She Walks in Darkness (9 page)

I was stumbling between pigsties now. I tripped over one pig and fell headlong into filth. I got up and nearly ran into some other moving object—heard a child scream.

I swerved and ran on, came out onto what must be the village main street. A dirt track that ran between houses, out onto the cliffs. I was there! I was there!

The child I had nearly knocked down was still screaming, dogs that looked half-starved were yapping, and now other children began to scream and run. Men stared at me, their jaws dropping. Women stared too, women whose dark dresses and still, carved faces made them look more like birds of prey than fellow women who might understand and help me.

“Aita! Aita!”
I stopped and moaned, throwing out my hands in the age-old gesture of supplication.

But all of them only stood there, staring. Suspicious, hostile, wondering. I had frightened their children, I had brought commotion into their quiet. Also the filthy, scarecrow figure I made by then cannot have looked quite human, and there is a terrible, world-wide delusion that that is just what foreigners are. Not quite people, not like oneself, ourselves.

I tried to pull myself together, to speak calmly. “Does anyone here understand English? Even a few words of it? I need help—
aita. Por favore
—please!”

Everywhere in Florence there had been people who spoke English. I had been told that even in the smaller towns, there was always someone who had been to America, or who had worked in the cities, and picked up a few words of it. Mrs. Harris must have been wrong; even in this tiny mountain hamlet, there must be someone who could understand that I was in trouble, needed help.

But they only stood and stared. Some eyes narrowed a little, puzzled; that was all.

I tried again. “My husband is hurt.
Mio marito— aita.
And someone is following me. I’m afraid. Afraid!”

I shouldn’t have said that last; it let the note of panic creep back into my voice. Made me seem outside reason again, like a wild animal that would be dangerous if it could.

I said loudly—why is it always so easy to behave as if foreigners were deaf?
“Mio marito! Aita! Aita!
(My husband! Help! Help!)” If only I had known some word for “hurt” or “injured.”

Still no answer, only that wall of watchful faces. I wanted to batter it with my hands, as I might have battered a real wall. I had tried so hard to reach them, and now that I was here among them, I could not. The gulf of language yawned between us, impassable.

I lost control of myself and screamed at them. “English! English! English! Go get somebody who understands it! Please.
Please!”

Still they only stood there, their faces hard, uncomprehending, like those of people on a frieze. To them I was only making unintelligible noises, as a maddened animal might.

The voice came from behind me then, speaking Italian. Quietly, reassuringly—I could not understand the words, but I understood the tone. Something else about that voice, a man’s voice, made my heart stand still. I could not believe my ears.

All those carving-like faces were breaking up into humanity, into smiles and friendliness. They were moving, the people were making way for someone who was coming. I swung round to see.

I couldn’t believe my eyes either. He couldn’t be there; it must be someone else. He was very near; some people were smiling at him and speaking to him. Plainly they knew him; and I didn’t have to know their language to know what they were thinking:
Here is someone who will know what to do.

He was beside me now, he smiled and spoke to me, he tried to lay his hand on my arm, but I jerked away from him.

He said in English, very gently and kindly, as if he were saying the friendliest thing in the world, “Did you think you could get away, you fool? Outwit me here, in my own hills?”

I suppose I did the worst possible thing then. I shrieked, neither in English, nor in Italian. The cry came from a level of consciousness too deep, too primitive, for language.

He grabbed me. I was in his arms, twisting, scrabbling, scratching, trying to claw his face. I must have looked completely mad. No villagers anywhere in the world would have tried to stop what he did then.

Floriano’s fist darting towards my jaw and Floriano’s beautiful, smiling face behind it, those were the last things I saw before the world went out in a shower of stars.

arkness, creaking, jolting darkness. Something pricked me when I moved; whatever I was lying on was rough. Where was I?

Then Floriano’s beautiful face burned through the darkness, vivid as if it were still there before me. Telling me again what it had told me in that last terrible moment. I bit my lips until they bled.

Richard! I had left Richard alone with a murderer.

Somehow Floriano had gotten out to follow me. But first had he turned and vented his rage on the unconscious man? No, surely not; surely all his energies had been bent on contriving his escape, on his pursuit of me. Yet sickeningly I remembered old Mattia Rossi’s gray hair blood-matted on the gray stones, his queerly caved-in head. Fool that I had been never to think that Floriano himself might have smashed that head!

The bicycle had fooled me; old Mattia’s own cycle, probably, on which the murderer had been leaving, not arriving, when I had run out and stopped him. Until he had learned that I was alone, he had been afraid, having seen that open door. Having known that his crime was known.

Floriano had killed Mattia Rossi; Floriano had come to our door last night. I had understood him then, when I could not see his face.... It all made sense now. Floriano had said he had been in Volterra yesterday, when the prisoner had escaped. Of course he had! He was the escaped prisoner. Our unseen passenger, young and lithe enough to curl up in our car trunk. And, however his knowledge had been gained, he knew the villa very well indeed; he had even known where to find Roger Carstairs’s diary. Because he had seen it hidden?
Or because he had hidden it himself?
He must have been very young when Roger died, but even children can kill.

But his tan—how could a prisoner in the Mastio get that tan? I was confused again, but not about one thing: I knew that he was evil....

The moon was shining into my eyes. I opened them, and saw that I was lying in a cart, upon a bed of hay. The driver’s bulk loomed black above me, behind his oxen’s horns. Beside it loomed another figure, taller, shapelier.

I must have moved, for he heard me and turned, white teeth flashing in that smile that now I would always hate. “You are better, carissima?”

No use pretending to be still unconscious. No use asking what he had done to Richard. To show concern for another man might be risky, an affront to his vanity. There are women who admire men who beat them; I had better pretend to be that kind. How do such women act?

I giggled nervously and sat up. “I’ll feel a lot better when I’ve had a bath and some coffee. I must look awful.” I giggled again and rubbed my jaw. “You hit hard, Floriano.”

“You asked for it, carissima.” He chuckled, evidently proud (as Dr. Pulcinelli had been long ago, in another world) of knowing American slang.

I made no answer; I didn’t know how far to go. To overplay my act, this captivated doglike meekness—bitchy in more senses than one—might be as risky as to underplay it. His pride would prefer to think me won, but he would be watchful. Though he certainly had no reason to think me intelligent; with what disgusting ease I had swallowed all his lies!

He said nothing more, either. But the driver grinned, his own teeth flashing. He must think our quarrel over. How wrong every one of those Italian words that I had used had been!
“Aita...mio marito.”
People everywhere hate to get mixed up in arguments between husband and wife. Everybody in that village must be feeling sorry for Floriano, married to a crazy foreigner. I had never had a chance.

Richard, Richard, why did I leave you? I was trying—trying so hard—and all I did was to desert you! Leave you alone with our enemy.

For a while I simply lay there and suffered, too sick to think. The cart creaked on.

Then the driver said something in Italian, and Floriano laughed. I sat up again. The villa rose before us, huge and dark against the moon. Soon I would know!

But if Richard were still alive, God keep him unconscious! The awakening that I had longed for would be the death of him now. Floriano could not afford to leave either of us alive then. By flinging myself into his arms there in the courtyard, I had merely postponed my death. Because I was young and a woman, he would wait. And that was nothing to flatter myself about; imprisoned (in the Mastio, I supposed now), it might have been months, even years, since he had had a woman. Sickness swept over me; I lay there and shivered....

Floriano looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “We are nearly there, carissima. Soon you shall have your bath and your coffee and make yourself beautiful for me.”

Again I managed that nauseating giggle.

When the cart halted before the villa, he helped me down, held me a moment, and kissed a fairly clean spot he found somewhere on my cheek. Then he let me go, abruptly.

“Truly you need that bath. I do not like my women to smell of pig.”

I said meekly, “I’m sorry.” I did know one thing: whatever else I might have to bear, one shame was gone forever. Never again would his touch have any power to charm the female animal in me.

As I ran past him into the villa, he turned to say good-bye to the driver. Was there an uneasy note in his laughter? To know that a whole village knows where you are cannot be pleasant for a wanted criminal, however remote and isolated that village is. Even among friends there is always, as Mattia had told Roger Carstairs long ago, one Judas. Floriano might feel that his time at the villa must be very short, now.

If he hadn’t much time, then neither had we....

But all that mattered now was Richard. Richard!

Holding my breath, I ran upstairs.

Our door looked just the same; it had not been broken down. To unlock it seemed to take a long time—could my clumsiness really be unwillingness to see what was inside? Fear?

Was Richard’s head lying at quite the same angle on the pillow? Blackness came over my eyes, and I swayed. I don’t know how I reached him, but I did.

He was breathing! He was safe!

The blackness threatened me again, and remembered the coffee. Floriano and I hadn’t finished the last pot I had brewed. It would be cold now, but strong. I reached eagerly for my cup; but the pot was empty. Floriano must have finished it, after all. Well, I would have to face him without its help.

He was in the doorway now, smiling that everlasting smile. “Are you wondering how I got out, carissima? Without breaking down the door?”

He wanted to be admired for that too, for his cleverness in escaping. I tried to register adoring wonder. “How did you ever manage it, Floriano? Is there a secret passage?”

He laughed indulgently. “No, but to swing myself from a window onto the roof was easy. A child could do it.”

“I never thought of that.” I hoped I sounded properly impressed. Inwardly I was wondering what would have happened if I had had those windows wide open last night. If that lithe body had swung through....

Once more I fought off faintness, said, “Shall I make the coffee right away? You could be drinking yours while I’m in the tub.”
Defer to him prettily; he will like that.

“The sooner you are in that tub the better, carissima. I will make the coffee. I make very good coffee.”

“Thank you.” I hurriedly chose clean clothes, gathered them up, and headed for the bathroom. I met him coming out of it, very domestically bringing cream from the refrigerator.

He was bringing something else too: Mrs. Harris’s set of kitchen knives.

I laughed; I don’t know how I managed it. “Are you going to make coffee with those, Floriano?”

“You will not need them to bathe with, carissima.” Again that flash of white teeth.

I locked the bathroom door, not caring whether he heard or not. He was not going to trust me anyway. Though even if he had stood still for me to plunge it into him, I doubt if I could have done much good with a kitchen knife.

That locked door gave me a brief, exquisite illusion of safety; then once more the cold water shocked me into full consciousness. This was real; this was happening to me, Barbara Keyes, not to somebody in a book or a play. Somebody who would be saved at the last minute.

There would be no miracle for me.

For one sick minute I wondered:
Could I set my teeth and hold my head under water?
I was going to die anyway, and I might save myself a great deal of pain and humiliation.

But there was Richard. He might take out his thwarted fury on Richard.

I toweled myself savagely, I almost poured on perfume. If I put on too much for Floriano’s taste, good; he might send me back to scrub some of it off. I would gain a little time, if only a very little.

I combed my hair, painted my face, and put on a smile. Also my new coral chiffon; I remembered with almost unbearable misery how proud and happy I had been the one time I had worn it before. For Richard. But if there was even a thousandth chance that I could beguile Floriano, get him off guard—

He whistled at sight of me.
“Bellissima!”

I said again, rather idiotically, “Thank you.”

He was entirely the gentleman now, loverly but well-bred. When I praised his coffee extravagantly, he was obliging enough to brew another pot, but I could manage no further delay. The time came, dreadfully soon, when I had to push back my chair and rise.

“I’d better tidy up now, Floriano.”

“No.” He rose too, laughing. “You are a good little housewife. And that is well, but I know what will be better. Come.”

There was coffee in the pot this time. Hot coffee. I could throw it in his face. With luck could blind him—

No. I might be able to escape him then, but Richard couldn’t. Blind, he could still find the bed....

He was lighting the lantern I had bought in Volterra. Above its glowing paleness, his eyes laughed and sparkled, very black.

“We will go to my room, carissima. My own place, the room I had here as a boy. All my boyhood treasures are still there, all the clothes I had when first I became a young man. This suit I am wearing came from there. You did not know that I grew up in the Villa Carenni, did you? My windows too look out upon the garden. There will be moonlight.”

“Why do you want that lantern?” I didn’t really care; but even a question takes time.

“The better to see you by. The moonlight may not be enough, and electric light is too harsh to fall upon a beautiful woman’s flesh.”

As we went out into the dark corridor together, his arm closed round me, held me close. I was not going to get the chance to break away and run.

We made a turn, went into the east wing, which I had thought the original guest quarters. At its far end was a walled staircase, black as the pit. Perhaps twenty feet from it was a door that Floriano opened. I caught one glimpse of the room within, no servant’s room, but wide and spacious, moonlight pouring through long windows onto the fantastic, richly carved furniture. Then I gasped and caught his arm, making the lantern shake. “Floriano! What was that?”

His free hand shot out, holding the lantern farther from me. “What is what? I saw nothing.”

“Over there, by the stairs! Something moved!”

Let him believe me—let him!
Let his grasp loosen for just one second, then I could dash the lantern from his hand and flee into the darkness. He would follow me, not turn back to hurt Richard, and these stone floors and walls could not catch fire. It was not much of a chance, but it was my last.