Death of a Serpent (33 page)

“Why, monk? Why before midnight? And why not here?”

He turned to her, rapped the marble floor with his staff. “Quiet!” he hissed.

Careful, Carmela
. Serafina wanted to pull her daughter inside to safety and rip apart this mad monk. But with one who had shown such quick deadly power, and her daughter’s life at stake, she was too afraid to try and overtake him now. Oh, Madonna, help us, she whispered.

“Keep your head down. Speak to no one. And hurry!” the monk said.

Arcangelo bounded up the aisle, past the chancel and the altar. Serafina opened the grille and the four exited. She led them through the hallway to the sacristy and down the stairs in time to see the door at the bottom closing. They ran down the stairs.

At the bottom Rosa caught Arcangelo’s elbow. “Stalk this monk, but as we rehearsed, as quietly as possible, staying a few meters behind us, keeping close to the walls. Careful: his knife never misses the heart.”

“Everyone, stay close to the walls!” Serafina said.

Arcangelo nodded, grabbed his revolver and, like a cat, slipped out the door.

Outside Serafina looked around. She saw the glint from Arcangelo’s revolver several blocks behind them, followed by two lolloping figures: the guards. Two others should be posted by the monk’s lair. Otherwise the piazza and surrounding streets were empty. The wind swirled around them, blowing their veils, knocking stones against their shoes, burning Serafina’s eyes. Ahead she saw two moving silhouettes.

“Where are they?” Scarpo asked.

Rosa pointed to the monk’s cross glimmering with light from early evening stars.

“Can’t we remove these habits?” Rosa asked.

Serafina shook her head.

They walked toward the lower city, hugging the walls. Buildings closed in on them. Serafina felt light-headed, squinting into the wind, watching the outlines of the monk’s swaying robe. As they passed a tavern, she heard drunken shouts from within, the sudden roar of laughter, pounding fists on wooden tables. The stench of urine gagged her. Rosa held a handkerchief to her nose. They followed the monk and Carmela as they descended through twisting alleys and garbage-strewn passageways.

Soon Serafina smelled seaweed, heard pounding waves in the distance. Her curls tightened. Her wimple bit into her face. She saw Rosa’s veiled form thrashing in the blowing force and was glad for the presence of five men.

Suddenly Arcangelo yelled, “Stop!”

A large wooden crate fell from an upper-story window, crashing to the cobbles, missing Serafina by a hair’s-breadth, and sending debris flying. She stumbled. Rosa gasped. Scarpo and Beppe steadied her before she fell.

“Get back!” she said to Rosa, Scarpo, and Beppe. “Keep to the walls.”

Serafina stood in full view, ready to meet the monk as he approached.

“Give her up, monk!” she yelled.

Ahead, the gleaming cross stopped. The dark specter turned. With a jerk of his free hand, the monk pointed to Serafina. He yanked Carmela in front of him, holding her neck in the crook of his arm, and pushed her forward.

Struggling back up the sharp incline, dragging the brazen serpent behind him, he made his way toward Serafina.

Knee-deep in offal from the fallen crate, Serafina stood, rooted to ground, staring at the approaching monk. Arcangelo and the guards hugged the walls behind them.

“Back here!” Arcangelo yelled.

Serafina turned, saw him pointing to an opening in a building a few meters behind them. “Back!” She motioned to Rosa, Scarpo, Beppe.

“In here, quick!” Arcangelo shouted.

They scurried into an alcove and flattened themselves against the wall. Taking in every detail, Serafina saw Beppe fumbling with something underneath his scapula. Arcangelo whispered to the guards who drew their pistols and retreated several paces.

Serafina brushed garbage off her sleeves. She looked at the dull shine of Scarpo’s shepherd’s knife, the beads of sweat on Rosa’s face. Serafina squeezed her friend’s hand. “Almost over now. A slight change in plans, but if this works, we won’t have to fight him in cave,” she said.

The alcove was cramped for five people and Serafina heard the dull thud of the monk’s staff growing louder, Scarpo’s habit scraping on the stucco wall. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she pointed to a door at the end of a small corridor. Scarpo pounded his fist on the wood.

Serafina listened for movement inside, but all she heard was the beating of her heart.

“I count to three, we push,” Scarpo said.

They nodded.

Counted.

Pushed.

Door creaked.

“Harder,” Serafina whispered.

They compressed against one another, a determined wedge.

Serafina ground her heels into the earth. Her stomach lurched, her blood thundered.
Oh God and all you angels, where are you when my poor Carmela needs you?

She heard footfalls and brass clanging on stone, felt him coming closer.

Tap-step-step-tap
.

Louder.

Tap-step-step-tap
.

“Won’t budge,” Arcangelo whispered.

“Must,” Rosa said. She stepped back, and with a mighty heave from her massive haunches, slammed her elbow into the back of Beppe who retched in surprise.

The force of her blow opened the door, sent them all careening, falling over one another into the room like rocks cascading into the abyss.

Scarpo straightened the hinges.

Serafina heard the click, felt the whoosh of air as the door shut.

Inside, an old woman with surprised eyes sat in the far corner, her candle guttering, one hand covering her mouth.

Scarpo tore off his headdress and turned to the woman, mouthing the word, “Bandits!” and she, nodding at a truth she understood, crossed herself.

He drew his revolver with one hand, clutched his knife in the other, and waited by the door.

Beppe crouched down in front of the keyhole.

Serafina stood next to Scarpo, ready to seize her daughter.

She turned and saw the madam tiptoe to the stove, grab the iron pan sitting on its top. Listing from side to side, Rosa headed over to where the granny sat and whispered something in her ear. The woman hunched her shoulders, nodded. Rosa picked up a ladder-back chair and returned to the entryway, placing the chair near the door, opposite Scarpo.

Arcangelo joined Beppe and they took turns peering through the keyhole. “They’re coming,” Arcangelo said, and the two young men stepped aside.

No one moved.

“Let go of me!” Serafina heard Carmela say from outside as the monk and her daughter approached the alcove.

A beat of silence. Then a wail, unearthly.

They waited for what seemed like hours for the monk to enter. Serafina reached for the door. Scarpo restrained her. Sweat streamed from his scalp as he motioned for the young men to stand alongside Serafina.

In one graceful arc, Rosa jumped up and stood on top of the chair’s seat, skillet held aloft, while Scarpo waited by her side. Serafina saw motes of dust churn in the madam’s wake.

Loud kicks. Door rattled.

Scarpo yanked it open, causing the monk to teeter off balance and stumble inside. His staff clattered to the ground.

Carmela broke free and lost her balance.

After the monk regained his footing, he pointed to Serafina, reached inside his sleeve, and pulled out a knife.

“Now you die!”

“Out of the way!” Beppe shoved Serafina aside as the monk flung his knife.

Even now she can hear it hum through the air, can see the blade meant for her body find a home in Beppe’s chest.

She stared at Beppe’s frozen face as he fell freely through the air. His body landed with a thud, the knife sticking in his chest.

“Carmela!” Serafina grabbed her daughter and held her. Both women watched as Arcangelo dragged Beppe’s body away from the struggle.

Scarpo lifted the monk up by his cape and held him out to Rosa.

She slammed the top of the cleric’s head with her skillet.

Sandaled feet kicked the air.

Squeezing the monk’s cape, Scarpo shook him hard, shook him until his teeth rattled and his sandals fell off.

The monk continued to squirm.

Rosa struck him again with the skillet.

This time his masked head drooped.

Scarpo released his hold, and the figure dropped, deflated, folding in on itself like a rag doll.

Unmasked

“W
hat have I done?” Serafina knelt, cradling Beppe’s body as the others looked on, silent.

Arcangelo reached for the knife sticking into the fallen man’s chest.

“Leave it,” Scarpo said.

“Stupid, I am so stupid. Look what I’ve done! Oh, Madonna, plead for me!” But it couldn’t be.
Turn back the clock
. How stupid she had been. How brazen. Fickle. Beppe never had a chance, gave his life for her. Blood pounded in her ears as she held him.

Rosa knelt beside her. “No blood?” she asked. “Eyelids closed? Cheeks red? Nostrils going in and out, chest working up and down?”

She shook Serafina’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with you—lost your wizardry?”

Beppe opened his eyes, peered down his nose at the knife sticking out of his chest. Smiling, he yanked it out.

“Losing his touch, the monk,” Rosa said.

“Misjudged the thickness of the cloth,” Scarpo said.

“And this,” Beppe said. He fumbled under his scapula and pulled out a thick pouch. “I heard Donna Fina say he never misses, the monk. So I tied this around my chest.”

Serafina undid the pouch and retrieved a book. “
Natural History, Volume Two, Pliny the Elder
. But Beppe, you can’t possibly read this. Where did you get it?”

“Giulia,” he said, sitting up. “You said, ‘Ask Giulia about the polar star.’ So I did. She gave me this book to read. Her father’s book, she said, about the heavens.”

The monk began to stir. With a yank, Arcangelo and Scarpo grabbed his arms, stood him up. Beppe removed his hood.

Serafina heard silk rubbing against hair, a soft sucking sound, as golden locks lifted up, broke free, and tumbled about the monk’s shoulders.

For a moment no one moved. They were without words, a tableau.

“Lola!” Rosa said.

Serafina unwound the rope she had tied around her waist earlier.

“You think of everything!” Scarpo said, flashing a smile and taking the rope from her. He tied Lola’s hands and feet. Lola stood in stillness, gazing at something beyond.

Another Body

W
hile Scarpo, Beppe, and the guards took Lola to the Municipal Building, Arcangelo walked back to town with Rosa and Serafina.

Before they separated, Serafina told Scarpo, “Renata prepared a late supper. Come to our home afterward.”

“Famished I am. No food for days.”

“At least not since the noon meal.” Serafina looked at Carmela. “We’ll grab a bite, before tending to Rosalia.”

As they crossed the piazza, she spotted the ragpicker’s mule and cart tied to a post near the fountain.

“Poor mule,” Arcangelo said. “Who would leave an animal tied up like that?”

“After we eat, you and Beppe see to him.”

“If he’s still here,” Arcangelo said.

“He’ll be here. Take him to our barn. We’ll need to search the cart.”

“The wizard speaks in riddles,” Rosa said, slow in her gait. The weight of the evening was taking its toll.

“Lola’s the ragpicker.”

“I still can’t believe it. Lola, the killer? Why?” Carmela asked.

“You can’t believe it. What about me?” Rosa asked. “Took her in, I did. The best of my girls. Trusted her.”

“So full of life, Lola. Bossy, conniving, two-faced, but not a killer,” Carmela said.

Serafina said, “Lola should be locked up. Mad. Suffered as a child, poor lost soul.”

“Poor lost soul? Killed my girls, she did,” Rosa said. “Took my coins. Would have taken my house, if it weren’t for you. That’s how poor and lost she is.”

“That’s her mule and cart, her means of transporting bodies and costumes from the monk’s lair to your house to the Duomo,” Serafina said. “And the reason
rigor mortis
was broken?—Lola killed her victims, went back to work, entertaining her customers, then returned to retrieve the body, using the cart to transport it to your stoop,” Serafina said, opening her front gate. “What’s more, Lola was the ruffled mourner at Gemma’s wake.”

Rosa stopped. “How do you know that?”

Serafina gestured to her temple with a forefinger. “Couldn’t sleep one night. Conjured the truth from the facts, the many times I’d run into the ragpicker and his cart when he tried to shoot me or had an altercation in town or wounded my son on the road.”

Rosa and Carmela looked at each other and shook their heads.

Serafina said, “Lola, the actress. She costumed herself as a monk, as a mourner, as a ragpicker, shifting her shape to suit her situation.”

Serafina saw Arcangelo untying the mule. “All right, Arcangelo, we can’t stand to see the beast suffer any longer, either. Take him now to our stable.”

• • •

By the time Serafina and the madam reached Villa Rosa, it was after midnight. Mist rose from the sea.

“Not in her room, Rosalia,” Rosa said. They checked with the laundress and the cook, the upstairs maids, the downstairs maids.

They spoke with the other prostitutes, those who were free.

“Haven’t seen her all evening,” one of the women said.

In Scarpo’s absence, Rosa and Serafina went outside to speak with one of the guards. No sound, except for the waves and the wind.

“And you say she just disappeared?” Serafina asked.

A torch lit his face. He nodded. “Late morning it was. Out the front door she goes, the girl, all dressed up. Takes a side path, doubles back along the grass and down to the rocks. We follow, Orazio and I, sneaking so she doesn’t see. Scrambles down the rocks, she does. Walks on the shore a ways and,
presto
, disappears into a hole between two big rocks. So we wait for her to come out.”

“And you didn’t follow her inside?”

“Never. We don’t go inside nowheres. Work only the outside. Orders. So we wait. Hasn’t come out, the girl. Take turns, we do, keeping a safe watch. Orazio, he’s there now.”