Rose Red Read online

  “Why not?” Bianca snapped. “Is it because you think I am a coward?”

  “Perhaps it’s because I think you have better sense than I,” Rosalinda responded.

  “If you stay off the higher, dangerous paths that still have ice on them,” Eleonora said, “and if Bianca goes along, then I will agree that you may ride for an hour or two. Rosalinda, I am glad to see you are trying to repair the ill feeling between you and your sister. I never did understand why you have been at odds during these past weeks, but I beg you to be friends again as you once were.”

  “Well, Bianca?” Rosalinda challenged. “Are you willing to make an effort, too? Will you ride with me?’’

  “If you promise to obey the rules Mother has set down,” Bianca said, “then I will ride with you for an hour.”

  It was hardly the warmth that Eleonora wanted to see restored between her daughters, but she appeared to think it was a start. She sent them off with a smile and only one warning to be sure to dress carefully, since the spring winds could turn chill at any moment.

  “Where shall we go?” Bianca asked when the two young women were mounted and riding out of the stable yard.

  “I would like to race into the hills and beyond,” Rosalinda said with a laugh. “But I have promised to be good. Let us ride along the meadow to the river, and then just into the foothills. Some of the early flowers should be blooming. You would like to see them, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Bianca’s politeness was so artificial that Rosalinda made a face and caught at the reins of her sister’s horse, pulling it close to hers.

  “I wish we could be friends again,” Rosalinda said. “I miss you, Bianca.”

  “So do I miss you,” Bianca responded. “But you have gone to a place where I cannot follow. You live with secrets you will not divulge, and with hopes that I can only imagine.”

  “I have changed, that’s true. But I still love you, Bianca. You are my best friend.”

  “I thought that was Andrea.” Bianca could not keep the bitterness out of her voice.

  “Don’t separate yourself from me this way,” Rosalinda cried. “Yes, I need Andrea, but I need you, too. You and I were so close that we always knew each other’s heart.”

  “I have not stopped loving you, Rosalinda. It’s only that I am bewildered by your actions. I feel lost, and very much alone. I can confide in no one.”

  “It could be different between us. We quarreled from time to time when we were children, but we always made up and became friends again.”

  “We are no longer children.” Bianca wanted to return to the loving affinity she had once enjoyed with her sister, but she could not. She was not sure why this was so. It was not entirely because of the changes wrought by Rosalinda’s close relationship with Andrea. Something had also changed in Bianca’s heart.

  “Can we at least agree to try to be friends again?” Rosalinda asked. “If Mother sees us making the effort, I know she will be happier.”

  “We can try,” Bianca said. She sighed, feeling infinitely sad, and glanced across the spring-green meadow to where an ancient bridge spanned the river in two very solid, pale stone arches. The Romans had built the bridge and the stone-paved road that marched in a northwestward direction straight across the valley. Centuries ago, Roman armies had tramped along that road on their way to conquer the barbarian tribes of the north, but on this spring day the valley was entirely peaceful. The river sparkled in the sunshine, blue as the sky it reflected, cold as the mountain snows that fed it.

  On the other side of the river the foothills rose, robed in lacy shades of early green. Behind these more delicate trees were the darker, sturdier evergreens of the deep forest and, higher still, the bare gray rocks of the mountain peaks, most of them cloaked in white. In the clear sky an eagle soared, gliding lazily on the wind currents. The beauty of the landscape and the sight of that single bird caught at Bianca’s heart as never before, holding her spellbound, making her ache with a peculiar dissatisfaction and a longing for she knew not what. She heard her sister’s voice as if from a great distance.

  “Since we are to be friends again, could we also agree to race as far as the bridge?” Rosalinda was grinning at Bianca as if all of their differences had been put behind them.

  “I can see that you won’t be stopped no matter what I say, and I know you have tried to be patient during all the winter days when you were kept indoors.” Bianca could not admit to her own, more recent, restlessness. She could, however, issue a teasing challenge that would result in the physical action she suddenly craved. “In fact, dear sister, you are so weak from sitting at lessons all winter that I do believe I could win a race against you.”

  “Never!” Rosalinda laughed aloud at the very idea of Bianca winning over her. “Count to three, and we’re off!”

  “One, two, three!” Bianca dug her heels into her horse’s sides and headed for the bridge. Rosalinda was right beside her. Together they galloped across the field, Rosalinda laughing and shouting that she would surely win, Bianca quiet and concentrating on handling her horse. Neck and neck they raced across the bridge and pulled up together on the other side.

  “A tie!” Rosalinda brushed several locks of loosened hair out of her eyes. “Bianca, my dear, that’s the best race you have ever run.”

  “I am glad we both won.” Bianca reached over to catch yet another lock of her sister’s hair, to tuck it behind her ear in á once-familiar gesture. “You should have let me braid it for you.”

  “I was in too much of a hurry to leave the house to think about my hair.” Rosalinda wriggled her shoulders, took a few deep breaths of the earthy spring air, and let her gaze rest with longing on the mountain heights. As if making a difficult decision, she said, “No, I promised Mother I would stay in the valley or the lower foothills. Bianca, shall I show you a place I know, where tiny flowers bloom?”

  “We could pick some to take home to Mother,” Bianca said. “Which way do we go?”

  “Wait.” Rosalinda put out a hand, signaling silence. “Listen. Do you hear someone calling?”

  “It’s probably only the water rushing under the bridge,” Bianca said.

  “There it is again.” Leaving the bridge, Rosalinda began to ride along the side of the river.

  Over the course of centuries, the river had cut a channel almost six feet deep through the meadow. Because the river was fed by melting snow and therefore was highest in the spring season, the small, sandy or stony beaches that edged the bottom of this channel during the rest of the year were presently submerged, with the water reaching almost to meadow height. Here and there a few large boulders reared above the swift current, and foam eddied and surged around these wet rocks. On the flat top of one of the rocks, a figure was hopping up and down and waving frantically.

  “Is that a child?” Bianca asked, following her sister along the side of the river. “How did he ever get out there without being swept away?”

  “We can ask him after we rescue him,” Rosalinda responded.

  “How are we to do that?” Bianca demanded. Regarding the short figure on the rock, she suggested, “I could try to calm him while you ride home as fast as you can and fetch Bartolomeo and one of the men-at-arms. Tell them to bring a rope and they can throw it to him and pull him through the water to land.”

  “I don’t think we have time to bring more help. He doesn’t look to me as if he will calm down until he is safe on dry land,” Rosalinda objected. “If that child does not stop hopping around out there, he is going to slip and fall into the river. Then he will surely drown.”

  “We can’t let that happen.” Bianca squinted against the sun’s glare on the water. “Who is he? I don’t think he belongs to any of the men-at-arms. Could he be from the village on the other side of the mountain pass? If so, what is he doing this far from home?”

  “Those are more questions we can ask once he’s safe.”

  Without further comment or speculation on h
ow the child had gotten where he was, Rosalinda dismounted. To Bianca’s astonishment, she began to strip off the doublet she wore for riding and then the wool dress beneath the jacket.

  “Rosalinda, I hope you aren’t planning to go into the water?” Bianca was on the ground, too, now, pulling off her cloak to free her arms for action. “It must be freezing in there.”

  “That boy will freeze if we don’t help him.” Rosalinda was down to her shift and was kicking off her boots as she spoke.

  “How are we going to do this?” Bianca asked.

  “I am going to reach across the water to catch hold of that foolish boy. While I do, you, my dear, are going to keep me from falling into the river by holding on as tightly as you can to both of our horses’ reins with one hand. With your other hand, you are going to hold on to me.”

  “Am I?” A thrill of fear sliced through Bianca. From the brief explanation, she understood what Rosalinda was planning and she knew that all of them – she, her sister, the boy on the rock, and perhaps the horses as well – could fall into the river and be swept downstream in the swift current. They might all drown in that icy, choking coldness.

  Recalling another day fifteen years in the past, when she had not been strong enough to help someone who needed her, Bianca resolved not to fail at this opportunity to prove to herself that she was not a coward. She grasped the reins Rosalinda put into her hands, winding them several times around her left arm to secure them. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around Rosalinda’s left wrist, while Rosalinda held her wrist in the same manner. With Bianca’ s feet planted at the very edge of the precipitous slope into the river, Rosalinda stepped toward the rock, stretching across the water with her free right hand toward the short figure that watched them, yet never ceased to dance to and fro from one side of the rock on which it stood to the other.

  “Take my hand,” Rosalinda shouted above the sound of the rushing water. “Hurry! I can’t hold on much longer. Stop that bouncing around and grab my hand!”

  Bianca could not hear exactly what the person on the rock said. A few syllables drifted to her ears, startling her with their vehemence. Surely, the person they were trying so hard to help could not be cursing them? Then she was distracted by a new danger. She was so close to the edge that she was about to lose her footing.

  “I’m slipping,” she yelled to the person on the rock. “For heaven’s sake, we are trying to help you! Do as my sister says.”

  She could not tell whether he heard her or not, but he did grasp Rosalinda’s outstretched hand. Bianca pulled on the reins. The horses stepped away from the edge and Bianca, Rosalinda, and the small person at the end of this chain of rescue slowly moved out of the water, up the slope, and onto solid footing in the grass.

  Rosalinda dropped to her knees and Bianca at once took up her discarded cloak, using it to cover her shaking sister.

  “Don’t you have anything to cover me?” the person they had just saved asked in a complaining voice. “I warn you, I expect something better than that old cloth.”

  Infuriated by his complete lack of gratitude, Bianca spun around to confront him. He was dripping wet, his black hair was hanging in lank strands over his forehead, and his dark eyes were blazing with anger. Bianca saw that he was not a child at all, but a man so short that he barely reached to her shoulder. She guessed that he was in his mid-fifties. Every line of his wiry body radiated an imperious rage.

  “How dare you handle me so roughly, you peasants?” the little man demanded. “Don’t you know a gentleman when you meet one?”

  “What we knew about you,” Bianca said, bending toward him with her fists planted on her hips, “was that you were about to be swept off that rock and carried away down the river. We just saved your life, but if I had known how rude you were going to be, I might well have let you drown.”

  “Ignorant peasants,” the man said, attempting to brush the water off his clothes.

  “That won’t work,” Bianca told him. “You need to take off your clothes and wring them out thoroughly, then spread them on the grass in the sun to dry.”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice, you stupid laundress,” the little man snarled at her.

  “No, you didn’t, but I am going to give you more unsolicited advice,” said Bianca. “You are trespassing on private land. If the owner discovers you are here, it will go hard with you. I insist that you leave at once.”

  “All I wanted was a drink of water,” he said, glaring at her.

  “Then you should have walked downriver to a calmer spot,” Bianca said.

  “Walk? Not I. Walking is for servants and farmers.”

  “Indeed?” Bianca’s nose was high in the air. Her diminutive opponent did not appear to notice. “Get off these lands and don’t come back.”

  “I am going, you impudent wench. Count yourself lucky that I do not toss you onto the ground and use you as a man uses a female.”

  “I count myself the most fortunate woman in the world to escape your embrace,” Bianca shot back at him.

  “What are you laughing at, wench?” the little man exclaimed, turning his attention to Rosalinda, who was still sitting on the ground, covered with Bianca’s cloak.

  “I was wondering what you were planning to do with me while you were trying to force my sister to the ground,” Rosalinda said in her most impudent manner.

  The man looked from Rosalinda’s glowing face and water-soaked braid to Bianca’s paler, more angry expression. He shrugged his shoulders as if the two young women were of no importance. But he did offer an explanation, of sorts.

  “I am here because I am searching for someone,” he said. “A dark-haired young man, a stranger in these hills. Do you know him?”

  “The only strange man we have seen in many a year is you,” Bianca told him. She wondered if he realized just how ridiculous he was, how rude and impolite. Even now, he did not thank the very people who had saved his life but, instead, addressed them in a manner that constituted a grave insult to anyone of gentle birth.

  “I know that few people come this way so, if he did, you must know of it. Are you sure you haven’t seen anyone new lurking about?” He looked from Bianca to Rosalinda, who merely shook her head, saying nothing. “You had better be telling the truth. If you are not, I will discover your lie, and I will see you punished for it.” With those contemptuous words, he strode off in the direction of some nearby trees.

  Never taking her eyes off the man in case he had attendants hidden in those trees, Bianca moved closer to her still shivering sister. A few moments later, the little man rode out of the trees upon a black stallion so huge it made him look like a young child on its back. Without another glance at the two who had rescued him and still without uttering a single word of thanks, he cantered across the meadow to the bridge.

  “See that you never return here!” Bianca shouted after him.

  He did not answer her, but rode over the bridge and along the Roman road that led across the valley and into the mountains.

  “And learn some manners if you want to get on in the world!” Rosalinda added to her sister’s remarks. She got up to stand next to Bianca and, as the little man disappeared into the distance, she began to laugh.

  “No wonder he thought we were peasants,” Rosalinda said. “Just look at you, Bianca. Your skirts are wet, your hair is all undone, and with your fists on your hips like that, you could easily be mistaken for one of the laundresses back at the villa.”

  “Could I?” Bianca turned from contemplation of the spot where she had last seen the little man to glance at her sister. Her mouth curved in amusement. “And there you are, Rosalinda, wearing only a wet shift. What could our ungrateful friend have thought of you?”

  “I am sure he found my demeanor as shocking as yours.” Rosalinda’s eyes gleamed with humor. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen you so angry.”

  “Shocking or not, I haven’t felt so wonderful in months,” Bianca said and burst into laughter alo
ng with her sister.

  * * * * *

  “Damnable wenches, both of them,” Niccolo Stregone muttered to himself. “It was the sight of those stupid females riding across the fields that made me drop my bag into the water. I saw it down there, between the rock and the river’s edge, and might have dragged it up again if those two hadn’t come along. But the water pulled the bag open and everything inside spilled out. Now there was no way for me to recover it. All that lovely gold lost, and a beautiful ruby ring, too. So this long journey was made for nothing, unless I can locate that foolish boy before I must leave. But why the devil would he come to this part of Italy? There is nothing here but mountains and isolated villages.

  “What do you want, you cursed bird?” This last sentence was shouted at an eagle that had swooped out of the sky toward him. Pulling his dagger from its sheath, Stregone waved his arms as if to strike at the bird. But apparently a mere human was beneath its notice, for the eagle flew straight on to the river. There it dove to the water to snare a fish in its talons, after which the eagle flew away again, heading back toward the mountains with its next meal held in a firm grasp.

  “Control yourself, Stregone,” the little man said to himself. “You are wet and cold and upset at losing part of your hard-earned treasure, and so you are imagining threats where none exist. Those two girls were no more than peasants, and that bird didn’t even notice you. All it wanted was its dinner. Soon enough, you will be eating your dinner, too, and wearing dry clothes.”

  Stregone sheathed his dagger again. Sparing a single backward glance for his rescuers, he noted that they were riding in the opposite direction from the route he was taking. Then a stand of trees blocked the girls from view, and Stregone put them out of his thoughts.

  * * * * *

  “Are you sure that is everything?” Bartolomeo asked. Frowning deeply, he looked from Rosalinda to Bianca.

  The three of them were standing in the stable yard, where Bianca had espied Bartolomeo as soon as they rode in from their encounter with the odd little man. They had not gone to look for early wildflowers after all, but had ridden home immediately after Rosalinda had pulled on her clothes.