Page 33

“H er cane rested on the bed with her, close at hand. She didn’t grasp it and land a blow because—”

“She did indeed know her attacker,” Cal finished my sentence. His face cleared of all emotion.

I began to understand him. He wouldn’t reveal emotions or thoughts until he’d contemplated them, worked through the possibilities in his mind—and maybe not even then. I added an important component to my theory. “Her serving maids say nothing is missing.”

He strode to the window and looked out once more to the damage on the bars.

I joined him. “Could a man have got in through such a small hole?”

“Perhaps. But a man couldn’t wriggle in.”

“Perhaps a boy. Or a woman?”

He nodded, a bare movement of the head, but he had observed the surroundings and he’d decided the intruder had invaded and attacked from within. “She knew them all. My guard. Our household. She believed them loyal, and she believed she was indestructible.”

“That makes sense. That’s why whoever it was, was able to hurt her . . .” My voice wavered.

Cal, bless him, gathered me close. Not a heated embrace, but one of comfort, and I put my forehead on his chest and my arms around his waist and gave back the solace in equal measure.

I had so much family—so many boisterous, emotional, loud siblings and grandparents and uncles and cousins—and Cal had so few people he cherished.

Like the men, he had never had a time when Nonna Ursula hadn’t been a force in his life, and he loved her, would have given her anything to keep her happy until the natural end of her days.

He’d failed in the most basic way, and while I longed to reassure him, I knew nothing I could say would change his unwavering sense of responsibility.

His love for her made him all the more bound to her safety and happiness, and I’d do anything to help bring her back to us.

Yet if there was a way, not even Friar Laurence knew it.

Trying to give comfort, I tightened my grip on Cal, and felt him flinch. Pulling back, I observed him more closely. Exhaustion ringed his eyes, and his mouth had a tightness I hadn’t observed before. The tightness of pain.

“Now that we’re alone”—except for an unconscious woman and her ghost son—“I can ask, what injuries have you amassed in the battle?”

“I’m uninjured.”

Yeah, sure. “Uninjured as those men were out there?”

He flexed a shoulder in what might have been a shrug, but wasn’t.

I reached up to the seams of his jacket. “Let me see.”

“It’s nothing.”

“I wasn’t asking. Let me see.” He was on the verge of refusing, and I didn’t want to push him into that corner.

Hastily I said, “Must I undress you? For I tell you, my prince, I’ve wrestled many a reluctant three-year-old sibling into clothes, and wrestling an injured, full-grown man out of his garments provides no challenge to me. ”

My mostly proper prince shook his head. “We are unchaperoned.”

“If only.”

Cal looked around. “My father . . . ?”

“He speaks with Nonna Ursula, commanding her to come to consciousness.”

“She can’t hear him,” he said testily.

“Perhaps, Cal, she can now hear him better than she can hear us.”

“Someone from within,” he murmured. “Someone she trusts.”

“Such treachery strips away all our security and leaves us brokenhearted and suspicious.”

“This explains why no one saw the invader enter or leave through the window. He slithered in and out through the door.”

I hated to throw acid on an already burning pain, but I had to ask. “How do we feel about Pasqueta, who conveniently left Nonna Ursula unprotected, and now claims to have seen a remorseful ghost slip from the room? And Old Maria, who slept through the clamor?”

In the face of such grim reality, his mouth lost its generous outline. “When you must leave Nonna alone, call Princess Isabella to stay with her. We don’t need to tell her more than that we—”

“That I sense improvement in Nonna when we speak to her,” I finished his thought.

“Do you?”

“What I sense is, Princess Isabella is getting discouraged by our lack of progress. She lingers in the corridor rather than come in to face the disheartening prospect of viewing Nonna slip further and further from us.”

“Yes, I too.” His gaze lingered on his grandmother, slack-jawed and unresponsive, and he returned to her side to pet her hand, lift it to his lips, and speak lovingly in her ear.

Elder watched his son. “Poor boy,” he whispered. “So much has been taken from you.”

I allowed Cal his moment, but time was of the essence. Grasping his hand, I pulled him toward a chair. “Strip down and let me see that shoulder.”

Irritably he said, “I didn’t say it was my shoulder.”

I wasn’t letting him get away with that. “Is there more than your shoulder?”

“Merely bruises.” It was an unwilling admission. “It was an all-out brawl.” He looked at his bloody knuckles, sat down, and eased off his jacket with a groan.

I unlaced his sleeve from his black shirt and that gave me a big enough gap in the linen to push it back and view the joint.

Merely bruising? Maybe, but this was a dark, angry red.

I put one hand on the joint—it was warm—and with the other took his wrist. “I’m going to move your arm for you.

Don’t assist me, but do tell me where the worst of the pain is. ”

“I don’t need you to make it hurt more. ”

I smiled into his face, all charm and chiding. “Don’t be a baby. In the end, I might be able to make it hurt less. You do want to know if something is broken, don’t you?”

“It won’t make any difference,” he said.

Of course not. When violence flared again, Verona’s prince had to go out and bring order to our world.

As I began to move the joint, he grunted and winced. “You were laughing with him.”

I concentrated on the inner workings of the shoulder, trying to discern anything loose or clicking or slipping. “Who?” I asked.

“Young Marcketti.”

I stopped in surprise. What had Cal seen? Heard? I have no idea how long he stood there and listened, but I could remember nothing but Lysander’s heartfelt declaration that if he couldn’t have me, only the prince was worthy. Surely, that was okay? Then Lysander teased and I laughed and . . .

“Lysander’s funny. And he’s not that much younger than you.”

“He seems younger.” Cal gasped as I took the arm back.

I eased it forward and observed his face, which relaxed from its clench of pain. “I don’t actually know all about his life, but I believe he hasn’t had the burdens thrust upon him that you’ve had, and certainly not the torments.” I brought the arm up and back.

“That hurts!” He was talking about his shoulder.

“Show me where.”

He pointed at the front of the joint.

I lowered his arm, but kept my hand cupped to his shoulder and gently examined the site. “What hit you?”

“The point of a pole wielded by a flagellant well-versed in its use.”

“Was he aiming for merely one of the warriors, or was he aiming at the prince of Verona?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“I don’t know.” I wondered at my own query. “I just . . . I told you about the man with the flaming eyes. His memory disturbs me.” I meant that more than I could say.

Taking my fingers, he kissed them. “Be not afraid, fair Rosaline, I’ll protect you.”

“I’m not afraid for my safety. I’ve taken precautions.” I told him about retaining Tommaso as my bodyguard. “You see, I’m not as rattle-skulled as you imagine.”

“Not rattle-skulled, but impetuous and far too dauntless.”

You’re wrong. I’m the sensible one! But he continued to hold my hand as if I were fragile, and gazed at me as if he saw a woman different than I knew. I asked, “Did you kill the brute with the pole?”

“Not I. Barnadine took his feet out from under him, and I lost him in the mêlée. Perhaps he was trampled to death.”

I clenched my fist. “We can only hope.”

He looked down at it and smiled as if my feeble defense amused him.

I wanted to remind him I’m a fighter, but he knew it.

He also knew, better than I did, that even armed and prepared as I was, I’d be at a loss in a fight with a man.

Any man. That truth was one of the Lord God’s most unjust decrees.

Cal’s smile dissipated by degrees. “The disciplinati have divided into two groups. Most are holy, devoted to their penance and their mission, but as you saw, Rosie, a few are anarchists who want to burn the world to the ground and bring it back in their image. Those men fought us last night, then disappeared into the old underground.”

“How do they know about it?”

“It’s accessible through the arena where I ordered them to camp.

But I fear the group includes local warriors and soldiers without a war.

They’re too good at battle.” He breathed deeply, his chest rising and falling as if he sought the words to explain.

“Last night, I judge you saw the leader of the flagellants who rampage through the city, deliberately causing death and destruction. I heard the talk. They believe a messiah walks among them, a man called Baal, a false god who tells them when they take down our beloved Verona, they will own its women and riches, and he will be their lord that favors them.”

Cal struck fear into my heart. “How many flagellants serve Baal?”

“In the heat of battle, it’s hard to tell.

Not all. Most of the disciplinati are the holy men of sacred sacrifice they claim to be.

But last night in Verona . . . fifty rebels fought for Baal.

” Cal took my hand, but he didn’t see me.

He saw the previous night’s battle. “Baal is driven by a demonic passion and he urges his men to the edge of destruction. They believe him invincible, and that in serving him, they’re invincible.

They fight with a fervor that fears nothing, for he assures them that even if they die in his service, they’ll gain paradise. ”

“What can stop them?”

His attention returned to me, and he seemed to find relief in my countenance. “We’ll find out.”