The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (35 page)

When Papa’s attention was caught by a new soloist, a soprano in satin and feathers, Carina slipped out the door of the hall and hurried down the stairs. Let them miss her. She was leaving.

Stepping out into the night, she considered going to Quillan. She could not see him among those lingering around the pavilion. He must have gone to his room. She was at once relieved and disappointed. At least he would not have seen her with Flavio.

She looked toward the Union Hotel. No, if Papa sent a contingent after her, it would not be healthy for Quillan. She had no doubt Papa knew where Quillan stayed. His connections were deep.

She started toward home, holding her skirts slightly raised, though the train would be ruined. What did she care? There was a light inside Schocken’s store. Could it be Quillan so late? She stopped outside the window and looked between the crack of the blinds. She just caught a glimpse of Solomon Schocken at his desk. Her heart sank.

She passed the Chinese laundry and started along the lane between it and the Swiss bakery. A sweet smell caught her nose as she neared the rear of the building. Three Chinese men sat in the darkness, smoke curling around their heads and the strange long pipes they smoked. Opium. She knew the odor now. They looked at her with half-dazed eyes as she hurried past.

The road was long and rough in her dancing slippers and heavy bustle. Carina half wished she had found Quillan. He could have lent her Jock or the gelding. Had he named the horse yet? Plato or Icarus or . . . Sam. She felt a pang. Poor old dog. Second Samuel had been Cain’s dog before theirs. And now he was Alan’s.

Almost for the first time, Carina thought of the people in Crystal. She had thought she would be miserable missing them, but so much had happened, she’d hardly thought of them at all. Did Alex still go to the restaurant? Was Èmie managing? Did Mae miss her?

Quillan was right. They seemed distant and somehow insubstantial. Another life that had briefly crossed her own. It was only because so much of her energy was drained now by this current trouble.
What are
you doing, Signore? What am I doing?

She stopped walking to catch her breath. The corset was tight and uncomfortable. Had they missed her yet? Whom would Papa send? Flavio? She shuddered, glancing swiftly over her shoulder. What if he found her here alone, in the dark? After his words tonight, she would put nothing past him.

What did he mean he kept her sacred, did not defile her as he had “the others.” How many lovers had he had? She hurried on.
Dio, get
me home
. But as she approached the house in the moonlight, saw its imposing gates, she didn’t feel like she was home. She looked at the tall arched windows, the elegant eaves and pillars. It was Papa’s home, as proud and unyielding as he.

But there was nothing else to do but go inside. She rapped on the door, and Jerome, their servant, admitted her. She went to the study to await her papa. He would be angry, and she would as soon settle it now as tomorrow. She sat down in his room, lined with medical texts and scientific writings from all the great men of history. Her favorite had been the book of diagrams by Leonardo da Vinci.

She smelled the slightly antiseptic smell that reminded her of her papa. This was his room. She had spent many hours there. She thought of Divina’s words.
Papa’s little favorite
. It was true. Papa had little patience for Divina’s silliness. It was she he had coddled, teaching her his craft, or at least the understanding of what he did. He had admired her spunk. She reminded him of Mamma, especially in appearance. How many times he’d said, “You’re so like your mamma.”

But there were ways Divina was like Mamma, too. Slapping and pouting and manipulating with her tears. And saying whatever it took in spite of the truth. Carina raised her head at the sound of the carriage in the yard. They must have all come home. She got up and stood in the doorway, where Papa would see her when he came in.

He was the first through the door. His gaze locked with hers as Mamma pushed in behind, hands to her mouth.

“You’re here, Carina!” She spoke with scolding relief.

“I told Papa I needed to go home.” She back-stepped into the study as Papa came in and closed the door behind them.

He walked to the desk and turned. “Why do you insist on defying me? What have I done to earn your disdain?”

“I don’t disdain you, Papa.”

He looked her down and up. “You are a woman, not a child, but I give you credit for more thought perhaps than you deserve. I know your nature makes you vulnerable to your emotions.”

“It’s not my emotions, Papa.”

He removed his coat and hung it on the stand. Then he turned, his pleated sleeves full and immaculate. He came and took her hands. She looked up into his face. Her papa was tall, as tall as Quillan, though not as broad in the shoulders. But, she realized with surprise, possessing the same sinewy build. Their faces, too, were similar, strong and angular; Papa’s blue eyes and Quillan’s gray, both intense in scrutiny.

“You must trust me, Carina. I know what is best for you.”

“Do you, Papa?”

“You would never have questioned me before.” His face grew sad, and it broke her heart.

“I don’t mean to hurt you. I just don’t understand.”

“Some day you will.”

She shook her head, turning away. How many times tonight would she be told she couldn’t understand? Thinking of that, she turned back. “Papa, why did you leave Italy?”

His brows drew together. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve never thought to before. But you had so much. Land and power and esteem. Why would you leave that?”

“You know your history. Italy was many years in disarray. How solid was its unification? Parts were still warring.”

“Not Sardinia. Not our Italy.”

Her papa released her hands and walked to the window. Looking out into the night, he stayed quiet.

“Mamma said you wanted freedom and land.”

He turned. “That’s right.”

“But you had land. And position.”

He rested his fingers on the window sash. “Land and position. Even power. But not freedom.”

“What do you mean?”

He returned to stand before her. “Carina, power has inherent dangers. There is always the chance of losing it.”

She searched his face. What power had he lost?

“I don’t speak of my own power, but of those I served.”

She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“In a country full of strife and rebellion, and you’re wrong to think it didn’t affect us in Sardinia, there are always those who pose a threat to the ones in power. Our stability had been hard fought and harder won.”

This, too, she understood.

He sighed. “Because of this, as a loyal follower, I was asked to do something that betrayed my oath.” She knew he meant his Hippocratic oath, to preserve life and cause no harm. He held it next to his devotion to God.

“You refused?”

Her papa looked away. “There was a man, particularly dangerous in his views and charisma. When he was injured in an altercation, I was summoned by the family, who were powerful enough to know the level of my skill and wealthy enough to appropriate it, though the mischief of this particular member threatened them.”

She waited, almost breathless. Had her papa helped the man and been exiled for it?

“Before I went to him I was contacted by an official of the king. He suggested that it would be in the country’s best interest if the man did not survive his injury.”

Carina could not hide her dismay.

“I went to the house and saw that the man’s situation was grave indeed. It would take all my skill to save him.”

“But you did?”

Her papa’s throat worked, and her heart sank.

“I did not. Perhaps I could not have anyway, but I withheld the skill God gave me. I worked on his body, but not thoroughly enough to sustain his life.”

She stood silent, unable to believe that was the choice her papa had made.

He drew a breath and released it. “For that reason I could no longer remain in Italy. I could not serve a king by whose order I betrayed myself and my God.”

Carina trembled. “Oh, Papa.”

He lowered his face, his eyes filled with grief. “I had seen the man, heard him speak. He was a hothead, full of dreams. His own family was afraid of him, of what he would cost them. When they learned that I was leaving Italy, they brought me his son. The mother had died in childbirth, and they feared the boy was . . . a liability. Indeed, at six he had his father’s beauty and nature.”

She clasped his hands between hers. “Did you take him, Papa?”

“He is your ‘cousin.’ Flavio.”

Her legs weakened. She gripped the desk. “Flavio?” It was Flavio’s father her papa had not saved?
Signore, help me
. She felt the burden of his guilt.

T
WENTY

To be submitted, flesh and soul, that is my desire.

To give myself, my all, my whole, and ne’er in that to tire.

—Quillan

F
LAVIO CARRESSED THE
smooth wooden ball, then eyed the long gravel lane and the arrangement of the other wooden balls already thrown around the small metal bocce ball. He lowered his hand into position, hanging the ball beneath his palm. Then swinging his arm and flicking the wrist upward together, he sent the ball down the lane.

It struck Lorenzo’s and knocked Tony’s to the edge of the lane, stopping within inches of the target ball. His shot put him in the lead. But that did nothing to ease the awful strain inside him. It felt as though he were tearing apart, tendon from muscle, sinew from cartilage, organ from organ. Such a hatred he had not felt since the day they told him his father was dead.

He had only been six, and though thoughts of his papa evoked strong emotions, he could not remember him clearly. He had images, but when he tried to see his father in his mind, it was more a sensation than a picture. What he did picture was the man he’d first fixed his hatred upon: Angelo DiGratia. When the dottore came into the house where Papa lay dying, Flavio had felt awe.

This man had healing hands. Like Gesù. He had heard the others talking, knew he was the finest surgeon to be found. He would save Papa’s life, and everything would be right again. Flavio had trembled, forgotten, against one wall, as Dr. DiGratia struggled to mend the damage.

Flavio stepped back for Vittorio to take his turn. He cared little for the outcome of this game, though normally his sense of competition was extreme. Especially against the DiGratia brothers. He hadn’t known the doctor had a family, or else he might have seen him differently.

Flavio had never known his mother, since she died birthing him. But he had heard that if only a doctor had come in time she could have survived. Now that the dottore was there, surely his papa would live. But he had not. And Angelo DiGratia became the target of all Flavio’s grief and despair.

The horrible hollowness had put him into that black place where he could scarcely lift his head from the pillow. Liquid grief filled his veins. When, some weeks later, he learned his family was going to send him out of Italy with the doctor, he ran and hid in the alley behind the house. He would rather die on the streets than see that man again. Unfortunately, they found him and gave him no choice in the matter.

Flavio leaned against the wall enclosing the bowling lanes, remembering his arrival in Argentina with the doctor’s party. It was marked most strongly in his mind by the jungle smell of the air and the look of bafflement on the faces of his company. They were at their wits’ end to discover how to handle the young animal placed in their charge. Wrapped in fear and horror, he had been scarcely less than savage.

Vittorio’s next shot posed no threat to Flavio’s, but Flavio was struggling to concentrate. He recalled how one of the families traveling with the DiGratias, some distant cousin on the signora’s side, the Lanzas, adopted him, willing to do what they could for the difficult boy. But strangely enough, it was the doctor who healed him.

Day by day, Flavio would sneak out and spy on the man, wanting only to feed the terrible hatred. But day by day, watching the doctor apply his skills to anyone who asked, even the Indians who paid nothing but a pouch of corn or a handful of colorful feathers, he realized he might have been wrong in his judgment. Signore DiGratia was a good man, but he was not Gesù. Gesù was a fairy tale.

And so the devotion Flavio had once held for God, he now gave to Angelo DiGratia. God could have saved his papa, but hadn’t. At least the doctor had tried. Or had he? Even in his love, there was doubt.

And now he loved again—Ti’Angelo’s daughter. And again it was in the doctor’s hands to save or not save his heart.

Lorenzo nudged him. “Your turn, Flavio.”

Flavio lifted his second ball and went to the end of the lane. What did he care for a small metal ball on a stretch of sand when his heart was tearing in two? There were two other lanes in the long narrow building, but no one was using them. A withered Chinaman with a thin gray queue hanging down his back swept loose gravel into the left lane with a straw broom. Flavio lined up and eyed the lay of the balls before him. His arm and hand knew what to do, but his thoughts were distracted by the Chinaman’s motion, by the
scritch, scritch
of the broom. His strain grew until he was being racked, torn, limb from limb. He flung his arm back and sent the ball like a missile into the old man’s back.

“Aiyee!” The Chinaman dropped his broom and fell to his knees as Flavio found another ball and hurtled it toward his head. It glanced off the man’s silken hat, splitting open the top of his ear, and he collapsed, covering his head and squalling.

A hand gripped Flavio’s wrist, though he couldn’t make out the face. Then the red fury became Tony’s features. Flavio stared at him, shocked and paralyzed by what he’d done, thinking of the missiles hurled at his papa in the riot. He hadn’t seen it, but had heard the family talking before they sent him away. Violent people had killed his papa. Violence Flavio had always despised. But now . . . He jerked his arm away. “Doesn’t he know better than to sweep when I’m trying to make my shot?”