Maximus merely waved Tiberius on and the man headed down the street with another knight in tow. Maximus cocked an eyebrow.
“He does not understand,” he said to the knight who had remained with him. “He is not yet old enough to realize that a man will do anything for the woman he loves. He’s not yet had experience with love like that.”
The knight who had remained with him, a hulking man named Sir Garran de Moray, glanced at Maximus with his onyx-black eyes.
“You speak as if you have known an affair such as that,” he said. “I did not know that about you, Max.”
Maximus pulled his muscular rouncey to a halt and dismounted. “It was a long time ago,” he said, muttering, as if he did not want to spare thought to those memories. “I was seventeen years of age and she was fourteen. We were madly in love.”
“What happened?”
Maximus grunted. “A de Shera cannot marry below his station,” he said, somewhat sarcastically. “She was the smithy’s daughter. When my father found out, he sent both her and her father away. I heard that she died later that year of a fever. I have always wondered if….”
He trailed off, disinclined to continue, as he tethered his horse to the nearest post. Garran dismounted beside him, unwilling to push the subject of his young and tragic love. Garran had known Maximus and this was the first time he’d heard such a thing, but he wasn’t surprised. Maximus tended to keep silent on personal matters. He wasn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve on speak on things even remotely private. Keeping that in mind, Garran pointed to the building in front of them.
“A wine and spice merchant,” he said, changing the subject. “It is my guess we will be able to find a myriad of things to settle Lady de Shera’s belly. If the wine doesn’t make her drunk enough to forget her ills, then we shall find a spice that will make her giddy enough to not care.”
Smirking, Maximus moved into the shop with Garran on his heels. Inside, it was dark, cluttered, and smelled of great and exotic lands. Mustard, nutmeg, and cardamom were in great baskets lining the walls, and there were spices from The Levant, Egypt, and darkest Africa. It made him sneeze. The merchant, a fat man dressed in silks and speaking with an odd accent, tried to sell them all manner of mysterious ingredients, including flakes of gold that were said to ward off the demons of sickness.
Maximus didn’t want golden medicine; he simply wanted licorice root for his brother’s wife’s nausea. The merchant, however, steered him towards chamomile and assured him that it would soothe an upset belly, so he ended up buying that as well. As the merchant tried to interest him in some dark seeds that looked like bugs, seeds that also promised to ease Lady de Shera’s belly ache, screams could be heard out on the avenue.
At first, Maximus didn’t pay any attention although Garran did. As Maximus paid the spice vendor for the products he had acquired, Garran went to the door of the stall and casually looked out to see what the fuss was about. He caught sight of it about the same time a massive wave of smoke blew into the spice merchant’s stall, catching Maximus’ attention.
“What is it?” he said to Garran. “Where is the smoke coming from?”
Garran’s features were bordering on concern as he pointed to the south. “A building is on fire,” he said. “It looks as if people are trapped.”
Thanking the merchant, Maximus went to the door, looking in the direction that Garran was indicating. Across the avenue and on the corner of the street where several hostels were located, smoke was billowing out of the first floor of a three-storied building. The entire area was filling up quickly with smoke and people were beginning to panic; a fire such as that, in the cramped quarters of the city, could spread quickly. Already, merchants were starting to pack up their wares with the intention of fleeing. As people began to run away from the fire, Maximus handed his recent purchase back to the merchant for safekeeping as he and Garran headed towards the flames.
As the knights drew closer, they could see that the first floor of the building was quickly becoming engulfed. A layer of heavy smoke was clogging the avenue and they could see through the haze that there were people on the second and third floors of the building that was burning. There didn’t seem to be any flame on those levels but it was only a matter of time; smoke was already filling the rooms, swirling from the windows as the people inside began to throw their possessions out the windows. In fact, people were starting to come out of the windows as well.
Two women and a small child jumped onto the street below, suffering no injuries by pure fortune. The crowd gathered at the base of the building was carrying buckets to extinguish the fire, encouraging the people trapped inside to jump. As Maximus and Garran came to the west side of the building, the side that fronted the Street of the Merchants, a young woman and a girl appeared on the third floor above.
The young woman, coughing as the smoke swept upward, had what looked to be a rope of material of some kind in her hands. It was clear that she had tied items together to form a rope, a very clever and resourceful action, and Maximus and Garran ran towards the rope as she lowered it.
“Make sure you secure the end of it,” Maximus shouted up to the young woman. “Tie it tightly. We will help you!”
As the young girl cowered in the window, the woman disappeared inside and they could feel the cloth rope tugging.
“Hopefully she is tying it to something sturdy,” Garran said, squinting up at the smoke-filled window. “What is this place, anyway?”
Maximus, holding on to the end of the rope, glanced about. “I am not sure,” he said. “A hostel, mayhap? People are throwing cap cases and satchels out into the street.”
Garran glanced around, too, and was forced to agree; there were possessions strewn out all over the avenue. As he watched, a pair of children stole a few items in the mud and ran off with them, disappearing into the quagmire of alleyways and avenues beyond. Garran cocked a disapproving eyebrow.
“And they are making it easy for thieves,” he commented, returning his attention to the women above them. “She had better hurry; the fire is gaining. It will reach the upper floor soon.”
He was correct. It had already reached the second floor and had engulfed at least two of the rooms. More people were jumping, landing in the mud and hard-packed earth of the avenue below, but those on the third floor, as this woman and girl were, had a bit more of a challenge. It was more of a jump. As they seriously began to wonder what happened to the young woman, she suddenly appeared into the window next to the girl.
“Hurry down the rope!” Maximus yelled up to her. “Send the little one down first!”