The Witch of Napoli (23 page)

“I don’t need your advice, Tommaso,” Alessandra replied. “Is Elsa coming?”

The tone of her voice annoyed me. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

A maid was hurrying up the stairs as we started down. She stepped aside as we passed. Alessandra glanced at me.

“I…I just wanted to know if you will be sitting next to me.”

“Alessandra, you’re the guest of honor. You’ll be seated next to Mr. Tyndall.”

“But he doesn’t speak Italian.”

“Elsa’s father will be on the other side. He’ll translate for you.”

As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard a girl’s voice.

“
Buona sera
, Tommaso!”

Elsa was standing at the front door in a blue satin dress, a white ribbon in her chestnut hair, and a mischievous smile on her face. She looked fabulous. Archie Mallory followed her through the door.

I left Alessandra and hurried over.

“Good evening, Miss Mallory,” I smiled and bowed. “How do you do? You look positively smashing this evening.”

I had spent the afternoon studying my English phrase book. It was a long shot, but you never knew. Girls are funny. If they fall for you, they do what they want – their mothers be damned.

The tall windows in the Tyndall’s dining room looked out over the great lawn where the reception had been held. Chinese lanterns lit the twilight, and down at the water’s edge, a small wooden punt sat in the dusk. Swallows flitted through the evening sky, and through the open windows you could hear the chirp of crickets. There were fourteen of us seated at a long, mahogany dining table fragrant with roses, bright with candles, and crowded with silver, bone china, and linen napkins. A full champagne glass sat next to each dinner plate. Henry rang a silver bell, and the serving staff came out and lined themselves against the wall.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I may propose a toast!”

Mallory brought Alessandra to her feet, and Elsa poked me in the ribs. I blushed and stood up. We all raised our glasses.

“To Home, Country and Queen! – and to our guests from Italy,
Signora
Poverelli and Master Tommaso Labella.” Everyone hurrahed, clinked their glasses, and we sat down.

Elsa made a face. “Unfair. I get lemonade.”

“We have a traditional English dinner tonight for our foreign guests,” Henry continued. He wagged his finger at Alessandra. “No macaroni tonight.” Everyone laughed.

“You must try everything,” Elsa teased. “
Mangia tutto
!”

The celery soup was boring, but I pretended to like it. Alessandra, across the table, flashed me a sour look when she tried her’s, then pushed it away. Elsa patted her lips delicately with the napkin after every spoonful, and I noticed how she placed the spoon on the side of the bowl when she finished, as a signal to the servants. After the soup bowls were taken away, a servant came around with glasses of sherry, and Alessandra grabbed one off the tray. She leaned across the table.

“With your permission, Signor Labella,” she said mockingly.

“Make sure you eat something,” I warned. She hadn’t eaten anything at the reception, and I knew the wine would go to her head.

Instead, she ended up pushing her food around her plate. I had trouble with the food myself. It was heavy and salty – a slab of beef, potatoes, heavy gravy, with various mustards and horseradish. Tyndall served up a claret with the roast. He had a large wine cellar, and was proud of it.

“My favorite Bordeaux, Master Labella” he said, as the maid placed a glass in front of me. “Chateau Latour.”

Uncle Mario had once mentioned the name of a local wine to me, and I wanted to impress Elsa. I took a gamble.

“If you ever get to Naples, you must try our
Lacryma Christi
. Tears of Christ. Made from grapes grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. A bit sweet for my taste, but popular with the ancient Romans.”

Mallory laughed out loud and translated my opinion for everyone. Henry frowned.

“Lacryma Christi, eh? Can’t say I’ve heard of it. But I’ll do that.”

Elsa stared at me. I nonchalantly swirled the claret in my glass and studied it.

Score another for Romeo.

Across the table, Alessandra had already downed half her glass, and Commodore Turnbull was getting annoying. He was the British Naval attaché to Italy, just back from Naples with his dumpy wife Henrietta. Alessandra later told me they reminded her of the Croppers, who had adopted her from the orphanage.

The pompous Commodore didn’t think much of the Italian Navy, and as he forked down his potatoes he wasn’t shy about sharing his opinion with us.

“Your Umberto-class battleship is not a bad little boat. Of course England manufactures the guns and engines.” He pushed peas onto his fork and pointed at Alessandra with his knife. “The
Re di Sardegna
can do twenty-plus knots. Damn good design.” He downed his peas and started slicing his beef. “Helps the Eye-talian Navy run for it when the fighting starts,” he chuckled. “You’re better lovers than fighters.”

Elsa spoke up. “The world could use more lovers and fewer fighters.”

Henrietta jumped in.

“We were hoping for a posting to Rome. You don’t have a proper English club in Naples, like you have in Rome or Hong Kong. It’s just a reading room with a few London papers. Dull as dishwater. At least in Rome you have the hunt clubs, and Sunday picnics at the Villa Borghese, and the balls and receptions are much more fun.”

I could see Alessandra getting irritated.

“Bloody noisy – Naples,” growled Turnbull, dipping his bread in a lake of gravy. “We had an apartment on the Chiaja, 500 francs a month. Supposed to be the nice part of town. But the din! Egad, morning to night! Rattle of carriage wheels on that lava pavement, the tramp, tramp, tramp of the infantry, donkeys braying, organ grinders camped outside your window; hawkers screeching in their unintelligible language trying to sell you something.”

“And the help! The stories I could tell you! ” Henrietta exclaimed, stabbing a potato and stuffing it into her mouth. “You want to make sure you only hire someone with a letter stating they were discharged from a foreign family of distinction. But even then they’re dreadfully incompetent. The maid could hardly speak a word of English. And the cook – he was an absolute thief! He’d run off to the market to buy a chicken, and come back claiming it cost two shillings. We found out he paid half that, and pocketed the rest. They’ll rob you blind!”

The embarrassed Mallory translated, and Alessandra glared at Henrietta.

I shot Alessandra a warning look.

Henrietta babbled on.

“And the sun! Goodness! You have to use a parasol everywhere you go if you want to keep your skin white. Otherwise you’ll come home looking like a nigger. ”

Henry attempted to move the conversation in another direction.

“Elsa, when is your father going to send you to the Continent to do the Grand Tour? Maybe Master Tommaso here could squire you around Naples.”

Elsa blushed. Henrietta jumped back in.

“Make sure you visit the Piazza del Plebiscito, Elsa. The Commodore always had a laugh there – didn’t you dear?” She attacked the remaining potato on her plate. “The Commodore likes his cigars, and when he finished one he would toss the butt into the street so we could watch the half-naked ragamuffins fight over it.”

It was true. You grab the butts, remove the tobacco, and when you collect enough you wrap it in a piece of paper and you’ve got a perfectly good cigar – something the little guy can afford. I used to hawk a tray of them around the piazza myself, before Uncle Mario hired me.

The dinner ended with a selection of cheeses, like the British do. It was the first time I had ever smelled Stinking Bishop, and I almost gagged. Lombardi wanted us to try Limburger cheese when we were in Munich, but we refused. Stinking Bishop is even worse, believe me.

“Don’t be a coward,” Elsa teased. She cut off the rind, and put some on a biscuit. “Hold your nose and try it.” I did, and it wasn’t bad, but I’ll stick to mozzarella.

Henry served port with the cheese, but Alessandra didn’t need another drink. She had already finished a glass of champagne, a glass of sherry, and two glasses of claret, all on an empty stomach. When the maid offered her a port, I tried to wave her off. Alessandra scowled at me, and grabbed a glass, spilling some on Mallory’s jacket. I was livid.

“Excuse us,” I said. I got up, and hurried around to Alessandra’s chair. I pulled her out of her seat, and steered her towards the hallway. When I got her there, I lit into her.

“Stop it!” I told her. “No more wine! You’re drunk, and you’re making an ass of yourself!”

She pulled away, and staggered backwards. “I’m
not
drunk. And I don’t give a shit about those English pricks. They can go fuck themselves.” She stood there, arms folded, staring at me. Finally she said, “I have to take a piss.”

I returned to the table, hoping the dinner was just about over. A few minutes later, Alessandra returned. The maid had left her a small serving of Stinking Bishop, and Alessandra picked up the plate and sniffed it. Everybody at the table was looking at her.

She made a face, then turned to Mallory.

“This cheese smells like a goat fart.”

Henrietta put down her knife. “What did she say, Archie?” Mallory blushed.

“She said she doesn’t… like the cheese.”

“WHAT DID SHE SAY?” It was Lady Hackett at the other end of the table. Huxley leaned into her ear trumpet, and said in a stage whisper loud enough for everyone at the table to hear, “SHE SAID THE CHEESE SMELLS LIKE A GOAT FART.”

Everyone stared at their napkins, as a giggling maid slipped into the kitchen to tell the rest of the servants what the crazy Italian lady had said.

A
lessandra was confident the spirits would show up that night.

They always had in the past when she called them. They would help her put on a show, humiliating Huxley and sending her home with an extra hundred pounds sterling.

“We can leave tomorrow, Tommaso,” she assured me as we headed down to the sitting. She had received a telegram from Lombardi that morning and she was sky high.

Her heart was already in France, which made me nervous.

When we entered the library, we found everyone sitting around the table waiting for us –Elsa and her father, Maxine who would act as stenographer, and Huxley and Henry who had their heads together in conversation.

Henry jumped up and showed Alessandra to her chair.

“Lord Carraig, Chairman of the Society, and his wife Lady Carraig, have decided to join our circle tonight,” Henry announced. “They will be here shortly. They’re coming from a dinner with the Duke of Westminster. While we wait, perhaps I can recap the rules all parties have agreed to for the test.” He picked up a piece of paper from the table and put on his reading glasses.

“First, there will be someone positioned under the table with a lamp – Mr. Mallory here – for the duration of the sitting.” Over Huxley’s vehement objections, the Society had accepted Alessandra’s one precondition for her trip to England – that she wouldn’t be tied down. In return, Alessandra was forced to allow someone under the table to control her feet and knees. That would let Henry and Huxley concentrate on controlling her hands.

“Second, there will only be three sittings – one tonight and …”

Alessandra cut him off. “I’ll only need one.”

I winced. She was much too confident.

“Third, each sitting will run for 90 minutes only.”

Huxley had insisted on a time limit. He was smart. He knew it usually took Alessandra time before she settled down, and he wanted pressure on her from the moment it started.

“Under these test conditions, the Society is interested in scientifically observing any phenomena you have reportedly produced in the past – raps, taps, touches, apports, the movement of objects, a table levitation, a materialization like that reported by Dr. Negri in Genoa.”

Alessandra looked at Henry. “A table levitation like the spirits did for Dr. Fournier in Geneva– would that be enough?”

“The Society would concede. I assure you.” Henry looked to Huxley for confirmation.

Huxley hesitated. “All four feet off the floor?”

Alessandra gave him a hard stare. “If I do, you pay me?”

Huxley smiled. “You have my word. One hundred pounds sterling.”

“Your own money?”

Huxley looked amused. “A personal cheque, drawn on my private account at the Union Bank of London.”

Henry interrupted them. “Really, Nigel. I don’t think a personal wager is appropriate here.”

Huxley ignored him and continued to stare at Alessandra.

Henry persisted. “This is highly irregular. Maxine?”

“What do I think?” Maxine smiled and pulled out her cigarette case. “I think I’ll put five on Alessandra.”

H
is Lordship arrived a few minutes before 8:00.

Lord Carraig appeared to be in his fifties, a tall, thin Englishman with a meticulously clipped moustache, wearing a bespoke suit from Savile Row which fitted him like a glove. Lady Carraig looked like she had drunk her fair share at the Duke’s dinner. She tripped over the rug, took her seat next to me, grabbed my hand and closed her eyes. I could smell the alcohol on her breath.

Between the moonlight shining through the large French windows of the library, and the light from Mallory’s oil lamp under the table, the room was bright enough to read the numerals on the mantel clock.

Alessandra started off strong.

Ten minutes into the sitting, a tattoo of three soft raps sounded from the direction of the book shelves.

Elsa squeezed my hand. She had heard them too.

“I heard three raps,” Lord Carraig announced.

“Objection,” Huxley said. “I heard only two.”

Maxine, sitting at the opposite end of the table, logged the event.

“8:10 PM. Two, possibly three, raps on south wall.”

According to Alessandra, “low spirits” produced the raps, pinches and levitation of small objects. They were mischievous, earth-bound discarnates who couldn’t let go of the material existence, and refused to move on. She would often feel them crowding around her minutes after the prayer finished. They needed to work together to make something happen. A few, like Savonarola, didn’t need other spirits to do stuff.