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to the paper and he reads, "One: there is no petty cash. Two: there is a need for surgical equipment. Three: there is a need for more ether gas to attenuate the patients' pain. Four: too many patients die convulsing in pain. Five: There are not enough beds with traction for fractures. Six: the surgeons are butchers and criminals."
"And you should be giving even the wounded men their soldiers' pay, Avezzana!" Cristina adds hotly, storming back inside, while the Minister with a wave of a hand stalks off in the direction of the bridge.
Margaret, left standing in front of the hospital door, acknowledges Sandor and Goffredo with a nod.
"Mrs. Margaret," Goffredo says, "is Eleonora in there with the Princess? Is she all right?"
"Eleonora? Eleonora needs help, gentlemen." Margaret Fuller takes in their startled faces, satisfied that at least these words of hers, of the many she utters or writes each day, are having an effect. "Eleonora eats next to nothing, and she's starting to look weak. All she does is work. She runs from one sick bed to the next, day and night. She needs to leave the hospital and get something to eat. Can I count on you for that? I know there's a food shortage, but I am confident you'll be able to scrounge up a meal. I don't want her fading away on me. Her help is too valuable. So, gentlemen..." She gestures that they should proceed through the door ahead of her, and of course they do, they are good chaps and both in love with Eleonora, she thinks. She is glad to see life imitate a romantic novel for once—it restores a sense to things.
Eleonora's heart skips a beat at the sight of them entering the ward, for she hasn't seen them for some days. Their faces have taken on an unnatural shade between soil and sand, and the unkempt fuzz patches on their cheeks have become straggly beards.
"My friends!"
Their eyes are animated with the unmistakable joy of having found her in one piece. She is so happy to see them in turn that she lets Margaret untie her pinafore from behind and whisper into her ear that she is to go with them. "Those stomach pains of yours are not a punishment from God or proof of a shamefully weak body," Margaret is telling her; every day she says this, and it hardly registers on Eleonora anymore. But what does it matter when Goffredo and Sandor are here?
"Don't bring her back tonight. Make sure she gets rest," Margaret repeats.
They lead her into the dark, narrow streets of the Ghetto on the opposite bank. Goffredo is convinced they will find an open osteria, a tavern, a dry-goods shop, something… but almost all the shutters at street level are pulled shut against the roaming French patrols and the imminent curfew. Pointing to a single lit window just an arm's length over their heads, Sandor wants to shout to the people inside for food for a nurse, for a heroine of the Republic, but Eleonora hushes him, "No, no!"
In the deepening twilight, her hunger mounts, and silently she doubles over, her arms cradling her abdomen. She can't see or even hear properly but knows Sandor and Goffredo are there because they are pulling her along. With a similar blind sense she knows where she is: she is nearing the square she knew best in Rome. She has sworn she'd never step foot in there again but there in a certain cellar bin, in the depths that only she can know about, there are the potatoes, there are the apples.
She yanks free of her companions and kicks open the front door of a regal palazzo, one of the many with gaping holes in its roof. Though nothing but an inside brick was holding the door in place (its bolts having long been hacked off), Sandor protests, "We're not thieves, Elly," and pulls her from the threshold.
Goffredo is emotional, ashamed of himself for not having thought of her needs before. "Eleonora, please." He raises his lantern as a sign that they should go. "I will get you food. On my honor."
"Please, what? This is my house!"
Or it was her family house before the French—her parents' 'saviours'—destroyed it.
The three walk in silence through rooms with high ceilings, past sofas and armchairs covered in sheets or splintered into pieces, past fireplaces over which pictures once hung, leaving only their rectangular dust-lines on the dark red wallpaper. "They're gone," she murmurs, leaving one sitting room for the next. "And the candelabras. The silver clock as well." She touches a few curios on a side server; that they belong to her past is clear on her face, but she doesn't elaborate.
"Food," she says instead, pushing on a swinging door, perhaps to the kitchen.
As if in answer, the door adjacent shudders on its hinges.
Sandor raises his rifle. Goffredo draws Eleonora to the side, gives her the lantern and opens that door.
A tiny old woman with the startled eyes of a child blinks at them, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Caterina!" Eleonora cries. She hugs the old woman and repeatedly kisses the top of her head, covered in a dingy kerchief. "Caterina is my nurse," she tells them.
"Is she alone?" asks Sandor, as Goffredo prudently opens the other doors—all to built-in armoires.
"Of course she's alone."
"Your parents followed the Pope into exile," Caterina says. "But was it the Pope who ordered the cannonades?"
"I suppose you can say that. Caterina, we're hungry."
"Dear me."
"Potatoes and apples in the cellar?"
"Still there. And rice and eggs they gave me for a brass plate, too."
She takes a small bowl from a hiding place behind some blue porcelain dishes displayed on a wall rack. "Eat these," she tells Eleonora, then disappears through the swinging door.
Munching and swallowing the pistachios as fast as their mouths will work, Eleonora, Sandor and Goffredo uncover the sofa and armchairs. Eleonora explains that Caterina was the daughter of a Jewish merchant who lost his shop and any way of maintaining his family when the old Pope prohibited Jews from doing business outside the Ghetto.
"When she was very young she was kidnapped and forcibly converted to Christianity. Eventually she was freed, but after that she wasn't accepted either by the Catholics or the Jews. We took her in. It's the one thing about the Serlupi family that I'm proud of. She was my first and most loyal friend, besides my nurse. That's why you can trust Caterina."
With the edge off her hunger, Eleonora gestures at them to sit down. They haven't had comfortable chairs for months and make sounds of appreciation.
"You seem a bit better," comments Goffredo, softly, from his chair.
"Goffredo. We forget!" Sandor bounds to his feet. "We have something to show you," he tells Eleonora, eagerly undoing the top button of his red shirt.
"This! We found this." He pulls off the leather pouch hanging round his neck and tells her about their night in San Pietro in Montorio, about the two dead Frenchmen and the one who escaped, about the wounded priest's dying words about there being an important mystery to keep regarding this…yes, this pouch, and inside it, the vial, the strange V-shaped instrument…and this medallion.
Sandor and Goffredo place their treasures gladly on her lap. The gold medallion, the size of a watch face, lay on top.
"What do you think, Elly? To me, it looks like the medal a general or a king wears," Goffredo says, sitting down and taking one of Eleonora's hands, as Sandor, collapsing on the opposite side of her, takes the other.
"But there are no precious gems, nothing particularly valuable that meets the eye here," Eleonora marvels. "So why does Louis Napoleon want it? Is it Masonic? Is it some other ruler's?"
Sandor jokes: "It's for General Oudinot. He'll get it when he brings Pius IX back."
Eleonora pretends to be angry and undoes their handhold to swat the back of his head.
Caterina comes back, carrying a steaming bowl of rice and apples and potatoes. There is even wine. The three eat slowly. The house seems to protect them, Goffredo thinks. It is peaceful and safe-feeling, this being with Eleonora around a real table.
When they have had enough and returned to the comfortable sofa and armchairs,