“Second thing is, we need money. I got some, but not too much. How about you? Or him?”
“Some. What for?” Suspicion shadowed the glance she gave him as she shoved the pole home against the bottom, suspicion and more of that smoldering anger and fear. Touchy about money, are we, Maria?
“Medicine,” he said quickly. “Some we send Benito for; people are always sending runners after medicine, especially in fever season. Nothing to connect Caesare with that.” Marco fell silent for a moment.
“You said, ‘some.’ ”
“I’ll decide the rest after we get him back,” Marco said slowly, “and I know how bad it is.”
Campo San Polo at last. Up the stairs at water level they went, stairs that led almost directly to Aldanto’s door. Aldanto tried to push them off, to get them to leave him at that door. But when his hands shook so that he couldn’t even get his key in the lock, Marco and Maria exchanged a look—and Maria took the key deftly away from him.
Caesare complained, bitterly but weakly, all through the process of getting him into his apartment and into the bed in the downstairs bedroom. Not even with three of them were they going to try and manhandle him up the stairs to the room he usually used.
Ominously, though—at least as far as Marco was concerned—Aldanto stopped complaining as soon as he was installed in bed; just closed his eyes against the light, and huddled in his blanket, shivering and coughing. Marco sent Benito out with orders for willow bark and corn-poppy flowers, also for red and white clover blossoms for the cough, not that he expected any of them to do any good. This wasn’t that kind of fever. He knew it now; knew it beyond any doubting.
“I hope you can afford to lose a night’s trade, Maria,” he said, pulling her out of the bedroom by main force. “Maybe more. I’ll tell you the truth of it: Caesare’s in bad shape, and it could get worse.”
“It’s just a cold or somethin’, ain’t it?” Her look said she knew damned well that it was worse than that, but was hoping for better news than she feared.
“Not for him, it isn’t,” Marco replied, figuring she’d better know the worst. “Same thing happened to me, when I had to hide in the swamp. I caught every damn thing you could think of.” Marco shook his head. “Well, he needs something besides what we can get at the drug-shops.”
“The Calle Farnese . . .” she said doubtfully.
Marco shook his head firmly. “More than quack-magic, either.”
He took a deep breath. “Now listen: I’m going to write down exactly what I need you to do with those herbs when Benito gets back.”
“I can’t read,” she whispered.
Marco swallowed. With Maria’s pride, you tended to forget she was just a woman from a large, poor caulker family. Even the menfolk could probably barely manage to cipher their names. “Never mind. Benito will read it for you. It should help him to stop coughing enough to sleep. The coughing is not serious. The fever is the part that is worrying. It should break soon and just leave him weak and tired. Then it’ll start up again. Right now he needs sleep more than anything else. You stay with him; don’t leave him. That might be enough—he’ll feel like he wants to die, but he’s not exactly in any danger, so long as he stays warm. But—” Marco paused to think. “All right, worst case. If he gets worse before I get back—if his fever comes again or his temperature goes up more—”
That was an ugly notion, and hit far too close to home. He steadied his nerves with a long breath of air and thought out everything he was going to have to do and say. What he was going to order her to do wasn’t going to go down easy. Maria Garavelli didn’t like being ordered at the best of times, and this was definitely going to stick in her throat.
“I know maybe more about our friend than you think I do. I’m telling you the best—hell, the only option. If he starts having trouble breathing or hallucinating, you send Benito with a note to Ricardo Brunelli. You tell him if he wants his pet assassin alive, he’d better send his own physician. And fast.”