Page 13 of Much Ado About Mistletoe
“He nodded his head as if he’d planned our betrothal because they were right and he wanted a wife from Verona. As if I were a street dog!” Remembering my irritation, I patted Efron a littletoo enthusiastically. He burped on my shoulder and missed the rag. I should have expected it; for this holiday, I had worn one of the new gowns of a fiery scarlet velvet, and now it had been properly baptized.
Katherina and Imogene laughed uproariously.
Nurse pulled a towel from her belt and efficiently wiped me off—between Mamma’s children and Mamma herself, she’d done it hundreds of times—and covered me with a clean towel. “Pat a little more gently. That one has reach.”
I viewed the baby’s blissful expression. “Obviously, he’s feeling better.”
“You’ve always had a gift.” Mamma was not so much teasing as stating a fact. When it came to digestive processes, all I had to do was hold an infant and it produced smelly concoctions from one end or the other.
“I’m starving,” Imogene complained.
To my eye, she looked taller and that seemed to go with her new and massive appetite. “Prince Escalus and his bodyguards aren’t here, either, so possibly Emilia and Cesario are still running royal errands.” Come to think of it…Cal was a timely man, and it was unlike him and his bodyguards to be late for any reason, much less something as pleasurable as a festive meal among convivial company. Why…?
“We can’t eat without the children,” Mamma insisted.
Thank the sweet Virgin, at that moment Cesario and Emilia ran in, yelling, although I could scarcely hear them for the hungry growling in my gut. They smelled of smoke and wore smudges of ash on their cheeks and clothes.
Cesario danced up and down like a wooden toy on stilts. “Mamma! Papà! A fire. A fire at the orphanage!”
CHAPTER NINE
“In the kitchen!” Emilia held her side and gasped. “The friars were cooking the feast—”
A fire in our beloved city was everyone’s worst nightmare. Iron did not burn, nor stone, but dry wood supported and topped most of the houses and shops that stood shoulder to shoulder on the narrow streets. Fire killed. Fire destroyed. Fire spared no one. All we had to battle it was water and the citizens’ willing hands.
I asked the dreaded question. “Can the orphanage be saved?”
“Prince Escalus is there,” Emilia said. It wasn’t an answer, but it showed a solid faith in our podestà. “He wouldn’t let us… He sent us to summon help.”
“I’ll go at once.” Papà placed the cask on its cradle and said to Tommaso, “Gather our people, buckets, rags, mops. Anything that will put out a fire.”
Tommaso was moving before Papà finished speaking. Our men had gathered at the first sign of trouble. Some vanished into the basement where our disaster supplies were kept. Some formed a chain to bring the supplies up the creaking steps. Some hurried to bring carts to the street. Some, led by Papà, hurried toward the orphanage to immediately lend themselves to the effort of extinguishing the fire.
“Injuries?” I mentally planned my medical kit.
“Nobody’s dead,” Cesario said.
“Not yet,” Emilia added with a grim fatalism that sat ill on her young face.
Susanna was on her feet, her complexion pale with the knowledge that her husband would fight on the front line with the prince. “We’ll trust God to care for our people.”
Emilia spared her a compassionate glance before saying, “Rosie, Friar Laurence commands you come in all haste to help him, and bring medicines that might be needed.”
“The babies…” Emilia was still having trouble putting words together. “We took the orphan babies. From the nursery.”
I realized she and Cesario had run into a burning building.Repeatedly. I glanced at Mamma, whose beautiful eyes widened in horror, and at Nurse, who stood frozen by the knowledge the children she had so lovingly tended had bravely put themselves at risk.
What could we expect? We Montagues had suckled on honor’s tit. Saving babies from flames was the ultimate “right and proper deed,” and they had done it.
“The holy sisters…they cried out to be careful…but we carried the babies…like our own babies…and they realized we knew…how.” Cesario closed his eyes as if overwhelmed by the events.
Emilia slammed her fist into his shoulder. “Breathe, kid!” They fought every day, but she showed a solid concern for her little brother, and revived him the best way she knew how—with a sharp command and a loving tone.
Cesario opened his eyes and, after a moment of wavering, smacked her back, but he showed his appreciation with a lack of real impact.
Nurse tore hunks of bread from the loaves stacked on the sideboard and shoved them into their trembling hands. “Eat!”
The kids devoured the bread and visibly grew steadier.
