Death Among the Ruins (15 page)

“Nothing provokes my rage like the arrogance of British despoilers,” he said. “The way they simply help themselves to the history of other cultures! What presumption! It is theft, pure and simple! If it were up to me, all such perpetrators would be hanged for the criminals they are! And one day,” he added, setting the tiny spoon onto his saucer, “it might
very well
be up to me.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kendrick.

“Oh, nothing, probably. But you see . . . well, there
is
talk. That is, some people are sort of suggesting that I shall end up as king of Greece.”

“Crikey!” Kendrick exclaimed. “Wouldn’t
that
be remarkable!”

“It would. Though I feel I can tell you that I do not believe myself worthy.”

“Gordon,” said Arabella. “Do not insult us by feigning humility. It suits you exceedingly ill.”

“I know it does!” he laughed. “I should
love
to be king of Greece! To what more could a man aspire? And then I’d give those English despoilers what-for!”

Arabella avoided Kendrick’s eye.

“But I want to know about
you,
Arabella! What has tempted you to leave fair Lustings and venture abroad?”

She cleared her throat. “Well . . . I . . .” Her voice faltered.

“You can tell Gordon, Arabella!” said Kendrick encouragingly.

Confound the man! What was he doing?! She couldn’t tell Gordon about her quest for the statue! He’d—how had he put it?—“choke the life out of her!”

“Come, come,” Kendrick urged. “Lord Byron is no stranger to scandal! Besides, it’s none of your doing; you are a victim of your brother’s poor judgment!”

“Oh!” she said weakly. “Oh, yes. Well, you see, Gordon, my brother Charles told a silly story at his club, which started a rumor . . .”

Byron slapped the table hard with his open hand. His listeners jumped, and the espresso cups rattled in their saucers.

“I
did
hear about that! Incest, wasn’t it? Incest, amongst the three of you!”

“
You
heard about it? In
Greece?
”

“News travels fast, these days. So, you’re lying low out here till the scandal blows over, I take it. You could not have picked a nicer spot to do it in: Mediterranean vistas . . . Roman ruins . . . and all the beautiful artworks of antiquity, spread at your feet.”

“Gordon,” she ventured, “have you heard anything? What are people saying?”

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” he said kindly. “Incest is such a little thing. I practice it myself, you know. Though of course, Augusta is only my half sister . . .”

“Tell us about Missolonghi,” said Kendrick quickly.

“A beautiful spot! Savage! Raw! I ate with the Pallikar chieftains, and slept beneath the stars, wrapped in my cloak. It’s just skirmishes now. But there will be full-scale war, eventually, and then I shall return, to fight side-by-side with my Pallikar brethren! The Italians, on the other hand, are ready to commence their own rebellion against tyranny,
now.
That is why I am here, in fact. I have joined the Carbonari, to help advance their glorious cause!”

“That sounds like a political organization,” said Arabella suspiciously.

“It is . . .
but,
” he added, hastily, “it’s a
secret society
. You dote upon those.”

“I do,” she admitted. “What are their aims? Please be brief, Gordon.”

“Briefly, then, we are seeking Italy’s unification, under one government.”

“That doesn’t sound like it need be kept secret!”

“Oh, but it does! You see, the Austrians are dead against it, and the papal states are insisting . . .” but he saw her eyes glaze over. “You must just take my word that it is a noble cause. We are in deadly earnest.”

“I believe you,” said Arabella, standing up and filling her lungs. “By heaven, what a morning! One could almost believe it was spring! Mr. K., might I prevail upon you to purchase a box of those exquisite little butter horns, and take them back to the hotel for me? Come along, Gordon! Let us go dabble our feet in some fountain!”

If Byron was shocked at her blatant contempt of Kendrick, he masked it.

“Another time, I should love to,” said he, consulting his watch. “But just now I have a pressing appointment.”

“What?!” cried Arabella, only half in jest. “Forsaking
me
for another woman?”

“No. I meant that literally. I am being honored this evening at a military dinner. Medals, you know, will only go so far in covering up the wrinkles on a man’s jacket, and I’m told they do absolutely nothing at all for crumpled trousers.”

A child in a tattered shirt hastened up to them, and Arabella saw with dismay that it was Pietro. He was panting, like one who has been running for a long time, or someone who is badly frightened. Or both.

“
Signorina,
I must speak quickly . . . !”

What was she to do, now? If she discussed plans with the boy, Gordon was almost certain to ask questions. And if he should discover that she was proposing to deprive Italy of one of its national treasures . . . !

“I am sorry, little fellow, but I have just spent the last of my lira on coffee,” said Arabella untruthfully, for Byron had paid for it. She turned away from Pietro, as though he no longer existed, and saw Byron across the street, tearing down her handbill.

“Vandals!” he snarled. “Looters! This is precisely the kind of thing I was talking about!” He ripped the notice to shreds as a dog rips a handkerchief dropped by an enemy, letting the pieces fall where they might. Then he stalked off.

“Good-bye, Gordon, my love!” called Arabella, waving for all she was worth. “Be sure to do everything I wouldn’t do! That was a near thing!” she said to Kendrick. “Where is Pietro? Pietro!” she called down the street. “Pietro!”

“I should not expect to see him again, if I were you,” said Kendrick quietly.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean. That boy has been of invaluable help in your pigheaded quest for a statue that isn’t actually yours. Has it occurred to you that he may have risked his life in coming to you just now? And you repaid the lad by treating him like a common beggar before your friends!”

If the rector had been a spitting man, Arabella’s shoes would have stood in some danger. He was thinking, perhaps, of how she had tried to dismiss
him,
too, sending him for butter horns when she wished to run off with Gordon.

“I pay Pietro handsomely for what he does,” she retorted. “In
cash.
We have no understanding about how he is to be treated in front of my friends.”

Kendrick remained silent. And as Arabella called and called without result, his silence grew in eloquence. At last, she gave up, and turned back toward the hotel.

She whirled round expectantly, but the boy who ran toward her from across the street was a stranger. “I have message for you!”

“Where is Pietro?” asked Arabella.

“He cannot come. But I will take you to the house you want. Can you go on Wednesday? At nine o’clock?”

“Of course.”

“And bring a nin . . . nintr . . . someone who speaks Italian, yes?”

“An interpreter?”

“Yes. One of those.”

 

 

T
he redoubtable Mrs. Molyneux, a cook par excellence, understood the importance of details. They
mattered,
whether one was cooking for the aristocracy, or only for one’s fellow servants while the mistress was from home. Unfortunately, after having saved a set of actual pigeon’s feet to make tracks across the unbaked crust of her pigeon pie, she forgot that Tilda had to be closely watched in everything.

“Wait!”
shrieked the cook. Dropping her saucier with a clang, she lunged across the pastry table and grabbed Tilda by the wrists only just in time. “You must first
wash
zee feets!”

Wonderingly, Tilda turned the bird claws over and saw that the bottoms were thickly coated with muck and feces from the pigeon coop.

“Oh,” she said.

Fielding, the parlor maid–cum-butler-cum–kitchen assistant, was standing at the kitchen sink extension, cutting sippets with a bread knife. Not for that night, of course—who would want sippets with pie? But Mrs. Molyneux would be requiring them for the following day, and insisted that stale ones were best.

“Mrs. Moly!” said Fielding, glancing out the window. “There’s an old peddler woman coming round to the door, with a sack!”

“Well, geeve ’air some food, eef she’s ongry, but send hair away eef she tries to sell you anysing.”

“New cats for old!” croaked a voice outside.

“What was zat she said?” asked the cook.

“Sounded like ‘New hats for old,’” said Fielding. “That doesn’t make any sense, though, does it?”

“
Non,
indeed! Go see what she wants, Marianne.”

Fielding opened the door to as outrageously an attired pilgrim as the young woman had ever beheld, with a sack of squirming creatures slung over its back.

“Oh,” said the parlor maid. “You’ll be wanting to speak to Cook, I expect. Mrs. Moly! Could you come here a moment? It’s somebody with rabbits or something!”

Mrs. Molyneux duly appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.

“ ’Allo! Yes? What ’ave you thair? Leetle robeets?”

“Kittens,” said the peddler, stooping down with her bag and pouring the contents across the threshold.

“Ah! Well, I’m afraid zat we do not eat keettens at zees ’ouse. You might try down ze road, at Justice Harbuckle’s residonce. I am told zat zee jodge prefairs children, but keettens might make a nice shange. Good day.”

Mrs. Molyneux tried to shut the door so as to scoop the cat cubs back out onto the step, but Lady Ribbonhat (for the astute reader will have guessed it was she) quickly stuck out her foot, just as Tilda arrived at the back door.

“Oh!” cried the girl, plumping down on the floor and gathering them into her skirt. “Kittens! Please, may we keep them, Mrs. Moly?”

“We may not,” said the cook. “We ’ave already got zee wan cat, and I don’t know ’ow zee mistress weel take on when she sees
zat
one! Besides, we ’ave no money to waste on kittens!”

“Oh, but you see, I don’t want any money!” cried Lady Peddler-Ribbon.

“No?” asked the cook, startled. “What
do
you want, zen?”

“An exchange! If you will let me have your raggedy old ginger tomcat, I shall give you these three adorable black-and-white kittens, instead!” She held one of them up and cuddled it against her cheek. “You see? Their eyes are still blue!”

Mrs. Janks now joined Tilda and Mrs. Moly at the door.

“’Ow did you know we even ’ad a ginger tomcat?” asked the housekeeper, narrowing her eyes. “And what do you want ’im for?”

“Uh . . . well,” said the peddler, “I only require one cat, for my particular line of work.”

“And what might that be?”

“Well . . . I . . . travel about. From one place to another, you understand. And I am chiefly engaged in selling . . . um, various gewgaws and bric-a-brac. I cannot keep three felines with me. I mean, they will get lost, will they not? No, three cats is two cats too many. I merely require one good, reliable mouser!”

“And why should a peddler need a mouser at all?” asked the cook. “Eef she travel all zee time?”

“No,” said Mrs. Janks. “No, thank you. We already have a cat, and we find him quite satisfactory! Come now, Tilda, give the woman back her kittens.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Janks!” cried the scullion tragically. “They’re such cunning little things! And they’ll get lost, she says, if . . .”

“She wants to trade them for Rooney,” explained the housekeeper. “You don’t want them
that
badly, do you?”

“Rooney?! I could never give
him
up!”

“So then,” said Mrs. Janks reasonably. “Give the kittens back to Lady Peddler-Hat, here. I dunno why you want a cat that you cared so little for that you had your ostler put it through our window,” she added, leaning in toward the “peddler,” “but I can tell you this, my lady; if
you
want ’im, that’s reason enough for us to keep ’im.”

And Mrs. Janks shut the door in her face.

“Tilda, when you’ve finished trackin’ that pie, wipe your ’ands an’ go fetch me a pen and some paper. The mistress is not going to believe this!”

 

Fair mornings generally found Arabella seated on the sunny little balcony, in a cashmere peignoir, fretting over her non-existent post and sorely missing her beloved blue chocolate pot. No one drank chocolate in this part of the world, evidently, so one had to make do with coffee. And in the absence of any correspondence, Arabella read a book, or searched through odd, outdated English papers for news of the family scandal. But she never discovered any mention of it.

“How bad can it possibly be,” she asked Belinda, “if the papers aren’t on to it? So why does no one write and
tell
me? Have you received any letters, Bunny?”

“No, but then, I have not written any, either. I simply haven’t the mental energy, at present. And if I had, all I should write would be ‘Bergamini, Bergamini, Bergamini.’ I should never tire of that, but I am afraid other people might.”

“They might, indeed! But I cannot understand this universal silence,” Arabella said, half to herself. “I have written to practically everyone I know.”

“Perhaps the post is not as efficient here as it is at home. Perhaps nothing is getting through.”

“But it
is,
though. Signor Terranova receives daily postal dispatches from all over the world, and Charles had another demand from his tailor only yesterday! I am exceedingly worried! Mrs. Janks has not even responded to my request for the household expense report, and you know that is just not like her!”

They were sitting in the sun, with coffee again, and Arabella was thinking how comforted she would have felt with a cup of chocolate between her hands.

“Hmm? I am sorry, I wasn’t listening,” said Belinda. “I cannot seem to concentrate on anything anyone says. But speaking of the post, here are two things that came in for you this morning.”

She held up an envelope, together with a packet, and Arabella fairly snatched them from her. Then she groaned.

“These aren’t from home! They were delivered
by hand
.”

“Well? Maybe they’re clews, then, or a death threat, with a packet of poison powder. Post is post, Bell, wherever it comes from . . . where
does
it come from?”

“The University of Naples,” she said, reading the envelope.

“Oh!” cried Belinda, scrambling up from her chair and coming round to Arabella’s side of the table. “That is Bergamini’s university! What does it say?!”

Arabella tore open the envelope and unfolded the note.

“It
is
from Bergamini,” she said. “It is a response to the note I wrote to him yesterday. Here, I’ll read it to you:

 

“Ah!” cried Belinda, half-swooning with delight. “Read that last part to me, again!”

 

“Again!”

“No,” said Arabella. “Here, take the note.” And she handed it over. “Now you can read it to yourself as much as you will. Just . . .”

 

“ . . . read it to yourself, please.”

“Oh, but I want to
hear
it, Bell!”

“Fine,” said Arabella, rising from her chair. “Then I shall visit the kitchen, and learn how to cook like an Italian.”

On the following morning, Professor Bergamini called at the hotel at ten minutes to 9:00. Belinda flew across the room when he entered, and clung onto him like a mussel on a piling. For his part, though he still displayed his usual manner of gentle solicitude toward her, Bergamini’s movements seemed charged with a new vitality. It would have been sweet to see them thus enthralled, the one with the other, were it not so strange. When they sat cozily together in the carriage they looked for all the world like a dear, doting old gentleman and his granddaughter, but for their little fingers linked upon the carriage seat. Yet who was there to disapprove? Arabella had seen all manner of queer things in her time. Charles would have made fun, probably, but he had not been included in the party. And Kendrick, too, had elected to remain behind. He seemed to be avoiding Arabella’s company since her rudeness toward Pietro.

It was nearly winter now, but one would scarcely guess this. The countryside at harvest time gladdened the eye in its magnificent abundance. But if the carriage seemed to bear them through the center of a lovely picture, the farm at which they eventually turned in was a veritable portrait of neglect. Weeds proliferated. The plow lay upturned in a puddle of rank water, corroded with rust. A few scrawny chickens picked despondently through the stones and trash in front of the house, as though they didn’t actually expect to find anything, but felt the need to keep up appearances. Yet the house itself was practically new, and a fine riding horse stood saddled and ready in the drive.

“Clearly,” Arabella murmured, as they climbed from the carriage, “the owner makes a comfortable living by some means
other
than farming!”

The man himself came out to meet them, and Arabella was alarmed by his appearance. He was a surly, swarthy fellow, with a curling mustache and one hard, brown eye that squinted. The other eye, which was blue and wide open, seemed to be fixed on something that stood next to and slightly behind him. He neither invited the visitors inside, nor brought them out chairs, so that they were obliged to remain standing during the whole of the interview. But in any case, their stay would not be a long one.

“Ask him, please, Professor,” said Arabella, “whether he has any information about the art theft.”

“It can scarcely be called a theft, I think,” said Bergamini. “Those pieces did not belong to the person who was murdered. In fact, I think we had better leave the term ‘theft’ out of this, since technically, you yourself are a potential—”

“Oh, very well,” she interrupted. “Ask him what he remembers of the murder, and whether he knows the statue’s current whereabouts.”

As the professor spoke to him in Italian, the smuggler stiffened, and his nostrils dilated with fear or with rage or possibly something else. Bergamini spoke quietly, but menacingly—to Arabella’s mind, at least—like a Spanish inquisitor. Eventually, the man found his voice and replied at length, in a high-pitched, defensive chatter.

“He says,” said the professor, “that he is a farmer. He knows nothing about any murder.”

“What else?”

“I do not understand,
signorina.
”

“He has been talking for the last minute or more. What else did he say?”

“Oh, you know these peasants . . . so superstitious! Just some nonsense about . . . a curse. He says he will be killed if he helps you.”

It was now quite plain to see that the man
was
frightened. He would tell them nothing, not even when Arabella produced a wad of lire from her reticule, and riffled the edges enticingly with her thumb. At last she was obliged to give it up as a bad job. But after they had re-entered the carriage, the fellow’s wife, who had hidden herself on the other side of it so as to escape detection from the house, reached her arm through the window, and caught Bergamini by the sleeve. She began to talk, low and rapidly.

“The artworks were wrapped in burlap and canvas,” the professor translated. “They were brought here in her husband’s little donkey cart, and the next evening they were taken away again, in a larger oxcart, which contained more canvas and burlap-covered items.”