The Italian Wife (45 page)

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 shoulder 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?’

She gave him a smile. ‘I’m more all right than Carlo Olivera is. How bad is he?’

‘Bad enough.’

‘He should be in hospital.’

‘That would be a death warrant, so what’s the point? Thank God for your Roberto’s strong back. Olivera would never have made it this far on his own.’

The tunnel had emerged halfway down the side of a mountain, surrounded by forested slopes in every direction and overlooking a verdant valley far below. Shadows slid from mountain to mountain like thieves on the run and grey rock ledges rose from the greenery as though trying to keep watch, their skin wrinkled and ancient. It was a world that was alien to Isabella, one that made her uneasy because there was always something unknown hidden in a forest. Something that laid its fingers on your soul.

‘You should have told me, Papa.’

‘How could I? You were unhappy enough. It was easier to lay the shooting at the door of a known Communist insurgent.’

‘Why did she do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re lying, Papa.’

He sighed and walked back to his patient.

They know we’re here
.

Roberto’s words drummed in Isabella’s head and made the hairs rise on the back of her neck, ice cold. Her eyes darted from tree to tree. From rock to rock. Searching for a face, the glint of a rifle barrel, the movement of a shadow.

They kept away from the bumpy track that ran along the hollow of the valley, and forged a path between the trees. It was harder going, especially on Roberto with the chalk-faced Communist on his back, but it was safer. Rosa trotted alongside her father, her hand resting on his thigh, her teeth clenched together in distress. They walked fast, up over the next ridge and down into a further wooded valley that was smaller and steeper. More secretive. No one spoke.

For an hour the silence held them in its grip. The only sound was the splash of a heron as it took off among the reeds, rising into the air on the morning thermals and arcing off down the valley. Isabella was jumpy. She started at the rustle of branches brushing against each other in the wind and trod carefully over the carpet of autumn leaves under her feet. The forest was decaying, wet and lush, roots tangling, the earth was dark and muddy. The world was becoming quieter.

Only Roberto’s breath behind her remained constant. She listened to the rhythm of it, step by step. She offered to carry the rifle for him but he gave her a bleak smile and declined to relinquish it. That told her too much. She kept her eyes scouring the mountainside on the opposite slope across the valley – it was the obvious place from which to launch an attack – but nothing moved. Beyond it lay the blur of further mountains.

She tried to hold back the anger that was growing in her each time she looked behind at the burden on Roberto’s back. She wanted to throw Olivera’s broken figure to the earth and make Roberto run. Run on those long legs of his to somewhere safe and uncharted. Somewhere too far away for Mussolini to stretch his grasping fingers and steal Roberto’s life. She wasn’t willing to exchange Roberto for anyone else’s life, however hard they were fighting for Italy’s salvation.

She was selfish when it came to Roberto. No one else could have him. He was hers to love and to spend the rest of her life with, talking far into the night about fishing or horses or building a fine new school or… Anything. Just talking. Heads together on a pillow. Hands entwined, stroking each other’s skin absent-mindedly while they discussed whatever it was that took their fancy at that moment. Committing to deep memory the feel of each other’s fingertips.

She wouldn’t let him go.

She wouldn’t.

43

The shot, when it rang out across the valley, missed its target. It slammed into Roberto instead of into the Communist hunched on his back. The crack of the rifle shattered the silence and sent Roberto spinning to the ground, Olivera crashing down beside him.

Isabella heard the breath leave Roberto’s lungs and the air seemed to fracture around her. It was ten years ago, all over again. The rifle shot. The birds rising in panic. The blood on the shirt. For years the images had crept under the covers at night with her and now they were here again in broad daylight.

She was struck mute with horror.
Roberto
. His name filled her head.
Roberto
.

She hurled herself to the ground at his side. His eyes were closed. Not staring doll’s eyes like Luigi’s. Grief howled like a pack of wild dogs in her ears and her mind became clumsy, but her hands worked with swift efficient movements, as she’d seen her father do a thousand times. She eased back his jacket to open the site of the wound at his collarbone and managed to start breathing again when she saw his eyelids flicker open.

‘Papa!’

She summoned her father who was busy pressing a pad on to Olivera’s chest to stop the bleeding.

‘Papa, come here.’

He scurried over just as another bullet sent a spray of dark earth skittering over Olivera’s cheek.

‘Get under cover,’ Roberto hissed sharply to Isabella. He tried to sit up, but Dr Cantini and Isabella took his arms and edged him back behind a broad fir tree that hid him from view from across the valley. ‘Dottore,’ he said, ‘I’m all right. See to him.’ He gestured at Olivera.

But Luca Peppe was already dragging his leader into the shelter of a tangle of bushes with Rosa, while Alessandro dodged behind a tree and took aim with Peppe’s rifle. Dr Cantini took a look at Roberto’s wound, probing with expert fingers.

‘A scratch,’ he announced with an encouraging smile.

‘Papa! How bad is it really?’

‘All right, the bullet has smashed your left clavicle, your collarbone. It is lodged inside there. I’ll do what I can to stem the bleeding.’ He worked quickly, before taping a pad over the area and tying Roberto’s arm up in a sling.

The whole time Isabella’s gaze was fixed on Roberto’s face, following each flinch of his eyes or grimace of his mouth. She felt sick inside from the blood and the pain and the hatred. She wanted to take his hand in hers and walk him away from this valley of death.

‘Help me up, Isabella.’

She didn’t argue. She tucked her shoulder under Roberto’s arm and eased him to his feet.

‘Pass me the rifle.’

‘No.’

‘Isabella!’

‘No. Isn’t this enough?’

He gently held her chin in his hand and gave it a tiny shake. ‘My love, there is no way out of here now for us. We die or we fight.’

‘No. If we fight we’ll die.’

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead tenderly. ‘I won’t let you die.’

For a long moment their eyes locked and then she turned and picked up the rifle.

‘You can’t fire it,’ she said flatly. ‘Not with a broken collarbone and a bullet inside you.’

‘No,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘I can’t.’

She looked down at her own bandaged right hand and at Roberto’s patched left shoulder. She smiled oddly at him. ‘Together we make one person,’ she said.

‘Yes, Isabella. Together we make one person.’

A shout of alarm from Alessandro jerked their attention back to the valley. ‘There on the ridge. Look! It’s the carabinieri.’

Peppe snatched his rifle from the boy and zigzagged forward through the trees. Two shots rang out from the mountainside across the valley but they snicked harmlessly into the trunk of a larch, spitting pieces of bark into the air. Isabella’s pulse raced as she saw Peppe take aim and return fire.

‘Isabella,’ her father ordered, ‘get down.’

But Isabella was off and running over to their right, step for step behind Roberto. Ducking behind bushes, swerving between trees, darting over fallen branches. The leaves under their feet silenced their footsteps; they kept low and in the shadows. Luck was on their side. The sun was behind their mountain, so their slopes were in shade, while it glared full in the face of the opposite side of the valley. A dark uniform stood out like a black cat in snow.

A smattering of shots was exchanged between Peppe and the carabinieri, and Isabella could see the uniforms spilling down from the higher slopes to the valley floor, though how they hoped to cross the open wetland there, she didn’t know.

‘Roberto, how did they find us?’

He grimaced. ‘Informers must have told them about the tunnel. Nowhere is safe in Mussolini’s State of Italy. He has poisoned the minds of Italians and no one can trust his neighbour any more. So Sepe has sent his forces to scour the hillsides for us.’

Still Roberto kept moving further down the valley and Isabella had to work hard to avoid tripping on the roots that writhed and twisted in her path. She knew what he was doing. Exactly as he must have done a thousand times when out hunting deer or wild boar in his forests at home. Outflanking them. She kept glancing across to the other side of the valley as she dodged behind trunks, dragging breath into her lungs, and bit by bit the far side of the rocky ridge came into view.

‘There.’ Roberto stopped dead and pointed.

Tucked down beside the ridge in the safety of its overhang were three uniformed figures. Even to Isabella it was clear that the middle one was thin and angular, with a wealth of silver braid adorning his jacket and bicorn hat as he gesticulated at the others, issuing orders. It was Colonnello Sepe.