"Traitor! Villain! " Her father shouted at someone Rosalinda could not see. "To think I trusted you!"
Always in her dream, as on the day when it had actually happened, Rosalinda began to cry at this point. Always she looked down to see a trickle of red seeping beneath the edge of the green curtain and oozing toward her toes. Rosalinda twitched aside the curtain. One of her father's guard lay upon his back at her feet. He was staring up at her with wide, open eyes, but she did not think he could really see her because he did not smile as he usually did for her. His right arm was flung out, with his sword lying beside his hand.
Elsewhere in the room men were sticking swords and daggers into each other. Rosalinda's father was using his dagger, holding off another man who also had a dagger. Rosalinda did not think they were playing a game because her father looked so angry.
Rosalinda knew she ought to pick up the fallen guard's sword and go to help her father. She reached down to the sword, but it was so heavy she could not lift it. She tried again and got both of her hands around the hilt, but the sword slipped out of her small fingers to make a loud clattering noise when it landed on the floor. Afraid someone would see her and stick a dagger into her, Rosalinda jumped back behind the curtain.
Gradually, the shouts and screams moved off into the distance. Rosalinda could still hear the noise, but it sounded farther and farther away. Save for a few groans, all was silent when she finally dared to step out from her velvet hiding place for a second time. She found the once lovely room in a state of terrifying disarray. Her father's chair was tipped onto it's side and many of the curtains had been slashed or pulled down from their poles. The Silver-embroidered green velvet hung in long strips that trailed across the polished floor. In places the green was stained with red that was still wet. In addition to the guard lying near her, there were several other men on the floor, all of them unmoving.
Rosalinda saw that her father was on the floor, too. He was lying very still, with a dagger buried up to its hilt in his chest. After wiping her wet cheeks and runny nose on her sleeve, Rosalinda went to him, walking through rivers of blood, tripping over unmoving arms and legs, ignoring the last moans of the one guard left alive. Those moans trailed off into silence as Rosalinda crossed the room.
"Father?" With her eyes now dry and burning, Rosalinda sank to her knees, not noticing the sticky wetness that seeped through her skirts. "Father, please speak to me."
Rosalinda laid her head on her father's shoulder, hoping for some response from him. There was none, and when she opened her eyes wide, all she could see was the gold hilt of the dagger that had ended his life. She stayed where she was for a long time, unable to move, her dress soaked in her father's blood, the only creature alive in a room filled with death.
"Merciful God in heaven!" Leonardo voice penetrative Rosalinda's languor. "I could not believe the terrible news, but now I see it's true."
"The child was here." The second speaker was a guard whom Rosalinda knew. "Leonardo, she is so still. Is she dead, too? Or have her wits fled at the awful sights she has beheld in this room?"
"Dead or alive, she comes with us." Leonardo swooped down on Rosalinda, gathering up her small form, cradling her against his shoulder.
"The duke is dead," said the guard, bending over the red-robed form.
"I can see as much, Lorenzo." Leonardo voice cracked, as if he wanted to cry, but couldn't. "Come along. We have no choice but to leave him. There isn't much time before those bloodthirsty mercenaries return. They only left the room because they thought everyone here was dead. We have to get to Madonna Elisabeth and her child to safety. It is what Ricci would tell us to do if he could still speak to us."
Only when Leonardo started to carry her out of the reception room did Rosalinda stir.
"Father!" Rosalinda stretched out her arms toward her unmoving parent. "I'm sorry. I tried to help, but the sword was too heavy."
"Thank God she's alive," Lorenzo said. "But keep her quiet or we won't get out of the city."
"Rosalinda," Leonardo said with quiet authority, "you are too small to lift a sword. You could not help your father, but you can help your mother by being a good girl. You must be very quiet, and very good, and do without question everything you are told to do. Can you understand me?"
"Yes," Rosalinda whispered. "I promise I will be good."
"I know you will. Your mother will be depending on you in the days ahead."
The last image of Rosalinda's dream was always the same, of Leonardo carrying her out of the reception room, while she looked over his shoulder at her laughing, active father lying so still, with silver-hilted dagger in his chest. Her small arms stretched out to him as she wailed her apology and her grief -----but silently, as Leonardo had ordered. For she knew, with the absolute certainty only a child's heart can hold, that her father's death was her fault. If she had not been naughty and run away from her nurse, if she had not interrupted him, and most of all, if only she had been brave enough and string enough to pick up the sword of that fallen guard and join the fray, she might have saved him. If not for naughty little Rosalinda, her father might have lived.
The grown-up Rosalinda understood in her mind that this was child's fantasy, that nothing could have saved Gioliamo Ricci from the well-armed men who were determined to kill him for their own advantage. But deep inside her heart, in the place where all grown-up remain children forever, Rosalinda recognize her own guilt. The only way she could make reparation for her naughtiness on that terrible day was by obeying Leonardo's orders, by being a good girl, a quiet girl, a girl who caused no trouble to anyone, for the rest of her life, and by never, ever again giving her mother cause to worry about her or be annoyed with her.
*****************************
Hope you enjoyed Rosalinda's nightmare chapter
I might actually make a sequel on RED, who knows?
#StaySafe
YOU ARE READING
RED
Romance"Sweet Sandra," he said. "I want you to promise you will tell no one that you have seen me. It is vitally important that no one knows I am here." "I promise." She said at once. "But-----" "Not another word," he said. "I saw you come here...
