CHAPTER 30

At sunset, I found Marcello on a hill above camp, looking toward Castello Forelli. I slipped my arms around his waist and leaned my head against his back, between his shoulder blades. “I am sorry, my love. For all you have endured this day.” Would Fortino even survive another night of captivity, as ill as Marcello had described?

He remained quiet but placed his hands over mine.

“I am thankful that you were spared,” he said, turning to face me. “That you’re here, with me.” He leaned his forehead down to touch mine and pulled me closer, eyes closed. “If only we did not so soon have to part…” We stood there a moment, sharing the grief, the fear.

“I wish I could ease your pain. After we lost my father…” My voice broke, and I took a halting breath. “I’m here. Ready to love you. Support you. Come what may.”

He pulled back a little, his eyes pools of torture. “Only one thing would ease the pain in my heart this night.”

“What? Anything. Anything.”

“To do what I have longed to do—claim you as my own. Thoughts of losing you, when I’ve as much as lost Fortino…” He closed his eyes in anguish, turned, and knelt before me. “Gabriella Betarrini, please honor me by becoming my bride.”

“Marcello,” I sputtered, searching for the words. “We are to part within hours.”

He remained on his knees, staring up at me.

“Do you not see?” I said. “If I promise you forever, then my mother and sister must remain here forever too.”

“I shall make a home for you all,” he said, rising and taking my cheek in his warm hand. I closed my eyes against the glory of him. Even displaced, frightened, grieving, he was a force. A man. I had trouble breathing. “Somehow. Somewhere I will take care of all of you. Do you not trust me?”

“’Tis not a matter of trust,” I said softly. “’Tis a matter of choice. If it were only me, I’d say yes this very moment. But for my family…You must understand, we would be leaving much behind.”

“But welcoming much here,” he said. “True?”

“True,” I said mournfully. I sighed and stared back up at him, helpless. “Forgive me, Marcello. But I cannot accept your offer of marriage.” Were these words really coming out of my mouth? And yet I could not stop them—I knew they were the right words. “Not yet,” I continued. “Not until Lia and my mother agree to remain.”

He gave me a tiny nod. “I understand, Gabriella,” he said. Then he bent and set a tender, soft, lingering kiss upon my lips, as if he was saying good-bye. Forever. Tears rolled down my cheeks again as I struggled to understand what was happening.

He dropped my hands, then turned and walked down the hill alone, pain radiating from the defeated curve of his shoulders.

With each step he took, I felt a tiny bit of me die too. I’ve made a mistake. This is wrong! It took everything in me to remain where I was, to not go tearing after him to agree to his proposal and wake up in the morning as his bride.

But I’d be waking up alone for days to come, with him off to battle. My sister and mom stuck here whether they liked it or not. I couldn’t do it.

Not yet.

At sunup, I watched as Marcello clasped arms with Luca. Then he called out orders to all men to pack up and be ready in fifteen minutes’ time, with three days’ supplies on their backs. “And see to it that you pack both bread and dried meat with you, if you have not yet,” he shouted. “A hungry man is a dead man.”

They cleared out, fast. But I remained, waiting for him to see me, face me.

At last his eyes settled on me. They moved from sorrow to determination. He stepped forward and took my hands. “Gabriella, you must promise me.”

“What, love?”

“As soon as you are ready, my six most trusted men shall escort you and your family southward, beyond the reach of any man loyal to Firenze. I have a friend—”

“Nay.” I squeezed his hands. “Take us with you. We will help you fight, help you galvanize the Sienese in case—”

“Think about it, Gabriella. For every man you take down, four more will be bent on reaching you, capturing you, or worse. You said it yourself. You are bait to the bear. And my men will feel they must defend you, rather than press forward. I will feel that way.”

I opened my mouth to argue but then decided I had to agree with him. We would be more of a distraction than an asset. I took a step away and put a hand to my face. I hated having him leave, like this, with so much yet to be resolved between us. “How long? Until we might be reunited?”

He shook his head. “Our men weary of the battle, as do those of Firenze. With the outposts gone, the attention has turned to Siena herself. If we were in time to warn the Nine…” He took a deep breath. “The tide turns this week, one way or the other. We cannot stay at this impasse for much longer.”

“So then, you shall come and retrieve us when it is done?”

He nodded. “As soon as I see their backs, I will come for you.” He stepped forward and took my hands. “Promise me you will stay with Luca and the others.”

“I promise.” The last thing the guy needed was to worry about me. I wanted him to come back alive. And to do that, he’d need to be focused, able to concentrate.

I lifted my face to his, and he gave me a soft, fleeting kiss. “Until the day of our reunion, Gabriella.”

“Until that day,” I returned. “Come back to me, Marcello Forelli.”

“I shall do my best.” He backed away slowly, as if reluctant to leave me. “Wait on Luca and the others to escort you,” he emphasized, narrowing his eyes. “Go nowhere without their escort, do you understand? Keep Luca with you at all times.”

I nodded, not particularly fond of his bossy demands, or that he was going into battle without his best men beside him, but knowing it had to go his way. He loved me. And since I had to go and fall for a full-on knight—possibly the future Lord Forelli if Fortino didn’t survive his injuries—I had to bend a little toward the whole lady-to-be-protected thing. At least for now.

And this parting was so much better than last night’s, I was ready to accept pretty much anything. Just bring us back together, God. Give us a chance.

I waited there, and Mom and Lia joined me. We followed behind the knights as they moved to the horses, where hundreds of men on foot waited. Marcello turned, took my face between both his hands and kissed me swiftly but soundly.

The men laughed and shouted their approval.

Then he was atop his gelding, riding before the mounted men, shouting instructions for what was to come. Laying out their goals—to intercept the new forces, before those men reached Siena’s city gates. “We take down those men,” he said, his horse prancing beneath him, “and Paratore’s forces too, away from our home. Once we destroy them, we will find my brother and free him. Then we shall return for our own. Mark my words. Be it this week or this year, Castello Forelli shall return to us. And she shall be rebuilt, stronger than ever before.”

The men cheered.

“For Lord Fortino Forelli!” he shouted, lifting his sword to the sky.

“Lord Forelli!” shouted the men in response.

“For Siena!” Marcello cried.

“For Siena!” the men thundered.

“May God Himself watch over us. Come, men. Let us be about it.”

With one last, lingering glance toward me, Marcello turned and moved down the hill at a pace that would not leave the men on foot in the dust nor alert Paratore’s scouts that they were departing. They’d left the tents as we’d found them, with several bonfires blazing.

Luca and I lingered, watching. I glanced over at him, sensing his hesitation. “What is it?” I said. “Hate to miss a battle?”

“Indeed,” he said, flashing me a smile. But I couldn’t miss that it was somewhat subdued.

“You never know,” I said, nudging him with my hip. “You said yourself that the Ladies Betarrini tend to draw action.”

“There is that,” he said, his smile widening.

I walked ahead of him and then glanced back when he fell behind again, his brow knit in puzzlement, as if he was trying to figure something out. We entered camp and sat down next to Lia in a corner, slightly away from the other five men who were to accompany us south: Pietro, Giovanni, and three others I didn’t know very well—Valente, Alonzo, and Santino. We dug into bowls of bland porridge in rich cream.

“Think they could ever go Atkins on us?” Lia asked in a whisper.

I giggled. “They enjoy their meat, but they’d wither and die without their carbs,” I returned.

“So would I, really,” she said. “Not that I would miss this slop. But Cook’s pasta? Mm, yeah.”

I nodded and shoved another biteful in my mouth. It wasn’t great, but at least it’d stave off the hunger thing for a while.

“You okay?” Lia asked. “I mean, without Marcello and all.”

“As okay as I can be,” I said. “It’s kind of like a piece of me has been torn from my body, you know?”

She nodded, looking at me with understanding eyes. “You ready? I mean, really ready? To stay here forever? What if this was our life, day in and day out? Always in the middle of a battle. Fighting for our lives—or those we love.”

Mom sat down beside us, bowl in hand.

I looked at them both and shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of think this fighting might settle down a bit, in time. And really, isn’t it better than flopping down in front of a TV and watching someone else’s story? I feel more…alive here, now, than I ever did at home.”

Mom was staring at her porridge. “So you’d leave everything you had ahead of you? College? A career? Your friends?”

“You two are all that really matter to me,” I said. “My friends would be okay. And the best kind of education is all around us, don’t you think? I’m thinkin’ a girl could do pretty well in business, with or without a man. Especially a girl with a little Norman knowledge.”

She smiled. I knew she would be reluctant to give up on the life she had lived with Dad. She really had the most to go home to—she was on the brink of a major discovery, the unpacking of the Etruscan Mother Lode back in Radda in Chianti. The thing that was going to make all the years of sacrifice and distraction worthwhile.

Mom held my gaze and seemed to know what I was thinking. She sighed. “Gabriella, Evangelia, these next steps…they’re yours to take. You two are my life. I know that our career took so much of your dad and me from you…And losing him…” Her voice cracked, and she rubbed her mouth, trying to get a grip. She looked up at us after a long moment. “What I’m trying to say is that if you’re staying, I want to too. There is nothing more important to me than you two. Nearly losing you…” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she smiled. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be good.”

We stared back at her, stunned. She was really ready to give it all up? Everything she’d worked so hard to obtain? Right when it was within reach?

Whoa, talk about a rift in the space/time continuum…

I looked over at Lia. “What about you?”

She looked back at me reluctantly. “I don’t know, Gabs. I just don’t know.”

I sighed and nodded. But a spark of hope glowed inside me. There was a definite maybe in her eyes. I’d talk about it more with her in the days to come. She could pursue her art here as well as she could at home, right? Maybe she was destined to be a world-class fresco artist, or the Michelangina that predated Michelangelo.

We rose and went to rinse our wooden bowls in a larger tub, then went to our tent to collect the few things we still had.

“I had one thought,” Mom said, laying an uncertain hand on the center pole.

“What?” I asked, wondering why she was acting so hesitant.

“Is it possible…”

“What, Mom?”

“What if we could get back…before…”

“Before?” Lia asked.

“Before your father died. What if we could go back, but not quite so far—”

“And save him,” I whispered.

“We wondered about it too,” Lia said, slowly, wringing her hands, puzzling over the options. “But if we stop at that point in time, do we even remember that he is about to die? Since, really, it wouldn’t have happened for us? We only know how this works from one end to the other. Our present time and here. If we change history, find Dad, warn him, then does Mom ever find the tumuli site?”

“We could write ourselves a note, everything pertinent,” Mom said. “In case that memory is erased.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Trying to pull off at a certain time is tricky. Even getting back here…I was off by months. It’s just so fast. And heading home—we might end up a hundred years early, not a couple hundred days.”

Mom nodded, her eyes shifting back and forth, trying to think it out.

“But let’s say it worked, somehow,” Lia said excitedly, still focused on the potential. “We get to Dad…but if we don’t get to the tumuli again, is history erased? Does Gabi remember Marcello? Or is that gone too?”

“Or do I remember that part because I lived it now, back here?” I rubbed my temples. It was enough to make my brain hurt.

“I don’t know,” Mom said, looking down, nudging her toe in the loose dirt. “Forgive me for even suggesting it. It’s probably impossible. A crazy idea.”

“No. It’s not,” I said. I went to her, and we hugged. “Getting Dad back?” I shook my head. “That’d be crazy-insane good.”

I looked over at Lia as she melted into Mom’s embrace too. “Stellar good,” she said.

Mom gave us both a squeeze and sighed. “We’ll think it through more together. All right?”

But as we left the tent, I had the sure feeling that this wasn’t something we could figure out. The best we could do would be Best Case and Worse Case Scenarios. Educated guesses.

Because that time tunnel made no sense, really. No sense at all.