fate. Immediately, the
terrible picture was replaced by blind fury. “Do you realize how
angry Mother will be when she learns of your visit to a man whose
presence here she wants kept secret?”

“She won’t know unless you tell her,”
Rosalinda said.

The two sisters stared at each other for a
long moment before Bianca nodded once and turned away, determined
to regain her self-control. She took a long, deep breath. It did
little to calm the anger that filled her heart and her mind. A fair
portion of that anger was directed at herself; only part was
against her sister.

“Bianca,” Rosalinda said softly, “I do love
him. He has promised to return to me.”

“If he lives long enough to return.”

“Don’t say that!” Rosalinda cried.

“
Hush,
you foolish girl, or you’ll wake the others.” Bianca stepped
nearer. Her words might have been dipped in acid before they left
her lips, so unerringly did they sear the close ties between the
sisters, burning and hurting both of them. “How can you be so
thoughtless, so careless of Mother’s feelings? While I – I have
tried so hard to be good and never to cause any trouble or to worry
Mother. I do everything she asks of me. I never complain. And for
all my efforts-” Bianca broke off, choking back bitter
sobs.

“Mother loves both of us.” Rosalinda’s arms
went around Bianca’s shoulders, holding fast even when Bianca tried
to pull away. “Dearest sister, you cannot think that Mother loves
me more than you. If it sometimes seems that way, it may be because
I do get into trouble and worry her, while you do not, so I require
more of her attention than you do. Mother knows she can always
depend on you.”