Season of Storms (36 page)

Both torches angled downwards to illuminate the contents of the case. At first I saw only some kind of a puffy white packing material. Pietro moved to pull it back but Daniela’s more careful hand intervened, pushing the white stuff aside to uncover a series of objects that glittered and shone in the strong beams of light. She made a comment to Pietro, then, and if I’d had to translate from her tone alone I’d have guessed it meant something like: “You see? What did I tell you?” but still he reached forwards and picked up an item before she could stop him.

Immediately, both Daniela and the other man spoke out in urgent voices. It was easy to see why. Pietro’s huge hand held a yellowish vase that appeared to be fashioned from jewel-studded glass, and looked fragile enough to shatter at the slightest pressure. Shrugging, he replaced it in the packing fluff and let Daniela fasten down the suitcase with a click.

So she
was
involved in stealing things, I thought, for all Edwina had imagined that Daniela wouldn’t want to jeopardize her status with the Trust. From what I’d seen of Daniela I rather suspected it might have been that very element of risk that had appealed to her—she did like playing games. And of course, there was always the lure of the money. The vase that I’d just seen was very similar in style to the Byzantine chalice that Giancarlo had recovered from the jeweller in Sirmione, and must also have come from Galeazzo’s Fourth Crusade collection—objects that would doubtless bring a high price on the clandestine market.

I was thinking this when something—some insect, probably—scuttled down the wall where I was standing, and I jerked away, not thinking, setting loose a tiny fall of damp stone flakes that would probably have gone unnoticed if the others had been speaking at that moment . . . but they weren’t. I saw their heads come up and turn; I saw the torchlight start to swing my way.

There wasn’t anywhere I could have hidden. And I didn’t want the light to find me cowered in my corner as though
I
were the one doing something that I oughtn’t to be doing. Straightening away from the wall, I stepped forwards and was standing rather calmly by the time the torches reached me. The light dazzled, stabbing my eyes, but I kept my head high and my gaze fixed in front of me, remembering Madeleine’s advice on how to handle sticky confrontations—pretend you’re a queen, she had told me, and the others are servants.

Trying for the proper tone, I told them all, “Good evening.”

I heard murmurs from the dark behind the lights. The sensation was not unlike standing alone on a stage with the brilliance of footlights obscuring the audience. The men’s voices mingled at first, then Daniela overrode them both, in English. “What are
you
doing here?”

Determined not to give her any ground in spite of my own nervousness, I countered her hostile demand with the arch of an eyebrow. “Actually,” I told her, “I was just about to ask you the same thing. I rather think your explanation might be more interesting than mine.”

Again the men’s voices murmured and again Daniela silenced them with some short phrase that sounded like an order being given, an impression that was strengthened when Pietro’s shadow stepped between the torch and me and came across the floor. His grasp hurt my arm as he hauled me back over to where the other two were standing—I could feel the bruises forming underneath his massive fingers—but I concentrated on not wincing or reacting to the pain. I had a feeling my advantage lay, at the moment, in not showing fear.

The man with the bald spot asked a question in Italian of Daniela, and she turned it into English for my benefit. “How did you know that we were coming here tonight?”

This close, the light from his torch no longer dazzled me, and I had no trouble seeing his face. There was something in the way he watched me, waiting for my answer, that convinced me to tread carefully. I shrugged. “A lucky guess.” In an attempt to deflect further questions I went on the offensive, nodding at the suitcase. “You can’t honestly think Alex won’t notice those things missing?”

To my surprise, Daniela seemed to find that amusing; so much so that she passed it to the others in translation so that they could share the joke. Pietro, standing close behind me, gave a short, unpleasant laugh. The other man simply smiled, turning to shine his torch down on a smallish wooden crate that had been wedged inside the niche, between the wall and the empty sarcophagus. Bending, he levered off the crate’s lid and carefully pushed back the packing to show me what lay inside. His torchlight caught the glitter of the square-cut jewels that rimmed a fragile vase of yellow glass. Glancing up, the man gave some instruction to Daniela and she opened the suitcase a second time, displaying the vase’s identical twin—the one that Pietro had handled a moment before.

Below that vase I saw the edge of what appeared to be a chalice . . . and as I started to grasp the significance of what I was seeing Daniela asked, “Which is the real one, and which is the copy? You know this? Of course not. And neither will he. As far as he will know, there will be nothing missing.”

So this was what Giancarlo had uncovered, then—not simple theft, but theft by substitution. Having tracked Pietro to the jeweller’s shop in Sirmione, he must have then learned, through the jeweller’s assistant, that the shop was participating in the creation of fakes.

Thinking of Giancarlo sobered me, because although he might have managed to uncover what was going on, he’d been silenced before he could disclose the information, and it suddenly occurred to me that, in all the crime novels I’d ever read, it was never a good sign when the criminals, having cornered the heroine off on her own, began to tell her every detail of their operation. It meant they’d already decided that she was expendable.

My only hope was that Poppy had done as I’d asked her, and that at any moment now she’d be returning with the others—and the dogs—to give me help.

“Is good quality, no?” Daniela touched the glass vase in the crate, proud of her accomplishment. “It has taken many skilled artists to make these. The glass, it was specially blown in Venice . . .”

“Is that what the two of you were doing there, then? I did wonder.” And calmly, as Daniela turned with a frown, I went on, “I assumed you were only fooling around behind Alex’s back, but now I can see it was business.”

She didn’t look pleased. “You have seen us in Venice?”

“Oh yes, a couple of times. And I saw you together in Mira, the day Bryan arrived.”

I could see her memory searching backwards, warily. “And you have mentioned this to Alessandro?”

Because it seemed to matter so much to her, I chose the answer I thought she’d like the least. “Of course. I thought he had a right to know.”

The two men had been watching our interchange in silence, but now Pietro asked a question and Daniela answered shortly in a sentence beginning with ‘Signor D’Ascanio.’ Perhaps, I thought, I was weaving myself a bit of a safety net by letting them think someone else besides myself knew what they had been up to. I said, “Alex knows everything, anyway—more than me. Giancarlo told him.”

The man with the bald spot glanced over and I knew he understood me because his gaze narrowed slightly, became more appraising. Dropping the pretence of using Daniela as his interpreter, he said to me, “I do not think so. No, I think you tell a lie. Because Giancarlo, I am watching him a long time, since our man in Sirmione says he thinks they may have trouble. I would know if Giancarlo is telling D’Ascanio something.”

“He came to the house.”

“Yes, but that is a long time ago, and Giancarlo, he knows nothing then himself. He is still asking questions.” Without moving, he seemed to have shortened the distance between us, his body language confident.

Trying not to let him see how much he frightened me, I studied him. “I suppose you were watching Giancarlo that Sunday in the square in Sirmione?”

“You remember me?” He smiled. “I am flattered.”

“And I suppose it was you who followed him back here, and ran him down in your car?”

Modestly, he shook his head. “No, no, that job I give to Pietro. He is already here—it is easy for him to be stealing a car and to wait for Giancarlo. Me, I take care of the traitor who has betrayed us.” The jeweller’s assistant, I gathered . . . the one who had given Giancarlo the chalice. The man’s smile grew shark-like and satisfied. “He will say nothing to anyone either, I think.”

That smile chilled me to the bone, and I found myself reversing my earlier wishes, and hoping that Poppy
had
simply gone off and abandoned me; that she wouldn’t return, unsuspecting, with someone in tow. A man who could smile like that, without any emotion, was dangerous, and with Pietro at his side I didn’t know what he’d be capable of doing.

Daniela looked a question at him. “What do we do now?”

“We change the plan.”

And before I could guess his intention his gaze shifted sideways and he nodded past my shoulder at Pietro, and I felt a sudden impact, saw a thousand lights exploding in my brain, and nothing more.

The crypt was silent, peaceful, still, and suited to his purpose. Here at least he knew she would not be disturbed. With tears upon his face he leaned against the lid of the sarcophagus until it shifted, inch by painful inch. He was not young. It took him time.

At length he’d moved it far enough that he had room to lay her in, with care. He hadn’t thought to bring a pillow for her head . . . tomorrow, maybe, he would bring her one. And roses. Yes, she must have roses all around her, she’d so loved their scent.

He pressed a kiss against her forehead, smoothed the soft pale hair. Here she could sleep, he thought. Here in this place where he kept what he’d loved the most, where he himself, in the fullness of time, would come also, to lie in her arms and find peace.

“Please, God,” he prayed aloud, “let it be soon.”

And then he knelt, and turned his face against her body where their child had been, and wept, for all that might have been, and all that he had lost.

xviii

I
opened my eyes to a pale orange mist. I was floating . . . I wanted to sleep, but the flicker of light held me mesmerized. I had no idea where I was—in a dream, probably. Certainly things had that unreal, distorted appearance of dreams. And the woman who sat on the edge of my bed wasn’t real, either. The dress she was wearing, a soft yellow summery thing, was decades out of date, and she herself had a faint luminescence about her that marked her as something not human. I met her eyes briefly and smiled before looking away, unable to focus in my strange, suspended state.

Finding nothing in the room that I could recognize, I drifted a moment, then brought my gaze round again with an effort. She was still there, at the end of the bed. But that was all wrong, I thought confusedly. She should be in the portrait.

“Darling, wake up now,” said Celia the First, in the voice I had dreamed before, lyrical. “Everyone’s waiting.”

I tried to absorb the words. “Waiting for what?”

“Just wake up and come with me, there’s a good girl.” Standing, she held out a hand in encouragement. “Hurry.”

It took me a few tries to stand—I seemed to have no control over my legs at first, they kept collapsing underneath me till I’d learned the knack of keeping them straight—and the first steps I took felt as wobbly as if I were walking on waves, but I did my best to follow.

The orange mist grew thicker, brighter, swallowing her figure as she led me down a staircase. At the bottom she was there again, and smiling. “This way.”

I trailed behind, but slowly, feeling very far away, my head a light balloon that floated high above my shoulders. I was vaguely aware we were passing through rooms, unfamiliar. Somewhere ahead I could hear a dog barking.

I was losing Celia the First in the mist again, but I saw her half-turn to look back at me. “You will tell him, won’t you, I didn’t run off? You will tell him I love him?”

And then she was fading, and the mist grew choking, rising up to burn my throat and sting my eyes, and when it shifted again there was Rupert’s face in front of me, his expression relieved. “Thank God,” he said, and turned me in the shelter of his arm. “Let’s get you out of here.”

And then all at once I came properly to my senses. I heard the crackling sound and realized that the mist wasn’t mist after all—it was smoke, and the shifting orange light I saw was fire. For a moment I was paralysed by panic, not knowing where I was or how I’d come to be there, and then I realized we were in the Villa delle Tempeste, a few steps from the entrance hall. Behind us I could just make out the remnants of the sitting-room, flaming fabric peeling from the windows by the fireplace.

As Rupert turned me I nearly tripped over something that I took to be a table till it moved. I felt its warmth; a wagging tail; a pointed nose that nudged my thigh. The dog—I wasn’t sure which one—pressed forwards with a nervous whine as something fell on fire from the ceiling, landing near us with a splintered crash.

“Go on, now.” Rupert aimed me at the front door. “Go with Max, he’ll lead you out.”

“But Roo . . .”

“I’ll be right behind you. I’m just going to have a quick look for Edwina.”

I hadn’t thought about anyone else being in here, but now that my reason was returning the idea left me horrified. I turned. “Edwina . . .”

“Go,” he told me, taking my shoulders in a firmer grip and pointing me back to the door. Another piece of ceiling fell and Max whined more urgently. Taking hold of his collar I crouched to get under the worst of the smoke, and did as I was told, letting the dog all but drag me through the jumble of debris until at last I found myself outside and standing on the doorstep.

I heard running footsteps before warm hands grabbed me, lifted me, and held me close against a rough-knit sweatered chest that smelled like Alex. Beneath my cheek his heart beat strong and fast and when he lowered his head his voice, close to my ear, sounded oddly unsteady. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but the sound of his voice alone soothed me. Leaning against him, I was only vaguely aware of the other people round us; other voices, and a frenzy of activity.

At length, he raised his head and stroked my hair back from my face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. But Edwina . . .”

“Don’t worry.” He guided me down the steps onto the lawn, to a safe distance where my view of the villa was framed by the towering palms. From here I could see the full extent of the fire, the flames that had swallowed the upper floor windows and were hungrily stretching now up to the steep tiled roof; and the silhouettes of people, small dark forms that called to one another as they moved before the brilliance with an orchestrated purpose. One of the figures, detaching itself from the others, came over the lawn towards us carrying what looked to be a blanket.

I turned my face to the roughness of Alex’s sweater as another spasm of coughing seized me, and I felt the blanket wrap around my shoulders.

“For God’s sake, Alex, give her air.” Edwina’s voice, close by. “The poor girl can’t breathe with you crushing her like that.”

He loosed his hold, obedient, but kept an arm around me as though loathe to let me go. The coughing passed. I raised my head.

Edwina looked, I thought, remarkably unscathed for someone who, like me, had just been rescued. “Thank heavens he found you,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Who, darling?”

“Rupert.” Her uncomprehending look worried me. “He told me he was going back to find you. He . . .”

She glanced from me to Alex as my voice trailed off. I think that something of the truth began to penetrate at that point, as I realized that Edwina looked
too
unscathed, too clean, that she most likely hadn’t been inside the burning house at all. My logic blurred, then, in a rush of pure emotion. I believe I called out Rupert’s name and tried to run towards the villa, but Alex was quicker. His arms caught me once again, holding me tight. “Celia.”

“No!” I remember I fought him, beating at his chest with both hands as I struggled to get free, but even if he’d let me go there wasn’t anything I could have done. Far off I could hear sirens drawing closer but the silhouettes were scattering and shouting, moving back, and as I raised my head the villa’s roof caved inwards in a splintering of beams, and the bright flames surged skywards in triumph against the black night.