The two servants swayed under the weight of the full buckets as they walked the last few steps to the river’s edge. I knew they were not amused at having to do this kind of work when they were primarily kitchen servants, but there were gaps in our service now that I’d dismissed all the local help except for the workmen. They would have to be patient for a while longer.
“I heard about it, too,” one of them said, setting her bucket of boiled water down. “It’s getting troubling. I don’t even want to leave the villa anymore.”
A wise choice. With the bloody flux gaining the kind of ground it had in the past three days, the best thing anyone could do was stay away from town and from people who might be sick. I only wished I could prevent the workers from going home every night. On my property, I could control the water and food they ate, even how often they washed their hands with rose water, but how could I make certain that they were careful in their own houses?
At least I had managed to contain the illness here. Only the twins had it. And even they were growing stronger with every tonic they drank. With the help of Dio, His Santa Madre, and His plants, the villa would be free of it altogether in a few more days.
“It’s even in the chancellor’s home,” the other woman said. “Everyone says his wife has it.”
I sucked in a breath, pivoting to look at them. “Is that idle gossip or is it true? Is Madonna Cestarello ill?”
The two women exchanged a rapid glance before dipping their gazes to the ground. “Madonna, that is what we heard.”
Why had I not heard anything? Received no missive from Silvia or from her husband? “When did you learn of this?”
“It must have been one or two days ago, madonna.”
It was early still, then. I could help her.
“Good,” I said. “Make sure the workers drink from the water in those buckets and not from the river.”
The two women made hurried curtsies as I strode away from them.
At a close run, I went to my cucinetta and took two of the flasks full of the tonic I’d prepared yesterday. I hesitated.
I lifted the lid of the cauldron and peered inside. There wasn’t much of it left, and I had, perhaps, enough ingredients to make another small batch. I doubted I could provide Silvia with a full treatment, not when my children still needed care.
I exhaled sharply. Some of the tonic was better than none of it, and it would at least take care of the worst of the symptoms. It would give her enough strength to battle the disease on her own.
Slipping the flasks into a leather pouch, I left the room and started for the stairs.
“Is everything all right, amore?” Florindo said behind me. He clicked our bedroom door shut.
“I need to take one of the carriages over to the chancellor’s home. Silvia has fallen ill with the flux.”
He walked toward me. “I’m sorry to hear that. You wouldn’t rather send a servant?”
I shook my head. “She is with child and I need to see what she looks like to know how much of the tonic to give her.”
“What you made for her worked, then?”
“Indeed.”
Florindo placed a quick kiss on my forehead. “You are a wonder, you know? Un angelo.”
I scoffed. “I think a few people in the region would disagree.” I looked up at him and tapped his chest. “Any news on the grain shipment?”
“It appears it will get here in two or three days.”
“Excellent. I presume by then we should have gotten the rest of the loan?”
He nodded. “The men will be finished with the dam today, and tomorrow morning they’ll begin removing the boulders.”
“Bene.” Standing on the tips of my toes, I kissed his cheek. “I’ll go take this to Silvia and then we can go through my jewelry to see if we have anything left worth selling.”
A clap of pain crossed his face but he nodded again.
I left him there and made my way to the stables where Spuma was, as usual, being as problematic as possible. The only groom we’d retained held the horse’s reins as he tried to brush its mane, and the animal snorted and kicked like it was being branded with a blazing poker. How Florindo had so much love for this mad creature, I would never understand.
“I need to ride to the chancellor’s home,” I said, my voice barely cutting through Spuma’s.
The driver leaped up from his stool and bowed. The poor groom only managed a nod before the animal attempted to nip him.
It was mere moments before the carriage was ready and I could only smile at the efficiency of the men. They could have served at any court in Genova.
I’d not left our property since the rains had stopped, and the sight of the damage drew out a sharp gasp from me as I stared out the carriage window. There was stagnant water everywhere. In every field that edged on the tributary that had flooded. The river no longer flowed through here now that the dam was almost completely repaired, but, if anything, that appeared to have just made things worse. Because there was no longer a current to sweep the dozens of rotting animal carcasses away. How had no official taken steps to remove them?
Little wonder the region was boiling with fever.
The roads weren’t much better. Here there had been obvious attempts to create canals for the water, with crevasses dug into the sides of the road, but the earth was already saturated with it. The carriage wheels trudged through what felt like porridge.
The chancellor’s villa, up on a slight hill, had at least weathered the worst of it without visible damage. There were fallen trees nearby, making the progress up to the entrance a rough, turbulent affair that jolted me all over the carriage, but none of them had touched the property.
The nearer we drew, however, the more I noticed a stillness to the villa that I did not like.
No servants were waiting to help me alight from the carriage and none came to direct the driver to where he should wait. I felt my chest constrict.
Holding on tightly to my leather pouch, I left the carriage, walked to the door, and knocked.
Slow footsteps echoed through the villa too many seconds later and made their way to me. The door creaked open.
The man who greeted me had a tinge of yellow to his skin and the dull, off-centered gaze of missed sleep. I pushed back the urge to clasp my handkerchief to my face.
“Buon giorno,” I said. “I would like to see Madonna Cestarello.”
“I’m afraid she is indisposed, madonna.”
“Yes, I am aware she is ill. Please let her know that Madonna Caparalia is here and that I’ve brought her something that can help.”
The man’s gaze found its focus for the first time. He stepped aside, allowing me to walk into the villa. “This way, please, madonna.”
I followed his rather unsteady gait into a room crackling with a cheery fire, the gold-threaded brocade of a pair of exquisite blue armchairs shimmering in its light.
“If you would be so kind as to wait here, madonna,” the man said.
“Yes, of course.”
He bowed and left the room.
Apart from the chatter of the flames, the silence that fell when the man’s footsteps faded was like a crystal dome closing over the house. A villa this size should have reverberated with all manner of sounds—doors creaking open as servants went about their tasks, the steward’s voice as he gave orders for the preparation of dinner in the sala, even hushed laughter and coarse words echoing in from the servants’ quarters. They all made up a living, breathing household. This villa had the muteness of the grave.
It was a long while before I heard steps approaching.
The chancellor himself walked into the room, thin of lips, with creases on his skin that were much more pronounced than the last time I had seen him. He could have been a decade older than he was.
“Dottore Cestarello, how pleasant to see you even in these difficult times.”
“Madonna Caparalia.” He made no move to offer me a seat or even a smile. “May I enquire as to the purpose of your visit?”
There was winter in his voice. Something besides sickness had occurred. “I heard that Silvia is ill and I’ve brought one of my tonics to help her recover. Would it be possible to speak with her?”
“I’m afraid not. Her doctors have forbidden it.”
Of course they had. They were probably also getting ready to do the worst thing that anyone could do against the bloody flux: bleed her.
I took a deep breath. If I couldn’t see her, I would have to risk the dose, perhaps a little bit more than half a flask. “Since that is the case, could you please administer the tonic I’ve prepared?”
I reached into the leather pouch and brought out the flasks.
“No, I will not.”
My hands clenched around the glass necks as I looked up. “Chancellor?”
“I will not allow a drop more of your concoctions to pass through my wife’s lips. I’ll not expose her to that kind of danger.”
I frowned. “Danger? I don’t understand.”
“I’ve had a visit from one of your servants, as I gather most of the region has by now, a young man who told me that you are using unspeakable ingredients for your tonics. Blood and fluids drawn from the womb of a dead sow. Herbs with unpronounceable names.” His lips curled up in disgust. “He claims that he has seen you make unholy bargains up in your cucinetta.”
A flush rose to my face before quickly morphing into a damp chill. “Who dares spew such lies?”
“That makes no difference. I’ve forbidden my wife from having anything more to do with you and your family.”
“You cannot possibly believe any of that! It’s superstitious madness!”
“All I know is that there has been nothing but misfortune since you arrived in our region. The endless rains, the broken dam and the flooding, this disease that is rampaging through the countryside. Look around you, madonna. There aren’t enough healthy men to remove the dead animals and more than half of my help is ill, delirious with fever. I expect to fall prey to it myself soon enough. And Silvia . . .” He shook his head. “After what your own servant has said, confirming all of the rumors we’ve heard for months, it is not too wide a leap to think that you’ve cursed our land with your presence.”
That was enough.
I drew myself up as tall as I could manage and walked toward him. “You may think whatever you please of me, but Silvia needs these tonics. My own children have been drinking them, so I assure you they are perfectly safe.”
“As were the last ones you gave her?”
I frowned.
“I found them, despite the attempts my wife made to hide them from me. She spent an entire night in the latrine, vomiting until she lost consciousness. Our Dio knows what that abomination was for, but I will not subject her to it again when she is already so weak.”
“She did not tell you, then?”
“Tell me what?”
I held his gaze. “She is with child.”
The bit of color he had in his face seeped away.
“Those tonics you found were to help her conceive and she knew exactly what to expect from them. I warned her of the effects they could have on her body and she was still willing to go through the discomfort of the process.”
“Discomfort? She was close to death!”
I sighed. “I assure you, she is much closer to it now. As is the child within her.”
He clenched his hands together, shifting his stare from me to the floor, as if the truth would be written on the golden mosaic flowers. “The doctors said she would never be able to conceive.”
“The doctors don’t know anything, especially about female bodies.” I held up the flasks. “Salvatore, she needs these.”
He looked at the dark liquid inside it, his lips pressed tightly, and I could taste his fear, as metallic as blood. I held my breath, using every ounce of silent will I possessed to tip him over to his wife’s aid.
I saw his eyes snag on the red thread I still wore around my wrist. His jaw clenched.
“No,” he said.
“Salvatore—”
“No.” His voice boomed above mine. “I will not let her drink whatever horrors you’ve put in those flasks. I cannot allow it. It goes against our Dio and the learned science of our doctors.” He shook his head with violence. “We are not in the Dark Ages anymore, madonna, and I will allow no sorcery in my household.”
He could have slapped me and caused less pain.
“I would ask that you do not return to my home or I will have to fetch the massaro, who is busy enough with his own sick child.”
My cheeks burned as I slipped the flasks back into my pouch. I harnessed the desire to rush out of the room and try to find Silvia because I knew it would do no good. One dose would do little and her husband wouldn’t allow her any more.
The damage here was done.
The chancellor made to reach for the bellpull but I raised my hand. “That is not necessary. I know the way out.”
I walked to the door, each step a bit heavier than the last, for I was failing Silvia. Failing myself, too, but I didn’t know what to do. “Please, Salvatore, at least do not allow the doctors to bleed her.”
“They have already done so, madonna, and I’m certain they will again.”
“Then your wife and the child she carries will die.”
Before he could say anything else, perhaps even accuse me of threatening him, I left the room, blinking back tears as I made my way out of the villa and back into my carriage.
“Madonna?” the driver said.
“Take me to the massaro’s home. It’s a five-minute drive or so down this same path.” If I couldn’t help Silvia, perhaps I could save the Scappis’ ill child.
“Yes, madonna.”
The carriage started off and I sat back, clutching the pouch to my chest. The chancellor’s words were barbs that I couldn’t dislodge. He’d believed every single lie someone had conjured up about me despite having met me, having dined with me. How could he have taken the servant’s words seriously?
The servant.
It wasn’t difficult to suspect Antonio. I had no reason to think that it would have been any of the men who had served me for years in Genova, and of the newer help, only Antonio could be considered a young man. Only he had been problematic from the instant we’d met. If I’d not already dismissed him along with the rest of the locals, he would not have finished the day in my home.
Was that why he’d done it? As retribution?
The open fields that surrounded the massaro’s smaller villa made it visible from a distance away and I felt a simmer of nerves. If Antonio had visited the chancellor with his lies, he would have carried them here as well.
Nothing to be done except face them.
The carriage didn’t have time to stop before Madonna Scappi lunged through her front door, her husband at her heels.
Collecting myself as best I could, I opened the carriage door and stepped out. Or made to.
“You will not touch a foot to our land,” Madonna Scappi said.
I halted, half my body still in the carriage.
“Have you not done enough? Must you impose more wickedness on our family?”
“Madonna Scappi, I’ve not done anything to you or your family and I don’t intend to.” I took a breath, ready to continue, to try to explain about Antonio and what he’d made up, but what good would it do? The massaro’s wife had branded me the night of the cena and she would not change her mind. In any case, I had not come to clear my name.
I pulled out one of the flasks. “I’ve brought you something to help your child, that is all.”
The massaro stepped closer to his wife. “You truly think we’d let our child drink anything you’ve made when you’re the one responsible for all of this? You’ve cursed us.”
I fought against the growing exhaustion I was beginning to feel. “I would never curse anyone. I’ve given my children this same tonic and it has helped reduce their fever and halt the blood in their expelled fluids. Please, accept it.”
“Leave our home this instant,” the massaro said.
I turned away from him and looked directly at his wife, extending the flask toward her. “Help your child, madonna.”
She moved so quickly I didn’t have time to flinch.
She snatched the tonic from my hand and swung it against the carriage’s side, the white screech of shattering glass falling over me before the slivers did.
The driver exclaimed and leaped out of his seat, but I stopped him with a hand.
I was done here as well, it seemed. Everything I said or did would only be seen as an attack.
Without another word, I closed the carriage door and tapped the roof, urging the man to ride off. The lies had spread like the sickness, and I did not have the strength to battle them both.
* * *
I placed the wet cloth on Vincenzo’s forehead and smoothed out the thin wool blanket that covered him. The fever was almost entirely gone but I’d not risk a reemergence. Across from him, Francesco slept soundly, his breathing heavy and steady. I’d had to practically restrain him earlier to keep him from bounding out of bed and running off to find his siblings.
With a stifled groan, I sat back in the chair I’d been perched on for the past two nights. The unpleasantness of this morning tried to crash over me for what felt like the hundredth time since it’d happened, but I pushed it away. I’d thought of Silvia’s situation the entire day, turning it over in my mind, recruiting Florindo in my search for a way in which I might help her. But other than sending up fervent prayers, we could do nothing without her husband’s consent. She would either improve or she would not.
I shook my head to clear it of some of the worry. At least we’d wrestled one positive thing from the day: the dam was finished. Tomorrow, the men would be able to start removing the boulders blocking the path to the mountain, and when we received the grain, the mill could be set to work.
What I couldn’t shake was the persistent feeling that all our plans were too precariously built. They were like the mill’s grindstones, waiting for the slightest misstep to set everything ablaze.
A horse’s neighing rang out. The bang of hooves hitting the stable door.
I sighed. That blasted animal must have gotten out of its stall again. I’d have to speak with the stablemaster about reinforcing it with iron or adding yet another lock.
But it could and would have to wait until morning. I closed my eyes. I had time to sleep a bit before I had to give Vincenzo and Francesco their next dose of tonic.
It was the panic I heard in the next whinny that snapped me back to alertness.
That was not Spuma’s usual tone.
I stood and walked to the window, making as little noise as possible as I pulled back the thick curtain to keep from bothering the twins.
I sucked in a breath.
On the hill leading to our drowned fields, the glow of torches brightened the night. Even from here, I could see four figures, their shifting silhouettes pressed against the orange light. And, like the fire cut through the darkness, their radiating hate cut right through the distance, to me.
A warning blared within me.
I ran out of the room, all pounding heart and steps, the horse’s cries trailing me like a veil, and flung open our bedroom door hard enough to drag Florindo up from sleep.
“Maddalena?”
“There are people with torches on our property!”
The sheets snapped as he yanked them to the side and I left him to follow me as I continued down the corridor, down the stairs, and out the front door.
The chilled night was sharp and clear as glass, allowing me to see what was occurring on the hill.
The four silhouettes had become five. To a command I couldn’t hear, they swung their torches down, joining the flames at the feet of the central figure, and the fire latched on, crawling up and up. There were no screams other than Spuma’s.
I didn’t know what I was seeing but I’d not allow it on my land.
I raced down the colonnade’s stairs.
One of the figures shouted as it caught sight of me and they all sprang into movement, the flames they carried flapping like flags when they took off across the hill and toward the forest.
My skirts threatened to topple me and I gripped them in a fist of cloth while I ran past the mill. Imitating that horrid night, I grasped grass and earth and pulled myself up the still slippery, muddy hill to the burning figure. Immobile, it crackled and smoked.
It was a creature of sack and straw and it wore a blue overdress with lace accents that were blackening and curling into themselves. It was one of mine.
“What is happening?” Florindo called from the bottom of the hill.
I could only stare at my overdress, feeling the residue of hate those figures had brought and then lit like oil. My effigy, in flames. But that wasn’t what chilled my insides so much that I didn’t know if I’d ever be warm again.
It was the thought that they’d been in our bedroom, in my very armoire, without anyone seeing them or stopping them. They could just as easily have slipped into the children’s room.
“Maddalena!” Florindo said, puffing up the side of the hill, oil lamp in hand.
“This cannot go on, sposo. It cannot.” I pointed at the wide lace collar he himself had purchased for me, already scorched black. “This is a warning.”
His face tightened as he recognized what burned before him. “Did you see who they were?”
“No. I saw no faces, just their shapes as they ran off.”
“Which way?”
I motioned to the darkness of the woods.
He said nothing but started across the hill toward all that blackness.
“Florindo, stop.”
“I’ll not stand threats to your life, sposa.”
“But you won’t find them!”
“I’ll at least try.”
He sped up and the forest swallowed him in an instant. I looked back toward the villa, but none of the servants had woken, not even Giusto, and I couldn’t waste time fetching them. I couldn’t leave Florindo on his own.
I ran after him.
I didn’t know what he thought the two of us could possibly do against four trespassers. Between us, the most dangerous thing we had were the small scissors hanging from my chatelaine.
“Florindo, this is ridiculous. They could be anywhere in this forest, perhaps not even in it anymore at all.”
“But look.” He pointed to a drooping branch, one of its edges still smoldering. He pressed his sleeve against it until it stopped. “They’ve passed through here with their torches. We just have to watch for the traces they’ve left behind and we’ll find them, we’ll see who is responsible for all of this destruction, and we’ll bring them to justice.”
What justice? The massaro had not deigned to help us last time we required him and now the chancellor had deemed me monstrous. How could we achieve justice when we had no assistance from anyone with the least bit of power?
The more we walked, following the lamp’s light down an uneven trail of snapped pine branches and burnt needles, the more I began to realize we’d already come this way just a few days ago. It appeared to be the same path Ilario had taken to reach the mountain. But that was irrational. Why would the trespassers choose a passage that offered no escape unless they turned back toward the villa? Did they not realize that a mountain would be blocking their way?
My thoughts snapped in two as something sharp cut through the sole of my shoe and into my foot. I winced and stopped.
“Are you all right?” Florindo said.
I waved his words away, steadying myself against a tree before reaching to pull the thorn or pine needle loose.
But it was porcelain that gleamed under the flame’s golden glow.
Holding my breath, I picked it up from the soil, the shape of it familiar between my fingers. A shape I had longed to see as a child, perching on a chair to await the strike of the hour and touching it lightly as it passed.
It was one of the dancing peasants from Father’s Bavarian clock.
Its base was cracked and part of it was missing, probably still attached to the rest of the mechanism. The top of the shepherd’s crook had snapped off where I’d stepped on it.
“What is it?” Florindo said.
I held the figurine up.
“Is that . . .?”
I nodded, wiping with fury at the sudden spring of tears in my eyes. Father had loved that clock and so had I. It was the second priceless thing I had lost since we’d come to this place, pieces of my youth, of my life, taken and destroyed.
Florindo drew closer and touched the figure as lightly as my childhood self would have done. He shook his head.
“It has to be that servant who’s responsible for this,” he said. “He must be one of the trespassers. He would have had access to everything, from the start.”
He was right, of course. It would have been nothing at all for Antonio to take my grandmother’s tablecloth, my overdress, and now my father’s clock. Knowing the lies he’d spread, it would not have surprised me to know that he had been involved in the ruining of the Embertide stew as well.
The question was why. I had reprimanded him the first time we’d met, it was true, but that did not warrant this aggression.
I wanted answers.
“Let’s continue, sposo,” I said, slipping the porcelain peasant into one of my dress’s pockets. “I would like to see that treacherous boy’s face one more time. I want the truth.”
We hurried on.
But we couldn’t go much farther. Soon enough, the mountain rose black in front of us and all torches, voices, and movement had been swallowed. The trespassers should have been trapped, but they’d disappeared.
“It’s impossible,” Florindo said, turning in every direction, the lamplight sending shadows scattering.
It certainly looked impossible, but these were people of flesh and bone. They couldn’t have just vanished at will, so the answer was here somewhere.
I walked toward the boulders blocking our path, skirting them in search of an opening large enough for a human to have walked through. They were pressed so tightly together, however, that it was difficult to slip a hand between them, let alone an entire person. Not this way, then.
A murmur turned my head away from the stones. A sound like the ruffling of leaves.
It was coming from a clump of shadows pressed against the mountain’s side. On my left. It was not a familiar voice, but it was plucking at me with weary insistence and I never ignored these callings.
Carefully, I stepped closer to the murmur.
It came from a patch of sow thistle, its butter yellow flowers heavy on broken stems, leaves crushed and already wilting.
“You poor thing,” I said and knelt before it. “What happened to you?”
I sensed Florindo stepping closer and doing so as quietly as he could manage, for he didn’t need to ask with whom I was speaking.
I tilted my head toward the thistle and listened.
It told me about the figures, the stomping boots, the floating fire, and the cold draft it’d felt chilling its uncovered roots. The draft that had come from behind it.
I glanced up at the mountainside in front of me and at the cascade of ivy that covered it. Conveniently.
“Can you raise the lamp, sposo?”
The instant he did so, I saw the lacelike border of singed leaves on one side of all that ivy and a dusty streak of black across the rocks on the other. Grasping a few vines, I pulled as I would a curtain.
A mouth opened up in front of us.
Florindo gasped.
This was where they’d gone: it was a passage carved right into the mountain. Through its center.
I looked down at the ravaged plant again and bowed my head, pressing a hand to my chest. “Thank you,” I said. “I am in your debt. Can I do anything for you, to ease the pain?”
I listened to its weakening voice and nodded once before grasping the scissors hanging from my waist and sliding the blades around the few roots still clinging to life.
“I’m sorry,” I said and cut through them. The voice stopped.
Florindo took my free hand and squeezed it as I cleared the sadness from my throat. “You are extraordinary, you know?”
Smoothing my dress, I stood and pulled aside more of the ivy, allowing a bit of light into the passage.
“No dawdling, Florindo.” I tugged on his hand and pulled him into the passage with me.
It was narrower than it looked, so that we could not walk beside one another. I started forward but he stopped me with a touch.
“I have the lamp and I will not have you walking first into darkness.” He shook his head, swiftly anticipating my attempt at objecting that he could simply hand it to me, and took the lead, the light raised high above him.
With a sigh, I followed. It was not my natural state.
Soon, it wasn’t enough to walk in a line, but also sideways to fit through the passage. If it narrowed much more, we’d not be able to continue at all.
With an extravagant amount of puffing from my husband, for which he would earn a daily dose of brisk walking from tomorrow onward, we rounded a slight corner.
My eyes widened.
A cavern opened before us, all of it naturally formed, it appeared, except for the more than hundred wide stone stairs that had been built right into the cave wall. My pulse sped as I realized they had to lead up to the top of the mountain.
“I think this is the passage to the trees,” I whispered. Still, my voice bounded from wall to wall. “Yes, look.” I pointed to a larger entrance to our right. “That must be the path the boulders are blocking.”
“But do you really think they went up the mountain?”
“I don’t see what other option they’d have,” I said. Except for the two openings we’d spotted, everything else was jutting rock.
Florindo lifted the lamp and walked into the cavern, each step revealing a bit more of the wide stairs. Loops of ropes hung down from the opening at the top of the mountain, buckets knotted to the end of a few of them, others tied around pegs wedged into the wall. A pulley system, but for what?
Something clinked at my feet and I looked down to find an empty bottle rolling away from me. Not too far away, a pile of rags lay in a heap that vaguely resembled the shape of a bed, and the stub of a candle sat on the floor beside it. Someone had spent time here.
The lamplight caught a shimmer of red coming from the wall above the rags.
“There’s something there,” I said.
The color looked familiar.
I didn’t need to get very close to it recognize what I was seeing. It was one of my necklaces, one of the few I’d not been able to part with despite our need, the garnets glowing like drops of wine against the stone. Florindo’s gift to me when we’d become betrothed to one another. I snatched it from the nail on which it hung.
Florindo met my eyes and I could see the same worry-tinged anger on his face that I felt. At least one person had been freely making use of our land, living right here, and then coming to our home at night to cause damage. With Antonio’s help, that person had had full access to every room in the villa.
My hand tightened around the necklace.
Had it all been just to rob us, then? Sabotaging the dam, killing the doves, destroying the tablecloth, tonight’s effigy, all to take my father’s clock and the few baubles I had left? It was absurd. We had no fortune to steal. Antonio must have realized that the moment he slid his fingers into my jewelry box. They would have had better luck in the chancellor’s home or perhaps even in the massaro’s.
I tucked the necklace in my pocket alongside the broken figurine.
“Disgraceful,” Florindo said, with more disgust in that one word than I’d heard him utter in all the years since I’d met him. “We must report him. He cannot be allowed his freedom.”
What I really wanted was to see him.
I strode to the stairs and began making my way up as Florindo hurried to follow. We had little chance of catching up to the trespassers, not with all our delays, but perhaps we could still see the direction in which they’d gone. Anything that provided us with more information.
I realized only now that I didn’t even know where Antonio lived.
Even with the help of the steps’ width, my sides twinged with the effort of climbing them, my bodice sticking to me with sweat. Florindo’s panting filled the cavern.
I clenched my jaw to keep from groaning as I took the last steps up and out onto the mountaintop. I looked up.
My gasp resounded across the hills and valleys of our property.
I’d been wrong. And how!
We did have a fortune to steal and that was exactly what the trespassers had been doing.
“Oh, Dio, no,” Florindo said behind me.
There was nothing but the stumps of oak trees all around us.
I shook my head, pressing my hands to my temples as I tried to dislodge this tragedy from my mind and failing and then failing again. We faced a field of decimation, of ruin. The theft as sharp as an axe strike on our future, as those that had felled the hundreds of trees we no longer had.
If all the hectares were like this, we were lost. Santa Madre, even if they weren’t, the outstanding debts would crush us.
My breath coming much too rapidly, I started running.
“Wait, Maddalena!”
But I couldn’t and didn’t, speeding instead through this first field, skirting the stumps, racing toward the far side of the mountain.
All about me, there were chutes of wooden planks, mazelike veins through which our fortune had flowed down the mountain and disappeared into other hands. Ropes coiled around axe heads and empty bottles. Laughter stained the air, and the lingering thuds of metal on wood, steady as a heartbeat, followed me as I careened toward the next field.
I almost fell to my knees with relief at the first sight of the towering trees.
We still had some hectares left. We weren’t buried yet.
“Grazie, Dio,” I said and crossed myself.
It wasn’t everything we needed, but it would at least allow us to buy the rest of the grain.
I tried to catch my breath as I looked out at the darkened army of oaks, taking in the logs that the trespassers had left in the chutes, the tools dropped in proprietary clutter on our land. How had we not heard any of this, any of the trees crashing to the ground?
With shaking hands, I brushed the nearest tree trunk.
We needed to get those boulders out of the way, boulders I was now certain had not fallen into place without a bit of help, and we needed to rip these thieves from our home before they could continue. Because it was obvious they would. Wherever the trespassers had gone now, they’d be back to stealing what was ours if we didn’t take measures to defend it.
“But how?” I said, gazing up at the sky. “What can we do to protect ourselves?”
The cold night and stars kept their own counsel, offering me no answer but that of an even colder silence.