But first she had to take that step, to face the man who had killed her husband and crippled her. She didn’t hesitate but walked into the room, eyes wide open. The room had been turned into a makeshift bedroom, dominated by a handsomely carved wooden bedstead, but it must have at one time been a dining room because a table and chairs were pushed against the wall out of the way. The walls were rough-plastered and white-washed, with a framed picture of the Madonna hung in pride of place.
A man lay on the bed, a man with blond hair matted with dried blood and intense blue eyes that fixed on her with a brilliance that glittered with fever. The man was the one in the photograph that Roberto took at the convent, the Communist who called himself Carlo Olivera, the one Isabella had sworn on Luigi’s grave to kill.
She approached the bed that was crumpled and stained with blood, and saw the gun he clutched in his hand that was lying weak and trembling at his side.
‘We meet at last,’ she said fiercely.
Another man with his back to her was bending over a medical bag on the other side of the bed and he swung round quickly at the sound of her voice. Isabella stared, aghast, at the tall bespectacled doctor.
It was her father.
41
Roberto could smell the sickness. The room stank of it. Of sickness and pain. And blood. He had once walked into a barn full of goats that had been savaged by a rabid dog and it had smelled like this. He stepped away from the ginger-haired escort, whose eyes never left the spot where Roberto’s gun was now concealed under his jacket, and took a position with his back to the wall, alert and watchful. Isabella’s father put down the syringe he was holding and stalked around the bed to stand in front of his daughter.
‘Don’t, Isabella, don’t look so shocked.’ He peered over his spectacles at her with stern disapproval. ‘What are you doing here? Get out now. This…’ he waved a hand at the ashen figure on the bed, ‘is no place for you.’
Isabella seemed to shake herself, her hair rippling back to life before she did. As though for a split second something had stopped working inside her.
‘You knew, Papa. All this time you knew, didn’t you, that it was Carlo Olivera and where he was hiding? You knew and you never told me. Why? Why keep it from me?’
Dr Cantini frowned at her. ‘You’d been through enough. I wanted you to forget.’
Her eyes flashed angrily at both men. ‘Did you really think I could forget?’ She moved closer to the bed. ‘I understand your hatred of my husband,’ she said to Olivera, ‘but did you think that you could kill him and maim me and I would forget?’ She placed her hand on the mattress beside him and stared down into the fierce blue eyes, bending over him. Blocking his sight. Filling his mind with the person who had come for vengeance.
He knew it. Roberto could see it in his eyes. Just as clearly as Roberto knew it himself. Yet he didn’t cry out. They both saw her slide her left hand into the sling that supported her right arm and let her fingers steal around the knife that they were certain lay there, though they couldn’t see it. She had hidden it well.
‘Signora Berotti,’ Carlo Olivera whispered, as his ice-blue eyes scrutinised her face, ‘you are hating the wrong person. All that rage. Tearing you apart. When the person you should be hating is Benito Mussolini.’ He spat out a thick jet of blood-streaked spittle, as though the name burned his tongue. ‘He is the one you should be saving an assassin’s blade for. Not me.’
‘Mussolini is not the killer who pulled the trigger that destroyed my life, Signor Olivera. You are!’
Peppe stepped towards her but Roberto blocked his path.
With a great effort Olivera pushed himself to sit upright, forcing Isabella back. His shirt hung open to reveal a thick pad of bandages across his chest, fresh scarlet stains flowering across them with the movement.
‘Don’t, Carlo,’ Dr Cantini groaned. ‘For God’s sake, what is the point of my patching you up if you —’
But Olivera brushed aside the objections with a sharp twist of one shoulder. He was propping himself up on one hand and Roberto could see the force of will keeping him there. His lips had turned grey and sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat. This was not a man who listened to others telling him what to do. The Communist leaned his face close to Isabella’s, their eyes fixed on each other. Her slender body was quivering and a low-pitched sound was coming from her, vibrating the air between them.
‘I let you come here today,’ Olivera told her, ‘because you were kind to my daughter when she needed me and I couldn’t be there. You have helped her, so now I help you.’
He glanced away to Rosa who was on her knees on the floor on the far side of the bed in an attitude of fervent prayer. Her eyes tight shut, her small hands clasped around her mother’s crucifix, her lips moving in silent prayer.
‘Come here, Rosa.’
Instantly she was beside him, her head tucked against his bandaged ribs. He stroked her cropped curls for a moment, but without warning he suddenly wrapped his fingers hard around the hand in Isabella’s sling. It must have hurt but she gave no sign of it, and Roberto could sense her father’s concern as intense as his own, but both knew better than to intervene. This was between them, Olivera and Isabella. Roberto fought down the desire to rip her away from the man’s grasp.
‘Signora Berotti,’ Olivera said with an odd smile that sat crookedly on his lean face, ‘you do not have it in you to kill. Look at my eyes, look hard. Yes, you see, don’t you, what is destroyed in a person each time a trigger is pulled. I am willing to pay that price for my country. But it is not in you, you don’t have what it takes to kill.’ His eyes flicked over to Roberto. ‘Unlike your big friend over there who does.’
‘You mistake me, signore,’ Isabella said quietly.
Roberto saw it then. What he had not until now believed. In the darkening of her eyes. He saw that the Communist was wrong. No warning. No hesitation. No doubting herself. The knife was in her hand and the blade was pinned against Olivera’s throat.
The air had become solid. No one breathed. No one moved. The child whimpered. Olivera’s blue eyes turned the colour of death as the reality of his mistake drained all certainty from them.
‘Isabella,’ Roberto said softly.
That was all. Just her name. To call her back. But she didn’t hear. She was somewhere he couldn’t reach her and he knew it was almost too late. He moved towards her.
‘No, Roberto.’
A trickle of blood slid down the Communist’s throat. His eyes didn’t leave hers.
‘For God’s sake, Carlo,’ her father shouted, ‘tell her. Tell her the truth. I won’t see her hang for you.’ He turned to his daughter and his face was suddenly ten years older, the flesh hanging from his cheekbones. ‘Tell Isabella the truth or I will.’
Isabella blinked. The blade froze. ‘What truth?’
Olivera let himself breathe. ‘I did not kill your husband. I was not the one who pulled the trigger to fire the bullets that took his life and wounded you.’
A shake of her head. A tightening of her mouth. ‘You’re lying.’
‘No, he’s not,’ her father insisted.
‘Who then? If it wasn’t you, who was it?’
The silence in the room was only broken by the moan of the child. She lifted her head from her father’s side and tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘It was Mamma.’
Isabella dropped the knife.
Olivera nodded. ‘It was my wife. Allegra Bianchi.’
42
‘It’s not true.’
The words faded as soon as they fell from Isabella’s lips. She knew she was holding on to something that no longer existed, like clinging to a ghost. The rage and hatred that had solidified around her heart for so many years seemed to crack open and she could feel her blood flowing hot and vital through her veins. No longer thick and heavy, no longer sterile and sluggish. But her mind struggled to grasp what was happening.
‘Why? Why would Allegra Bianchi try to kil
l me and then bring me her child?’
Nothing made sense.
The small room with the stink of blood in it suddenly felt too crowded for her thoughts, as they twisted around each other, seeking a way to understand what was going on. Why had Carlo Olivera allowed her to come so close? He was wounded and sick. In danger and in desperate need of help. So why let her, of all people, inside the house? Was it in return for her father’s care, a payment for his medical treatment? For his silence? All this time, year after year, for a decade her father had known Luigi’s killer was Allegra Bianchi.
Yet he had kept it a secret.
Why?
She felt the question roaring inside her.
What reason did the troubled woman with the wild hair and the angry eyes have for wanting to kill Luigi and herself?
The people in the attic?
The thought flashed into Isabella’s mind. Was that it? Did someone close to her die in the fire that Luigi started in the Communist meeting house? The one Giorgio Andretti had told her about.
She spun around to Roberto. He was the only one she could trust in this maze of lies and secrets, and she found him right behind her, guarding her back.
‘Isabella,’ he said urgently. ‘Leave now. Walk away from this —’
The door of the room burst open and Alessandro rushed into the sickroom. He flung himself to the bedside of Carlo Olivera, panting hard, eyes wide with panic.
‘They’re here! The Blackshirts are here. They’re marching up the street. Someone in the town has betrayed us, Carlo.’
Roberto was the first to react.
He seized Isabella’s shoulder. ‘We leave right now. If you stay, you will be shot for helping a traitor.’ His tone was clear and decisive, his grey eyes were on her face.
Carlo Olivera was swinging himself off the bed, but he buckled as soon as his feet hit the floor.
‘Merda!’
Isabella fought down her fear. She saw her father and the ginger-haired Peppe leap to support him on each side, as Rosa grabbed the gun from under his pillow. Isabella snatched up her knife from the floor and followed Roberto to the door. She pressed herself to his side, making no sound. Out in the street she could hear the steady beat of Blackshirt boots. Shouts snapped through the bright morning air, edging closer.
‘It’s too late to run, Isabella,’ Roberto said in a low murmur. ‘We’ll have to fight.’ They both knew what the outcome would be. He pulled his gun from under his jacket and Isabella wanted to claw it from his hand.
‘No,’ she whispered, wrapping her arm around his to hamper it. ‘Don’t.’
He touched her face, a brief heart-stopping touch. Then he unwound her arm from his and stood behind the door, drawing her to his far side.
‘Isabella!’
It was her father’s voice, urgent and low.
‘This way!’
Peppe and Alessandro were prising up one of the flagstones from the floor, while her father held Olivera on his feet, though he swayed with the effort. Instantly Roberto strode over and lifted the stone clear of the floor. Underneath lay a black hole with metal rungs set into the rock. Isabella was staring into the mouth of a tunnel and its meaning made her almost double up with a fierce pain that cut through her like a knife blade. It was relief.
They might live.
The tunnel lay in absolute darkness.
It closed around them as suffocating as soot. It smelled of things unseen and of ancient footsteps and it contained the kind of stale air that had been breathed by too many others. Centuries old, it had been hewn through solid rock, a secret escape line when invaders came calling and Sermoneta’s defences failed to keep them at bay.
The town had learned the hard way that you keep a back door open at all times in case the wolves come howling at the front. The minds of the people of Sermoneta were as tortuous as its streets and Isabella breathed a blessing on their forethought as she hurried through the tunnel, bent over to avoid the low ceiling. It felt like a tomb.
The darkness was pressing on her chest. In front of her, Alessandro led the way. She couldn’t see him but she could hear his breath, ragged and erratic, as though he stopped breathing for long moments. For a young boy who was clearly terrified, she admired the courage of his fight against the Fascist regime. Behind her scrambled Rosa, holding Isabella’s hand, her small fingers clamped tight as if she thought the darkness would swallow her whole if she let go. Small wordless sounds came from her whenever Isabella murmured softly to reassure her.
Following the child were Roberto and Carlo Olivera, a black two-headed monster, because Roberto was carrying the Communist on his back. The tunnel was so low and so narrow that he was bent double with Olivera’s head slumped on his shoulder, but somehow he was forcing his way forward. He snorted like a bull each time he cracked his skull on the rocks but otherwise remained silent.
It was her father behind them who spoke quietly to Olivera at intervals, checking on him, offering him pills to chew on for the pain, but Olivera just grunted in reply. In the rear Luca Peppe called instructions to Alessandro in the lead.
‘One more corner and then we can use the torches. I think there’s no one following. They haven’t found the tunnel, but watch your step, Alessandro, because it drops down steeply after the bend.’
The darkness inside Isabella’s head was growing denser, like winter fog. She discarded her sling and drew Rosa tighter to her, twisting round to brush her hand over the child’s cheek, and she felt the small teeth chattering.
‘I won’t let go of you,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be frightened, we’re safe here.’
Her foot stepped on something soft, unnerving her, and she realised it must be a dead rat. She led Rosa past it. Once around the next bend a torch sprang into life in Alessandro’s hand, a pencil-thin line of dancing light like a split in the blackness, and she heard Rosa’s smothered sob of relief.
‘Roberto,’ Isabella murmured, ‘there are steps here. Take care.’
He gave a harsh grunt, readjusted the burden on his bent back, and after a second added, ‘If I fall, you’ll make a soft landing for us.’
She laughed, a strange unexpected sound that trickled through the tunnel and she wondered when these walls had last heard a laugh. Maybe never. Cries of alarm and the scurrying of frightened feet were the only noises that an escape tunnel heard.
The steps were steep and seemed to have no end. They descended into the darkness inside the bowels of the mountain, rough and treacherous, slimy with water that oozed from the walls. Isabella kept a tight hold on Rosa, aware of the bleak terror in the child, but Rosa possessed her father’s courage and made no sound. Isabella loved her brave heart and the way she stared the leaping shadows in the face.
Abruptly the steps came to a halt and a passageway curved away to the right. There was no sign that the tunnel had ended but suddenly Alessandro was pushing his shoulder against a barrier that began to shift and tumble. Daylight leapt through the gaps, blinding the small group. Pure sunlight washed over them as Alessandro tore down the barrier of branches and Isabella drew in great lungfuls of clean fresh air.
The world had turned green. A thousand shades of green, emerald and lime and dark olive, mingled with the yellows and browns of autumn and the heavy musty smell of damp earth. Trees offered their trunks and their canopies for shelter, and the sense of safety under them felt like something solid and warm inside her. Isabella saw the same relief flooding Rosa’s dark eyes but when she turned to Roberto, the brightness of the moment faded.
‘What is it?’ she said at once.
He shook his head. The strain of carrying Olivera through the cramped tunnel was etched on his face, its muscles taut and smeared with blood. He placed the Communist down on a patch of shaded grass where her father tended him, and Peppe was moving forward stealthily through the trees ahead.
‘What is it?’ she asked again.
She put a hand on his chest and felt each heavy beat of his heart. Over his shoul
der was slung a rifle, presumably Olivera’s, and it sent a shiver through her.
‘It was too easy,’ he said.
‘Easy? You call that easy?’
He drew her against his chest and held her there, but his eyes scanned the gaps between the trees to the forested valley below. ‘They know we’re here.’
‘Isabella, do you need something?’ Her father tapped his medical bag, the old scuffed leather one that was as much a part of him as his spectacles and moustache.
‘No, grazie.’
He peered into her face. ‘Are you all right?’