The Aura (21 page)

“Do you know the house that has the maze?” I asked him. “You can see it from the hill.”

“Yes, I do. It was the brainchild of Professore Bertagli, who created it some years ago as a project to occupy himself after his wife died. He is a professor of the medieval period at the university and had some knowledge of maze designs. It was quite an event, I remember. He rented one of those digging machines to clear out all the flowerbeds and lawns. He flattened the place, and then used white paint to mark the paths. I saw it once after it was finished because he called me to the house to bandage his hand. He’d cut it pruning the hedges. The maze is quite impressive, although I’m not sure I see the point of it.”

I wasn’t sure I could see the point either, but I knew that Sister Chiara had shown it to me for a reason. “Do you think he would let me in to see it? I’d love to walk through it.”

Paolo nodded, smiling widely, obviously eager to help. “I don’t see why not. I will call Professore Bertagli.”

***

It was late afternoon when my father and I arrived at Professore Bertagli’s house. Dark clouds had swept over the hills, threatening rain and bringing with them a sudden drop in temperature. Dad had insisted I put on a cardigan. Paolo waited for us at the gate, joining us for the walk up the long driveway towards the house.

“The Professore was happy for you to come, but he is somewhat reclusive,” he said, “so don’t expect too much from him.”

A dog loped towards us, barking frantically, a straggle-haired grey and white mountain dog with pointed teeth bared in defense of its territory. Dad put his hand on my arm, protective.

“Botticelli!”

At its master’s call, the dog stopped in its tracks and sat down, panting, its tongue hanging out of one side of its mouth. A hound from a bad dream transformed instantly into a sweet pet. I wished my nightmare could so easily metamorphose into something benign.

I’d imagined that Professore Bertagli would be older, frail and bookish. Instead he had the look of a farmer, barrel-chested and wide-shouldered, with large hands. His black hair stood up from his head like the bristles of a brush. His welcome was polite but distant; he expressed no interest in why I wanted to see the maze. After walking us all around the side of the house to the maze entrance, he gave me a small silver whistle. I looked at it in surprise.

“If you get lost, blow the whistle and I will find you,” he explained.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to come with you?” asked my father, looking nervous. We had discussed on the walk over that I would do this alone. Paolo had already confirmed with Professore Bertagli that he and Dad could do a tour of his greenhouse and its precious collection of exotic orchids while I was in the maze.

“No, go enjoy your plant tour,” I said.

With some trepidation, I stepped on to the entry path. The cypress walls were tall, about ten feet high, and thick enough that I couldn’t see through them. They exuded a faintly astringent smell, like cat pee. After I had walked a few yards, the path curved right. When I glanced back I couldn’t see the entrance. I felt a momentary panic, but shook it off and forged ahead.

The first intersection came up quickly; I hesitated. Thinking back to what I had seen from the hillside earlier in the day, I turned left, heading deeper into the center. Then I went left again, keeping count of my turns in my head. A few drops of rain fell. I buttoned up my thin cardigan. The sky, visible only as a narrow strip above the towering cypresses, had turned the color of charcoal.

A dead end loomed in front of me. With hedges on three sides, I had no choice but to retrace my steps back to the last turn. I thought of how Ariadne had given Theseus a silk thread to help him find his way out of the labyrinth. At least no savage and hungry Minotaur waited at the center to tear me to pieces, but somehow the thought didn’t make me feel much better.

After a while, I fell into a rhythm of reaching a dead end, backtracking, taking a new path. The motion and the repetition was soothing, like a slow dance. I lost all sense of time, but felt that I was moving in the right direction.

Thunder rumbled over the hills and a lightning bolt filled the air with the scent of ozone. Seconds later, the clouds burst, releasing torrents of rain that soaked through my clothes and chilled my skin. The violent change in the weather disoriented me. After a couple more turns, I realized that I was completely lost. I had no idea if I was still heading towards the center, and was even less sure of how to reach the exit. Another thunderclap broke overhead, echoing off the side of the hill, grumbling away into the distance. Seconds later, lightning flashed again. Its white incandescence rendered the cypress hedges black. The storm was directly overhead, and I felt a small worm of fear crawling through my stomach.

I took a few steps along the path, my ears ringing with the sound of thunder, my vision blurred from the lightning. Another dead end. Disconsolate, I turned around. After a few more minutes of taking wrong turns, I put the whistle to my lips.

***

We left Professore Bertagli’s house in silence. I sheltered under Paolo’s umbrella even though I was already drenched. My father had hugged me tightly when I’d emerged from the maze in the company of the Professore, but he seemed at a loss for words and I couldn’t find any either.

I tried to push my frustration and confusion to one side so that I could think clearly. Sister Chiara had shown me the maze for a reason but nothing had come of it. The maze had first tried to swallow me and then had spat me out like a scrap of bad food. My hopes for some sort of revelation drained away with the rain water into the overflowing gutters that gurgled a noisy accompaniment to the walk home.

“I’m glad you came, but I’m still worried about you,” Dad said, backing his car out of the driveway.

I felt terrible. Dad had been through so much; he didn’t need the burden of my problems on top of all that. I put my hand over his. He had to keep a hand on the gear stick to stop it from shifting out of reverse suddenly. Although the Fiat was ancient, he loved it.

We were on the A-1 when a clap of thunder shook the car. The storm that had started while I was in the maze had raged all night, dashing rain at the windows and sporadically illuminating the rooms with fierce white light.

The windscreen wipers were losing the fight against the deluge of rain, and the taillights of the cars ahead appeared only as red smudges. I peered out of the passenger window. The sky, mottled black and purple, hung low over the hills on the north side of Florence. I pulled out my phone to look for the flight details on the CityJet site. There were no delay or cancellation notifications. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. I didn’t like flying in bad weather, and this was as bad as I’d seen it for a long time.

In spite of the stop and go traffic, we soon pulled up in front of the terminal.

“Call me if the flight is cancelled,” Dad said. “I’ll come back for you. Otherwise, I’ll see you at Christmas. He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, promise?”

I pulled off a big smile. “No need to worry. I’m okay. I love you, Dad.”

Grabbing my carry-on from the back seat, I headed into the terminal. Seeing very few people around, I realized I was late. I hurried through check-in and security to reach the gate. Passengers were thronging through the open doors with the usual Italian disregard for queuing, so I waited at the back of the crowd and checked my seat number.

When I looked up, I saw an aura over the grey-haired lady in front of me. For a minute, I panicked. Was the plane going to crash? I scanned everyone else in line, trying not to be caught staring. Everyone was busy looking for boarding passes, or checking seat numbers. There were no other auras, and for the first time ever, my aura vision made me happy. It was nice to be sure that we weren’t all going down. I felt badly for the lady, but my defense mechanism quickly locked into place and I let the thought go. I knew I couldn’t worry about every aura I saw.

When I got home, on time in spite of the bad weather, there was a message on my answering machine from Terry Williams, saying that Rebecca’s body had been released and that the funeral would be on Thursday of the following week. My heart went out to him.

I called Nick to let him know, but Gary answered the call, saying Nick was in bed with flu.

“He’s been sick for three days,” he said. “No thanks to you and your crazy visions. The stress is getting to him.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in my visions.”

He didn’t reply. I asked him to have Nick call me when he was feeling well enough, but had a feeling the message wouldn’t be transmitted. While I brushed my teeth, I wondered how ill Nick was. Was it something serious enough to be dangerous?

I was just getting ready for bed when my cell phone rang. It was Inspector Clarke, apologetic for disturbing me late at night.

“We still haven’t been able to trace Edward,” he said. “And I wanted to check in with you to see if anything new has come to mind?”

We talked for a minute or two and then his next words sent a chill down my spine.

“I heard you were in Italy over the weekend?”

“I went to see my father.”

“I hope you had a good trip,” he said. “But please let me know next time you leave the country.”

“Why? Am I a suspect?”

“Not exactly, Kate, but there’s something going on that I don’t understand. Everything in my gut tells me that there’s something you’re not revealing.”

If I told you, you’d have me locked up
, I thought.

“There’s nothing. I’ve told you everything I know. Did you follow up on my message about Gary?”

He hesitated before speaking. “We’re working on it.”

No wonder Gary was hostile on the phone. I wondered if he knew it was me who’d put his name in front of the detective.

Just before getting into bed, I texted Aidan. I’d been in touch with him regularly, and he was good about responding. Usually nothing more than a short exchange, but it was enough to reassure me that he was all right. When I saw his short g’night message, I turned out the light.

To my immense relief, Alan wasn’t in the office the next morning. But neither was Josh; Annie told me they were both out visiting a client for the day. I was sad to miss Josh. I wanted to tell him about my encounter with Sister Chiara and the walk through the maze. Still, as the office was quiet, I managed to catch up on my work, feeling proud of how productive I was being. At the end of the day, I texted Josh, asking him to come for dinner, and then stopped at the local market to buy enough food for two.

While unpacking the groceries, remembering that Leo was at a university dinner that evening, I sent a text to Aidan asking what he and Gabe were doing while their Dad was out.

“We just ate pizza. Watching a Transformers movie on tv,” Aidan texted back. We sent messages back and forth for a couple of minutes, and Aidan told me that his Dad would be back at eleven. I felt nervous and couldn’t settle. I wasn’t sure if it was anxiety for the boys, even though they often spent a few hours alone in the house, or nervous anticipation about seeing Josh. I tidied up the flat, which was already spotless, and put some white wine in the fridge.

But by eight o clock, when I still hadn’t heard from Josh, I resigned myself to an evening home alone. I sent another message to Aidan asking if the movie was any good. It was Gabe who answered. “Aidan’s got stomachache. He’s in the bathroom.”

“How bad is it?” I wrote back.

“He’s throwing up. It’s gross.”

“Can you call your Dad?”

“No. His phone is off.”

“What about Mrs. Wright?” She was the next door neighbor who doted on the boys and had babysat them when they were younger.

“She’s at bingo and she doesn’t have a cellphone,” Gabe texted.

It only took a few seconds for me to decide to go to Oxford. Aidan could have food poisoning or it could just be a bug of some kind, but he needed someone there with him while he was sick. I threw a few things into a bag and called the taxi service I usually used. It took them ten minutes to find a cab willing to take me all the way to Oxford, but I was soon sitting in the back seat, calling Gabe to find out how his brother was doing. For a while, Gabe didn’t answer, which made my anxiety level shoot up, but finally he picked up.

“Aidan says he has real bad pains in his side,” Gabe reported. “And he’s all sort of sweaty and hot. He’s still throwing up too.”

“Ask him to press on the lower right side of his abdomen,” I said.

“His what?”

“Stomach,” I amended. “Just ask him if it hurts when he does that.”

I heard some murmured voices and, after a few seconds, Gabe came back on. “Yeah, that hurts.”

“I think it’s appendicitis. Listen, Gabe, I’m going to call for an ambulance to come to the house. You’ll have to let them in. Ask them if you can go with him to the hospital. I don’t want you to be home alone.”

“Aunt Kate,” Gabe’s voice was shaky. “I don’t want to go in an ambulance.”

“It’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure him. “They’ll know what to do and you’ll be fine until I get there. I’ll go straight to the hospital.”

I rang off and called the emergency number. The dispatcher assured me an ambulance was on its way. Leaning forward, I asked the taxi driver to go as fast as he could. The car surged forward. On the front dash, an assortment of figures with nodding heads snapped into frenzied motion. Most of them were dogs and cats, but an Albert Einstein, a Buddha, and a Christ nestled among them, nodding wildly as the car sped along the fast lane of the M40. I wondered what to make of the driver’s bobbing head collection. Was he a scientifically-inclined agnostic who was hedging his bets with a choice of religions?

I welcomed the brief distraction from my concerns for Aidan. It was likely that I was overreacting. I briefly envisioned the conversation I’d have with Leo later. It wasn’t a pretty image, but better to face that than take any risks. I wondered if I would have sent for an ambulance if it weren’t for the aura. I decided probably not. In fact, I wouldn’t have texted the boys at all had it not been for my constant anxiety about a threat to Aidan.