The Girl With the Painted Face (35 page)

‘He said he’d be back,’ Lidia says. ‘He’s not just walking away from us.’

Cosima nods. ‘It looks as though they might be thinking seriously about what we’ve said… what Angelo said.’ She puts a hand around the side of Beppe’s head, drawing him in close; he leans against her for a moment; then, gripping her fingers, he stands straight again, turning back to look at the crowd.

The people in the square start singing.

One lone voice begins it – a clear, ringing tenor – then more and more join him, and the sound rapidly fills both the piazza and Beppe’s head. He has no idea what the song might be – though he thinks he has heard it before, perhaps in a tavern, perhaps in the street – but here, issuing from two, three, four hundred mouths, it has a haunting power and the hair on the back of his neck prickles.

The Coraggiosi stand in a tight group by the door. Agostino and Cosima, Lidia and Vico, Federico, Giovanni Battista and Angelo – and Beppe, a little to one side now, right by the architrave of the door, leaning against it, waiting, waiting.

Just as the crowd’s song builds to a ringing crescendo, the door opens again and the sound quickly fades. The thin man from earlier looks at the troupe and says, ‘Signor da Budrio wonders if you would care to come in.’

Agostino nods and takes a step towards the door. ‘Thank you.’

The thin man shakes his head. ‘No – you misunderstand. The signore would like to see
him
.’ He nods towards Angelo. ‘Just him.’

Agostino clutches at Angelo’s sleeve. ‘Please, Angelo, don’t agree to this. Take us all in with you.’

Angelo stares for a moment at Agostino, his expression impossible to read. His gaze moves to the women, to the two older men, to Beppe. Beppe’s heart races. Then, after several long seconds, Angelo shakes his head. ‘It’ll be better if I go alone, I think,’ he says. And without a backward glance, he follows the thin man into the darkened entrance, and the door closes once more.

25

They have been living in the house on the edge of the salt marsh for just less than a fortnight. Long and low, red-roofed and brick-walled, it sits near the edge of a wide expanse of water; scrubby bushes cluster around two sides of the house and, away to the left of the building, a long strip of land curves away like a protecting arm around the edge of the marsh.
 

The furthest of the three rooms holds two straw-filled mattresses, one wooden chest and a broken chair; in the middle room a table and several folding stools give the family somewhere to sit and eat, and the small fireplace over on the far wall provides the means to cook and keep warm. And in the outermost room, a long low table and a bench fill most of the space.
 

Mamma has already begun collecting leaves and roots to dry and turn into her special tinctures and powders: bunches and piles lie neatly along the whole length of the table on shallow, sand-filled trays.
 

The light in all the rooms is dim and indistinct: rather than glass in the windows, they are lined in a thick parchment, which gives an odd, filtered light: as though, Sofia thinks, the house were underwater.
 

She stands by the low table in the outermost room and fingers the dozen or so bunches of drying leaves and flowers lying on the sand-trays. Picking one up, she holds it to her nose, then, grimacing, puts it back down quickly: woundwort. A bunch of starry-white bogbean flowers catches her eye and she reaches out to run a finger over their ragged, frilled edges; they are already beginning to turn brown. Several bunches of cudweed lie in piles at one end of the table, and Sofia straightens them to lie more neatly. What was it Mamma said about cudweed as they picked these leaves a few days ago? It’ll make you sweat, she said – good for fevers. It can turn a man… into a devoted lover, too, she added, smiling at Sofia.
 

‘Does Papa like it?’
 

She saw a smile on Mamma’s face for the first time in days. ‘Oh, Papa doesn’t need it. He never has.’
 

She fiddles the fading white flowers with the tip of her index finger for several more seconds, pleased with the silky fringed feeling of the petals against her skin, then turns back towards the middle room. Mamma asked her to keep an eye on the fire while she was out getting food from the market in the town, and Sofia is determined to show her how well she can manage the task. Squatting down in front of the little hearth, she jabs at the mound of glowing logs with a short iron poker. A burst of red sparks spits out at her and a log crumbles and falls; several nut-sized lumps bounce out, white hot, onto the stone surround and Sofia, standing quickly, kicks them back into the blaze with the toe of her shoe. She adds another couple of logs, then sits back on a low stool to wait and watch her charge, making sure it
behaves
and works hard until Mamma’s return. Or until Papa comes back from his search for work.

Sofia and her mother cross one of the many bridges which up-and-over Comacchio’s myriad canals. This one is of stone: neatly built, shallow, merely for foot passengers. Some are bigger, strong enough for a laden cart; others are flimsy, ramshackle, poorly built affairs, which wobble each time someone crosses from one side of a waterway to the other. Sofia does not like these wobbling ones; there are several she fears will collapse beneath her each time she sets foot upon them. Sofia and Mamma make their way down one long waterside street, cross another bridge – a sturdy stone one – and turn down a narrow alley towards an open space in the centre of the town where Sofia knows the bustling market regularly takes place.
 

They are hand in hand: Mamma is walking quickly with the basket of herbs over her arm, and Sofia skips by her side. ‘And the crayfish’s claws are tied tightly – like this…’ Mamma bunches the tips of her fingers and thumb together and points them at Sofia. ‘… because they’re very,
very
cross about having to become our supper…’ She jabs the fingers forwards to pinch the end of Sofia’s nose.

Sofia laughs.
 

‘The nice market man has promised us three crayfish in return for these…’ Mamma shakes the basket. ‘And the other man has given us cheese and asparagus – he didn’t really want to, but the crayfish man told him he should.’
 

‘What does asparagus taste like?’
 

‘Delicious! You dip those long green fingers into melted butter and bite off the tips – like this…’ She takes hold of Sofia’s free hand and holds the end of her daughter’s small index finger between her teeth for a second. Sofia squeals happily. ‘And they taste green and lovely.’
 

‘What does green taste like, though?’
 

Mama frowns, thinking. ‘I don’t know – just green. Fresh, like the smell of summer.’
 

‘Poor crayfish,’ Sofia says. ‘They have no idea what’s just around the corner for them.’
 

And neither had we, Sofia thinks now, sitting up on the thin mattress and hugging her knees. Neither had we. Not then, not now.

26

Nearly an hour has passed since Angelo strode away into the darkness of the house beside the Palazzo Communale in the company of the formidable Signor da Budrio. Beppe has been pacing the length of the façade of the building like a caged animal ever since, back and forth, pointlessly, wordlessly, counting his steps – twenty-two each way – hands deep in his breeches pockets, staring down at his feet as he walks, scraping and scuffing the dust. His head is still pounding.

The crowd became restive some moments ago, and seemed on the point of abandoning their defiant support and slipping away bit by bit, but Agostino, Cosima, Vico and Lidia, Federico and Giovanni Battista, almost without discussion – merely by sharing a flicked glance and mutter and a couple of nods – began to perform. Quickly adapting the final scene from
The Three Loyal Friends
to remove Arlecchino from the proceedings – Beppe was clearly beyond any involvement – within a couple of minutes, they had the crowd hooting and catcalling, clapping and laughing.

Beppe hardly heard them.

Each time he passes the door now on his relentless paced way from one end of the building to the other, he glances across at it, willing it to open, feeling in his chest wild, suffocating, smothering surges of hope and despair pushing up like silt into his throat.

The scene concludes and the crowd applauds wildly. Agostino, standing now up on a low wall, shouts out above their noise, ‘Stay with us! Please! It can’t be long now – and if… if… if it has gone badly…’

Beppe’s heart twists painfully but Agostino’s voice rings out again. ‘If it has gone badly, then we will need you. We might even need to storm the building. We’ll have her out, come what may!’

The crowd cheers and claps, people stamp their feet and whoop. Beppe knows in his heart that this can only be Ago’s wild words; he imagines the crowd pushing through, past the wool-haired man, da Budrio, surging into the building like rats, barging their way along corridors, up staircases, banging on doors and breaking windows, knocking down anyone who stands in their way in their search for Sofia. It couldn’t happen. Why has Ago said it?

‘But…’ Agostino continues. ‘But we must wait patiently a little longer, please, my friends. Just a little longer.

Murmurs of agreement. The clapping and whooping dies away.

Lidia now begins to sing – a haunting, lilting love song, which Vico normally accompanies on his guitar – and Beppe feels tears pricking sharp in the corners of his eyes. Lidia’s voice rises up above the mutterings of the crowd, and the whole piazza falls silent to listen. The sound is pure and sweet, laden with longing and love, and redolent with a heart-touching comprehension of the pain of loss.

Beppe feels Cosima’s arms around him. ‘Oh, don’t cry, sweet boy,’ she whispers. ‘We’ll have her back soon, I’m sure.’

Wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist, Beppe nods at her, nipping the end of his tongue between his teeth.

Lidia’s voice lingers on a high note, then falls back down to resolve the melody into its final bars.

The crowd claps, cheering and stamping once more, and, distracted by their energy, deafened by their noise, Beppe does not hear the door to the dark building opening at last and he is watching Lidia as it swings wide.

But someone shouts out, and he whirls around.

The crowd has begun to clap and the sound is echoing off the walls of the piazza. Several people whistle.

Flanked by Angelo and a grim-faced Signor da Budrio, Sofia is standing in the doorway. Small and white-faced and dirty, her hair tangled and flattened on one side, her eyes are wide and dark-rimmed and she is looking out at the crowd, her mouth dropping open a fraction at the sight of the packed city square.

Beppe steps forward, breath held, his heart racing. Some dozen people are standing between him and the doorway, but he edges through, turning sideways, arms raised, muttering apologies as he shoulders his way past.

Suddenly aware of the movement, Sofia turns and sees him. She stares at him, and he cannot take his eyes from her face. Someone is speaking – a deep voice – but it takes Beppe several seconds to realize that it is da Budrio and that he should listen.

‘And so,’ da Budrio is saying, ‘following a frankly revelatory discussion, we have come to the conclusion that it will perhaps be advisable – given the circumstances laid out to us so forcefully here by Signor da Bagnacavallo…’

He inclines his head to Angelo, who lifts his chin, smirking out at the crowd, a scroll of paper in one hand.

‘… it will be advisable to presume that the killer of the unfortunate Signor da Correggio is regrettably still at large. Our forces and moneys will henceforth be put into attempting to discover the real culprit.’

The crowd mutters and someone shouts, ‘What are you actually going to
do
about it, then?’

‘Aye – what’s to be done?’

Several more people call out
their
wish to know more about proposed plans, and da Budrio holds up a hand for quiet.