Arcadia Burns (15 page)

“A
FEW
hundred
?” A
LESSANDRO
exclaimed.

“The entire freezer is full of them.”

He slowly shook his head, unable to take it in, and for a moment she was afraid that this could all backfire on her. Suppose he thought she was just like her grandmother? Suppose he began to believe what everyone had been telling him for months? That she was bad news for him, bad news for Cosa Nostra as a whole, and it was a mistake to have anything to do with an Alcantara.

Rosa was sitting beside him on the battlements of Castello Carnevare in the evening twilight, looking out at the plain below the mountain where the castle stood. The land was not as flat as it looked at first sight. The farther you went from the Castello, the hillier the country became. Here in central Sicily the landscape was bleak and inhospitable, a sea of ocher undulations in the ground, with dry riverbeds spanned by ancient stone bridges running across them. The sun had sunk below the horizon in the west. A solitary car was driving along a road a few miles away. Its headlights were two lonely stars in the darkness.

Rosa and Alessandro were nestling close together, enveloped by blankets. Both of them had drawn up their knees and
wrapped the thick wool tightly around them. They were sitting on the very edge of the abyss; if anyone were to push them from behind, there would be no stopping their fall. Forty-five feet to the bottom of the castle wall, and nothing in the way to slow their progress along the rocky slope.

But Rosa wasn’t even uneasy. Nowhere had she ever felt as safe as she did with him, her shoulder against his, their fingers closely entwined.

“I love you,” he said.

Just three words—but it was so sudden that she swallowed. Whatever they had been talking about just now, their emotions were in tune. They both felt equally ready to be there for each other, forever.

She didn’t say anything. She still couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring the words past her own lips, or not so that they sounded genuine. Even as she formed the sentence in her mind—
I love you—
it sounded artificial to her. She had tried to explain that to him, and she could see in his eyes that he understood.

She leaned her head on his shoulder, felt his lips in her hair.

“How do you do it?” she asked, looking into the distance.

“Do what?”

“Be the way you are. Still like me in spite of everything I’ve just told you.”

“That’s got nothing to do with us. What your grandmother did—it’s so long ago. We can’t help what our ancestors did.”

She raised her head. The horizon was reflected in the green of his gaze. For a few heartbeats she saw the world through his eyes. Larger, wider, and yet so close that you could put
out your hand and grasp it. To him, nothing was beyond his reach.

She had told him everything. About her horrifying discovery in the cellar, and also about her visit to Trevini and the agreement she had made with him. And how Valerie was a captive in his hotel.

“I have to get rid of the whole thing,” she said, adding quickly, in case he misunderstood, “I don’t mean
her
; I mean the stuff in the basement. But if I have the furs burned, there’s a danger that someone could see the names on them.”

“We can tear the labels off first.”

“Open all those containers? Take out every single fur?” She shook her head. “I’d rather move somewhere else and have the whole palazzo blown sky-high.”

“By somewhere else you mean—”

“Not here. That wouldn’t be a good idea…and not safe,” she added a moment later. “It’s strange enough that they let us see each other at all.”

“Most of them have other things on their minds right now.”

“The Hungry Man?”

Alessandro nodded. “Some of them are more worried than ever that he’ll return. And others can’t wait for it. The mere possibility that he might come back to Sicily from the mainland has them at one another’s throats. I’ve seen them sitting in a conference room in Catania…worldly men in expensive suits. If the rest of us hadn’t separated them, they’d have torn one another apart. They shifted shape, the idiots. Luckily there were only Arcadians in the room, or else—”

“It’s getting out of control, right? The old rules of the dynasties, the laws of the tribunal, all the agreements to keep the peace…before long, none of that will mean anything anymore.”

He smiled sadly. “I know some who claim that our relationship is already part of it. Nothing’s the way it used to be. Alcantaras and Carnevares hand in glove. A package deal.”

She plucked at her blanket. “Two of them. Dammit.”

He turned to her and put one hand under the soft bedspread. His beautiful, long fingers touched her bare thigh. Moved farther up. She was wearing only a large T-shirt and a pair of his shorts. They had been in the pool down in the castle, and after that in the sauna. Her own black clothes were lying crumpled somewhere down by the edge of the pool.

“Wait,” she said, and almost choked.

His hand stopped moving. “Snake alarm?”

“That too. But I have to talk to you. First, I mean. Talk—normally.”

His smile widened. A wind from the plain, from the south—maybe from Africa, as he always claimed—blew through his tousled hair. It wasn’t its usual nut brown, but almost black. He didn’t have his transformation under much better control than she did, no matter what he said the big cats in the zoo had taught him.

“Valerie,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with her.”

He let out a sigh. She felt his fingertips move back like velvet paws. “And you think she’s responsible for what happened?”

“Partly, anyway.” Why didn’t she tell it as it was? Valerie had handed her over to Tano, Michele, and the others. There was no ignoring that.

“Then let her rot away with Trevini.” He meant exactly what he said, as she could tell from looking at him.

“I can’t,” she replied. “I can’t give someone orders to kill her. Or simply act as if I don’t know about it. It feels like she’s next to me all the time. Even when I look at Iole, I see Valerie.” A cold breeze blew against the walls and got under the fabric, and she pulled her blanket close. “We both freed Iole because your family was keeping her captive. Am I going to do something like that to Valerie now?”

“Iole was innocent,” he said. “Valerie isn’t.”

“I know that. And yet…” She shook his head. “Trevini and the others are right. I’m a disaster as head of a Mafia clan.” She laughed out loud. It sounded hysterical, and made her furious with herself. “Even the words are like a bad joke. Head of a Mafia clan!”

“Then ask her questions. Try to find out what really happened back in New York. What Michele wanted with you.”

“Tano,” she corrected him.

“Both of them.” The anger in his voice made her shudder even more than the cool wind from below. But the goose bumps on her arms and legs felt good, perfectly natural, unlike the icy breath of the snake.

“I can’t talk to her,” she said after a moment’s pause. “If I do, I’ll go for her throat. It’s…I’m surprised at myself. When I saw her sitting there, totally helpless, stoned out of her
mind—I didn’t even feel sorry for her.”

“It’s what she deserves.”

“That sounds so simple. But it’s a little more complicated for someone who wasn’t brought up knowing the basic rules of the Mafia.”

He stroked her cheek, smiling. “Where’s the tough Rosa who was on that first flight to Sicily with me?”

“The odd thing is that all this should have toughened me up even more. Made me more realistic about it. But instead just the opposite has happened.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and propped her chin on her knees. “I don’t understand myself anymore. And that’s an awful feeling. I don’t want this. Can’t everything just go back to how it was before Trevini brought the whole thing up again?”

“He’s a calculating man. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

“Yes, sure. But now it’s too late. I can’t just act as if I never watched that video.”

He looked out into the dark. “Are you asking me what I’d do in your place?”

She’d known the answer to that for a long time, and it wasn’t what she wanted. “No.”

Minutes passed, and neither of them said anything. Their hands met again, but he didn’t make another attempt to get closer to her. It was probably up to her to take the next step.

All she said was, “And then that ship.”

“I have people finding out as much as possible about Thanassis and the
Stabat Mater
. They’ve come up with nothing
but a few newspaper reports. Looks like he’s cut himself off from the outside world in every possible way. Erected a kind of firewall around his business affairs and his private life. Not easy to get past that.”

“Do you think he’s a member of TABULA?”

“How would I know?”

“Exactly. We don’t know anything.” Alessandro didn’t conceal the fact that he was at a loss, and it was good to see him, too, baffled for once. Without any answers. Or suggestions. Or any idea how to get out of this mess.

“There are just too many things I don’t understand,” she said. “And now my father is part of it as well. Can’t anything be simple for once?”

“What did you say to Trevini’s proposition?”

“What do you mean?”

“When he asked why you didn’t get out of here, taking a large sum of money.”

“He can go fuck himself. Figuratively speaking, anyway.”

“He’s right.”

“What?” She stared at him, at the fine profile that looked, against the indigo twilight, as if it had been drawn with a quill. “How can you of all people say that?”

“I’ve thought of doing it myself,” he admitted. “More than once.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re exactly where you wanted to be.”

“But you matter to me more.”

“I’m not running away from you.” She tried a smile. “Hey,
you have a sauna. And a great pool. I wouldn’t give that up for the world.”

“Maybe we
will
go away, all the same, some time or other.”

“Sure.” She didn’t believe it for a second.

“Can I take a look at them? Those furs?”

“Come tomorrow. Maybe you’ll arrive before the villagers march up the mountain with lighted torches to burn the monster on her pyre.”

“Your grandmother was a monster. Not you.”

She widened her eyes theatrically. “A reptile? Nine feet long? How does that sound to you? There we are, the story of my life. My boyfriend turns into the most beautiful animal in the world, and what do I turn into? Godzilla.”

He drew her close to him, and she was thankful for that. He often guessed what would do her good even before she knew it herself. But why did the same never happen to her? Was that why it was so easy for him to say he loved her—and she found it so hard to say she loved him back? How long had she mourned for Zoe? Not long. What did she feel for her mother? Not enough. Couldn’t she love like other people? Was that her real problem?

He kissed her, and as the tips of their tongues touched, she thought: Of course I love him, more than anything else in the world.

When his hands felt under her T-shirt, and her fingers touched his arms and went to his chest—all in a tangle of blankets, crumpled shirts, and shorts, rather clumsily and very much her—some things didn’t seem to matter, others
were more important, and she thought: Don’t let the snake control you.

She felt the panther fur at the back of his neck and the scales on her hands. She heard them rubbing together, and the sound thrilled her to the marrow of her bones. It was like a series of gentle electric shocks, a tender vibration that lasted a long time, much longer than usual, before the cold she feared came over her at last, bringing with it the transformation, and the end of something that hadn’t even properly begun.

Coiling and purring, they lay together on the battlements, unable to stay in human form. But for the moment it was all right, because it was their nature, what they had in common, and perhaps even their purpose in life, if they only wanted it enough.

“W
HAT ARE YOU DOING
?” Iole was hurrying across the inner courtyard of the palazzo in Rosa’s wake. She impatiently brushed the cobwebs that had been clinging to the toolshed door off her face.

Rosa went ahead to the gateway leading to the front of the house. Her footsteps echoed under the vaulted roof, hardly muted by the fluffy patches of mold hanging above her like storm clouds. She had a pickax in her hands, but she quickened her pace in spite of its weight.

“Rosa! I want to be there if you’re going to wreck something!” In the tunnel, Iole’s voice seemed to come from all sides at once, although she was several yards behind Rosa. She wore loose linen trousers and a white turtleneck, and looked more grown-up than she did in her usual summer dresses. Her short black hair had an almost blue sheen as she ran out of the tunnel into the open.

A glance over her shoulder confirmed Rosa’s fears: Iole had Signora Falchi in tow. That was no surprise. Iole had seen Rosa in the courtyard through the schoolroom window, and had stormed out despite her indignant tutor’s protests. She had trailed Rosa to the shed, where garden tools and other implements were stored.

“Iole! Signorina Alcantara!” The tutor was flailing her arms excitedly in the air as she followed Iole, some way behind her. “Just for
once
, will you please listen to me!”

Rosa hurried on.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” Iole demanded.

Rosa did not reply. She pressed her lips together firmly. She might change her mind if she said aloud what she was planning to do.

She went around the southeast corner of the palazzo, along the untended path that led to the side of the property facing uphill. Four months ago, when Zoe and Florinda were buried, the weeds and shrubs rambling all over the path had been removed. In the mild winter climate of Sicily, some of them had grown back, though not as wildly as before. At this time of day, the shadow of the chestnut trees on the outskirts of the pinewoods farther up the mountain didn’t reach the east facade. At eleven in the morning, the sun was still too high. It shone with a dull glow in the hazy February sky.

As she walked, Rosa turned the pickax around in her hands to avoid grazing her leg on its rusty iron point. The tool looked as if no one had used it for years.

“Signorina!”
called the tutor again when she, too, rounded the corner of the wall. She was determined not to be shaken off. “What on earth are you doing?” And, most uncharacteristically, she added a half-swallowed curse.

Rosa stormed toward the entrance of the funeral chapel. The small annex huddled furtively against the facade as if it had occurred to the architects of the palazzo, rather late in
the game, that they had nowhere in the house dedicated to prayer and devotion. In fact, Rosa doubted whether anyone in the palazzo had ever prayed. A cast-iron bell hung in a niche above the chapel porch, as black as if pitch had been poured over it.

Just outside the entrance, Rosa stopped. She heard Iole’s footsteps behind her and wondered for a moment whether to tell her not to come closer. But she lost patience and pushed both doors inward. All the doors in the palazzo squealed, this one loudest of all. Signora Falchi, still thirty feet away, sighed, “Holy Mother of God!” and slowed down.

Hands firmly clutching the pickax handle, Rosa stepped into the chapel. Inside, it smelled of dank masonry and withered flowers, although the floral arrangements for the last funeral here had been removed long ago. The odor seemed to have sunk deep into the walls and the faded fresco of saints under the ceiling.

The front and side walls were covered with a chessboard pattern of granite slabs, arranged one on top of the other in sets of three. Rosa didn’t know when the first of her ancestors had been laid to rest here, but she assumed that the family tree went back centuries.

Costanza’s tomb was on the far side of the room, beyond the altar in the front of the chapel. Rosa went up to the panel embedded in the wall and dropped the heavy end of the pickax. The metal crashed on the stone floor, and the sound vibrated through the high interior. The bell on the porch seemed to reply with a deep clang.

Rosa’s fingertips touched the lettering carved into the granite surface.
COSTANZA ALCANTARA
. Black dust had settled inside the characters. Instinctively, she wiped her fingers on her jeans. There were no dates of birth and death, same as all the other tombs. Just names. As if it made no difference when the family members had lived. All that mattered was that they continued the Alcantara line, ensuring the survival of the dynasty.

Iole stumbled through the door, the tutor close on her heels. They both stood speechless. Rosa could feel their eyes on her back.

She placed the palm of her hand on the stone slab, as if feeling whether anything was moving behind it. A little dirt was left under her fingernails. She could see it even through the black nail polish that she had to reapply after every transformation. For a long time she had been making an effort to stop biting her nails. The dirt from the inscription on Costanza’s tomb would certainly stop her now.

She withdrew her fingers, grasped the pickax again with both hands, and turned to the interior of the chapel.

Iole watched with bated breath. Signora Falchi’s eyes, behind the lenses of her glasses, looked anxious and simultaneously fascinated in a macabre way.
“Signorina,”
she began cautiously.

“Just keep it to yourself,” retorted Rosa.

“But—”

“Not now.”

Three or four steps, and Rosa was looking at her father’s
tomb. Like Costanza’s, it was in the middle row of slabs. The one below it bore no inscription; the lettering on the one above it was faded. Curiously enough, no dust had settled there. As if only Costanza attracted all the dirt in this place.

Rosa took a deep breath and swung her arm. With an earsplitting noise, she drove the tip of the pickax into her father’s tombstone.

“Signorina!”

Steps behind her. Clattering heels.

Rosa struck a second time. A crack as wide as her finger ran across the surface like a flash of black lightning.

“Signorina Alcantara, I beg you—”

Spinning around, she let out a hiss that made the tutor flinch. Rosa felt her tongue split behind her teeth, but she took care not to open her mouth as the woman gave her one more dark glance, then turned and ran back to Iole, stationing herself protectively in front of the girl, as if seriously afraid that Rosa might go for her with the pickax.

When Rosa hit the tombstone for the third time, a gray triangle broke off the stone beneath the inscription. She had to strike the slab several more times before it crumbled away completely. The fragments fell to the floor, leaving only a few splinters in the open compartment of the tomb.

She could see the foot of a casket. The last eleven years had left it untouched. A gilded handle shone in the darkness.

Suddenly Iole was beside her. “Here, I’ll help you,” she said quietly. Rosa nodded gratefully, propped the pickax against the
wall, and took hold of the broad metal handle on one side of the casket. It was cold as ice. Iole grasped the other handle, and as the tutor stood silently in the background, they gradually pulled the casket forward until the end stuck a foot and a half out of the wall compartment.

“That’ll do,” said Rosa.

Iole nodded and stepped back.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rosa saw Signora Falchi down on the floor beside the door. For a moment she was afraid that the tutor was going to faint, but she was wrong. Instead the woman frowned, leaned back against the wall as she sat there, and drew up her knees. “Nothing I can do about it,” she said, sighing. “I’ll just wait here until it’s over, if I may.”

Sweating now, Rosa raised the pickax. She hit the oak lid of the casket three times, until a hole the size of a human head gaped in the wood, and the pickax stuck in as far as it would go. With a gasp, she pulled the tool out, let it drop, and bent over the hole.

“Let’s just hope,” remarked Signora Falchi on the other side of the chapel, “that it really is the foot end you have there.”

Rosa peered over the splintered edge of the hole. Iole’s hand reached for hers and held it tightly.

“Makes no difference,” she said a moment later, straightening her back and standing erect as she breathed deeply in and out.

Iole looked at her, and then she too peered inside the casket.

“Oh,” she said.

Rosa squeezed her hand once more, then let go. She walked out of the chapel, stopped, and drew fresh air into her lungs. It smelled of the pine trees growing farther up the slope, of grass, and of the salty wind blowing over the hills from the distant sea.

Behind her in the chapel, she heard the sound of the tutor’s footsteps as she took her turn glancing inside the casket.

Iole came out onto the porch and stopped a little way behind Rosa.

“Where is he, then?” she asked.

Rosa shrugged her shoulders, and went back into the house in silence.