She Walks in Darkness (10 page)

But Floriano’s hold did not loosen. He sat the lantern down just inside the door, out of my reach. His mouth still smiled, but his eyes were hard.

“Still playing tricks, carissima? This one is old, very old. I do not like to be bored.” His voice was silken-soft, but something in it made me shiver.

“I’m not. It may be Mattia Rossi’s murderer—”

“That one?” His smile broadened. “He will not come, my pretty; I can promise you that. We are quite alone—”

“Not quite, my son.”

The cold, cultured voice was not loud, but it rang through the dark hall like a bell. It had the smooth hardness of a bell.

I felt the start that made Floriano’s whole body jerk. He stared, as I stared, towards the stairs. Into the blackness that seemed to be opening and giving birth....

We could not see the tall man who advanced upon us as anything but blackness, moving, towering darkness. Shadow, terribly made substance. He stopped just before the lantern light could reach him, make him human.

Yet Floriano knew him. He cowered; his voice rose in a thin wailing whisper,
“Tu! tu!
(You! You!)”

The gun rang out, thunder-loud in that narrow space, between those stone walls. With a crash that seemed as if it must end the world.

loriano screamed once. He still stood erect, and for a second I thought, “He hasn’t been shot after all.” Then I saw how his right arm hung.

The newcomer’s voice came again, velvet-soft now. With something terrifying in its very calm. “It will not be necessary to watch you quite so carefully now, my son. Disablement will curb those animal spirits of yours.”

Floriano moaned something that might have been either a prayer or a curse. The voice reproved him. “A communist calling upon God, my son? I never taught you such Christian superstitions as prayer, and you know better than to use profanity before a lady. Speak her own tongue, and such words as are fit for her to hear. You were taught languages, also your manners.... Your pardon, signora.” He turned to me and bowed with courtly grace. “Allow me to present myself: Prince Mino Carenni. Under happier circumstances, your host.”

“You are alive!” Floriano shrank back, staring at him as a hypnotized bird is said to stare at a snake, but obediently he spoke English now. “How can you be alive? How?”

“I never died, my son. But I will explain later, satisfy this most touching filial concern of yours. First, let all of us go into your room. You too, signora.”

I went, wondering if I were dreaming. I couldn’t have raised Prince Mino’s ghost, it couldn’t have shot Floriano. And it couldn’t be Floriano’s father.

“...please obey me, signora. Be so kind as to search our dear one’s pockets. He probably carries weapons.”

He had been speaking again, speaking to me, and I hadn’t heard. I jumped, said, “I’m sorry,” and obeyed hastily. I found an ugly-looking knife. With another bow he took it from me.

“This only, my son? No pistol?”

“Not a gun in the gun room is loaded! You know that; you must have hidden the ammunition. Or else this woman did.” Floriano flashed me a glance of pure hate.

“Do not speak rudely to the lady, my son. It was the good Signora Harris, not she or I, who made poor Mattia remove the ammunition. She is of those ladies who fear firearms.... But we neglect your wound.” Again he swung to me. “In that chest of drawers yonder, you will find shirts and handkerchiefs, signora.”

I was still dazed. I didn’t move at once and he said, with his first touch of impatience, “Would you let him bleed to death? You who a moment ago were his lover?”

“That isn’t true.” Indignation should have helped me, but it didn’t. My voice shook as I tried to explain. “My husband is here, hurt. Unconscious. I tried to go for help, but this man stopped me. I couldn’t get away from him.”

“A moment ago you were making no great effort to escape.” The fine old voice was dry. “But your love affairs are no concern of mine, signora. Be pleased to help him off with his jacket and to bandage him; also be careful not to stand between him and me while you do so. You will not need to bathe or disinfect the wound. Stand still, my son! I do not wish to shoot you again.”

Why was no disinfectant needed? My hands were cold as I rather clumsily did Prince Mino’s bidding.

“Enough. That is well.” He swung away the lantern, whose light he had been directing upon Floriano’s bleeding flesh. He set it down, and I had my first good look at him. At a tall lean man with white hair and piercing black eyes. His profile, stern and finely chiseled, might have been cut out of an ancient frieze; it had none of the softness of living flesh.

He glanced around the big, pleasant room. “All here is just as you left it, my son. Old Mattia kept it carefully; he always hoped for your return. Almost as much as I did, though for different reasons. He never would believe that you had meant to betray me.”

“You touch me.” Floriano’s lip curled.

Prince Mino ignored him, spoke to me. “There was a time when I took pride in this young man, signora.” Neither his eyes nor the hand that held the pistol wavered, but his voice had grown thoughtful, almost wistful. “As a boy he showed great promise. He had beauty, and what is better, sensitiveness to beauty. He had charm and gaiety; he brought laughter between these old walls that have heard too little laughter. Even when I began to realize his limitations, I did not fully understand that he had greed, not ambition, vanity, not pride, a certain facile cleverness but no true intelligence—”

“Did I need all those fine things?” Floriano’s voice was harsh. “I am a bastard. I never could have been a Prince Carenni.”

“You could have been many things. A scholar and a gentleman among them. A rich man, too—and wealth you do value. You were not bred like a bastard.”

“Although my mother was brought here to serve as maid to the principessa? To your fine lady wife? Before whom we could never speak to you save as to our master? To spare her feelings—as if she did not know the truth as well as we three knew it!” Floriano spat.

“She was a noble lady who understood her obligations, the duties of her position. A gentleman also has obligations, as I tried to teach you. When you could not learn them, I realized that our house could not be reborn through you.” The fine old voice was unruffled, but it sounded weary. “You have thrown away a great deal that you might have had.”

“You say so now. But would you ever have given me enough to matter? You were tiring of me—withdrawing from me—”

“All that you could have understood, I would have given to you. For I was still foolishly proud of you, of your beauty and grace and strength. I never dreamed that you lacked even the simple virtue of a dog: loyalty.”

“Were you entitled to my loyalty?” Again, Floriano spat.

“I was. And for that lack I will exact the penalty.” The quiet, metal-hard voice had not risen, but its coldness made me shiver. “Sit down—there, on that chair; rest a little. We have a long way to go, and I do not wish you to faint before we reach our destination. But first place a chair for the lady. I regret that you must accompany us, signora.”

“Where?” My lips framed the word, but no sound came. I sat down, and Floriano sat down. Without taking his eyes from us, the prince drew up another chair.

“While we wait we may talk. You wondered how I came to be alive, my son. That is simple. I wished to return to my own house, to my work. The latter must be finished before I die. Though doubtless neither of you can comprehend that necessity.” The cool scorn in those old eyes flicked at both of us like a whip.

“He let you go! Dr. Manelli! He couldn’t have been such a fool!” Floriano spoke savagely.

“He owed the Carenni much; my father paid for the medical schooling of his. Also”—a faint smile flickered over the princely mouth—“during the war he had found it prudent, though never pleasant, to oblige the Nazis in certain small ways. Many men did as much, but he came to fear that my lawyers held papers that might convict him of collaboration.”

“You blackmailed him.” Floriano laughed shortly.

“I had no need to threaten the good Dr. Manelli, my son. He became very grateful for my kindness in suppressing the documents.”

“What was the difference?” A shrill note had come into Floriano’s laughter. “Your delicate reminders—”

“A very great one, my son, though too subtle, perhaps, for peasant wits to appreciate. Fear is the basis of all authority; it is necessary to keep a whip in a drawer, yet distasteful to bring it out.”

“Do you find cruelty so distasteful, signore?” A sneer twisted Floriano’s beautiful mouth.

“It is without beauty, my son. Until one has learned to hate greatly.... Be so good as not to interrupt me. The urn that was sent here contains ashes, though not mine. It came by day, I by night. Poor old Mattia took me for a ghost at first—I was sorry to give the old fellow such a fright.”

For a second he paused, and I found courage to speak. “But whose ashes were they? Surely this Dr. Manelli didn’t kill somebody for you!”

He looked amused. “No, signora. He had an old gardener whose family had died in the war, a man for whom few inquiries would be made. He listed this fellow’s heart ailment on my chart, he gave him a small room in the sanitarium grounds, and when he died, the man who took him away for cremation thought that they carried my body. Nothing about the death certificate was irregular save the substitution of my name for his. So I was free to return here. To come home, as you would say.”

“And it needed no threat to make Mattia risk himself for you—that good, stupid dog!” Floriano snarled.

“He was loyal, my son. The thing that you can never understand.” Suddenly the old voice was unmistakably weary.

“And you let him sell some of those gold Etruscan things to pay for food and whatever else you needed! You, who never would let me touch even the least of them!” There was fury in Floriano’s voice.

“Because you cared only for the gold, my son. Not for its beauty or its workmanship.” The tired voice was bitter. “But he sold little; for many years my needs have been simple.”

“It wasn’t Mattia Rossi who accused you to the Allies, was it?” I was surprised to hear myself asking that.

“That honest old servant?” Prince Mino stiffened, with the first simple human anger I had seen him show. “Never. So you had to blacken his name, my son? His death was not enough?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him; I didn’t want to!” Floriano’s protesting hands flew wide, then the pain in his shoulder made him gasp. “He tried to frighten me—to make me leave. And he did lie to me—he said that you were coming, not that you were here. I didn’t believe him, I did not think you could be alive, but I saw that I could not trust him—him that I had been so sure would help me—” His voice broke in a sob of self-pity.

Prince Mino smiled thinly. “He thought to save us from each other. You were always his great weakness, you who had tagged at his heels as a little one. And he has paid dearly for it. You, whom he loved, murdered him. As you murdered Roger Carstairs.”

I gasped. Floriano laughed again, wildly, in hysterical triumph.

“Yes, I killed them, I killed them both! I’ve blackened your precious name, I’ve driven you into hiding! With my peasant’s wit I’ve made you—you, the great noble Prince Carenni—a fugitive skulking in your own cellars. Dependent on a servant you held no higher than a faithful dog! And now I’ve taken even him from you. I’ve finished you! If you stay here, you’ll starve. Whatever you do to me, I’ve done that to you! I!”

“It needn’t be that way.” I spoke eagerly. “You have me for a witness, Prince Mino. You’ve done nothing. You can live in your own house again, openly, your name cleared.”

He smiled with good-humored contempt. “You—would you be likely to bear witness against your lover?”

“He is not my lover!”

“Then appearances were most deceiving when first I came upon the two of you, signora.” His smile deepened.

Floriano smiled too, impishly. “You hurt me, carissima. I had thought we loved with great passion—”

“Be silent.” Prince Mino lifted an imperious hand. “And you, signora, I sincerely regret your involvement in this matter. But it cannot be helped now.”

Under those terrible, passionless eyes, I shrank and was silent. They swung back to Floriano. “Why did you murder my guest, my son? You did not know him; he had nothing you could have wanted.”

“You talked to him; you showed him things!” Floriano was almost shouting now. “Things you never showed me! I knew that; I listened, listened at the door. Many times. I knew he was in the villa before you did. I saw Mattia find him. Even Mattia befriended him, hid him from me!”

“Sneaking and spying were born in you.” The prince’s voice and eyes were equally hard, equally cold. “Vanity and jealousy also; but you did not kill for these.”