The Italian Wife (42 page)

A gentle hand stroked the back of her neck and the architect sat beside her, murmuring soft words until the tears stopped. Then she found her some flat focaccia bread that tasted of herbs and a chunk of crumbly cheese from the kitchen. Rosa remembered not to cram it into her mouth.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ll have to thank Roberto Falco when he arrives.’

‘When is he coming?’

‘When it’s dark.’

But the way she said it wasn’t right. To Rosa it sounded like a lie she was trying to make herself believe.

‘Signora, how will we get to your home if it’s dark? There is a curfew.’

The architect bent down and kissed Rosa’s head of tight curls and Rosa could feel the warmth of the kiss. ‘I’m not planning on going home tonight.’ She returned to the window but kept the light switched off. ‘We have other places to go.’ She smiled at Rosa in a way that only her father ever smiled at her.

The photographer arrived in silence.

The street was empty, nothing moved, but between Rosa’s blinks he suddenly stood in the doorway. In the darkness of the apartment he looked like a man with no face, just a shape with wide shoulders that filled the room and a way of moving that made her want to sit on his big shoulders and feel safe. She was too old for that, much too old at nine years. But she could remember what it felt like to ride on her father’s shoulders and a silly childish longing for it made her murmur a soft greeting.

The architect went to him, she flew across the room. Weightless in the air. Rosa did not know how it happened but the two separate shapes met with a small explosion of sound, as though the air fled from both of them as their bodies came together. The architect’s one good arm wrapped around the man’s strong neck and their heads merged, pressed tight against each other, as though any gap might steal their souls.

Rosa whispered a Hail Mary under her breath to say thank you to God, though she had her doubts about whether He was responsible. It seemed to Rosa that the architect had done this, the architect and the photographer together.

She crouched on the floor, wide-eyed in the darkness. Rosa had never seen this before, a man and a woman become so much a part of each other that their edges blurred as they held each other. She heard their breath, the warm twist of air that snaked across the room. She edged closer to them, shuffling on her knees over the floor because she suddenly needed to make the gap smaller, so that she could put out a hand and touch them. To discover what love felt like on her skin.

39

They set off long before dawn. Roberto said little, except to offer instructions and to keep Rosa tight against his side, so that she presented no target to any watchers.

It was Isabella’s idea to use the attics.

‘They are constructed in threes,’ she explained. ‘The attics of all three houses run into each other, with only a low wall inside the roof dividing them up. If we could get up into the attic, we could move along and climb out into the house two doors down.’

Roberto kissed her lips. ‘You,
cara
mia
, are a genius. They will be watching the door and windows of my house, but if we move quickly while it’s still dark and come out of the back of the house three doors away, we should stand a chance.’

‘Your neighbours might object,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll take that chance. The ones three doors down are elderly. They won’t hear a thing.’

But they did.

‘Signor Falco!’

The old couple stood on their landing in their nightshirts, their faces crumpled from sleep. Their eyes were wide with shock at seeing their neighbour and two strangers descend from their attic in the middle of the night.

‘Say nothing,
per favore
,’ Roberto said to them cheerfully. ‘Sorry to wake you.’

The man opened his mouth to shout his annoyance but his wife laid her hand on his arm to restrain him. ‘Look, Leonardo, look at the poor child. You’re frightening her.’ She smiled sweetly at Rosa and flapped her hands at her as though shooing a puppy from her door. ‘Off you go. Be good.’

‘Not much chance of that at this hour,’ the old man grumbled, but he stood back to let them pass. As they slipped noiselessly down the stairs he called out, ‘Whatever it is you’ve done, Falco, they’ll come after you. They are like hounds when they have the scent of blood and they’ll tear that child to bits without blinking an eye. Think about it.’ His voice was rising. ‘Think about it. Don’t be a stubborn fool. You can’t win.’

Isabella lifted her head as she hurried to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the old couple above. ‘If nobody does anything, nothing will ever change.’ She pointed straight at the front door. ‘Tell them out there not to be stubborn fools when they come banging on your door. See if they listen.’

Unexpectedly the old man started to laugh, a wheezy rattle of a laugh that sounded loud in the silence. ‘Get out of here,’ he chuckled, and went stumbling back to bed.

The three of them climbed out the rear window. Under cover of darkness they retrieved Roberto’s car from the blacksmith’s yard.

The road into the Lepini mountains zigzagged back and forth up the forested slopes, taking its time. These were ancient hunchbacked mountains that had no need to hurry. Dawn had painted the eastern slopes golden, turning the tree trunks to bronze and the leaves to gilded fluttering creatures that rippled to escape in the morning breeze.

The sounds of the forest drifted to Isabella inside the car, noises that she was unaccustomed to, its sighs and murmurs, its sudden startling cracks and creaks. The bark of some wild animal echoed between the dense trunks and she had no idea which direction it came from. It unnerved her. She could sense the forest’s desire to close around them, to swallow them whole in its relentless greenness. She could smell its breath, damp and earthy. She wrapped a scarf around her nose.

But the view as they climbed higher was breathtaking. Like a gift from the mountains it stretched out below them, the
Agro Pontino
, the vast plain that had once been the impenetrable wooded Pontine Marshes. Barren now and pockmarked by the gigantic yellow Tosi digging machinery, the fields would rise again green and fertile next spring and for many springs to come, to become the breadbasket of Rome.

Roberto had opened his driver’s window and was inhaling great gusts of clean mountain air deep into his lungs as if he could not rid himself of the stench of the cells fast enough. He could feel her gaze on him and turned to her but he didn’t smile. His eyes were solemn, a dark prison grey, and she knew he didn’t want her to make this journey into the mountains; he’d wanted to come alone.

Behind them on the rear bench sat Rosa, her young face brimming with excitement, her limbs free at last from the rigidity that had turned them stiff and spiky since entering the convent and it gave Isabella pleasure to see it. She could taste the child’s anticipation as sweet as honey in the air.

‘He’s here,’ Rosa said quickly. ‘I know Papa will be here. It’s where Mamma took me to see him. In Sermoneta.’

Sermoneta hovered on the edge of a cliff. Poised as if to fly. It was a crooked little medieval town that had been hewn out of the rock itself, two hundred and eighty metres high above the Pontine Plain to keep a watch out for marauders.

There had been plenty of those over the centuries, including Spanish and French troops, which was why the town boasted massive fortified stone walls and the impressive Caetani Castle. It was constructed in the fourteenth century with watchtowers built on high rocks to keep invaders at bay.

Isabella had never been here before. At any other time she would have been enchanted by the ancient beauty of the narrow streets and medieval stone houses, turned to amber by the morning sun while others hung back in the blackest shade that looked as old as the castle itself. But not today. Today they were relying on Rosa’s word. Carlo Olivera would be here. Rosa was certain. She could pick out the house, she told them over and over, as though she feared they would not believe her. She knew the trails in the mountains better than the wild boar.

‘Mamma brought me to Sermoneta many times.’ Her black eyes stared up at them, willing them to trust her.

So they had driven without headlights for much of the way, following the twisting silver ribbon of the road by moonlight, alert for any sound of a car behind them. But they saw no sign of pursuit and all three of them breathed more easily as the dark broken back of the mountains loomed closer. Dawn had spilled over the plain and a pearly mist rose from the canals, creeping on its belly up the first slopes of the Lepini mountains. Roberto parked the car hidden from sight deep under trees, well away from the stone walls of Sermoneta, and they sat in it, waiting and listening.

When they were certain the approach road was quiet, they climbed out of the car and started up the incline to the ancient Porta Annibaldi, the arched gateway through the massive walls into the heart of the town. A flower seller crouched in its heavy shade, an aged woman in black skirts and headscarf with creases cobwebbing her cheeks and the kind of voice that is the prerogative of the very deaf. It cut through the quiet morning air, as she talked to someone just out of sight on the other side of the archway.

‘You are bad for business,’ the old woman yowled at the other person. ‘Go away!
Va via
!’

The walls were too thick to hear the reply, but Roberto took hold of Rosa’s hand as they approached the shadow of the archway.

Isabella smiled at him. ‘You’re too jumpy. It’s just a flower seller having an argument with —’

A man stepped out from the far side of the arch as though he heard their footsteps, though Isabella was sure they had been silent. The sight of the dark uniform and the bicorn hat with the silver braid stopped her heartbeat, but she stood squarely in front of him and didn’t give ground.

‘Good morning, Colonnello Sepe. You are out early.’

Sepe’s thin features were taut with suspicion. ‘You also, Signora Berotti and Signor Falco. Very early for a stroll.’

He covered himself well, but he was surprised to find them in Sermoneta. Isabella could see his unease at this unexpected complication and she knew then that he hadn’t followed Roberto’s car. He was here ahead of them. Sepe bent down to Rosa, seeking out their weakest point, and curved his narrow figure over her as though poised to strike.

‘And you, Rosa Bianchi. What are you doing here? Have you come to find your father?’

‘No,’ Roberto intervened. ‘No, she came with us to get her out of the town for a —’

‘I asked the girl, Falco. Not you. Tell me, child of a traitor, why you have come to Sermoneta?’

‘Papa is
not
a traitor.’

‘Carlo Olivera is a traitor to his country and to his king and to the new world that Il Duce is building, so that Italy will be proud and powerful once more. Men like your father are scum and should be poisoned like rats in a drain.’ He gave a sour smile. ‘Is that not so, Falco? The offspring of rats should be hung up by their tails and fed to the crows.’

None of them saw it coming. Isabella was facing the wrong way, looking at Roberto, frightened that he would be provoked into retaliation against the police colonel. She could see the muscles in his neck tightening as Sepe goaded them, caught the flash of anger in his eyes that turned them from grey to a dull bruised purple and she was stretching a hand out to brush his elbow in warning.

But it was the child who attacked. She flew at Sepe with a feral shriek, leaping up at his thin jeering face. Clawing at his eyes like a wild cat. Sinking her small sharp teeth into the hollow flesh of his cheek and hanging there, while blood spurted down her face and drained into his black jacket where it glistened darkly.

Sepe’s gloved hand smacked her away with a roar and the girl flew backwards through the air. She slammed into the stone wall with a crack to the back of her head and slithered to the earth with no sound. Not even a cry of shock.

‘Rosa!’

But the child was already up on her feet when ten car
a
binieri charged into the archway at the sound of their colonel’s roar of anguish. She was off and running, ducking and dodging to avoid their grasping hands, twisting and turning, never letting her small feet stay still for a second.

‘Catch her!’ Sepe roared.

But it was like ordering his men to catch a weasel. She was too quick, too sharp, too sure of where she was heading. She vanished down a narrow cobbled side street no wider than a handcart, scampered up a set of stone steps and leapfrogged over a low wall. Isabella tried to keep up but lost her.

‘Isabella.’

Roberto was at her side.

‘Now,
pronto
! It’s the moment to walk away, Isabella. We’ll find Rosa.’ He drew Isabella’s arm through his, holding it tight. ‘Or more likely, she will find us when she’s ready.’

He steered her swiftly into a shadowed alleyway that led towards the outer defence wall but they were too late. The carabinieri were fanning out, scouring the tiny cobbled streets, moving swiftly from one to another. Roberto pulled Isabella deeper into the alley where it was overhung with tendrils of ivy and elder branches which hid them from view. They halted, their backs pressed against the ancient wall, listening hard. They could hear the clatter of boots, the shouts of the police as they searched. The rattle of rifles broke the still morning air and sent a wave of starlings sweeping in spirals up to the top of the square cathedral tower.

Isabella leaned her shoulder against Roberto’s. Her heart was thudding and she could feel its echo vibrating through him.

‘They’re close, Roberto. Sepe will take us both for questioning. He will want revenge after what Rosa just did to him. Right in front of his men.’ She paused, shrugged and gave him a lopsided smile. She couldn’t bring herself to say more.

‘I know, Isabella. We’ve slipped through Sepe’s fingers too often. He won’t let us go again.’

‘Why are they here? Why are the carabinieri in Sermoneta in such force? They were here before us, so they didn’t follow us.’ She caught the slam of a door somewhere and the sound of angry male voices.