I pressed a hand to my mouth to hide the yawn from a night of missed sleep. Novels of spies and intrigue had never been part of my reading fare, but I couldn’t even recall any movie in which the protagonist dragged exhaustion behind him as he spent nights breaking codes and chasing villains. One night of searching through a study and I was ready to collapse.
I considered returning to bed now that Giovanni was at the mill but pushed the thought aside. What I really wanted was to get out of the house, clear my head, and see if I could come up with the right way of getting the truth from my husband. Speaking with him was always the same—like trying to open a lock with a key you weren’t sure would fit.
“Perhaps the forest has the answers that I don’t,” I said as I crossed the kitchen and made for the door. “A bit of air will do us both good, in any case, child.”
With a gasp, I pulled my hand back from the handle the instant the metal met my skin. Santissima Madre, if someone didn’t fix the wiring, we’d all end up sizzling!
I turned, searching for something to use as protection, and frowned.
There was a large stain in the center of the kitchen that I was certain I’d not seen this morning. Had Buona spilled something?
I grabbed the rag on the table and walked over to it. The last thing any of us needed was someone slipping and breaking a limb.
Just one look, however, was enough to realize that the stain was old, so much so that the stones appeared to have absorbed it. But we’d spent days in this kitchen, scrubbing every speck of dirt and dust, every grease stain, from it. This one had not been there. I was certain of it. Its size would have made it difficult to miss.
I bent and brushed it with my hand. It felt slick and slightly warm, and more substantial than I’d expected, almost viscous. When I looked down, I saw that fingers came away gleaming with the red of blood. Even as I watched, it seemed to throb against my skin.
A drop of blood fell on my wrist, then another. Like the air itself was bleeding.
My vision pulled in like a drawstring bag. A pressure began in my head.
All that red.
My pulse leaped into a race in an instant, beating with fury in my temples. I felt them rising rapidly, those two half-remembered but wholly useless bits of conversation that told me nothing yet could tear at me with such precision.
The cloaked memory smothered me in its thick red folds, allowing me to see nothing but that color, to feel nothing but the crushing panic I must have felt that night.
No, I couldn’t allow it to overtake me. I had to protect my child from this. From me.
I forced my legs to start moving. I left the kitchen and ran to one of the rooms off the courtyard, where the one thing sat that was truly mine in this world: the piano that had once been my mother’s.
My hands shook so violently that the embossed wooden lid slammed closed twice before I managed to open it fully. The yellow-tinged ivory keys were cool under my fingers, the feel of their smooth surfaces alone already easing the first layer of pressure from my head. I closed my eyes to avoid seeing the streaks of red I left on the keys and began to play.
The melody was a stumbling thing, the dissonance of trembling fingers transforming the light waltz into a lopsided musical aberration, but I didn’t stop. I fought through the red of that missing memory, the notes helping me claw my way out of its embrace.
I played the waltz over and over.
And slowly, like an animal’s jaws prying open, the pressure eased. My pulse slowed. The melody regained its shape.
By the time I opened my eyes, Buona was standing at the door with a bucket of water, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She watched me go through the melody one more time.
“That’s pretty,” she said. “You’re a real talent at that. I can’t imagine how you don’t tangle your fingers up.”
My lips twitched as I forced myself to smile. A thread of sweat slid down my back.
“You look pale, Sibilla. Do you want me to make you some tea?”
I shook my head. “What I want is to go outside.” As I said the words, I realized just how much I needed to get out of the house. Right now. It was like someone was pulling on a leash, urging me forward. “Would you come with me?”
“Of course. If I ever turn down a chance to avoid cleaning, you’ll know I’m ill.”
This time I didn’t have to force the smile.
I stood, hand on my child, but hesitated. “Could you do me a favor first, though? Could you wipe that bloodstain, just so that I don’t see it again? It’s ghastly.”
“What stain?”
“The one in the kitchen. The chicken we bought yesterday for our cena must have dripped on the floor as we prepared it. It’s almost in the center of the room, a few paces from the stove. And check the stove, too, because I felt some drops.”
She frowned. “I just came from the kitchen and there wasn’t a stain of any sort.”
“Well, it is there. I touched it. It was even slightly fres—”
What I saw when I looked down stopped my words.
There was no blood on my fingers, on my wrist, no blood on the piano keys. No blood at all.
* * *
We set off into the woods, down the same path I’d taken when I’d heard the horse that afternoon, and continued on. I forced my attention to the land around me and away from whatever I’d thought I’d seen in the kitchen.
It was a pleasant enough day. I’d come to realize that Buona was perfect company, at least for me. She didn’t chatter but her silence didn’t weigh on me either. Whenever I walked with Giovanni, I was as worried about saying the wrong thing as I was about not saying anything. I always ended up letting him talk and just agreeing with whatever he said. It was one of the reasons I’d always enjoyed going to the pictures with him when we were courting. I could sit beside him without worrying about conversation.
The frustration that had verged on anger last night as I knelt in front of the fireplace tried to grab hold of me again, but I swerved around it. I was too tired, too heavy-minded and heavy-bodied, to think on that right now.
We passed the forest of pine trees and kept walking, nearing the mountain’s side. We stepped around a collection of rocks that were dressed in moss and, all at once, there was white everywhere. Small white flowers woven together into a carpet that covered the grass and the rocks and the dirt itself. They pressed tightly against each other so that it was difficult to believe that a single petal more could fit.
“How lovely they are,” I said.
It was impossible to move without crushing them underfoot. With each step, the forest began to fill with a dark, sharp odor that reminded me of my father’s cellar the summer that mice had overtaken it. It was strangely comforting.
I bent to look closer at a cluster of them. “Do you know what these flowers are?” I said.
“My mother called them poison parsley, but I don’t know if that’s their actual name. We have them near my house.” She shrugged. “It could be another plant, though, because I’ve never seen them spread like this. There’s usually just one or two.”
I frowned. “Are they actually poisonous?”
“Madre used to slap my hands if I tried to touch them, but it was impossible to tell with her. She was always deep into her cups, no matter the time of day, and couldn’t be trusted not to be imagining entire conversations.” She snorted. “One morning, she thought the mayor had come to compliment her on her garden, which was dead, mind you, and had been for years. She’d actually been speaking to a fence post. I saw the whole thing and almost choked myself laughing.”
Like me and that imaginary bloodstain.
I blinked. I couldn’t conceive that. Until my mother had died, she’d been a lighthouse beam for me, guiding me through the darkest of moments.
“Look,” Buona said as we drew close enough to touch the steep mountain. She was pointing to a wide opening that had been carved into it, most of it draped with vines of ivy, the carpet of white flowers continuing to unfurl into it. “It looks like a cave.”
I vaguely remembered Giovanni mentioning to one of his colleagues back in Torino that there was a passage on the property allowing easy access to the hectares of oak trees on the mountain. This had to be it.
“Should we go in?” Buona said.
I rested my hands on my stomach. “I’d like to see it, but do you think that animals could be in there? I don’t think I could climb a tree if a cinghiale comes after me.”
“I could go first.”
“No, no, you’ll not go alone. We’ll just, uh . . .” I bent and grabbed the first rock I found. “We’ll go in armed. It’s not quite Giovanni’s pistol, but it might buy us time to run.”
With a chuckle, Buona also bent and picked up two rocks, stuffing one into each of her trouser pockets. “We’re ready, I think.”
“Let’s go.”
We eased under the vines and stepped into the passage. It was taller than it had looked from the outside, the rock ceiling rising high above me, and now that we were through the ivy-darkened opening, it was easy to see this was indeed a passage leading up the mountain.
Steps wide and deep enough to allow three or four people to walk up side by side had been carved into the cave wall. It would have taken substantial time and effort to build them, but I assumed the woodcutters would have needed to bring tools, maybe carts of some sort, up to the top and this would have been easier than scaling the mountainside and then pulling them up. It was a clever solution.
Buona hurried ahead and climbed up a couple of steps, stomping on them to check their firmness. Nothing shifted.
“They feel sturdy enough, but I’ll go up first and make certain it’s safe for you.”
It had to be the strains that pregnancy placed on the mind, because that simple sentence squeezed something in my chest. I blinked back sudden tears.
She bounded up the stone staircase until I could hardly see her in the thin light streaming in through the opening at the top.
“It’s safe!” she called down.
I started up, grateful for the size of the steps.
And even so, I soon felt like I was lugging a cart up myself, my breath quickly tightening into a pant as I cradled my stomach with one hand and pressed the other against the cold mountain’s side.
Above me, Buona was shifting branches and tearing at the vines blocking the opening, and the stone walls amplified her muttered curses at the debris that fell on her hair, allowing them to reach me with ease. At her age, I wouldn’t have known half of those words.
Halfway up what had to be at least a hundred steps, my thighs burning, I realized I’d earned every unkind word Giovanni had ever thrown at me. I was an idiot.
I stopped, feeling my heart’s thudding vibrate through the liquid that shielded my child.
“Sibilla?” Buona called. “Are you all right?”
The girl already thought me feeble. How could she not? Soon I’d start seeing the same distaste on her face as I’d seen in Giovanni’s.
I flinched away from the thought.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just allowing myself a few breaths. You go on up.”
Her hesitation rained down on me, and I expected the trail of her footsteps to unwind as she returned to my side.
But they didn’t and she didn’t.
Both hands around my child, I made myself continue. It felt like ages before I stepped, panting, through the opening at the top.
Oak trees of all sizes covered the mountaintop. Hectares of them. Those same white flowers piled beneath them, their delicate petals in perfect contrast with the jagged flakes of bark.
From the forest below, where the only thing visible was a sheer rock face, it was impossible to see how massive the mountain itself was, how many terraces and mounds and even narrow valleys it had. And all of it brimming with oaks.
Giovanni had told me that no one had touched the trees in the centuries since the Caparalia family had owned the mill, and it showed. Some of the tree trunks were twice the length of my arm span, the ridges in their bark large enough to fit an entire finger, and I could have used just one of their leaves as a fan.
The silence up here was striking too. Despite the acorns I could feel cracking under my boots, the trees swallowed up the sound of our steps. Even the wind refused to shatter it by ruffling through the leaves.
“Oh, this is so beautiful,” I said.
Buona glanced at me, a slight frown on her face, and shrugged. “I suppose.”
And Giovanni would be shocked. For I didn’t think he had a real idea of the number of trees we had.
When he’d visited the property and decided to purchase it, he’d planned on going around the mountain, to the narrow access path leading up to the oaks on that side. It didn’t really belong to us, but since no one else used it and the sellers hadn’t known where our entrance was, it’d been the best option. A heavy storm had rushed through a few days before, though, and the rain had brought down rocks, so he’d not been able to pass. He still hadn’t.
Now that I’d found our entrance, he’d see that just a quarter of the oaks up here would allow him to invest in purchasing more lumber and planting faster growing black locust trees in the fields below. With the influx of the lire these trees would bring, he could start his sawmill in earnest.
Despite myself and last night’s frustration, the thought of seeing him smile, of being the cause of that smile, made my heart stumble over a beat.
“I think I see some mushrooms up there,” Buona said, bringing my eyes and thoughts down from the trees. She pointed to a slope a bit ahead of where we stood. “I could see if they’re edible. The right ones can be good for women in your condition.”
I followed her gaze but could see nothing except more of those white flowers. Perhaps a tip of something blue. Were there blue mushrooms?
“It’s a bit of a climb, Buona.”
She waved my words away. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She hurried off toward the slope and didn’t hesitate, not even bothering to grasp the nearby oak branches for help. As sure-footed as ever, she pulled herself up until she disappeared over the lip of the hill, decapitating some flowers on her way.
I heard the horse the instant she was gone.
A shock of cold went through my limbs.
It was the same high neighing and the same thundering hooves that I’d heard twice before already. And it was all coming from up here now, on the mountain.
The trespasser.
“Buona,” I called, though I knew the galloping animal and my own fear had smothered my voice.
But I needed to do something. I couldn’t just stand here.
I spun, searching through the trees for sight of anything moving, following the sound of the horse crashing through the forest first with my eyes and then my feet. I swerved between oaks at a near run as the hoofbeats grew louder, but there was nothing at all. How was that possible?
And where was Buona? Could she not hear this?
When the first ripple of nausea overtook me, I realized something else was rising with the noise, growing stronger with each second. The smell of crushed flowers. The original comfort of the odor was warping into something so suffocating and cloying that I had to cover my mouth and nose. It surged like a wave and shattered against me over and over. I could taste the bitterness of bile.
A whinny climbed to a shriek.
Much too close.
I gasped as something struck my cheek, whip-like, leaving it stinging. Another strike, this one to my neck, was strong enough to jerk me back. My hands flew from my mouth to cover the growing mound of my stomach. What was this? What was hitting me?
The sharp blows doubled, tripled, coming faster, an icy gust of wind snapping the hem of my dress up and bringing with it the pain of a classroom switch against my knees.
“Stop,” I hissed, though I could see nothing actually hitting me. For an instant I thought I saw a twisting black form through the trees, but it was gone before I could focus on it.
I heard a resounding dry crunch and then wood splintering and snapping, the thud of a crashing tree shaking the ground.
As suddenly as they’d begun, the blows stopped.
“Buona!” I finally managed to yell. “Someone’s up here!”
But I didn’t wait for her. I had to be able to tell Giovanni that I’d at least seen the horse of the trespasser.
I followed the still-echoing crash.
The instant I saw the tree, the only one among its brethren that had fallen, I stopped, locked in place.
Half of it sat at the edge of the mountain and the other in the air, a jagged edge of its trunk shooting up from the ground where it had snapped. But it was draped in moss and vines and white flowers, vegetation trapping it in place. The bit of bark I could see was black with age.
This tree had fallen years ago.
No, but it couldn’t have. I’d just heard it.
I cast about in search of another tree that could have been the cause of the noise, but they all stood tall, unwavering, solid as the mountain on which they lived. Not so much as a lone branch had fallen from any of them.
“Sibilla,” Buona said, suddenly at my side. “What’s the matter?”
“The trespasser,” I breathed. “He’s up here.”
The girl searched my face. “The one who broke the mill parts?”
“Yes, riding a horse. I don’t know how he was doing it, but he was flinging—” But I stopped myself, for what could I tell her I’d felt? I didn’t know how to explain it to her without sounding hysterical, and after the stain nonsense, she’d think me well and truly pazza. “Do you hear the horse? Perhaps we could still follow it.”
“No, Sibilla.”
“But you did hear it when you were up there with the mushrooms?”
She shook her head.
Something about the way she looked down at the ground, her lips thinning, made me frown.
I kept my eyes fixed on her face, not wanting to but feeling the first prick of doubt. Because I’d heard the horse the moment Buona had disappeared. The very instant. I looked at her empty hands. “You didn’t manage to gather the mushrooms?”
“No. They weren’t the right type.” She looked up at me for a beat before motioning back the way we’d come. “Maybe we should return.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“And you should rest when we get back. I’ll prepare a cup of tea for you.”
She offered me her arm and I drew closer to take it, pushing the residue of suspicion from me. I was being silly, as usual. And that was exactly what Giovanni would say if I told him everything that had happened up here today, so perhaps it would be wiser to limit myself to an abridged version. If he kept things from me, it seemed only fair that I do the same.
“What a morning,” I said, shaking my head.
Buona snorted and tugged up a trouser leg in urgent need of hemming. The movement shifted her shirt. From the corner of my eye, I caught a bit of color, something tucked into the piece of twine she’d fashioned into a belt.
I only managed a glance before it disappeared from sight again.
A handful of flowers.