The buzz of electricity made the hairs on my arms stand up as I lifted the coffee cup to my lips. We’d had electric light in Torino for years now and I’d never felt the like. It vibrated against my teeth.
“Is this normal, do you think?” I said.
“What?” Giovanni glanced up from his newspaper.
I pointed to the cables on the wall in front of us, the nest of colors that the men had wrestled into service.
He sat back in his chair. “It is a bit distracting, isn’t it? They should have done a better job of it, considering what I paid them.” He shook his head. “A fortune for people without proper titles. I’ll have to speak with them and see if they can improve it.”
“They weren’t real electricians?”
“Of course not, Sibilla. We can’t afford that.”
I bit my lips because . . . couldn’t we? Wasn’t a bit of expense better than the danger of an electrical fire burning the house down to ashes?
I sipped more coffee. I would have thought that was more important than the telephone he was having installed in his study this week. It wasn’t as if he had any clients to speak of yet, and his lawyer obviously knew where to find him, so what could possibly be the urgency?
I blinked as the answer came to me with the force of a slap. Of course. What a ninny I was.
The urgency was the child we were awaiting. He’d want to make sure he could call a doctor at once.
Buona stepped into the room and started toward us, the house shoes I’d given her hitting the tiles as she tried to keep them from slipping off her thin feet. When Giovanni bought a car or when he asked to borrow a buggy from a neighbor, I’d try to convince him to take us into town. The girl needed clothes and shoes and, despite myself, I would have liked to purchase a new set of curlers. My old ones had somehow been misplaced in the move from Torino and though I knew how to make them out of aluminum and paper, it seemed like unnecessary work. Surely Giovanni would allow me that small luxury.
“You’ve boiled it, I presume?” he said as the girl filled his glass with water from a decanter, her lips pursed in concentration.
“Yes, ingegnere. As you’ve told me to do.”
He nodded and picked up a slice of toasted bread from the plate resting between us. I’d done what I could to scrape the burnt layers off their undersides, but he was bound to notice. He liked the bread crisp and golden, without a hint of singeing, and the girl still hadn’t quite managed it. Tomorrow morning, I’d help her with the toaster myself. It was a fussy thing that required as much monitoring as the radio now seemed to need.
“Even if you’re washing dishes, the water should still be boiled,” Giovanni said, smoothing a thin slice of butter onto the bread.
“But it’s well water we’re using,” I said. “Isn’t that safe?”
He flicked his eyes up at me. “I’ve not checked the state of the well yet. Have you?”
“No, of course not.” I reached for the bowl of peach jam. “I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”
“Precisely, so just do as I say and boil the water.”
He took a bite and almost immediately grimaced. With a sigh, he turned the slice of bread over, the evidence of Buona’s distraction making him shake his head.
Yes, tomorrow I’d have it resolved.
I cleared my throat and shifted to place the bowl back within his reach in case today he decided to try a bit of it along with the butter. As I moved, my stomach pressed against the stone table and I flinched at the shock of cold it sent through me.
“Sibi—signora?” Buona said. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I placed a hand over my midsection, where the fabric still retained the chill. “I brushed against the stone and it’s frigid.”
Giovanni frowned, placing a hand on the table. “It’s a perfectly normal temperature.”
Perhaps it was just on this side, then, facing away from the bit of sun coming in through the window. I shrugged, smiling lightly. “It’s really not important. I’m being silly.”
He watched me for a second more, the frown remaining in place even as he lifted a napkin to his lips and dabbed at nonexistent crumbs. “Right,” he said and stood. “Well, the men will be here soon and I want to take some measurements before they do.”
“Oh, could I come to the mill with you?” I said, setting down my untouched slice of bread. “You haven’t shown me the repairs you’ve made yet, and I would like to see them.”
“I suppose.” He reached for the coat he’d laid across an empty chair. “But that actually reminds me, I wanted to ask if either one of you has heard or seen anyone walking about the property. Other than the workers, of course.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember seeing anyone. Buona, do you?”
“No, signora.”
I stood, pulling my cardigan a bit closer around me. “Why do you ask?”
“I found some fresh footprints yesterday morning, in the mud on the other side of the river, and I’ve not had any of my men working there.” He shook his head, his jaw tight. “I don’t like the thought of people walking where they have no business doing so.”
And perhaps not just walking. “Do you remember the horse I told you I heard in the woods a few days ago? Maybe someone is just used to passing through here and is not aware it’s no longer appropriate. The land has been abandoned for a very long time, after all.”
He tugged on his coat, straightening it. “Yes, well, that will have to stop. I won’t allow it. Come on.”
I followed him out, hurrying to keep up with his steps as we crossed the courtyard. I glanced up and felt the same ripple of pleasure from the first day. It was mine.
“Isn’t it incredible?” I said.
“What?”
“The fresco.”
His gaze rested on the beauty above him for only a moment, his feet already moving again. “It’s damaged.”
My smile wavered. “Just a little discolored.”
But his thoughts were already on something else and he turned, leading us through the vestibule and to the front door.
The morning light revealed a tightness in his face. Preoccupation. I’d noticed it more often these past few days, ever since Dottore Lupponi’s letter had arrived.
I started down the steps with care.
Giovanni hadn’t even mentioned the letter again, and although I was sure he had good reason, I couldn’t help wanting to know. I’d not really had a chance to ask him about it, either, for he was always at the mill, giving orders to workers, or slipping into sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. Even at mealtimes, his forehead was furrowed in thoughts that appeared too weighty for me to shift aside for long enough to get his attention.
But now, perhaps . . .
My blood bubbled with nerves as I looked down at my feet, already sinking in mud. I had to be careful with the words I chose, the tone I used. Giovanni was sensitive to all of that.
“Have you had any interesting news from Torino?” I said, my voice all light, like glinting crystal.
“Why would I have heard anything from Torino?”
I swallowed. “Because you got that letter a few days ago. I just assumed it was from acquaintances there, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t.”
I bit the inside of my lip. I knew I shouldn’t ask, I could feel it. “Was it about the mill, then?”
He looked at me. “I’ve already told you, it was nothing important.”
“But you’ve seemed preoccupied and I just—”
“Enough, Sibilla.”
He walked ahead, leaving me to manage through the mud on my own. I sighed. So much for that.
An apology on my lips, I stepped into the mill but all words dried to dust on at the sight of Giovanni rooted in place. And at what lay beyond him.
It was impossible.
The new wooden beams Giovanni had fetched from the station two days ago were smashed to splinters, the large metal cogs warped out of all recognizable shape, the scaffolding to reach the topmost mill cranks reduced to firewood. Everything my husband and the workers had spent repairing, undone.
I shook my head, as if a negation of what was in front of us was enough to clear it away.
Giovanni slammed a fist into a plank, making me flinch. “This is preposterous!”
I swallowed, dragging my voice up from where it hid. “I don’t understand. Did something fall and break?”
But no. If it’d been only some of the wooden parts and structures, then perhaps it could have been an accident, something tipping over in the night and crashing its way down, but there was no manner in which the iron cogs could have been twisted out of shape in error.
“Someone did this,” Giovanni.
“But who?” I touched the twisted metal. “How could they have done this?”
How could anyone have managed to do all this damage in just a few hours and without any of us hearing it? It was true that sound moved strangely through the property, but we would have heard all of this crashing, wouldn’t we?
We had to report it to the carabinieri.
“I should have known they’d do something like this,” he said.
My eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
He shook his head.
“Who would have done something like this?” I asked.
He waved my words away. “The—the people in the region.”
Giovanni ran a shaking hand through his dark hair. He practically vibrated with anger. “I’ll need to go buy more parts. I’ll walk to find Manfredo and see if he’ll lend me his buggy.”
“But he’ll be here in an hour or so, and besides, don’t we need the carabinieri—”
“I’m going now, Sibilla.” He bit the words out more than said them. “Two of the parts are made in Alessandria, so I need to get to the post office as soon as possible to send a message to the provider. You, who are always going on about why I could possibly need a telephone, see? This is what I need it for. So I can behave in a civilized manner and not beg favors off subordinates.”
Oh. Yes, of course. I should have realized. How many times had he told me that to be powerful, one had to first look powerful?
He stalked across the floor toward the cave-like opening that allowed a glimpse of the water wheel, which remained as silent and still as it had been for centuries. The fixed dam hadn’t yet made a difference.
I placed my hands around my mound and held my breath, waiting for another frustrated yell as Giovanni leaned into the opening and took stock.
But it didn’t come.
“The wheel appears intact,” he said. “Whoever did this limited their destruction to this area.”
I exhaled. Something to be grateful for, then.
A sudden silvered ringing sound pealed through the room. It quivered about me and faded.
“What was that?” I said.
Giovanni frowned, stepping from the edge of the opening. He paused to listen. And there it was again, the chiming of what sounded like a bell, coming from right above us.
His face cleared. “It’s one of the dansil’s bells,” he said. “Probably a rat or something is moving it and—”
But the sound of two more bells stopped his words.
We listened to what was rapidly becoming a frantic, dissonant ringing for an instant more before Giovanni launched into action and hurried to the steep, narrow stairs leading up to the floor above us.
I followed, sensible heels that were still not very sensible for this property clicking against the wooden floorboard.
The ringing grew more desperate with each step I climbed, the sound multiplying as more bells joined in.
It was a cacophony by the time I reached the top.
I’d been up here only once, on the day of our arrival, but now that some of the workers had pried the wood that had boarded up the windows, I could see more than silhouettes. Shattered remnants of fifteen large circular containers, like barrels, that had once held grain, lay scattered, the wooden funnels above them in various stages of decay. The only trace of one was a ring of black iron from which the funnel had hung and that only a single nail held up. Attached in some form to what was left of each of these contraptions was a small golden bell. And each one of those bells was ringing to call down the heavens.
“Why are they doing that?” I called over the noise. All I knew of milling was what I’d learned from Giovanni, and since I’d met him, he’d only worked in sawmills.
He shook his head. “I-I don’t know. That is, the bells are only supposed to ring when there’s no more grain to send to the millstones. It’s a warning that gives the miller a few seconds to bring the mechanism to a stop before the stones grind together, create a spark, and light up the flour dust. The smallest spark could cause an explosion that’d destroy the entire building.” He motioned to the broken containers. “But the mechanisms are not working at all now. How could they be? Entire sections are missing!”
I drew closer to one of the furiously ringing bells and saw that, of course, Giovanni was right. This one wasn’t even attached to anything more than a drooping frayed cord, and still it chimed. I reached out to stop it and yanked my hand back immediately.
It boiled.
“Giovanni, it burns like it’s been under a flame.”
He touched the one nearest to him and hissed, shaking the burn off his fingertips. “This one, too.”
We moved from bell to bell, allowing our hands to hover near the metal to confirm what we really already knew: they were all scalding hot.
And then, midring and without warning, they stopped as if they were one. Silence flooded the room.
“What is happening here?” he said.
The high whinnying of a horse jerked my head up from the bells.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” he said.
“The horse. I heard it again.”
Frowning, Giovanni walked to one of the windows and looked out to see if anyone approached, but the sound seemed to come from behind the mill and be heading toward the villa. Even as I thought that, though, it changed direction with all the speed of a panicked animal.
“I think it’s in the woods,” I said. “It’s the same thing I heard the other afternoon.”
“That must be them,” Giovanni said, racing to the stairs.
“Who?”
“The people responsible for all of this!”
I blinked, my mouth filling with questions, but he was already gone, bounding after the sound like a hunting dog. Leaving me to work my own way down steps so narrow I had to turn my foot sideways to keep from slipping, hands pressed against my stomach, elbows out to scrape the walls in lieu of the support a banister would offer. I knew my heels made me much too slow and cumbersome for Giovanni’s quick mind, but sometimes I did wish he’d offer to help me.
Rapid movement from the floor I’d just left drew my eyes for a moment, bringing me to a stop again. I stepped back up and peered at the bells and the rotten wooden containers. Had it been this dark up here just a moment ago? I could have sworn . . .
“Don’t start with nonsense, Sibilla,” I murmured. “They’re just shadows.”
I made myself turn away.
I eased down the stairs and reached the ground floor just as another whinny echoed across the length of the forest.
Giovanni shouted from outside, but I couldn’t make out what he said.
I hurried out of the mill and cast my eyes about for my husband, finding him at the edge of the woods. My feet squelching with every step, I started toward him.
“Bastardi!” he shouted.
“Did you see them?”
“I didn’t need to. They were here, I know they were, and they got away. They have to be the ones who destroyed all of the repairs. They must have somehow rigged those bells, too, as a distraction. A bait we easily took.” His hands clenched into fists. “They’re sabotaging us.”
“But why?”
“What do you mean, why? To harm us.”
I frowned. All this damage? To what purpose? I’d heard of some of the less reputable businesses sabotaging others, burning their stock or stealing it outright. It had happened among sweet shops when I was a child, forcing my father to sit with a pistol in his lap for a few nights. But here, in this case, sabotage wouldn’t benefit anyone.
“Giovanni, I don’t understand. You told me yourself there aren’t any competing mills in the area. We don’t have neighbors. Who could possibly want to harm us when we’ve practically just arrived?”
He turned away from the road and looked at me. His eyes took me in with one sweeping glance, from muddy heels to undefined curls.
I thought there could be nothing worse than the casual irritation that many times I saw on his face when he glanced at me. Annoyance at something silly I’d said or done that would fade when I quieted or sat down. What I saw in his face now made my breath lock in my chest.
It was a flare of dislike.
“You’re so simple sometimes,” he said, as if he were telling me what time it was, and walked away.
His words were glass shards that lodged into my skin. He’d said them easily, without hesitating. Like he’d thought them many times before and this time articulated them. If he’d thrown the words at me in anger, I might have been able to set them aside, but in this manner, the simple stating of a fact, it was impossible.
I felt a sudden tightening in my midsection, the squeezing of a vital part, that dislodged a gasp. I closed my eyes against the galloping of my heart, tears trailing down my cheeks.
“Sibilla,” Buona called from the villa’s front door.
I bit my lips to keep the sob compressed, as if that alone would make the fear that was rising like water stop. My shaking hands went to the mound. I could see it, the loss, the blood, I could smell the sharp hospital scent, feel the rough and overstarched white sheets.
“What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
Despite my best efforts, the sob found its way out.
The girl ran down the villa’s steps and hurried toward me, coming close enough I could smell the carbolic acid she’d been using for the washing. I hesitated. I felt the need to speak with her, with someone who would listen without telling me I was imagining things or being silly or hysterical, but was it the right thing to do? What did she care about my problems?
“Sibilla, I probably can’t do much to help,” she said, coming closer, “but my father always tells me I’m a good listener, if you want to talk. Or not. We could just go inside and have tea in one of the sale.”
She placed a hand on my arm.
“Chat with the mold a bit, strike up a conversation with a rat, perfectly normal ladylike activities.”
That pried a small smile out of me.
I breathed in deeply and decided.
“It’s just . . . I’ve already lost two pregnancies,” I murmured. “And I’m so frightened for this one that I don’t know how I’ll get through the next five months.”
She gave my arm a light squeeze but waited as I gathered the words I needed to say.
“The first,” I began, “happened when I’d been pregnant four months. This was three years ago, come November. It was a very difficult time for us. Giovanni had had a serious argument with one of his superiors and there had been threats of him being let go from the sawmill. As you can imagine, the baby was inopportune. I was just very nervous all the time, crying for no reason at all, and Giovanni wasn’t in the most pleasant of moods either. The doctor said it was those bouts of nerves that caused the miscarriage.” I swallowed. “The second pregnancy was different, though. The issues at the sawmill were resolved by then and Giovanni had even been given a higher salary. We were both very happy. Probably happier than we’ve ever been, save for our honeymoon.”
My fingernails dug into my palms.
“I had the miscarriage at six months, that time.” I blinked back new tears. “I was in the hospital for three weeks, afterward, recovering from whatever caused it.”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head. “The doctor said that I fell but I can’t recall anything substantial from that night. He told me that the memory loss pointed to a brain lesion and that it would heal with time, but it’s been a year already and it’s still no better. I think it might actually be worse, because I get overwhelmed with the feeling of the memory without being able to sift through what actually occurred. It puts me in such a state of panic that I fear for the child I carry now. I could lose it just like that first one.”
“And your husband? He doesn’t know what happened, either?”
“He wasn’t there. He was at the sawmill, working late into the night on his invention. The one that allowed us to buy this place.”
I could still see his face when I regained consciousness in the hospital. There had been such grief in it, his eyes swollen from crying, and even his suit, which he was always fastidious about, had been wrinkled, tie undone. He’d not left my side for days.
“Have you told your husband about your fears? Perhaps he could get a doctor to visit every couple of weeks or so, to put you at ease.”
“He’s got too many worries already, with the mill, the dam, and now with what happened.”
“Something did happen, then?”
I nodded, wiping at my eyes. “Someone destroyed all of the repairs he and the workers have done.”
She sucked in a breath.
“Sometime last night, it seems. All of those new parts are broken. And we didn’t hear anything while it happened, when we really should have. Did you?”
“No.”
I turned at the speed of her response, catching the rapid tightening of her jaw. “Nothing at all?”
She shook her head. “You’re sure that someone did it? That something didn’t just break or fall and cause the damage?”
“I’m not sure of anything. Giovanni thinks someone is sabotaging us, someone from the region, and I suppose that’s the most logical explanation, but he also doesn’t want to fetch the carabinieri.”
“It—it may be better not to,” Buona said. She looked down at her hands. “They’ll delay the repairs and get underfoot, and, really, it won’t bring the parts back in functioning shape.” She shrugged. “It’s not even as if they can truly do anything now if you didn’t see who did the damage.”
I sighed. “Maybe not, but it could frighten the culprits into not doing it again.”
“There’s no reason to think that it’ll happen again. Maybe it was just a bit of mischief. Who wants to put all that effort into doing something like that more than once?”
I hoped she was right. “In any case, I don’t want to add any more weight to Giovanni’s shoulders with my nonsense.”
Buona nodded, eyebrow lifted. “Yes, the superior sex always seems to have difficulties carrying more than one bucket at a time. I dread to think what would happen if they had to worry about children and housework.”
I chuckled. “I’m not sure I could manage what Giovanni does, either.”
“You’ve never been given a chance, though, have you? Sometimes I wonder if men are just afraid we’ll be better at their jobs than they are, and that’s why they’ve trapped us in heels and skirts and told us our minds are too frail.”
She was speaking in jest, I knew that, but her voice had a tightness to it that made me want to talk about something else.
“We’ll never know, I suppose,” I said.
“No, likely not.” She offered me her arm to help me through the worst of the mud. “Did you ask him about what was in that letter from the lawyer?”
I frowned at the abrupt change in topic. “Uh, yes, well, I tried. He told me not to worry about it, that it wasn’t anything of importance.”
She bit at her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on the dirt as if she were reading something off it. “I think he burned it.”
“Oh.” That was unusual. He kept all his letters.
“If another one comes, I could bring it to you first,” she said, flicking her gaze at me. “If you’d like. We could say it was opened in error.”
The meaning of her words settled on me, heavy, but my hesitation was heavier still. I should have immediately refused to entertain her idea, even for an instant, maybe even rebuked her for her forwardness. Instead, my mind rolled the suggestion about like hard toffee.
But why? Giovanni had never done anything to garner such suspicion and disloyalty from me. Even deciding to purchase this property without consulting me had been for the best. If he told me it was nothing, then that was what it was. I trusted him. I’d not betray him in this manner.
I felt my own slight flare of irritation. It wasn’t seemly for her to be questioning her employer in this manner.
“Thank you, but there’s no need,” I said. “If there’s something of importance in the letter, he’ll surely tell me.”
Buona recognized the chilled finality in my voice and nodded, lips pressed together as if to keep stray words from leaping out.
We started for the house just as Giovanni raced right out of it, pushing a hat on his head. Off to buy more parts, I imaged. Hopefully ones that would not meet the same dreadful fate as their predecessors.