Arcadia Awakens (27 page)

“That was nice of her,” said Alessandro.

“Zoe’s always surprising me.” She looked into Alessandro’s eyes. “So what about Iole?”

“She’s at the castle with us. Cesare really did have her removed from the island just before we got there. He knows what happened. He’s furious, but he doesn’t dare move openly against me yet.”

“Did you speak to Iole?”

“Only briefly.”

“And Tano hasn’t hurt her?”

“Cesare seems to be keeping him on a tight rein. Right now he’s more cautious than usual. I’m sure Cesare is planning something, but he’ll wait until it suits him before letting trouble break out between his supporters and mine.”

Rosa was exhausted. After waking up from her dream she’d had difficulty even getting out of bed. Her skin felt hot and irritated, and she had muscle cramps. She’d also bitten her lower lip, and it throbbed slightly.

“Looks like a cold sore,” she said awkwardly, when he looked at her mouth, “but it isn’t.”

“You had a bad dream,” he commented.

To change the subject, she pointed to the gate. “Let’s get out of here. If we take two cars you don’t have to bring me back later. Drop me off outside our garages and then I’ll follow you.”

“Where to?”

She smiled. “To the end of the world,” she said. And thought,
What the hell do you think you’re saying?

But before she could change her mind, he was holding the door of the Ferrari open for her. She sank into the black leather upholstery.

Alessandro let her out when they reached the palazzo garages. One of the boys from the village came in regularly to wash and wax the six sports cars that were lined up side by side. None of them was brand-new—Florinda had obviously lost interest in her expensive hobby over the last few years. Rosa didn’t know much about cars, so she opted for a black Maserati Quattroporte. Aside from Zoe’s Porsche, it was the only automatic. The boy looked a little nervous as he handed her the key, and went white as a sheet when the engine howled as she drove away.

Forty-five minutes later they got off the A19 at Agira and continued north along dusty country roads. This time Rosa made sure to memorize the way. The hills they passed showed no sign of life, and in another thirty minutes they reached the barricaded access road to the unfinished expressway. Here they drove side by side—they had all four lanes to themselves—and Rosa adjusted the speed of the Maserati to Alessandro’s Ferrari.

The steep ravine where the expressway ended was just coming into view when Alessandro slowed down, driving in the middle of the highway. It was another half a mile to the fallen bridge, but he switched off the engine and got out. Rosa slipped out of the driver’s seat of the Maserati and looked at him across the roof of the car, through the flickering heat haze.

“Let’s go the rest of the way on foot,” he suggested.

She looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight, but she locked the car anyway. The car was too old to have a remote control, and for a moment she wondered whether her father had driven it. The idea moved her more than she liked to admit.

After a few steps, Alessandro bent down near a dandelion that had fought its way through the cracks in the road surface.

“Oh, don’t pick it,” begged Rosa. “It’s tried so hard to reach daylight.”

Alessandro shook his head, cautiously reached out his fingers, and picked up a beetle from the shady side of the plant. He gently placed it on the palm of his hand. As the insect explored his skin with its feelers, its wing case shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow.

“Look at that,” he said, “it isn’t at all afraid of me.”

Rosa looked up and met his eyes.

“So why are you?” he asked.

“What makes you think I am?”

“You’re trying to hide something from me. Exactly what,” he said, smiling, “well, I was only guessing.”

“Maybe you guessed wrong?”

“What is it, then?”

“This whole thing—this place, the island, you, being here with you—it makes me nervous. But I’m not afraid.”

He put the beetle carefully back on the ground, watched as it scuttled away into the shade of the solitary dandelion, and walked on.

Just then a single cloud covered the sun, and the hilly ochre landscape on both sides of the empty expressway lost its brilliance. Under the shadow of the cloud, they walked over the asphalt, kicking aside pebbles. Tiny lizards ahead of them scurried off.

“I’ve looked at the files from the studio,” he said. “My mother’s notes, the documents, all of it.”

“So?”

“So it’s exactly what I thought. She knew all about the way Cesare went behind my father’s back. Obviously she even tried talking to my father about it, more than once.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice. “But he wouldn’t listen to her. He wouldn’t hear a word against Cesare; he’d trusted him and his advice all his life. My mother hadn’t wanted me to go to that boarding school, either, but Cesare told my father that getting a good education in the States was important for my future as
capo
of the Carnevares. So that got me out of the way, and Cesare had only my mother to deal with.”

As they walked she surreptitiously looked at him: his perfect profile, his supple way of walking. It reminded her of her dream, and this time she let herself enjoy the memory without feeling ashamed.

“In the end she must have withdrawn almost entirely to Isola Luna. She spent more and more time alone at the villa. Clearly my father didn’t mind. She says in her notes that he told her she was out of her mind if she thought Cesare was a threat. He just refused to see it, the idiot! Didn’t
want
to see what kind of game Cesare had been playing all those years.”

“And finally she gave up?”

“No, she kept trying to convince him. In the end she had all the evidence she needed to expose Cesare. Evidence that not even my father could have ignored. Copies of secret agreements, even recorded conversations between Cesare and politicians in Rome and Brussels… In the notes she wrote not long before her death, she says she called my father and asked him to come out to the island to see her. In those last weeks she seems to have been afraid to leave Isola Luna herself. She barricaded herself in the villa—and he couldn’t have cared less.”

She touched his hand with her fingertips. “I’m sorry.”

“But she also writes, on the very last page, that he did at least agree to come and look at what she had. My God, she was so proud of that. Thinking that he would finally have to believe her, that she hadn’t gone to all that trouble for nothing…”

“But Cesare went out to the island instead of your father.”

“She must have suspected something. She hid the important documents in her paintings, and left a few harmless papers in the safe for Cesare to find. But she didn’t write anything else about that. Her last few sentences sound…” He swallowed. “They sound almost happy. She still loved my father, in spite of everything, and she writes about me … she writes…” He fell silent, and turned away for a moment. Rosa waited. She longed to put her arms around him and comfort him. But then she saw the line of black fur creeping up the back of his neck, and she hesitated.

A moment later he was in control of himself again. He gave her the ghost of a smile and took her hand to walk on.

The cloud moved past the sun, and sunlight flooded the dry landscape again. In the distance, the edge of the asphalt turned to a flicker of silver.

“I can’t help it,” he said, after a short silence. “I mean, sometimes the change just happens….”

She knew what he meant. At that moment it was all clear to her. There was something in his voice. And the feel of his hand. The little hairs she suddenly felt beneath her fingers.

She didn’t look at him.

“It’s not so bad,” she said softly. “It’s not bad at all.”

He sounded different now, as if he were finding it difficult to get the words out. “It’s not … not because of my mother,” he said with difficulty. “Or Cesare…”

She looked straight ahead, couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She didn’t know just why. But she couldn’t.

Not while it was happening.

“It’s only because of
you
,” he whispered hoarsely.

Then why, she wondered, numbed, isn’t it happening to me? I feel just the same, damn it. Why don’t I change?

His hand slipped out of hers. The fine hairs brushed her fingers once more. An affectionate caress, then they were gone.

The end of the road was coming closer, its shape forming in the bright, flickering light, against the blurred background of the ravine.

He stayed slightly behind her. There was a rustle of fabric as he stripped off his jeans and T-shirt before the change could wrench at the seams and fibers. She heard it, and still she didn’t look. She kept walking.

A scraping noise, then the sound of paws on the asphalt. Stepping lightly, on all fours, speeding up, catching up, yet still a little way behind her, just far enough not to enter her field of vision. But she sensed him, heard him, even smelled him.

She reached the jagged end of the road, sat down, and swung her legs over the edge, looking into the depths below, trembling, her mind in turmoil.

Why not me? she wondered. Don’t I feel enough? Do I
still
not like him enough?

Or was something else bothering him? Fear of something? His hatred of Cesare? Maybe a sense of guilt had brought on the change?

The paws were coming closer. Purring in her ears. The feel of his fur rubbing against her back, her upper arm. The hot animal smell, the wildness radiating from him. Sleek muscles under the pitch-black fur. An elegance that made her tremble.

He sat down beside her, very close, and leaned his beautiful panther head against her shoulder.

W
HEN SHE HAD TAKEN
the Maserati back to the garage, she went down to the front courtyard as if in a trance. The baroque facade of the palazzo was visible beyond the pine and chestnut trees: its tall windows, the gargoyles, the stucco overgrown with green moss.

The sound of an engine was coming up the drive, chugging through the olive groves below the property. It sounded like a lawn mower.

In fact it was a motor scooter, with Lilia riding it. She stopped the Vespa beside Rosa, right in front of the stone fountain, took off her helmet, and shook her dark red hair loose over her shoulders. It stood out like fire against her black leather jacket. Through the tumbling locks at the back of Lilia’s neck, Rosa thought she caught a glimpse of a tattoo.

“
Ciao
,” said Lilia, beaming.

“
Ciao
.” Rosa tried to return the smile. She was feeling melancholy, and most of all confused. The smell of the warm panther fur was still with her.

Lilia frowned. “What is it?”

“I …oh, I only went for a drive. In the Maserati. Very exciting.”

“I can imagine that. Any scratches or dents?”

Rosa shook her head.

“That was your father’s car, did you know?”

She sighed softly. “I wasn’t sure, no.”

“Zoe told me. She sometimes drives it herself. Because you Americans can’t cope with a manual gearshift.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

Lilia shook her head. “I was going to fetch her. Go for a ride together. We do that quite often, especially at twilight. Have you seen her Vespa?”

“There isn’t one in the garage.”

Lilia patted the broad saddle behind her. “Hop on and I’ll show you.”

Rosa climbed onto the scooter and held Lilia tightly around the waist. The next moment she was jerked backward as Lilia stepped on the gas too hard. Then she rode the Vespa out through the gate and into the inner courtyard of the palazzo. Once there she honked a few times, rode in a circle around the weed-grown flower bed in the middle, and finally stopped in front of a narrow door on the east side of the facade. A way into the cellars, maybe? Rosa hadn’t explored the underground part of the palazzo yet.

Lilia was looking around impatiently. “Where is she?”

Rosa shrugged and dismounted. “No idea. She was up there this morning.” She pointed to the second-floor window. “Maybe Florinda’s back, putting Zoe through the wringer.”