SIX

Francesca

September 10, 1943

Francesca was awake in bed most of the night, listening to gunfire and explosions in the distance. When she finally closed her eyes, she sank into a troubled doze. Memories rose in her dreams, one after another, like leaves on the wind.

There was her father. The image of his face sailed toward her, his green eyes crinkled as he bellowed in laughter. And there he was again, sitting at the kitchen table, scratching something out with his pen. She fell into this memory, headlong.

She sat opposite her father in a chair, her legs straight and stiff in braces, thirteen years old and angry. Spring light splashed the room.

“When your mamma gets home, we can ask her about new shoes,” he was saying. He glanced up, his kind eyes troubled, and she crossed her arms and looked away. Her mamma and nonna were out, and she was furious at them. She was furious at her father, too, and at everyone in the whole world, because her feet hurt and her legs hurt and she had to wear clunky shoes that made the other girls snicker at school.

“I’m not going to school anymore,” she spat, staring at the floor as if it were alive. He sighed across the table.

“Francesca,” he murmured.

He didn’t get to finish whatever he was going to say, because the front door burst open.

She froze. A pair of broad men, wearing Mussolini’s Blackshirt uniforms, strode into the house. They were yelling, but she couldn’t focus on the words, couldn’t think, because one of them grabbed her father and hauled him out of his chair. The other cuffed him, hard, with a gun. Blood burst from his nose, speckling the floor.

Francesca screamed, and they ignored her, yanking her father toward the open door.

She scrambled up from her chair, using it to balance.

Her father looked back at her, desperate and wild-eyed. “Francesca, amore mio. I’ll be back—tell your mother—”

But before he could finish, the Blackshirts shoved him through the door and into the waiting car.

She stumbled to the doorjamb without her crutch. “Babbo,” she screamed, “Babbo, no!” But she was screaming at a car, closed and sleek, and the engine rumbled into gear.

By the time Francesca tottered out into the yard, wailing, the car, and her father, had vanished.

---

*   *   *

Francesca sat up in bed, gasping. Giacomo glanced over at her.

“The dream?”

She nodded, pressing a hand to her forehead. But it wasn’t a dream, not really. It was her life: her father, lost to political exile, like so many of Il Duce’s enemies. He’d been sent to a remote confino, where he’d died, they were told, most likely of a heart attack. She closed her eyes, pushing the memory from her mind, letting the sound of gunfire replace it.

Giacomo was across the room, packing a bag. Francesca swung her legs off the bed, breathing to clear her head. She looked to the window, squinting through the shutters. The blackout paper was pulled back, the sun barely up.

Reality assembled before her. She stood, shaking her head. Giacomo was sweating, though it wasn’t yet hot in the apartment. He stuffed bandages and scissors into the bag.

“Mino.” She picked up where she’d left off the night before. “Don’t go.”

He paused, glancing at her with a roll of bandages in one hand. Gunfire volleyed somewhere in the distance, followed by a roll of thunder. But, she knew, it wasn’t thunder.

“It’s the right thing to do, Francesca.”

She went to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “It’s a war zone.”

He cupped his hand on her cheek. “War zones need doctors.”

She sighed, stepping back and glancing around the dark apartment. He zipped the bag shut while she walked to the window. Her stomach sickened. “I’m coming, then,” she said over her shoulder.

Her words hung between them, and she spotted what she was looking for. She plucked his glasses from the sill and turned.

He stared at her.

“No.” He shook his head hard. “No, you can’t come. I won’t let you take that risk.”

She stepped over to him, opening the glasses, and reached up to slide them onto his nose. She tucked a peg behind each ear, never breaking her hold on his gaze.

“I’m not letting you go alone.”

“But, Francesca, the fighting’s outside the city. It’s at least a two-kilometer walk—”

“I can walk that far.”

“But what if you need to run?”

“You’ll help me.” Before he could open his mouth to protest further, she turned away, looking for her shoes. “Don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise. We’re equally stubborn.”

When she pulled on her first shoe, her hands shook. She pinned her eyes shut and swallowed a swell of nausea. But she wouldn’t let Giacomo go out there alone. What if he left and never came back? The thought was more terrifying than the sound of fighting. She’d already lost someone without a trace. She wouldn’t let it happen twice. Distant explosions punctuated the silence as they locked the apartment door.

The streets were empty and pale in the early light. Giacomo took Francesca’s elbow, and they hurried. His other arm hoisted the bag of bandages, tools, and ointments. They turned up a wider, tree-lined road that snaked toward the city walls, following the sound of fighting.

Cutting through Parco del Colle Oppio, they melted into a cluster of other civilians streaming under rows of umbrella pines and cypresses. The sun broke over buildings on the eastern horizon, burnishing rooftops. The trees swayed in the breeze as if this were a normal day, as if this were any other autumn.

A leathery, middle-aged man fell into step beside Giacomo. He squinted at the bag.

“What’s in there? Weapons?”

“Medical supplies.”

“Ah.” The man nodded emphatically, swinging his gaze ahead. Francesca hooked her arm into Giacomo’s, using his momentum to keep up with the long-strided men. He supported her weight, automatically boosting her every time she hitched her weak leg forward.

“Always a need for medics,” the man continued. He had a smoker’s voice, low and rough. “You served before?”

Giacomo shook his head. “I’ve had an exemption as a medical student.”

“Ah, sì. I served on the ground in Ethiopia.” The man spat on the path. “Now here we are again, fighting another war Il Duce queued up for us. Il bastardo.”

They walked on in silence, streaming from the park toward the Colosseum, huge under the rising sun. A flock of starlings dipped over the ancient ruins. How many wars had been fought in Rome since the forum was built? The starlings folded into one another and disappeared over the horizon. Countless. Gunfire ratcheted in the southeast, echoing over the ruins and tightening Francesca’s chest. Countless wars.

They made their way to the edge of the city, and her pulse rose into her ears, thudding like a drum. Explosions echoed off buildings, and Giacomo glanced at her, wide-eyed. A whir and a crack rebounded somewhere down the road, and he shrank into an alcove with one knobby elbow over Francesca, as if to shield her. She looked out from under his arm, watching other civilians hurry forward, clutching guns. Ahead, the Aurelian Walls met the Porta San Paolo, an ancient, turreted entrance to the city. Its redbrick shoulders rose in the sky, guarding the start of the Ostian Way. Civilians and soldiers alike gathered at the base of the monument.

“The fighting must be down Via Ostiense,” Francesca said over the noise. Porta San Paolo was still behind the front line, if barely.

Giacomo nodded. He took her hand, and ducking under the cacophonous noise, they ran.

“I’m a doctor,” he said when they arrived at the wall, speaking to the first soldier who looked like he might know how things were organized. Francesca looked past the porta to the Pyramid of Cestius, which stood in its shadow, guarding the Ostian Way. The road snaked into the distance, and not far down was a throng of fighters shooting and reloading from a barricade of overturned tram cars. Was that the front line? It was stunningly close.

A bomb exploded somewhere, and she looked back to Giacomo. The man he’d been speaking with gestured toward a handful of trees beyond the wall. Francesca followed Giacomo past weary-looking Romans, and there they found a makeshift field hospital in the open air. The wounded were lined up in the shade like matchsticks.

Giacomo dropped his bag and knelt next to a boy with a dark bloom across his chest. He breathed with a wet suck. Francesca’s limbs trembled like twigs in a storm. Why had she come? A barrage of artillery thundered. What could she possibly do to help?

A hand weighted her shoulder, and she turned, facing an older woman. Steely hair wisped into her firm stare. “These people need water.” She pushed a canteen into Francesca’s hands. “We’re trying to find transport to a hospital, but we’ve had to move with the fighting . . .” She shook her head, grimacing. “Help out in the meantime. Bind up bleeding wounds until a medic can see to them.”

The woman dropped a roll of bandage into Francesca’s free hand and shuffled away. Francesca stared at her hands, as if bewildered by the items in them. Machine guns ratcheted down the road. How long could the Italians hold back the German army? Days? Hours? Long enough for the Allies to arrive? Her pulse thudded everywhere in her body. Giacomo was already on his second patient, kneeling in a pool of blood, hair in his eyes, checking a pulse rate. She inhaled and started toward the other end of the long line.

Her first patient was a man around the same age her father would’ve been. She knelt, ignoring the shake in her fingers. There was a gash across his thigh, and she unraveled a bandage. Again she inhaled, marshaled her hands, and worked the bandage under the leg. She’d tie it above the wound, tightening like a tourniquet, until Giacomo or another medic could see him.

“You don’t look like you should be here, bella,” the man murmured. She glanced at his face, surprised. His pupils rolled beneath half-closed lids.

“Would you like some water?” she asked, hoping to catch him before he dipped back into a stupor. She placed her palm under his neck, lifting slightly, and poured water over his dry lips. He swallowed eagerly, eyes closed. When she lowered his head, he tried to speak again. She had to bend close to hear him.

“You look like a dancer. You know Degas? Ballerinas . . .”

She smoothed drips from his chin. He was adrift, confused.

“Go home, bella. The Germans . . .” He sank away for several breaths, then his words rose in a final swell. “The Germans’ll eat you alive.”

Francesca bit her lip while the man floated off in his mind. She glanced toward the Ostian Way. What was she doing out here? She, who could barely run?

Clutching her canteen and summoning her nerve, Francesca pivoted to the next patient, a boy. She felt his forehead. He didn’t move. She studied his face, his long lashes resting on sunburned cheeks, and her breath caught. The air seemed to sharpen around her.

He was dead.

She reached for his wrist and tried to find a pulse while her own pulse galloped. Nothing. Her hand moved on its own to press against her mouth, stifling a sob, and her eyes stung in the dusty sunshine.

She sat back on her heels and stared in the direction of the fighting. The boy looked to be about fifteen. Machine gunfire rattled the oxygen in the trees. Why was she surprised? There must be scores of dead people out there. She wiped her eyes. There was nothing to do but move on.

The morning unspooled that way behind the monuments, gaining its own strange rhythm. Francesca, Giacomo, and a handful of other civilians and medics rotated between the wounded and dead, doing what they could. Over and over, she had to pin her eyes shut, drop a wrist with no pulse, and govern her emotions. When the sun hung in the west, hot on her neck, Francesca trudged to the fringes of the makeshift field hospital. Giacomo was there, taking a rare break.

“How are you holding up?” he asked after pulling a long drink from a canteen.

She shrugged. “Just getting through it. I don’t even know if I’m helping.”

“You are.” He caught her gaze. “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s more than many can say. Did you hear about the king? And Badoglio? They fled Rome in the night, the cowards.”

“What do you mean? How can they govern Rome if they’ve left it?”

He narrowed his eyes against the sunlight. “They can’t. They saved their own hides, abandoning us to the Germans. One of my patients told me. He had a hole in his belly, had been fighting for over thirty hours with no food, little water. And yet what he couldn’t get over was Badoglio and the damned king.”

Shouting drifted over the treetops, and they glanced down the Ostian Way. Giacomo handed her the water. “How are our fighters supposed to keep up morale?”

Francesca tried to wrap her head around it. Without the king and Badoglio, Rome was without a government. The Ostian Way exploded with noise. And those who wanted Rome for themselves? They were close.

She took a long drink. When she had finished, her mind sharpened, almost immediately. She stared past the porta again, sensing something. The noise was changing.

Giacomo’s eyebrows tipped up. He sensed it, too. Men gestured in the shade of the pyramid, and Giacomo pivoted to study the side streets. The civilians ministering to the wounded stood, lowering canteens and glancing toward the Ostian Way. It took a long moment, under the hot September sun, for the situation to crystalize.

“They’re retreating,” Giacomo said as the first Italian soldiers appeared on the other side of Porta San Paolo. They jogged in loose clusters, eyes wild and weapons slung under their arms. The crowd agitated.

A string of explosions thundered down the road, breaking into the cacophony with a new sound. It was louder somehow. Sharper.

A man in a helmet loped past, and Francesca grabbed his arm. He turned, startled.

“What’s happening?” she yelled under the new sound. Was it shelling?

“We’re out of ammunition.” The soldier shook his arm away from her grip. “It’s over, kid—Rome’s lost. Get out of here.”

He ran toward the neighborhoods, and Giacomo pressed his hands to his forehead, pushing his hair into sweaty tufts. Several soldiers were taking up positions behind the wall, aiming toward the Porta San Paolo, ready to fight to their last breath.

“The patients!” Giacomo shouted into the chaos. He tried to get the attention of a group of soldiers, but they were readying for the Germans. “We have to move the patients!”

The old woman with steely eyes hustled over, grabbing Giacomo’s and Francesca’s arms. Her hands were like claws.

“Leave them. Get into the neighborhoods. Now. The Germans will leave the wounded alone—they’re no threat. We’ll come back once they’ve passed and get them to a hospital.”

Francesca nodded. She linked Giacomo’s elbow as the Italian soldiers started to fire, shattering the thoughts in her skull. “Mino,” she shouted over the noise. “Andiamo!”

There wasn’t a second to waste. Francesca grabbed Giacomo’s hand, yanking hard, and they ran for a side street. He lifted as she thrust her weak leg forward, gesturing to a narrow alley off the main roads. They skated into the shadows of the buildings and crouched, unsure of which direction to run from here. A rumbling grew from the Ostian Way. She listened, frantic. It took her a moment to guess what it was. She looked to Giacomo.

“Tanks, Mino. They’re driving tanks into Rome.”

He nodded in time with an explosion, wide-eyed. They both knew it then: Rome was lost.

“They’ll have to take a main road,” he sputtered after the shelling. “We should circle back and go home through the forum—”

A barrage of gunfire interrupted him. She knew he was thinking not only about their route out, but also about the patients. Several of their faces, sunburned and pained, flashed in her mind. Was it possible to stay with them? Could they hide, reemerging to save whomever was still alive when the Germans passed?

The noise from the main streets died down abruptly. A few shots echoed, but the Ostian Way dipped to an eerie quiet. Francesca met Giacomo’s stare. Perhaps that was it? Had the Germans beaten the last of the Italians? Now they would roll through with their tanks, abandoning this part of Rome for the center . . . Francesca’s pulse filled the quiet, the blood pounding in her skull while her thoughts raced.

“Let’s wait here,” she whispered. “See to the wounded when they leave . . .”

Giacomo opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by a single shot echoing from the direction of Porta San Paolo. He froze. Another rang out. It was as if they were timed.

“Madonna,” Giacomo breathed. Shock washed over his face. He dropped her hand, whispering, “Stay here.” He scuttled, in a crouch, back toward the Ostian Way.

“Mino!” She glanced around the quiet alley, frantic. What was he doing? They hadn’t waited long enough—the Germans were still there. She tightened her fists and slunk behind him, staying close to the buildings down several side streets, until they both stopped in an alcove’s shadow. From there, they could see out toward the Porta San Paolo.

Francesca gasped. Beyond the monuments, on the Ostian Way, a column of tanks idled in a long, even line. On their side of the wall, a German officer ambled through the shade, vanishing and reemerging as he stepped past tree trunks. At regular intervals, he lifted his gun, passionless, and shot the wounded.

Time stopped. Francesca couldn’t look away. And suddenly, she couldn’t hear—not the tank engines, the German shouts, the birds exploding from trees after each shot—all she could hear was the click of the gun followed by a bang. The people jolted when they took the bullets.

Not an hour ago she’d wiped sweat from those foreheads, poured water over those lips, and stoppered the blood running from those limbs. The Nazi ambled to a broad, talkative man Francesca had helped when he came in.

“My mamma’s surely beside herself with worry,” he’d managed, voice gurgling, hands pressed over a bullet wound in his leg. Now he raised an arm toward the Nazi and was shot mid-sentence, his head jerking apart.

Giacomo bent and vomited. Francesca turned to him, and it was is if a cold wind blew through her brain, stripping her thoughts like leaves off a limb. Only one remained: We have to get out of here.

“Andiamo,” she whispered, tugging Giacomo’s hand. They were far too close and barely hidden. What if someone saw them? “If they catch us, they’ll shoot us, too.”

He met her stare, nodding as this new reality took shape before them. Hooking elbows, they ran up the shadowed alley just as the tanks rumbled back to life.

Like mice in a maze, they hurried through side streets, choosing routes too narrow for vehicles and avoiding patches of gunfire erupting through the city. Francesca’s legs ached. Giacomo held her around the waist, half carrying her, and they spilled onto a narrow street leading to the Colosseum. Shots ratcheted through the neighborhood at their backs, and the amphitheater rose silently over the gap between buildings. Home wasn’t far. They could arc along the Colosseum and cut back through the park. The idea of the cypress trees, cool and quiet in the lowering sun, drew Francesca like a magnet.

But as they neared the end of the street, the Colosseum looming, a rumble grew. Giacomo gripped her hand hard, and they stopped, again in shadow, nearly at the intersection of the road circling the amphitheater. The stones shook under their feet, vibrating up into their limbs as a Tiger tank rolled past, so close they could’ve hit it with a rock. They took a step forward and glanced in the tank’s wake. Beyond the Colosseum, on the avenue that straightened toward the Aurelian Walls, a line of tanks and armored cars idled in formation.

Francesca turned to Giacomo, whispering, “Find another way?”

She saw her own bewilderment in his flushed, sweaty face. Before he could answer, someone yelled something indecipherable in Italian. Footsteps clattered down by the Colosseum, and a series of explosions shook the air. Resistance fighters appeared from nowhere, aiming at the German column. Giacomo wrapped his arm around her waist, and again they sank into an alcove, hugging someone’s door. Bullets zinged, chipping buildings, and the Tiger tank rolled past again.

For several minutes, Francesca and Giacomo didn’t move, unable to leave the safety of the alcove to run. Then the noise died away. Was the skirmish over? They slipped out, tentative.

Scattered across the street circling the Colosseum, Italian men lay on the ground like tossed dolls. One of them lifted his torso onto his elbows and stared at his bloodied leg, anguish across his face. He opened his mouth to scream, inhaling dust and smoke. The whites of his eyes flashed under a helmet that seemed too big for his skull.

The Tiger tank bounced past the Colosseum and down the road, rejoining its column.

“They’ll kill him,” Francesca whispered to Giacomo. He met her stare, eyes darting behind his glasses as he calculated. The area remained quiet, with only the low movements of the dead and dying, and the German column idling in the distance.

“We could get him, Mino.” Her voice was rough in her throat. “We can’t just leave him out there.”

They stared at each other. How far was the wounded soldier? Fifty feet? Would they be shot as they ran out to get him?

Giacomo nodded. “I’ll go.”

Francesca was about to protest when he dropped her hand and ran, hard, into the empty street. He ducked and hooked his hands into the armpits of the stunned soldier, dragging him toward the alley. Their shadows dipped and bobbed over the stone. They were halfway to safety when machine guns erupted in the distance and bullets split the air over Giacomo’s head.

Without thought, Francesca scrambled from hiding and ran to him, taking the soldier’s feet. She could feel the wind of bullets as they missed, zinging in the gaps between their three bodies. She pooled her focus on moving without falling. Gasping, they lugged the soldier into the narrow alley. Where could they go? As if her thoughts had been heard, Francesca saw a building up ahead with a gate for a door, and an enclosed courtyard beyond it. An elderly man stood in the archway, gesturing wildly. They hefted the soldier to the gate, which the old man swung open and shut so they could vanish inside.

“Bring him in, quickly,” the man said, ushering them to a door on the other side of the courtyard. They passed an empty fountain, hot in the lowering sun, and then they were inside a dark and quiet kitchen. They hoisted the man onto the table.

The leg needed binding. The young soldier’s eyes were wide, but he seemed unable to talk, perhaps from pain and loss of blood.

“I don’t have my supplies,” Giacomo said, but their elderly host left and came back with a scarf, fetched from a closet. Giacomo tied it into a makeshift tourniquet, pulling the ends tight.

He raked both hands through his sweaty hair, eyes darting. “I have to go back. There were at least two more alive out there. Maybe I can get them before the column comes through.” He turned to the old man. “Will you shelter more than this one?”

The man nodded, emphatic. “Certo.”

“Then I’ll be back in a minute to tend to him. He’ll be all right for now. Give him water, if you have it.”

Everything in Francesca tightened. What if the column of tanks was already moving? What if whoever had shot at them was in the street now, searching? She struggled to speak but knew it was hopeless. There would be no talking him out of it.

“I’ll come keep watch,” she managed. He nodded, likely aware that she, too, would not be talked out of following him.

They hurried through the shadows, hand in hand, and found the road skirting the Colosseum the same as when they’d left it minutes ago. Empty. Francesca exhaled. They could make it if they were fast. The column still idled down the way, as if whoever was in charge was deciding what to do next. And what would they do? Would the Germans really occupy Rome? She shook the questions away. Giacomo dropped her hand when they reached the hem of the shadows. He cupped her cheek, whispering, “Stay here. You promise? No matter what?”

He’d be safer if he didn’t have to worry. She nodded. “Be quick.”

He leaned in, kissing her lips for no more than a breath, then turned and sprinted into the street like a track runner. His wiry limbs propelled him forward until he slid to a stop beside a body. Kneeling, he checked the pulse, grimaced, and crouch-walked to the next man. Francesca joined her hands in prayer, pressing them to her mouth. Every second he was out there, exposed in the sunshine, was a second someone could notice and take aim. She couldn’t breathe. But in another minute he had a man slung over his back, and ducking, he prepared to run.

An engine revved from somewhere around the corner. An armored car appeared from a different alley, bouncing into the road.

Francesca’s hands flew to her mouth. She wanted to scream. They’d been waiting for him, hidden. Could he run?

But it was already too late. Giacomo was backing up, eyes wild, while the car careened toward him and lurched to a stop, nearly at his feet.

Giacomo turned, the wounded man still draped across his back, and looked around frantically. Francesca watched him search for an escape that wasn’t there. There was nowhere he could go that a bullet wouldn’t hit him in the back as he ran. When he glanced in her direction, he widened his eyes and, ever so subtly, shook his head.

She could read his mind. “Stay hidden.”

Two German soldiers jumped out, boots thudding as they hit Roman ground. One hoisted a gun, leveling it at Giacomo with tired informality. Francesca’s blood boiled into her head, and she had to press her palm hard against her lips, pushing back a scream.

“Please,” Giacomo spoke quickly. “I’m a doctor. I just wanted to save him. I’m a doctor.”

The Nazi gestured with his gun for Giacomo to drop the wounded man, so he lowered the weeping Italian soldier to the ground. The gun fired immediately, and the weeping stopped.

Giacomo remained standing, arms up, his eyes on the dead soldier. His glasses flashed.

“I’m not a fighter. Just a doctor,” he sputtered in Italian, his slender arms shaking in the sunlight. “Sono solo un medico.”

The German leveling his gun hesitated. He looked Giacomo up and down, seeing no weapon. He turned to his counterpart and exchanged a few unintelligible words. When he turned back to Giacomo, the gun dipped slightly.

“Medico?” the Nazi repeated, his accent heavy.

Giacomo nodded, emphatic. “Sì. Medico.” He pointed at his own chest.

The Nazi shrugged, said something to his partner, and both of them stepped forward. Taking Giacomo roughly by the shoulders, they hoisted and dragged him away. His heels pedaled, trying to keep up, as he was lugged toward the armored car. Then they leveled their guns on him again, ordering him in.

Everything in Francesca wanted to scream, to run, and to pull him back to safety. But just as she thought she couldn’t resist, Giacomo took a risk and glanced at her. He nodded his head once, sharp and subtle, before climbing into the vehicle.

His thought was a scrap in the wind, sailing past her.

“Coraggio,” the wind whispered.

And then he was gone.