The Angry Mountain (29 page)

But I was feeling obstinate. Perhaps it was because I was so darned tired. But I had a feeling that I'd saved that animal to meet just such an emergency. “He's probably in a grocery store somewhere,” Hacket said sarcastically.

“A greengrocers.” I snapped my fingers. “Zina,” I called. “Where's the nearest greengrocers'?”

“Greengrocers? What is?”

“Where they sell vegetables.”

“Oh.
Fruttivendolo.
There's one just down that street there.” She pointed past the pump to a narrow, dirty-looking thoroughfare. “The others have all gone I think.”

I crossed the piazza. The fruiterers' was the third shop on the left and there, sticking out of the doorway, was the bony rump of my mule. I called to him and he backed out and stood looking at me, some green stuff hanging from his mouth. I went to the shop. It was asparagus he'd been eating. I filled a basket with the neatly tied bundles and he followed me back towards the piazza nuzzling at it. The last house in the street had big doors gaping wide and the smell of manure. It was a stables and inside I found collar and traces.

Hacket stared at us as we crossed the piazza. Then he began to laugh. “What's so funny?” I snapped at him.

“Nothing. I was only thinking …” He stopped laughing and shook his head. “Guess I thought the mule wasn't real, that's all. Now all we've got to do is clear this cart, hack the back part off and we've got a buggy.”

We set to with a will. The need for haste drove me and gave me strength. We pushed the pile of furniture overboard and then got to work with axe and saw which we got from a nearby shop. This was the first opportunity I'd had of questioning any of the others and I asked Hacket what had happened after they had entered the monastery.

“We were had for suckers,” he said. “That's about all there is to it. We ought to have known considering the door wasn't locked. But seeing those two poor devils chained to the wall—well, we just forgot everything else. And the next we knew the door had closed and the key was grating in the lock. The doctor fellow must have been waiting for us on the roof. The son-of-a-bitch had the nerve to wish us
bon voyage.
If I ever get my hands on the bastard …” He swung the axe viciously.

It didn't take long to smash the back half off the cart. The wood was old and rotten. Then we harnessed George and backed him in. By the time we'd finished, Hilda had set Max's leg. “I've done the best I can for him,” she said.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Not good. He says much that I do not understand, but he knows what is happening.”

We lifted him on to the cart. Then we got the others on. “Can you drive?” I asked Hacket.

“I don't know. Maybe I've forgotten how. But I was an artilleryman in the first war.”

“You carry on then,” I said. “I never held a pair of reins in my life.”

He nodded. “Okay, then. Here we go.” He clicked his tongue and flicked George's back with the reins. The mule started forward at a walk. Hacket slapped the reins. Still the animal ambled. I could have walked faster myself and I
thought,
My God, we'll never get through Avin before the lava streams cut us off.

I think Zina had the same thought for she called out to Hacket, “Swear at him in Italian. He requires many curses to make him go fast.”

“
Via!
” Hacket shouted. “
Via!
”

“Oh, you do not understand what I mean by curses.” She moved over to him and took the reins. She jerked at them and then she began to scream curses at the wretched animal. She screamed them at the top of her voice, using gutter language, many of the words quite unrecognisable to me. George laid his ears back and then suddenly he had broken into a trot.”
Ecco!
Now we move.”

We must have presented an extraordinary spectacle if there'd been any one to see us, the cart swaying and slithering on the shifting surface of the ash and Zina standing there balancing herself to the swing of it like a charioteer, her black hair streaming in the wind. Behind us the mountain belched a red glare of farewell.

“I think he has been very kind,” Hilda said to me.

“Who?” I asked.

“Vesuvius. We have had no more falls of hot stones.”

I nodded. “But pretty near everything else has happened.”

She smiled and put her hand over mine. “Now tell me what happen when you go off after that—that man?”

We were past the last of the houses now and in open country, forlorn-looking under its mantle of ash. I looked back at the remains of Santo Francisco and I knew I'd never in my life be so glad to be out of a place. Then I told her all that had happened on the roof of that house, and as I was talking I was looking at Jan Tu
č
ek. He was barely recognisable. He looked like an old man and he met my gaze with eyes that were dull and lifeless as though he had suffered too much. His companion—Lemlin—a big man with a round baldish head and china-blue eyes was the same.

When I had finished Hilda said, “You have been lucky, Dick.”

I nodded. “The devil of it is that swine got away with your father's things.”

“What does that matter?” she said sharply. “You are alive. That is what matters. And I do not think he will get far—not now.”

“Have you found out what happened to your father?” I asked her.

Her eyes clouded. “Yes—a little. He will not tell me all. He and the general letectva landed at Milan as arranged. They were met by this man Sansevino and another man. They have pistols and they tie Lemlin and my father up and then they fly to the villa where we find you this evening. They land in a vineyard of very young bushes. The next night my father is brought up to the monastery, chained to the wall in that terrible tower like a convict and then tortured. When this Sansevino learn that my father has not what he wants and that you have it, then he leave. An old man called Agostino bring them food every day. That is all. They see no one else until Maxwell and the Contessa arrive.” The grip of her fingers tightened on my hand. “I think he will wish me to say he is sorry to have involve you in this business. He will tell you himself when he is recovered.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “I'm only sorry—”

“Do not reproach yourself please. And I am sorry I was so stupid that time in Milan and again in Naples. I did not realise then.…” Her voice trailed away and she dropped her eyes. “You have been wonderful, Dick.”

“You don't understand,” I said. “I was scared stiff. That man who posed as Shirer—”

“I do understand. Max told me all about what happened to you at the Villa d'Este.”

“I see.”

“You do not see,” she said angrily. “It makes what you
have done—” She shrugged her shoulders. “I cannot put it into words.”

The blood was suddenly singing in my veins. She believed in me. She wasn't like Alice. She believed in me. She offered hope for the future. I gripped her hand. The grey eyes that stared up at me were suddenly full of tears. She looked away quickly and where the dust had been rubbed from her skin I saw the freckles reaching to the neat shape of her ears. I looked past her to the gaunt remains of Santo Francisco and the mountain behind it with the great belching column of smoke and the broad bands of the lava and I was glad I'd been there. It was as though I'd been cleansed by fire, as though the anger of the mountain had burned all the fear out of me and left me sure of myself again.

“Stop! Stop!” It was Hacket and he was shouting at Zina. She tugged on the reins and the American jumped down.… He ran back up the road and picked up something lying in the ash at the side.

“It's the little boy,” Hilda said.

“What little boy?” I asked.

“The little boy who was sucking his thumb by the fountain when we drove into Santo Francisco.”

Hacket handed the small bundle up to Hilda. She took the little fellow in her arms. His brown eyes opened wide in sudden fear, then he smiled and closed them again, snuggling close to her breast.

“He's probably lousy,” Hacket said. “But you can get cleaned up later.”

He climbed in and we started off again. I caught Maxwell's eyes looking up at me. His lower lip was in shreds where he'd bitten it. “How much farther?” he asked. I scarcely recognised his voice.

I looked past Zina's skirt along the road ahead. I could see the entrance to the villa now and beyond it, down the straight, tree-lined ribbon of the road I caught a glimpse of Avin lying in a huddle under a cloud of dust. “Not far,” I
said. I didn't tell him a great sea of black lava was reaching into the village. Away to the left, beyond the villa, the air shimmered with the heat of the other lava flow. It ran past the back of the villa and on down towards Avin. On either side of us was lava—nothing but lava. “How's the leg?” I asked.

“Pretty bad.”

The dust and sweat on his face had caked into a mask that split and cracked as he moved his lips.

“I wish we had some morphia,” Hilda whispered to me.

I glanced up at Zina. “There's some at the villa,” I said.

Maxwell must have heard, for he said, “No time. Must get through before we're trapped by the lava. I'll last out all right.” The cart jolted violently in a rut and the beginnings of a scream was jerked out of his throat. He clutched at Hilda, catching hold of her knee. She took his hand and held it as the cart rocked and swayed and he writhed and bit at his lip in pain.

Then we were entering Avin and suddenly it was hot and the air was full of dust. A smell of sulphur hung over the village. It was as though we had returned to Santo Francisco.

The cart came to a halt. I heard Zina say, “What do we do now?” and I looked past her at the narrow village street that had been full of children and carts when we'd come through the previous day. It was utterly deserted now and it finished abruptly in a wall of lava. I don't remember feeling any sense of surprise at finding our way out blocked. I think I'd known all along we'd find it like this. There'd been such a narrow gap when I'd looked towards Avin from the top of that tower. I heard Zina sobbing with vexation and Hacket saying, “Well, we'll just have to find a way round, that's all.” And I sat there with a sense of complete resignation.

“Come on, Farrell. We got to find a way round.” Hacket was shaking me.

“I don't think there is a way round,” I said. “Remember
what I told you back in Santo Francisco? The two streams have converged.”

“Come on, man. Pull yourself together. We can't just sit here.”

I nodded and got out of the cart. The stump of my leg was very painful when I put my weight on it. The lacerated skin seemed to have stiffened and as I moved I could feel the grit working into the flesh again. “What do you want me to do?” I asked. All I wanted to do was to sit still and wait for the end. I felt resigned and at peace. Hilda believed in me. It wouldn't be so bad going like that with someone believing in me. I was very, very tired.

“This lava flow is coming in from the right.” Hacket's voice seemed far away, almost unreal. “We'll just have to work along the flank of it until we can find a way round.”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “There isn't a way round,” I said wearily.

He caught hold of my shoulders and shook me. “Pull yourself together,” he snapped. “If we don't find a way round we've had it. That lava flow behind us will push its way through Santo Francisco. Then we'll find ourselves driven into a smaller and smaller area. We'll be slowly burned up. We got to find a way through.”

“All right,” I said.

“That's better.” He turned to the others, still huddled on the cart. “You wait here. We'll be back soon.” They looked like refugees, a cartload of derelict humanity fleeing before the wreck of war. How many times had I see them—on the roads in France, in Germany, here in Italy? Only they weren't fleeing from war. I glanced back again at the dim, smoking ruins of Santo Francisco and the mountain hanging over it, spilling death out of its sides, belching it into the sunless air, and I found myself thinking again of the end of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“Come on,” Hacket said.

Hilda smiled at me. “Good luck!” she said.

I turned then with sudden, violent determination. I had to find a way through. There just had to be a way. Seeing her sitting there, calm and confident in me, the little bambino asleep in her arms, I felt there had to be a future. I couldn't let her die up here in this world of utter desolation. If I had to tear a way through the lava with my bare hands I'd got to break a way through into the future for her and her father.

We went down towards the lava, found a track that ran to the left and started along it. Then Hacket stopped and I saw there was a man coming towards us. He wore no jacket and his shirt and trousers were burnt and torn. “You speak Italian, don't you?” Hacket said. “Find out whether there's a way through.”

I limped forward. “Can we get through?” I asked him.

The man stopped. He stood staring at me for a moment and then came running towards us. Something about the stockiness of his build and the square set of his ash-caked jaw seemed familiar. “It's Farrell, isn't it?” he asked in English.

“Yes, but—” And then I knew who it was. “Reece!”

He nodded. “Where's Maxwell?” He was panting as he stopped in front of us and his eyes looked wild.

“Back on the road,” I said. “He's hurt. Is there a way through?”

He brushed his hand through his matted hair. “No. We're completely cut off.”

Meeting Reece like that, all the serenity and confidence seemed drained out of me. The sight of him brought back the memory of Milan and my fear and that brief meeting with Alice. “How did you get here?” I asked him.