Rosamanti (16 page)

Her flashlight became perceptibly dimmer with each inch she moved. An uneasy thought crept into her otherwise adventure-soaked mind. What if she got stuck in here?
In the darkness, she grimaced as she realized her spontaneous decision to shed the backpack could come back and bite her on the bottom. It contained maps, food and water. A lot of good it would be to her if it was back in the cottage
.
It was obvious to her that nobody had visited the little outbuilding for goodness knew how long. Noticing it was getting harder and harder to see up ahead, she silently cursed herself for being so impulsive. The flashlight beam dropped a pool of pale yellow light only as far as her outstretched hands could reach. Once eager to move forward, to discover whatever there was to discover, she became a bit shaky, her breathing a little shallower and faster. Her muscles ached and her hands, rough and grazed, stung with every movement forward. Dread replaced euphoria, fear replaced bravado. With each inch forward, she became more and more scared.

“Come on, keep going. You can do it.” Her voice sounded young and scared, even to her own ears. If twelve year old Elena Lombardi could come here, surely she could too.

A forced chuckle bubbled up from her throat. This would make a great scene in the new Felicity French novel. She smiled in the darkness, the sound of her own voice comforting. Even Felicity was afraid of some things.

There, she had said it. That “afraid” word. Just then, the flashlight dimmed and went out. She shook it, hit it, banged it on the ground. She flicked the switch on and off. It was dead.

Bad thoughts crept in. Claustrophobia became a reality. Tiredness sapped her. Her limbs felt like lead, and she willed them on. Keep going! Keep going!

Bang!

Her head hit a hard object. The sound told her it wasn’t rock.
A trap door? Please let it be a trap door?

* * *

Pietro woke to a haze of throbbing pain emanating from his leg; his tongue was swollen and dry. The slim crescent of the waning moon hovered over him in the darkness like the blade of the Grim Reaper’s scythe. It took him a minute to realize where he was. He tried to sit up, to rest on his elbows.“Agh! Madonna!”

The freshly dried blood on his arms cracked and opened, the sand sticking in the grazes. He put his palms down beside him and slowly, carefully, lifted himself up, sending a shower of sand from his bare chest down on his thighs. Seeing his swollen knee looking white in the pale moonlight, he realized why it was hurting so much. He sighed, cursing himself. It was not only painful to be here like this, it was embarrassing. Never had he felt so useless. He longed for some water, his mouth dry and salty. He tried to lick his lips, feeling them cracked and dry.

Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead as he noticed his heartbeat fluttering quickly, seeming less robust than normal. Even his breathing seemed shallow and fast. Light-headed and fearful, he blinked, trying to clear the blurry images of a string of small yellow lights dancing in front of his eyes. They seemed to be getting brighter, closer. He felt himself swooning, the lights coming faster now, much brighter, spinning round and round.

“
Che cosa?
”

Now he was hearing voices.

The bright lights shone like a spotlight in his face.

“
Chiamate un'ambulanza
!”

Strong hands held his shoulders as water dripped into his parched mouth, trickling down the sides of his lips and onto his chest. He heard more voices, tasted the water.

“Pietro?” The sound of his name entered his addled and dehydrated brain. He kept lapping at the steady drip of water. With difficulty, he focused his eyes, pulling them away from the bright light at which he had been staring. He saw faces, saw brows pulled together in concern, swaying in front of his eyes. Slowly, he recognized them.

“Pietro?
Stai bene?
You OK?”

Gradually, the haze cleared. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he breathed more easily. He had never been so happy to see the fishermen who regularly supplied their catch to the restaurant. His eyes looked over at their river nets lying on the sandy beach, their little lights, meant to attract the sardines and shrimps, still flickering in their floats in the shallow water. He nodded his head and let out a deep breath. “Si
.
I’m OK
.
”

* * *

Sarah’s legs ached from the effort of pushing the door. She lay on her back, using her quads like a hydraulic press, pushing as hard as she could. The pitch darkness engulfed her, heightening her senses. Fear of suffocating, alone, in this subterranean tunnel ate away at her sanity. Focusing hard, she kept pushing as if she was on a leg press at the gym. Fatigue sapped her strength. She rested now in between thrusts. Thinking she could do no more, she took a deep breath, summoning up all her core stomach muscles, willing her trembling quadriceps not to buckle under the pressure.
Just one more!

The force of the breath coming out of her chest made her cry out, sounding like a tennis player serving an ace. Suddenly, the seal from decades of disuse, seemed to crack. She distinctly smelled salt. And was that fresh air?

Thump!

Her quivering leg muscles collapsed, the door closing again. She lay there, her heart pounding, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Her hair was wet with perspiration. Fear and defeat took a back seat to optimism. She gathered her strength and rested. The next push would be the last.
When she was able, she moved her backside forward until it was up against the door. Lying flat on her back, she planted both feet shoulder width apart on the door and lay down, her fingers digging into cracks in the rough floor of the tunnel.

“One, two,
three
!”

Her trembling legs slowly pushed, her whole body-weight straining to maintain the pressure. She slid backward. Suddenly, it gave, and her knees straightened out. She grabbed the now useless flashlight and quickly jammed it in the small space, wedging the door open. Her legs shuddered as she slowly let them relax, maintaining pressure on the door so that it closed lightly on the flashlight.

Raspy breaths wracked her chest, the sound filling the tunnel. Rivers of perspiration ran down her face, tickling her neck as she lay there on the hard stone floor. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the strong smell of salt. An almost imperceptible puff of air floated across her, chilling the perspiration, cooling her.

She lay there for several minutes, waiting until her breathing and heart rate were somewhere near normal. She tried to sit up, but fatigue had turned muscles to mush, all wobbly and weak, so instead, managed to pull herself around on her backside so that she could inspect the opening. Pushing with her hands, she was stunned to find that the trapdoor opened with relative ease now that the dusty seal was broken.
Carefully pushing the door open and putting both her palms through the hole, she probed the darkness, trying to get a picture of what lay beyond the door. There seemed to be a floor similar to the one she was already on, and to each side, cold, damp, stone walls. Above, the low rock roof continued. With disappointment, she realized she still wouldn’t be able to stand up.
In the back of her mind, she’d been worried that the trapdoor would open to an abyss, sending her crashing hundreds of feet downward and splattering as she hit the bottom. With a sense of acceptance, she moved the rest of her body through the trap door, leaving the now useless flashlight wedged in place, in case she needed to come back out this way.

The tang of sea salt permeated the air. Every time she licked her lips, she could taste it. Every so often there was a faint roar, away in the distance, and minutes later a small, cool breeze teased the wayward tendrils of her hair. The effort to crawl along was physically difficult, but hope had replaced her sense of doom. Little Elena was probably the last person to crawl through this passage, and she had lived to the ripe old age of 97.

Minutes turned to hours, her energy was fast depleting. But the shadowy greyness of the tunnel, replacing the total blackout, excited her. She knew in her bones that this was the way out. The roar she heard before the little breeze was clearly waves, hitting the cliff face. She was probably going to emerge on one of the many caves on the cliff face. She had no idea whether it would be high up, or at water level. But she didn’t care. Pietro would come looking for her when he got back to Rosamanti
.
Oh.
A pang of loss shot through her heart. So engrossed was she in escaping, that she’d forgotten the events of that morning. Her crawl slowed to a snail’s pace, her shoulders slumped. The vision of his face when he left Rosamanti hovered in front of her eyes. He may never come back. He might never notice she was missing. For the first time since she’d set off on her quest to find the tunnel back in the Lombardi cellar this morning, tears pricked the backs of her eyes.

Her arms melted, and she dropped to her elbows, her backside still sticking up as her knees, red raw and stinging, bore the brunt of the long crawl. She rested her forehead on the cold stone floor. The palms of her hands felt like they had no more skin on them. She had kept going through the pain—up until now.

What seemed like a long time passed before she was able to summon the mental strength that had got her through many difficult, and tragic, times in her life. Never in her life had she been a quitter. Never had she been less than a tiger of a mother when it came to protecting her daughter, and she had never thrown in the towel when her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. Quite the opposite. She’d stood up, taken a few deep breaths, and squared her shoulders in battle.

She turned her head and wiped her runny nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt, then sniffed noisily.
Have faith. Faith in yourself, and faith in Pietro.
Slowly, painfully, she hoisted herself from her elbows to her palms. It crossed her mind that she must look like a camel as it stood up in stages, its ass absurdly high up in the air and its front legs bent double on the ground. A light chuckle echoed in the confined space. “That’s more like it,” said a croaky voice, “Come on, girl
.
”

When she reached the end of the tunnel, her jaw hung open, gawping at the vista in front of her. Perched on a narrow rock ledge, she saw a large, semicircular opening, very low in the rock wall opposite. Every few minutes a large swell of seawater lifted the water level to completely cover the cave opening. On the ebbing wave, grey light illuminated the cave. Maybe it’s night time? From the ledge where she was sitting, the wave rushed up, coming within inches of her. Fear of the sea brought fresh doubts. Don’t tell me that I’ve come all this way, only to drown!

The grotto wasn’t as large as the Blue Grotto. The opening would hardly take a swimmer, let alone a boat. In contrast to the illumination and blue light in the Blue Grotto, this cave was drab, with grey-white rocks tumbled every which way. Sarah scanned the rocks above her, looking for somewhere safe to spend the night. She wondered how high the tide would come in here. Would it totally consume the cave, or would there be somewhere safe to sit? Her mind was causing her grief, making her once again fearful and shaky.

Holding tightly to the sharp, limpet-encrusted ledge, she slowly stood. Sharp pain cramped in her back, causing her to cry out. Hunched over at the waist, she couldn’t stand, her back seized from so long without being able to stand upright. Tears of pain and anguish sprang to her eyes. Her breath came in gasps as her back clenched in painful spasms and her arms tensed as she clung to the rocks. Slowly, inch by inch, she forced herself to stand upright, each movement causing excruciating pain, making her gasp out loud. With biceps trembling, she bore the weight of her stricken body. One slip and she would fall down onto the rocks, shredding her flesh on the razor-sharp, rippled edges of the oysters and other mollusks attached around the waterline. Panting, she fought hard to gain her inner strength, as well as to calm her heart beat. Dribbles of sweat ran down from her forehead and into her eyes, making them sting with their saltiness.

Finally standing upright, she let her eyes scan the rocks and little caves above and around her. Although the light was dim, the trough of the ebbing wave allowed light in. She glimpsed, on one such wave, a round hook protruding from the wall high above her. Her heart leapt in her chest.
Signs of humanity!
Carefully placing each foot and holding tight with her broken nails to tiny finger holes, she climbed over slippery, shell encrusted grey boulders until she lay panting, totally spent, at the rusty ring in the wall. The ledge here was wider, flatter, and certainly a lot higher above the swells which whooshed into the grotto, swirled around like a washing machine, and then exited with a loud rush through the tiny entrance. The noise of them alone was frightening, but the thought of being swept off the ledge and sucked down under the turbulent water was enough to make her feel sick.

Her hands shaking, she took off her bra by undoing the back and threading it down both armholes of her T-shirt. She tied one end of her bra to the ring, the other, awkwardly using one hand, to her wrist. Positioning herself as far back as she could against the wall, she huddled with knees drawn up, her head resting on them and one hand elevated toward the ring where she was tethered. Fatalistically, she allowed herself to fall asleep, telling herself that either she was going to make it through the unknown that the night ahead would bring—or she wouldn’t.

Chapter Ten

“Signora! Signora Sarah!”

Carlo’s voice called out as he entered the gravel courtyard of Rosamanti. The shiny red bike parked against the wall caught his attention. His eyes wide, he went closer to it, rubbing his hand over the glossy paint. Tilting his head and bending sideways, he checked out the mechanism in the rear wheel hub, then the battery underneath the saddle. He went to the front and inspected the little headlamp, the two wing mirrors, and the horn button.