Rosamanti (15 page)

Fury seethed through him as he watched the bus disappear from sight around the next corner, oblivious to his fate. He rose to his feet unsteadily and walked over to his Vespa, sprawled awkwardly on the roadway. One whole side was missing its powder blue paint, and the mirror was dangling from the handlebars. A new rip in the vinyl seat and a buckle in the front cowling seemed to be the only other scars. Picking it up from its ungainly position, he sat astride it and kicked the start pedal.
Cough, cough.
He kicked it again. Remarkably, it roared into life.

Pietro took a few deep breaths, trying to dispel the rage he felt at himself.
Stupido!
His heart rate was still up. He opened the throttle and took off—at a more respectable speed—up the steep road. The wind blew his hair and cleared some of the fog out of his brain. He reached Anacapri and drove through the traffic as quickly as he could, desperate to get to a less populated part of Capri. It was only at rare times like this, when he needed some space, that he found the island too small. He longed for somewhere to go to be alone. Somewhere to hide.

Turning into
via Lupinaro
, he traveled down into the deep valley, meeting the longest river on the island, Rio della Cesa. When he was young, he used to come here sometimes. Back then, there were only some fishermens’ cottages, but these days, rich people from the mainland had vacation villas. He turned into a sandy track, the Vespa struggling to move forward. Eventually he entered a secluded dell, a ring of thick shrubbery surrounding a small wooden hut. He stopped in the shade of a tree, suddenly feeling sapped as the adrenalin abated and his body began to feel pain.

Parking the bike, he painfully climbed off the Vespa and walked through a track until he came to the mouth of the river. He pulled off his shirt, kicked off his sandals, and entered the water in just his shorts. The saltiness stung at his grazes. He endured the pain, taking it as some form of penance for behaving badly. Floating on his back, he stared up at the blue sky. He rarely, if ever, lost his temper, and when he did, it was only ever with himself. But shame settled on his broad shoulders like a shroud.

He thought of Sarah. She wasn’t to know about the old goatherd’s cottage. How could she? Remorse, guilt and embarrassment ate away at him. Maybe, now that Nonna was gone, it was time to move on. He swam leisurely back to shore and dropped onto the sand under the shade of a large cassia tree. All his muscles now ached from the fall off his bike. Lying back on his shirt, he let his mind drift to thoughts he hadn’t dredged up for a long time.

He could still hear his mother’s harsh voice, earnestly telling him that Nonna had brought shame upon the family, shame that threatened the Lombardi name. He was at the airport when she told him, leaving for the United States. Why was she telling him this? Nonna had been more of a mother to him than his own mother ever was. His flight was called, but his mother kept going. She told him she had married his father to get away from Rosamanti, to get away from Nonna and a life of poverty. Her voice, full of bitterness, still rung in his ears.

“Your Nonna made us poor. The Lombardis were once rich. I went to Naples to find a husband who could provide properly for me. I wanted children who would be proud of me, proud of our life. But once your father found out I was a bastard child, he left me. And so, here we are, stuck back at Rosamanti with her.”

His knew his mother had worked hard to try and break the cycle of poverty. When he was fifteen, his mother received a letter, saying that his father had died, leaving some money to Pietro, to educate him and get him away from Capri.

Pietro exhaled noisily. These thoughts had not crossed his mind for many years. They were destructive thoughts. Pain infiltrated his reflection. He looked at his arms. The grazes stung, and fresh blood oozed out of a deep gash in his elbow, dripping down onto his shirt underneath him. He moved his body, trying to get comfortable.

“Mamma mia!”
An agonizing ache shot up his leg.

He looked down at his right knee. It had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. Again, self-loathing at his earlier anger spread through him, doing nothing to help the way he felt. He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun, his head lying back against the root of the tree, and drifted off to a troubled sleep, the breeze from the river estuary caressing him.

* * *

Sarah searched every inch of the Lombardi cellar. She knew it had to be there somewhere.
Using her fingers she felt for anything that would open up. The flashlight was bright, but the cellar was as old as the house. Years of dust coated everything. Just as she was about ready to give up, she found it. She held the light closer, seeing the hinges low down on the wall. Her heart beat rapidly as a raised iron ring moved under her touch. She put the flashlight down on the ground, needing two hands to open the low doorway. It seemed to be the same size as the trap door above the cellar. She picked at the edges with her fingernails, trying to loosen the solid grime. At last, she found purchase and managed to open one corner enough to slip in a finger, then another. With a huge pull, she yanked on it, a loud creak heralding its annoyance at being disturbed after so long.

She peered in, angling the flashlight so she could see. It seemed to be a horizontal tunnel at the same floor level as the cellar. It looked creepy, but at least there were no spider webs. A musty smell and a faint aroma of salt engulfed her. Gingerly, she put her hands out, feeling the cold rock walls with her hand. The floor seemed level and unobstructed. She dropped to all fours and crawled slowly into the tunnel, the air feeling surprisingly cool.

As she crawled, she scanned where the beam from the flashlight illuminated the floor, fervently hoping she wouldn’t see a spider, or any other creepy crawlies, for that matter. Just the thought of what bugs might be sharing the tunnel made the hairs on the back of her neck stand out. She tightened her grip upon the flashlight. Without its comforting beam, strong and probing, she didn’t know how she’d cope in the dark, eerie passageway. After what felt like thirty minutes or so of slow crawling, the height of the tunnel roof increased. Relief swept through her. She rose until her head touched the roof and continued on. It wasn’t long before her back began to ache, finding that walking half hunched over was worse than crawling. Then the flashlight found some steps leading upward. As she climbed them, the angle afforded her enough height to stretch upward, the ceiling being higher than the tunnel had so far been. She counted seven steps, then the tunnel flattened out again for some time, again she needed to bend in two—not quite crawling, but not walking either. Beads of sweat formed on her brow as her courage began to wane. The air here was damp and smelly. She wondered if she should perhaps go back now
.

Just as she decided to turn around, the flashlight beam found more steps. Uncertainty and fear played with her mind, making her uneasy. She shone the light up the stairs, searching in the darkness for a clue as to what lay ahead. There seemed to be a blockage.
Oh great.
Taking a deep breath, she climbed up the steps. It was a relief to be able to stand upright again. After a dozen steps, she was close enough to see brown wooden planks blocking her way. She put out one hand, touching it, feeling the edges. As she hoped, hinges lay down one side. Going to the other side, she probed and scratched until she felt the latch.

She climbed up as close as she could and placed her shoulder against it. Dirt and debris fell into her hair. With a shove, she lifted it. Bright white light momentarily blinded her.
Bang!
It dropped closed again. With a heave, she managed to push it up, at the same time climbing higher on the stairs.

“Agh!” Her voice echoed in the confined space, but the effort she put in paid off. The trapdoor opened silently into a room. Where the hell was she?

“Hello! Buon giorno!”

Nothing. Total silence. With trembling hands and panting from exertion, she climbed up the last couple of steps and into what appeared to be a deserted kitchen. Slowly, she crept fully into the room, her eyes darting around, trying to take in the scene. She paused. A big pot sat on a cast iron stove and a table laid for a meal lay under a smothering layer of grey dust. Straining her ears, she listened for any sound, any sign of inhabitants. Dusty bottles of wine sat on a shelf next to a closed doorway. Creeping over on the balls of her feet, she put a hand on the brass door knob and twisted it. The opening door shrieked, making her jump and her heart race. She froze still, again listening hard, as she peered into the room, her jaw dropping as she realized where she was.

Two windows sat either side of a solid green door. Although they were shuttered from the outside, she could see enough through the cracks to make out Villa Jovis towering above her. Farther around, she recognized the view—the blue of the sea and the rolling hills and rugged outcrops of the land belonging to Rosamanti. The forbidden
casa.
She casually searched through the little cottage. It was eerie. Men’s clothes hung in the little wardrobe of the bedroom. A double bed with an ornate iron bedhead, lay strewn with bedding, all filthy and dusty. A little dressing table in the corner was adorned with a brush, comb and other things. If it wasn’t for the thick layer of dust, she’d say this place was lived in only yesterday
.
The apprehension she felt crawling through the dark and dank tunnel, and then entering this unknown place, disappeared completely. There was a vibe here, a comfortable feeling. Why did she feel as though she’d been here before?

She went from the bedroom into a small sitting room at the front of the cottage, then found the bathroom. Bright orange rust marks trailed down from a dripping tap in the once white enamel bath tub. A table in the corner held a porcelain bowl and jug, dry green slime coating the insides where it once had water sitting for a long time. The floor was made of stone, except for a wooden area behind the door. Tilting her head to one side, she leaned forward, then kneeled down to examine it properly. Her fingers, now practiced in the mechanisms, found the hinges, then the latch. A slow smile gradually spread across her face.
Another tunnel!

The compulsion to explore was too strong to deny, even though her common sense told her to go back to Rosamanti. Her curiosity was insatiable, with the who, what and why words bombarding her brain. Question after question formed, obsessively wanting to know the answers. Adrenalin coursed through her veins, deleting any thought of danger or fear. She quickly retrieved the flashlight from the kitchen where she had left it at the other trap door and returned to the bathroom. Climbing in, her feet found the rusty rungs of a steep metal ladder. It was awkward to go down vertically and hold onto the flashlight. Her backpack was catching on the rough rock wall at her back.
On an impulse, she climbed back up to the top rung, unhooked her backpack, and tossed it over the lip of the trapdoor, landing behind the bathroom door.

With renewed determination, she again lowered herself slowly down the vertical shaft, holding tightly to the rusty rungs. Down, down she went. She smelled salt, mingled with decaying organic matter. The deeper she went, the darker it became. A thought crossed her mind, sending chills up her spine. What if the flashlight batteries gave out? Still, she persevered. Finally, just as her burst of adrenalin was about to fade, her feet found solid ground.

Leg muscles trembling from the exertion of climbing down the long ladder, she found herself standing at the bottom of the shaft in a small space. Shining the flashlight around, she saw that there was only one way to go and that was to follow the tunnel that went off at waist height, either that or climb back up. It was pitch dark now. She surmised she had to be really deep into the mountain under Villa Jovis.
She bent over and, on all fours, prepared to climb into the tunnel. She heard a crunch underfoot and shone the light down. Squashed under her shoe was a roll of filthy, yellowed paper, tied up with a red ribbon to look like a scroll. Her hands shook as she picked it up. Placing the flashlight on the ground, she began to undo the bow. The old material fell to pieces, rotten from time, and easily dropped off. As she tried to unroll the scroll, a chunk of it broke off in her hand, like a piece of thin wafer bread. With deft fingers, she painstakingly unfurled the old, dried out document. Words written in black ink stood out starkly from the cream paper. Sarah gasped as she recognized the handwriting.

Ebano e avorio, cani e gatti.

Her heart beat faster. It had to be another clue from Elena.
She peered intently at the words on the yellowed paper.
Gatti.
That means cat.
Cani…
That would be plural for dog. She shook her head. Dogs and cats. She looked at the other two words, unable to translate them. She carefully stuffed the roll of paper into the top of her T-shirt and bent down, preparing to enter the shaft. Dropping to her knees, she slowly and awkwardly moved through the tunnel, holding the flashlight in one hand. Every so often, the beam flickered, but if she slapped it, it sprang to life again. On she went, noticing that the gradient of the tunnel floor was rising—not steeply, but gradually. As she crawled, she pictured in her mind’s eye the markings on the old map back in Nonna’s drawing room. The dotted line from the outbuilding had ended up on the cliffs.

The passage of time was irrelevant. Pitch darkness surrounded her. Above ground it could have been night or day, raining or sunshine. The writer in her felt excitement beyond anything she had experienced. She was deep in a secret, a real life mystery, and almost certainly, she was the first person to use this tunnel for a very long time, probably since Nonna was twelve years old. As she crawled doggedly on all fours, a tingle ran up her spine.
Maybe Tiberius himself used this tunnel.
She knew, with considerable certainty, that she was indeed crawling under a structure built two thousand years ago.