Tuscan Rose (58 page)

‘Why?’ said the Marchesa, letting go of Rosa and stepping back. ‘Because I never wanted you. Because you were the child of a dimwit. I’d have to look at you every day and remember my stupid mistake. Besides that, you could never have been passed off as Ferdinando’s. He was dead by the time I got to Libya, and it was only a matter of time before people would find out that we had never met. I was nearly four months pregnant anyway. But people don’t ask so many questions about the dead. Nobody wishes to think ill of them, especially babies.’

The Marchesa was a monster. Rosa shouldn’t have cared. She’d been treasured by Madre Maddalena; her children adored her; she’d been loved by Luciano and Antonio. But this rejection from her birth mother stung her far more deeply than she could ever have imagined. She was taken straight back to the convent when the other children taunted her: ‘No Name! No Name!’

‘If you didn’t want me then why did you adopt Clementina?’ Rosa asked.

‘After we had been “married” a while, people expected a child,’ replied the Marchesa matter-of-factly. ‘But I couldn’t bear one with my brother, could I? And a girl was an infinitely better choice than a boy. If Emilio died and the boy married, I could have lost my
title. I resented that it passed over me in the first place. I should always have been the Marchesa Scarfiotti. Not
her
.’

Rosa slumped against a wall. This was Nerezza’s vanity: she would sink to all this just to keep a title. Rosa understood it now. Nerezza had pretended to die from an infection after Rosa was born; then she returned, masquerading as an ill Luisa so she could stay in isolation to complete her transformation. That’s why the Marchese had got rid of the old staff and kept only those who were loyal to Nerezza or hired new ones. It was also why the Marchese always looked sad. He was living a terrible lie. That was the shadow that Rosa had seen around him.

The Marchesa gave Rosa a treacherous smile. ‘Rather paradoxical, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘When you put me in front of the firing squad tomorrow, so eager to punish a “war criminal”, you will be executing your own mother. What will your fellow partisans think of that?’

Rosa wanted to get out of the room, to flee from this monstrosity that was her mother. For so long, she had yearned to know her origins. And this was the answer! To be an orphan—a ‘No Name’—was better than this. She ran for the door, but before she reached it her strength came back. She turned around and faced the Marchesa.

‘You thought it was a scandal for your brother to have killed his unfaithful bride in a fit of passion. What is it then to have been responsible for the deaths of innocent people! The Scarfiotti name will be cursed!’

‘But no,’ said the Marchesa, still smiling. ‘I can easily support your claim that you are my daughter and all this will belong to you when I am dead.’ She waved a hand, indicating the villa. ‘From tomorrow, millions in lire, a house in Paris, jewellery, furs…they could all be yours, my daughter. You, not Clementina, should be the rightful Marchesa Scarfiotti. Just think of that. A nothing from a convent is suddenly a rich marchesa!’

Rosa raised her chin. The Marchesa was deceitful to the end. She didn’t want to bestow her wealth on Rosa. She wanted her
convicted of murder when civil law was restored. There was no way for Rosa to prove she was Nerezza’s daughter. It would look like she had made the whole thing up to get her hands on the Scarfiotti fortune. But even if that hadn’t been the case, Rosa didn’t want anything from the Marchesa.

‘My name is Rosa Parigi,’ she said. ‘Wife of Antonio Parigi, the fine furniture dealer of Via Tornabuoni. Mother of Sibilla, Lorenzo and Giorgio. My battle name is Raven. I will oversee your execution tomorrow as a lieutenant in the army of the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy. The Scarfiotti name means nothing to me.’

With that, Rosa turned and left the room.

Madre Maddalena and Suor Dorotea led the Marchesa out of the villa the morning of her execution. Two partisans followed behind as the group made their way to where Rosa and the other partisans were waiting. The Jewish women and children had been sent to the gatekeeper’s cottage with the rest of the nuns. The site chosen for the execution was a field some distance from the house where there was a stack of hay to absorb any bullets that missed their target. The partisans were not following the tradition of having two guns containing blanks so no-one would know who had fired the fatal shot. There was no time for that sort of ceremony. The firing squad—Starling, Woodpecker and Partridge—were all using live ammunition. Rosa knew from nursing that death by shooting was rarely instantaneous. Sometimes the heart continued to beat for another two or three minutes. It could even take up to ten minutes for the person to die, in which case they were bleeding to death. That was why the lieutenant of a firing squad always carried a pistol to finish off the job if the volley of bullets did not hit the prisoner’s heart directly. That was why Rosa was holding her pistol now.

The nuns approached the field with the Marchesa, who, despite the warm weather, was wearing a black woollen dress trimmed in panther fur. Rosa stared at it, willing herself to see the
majestic jungle creature that had been slaughtered to make the outfit. But the animal didn’t appear. Rosa had lost her ability to see the source of things. She knew it was gone forever now. Perhaps she no longer possessed it because she had finally discovered her own origins.

Traitors were traditionally shot in the back. But Rosa had not arranged for that. She had not even ordered that the Marchesa have her hands tied for the execution. It was not for the sake of the Marchesa’s dignity that Rosa had neglected these arrangements. It was for her own. Although the Marchesa was a war criminal who had been sentenced to death for her crimes, Rosa could not forget that she was about to execute her mother.

‘The blindfold,’ said Madre Maddalena, offering the Marchesa a white cloth.

The Marchesa shook her head. ‘I don’t need it,’ she said. ‘I’m not afraid of death.’

For a fleeting moment Rosa saw Nerezza once again: proud, defiant, beautiful.
I shall gain mastery over my heart
, she had written in her notebook and on the lapis lazuli stone Rosa had found in her private chamber. Nerezza had succeeded. But at what cost? Rosa was sure that she heard music from somewhere: Chopin’s Nocturne No 2 in E-Flat Major. The piece she had played for Signor Trevi and his guests before she discovered the notebook; the night that Nerezza had ‘possessed’ her. From the way the Marchesa cocked her head, it seemed that she too heard the music. At the moment of death, mother and daughter shared a passion for a few seconds that they had never shared in life. The music faded.

‘Do you have any final words?’ Madre Maddalena asked the Marchesa.

The Marchesa lifted her chin. ‘Long live Mussolini!’ she replied. ‘He will see that my death is avenged.’

Rosa’s mother did not look once at her daughter but simply stared straight ahead at the three partisans who were to shoot her. Rosa knew it was her final snub. Madre Maddalena and Suor Dorotea moved away behind the partisans who were serving as
witnesses. They included Ada and Paolina. Fiamma was there as well, to check for a pulse after the Marchesa had been shot.

Rosa raised her arm. Her fingers trembled. ‘Ready!’

The men cocked their rifles. The Marchesa did not move a muscle. Not one part of her flinched.

‘Aim!’

When Rosa dropped her arm and gave the command to ‘Fire!’, she saw the partisan who had been tortured and hung like a piece of meat in the villa’s cellar; she saw Carlo and Orietta; she saw Luciano, Giovanni and all the partisans who had never seen Florence liberated. She remembered everyone who had suffered because of the Marchesa’s collaboration with the Nazis.

The bullets struck the Marchesa in the chest. She sank to her knees, still looking straight ahead. Then she collapsed backwards, her arms outstretched and her eyes staring at the sky. Fiamma rushed forward, followed by Rosa clutching her pistol.

‘There’s no need,’ Fiamma told Rosa, feeling for a pulse in the Marchesa’s neck. ‘She’s dead.’

Rosa nodded to the squad who put down their guns. The last legitimate Scarfiotti was gone. Rosa knew that the witches would leave the villa now. Justice had been done. But Rosa, standing over the bloody body of the mother she had never known, felt no closure; only desolation.

A few weeks after the Marchesa’s execution, Rosa and Fiamma were sitting in the garden with their patients when Rosa noticed a black car weaving its way up the driveway towards the villa. Starling saw it too and picked up his gun. Then Rosa glimpsed the Red Cross flag on the bonnet. So, they have finally come to requisition the villa for Allied soldiers, she thought. The car came to a stop near the fountain and Rosa’s face broke into a smile when she recognised the driver: Signora Corvetto. Clementina was beside her in the passenger seat.

Signora Corvetto, in a black dress with red cherries on it, rushed from the car and embraced Rosa. ‘Thank God you’re alive!’ she said, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I’ve lost so many friends!’

Rosa glanced towards Clementina.

‘She is becoming her cheerful self again,’ Signora Corvetto said, grimacing slightly. A serious look fell across her face and she lowered her voice. ‘You know when Clementina said that she had “bribed” a guard so she could come and see you…it was more than that. You know what they were like. You know what he would have expected.’

Rosa flinched. No, she hadn’t realised. She hadn’t given any thought to what Clementina might have suffered in order to warn her about the hostages at the villa. Rosa remembered how harshly she had spoken to Clementina and was sorry for that now.

‘Does she know?’ she asked Signora Corvetto. ‘That you are her mother?’

Signora Corvetto’s face lit up. ‘When I told her, Clementina said that she had often wished that I was her mother instead of the Marchesa Scarfiotti! Do you think we will be all right? Do you think I will be a good mother?’

Rosa reached out and clasped Signora Corvetto’s hand. ‘You will be wonderful,’ she said.

The question made Rosa think of her own children. With all that had happened, she believed that she and Antonio had done the best they could in sending Sibilla and the twins to Switzerland to keep them safe. But having not heard from her all this time, they might view her as a stranger when she went to collect them.

Signora Corvetto squeezed Rosa’s hand in return. ‘I think it’s been a relief to Clementina to know that she is not the daughter of that…
monster
. What a terrible burden that would be to bear! No-one will mourn that woman, no-one at all.’

Rosa knew that Signora Corvetto meant well, and she had only confided her feelings in Rosa because she had no idea who the Marchesa Scarfiotti had really been. Rosa herself had to agree with the sentiment: Clementina
was
lucky not to have the burden of that parentage.

‘What are your plans now?’ she asked.

‘The war is still raging in the north,’ Signora Corvetto said, ‘but when it’s over, I will take Clementina to Switzerland. We’ll make a new start there.’

‘That would be for the best,’ agreed Rosa. ‘But what about the villa? It belongs to Clementina now.’

Signora Corvetto turned towards the car and waved to Clementina to join them. ‘She wants to tell you about that herself,’ she said.

Clementina walked towards them. She was fresh-faced in her polka-dotted dress and bore no resemblance to the coquettish young woman Rosa had seen on the colonel’s arm.

Clementina lifted her eyes to Rosa. ‘Signorina Bellocchi,’ she began.

‘Signora Parigi,’ her mother corrected her.

‘Signora Parigi, I mean,’ said Clementina, blushing. ‘The villa has been a place of horrors but I want that to change. I want this villa to be a place of kindness and generosity.’ She took Rosa’s hand. ‘I intend to donate the villa so it can be used as a home for war orphans: not a horrible, impersonal institution but a place where children feel safe and loved. I know that you are the right person to make that transformation.’

‘We understand that you will be returning to your busy family life,’ Signora Corvetto added. ‘But we would be honoured if you would chair the board to decide on the running of the villa. We hope to find a suitable director, and if you have any recommendations we would be grateful to receive them.’

At that moment, Madre Maddalena walked out of the villa with a group of children behind her. She was going to read them a story in the sunshine. The sisters of Santo Spirito no longer had a convent, but they certainly had a new home if they wanted it. If they decided not to return to enclosure and obtained permission from the Pope, then this would be the perfect place for them.

‘I know exactly the person for the role,’ Rosa said.

Clementina nodded, understanding who Rosa had meant. Rosa thought of the times she had spent with Clementina as her
governess, with no idea that the bubbly girl was her cousin. Rosa had not been alone in the world; she’d had a blood relation. And she would still have her, although she would not tell Clementina about the Marchesa being her mother. She and Clementina were going to organise the orphanage together. Their work for the good of the children would be the bond between them.

‘Would you be offended if I suggested we change the name of the villa?’ Rosa asked.

‘Not at all!’ said Clementina, her eyes wide. ‘It needs a new beginning. We don’t want any associations with the past. Do you have an idea of what we should call it?’

Rosa saw Speranza and Pace grazing on Ada’s freshly planted flowers, oblivious to the scolding they would receive when Ada discovered them. Rosa had to stifle a laugh when she thought of the times the affection she and Fiamma held for the sheep had confounded the partisans.

She turned back to Clementina. ‘I have the perfect name,’ she said. ‘How about La Villa della Speranza e della Pace: the Villa of Hope and Peace?’

‘Yes!’ said Clementina, turning from Rosa to Signora Corvetto, who nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’s perfect! That’s exactly what we should call it!’