to her room. It was open, only a sliver, but Cass swore she saw a face in the hall. Was it Piero coming to administer medicine? Signorina Briani coming to check on her? Or was someone spying on them?
She sat up quickly, pulling her covers tight around her. Her arm throbbed in protest, and Cass bit back a cry of pain. The face disappeared from view.
“What is it?” Falco asked.
“I saw someone,” Cass faltered. “A face, looking through the door.”
Falco stood and took the candle from the bedside table. He strode across the room. “The door is closed,” he said. He pulled it open and peered out into the hallway. “The whole villa is dark. Could you have imagined it?”
Cass sighed. Was she really so terrified of giving in to Falco’s affections that she was hallucinating?
She was suddenly seized with a terrible idea: was she getting sicker? Perhaps her fevers were attacking her brain.
“I—I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I need you to find that book for me.”
“Cass,” Falco said, watching her with concern. “I’d better go. You need your sleep.”
“I do not need sleep. I need the Book of the Eternal Rose.” She sighed in frustration. “I know you don’t believe me. Just promise that you’ll at least skim the books in the library for me.” She should have gone through them the night of the party, headache or no. Even if she did feel strong enough to make it to the library, she might not get a chance with Piero watching over her at all hours of the day.
Falco nodded. “Fine. I’ll look for your book. And I’ll come visit you again tomorrow night.” He placed a hand on her head, and then pressed his lips to her cheek again. “I promise.”
This time, when she slept, she dreamt of Falco.
Madalena and Siena came to visit early the following day. Cass had just taken another draught of pain medicine, so when Mada glided into the room in a brilliant blue dress with a matching hat and gloves, Cass blinked hard, wondering momentarily whether her friend was a vision. But then Siena and Eva followed, hanging back from the bed as Madalena approached with a pitiful look on her face.
“Oh, Cass,” Mada said. “I feel just terrible. You wanted to leave the party, and I insisted you stay . . .”
Cass rubbed her eyes. Madalena was pacing back and forth across the stone floor, and for a moment it looked as if there were two of her. “I’ll be all right, Mada,” Cass said. But she wasn’t sure if it were true. Madalena’s crestfallen expression made Cass wonder whether Mada knew something Cass didn’t. “Piero said I just need to rest.”
Mada’s lower lip trembled. “People die from dog bites, Cass!”
“Thank you for reminding me,” Cass said. Madalena’s form blurred. Cass closed her eyes. She didn’t know if it was the medicine or the pain that was making her see things. Or something worse. She inhaled deeply. “I don’t suppose there’s been any word from my aunt, has there?”
“No, but I plan to send a message to her as soon as we return to the palazzo,” Siena piped up. “I just wanted to be able to tell her that you were all right.”
Whether she was truly all right was still a matter for debate, and Agnese didn’t need any bad news; her constitution was hardly fit for it. “Please don’t,” Cass said. “By the time the letter reaches her, I’ll be healed, and you will only worry her for no reason.” Her arm was starting to tingle again. After the tingling came the burning, and after the burning came the throbbing.
“But Signora Querini would want to know . . . ,” Siena trailed off.
“You have kept many things from my aunt that she would have wanted to know,” Cass reminded Siena. “If you really want to help me, you’ll get me out of this skimpy chemise and into a proper sleeping gown. If I’m going to be trapped here for days, I would prefer to be decent.”
Madalena was already going through the armoire. She held up a cotton nightdress. “This ought to work,” she said breezily. “Looks like something old Agnese herself might wear.” Together with Siena, Mada stripped Cass out of her sheer blue chemise. They had only just gotten her dressed again when Piero barged back into the room.
“Did you sleep well, Signorina?” he asked, barely glancing at Siena and Madalena as he approached the bed.
Was it her imagination, or did the words contain a challenge? Had it been his face at her doorway in the middle of the night? Had he seen her with Falco?
Kneeling down, Piero took Cass’s left hand and straightened out her arm. She flinched, first from his warm touch and then from the pain. “Your bandages need changing,” he said, pointing at a light pink spot seeping through the top layer of cloth. He turned to Madalena and the handmaids. “Ladies, I can assure you, the occasion doesn’t merit an audience.”
Cass felt sick. Maybe Piero could give her a tonic to make her go to sleep. She flashed back to the attack, saw the dog’s canines sink deep into her flesh. Penetrating. Tearing. She wasn’t ready to see what lay beneath the bandages. At the same time, she was desperate to know how much damage had been done.
Piero left to gather the necessary supplies for the dressing change. Siena and Madalena both leaned in to hug her and promised they would return for a visit the following day.
“How’s Feliciana?” Cass asked, trying to delay their departure.
“She’s fine,” Siena said. “She’s worried about you, of course.”
“We all are,” Mada blurted out, and then quickly corrected herself. “We
Cass could think of no further questions, no way of detaining her friends, so she forced a smile and assured them she’d be home, and healthy, very soon.
Piero returned with a black cloth bag, an armful of plain white fabric, and an empty basin. As he organized his equipment on the table next to her bed, Cass tried to imagine what she might see when the bandages came off: flashes of bone and blood, blackened flesh. Her stomach churned, and she whimpered slightly.
“Are you all right?” Piero hurriedly set down a small silver vial from which he had been pouring.
Cass shook her head. She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears.
Piero’s normally teasing voice turned soft. “What is it? Are you hurting?”
She couldn’t bring herself to voice her fears, but Piero seemed to understand. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” he asked, and she nodded, feeling like an idiot, mentally berating herself for being so weak.
“The pain should be tolerable,” he said. “There will be some stinging when I actually clean the wound, some pressure when I reapply the bandages.”
Piero pulled a pair of vials from the black bag and mixed their powders together in a silver tumbler. He added a splash of ale from the pitcher at Cass’s bedside. “I can give you something,” he said. “Mandrake and feverfew. It should calm you and keep the pain at bay, perhaps even put you back to sleep. Although it may cause unusual dreams,” he cautioned.
Cass accepted the tumbler. “Thank you,” she said, sipping the potion slowly. It was mild-tasting, like a thickened version of herbal tea.
Piero turned back to his table. Cass watched as he cut a square of white cloth into strips with a scalpel blade. He piled the pieces of white neatly on one side of the table. The sharp smell of vinegar filled the air. It was a common wound cleanser, but it always made her eyes water. Finally, as Cass watched, Piero removed the stopper from a tiny pot of salve. “Theriac,” he explained.
Cass knew theriac well. It was an expensive cure-all, prepared from more than sixty different ingredients. Powdered herbs. Flower petals. Crushed viper skin. There were as many different recipes for the medicine as there were apothecaries. Cass’s own father had tried his hand at a theriac elixir when she was a child. For a few months, she and her parents had all choked down a spoonful of his concoction with the morning meal. Luckily, he had eventually run out of one of the ingredients and his interest in the medicine had waned. Cass had likened the taste to a mixture of canal water and chimney soot.
“What is her condition?”
Cass flinched at Belladonna’s voice. The woman strode into the bedroom without so much as a knock or a cough. She was dressed in a low-cut indigo dress with a black lace overskirt. Ignoring Cass, she spoke only to Piero.
