Tuscan Rose (47 page)

‘So another relative can accompany him,’ said Starling.

‘There isn’t anyone,’ answered Rosa. A new thought stung her. What if the partisans didn’t let her go? What would happen to Antonio?

Starling sent Luciano an exasperated look. Luciano turned away from him. Rosa wasn’t sure if he was even listening to the conversation any more. Perhaps he was thinking about Carlo.

‘Too bad then,’ said Starling. ‘Your husband will have to stay in prison.’

Rosa stood up. ‘He’s Jewish!’ she said.

Luciano looked back towards her. If Rosa thought that getting down on her knees and begging would have helped, she would have done it. Antonio was in prison. He needed her. Rosa could not have begged the SS officer for her own life when he pointed
the gun to her head, but she would sink to any level to save her husband.

‘If you let me leave to get my husband out of prison, I swear on my life that I shall return,’ she said. ‘I will be your nurse. But please let me get my husband to safety first!’

The men said nothing. Luciano was looking at Rosa but she couldn’t read his expression. Something inside her broke. Tears poured down her face.

‘He’s Jewish!’ she wept. ‘Don’t you understand what will happen to him if he’s left in prison? I swear on my life that I will come back!’

Starling shook his head. ‘I told you we couldn’t trust her,’ he said to Luciano. ‘The first sign of sacrifice and she’s crying—’

‘Her husband is Jewish,’ said Partridge, cutting him off. ‘Let her go. I believe she will come back to help us. Maybe her husband will join us?’

Rosa nodded. Yes, of course Antonio would. Both she and her husband had changed their views on what they were willing to do to fight the fascists. For a moment Rosa felt a light of hope but Luciano snuffed it out.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said. ‘Someone might recognise her.’ He turned to Rosa. ‘After what’s happened, they’ll be looking for you.’

Rosa knew that Luciano meant that she might be tortured the same way as Carlo had been to reveal information about the partisans. She could see the conflict in his eyes. He wanted to help her, but the same way as he’d had to master his emotions over Carlo, he expected her to master hers as well.

‘I’ll take the risk,’ she told him.

‘We won’t,’ said Starling. ‘The first slap and you will be blabbing everything you know. You’ll get us all killed. None of us can consider our own petty lives any more. Don’t you think that the men in this band have wives and children—families who might be killed at any moment by the Germans or fascists? Can’t you think beyond your own trivial worries—’

‘Enough!’ Luciano said, raising his hand to silence Starling. ‘You are talking disrespectfully to a nurse. I’m sure she understands sacrifice.’ He glanced at Rosa. ‘You can’t go but we’ll send somebody. We have contacts in the city. They will pose as a relative and get your husband out of prison.’

Rosa could have kissed Luciano’s hands to thank him for his mercy. She realised that she had created tension between him and his second-in-command and hoped that the rift would not last.

When Partridge led her from the room, she heard Starling hiss at Luciano: ‘Who is this woman to you that you are willing to endanger one of our precious contacts and possibly our whole operation?’

Luciano said something in reply, but Rosa didn’t hear what it was.

The following day, Rosa maintained a surreal calm while she went about performing the tasks placed before her. It was as if she and Fiamma had changed uniforms the way actors change costume and now they were playing new roles. They set up a makeshift hospital in one of the barns and wrote out a list of supplies that the unit planned to obtain during a raid on a fascist-supporting village.

‘Do you know how to clean guns?’ Partridge asked them.

Rosa and Fiamma exchanged glances, then shook their heads.

A smile came to Partridge’s face. ‘No, I don’t suppose two nurses from Florence would know. Well, I’ll teach you because it’s rather important that our guns work.’

The idea of handling a device whose sole purpose was to end life was abhorrent to Rosa. She hated everything about guns—their weight, the metal smell, even the shape of them. What she had seen in the past days had left her with a disgust for the human race and their bloodlust. She understood why Madre Maddalena and the nuns of Santo Spirito desired to shut themselves away in order to be close to God. To be amongst humans was to be tainted by their murderous instincts. They killed animals for sport and each other out of greed. Still, the task of cleaning guns was given
to them for a reason, and Rosa and Fiamma followed Partridge’s instructions to his satisfaction.

‘The Falcon won’t approve,’ he said, handing them a pistol each. ‘But you are to keep these with you at all times.’

There was something in Partridge’s manner that reminded Rosa of Friar Tuck.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
had been one of Nonno’s favourite books. Rosa imagined that if Partridge had not been fighting, he would have been at a bar somewhere indulging in wine and song. But from the way he could unload and reload the pistols within seconds, she also understood that he would be a formidable soldier in battle.

‘You didn’t trust me yesterday,’ she said to him. ‘Today you are giving me a gun. Things change quickly around here!’

Partridge smiled wryly but then his face turned serious. ‘I don’t believe in leaving women defenceless. The guns are for your protection only,’ he said. ‘If you are cornered by a German, the first bullet is for him. Should you miss, the second bullet is for yourself.’

The men left on a reconnaissance mission in the afternoon. The priest was taken with them, but whether that was to return him to the village or execute him as a traitor, Rosa didn’t know. Priest or nun, no-one’s position was sacred any more. Rosa had not seen Luciano all morning. Was he avoiding her? Maybe he had gone somewhere to mourn Carlo.

Rosa and Fiamma were sent to the farmhouse to help with duties there. Despite their savage lifestyle, the partisans took pride in their military discipline. Rosa and Fiamma were set to work by Marisa and the other older peasant woman, Genoveffa, cleaning uniforms and ironing them. They had to scrub their own nurses’ uniforms and aprons to get the blood out of them.

Afterwards in the kitchen, Marisa held out two dead rabbits by their ears. ‘Skin them!’ she said to Rosa in a thick dialect. Her complexion was dark but had a healthy glow to it. She wasn’t refined in any way and she smelled of stale sweat and garlic, yet
there was an air of majesty in her face with its noble nose and full lips. She didn’t slouch like most peasant women but held her chin high like a queen.

Rosa looked at the bloody corpses in Marisa’s hand and had a vision of two rabbits following their kittens into their burrow. She shook her head. ‘I’d rather clean the toilet,’ she said.

Genoveffa laughed but Marisa scowled. She said something in dialect to Genoveffa that Rosa didn’t understand. The older woman stopped laughing.

‘Then clean it!’ said Marisa, her eyes flashing at Rosa. ‘If you think you are so superior!’

Rosa was unfazed. It was obvious from the looks Marisa had sent Luciano the previous evening and the disdainful way she regarded Rosa that she was his woman. He was a sensual man and being a loner did not mean that he wouldn’t take comfort in such vital and attractive flesh. For her own part, Rosa viewed the situation between herself, Luciano and Marisa with impassiveness. When she had first recognised Luciano, she had felt immediately the warmth that had once existed between them. She knew then that she had never stopped loving him; she had only stopped being with him. But now there was Antonio and the children and that changed everything. It was her family that she had longed for the previous night when she lay down on the hard bunk in the attic, not Luciano.

Two days passed before the men returned from their mission. The soldiers seemed relieved, which made Rosa assume that the mission had been a success and the priest had been spared. But Luciano looked troubled. He would not meet Rosa’s eyes. After the men had eaten and he had given them their orders for the following day, he entered the house and called for Rosa.

‘I want to speak to you,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘Come outside.’

Rosa felt Marisa’s gaze burning into her back as she followed Luciano out into the yard and then to the storeroom he used as an office. He closed the door behind them.

‘I have bad news,’ he said, after clearing his throat. ‘Antonio has been transported to Germany.’

Rosa nearly toppled over with the shock. The worst thing she could have imagined had happened! Cold chills ran over her. She sank to the floor and buried her face in her arms.

‘Be brave!’ said Luciano. ‘As far as our contact could ascertain, it’s a labour camp he’s been sent to, along with other inmates from Le Murate. A camp for Italian forced labourers—
not
a concentration camp for Jews. The conditions will be harsh but the aim isn’t to kill them.’

‘But it’s only a matter of time, isn’t it?’ Rosa asked, trembling so violently she could hardly get the words out. ‘Before they discover he’s Jewish?’

Luciano crouched down beside her. ‘He’s not a member of the synagogue and he has been a practising Catholic for all his life. He married you in a church so there is nothing outwardly to mark him as a Jew.’

Rosa was surprised Luciano’s contact had been able to find out so much so quickly. ‘But the city records,’ she said. ‘His father and grandparents were Jewish.’

Luciano studied his palms. ‘I think you have some luck there. When the mayor of Florence heard that the Germans were coming, he destroyed hundreds of documents regarding citizens’ racial origins. The only way Antonio could be discovered to be Jewish is if someone denounces him.’

Rosa tried to be reassured by Luciano’s words. She closed her eyes to calm herself but the picture she saw of Antonio’s face in her memory made her cry. She had missed getting him out of prison and away from the Germans by a few hours.

She looked up and saw that Luciano had turned away from her, his jaw clenched. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

He stood up and moved to the opposite side of the room. ‘The other nurse…she said one of the partisans had been hung on a hook. You said they had been beaten. What she described was far worse.’

A pain gnawed at Rosa’s side. ‘Fiamma fainted from fear,’ she told him. ‘She doesn’t know what she saw.’

Luciano clenched his fists and Rosa could see that he didn’t believe her. The truth was going to come out sooner or later.

‘How could I tell you?’ she asked him. ‘How could I describe what they had done to Carlo? It would have driven you mad. The Villa Scarfiotti is like a fortress. If you had known, would you have had the strength to resist getting yourself killed trying to avenge him?’

‘What happened?’ Luciano shouted, more in anguish than in anger.

Rosa’s hands shook. She did her best to describe the scene in the storeroom and recounted all that had happened from the massacre at the hospital to the time when Luciano and the other men had rescued the villagers.

Luciano stood up and punched his fist into the wall. The storeroom shook with his rage. ‘Carlo!’ Luciano clenched his fists again and turned to Rosa. ‘You said you gave him morphine. How much? Enough to stop the pain?’

‘Enough…’ Rosa broke down in tears. ‘Enough to end his suffering.’

The silence in the room was oppressive. Neither Rosa nor Luciano moved. It took a moment for the meaning of Rosa’s words to register with Luciano. He rubbed his hands over his face.

‘Carlo!’ he said, turning to her again. ‘You killed him? You overdosed him on morphine?’

‘They were going to torture him again,’ Rosa cried. ‘They were going to…’ But she couldn’t get the last words out, couldn’t tell Luciano that they were going to skin his brother alive. Whatever Rosa had failed to do, at least she had spared Carlo that.

Luciano rushed at her. Rosa was sure he was going to strike her and flinched, waiting for the pain that would come with the blow. She was surprised when he dropped to his knees and took her hands. His flesh was cold and he was trembling. All traces of the Falcon had gone. He was his old self. Rosa pulled him to her and cradled his head against her chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘I would have done anything for Carlo.’

Luciano looked up at her with pain-stricken eyes. ‘I know you would have,’ he said, his voice catching in his throat. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough for having that kind of courage.’

As part of the military unit, Rosa and Fiamma were given codenames, unlike Marisa and Genoveffa. Rosa was Raven because of her dark looks and Fiamma was Nightingale in reference to her nursing. Despite Partridge telling them that they had to think like soldiers, however, they were provided with dresses to wear because the men didn’t like to see women in trousers. When the Flock, as the unit termed itself, discovered Rosa’s skill with languages even Starling was impressed.

‘A band near La Rufina was wiped out when they were penetrated by a German spy posing as a French Allied soldier,’ he told Rosa. ‘We have the British and American soldiers to interrogate people in English to catch any traces of an accent, but no-one who can switch from French to German to Italian to catch anybody out. You’re useful to us but also to the other units around Florence.’

When word spread amongst the partisan bands that the Flock had two nurses and a translator in their midst, Rosa’s and Fiamma’s skills were in constant demand. But that put them in danger too.

One day Luciano received a visit from the commander of a neighbouring band.

‘We want to take Raven with us on a reconnaissance mission,’ he told Luciano. ‘We believe there is a German-fascist command setting itself up a few miles from our camp. If we can get Raven close enough, she can tell us what the Germans are saying to each other.’

Luciano shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Lungo,’ he said, using the commander’s battle name. ‘She’s not skilled enough for that sort of mission. She’d only get herself and your men killed.’

After the commander had left, Rosa overheard Starling say to Luciano, ‘You can’t protect her like a little dove. You have a
weapon there and sooner or later you will have to use it. We have a war to win, you know.’