Waterfall (14 page)

“All right, all right,” I muttered, ducking back through the short turret door. And swept down the stairs, wondering what the day might hold for me. Without a search for Lia in Siena, without a chance to stare out across the forest, what? Hang out with the dreaded Lady Rossi?

Not if I could help it.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, glanced down to where my bedroom door was, and quickly decided I couldn’t spend another day cooped up in there. I walked in the opposite direction, deciding to explore a little, get an understanding of what was where around the castle. I tentatively knocked on a few doors, but it was as I suspected. This wing of the castle was empty save for me. “What?” I muttered. “Do I have the plague or something?”

I was actually glad for the privacy. The last thing I needed was Lady Rossi hanging out with me, jumping on the bed like we were going to have a sleepover or something, asking me what I thought of her boyfriend. No, that wouldn’t be good. When I reached the turret, I came into the courtyard, entered the next door, and continued on down the next segment of the corridor. The castle was laid out like a pentagon, with a tall, crenellated tower at each corner. Each corridor had a fortified door. Luca had informed me it was for defensibility. One wing might fall to attackers, but chances were, the castle’s defenders could hold them off somewhere. I ran my hand across the pockmarked limestone bricks, wondering how long ago the castello had been built. It was no wonder she was important to Siena; she was like a tight little ship on the far edge of the sea.

What had left her dismantled, totally leveled, by the time Lia and I explored her ruins? And when? Other medieval buildings survived. What had happened here?

I moved into the next segment and immediately saw and heard more action. Here, maids were at work, and I could see massive trunks and many dresses across the two large beds in the first, big room, with tapestries on the wall and a small fire crackling in a corner hearth. It was nothing like my own austere room, suitable for a nun.

I heard Lady Rossi giggling. I shivered and kept moving. Of course it was a room decorated for a lady; it was for the future Lady Forelli. The other rooms in this wing were probably for her ladies-in-waiting.

I couldn’t get through the hallway fast enough. I raced to the door, relieved when I unlatched it and escaped. I ducked into the next corridor, expecting another row of rooms. But it was a massive, dimly lit room.

In the corner, a fire smoldered in the hearth, having chased away the morning’s brief chill. Two big windows let the morning light in. I had stepped into the inviting room before I spotted him, lounging on a large horsehair settee, staring back at me with mild interest.

“Oh! M’lord!” I said, horrified to be discovered snooping. Fortino’s sickroom.

“No, no,” he said, gesturing at me as if to say calm down. “It is quite all right, Lady Betarrini.” He lowered his book to his lap, and when he smiled, I realized just how down he looked. I wondered if he was thinking about Marcello, galloping off to a battle that should have been his own, if it wasn’t for his sickness. He may as well have been a patient in the cancer wing of a hospital, simply biding his time.

I forced a smile and shoved away a shiver of fear. He was obviously a sweet guy, and not much older than me. “I will leave you to your reading.” I started to back away.

“I would much prefer your sitting with me for a moment. Please.” He gestured to a chair beside his.

I met his gaze and realized that despite his frail appearance, he had the bearing of a young lord. There would be no arguing with him.

I moved to the chair and folded my hands in my lap, staring at him as boldly as he was staring at me.

“You wonder why I don’t ride with my brother?” he said, each word a sigh of long-held frustration.

“Nay. I mean…you are plainly sick-ailing.”

“Indeed I am.” Even in those few words, I could hear the wheeze in his breath. He was far worse than he had been, even a couple days ago.

“May I ask…what is it that plagues you?”

“Are you educated in the art of medicine?”

Yeah, the art of Walgreens and Urgent Care. “A bit,” I hedged.

“Lung trouble. The doctors say that I am full of water. My humours are off balance. But they cannot right them again.”

“Ahh,” I said, as if I understood what the heck he was talking about. Humours. Dim recollections of a medieval museum and a diagram of a body segmented into four segments called humours flitted through my mind. They thought that if the body was off-kilter in one area, it set you off in the others. There was probably some logic in the midst of it that actually made sense. They hadn’t been total idiots. But they had some pretty wild remedies, too.

“If you don’t consider it prying, m’lord, can you tell me what your symptoms are?”

He smiled and laid his book on a small table beside him. “Surely a lady as comely as yourself wouldn’t want to speak of such things.”

“Try me.”

He stared at me, confusion lowering his brow.

“Nay, m’lord,” I translated. “I am most interested to know. Mayhap I might find some small way to aid you.”

He looked at me hard then and shook his head a little. “I am not seeking a bride.”

He thought I was after him? For what, his money? I raised my brows. “That is of great relief to me since I am not seeking a husband.” Dad always joked that I had to wait until I was twentyone to date…. Was this guy even twenty-one himself? I had pegged Marcello as about nineteen, a couple years older than me. I was guessing Fortino was a couple years older than that, but his thin, bony structure made him appear younger.

His brows lifted, and he smiled a little, as if he had never heard such a thing from an unattached female. Perhaps he hadn’t. Not seeking a husband? What else did the girls have going for them? No studies, no working. A girl’s total worth was in whom she could marry and how many boys she could birth. It made me feel a little sorry for Lady Rossi. Maybe I should cut her some slack….

“I awaken in the morning, barely able to breathe,” he labored to tell me, staring back at the fire again, “and my servant has to thump my back, break up the mucous, at which point I cough so hard that I confess I wish for death. At times, in the middle of the night, I labor so that I fear I’ve reached the end.”

Hmm. Sounds a bit like the asthma I had as a kid. I remembered well the horrific feeling of suffocation…. I shook my head at the memory, glad that I’d outgrown it years before.

He leaned back and returned his gaze to me, as if that might be enough to make me take my skirts in hand and run from him. But I simply stared back.

“As the morning goes on,” he finally went on, “the coughing eases, but this dreaded wheeze stays with me, reminding me of my illness with every breath of every day.”

“Does your nose run? Do your eyes water?”

He nodded, clearly puzzled by my questions. His eyes were ringed with deep purple, testimony to his nightly battles to breathe-and possibly to allergies that set him off in the first place. Or it might have been caused by his sleep being so disrupted….

“Do you run a fever? Are you hot?”

He shook his head, then shrugged one shoulder. “I perspire, when I cough so violently. But it is not a fever.”

“And your appetite? Do you want to eat?”

“At times, but my breathing makes it a chore.” He lifted an arm and studied it, as if seeing for the first time how bony he had become.

“What have the doctors told you to do?”

He glanced to the fire. “Precious little. Though they are more than happy to take my father’s gold florins for every visit.”

“Does steam help at all?” I thought of my mom, tenting our heads with a towel and making us sit over a bowl of boiling water when we were all stopped up. It was uncomfortable, but it did get things moving again. And in dry country, like Toscana tended to be in the mid- to late-summer, it helped with things like allergies, too.

“Steam?”

“Yes, breathing in the vapors from scalding-hot water?”

“Nay,” he said, studying me with an edge of crazy hope in his eyes. “They never suggested such a thing.”

I eyed the chair on which he lounged. “How often are you on that settee each day, m’lord?”

He raised one brow. “Most of every day, I’d wager.”

“Do your symptoms change depending on where you are? Do they get worse when you come in here from your bedchamber?”

He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket as he thought my questions over. “My nose and eyes tend to run. But I assumed it was from the smoke.”

I glanced at the fire. “That is possible. Or you might be allergic to horses. And lounges covered in horsehair,” I said with a small smile.

He glanced down at the settee with some understanding. “Allergic?”

Hmm, maybe that word isn’t in use…. “It simply means that being near horses or couches made with their skins might interfere with your… humours.”

His eyes opened wider with understanding.

“One can be allergic to horses, or hay, or cats, or pollen.”

“Pollen?”

“Mm, that fine dust from the trees that is so thick this time of year. Even grass or weeds. Mayhap in Toscana, your doctors have not yet heard of this. It is quite common in Normandy.” I was lying through my teeth, of course, but I wanted him to give my words some weight in case I could actually help him.

I rose and went to the small bookshelf, running my hand over the thick, odd goat-leather bindings and trying to remember enough Latin to read the titles. It had been a pet peeve of Dad’s, that most kids never learned any Latin. He’d insisted we learned the basics. You can imagine what that did for my rep at Boulder High. Total Geek Alert, when you have to meet your Latin teacher at the library on Saturdays-

“Do you read, Lady Betarrini?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.

“Well, yes,” I said, before I thought it through. I dragged my eyes toward him. Being schooled enough to read in this era was probably rare, even for the guys.

But he was smiling in delighted surprise. “Books are my constant companion. Father has little use for them. Marcello can read only a few pages before he falls asleep each night. He tolerates a reading in the Great Hall each eve, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Tell me, have you read the poet?”

The poet, the poet, I thought, wracking my brain. “Dante. Of course.” That’s what all Italians called their most famous writer.

“Wonderful,” he said in approval. “We shall have to discuss The Divine Comedy at your earliest convenience.”

Everywhere Igo, I can’t seem to escape that thing… but if it turns your crank-

He regarded me and then took a slow, wheezy breath. “Pray tell, Lady Betarrini, how does one avoid daily things such as horses when one lives in a castle? Or dust from the trees?”

I smiled at him. “It is difficult. But I think I know of some measures that might bring you some relief. Might I hope that you would try one or two of them?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Great!” I said, then seeing that my exuberant response shocked him a little. “I mean, very well. We shall begin on the morrow.”

“Why not now?”

I blinked in surprise. “Well, all right. Please, m’lord, summon a servant.” We’re gonna need a little help in here.

He reached behind himself and pulled a rope. My eyes followed it to the ceiling, where it disappeared through a small hole. In a few moments, a footman appeared.

“Enzo, Lady Betarrini is of the mind to aid me this day.”

The servant did not react. Perhaps that was what they strived for-no reaction, just obedience.

“Be at ease, Lady Betarrini. Tell him what to do.”

I tapped my lips, thinking. “Is this where you like to spend your days? Is there another room with more air? More windows?”

“Nay, I’m afraid this is the best. And I confess, my favorite.”

“All right, then. I’ll need you to do exactly as I say for a week, no matter how mad it sounds. Are you willing to give me that much time?”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “I might be dead on the morrow, m’lady. But what time I have left is yours.”

I returned his subtly flirtatious smile. We weren’t serious about it, of course. It was just fun. “Good. Then Enzo here better fetch some help. I need this room cleared out, from top to bottom, and then the maids will need to come and wash every inch of it, from top to bottom, with hot, hot water, and some sort of cleanser…. What do you use to disinfect?”

Both men stared at me blankly. “I mean when there’s been something foul, what do the maids use to clean, make it safe again?”

“Ah, lye is what you’re after. And vinegar.”

“Excellent!” I said, remembering. Lye was still the main ingredient in a lot of soaps. “Yes, hot, hot water, vinegar and lye. The same for your bedroom, m’lord. I beg you to empty it, and bring back only the barest of essentials.” I began to pace. “The horsehair settee has to go, for example. You’ll need to find a hardwood chair for the week.”

“Be this a treatment or a punishment?”

I smiled. “I’m attempting to help you. Remember that. Please do not bring any of these woolens back in. Let’s remove the tapestries, just for the week,” I added quickly. “I saw women working upon a loom in the courtyard. Bring that new blanket in, fresh from the loom.” I leaned closer to him. “Our doctors believe that things like dust get lodged in linens, and therefore, if that is what irritates your lungs, you are beneath one, huge irritant.”

He nodded as if he understood me, but I could see a little of the This Chick’s Crazy look in his eyes. Whatever.

“And me, m’lady. All this is well and good for the room, but I thought your aim was to aid me.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, that flash of flirtation and humor there again. In that moment, I could see the resemblance to Marcello, the glimpse of the young man he was supposed to be. I paced, thinking about Mom poking around the sites, pointing out herbs used in remedies for centuries.

“Peppermint,” I told the servant. “More hot water. The finest, thinnest cloth you can obtain.” I turned to Fortino. “In the meantime, I need you to bathe, head to toe, and wear a dressing gown, again, of the finest possible cloth.”