Chapter 38 Magellan
Magellan
Magellan kept playing, afraid to stop. She closed her eyes and played on as the world around her transformed into a spinning wheel of light, and she prayed for the Ley Lines to take them somewhere safe.
When the blinding light faded and the tilting sensation stopped, she opened her eyes to find she and Rhys were no longer on the floor of the church, and the violent noise from the shadows’ attack was not ringing in her ears.
She fought the urge to be sick from the aftermath.
The sounds had been worse the second time and felt like a visceral strike on her nervous system. Her whole body was still shaking.
Now they were on the floor of a different church. She couldn’t tell if Rhys was still breathing. She placed her fingers to his neck and after a moment of panic felt a faint pulse.
Behind the altar, a door opened and a small elderly man in priest’s robes came out. He gave a cry of alarm when he saw Rhys bleeding on the floor and rushed to help. Words tumbled from him, which Magellan quickly identified as Italian.
“Per favore, please help him,” she begged. She didn’t know enough Italian to communicate. She knew only a few words from her time playing operas.
The priest called out and two young men in long brown robes came hurrying from the back room.
He spoke to them with urgency, and one of the men ran off, hopefully to get help.
The priest and the other man lifted Rhys with some difficulty and carried him through the door behind the altar, leaving Magellan to follow helplessly.
The door past the altar led to a large sitting room, and beyond that was a hallway full of smaller rooms with sleeping quarters. They carried Rhys to the end of the hall, to a room with two twin cots and a small table, and laid him on one of the beds. The knife wound was still bleeding badly.
The priest fired off questions at her. She shook her head, unable to stop weeping. “I don’t understand.”
He lifted Rhys’s shirt and tried to slow the bleeding with cloths. Magellan knelt by Rhys’s head to stay out of the way.
Countless minutes later another man came, dressed in long black robes and carrying a leather bag.
Magellan desperately hoped he was a doctor.
Right away he took over, directing the men in a severe, no-nonsense way.
Bowls of water were brought in and more cloth.
He cleaned the stab wound and then poured a liquid from a vial over Rhys’s chest, causing Rhys to scream in agony. Magellan shot up in alarm.
“What is he doing?” she cried out, but no one paid her any attention.
Rhys was at these men’s mercy. She watched as the doctor pressed hard on his chest, wrenching another scream from him.
The knife wound was inches above his heart.
The man directed the other men to hold Rhys down as he prepared the needle and thread.
Magellan stayed kneeling near Rhys’s head, tucked in the small space beside the cot. She stroked his hair and tried to assure him. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
When the doctor jabbed the needle into his chest, Rhys screamed, lurching off the bed, but the men held him down.
The doctor didn’t take long. He worked quickly, not seeming to care his patient was writhing in agony.
The knife wound wasn’t wide, but it appeared to be deep.
Fortunately, Rhys passed out halfway through the procedure.
When the doctor was finished, he placed padding over the stitches and wrapped Rhys’s chest and shoulder in a binding.
After he finished, the doctor turned his focus on her and launched into a harsh slew of Italian.
It sounded like a lecture, as if she had stabbed him.
Whether he was asking her questions or giving instructions how to take care of Rhys, she couldn’t tell.
She shook her head helplessly, not understanding a word.
The priest said something, then the doctor scowled at them all and stormed out.
The priest gave her an apologetic look and hurried after him.
Magellan knelt beside Rhys, taking his hand.
He was barely breathing, his skin deathly pale.
They should have left 1165 quicker. They should have bought a horse before she met Hildegard so they could have ridden straight to the standing stone as soon as she’d gotten the song.
Gwynedd had said never to linger, to do so at her own peril. Now Rhys might die.
Tears ran unchecked down her face. She stayed kneeling on the ground. She could only pray, Let him live, let him live, let him live, unable to stop repeating the words.
Sometime later the priest returned with a plate of food and drink. He set it gently on the table, then helped her stand.
He laid his hand on his heart. “Giuseppe.”
Magellan put her hand on hers. “Magellan.”
He repeated it back, haltingly. She took his hand, unable to hold back the fresh wave of tears.
“Grazie, Father Giuseppe. Grazie.”
Father Giuseppe patted her hand and motioned for her to eat. He blessed the food, lit a candle, and then left her alone again.
Magellan stood in the center of the room, unsure what to do.
She sat down to watch Rhys sleep, taking small comfort in the rise and fall of his chest. The world was ending in the future, and they had lost the diary.
She didn’t even want to contemplate the ramifications of that fact.
Right now, she needed to get Rhys out of here, wherever here was, but to do that she needed the song.
The Ley Lines had sent them to this time to find someone.
But she couldn’t leave Rhys alone, not like this.
She would wait for him to recover. If he recovered.
Her heart lurched at the thought. Of course he would recover. He had to.
She knelt by his bedside again, holding his hand.
She must have fallen asleep that way, because when she woke it was the middle of the night.
The length of the candle burning down was the only indication of time passing.
Rhys was back to moaning, his face flush with fever.
At dawn Father Giuseppe came and checked on them.
He brought fresh water and encouraged her to sit down and eat when he saw she hadn’t touched the tray.
She forced herself to eat bread to keep from having an attack, but she didn’t taste a thing.
Right now she was adrift, unable to function until Rhys opened his eyes again.
She choked on a sob. Someone had stolen the diary from her. Now life was trying to take Rhys from her as well. She gripped his hand, willing her strength to him, trying to anchor him to her.
“Stay with me, Rhys. If you leave me, I can’t do it. I can’t do this without you.” How had she ever thought she could do this without him? Leave him in 1829. This man who had her heart.
For hours she tried coaxing him awake. She threatened him, then pleaded and begged. She told him stories of her life, of the future, and everything he would miss if he didn’t wake up. She even proposed marriage if he would just get better.
“You’re going to wake up, and I’m going to court you,” she whispered, kissing his hand and pressing her cheek to it.
“I’ll play you love songs. All the best ones.
” She would play every song from her playlists.
“You can sit beside me on the piano bench anytime you want.” She choked back a sob. She would never send him away again.
Two more days passed. Two more days of waiting and praying in the twilight of despair as his body raged with fever.
Magellan was trapped in a strange purgatory, a limbo she couldn’t escape.
They were somewhere in time’s labyrinth.
She had only part of the song, the first movement and the second, which Hildegard had given her in its entirety, a lyrical part full of beauty.
Two women were still left to find, and she had to assume one was here in Italy, but Magellan couldn’t rouse herself to leave the church.
She’d been sitting by Rhys’s bedside, praying and listening to the masses Father Giuseppe conducted on the other side of the wall.
But Rhys wouldn’t wake, and his fever hadn’t broken.
Had the world already ended and this was hell?
On the third day when Father Giuseppe came to Rhys’s bedside and began to perform what looked like last rites, Magellan stood up in alarm.
“No no no!” Hysteria rose within her. “He’s not .
. . He’s not . . .” going to die, but she couldn’t say the words.
She backed away, shaking her head in denial.
Rhys needed another doctor. He needed medicine.
He needed a better goddamned century than this one.
Had antibiotics even been discovered yet?
He could not die here. He had a life in 1829.
He had a family who would never know what happened to him.
These last days sitting in a dark room in the back of a church, Magellan had become convinced Rhys had to survive because their love was part of the song. He was a part of the song—and a part of her. He was her love song, and she couldn’t play a song for the world without him.
In a blind panic, she ran down the hallway to the doors leading outside the church.
She had no idea what was waiting for her on the other side.
Her hands hovered on the knobs, and every fear, every ounce of anxiety she had endured her whole life, returned all at once in a flood until she was drowning.
She closed her eyes, breathing too fast and heavy.
She could do this. She just had to open the doors and walk through them.
Trying to calm down, she let out a long, deep hum, slow and steady, feeling the vibration from her voice fill her body.
She knew better than anyone nothing was more powerful than sound, and music was a universal prayer. So she stood at the church doors and hummed, feeling the sound’s resonance filling her with power. Her power.
She threw open the doors to meet the outside world for the first time and blinked furiously at the sunlight.
She was standing in the middle of a gorgeous city in some previous century with narrow cobblestone streets and vibrant buildings stunning in their artistry.
Everyone was dressed in fine robes, speaking Italian and looking straight out of a Renaissance painting.
In front of the church stood a pillar covered with public notices. Magellan scanned them to find the date.
1570.
The air puffed out of her. They were right smack dab in the Renaissance. But where?
She did a full circle, taking in the city, and her mouth fell open when she recognized the famous view from a postcard Wren had sent her when she had visited last year. A postcard with the famous lit dome of the Saint Mary of the Flower. In Florence.
They were in Florence, Italy, in 1570.
Magellan thought quickly. Only one woman in Florence could have the song. A woman whose quote was in fact framed on Magellan’s wall. The first woman ever to publish her music. The first woman to also publicly chastise men for not allowing women to do so.
BBC radio had done a special on Maddalena Casulana for International Women’s Day and performed a concert of her madrigals.
A madrigal was popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
It was a vocal piece, performed by a group without any musical accompaniment.
A form of musical poetry, madrigals reached their zenith in the 1500s, and Maddalena Casulana was the equivalent of Adele, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Aretha Franklin, and Alicia Keys all rolled into one.
She also played the lute, which was the Renaissance guitar.
In her first book of madrigals, Maddalena had dedicated her songs to her patron Isabella de’ Medici and had written in the dedication:
“I want to show the world the vain error of men
that they alone possess intellectual gifts and believe
those same gifts are not possible for women.”
Maddalena was a giant in her own time and had fearlessly forged a path for other women in the future. She had shined so brightly, history had been unable to look away.
Filled with newfound determination, Magellan returned to the church and hurried back to their room. She would not lose Rhys to this place. She would find Maddalena and get him out of here.
She quickly ate the food Giuseppe had left for her, suddenly voracious.
She shoved olives, bread, and cheese in her mouth and downed the wine.
Then she braided her hair back and wiped her face.
She slipped her hand into Rhys’s tunic pocket hanging on the wall and found the few coins he had taken from the satchel.
Kissing his brow, she whispered, “I’m going to get the song. I’ll be back.” She tried not to think of the danger she would face or she would never leave this room.
Father Giuseppe was in the main sitting room behind the altar. When she found him, she held up her vielle and tried to communicate. “Maddalena Casulana?” Then she mimed playing and pointed to herself. “Student.”
Father Giuseppe’s eyebrows rose. “Maddalena Casulana? Alluna?”
Magellan had no idea what “alluna” meant, but she nodded and repeated it again. Father Giuseppe seemed to understand.
He led her outside, down the main street ending at the river, and they walked across an enormous stone bridge to a palace. It had to be the palace where Isabella de’ Medici lived.
Isabella was Maddalena’s influential supporter, a powerful woman in her own right.
Magellan had watched a documentary on them both.
Isabella had been murdered by her husband and brother.
Magellan only hoped that tragedy was still years away or else she was walking into a murderer’s den to find the song.