The Scarlet Thread

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The Scarlet Thread

Evelyn Anthony

To Shirley and Tony Fanshawe

with my love

ONE

It was dark and cool inside the church. It smelled of incense and candle grease; there were statues of the Virgin with the Christ Child nestling in her arms, and of saints in ecstasy. The images were painted and gilded, with crowns and paste jewels glimmering in the dim light. It was the last place in the world she would have imagined in picturing her wedding day.

She held on to his arm as they walked up a side aisle, close to the altar. Marble and gilding surrounded a writhing Savior on his cross.

He said, “Sit down and wait here, sweetheart. I'll go find the priest.”

She sat on a rickety wooden chair. There were no pews.

A woman was on her knees, polishing the floor.

They had driven up the steep hillside, over the narrow, rutted tracks that led to the village. It clung to the hill as if it had grown out of the rock. They left the jeep in the tiny piazza close to the church, and he had taken her by the hand and walked up cobbled streets to show her the house where his grandfather had been born. It was poor and mean, with tiny windows and a low door that no full-grown man could have passed through without stooping. Geraniums bloomed blood red from little pots and cracks in the walls. Someone's wash hung limply from an upper window.

It was blindingly hot, and the red Sicilian dust was in the air they breathed. “His name was Stefano too,” he told her. “That's what we'll call our boy. Let's go to the church now.”

The woman who had been polishing the floor straightened up, rubbing the small of her back to ease an old ache. As she turned and stared at Angela for a moment, her expressionless face was sallow and wrinkled like an old map. Picking up the tin of polish and stuffing her rags into it, she painfully went down on one knee before the altar and crossed herself with her free hand. It seemed a strange pantomime to Angela Drummond. She wondered whether Steven had found the priest. The old woman went out, and the door closed behind her. She ought to pray, Angela thought suddenly. Even in this alien place with its sickly smells and guttering candles, she should remember her upbringing and pray for God's blessing on her wedding day.

It was all so different from what she had imagined. She had thought the ceremony would be in the church at home in Sussex, where her mother helped with the flowers and her father dutifully read the lesson once a month. The vicar who had baptized her would marry her to some faceless young man, with a ribbon of bridesmaids behind them and the pews full of friends and relatives in neat suits and flowered hats, whom her brother had ushered in.

But that was before the war had broken out and all their lives had been changed. Her brother was dead, killed on a bombing raid over Germany in 1942. She'd done her nurse's training and gone overseas, and she'd seen a lot of other young men die.

She closed her eyes and tried to formulate some kind of prayer from her thoughts.
I love him; please let us be happy
was all that echoed in her mind.

The priest was seated. He had a spreading bald patch on the top of his head. His cassock was dusty and stained. He looked up at the American captain and said slowly, “Why do you come here? We're at peace now. We don't want you.”

“That's not why I've come,” was the answer. “I've come for myself.”

“You've come to bring back the men of blood,” the priest said. He removed his spectacles and wiped them on his sleeve. “There's nothing for the Falconis here,” he said. “Nothing.”

“You don't understand. You're not listening to me. Listen to me, Father.”

“The word comes even to Altodonte,” the priest said. “The Americans are bringing you back to prey on us, to bleed us, as you did in all the years before we drove you out. Altodonte is poor. You can't squeeze anything from us. You can't bleed a corpse. Tell your people that.”

“I was born here.” Steven Falconi spoke quietly. “I've come here to be married. You can't deny me that. That's all I want from you. Nothing else. I've brought my woman; she's waiting outside.”

“No.” The priest got up, and the rickety chair creaked with relief. “I won't marry you. There's blood on your hands.”

“She is carrying my child,” Steven Falconi said. “For the sake of honor I ask you to marry us.”

“No,” the priest repeated. He opened the sacristy door into the church. A young woman in a nurse's uniform was sitting in the shadows at the back. “I won't pardon your sin. Take your woman and leave my church.”

Steven Falconi didn't move. “If you marry us, Father, we will forget Altodonte. You'll be left in peace. I guarantee you won't be troubled. Ever.” He crossed to the door and closed it quietly. “You'll never see or hear from us again.”

It was the tried and proved negotiating term. Do this favor, and I promise a favor in return. Refuse me … There was never any choice then. The priest knew there was no choice now.

“You swear this?”

“On my family's honor,” was the answer, and the priest knew that oath was never broken. Like the oath of silence.

He sighed. “God forgive you. And me.”

“I will wait outside for you,” Steven Falconi said. “You've made a wise decision. You won't regret it.”

“I remember your grandfather,” the priest mumbled, not looking at him. “I was only a boy, but I remember him. He was a murderer.”

“I'll wait five minutes, Father,” Steven Falconi said. He went out of the sacristy into the nave of the church.

There had been nothing to warn Angela Drummond when she went on duty that day. It seemed a day like all the other days. The base hospital was set up after the Americans captured Palermo; Angela had joined it from Tripoli. Casualties were still coming in from the fighting around Messina, where the British were. American losses had been less light. The American boy she was tending had lost both legs when his tank hit a mine. He was unconscious, and from experience Angela knew that he was going to die. He lay as bloodless and still as if he were already dead. As she bent over, checking the failing pulse, she heard a voice say, “Nurse, is this Lieutenant Scipio?”

Angela straightened. “Yes, it is. I'm sorry, but you can't come in here. You'll have to go.”

He was tall and very dark, with an infantry captain's bars on his uniform collar. “We grew up together,” he said. “I heard he was brought in. How bad is it?”

“Very bad,” Angela answered, her voice low. “He's lost both legs. Please, Captain, you shouldn't have been let in.”

“I'll come back,” he said. He stood staring down at the dying boy. “I'll come tomorrow. Take care of him.”

“We take care of them all. Now, please …”

He nodded and turned away. She could see he was moved. If they had grown up together … She bent closer to the bed to see his chart: Alfred Scipio, Lieutenant, Tenth Armored Corps, age 23.

What a waste, Angela thought, as she had thought so often at so many deathbeds. A waste like her brother, blown to oblivion over a blazing German city.

“Nurse Drummond!” The head nurse's voice was sharp. “What are you supposed to be doing?”

“I'm sorry, Sister. I was just checking the patient's pulse. It's very weak.”

“It doesn't take five minutes, Nurse, and that's how long you've been dawdling. Over here, please. Help me change this dressing.”

When the American infantry captain came the next morning, there was another man in Scipio's place. He had shrapnel wounds, second-degree burns to the chest and arms. He would recover.

He came into the ward and straight toward her. “He's gone,” he said. “Lieutenant Scipio's gone. Where is he?”

Angela had forgotten the captain would return. After a long day, she was always too tired to think of anything. Then she said, as she had many times before, “He died last night. I'm so sorry.”

He looked over to the bed where Scipio had lain, and he said, “It's better for him. I knew him. He wouldn't want to live like that. Thank you, Nurse. Thank you for taking care of him.”

“I only wish I could have done more.…” Suddenly she was overwhelmingly tired, saddened by the futile words. Her eyes filled with tears, which overflowed. “Poor boy,” she said, and turned away. “Please go. I'll get in trouble if the ward Sister comes and finds you here.”

“When do you come off duty?”

She answered without thinking, wiping the tears away. It was unforgivable to give way and cry. She was an experienced nurse, with the North African campaign behind her. “Seven-thirty.” Then, collecting herself, she added, “Why?”

“I'll wait outside,” he said quietly. “My name is Steven Falconi. I'd like to thank you for taking care of my friend.”

She didn't mean to let him drive her into Palermo to have dinner. He seemed to know exactly where to get good Sicilian food.

“Where did you and that poor boy grow up?” she asked. “Where do you live in America?”

“New York City,” he answered. “Scipio was two grades behind me in school, but his family knew my family. I graduated from college and joined the army. He'd already enlisted. His mother was crying to my mother for weeks. She didn't want him to go. Have some wine—it's good. Do you like the food?”

He spoke fluent Italian. The owner of the little café was never far away. It seemed to Angela that he was always watching Falconi.

Steven talked a lot about Scipio and how he'd promised his friend's mother to look out for him when they were overseas. Not that he'd expected ever to see him once they embarked, but the promise was a comfort to the family.