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  The three closest scurried to do as I bid, breaking up the crowd in the hallway. But then the servants were there with the water.

  “Tell me what I can do,” Marcello said lowly, at Fortino’s head, trying not to interrupt our process. There was fear in his eyes, the first I’d ever seen in him.

  “Boiling water, two buckets on each side of him. Use the cloth to make a tent above us. Try and seal us in, as best you can. And have them fetch more boiling water. We need steam. Constant steam.”

  Marcello rose and barked orders.

  A maid arrived with the herbs I’d asked for.

  “Quick as you can—everyone tear all that into piles.”

  Fortino was mouthing words, trying to tell me something. I shook my head furiously. “No. It can wait. Do not try to speak right now. Do you hear me? You breathe, and that’s it. In…and out.” I was about as tender as a drill sergeant. But he was seriously freaking me out. People still died of asthma attacks in the twenty-first century. How much harder was it to keep them alive in the fourteenth?

  In two minutes, Marcello had the cloth spread above us and water inside. It didn’t take long for sweat to drip down my scalp and back, but I wasn’t leaving Fortino. Not that I could. The man gripped my hand, so hard it scared me all the more. As weak as he was, if he held me like that, he was afraid, deathly—literally—afraid.

  Marcello was there, on the other side of our makeshift tent. “The herbs are torn, Gabriella. Now what?”

  “Mix them with olive oil, into a thick paste. Quickly.” I watched in horror as Fortino’s eyes began to roll back. “Fortino!”

  They slowly rolled back to focus on me.

  “Stay with me, Fortino. Stay with me.”

  His eyes remained locked on mine.

  Marcello came under the tent, staring at my flushed, sweaty face, then at his brother’s, which was almost blue from lack of oxygen. New buckets of water were slid under the tent, the cooling water removed.

  “Go over there,” I said to Marcello, nodding to the other side.

  I looked back at Fortino. “Marcello is here. I need to pack your chest. He shall hold your hand.”

  Marcello gently took his older brother’s hand from mine, moving it to his side. There was such care in his movements, such love, that I thought I might burst into tears. Fortino’s eyes shifted to his brother, as hungry for encouragement from him as he was from me.

  None of us wanted to be alone when we died. A chill ran down my back at the thought, even though it was hotter than Hades in there.

  “Fortino,” I said, slapping a bunch of the herbal slop—heavy with mint, caraway and lemon—over his chest. “You breathe, man. Breathe!” What was I doing? I was guessing at an old recipe of my mother’s, hoping I remembered it right. Hadn’t Lia had a major allergy attack? And hadn’t she put such things on her?

  I studied him as I placed handful after handful of the stuff on his skin.

  I might finish him off if he’s allergic to any of this stuff.

  But I was desperate. There was nothing left for me to do. I couldn’t just sit there and watch him die.

  “We must pray,” Marcello said, glancing from his brother to me.

  I stared back at him. Pray?

  If praying would save the man, I was up for it. God had never seemed to pay much attention to my pleas, but maybe he’d listen to Marcello.

  The man closed his eyes and began to speak in Latin. My mind raced, trying to keep up with his words. I knew just enough Latin—on my parents’ insistence—to totally massacre any attempt at speaking it. But I could understand it well enough.

  “Mighty God in heaven,” he began, a little awkwardly, “reach down and touch this man. Heal him. Save him. Grant him breath. God on high, You are all-powerful. We beg that You spare Fortino now. Amen.”

  “Amen,” I whispered. I glanced at him, but he was looking only at his brother. It wasn’t his words that struck me. It was that he appeared to believe in them.

  His face relaxed, as did Fortino’s. Marcello reached up to wipe away the sweat from his brother’s face with a cloth, and smiled his encouragement.

  “Gabriella, you look as if you are about to faint,” Marcello said, his eyes suddenly on me. “Take your ease a moment outside the tent and get some cooler air. I will stay with him.”

  I nodded and put the back of my hand up to wipe my forehead and upper lip of sweat. I was feeling a little dizzy. I moved from under the edge of the cloth and looked about the room, to a sea of waiting faces. “He still struggles,” I said, sinking to a chair. “Please, fetch more boiling water. We must keep it coming, constantly.” Three set off to do as I asked. Another brought me a ladle of cold water, and I gulped it down. Then when I felt more myself I returned under the edge of the tent.

  “God has heard our prayers. He’s breathing a bit easier,” Marcello said.

  I studied the side of Fortino’s ribs, where herbs and oil streamed down, and watched the muscles. Just a tiny bit less desperate and lurching. He still sounded like a sick seal, gasping for every bit of air he could take in, but any improvement was a small victory.

  I rose and looked into Fortino’s eyes. He didn’t look quite so close to giving up, but he was still working so hard…and he was again trying to form words. He looked at Marcello this time.

  Marcello rose and placed his ear next to his brother’s mouth, closing his eyes as if to concentrate on deciphering what Fortino was trying to say.

  “Marcello,” I complained in a whisper, “he shouldn’t try to speak.”

  Marcello held up his hand to shush me. After a moment, he went back to kneeling beside his brother. After several long minutes, he said something back and lifted his face.

  “What’d he say?” I asked.

  “He said to carry on with the attack. To leave him with a sword in hand, in case they breach this corridor.”

  The knights in the room, clearly hearing Marcello’s words, all cheered.

  I put a hand to my forehead. How could I leave Fortino struggling like this?

  “There is no choice,” Marcello said, reading the question in my eyes. “The plan is already in motion. Your own Evangelia is counting on us to rescue her in the wee hours of morning.”

  I dragged miserable eyes to his brother and back to Marcello again.

  We might save Lia—how I hoped we would save her—but if the Paratores breached this corridor, we would most assuredly lose Fortino.

  CHAPTER 16

  Marcello made his “return” the next morning with golden flag flapping in the wind beside the flag bearer’s horse and all of his trusted men riding behind him. Hours later, I still paced back and forth. We’d gone through the plan with all the knights, then again with the servants, ten times. It had to appear natural. Nothing could smell of a trap. They had to confine the battle within the courtyard, so that the Paratore knights remained engaged there, until the reinforcements arrived and could capture and kill them all—and so that they would not give chase to those who were attempting to breach the Castello Paratore wall and save my sister.

  Marcello had thought of a few things to give our side an edge. He put fifteen knights into common clothing, and they took the quarters at the front of the castle, while the servants sheltered in the rear quarters, which were more defensible. Five brave servants agreed to make a run from two separate corridors, and into another, making it appear as if the castle had truly been surprised and all servants were where they usually were, in the hall across the courtyard from mine. They practiced it, like actors on a Hollywood movie set, timing it, men on horseback charging about, so it was all perfectly choreographed. The idea was that at first, Paratore men would think they’d breached the castle doors just as they had planned, surprising all inside.

  Ten men were positioned along the walls, hidden
under woven tarps, with bows and countless arrows. After twenty minutes of siege, they would be allowed to rise and take aim at the interlopers. But not before then. Marcello wanted to be certain that his reinforcements would arrive in time to capture any that tried to escape. “If you stay down, they’ll concentrate on breaching the corridor entry points,” Marcello said. He smiled. “And then the secondary barriers.”

  All afternoon, men had been busy erecting heavy, new interior doors within four of the corridors, where the castello’s unarmed would hole up. The other corridors would be locked up tight, but if they were breached, the interlopers would find them empty. Indeed, at the twenty-minute mark, the knights had permission to openly attack any Paratores they came upon.

  “They’ll think us cowards,” they grumbled, irritated that Marcello would not allow them to defend the castle upon the enemy’s entry.

  “They’ll be dead come morning, and you shall be alive,” Marcello snapped back. “Do as my brother has planned. Nothing different. It’s a brilliant plan. And an honor to him to see it done.”

  They clammed up then, unable to argue with the whole Dying Brother card.

  I did fear that Fortino was dying. That he wouldn’t make it until daybreak. He still labored to breathe, and his poor heart couldn’t sustain many more hours of such suffering. Marcello had had to drag me out of his room.

  In the hall, he had taken my face in his hands, his own features full of heavy misery. “I know. I know. But we can do nothing that the servants can’t do. Right?”

  I stared at him for a long moment, tears slipping down my face. “Right,” I said at last. “And your father?”

  He dropped his hands and turned away. “Dim and chatting on and on about my mother. He keeps trying to send servants to fetch her.”

  “It could be that he’s suffered another…spell,” I said. I moved toward him and after a moment’s hesitation, put a hand on his back. “Marcello, the stress of what is to come…there is a good chance that neither your brother nor father will survive the night. Perhaps you should remain here, with them.”

  He turned to me then. “Fortino wants us to do this, and were my father in his right mind, he would suffer no halt to the plan. I honor them best by seeing it through and looking to the castello’s future, Siena’s future.” His eyes sought mine. “And ours.”

  I shook my head and broke away from his light hold on my hips. “I’ve been thinking about that, Marcello. You belong here, defending what you love.”

  He gave me a gentle smile and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I belong where I can defend all that I love. I will be here at the beginning, engage in a skirmish or two, then retreat, barricading myself into the first corridor across the way. An empty corridor, of course. Once I see the flags of the Sienese reinforcements, I’ll come and find you.”

  My eyes widened with alarm. “Except the Paratore men will be circling the castle, making certain no one escapes.”

  He cocked his head. “And we shall fight our way through.”

  “You and Luca,” I said.

  He nodded. “You didn’t think we’d expect you to rescue your sister on your own, did you?”

  “I didn’t know what to think.” I rubbed my temple. “This plan, Marcello…it could go wrong in a hundred different ways.”

  “Or perfectly right.” He took my hand in his now, bringing me back to the present. “Are you ready, my sweet warrior?” He slowly kissed my knuckles, his eyes solely on me. I knew the entire castello watched us, but I could look nowhere but at him. We stood at the first corridor entrance, where I was to climb and pretend to murder the two front guards.

  “Do not die this night, m’lord.”

  He gave me a pained smile. “So on the morrow or the next is all right, just not this night?”

  “No,” I said, laying my other hand on his chest and willing him to promise me what he could not. “Ever.”

  His smile faded. “Only if you promise to do the same.” He kissed my knuckles once more. “Luca and I will catch up with you before you reach Castello Paratore. I promise you that. Gabriella, the battle ahead will be fierce. You must fight. Fight with everything in you, beloved.”

  Taking a deep breath, I ripped my hand from his, turned and entered the hallway, then the turret, my mind screaming at me to stop, to turn around, to take cover alongside Fortino, or better yet, in a corridor with the rest of the weak and completely freaked out. I didn’t feel strong. I felt coldly afraid, even though I hurried up the stairs as if I hungered for nothing but the battle ahead. At the tiny door at the top, I stopped, my hand on the latch.

  “Fortes fortuna adiuvat,” Marcello had said to his men. Fortune favors the brave, the bold.

  That was all well and good. But it was remembering my dad talking to me about bravery in life that pushed me onward. We’d been on a rare father-daughter walk, and I had shared my fears about something. He’d said, “I read once that courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something is more important than that fear.”

  I pushed through, walking hunched over, as if trying to avoid being seen by those inside the castle but close to the edge, so that those who watched me from the outside could clearly see my progress. I raced to catch up with the guard, Giovanni, who was walking away from me, as was our plan. “Coming on your left,” I whispered to him, raising my short broadsword high in the air where it could catch the gleam of torchlight. “Three, two, one,” I counted lowly, still mirroring his steps. He pretended to not hear a word from me. I turned the sword and plunged it between his shoulders, where it caught a hidden wooden plate and slid downward. We went down between the edges of the wall—where no one could see us—and I rolled off of him. “Nicely done,” I said. “How does it suit you, being dead?”

  “Feels mostly the same,” he said in a whisper, grinning at me as he rolled over.

  “Well, prepare for a second death,” I said, rising and making a great show of stabbing him once more. This time, I knew only I would be visible from the Paratores’ vantage point, so I plunged downward—waited for Giovanni to give it a quick wash of cow’s blood—then wrenched my sword up as if it had been stuck in a body. I raced forward, shoving the bloody sword into the sheath at my back.

  “Go with God, m’lady,” I heard the knight whisper behind me.

  And with you, I thought, surprising myself. All the God talk was rubbing off on me. I hoped the Big Guy was listening.

  At the end of the wall, I rose and looked into the center of the enclosed courtyard where Marcello stood, alongside Luca, watching me. I stared at him overly long, wondering if it might be the last time I would see him alive. But then he pointed at the other guard, approaching me from the other side, reminding me of my task.

  I crouched down and moved into position. The other guard, Pietro, feigned surprise when he saw me. He moved his hand to his sword as if to draw it. I pulled the dagger from my front sheath and pulled back, my eyes on the center of his sternum.

  “Aim true, m’lady,” he whispered a second late, since the dagger already flew across the space between us.

  His timing was as perfect as my aim. As the blade plunged into the leather and padding that made him appear as portly as Giovanni, he wavered, then reached for it, pretending to try to pluck it out. Just as I was silently urging him not to milk it, he crumpled with an anguished groan to the ground.

  I hurriedly tied off my rope and rappelled down the inside of the castello wall, shaking in fear when I heard the massive numbers of horses rumbling toward the gates.

  “Go, Gabriella,” Marcello mouthed.

  I turned to the massive, rusted metal beam and unlocked it, then, pushing with everything in me, slid it back in its track.

  They didn’t wait for me to open it all the way. The giant door barely missed me as I leaped aside. They burst through with a ro
ar, fifty men on foot, with twenty on horses behind them.

  Knights, dressed as servants, ran for the corridors that had two barricades. Our twenty minutes were now counting down. “Knights to arms!” one cried. “The castle is breached!” Ten knights joined Marcello and Luca. Women ran screaming to the corridors farther back, just as they had practiced. The first sounds of iron meeting iron sounded in the yard.

  Lord Paratore came through the gates on his horse and pulled up on the reins when he reached my side. “Off with you, then,” he said, gesturing with his chin over his shoulder. “You have done well. Go and claim your prize.”

  I nodded and smiled. I turned and scurried out, straight through the third line of men who stood there, swords drawn, ready to enter at their master’s call, to the Paratore knight on his horse. “I need a mount,” I said to him.

  “You can walk,” he sneered.

  I stared hard at him. “I need a mount. I’ve done all that your lord asked me,” I spit out. “The castle is yours. Now give me what should be mine. Lord Paratore promised a horse.”

  He looked down at me, plainly irritated that I was even talking to him. But I stubbornly refused to look away. After a moment, he grimaced and glanced behind him. “Bring the wench a gelding.”

  As soon as the horse was within reach, I took the reins, put my foot in the stirrup, and swung across the saddle, ignoring their lecherous glances at my legs. I was already turning, kicking the horse’s flanks, leaning down, racing across the path that was clearly visible in the moonlight.

  I’m coming, Lia. I’m coming.

  CHAPTER 17

  From the corner of my eye, I’d seen a patrol of Paratore men, riding around the edge of the castello, just as I thought they would—just as Marcello believed they would too.

  Dear God, please bring Marcello to help me! Keep him safe! Keep us all safe!

  I bent lower and raced down the path, far faster than was wise. But adrenaline and hope combined to make me feel strong, as if I could see in the dark. Again and again, I urged my horse to leap stones and logs, making me believe it was true.