Tuscan Rose (56 page)

Luciano and Ada guarded the cellar door while Partridge, Rosa and Madre Maddalena searched the cellar to make sure nobody had been left behind. They found four small children wedged under a wine rack. No matter what Rosa said, she couldn’t coax them to come out.

‘Their mother was shot by the Germans when we got here,’ Madre Maddalena explained.

The longer the children stayed there, the more time was running out. It was inconceivable to leave them to their fate, but Rosa and Partridge couldn’t move the heavy wine rack without the risk of crushing them. A thought suddenly came to Rosa. She spoke to the children in German, telling them that if they came out the nuns would look after them and they would be safe. The children
understood her. The eldest came out first, followed by his siblings. The youngest was three years old: too young to run on his own. Partridge lifted him onto his back.

‘The Germans even kill their
own
children simply because they are Jews,’ Rosa said to Madre Maddalena. ‘It’s unbelievable!’

‘Go! Go! Go!’ Luciano shouted, pushing his group out of the door.

They reached the exit to the kitchen garden at the same time Giovanni and his men raced up the driveway, pursued by two lorries full of SS soldiers. The reserve corps had reached the villa faster than expected. It was the first thing to have gone wrong. Giovanni’s men were withdrawing and defending, the hardest manoeuvre of all. Luciano and his group couldn’t get out of the villa now. They were in the firing line of the Germans.

Starling, who had moved everyone else into the woods and sent them fleeing, turned and stared at Luciano and Rosa. Grief welled in his eyes when he realised he couldn’t help them.

‘Go!’ shouted Luciano. ‘Quick! Save the others!’

Giovanni and his men were driven back to the kitchen garden but did their best to pick off the SS soldiers, defending both the hostages fleeing into the woods and Luciano’s group trapped in the villa.

‘The tunnel!’ Giovanni shouted to Luciano. ‘It’s your only hope! There are more trucks coming!’

Where were all these reinforcements coming from? Rosa wondered. Weren’t the Germans supposed to be withdrawing north?

‘Quick, this way!’ called Ada, directing the group to the room where Rosa had first stayed. ‘The tunnel’s here,’ she said, pushing aside the heavy bed with the help of Partridge.

By some miracle the entrance had not been nailed shut. Or was it a trap? There was no choice but to try it and hope that Giovanni’s men could hold off the Germans until they reached the end.

Partridge jumped inside first. Ada and Madre Maddalena passed the children down to him and then followed themselves. Rosa and
Luciano climbed in and pulled the bed back into position. The tunnel led down some stairs. Rosa tugged her flashlight from her belt. Partridge, Ada and Luciano had turned on theirs too. The tunnel was much larger than Rosa was expecting and had stone walls. She wondered what its original purpose had been. Signora Guerrini had told her that the room above it had been used for plague victims. Perhaps the tunnel had been a way of transporting their bodies out of the grounds without infecting the rest of the villa.

They were able to run upright in it, two abreast, but it twisted and turned in all directions. Sometimes it seemed to be descending deeper into the earth and at other times there were steps and ladders. Madre Maddalena struggled up them in her long habit. The group ran as fast as they could, exhausted but driven by fear. Suddenly they heard the sound of running and shouts behind them. The Germans had found the tunnel.

‘Faster!’ Luciano said.

One of the children tripped and began to cry. Rosa picked her up and ran with her, but it meant that she couldn’t use her gun if she had to. They came to a section of the tunnel that had gaps in the top. Moonlight streamed inside and Rosa could see the outlines of trees. They must already be on the outside of the villa gates. More lights bounced from somewhere behind them and the footsteps grew louder. The Germans were gaining ground.

Luciano turned around and aimed his gun, ready to fire on them.
Withdraw and defend, the hardest manoeuvre of all.
The girl in Rosa’s arms began to wail. Partridge, Ada and Rosa looked at each other. The truth was obvious. Madre Maddalena and the children would never be able to outrun the soldiers. Rosa passed the girl to Ada.

‘Run! Take them!’ she said to Partridge and Ada.

She gave Madre Maddalena her flashlight, before turning and dropping to her knee beside Luciano, aiming her gun in the direction from which the soldiers were coming. It was a fatal decision, but there was no other choice but to try and slow the Germans down in order to save the others.

‘Withdraw.’

Rosa looked at Luciano. In the glow of his flashlight, she saw that he was regarding her with the same tenderness he had that morning after they had made love.

‘Withdraw,’ he repeated.

She didn’t comprehend at first. She shook her head. She and Luciano were soldiers and lovers, they must fight side by side. ‘No!’ she said.

‘Withdraw, Lieutenant. As your commanding officer, I order you to withdraw!’

Luciano’s face was burning with love. It was so full of light that the tunnel seemed to be illuminated with it.

‘Withdraw!’ he said. ‘You have been called to save the children and the nuns, not me.’

His words shattered inside Rosa because she knew he had spoken the truth. She was being called to live and he was being called to stay.

‘Luciano!’ she cried, tears pouring down her cheeks.

He grabbed her and kissed her, then pushed her away. The sounds of the Germans approaching were growing louder now. They would soon be within their sights.

‘If you love me, Rosa, run!’ Luciano said.

Rosa’s heart fell to pieces as she turned and fled. Only out of love for Luciano, not fear for her life, did she run with all her strength. Through the darkness she could see up ahead of her that the exit was only a few feet away. Partridge was lifting the others up the ladder and out of the tunnel. She reached the ladder too.

‘Raven! Give me your hands,’ Partridge shouted when he saw her.

Rosa turned back to where Luciano was waiting. His silhouette was illuminated in the flashlights of the Germans. He was holding up a grenade. Rosa knew the pin had been pulled. She saw the angel wrap its wings around him. An explosion shook the tunnel. The walls began to collapse. Dust flew up around Rosa and mixed with the tears on her face. She lost consciousness for a few
moments before she felt hands pulling her out of the ground. The warm summer air floated around her. She opened her eyes. The stars were twinkling in the sky up above her. But they no longer held any charm for Rosa now that Luciano was gone.

W
hen Rosa arrived with Partridge and the others back at the camp, it was apparent that many of the partisans had perished in the raid and most of the casualties had been in Giovanni’s group. Rosa was consumed by a sickening grief in her stomach and her legs were shaking beneath her. But the sight of Fiamma and the nuns tending to the injured brought back her nurse’s discipline. Somehow she had to find the strength in her to help them; it was what Luciano would have wanted her to do.

‘How many?’ she asked Fiamma, almost collapsing into her arms.

‘We’ve got the injured out; the…dead we had to leave. There are about twenty with gunshot wounds.’

‘The hostages?’

‘Only one casualty: the elderly nun. She wasn’t shot. Her heart simply gave out.’

Rosa looked to where Fiamma was pointing and saw Suor Valeria lying on a stretcher. She knelt beside the nun and kissed her forehead. ‘Not forgotten nor forsaken, dear Suor Valeria,’ she whispered.

It took everything Rosa had to pull herself together. The light was breaking in the sky. She washed her hands in a basin and
looked for the most seriously wounded partisans, the ones the
staffette
and nuns weren’t qualified to help.

She caught sight of Madre Maddalena kneeling next to Giovanni and rushed to them. Madre Maddalena looked at her with wide eyes. ‘The Wolf!’ she said.

Rosa was puzzled and turned to Giovanni, who was struggling to breathe. She remembered the Weimaraner puppy and the animals he had saved and suddenly understood what Madre Maddalena was trying to tell her. Why had she not realised it before? It was him. Giovanni was ‘The Wolf’. He had taken her to the convent all those years ago. But why?

She drew back the blanket that was covering him. Giovanni had a wound to his stomach but it was the rasping in his chest that worried her. His lungs were struggling to take in air. She loosened his shirt and saw that several bullets had gone through his chest. She realised that they were going to lose him.

‘This is the child you rescued,’ Madre Maddalena said, clasping Giovanni’s shoulder. ‘This is the girl you brought to me. See what a heroine she has become.’

Giovanni rested his eyes on Rosa. Despite his pain, he smiled at her and struggled to explain. ‘She told me to get rid of you,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘And to bring back your heart to prove I’d killed you. But I couldn’t do such a thing. I took you to the convent and stole a dead child’s heart from the university’s anatomy department.’

‘The Marchesa?’ asked Rosa, stroking Giovanni’s forehead. ‘The Marchesa told you to do it? After Nerezza died?’

Giovanni nodded. ‘She killed Nerezza. Poisoned her,’ he wheezed.

So the Marchesa
was
there. Rosa had long suspected that the woman had tried to get rid of her but not that she had murdered her mother too. Giovanni had been told to kill Rosa but hadn’t had the heart to do it, any more than he had to slaughter the puppy or any of the other animals the Marchesa had considered…
imperfect.
Suddenly it all made sense. But even such an earthshattering
revelation meant little to Rosa at that moment. Giovanni was dying and she did not want his last thoughts to be of the Marchesa.

She pressed his hand to her cheek. ‘Thank you, kind man, for saving me. Thank you for your mercy.’

Giovanni squeezed her hand with his waning strength and turned his head. ‘My children,’ he said.

Rosa realised he was looking at the German children they had saved from the cellar. For a moment, their faces blurred and she saw in their place a young Piero, Carlo, Orietta…and Luciano.

‘You’re going home to them,’ she said, fighting back her tears. ‘They are waiting for you.’

Giovanni nodded and his face shone. ‘We’ll never be separated again,’ he said.

The light faded from his eyes. Madre Maddalena murmured a prayer. Rosa didn’t think it was possible to feel any more pain than she was already experiencing but her heart turned blacker. Another person she loved was gone.

When Rosa had done all she could to help the injured, she slumped down next to a tree. The depth of all that had been lost finally hit her. Luciano was gone. She didn’t know where Antonio was but it was most likely that he was dead too. Her children were all that she had left but she’d had no contact with them for over a year. Were they safe?

She felt someone standing beside her and looked up to see Fiamma.

‘Luciano gave his life for ours,’ Rosa wept.

Fiamma knelt down beside her. There was a piece of paper in her hand. ‘He gave me this,’ she said. ‘He told me that if he was killed and you survived, I was to give it to you.’

Fiamma embraced Rosa then left her on her own. Rosa held the paper between her fingertips, the way one would hold a delicate leaf. She took a deep breath before opening it.

My Dearest Rosa,

The sudden turn of events means I cannot tell you all that is in my heart in this brief message. But if you receive this, it means that I am dead. Do not grieve for me, Rosa. I loved you and adored you. In your arms I found my greatest happiness. Know that I have died happy and content to have loved you. It is the most I could have ever asked: the chance to see Italy free and to hold the whole world when I embraced you in my arms.

Find Antonio, for I know that he is out there somewhere looking for you. And when you find him, love him with all your heart—but sometimes, when you look at the stars, think of me and smile.

In memory of Piero, Carlo and Orietta, teach Sibilla and your sons to love freedom and truth and to never allow themselves to become slaves.

Farewell, my love. One day we shall meet again.

I am your beloved,

Luciano

Rosa reread the letter, lingering over each word as if by doing so she could hold onto Luciano a little longer. The sentiments he had expressed had been written down less than a day ago…and now he was gone. But she knew what he was telling her. It was the same message she had been given in the tunnel: that she was to live and, in doing so, to be a witness to all that had happened. Her mission was not over. It had just begun.

A church bell started ringing. Rosa looked up. Then more bells sounded, one set after another.

Starling, who was carting water from the river, put down his buckets. ‘It’s coming from the direction of Florence,’ he called out to the partisans. ‘The city is free!’

‘The Germans are gone,’ Starling told Rosa, two days later. ‘We have secured the Villa Scarfiotti. It would be better to move the injured there and get them out of the elements. We’ve checked for mines and booby-traps. It looks like the Germans didn’t have time to set them before they fled.’

‘What about the colonel and the Marchesa?’

‘The colonel resisted and was shot,’ Starling said. ‘We have the Marchesa captive at the villa. We’ll keep her under guard until we can hand her over as a war criminal. The housekeeper, Signora Guerrini, was killed during the raid. She started firing on my men. The rest of the servants are in the village gaol.’

Rosa agreed that it would be best to take the injured to the villa where there was running water and an ample supply of beds and linen. They would then inform the Red Cross in Florence that they were using the villa as a hospital. Clementina had been sent with a
staffetta
to the city, where Signora Corvetto was waiting for her. Rosa gazed at her hands. The injured needed her and Fiamma to nurse them but she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to return to the Villa Scarfiotti. Starling guessed the reason for her hesitation.

‘The tunnel has collapsed,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t retrieve Luciano.’

Rosa remembered the grenade and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think he would have preferred it like that. He died like a soldier: in battle.’

When they arrived at the villa, Starling, Fiamma, Rosa and the nuns converted the ballroom into a hospital ward. Partridge left for Florence to inform the Red Cross that they needed supplies and also to offer the rest of the villa as a hospital or accommodation for the Allies if it was needed.

Rosa couldn’t bear to go anywhere in the villa other than the ballroom and kitchen. It wasn’t that Luciano had died at the villa alone that made her feel the way she did. It was the thought that she would be sharing the same roof as her mother’s killer. Another person might have been enraged enough to want to face such a
murderer immediately, but Rosa had lost so much in her life because of the Marchesa that she couldn’t even bear to breathe the same air as the woman, look at the same walls, climb the same stairs. The Marchesa had murdered Rosa’s mother, tried to kill Rosa, left her an abandoned orphan, had her falsely accused and sent to prison—and, finally, was responsible for the death of Luciano and the partisans because of her collaboration with the Germans. Rosa couldn’t even use the word ‘hate’ to describe her feelings for the Marchesa. Her loathing was such that there were no words for it. She knew that one day there would be a confrontation, but she could bide her time for that. She needed to build her strength. Until then, the Marchesa could wait.

Ada and Paolina took over the kitchen. The nuns helped them by restoring the kitchen garden. The Jewish women and children worked in the orchard. The Convent of Santo Spirito had been destroyed when the bridges were mined and the nuns had nowhere else to go. Rosa appreciated how difficult the destruction of their community was for them, especially those who were committed to enclosure. But she was also grateful that they all pitched in to do what they could.

One morning Rosa stepped out into the kitchen garden to find Dono on the edge of the woods. He sniffed the air and lumbered towards her. The women and children fled indoors but Rosa wasn’t afraid. Dono pressed his nose to Rosa’s shoulder. His cage was still there in the kitchen garden. For his own safety, he would be better off there than wandering around the woods where some poacher might shoot him. Rosa hating making him a captive again, but he seemed to understand when she led him to his cage. She gave him a bowl of water and some artichokes and he sat there contentedly eating them.

After that, she took Dono out of his cage twice a day so he could stretch his legs. The sight of Rosa walking down the driveway with a bear sent the partisans clambering behind rocks or running into the summerhouse. The only people, besides Rosa, who weren’t afraid of the bear were the German children.

‘What’s his name?’ Karl, the eldest, asked Rosa. The others were called Alfon, Hannah and Erhard.

‘Dono,’ she replied. ‘It means “gift”.’

They took turns in patting the bear’s head. Because the German children had lost their parents, they followed Rosa around like ducklings. She didn’t mind. She liked their company. It took her mind off her pain.

In early September, the battlefield moved north and, with the villa secured, it was time for the partisans to return to their families and to rebuild their lives. Rosa embraced each member as they set off, wishing them a safe journey. Starling and Woodpecker and a few of the other men insisted on staying to protect the villa and guard the Marchesa.

‘We’ll leave when you do,’ they told Rosa.

‘What about your wives and children?’ she asked.

‘I’m a single man,’ said Starling.

‘My brother moved my wife and children to our mother’s home in Sant’ Anna di Stazzema. It’s an isolated hilltop village,’ Woodpecker told Rosa. ‘They will be safe there until I collect them.’

Rosa thanked the men. She wondered what news Partridge would bring from Florence when he returned. She hoped that he would be able to find supplies. They were running out of morphine. Rosa was having to ply some of the patients with wine from the cellar to ease their pain. She couldn’t bear to go there herself, so Ada went instead, always bringing back the finest vintages.

‘What do you give the Marchesa?’ Rosa asked her.

‘Vinegar with water,’ Ada replied.

One day, Rosa ventured into the woods to see if she could find more berries for Dono. He liked the peaches from the orchard and the vegetables she gave him but berries were a special treat. Rosa found that looking after him soothed her heart. He needed healing and care and so did she. She walked the path to the gatehouse, her gun slung
in its holster over her back, and crept stealthily about. Although the Germans had left, there were looters and poachers in the vicinity. The woods were different in the daylight, peaceful. It saddened Rosa to think that the last time she had passed by these trees Luciano had been by her side. She felt a breeze brush over her. She couldn’t see anything but she sensed it was Orsola. The witch hadn’t completed her work; justice had not yet been done. Rosa’s mind turned to the Marchesa, but she didn’t want to think about that now.

She found some wild strawberries and picked them and put them in her bucket. She was about to straighten up when she saw two sets of boots and legs in grey pants standing before her. Her heart skipped a beat. Germans! She looked up and against the light through the trees saw two figures. She seized her gun.

‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ the soldiers shouted, raising their hands in the air. ‘We surrender!’

Rosa stood up. The men were unarmed but instinctively she looked around to see if there were other soldiers, in case it was a trick.

‘It’s the gelato girl,’ said one of the men.

Rosa recognised the two soldiers from the day she had cycled into Borgo San Lorenzo and discovered Orietta had been killed. Rosa’s blonde hair was growing out but she had hidden the dark roots under a scarf.

‘How can you surrender?’ she asked the soldiers. ‘We’re not fighting. You are deserters. You should have gone with your army. If they find you now, they will shoot you.’

‘Please,’ said the soldier who had flirted with Rosa. ‘The German army does terrible things. We don’t want to be a part of it.’

Starling froze when he saw Rosa marching the two German soldiers out of the woods.

‘
Cazzo
!’ he said, running towards her. ‘What’s this?’

‘They are our prisoners.’