THIRTY-ONE

Lucia

Mid-March 1944

Carlo was alive. Lucia repeated this to herself throughout the day, whispering it while doing chores, while playing chess with Matteo, while ignoring her rumbling, cramping stomach, and while falling asleep to the thunder of distant battles. He was in hell, but alive.

She whispered it now, two weeks after first hearing it, while stroking Matteo’s hot forehead. Sunlight fell on his face, but his eyes didn’t open. His breath came shallow and fast, nostrils flaring with each uptake of air, and she swallowed the fear closing her throat. In a bed across the room, in this makeshift infirmary, a slightly older child slept, but she couldn’t see him. The nuns had barricaded Matteo from sight with a pair of sheets in case he was infectious. It was the best they could do in the overcrowded convent.

Lucia closed her eyes, fighting panic. This morning, Matteo had failed to fully wake. He’d opened his eyes, coughed weakly, and fallen back asleep. She’d run for help, they’d brought him here, and now she perched on a stool in this white-walled square, listening to each raspy breath in terror.

A soft voice interrupted her thoughts. “Signora?” The sheet lifted, and a grandmotherly nun wearing a stethoscope dipped inside. “I’m Suora Chiara.” She was tiny, with a sharp nose, narrow eyes, and quick, assured movements that defied her obvious age.

Lucia blinked back tears. “I’d like him to see a doctor.”

Suora Chiara shook her head and leveled Lucia with a direct stare. “I’ve worked in several hospitals, cara mia, and I’ll take good care of your boy. We’d rather not bring an outsider into the convent—the Fascists have spies of every kind.”

Lucia looked from the nun to Matteo, and like a reflex, she felt his forehead again. He was hot, flushed, twitchy in his sleep. She watched his flaring nostrils while she spoke, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “Should I take him to a hospital?”

The nun shook her head decisively. “Conditions are terrible in the hospitals. They’ve nothing to give their patients, and I’ve heard of patients dying of hunger before their ailments take them. He’ll do better in this quiet room, with you at his side.”

At the word “dying,” everything within Lucia rose to a frantic height. Matteo couldn’t die. Her own breathing came fast, but the nun didn’t seem to notice. She shuffled close, fitting the stethoscope over her veiled head.

“All right if I take a look?”

Lucia nodded, and the little nun bent to listen to Matteo’s chest. Carlo was alive, she reminded herself. Miracles could happen. She needed another miracle now.

“Pneumonia . . .” the nun murmured, moving her stethoscope around. “Sì, I hear it in his lungs. How long has he had his cough?”

“Weeks.” The word fell out as a croak. “He’s always been prone to colds, but this one just took hold of him . . .” She couldn’t speak. She looked down and twisted the ring on her finger. It was her wedding band, plucked from the oilcloth she’d hidden in the lemon tree’s roots.

Suora Chiara sighed. “Lack of nutrition makes it difficult to fight off infection, especially for the littlest.” She bent again, taking Matteo’s temperature and frowning at the results, then counting off his heartbeats. “We need to keep him hydrated,” she murmured, perhaps to herself.

“Will he be all right?” Lucia asked, grabbing the nun’s hand as she tried to pass. Fear coursed through her like continual jolts of lightning, mixing up the rhythm of her heart.

Suora Chiara hesitated. She glanced from Lucia to Matteo, firming her narrow lips. “It’s difficult to predict how he’ll do. Sometimes children bounce back from an illness like this, and sometimes they don’t. I’ll do everything I can to turn him around, sì?” She reached for Lucia’s hand, pumping it once. “Stay strong for him. Let him hear your voice. He needs his mother.” With that, the nun turned and strode out, muttering to herself, her robes vanishing under the suspended sheets.

Lucia bent next to her little son, taking his hand and choking back sobs. “Please get better,” she whispered. She couldn’t fall apart. She touched his hot forehead again, his lashes fluttered on his freckled cheeks, and she cleared her throat to speak. “Matteo, would you like to hear your bedtime story? Caro mio, a boy once went for a walk in a green and sunlit forest. He saw so many beautiful things . . .” Please God, she prayed as she spoke, her tears darkening the sheets. I can’t live without my son. The words of the story emerged on their own, and she studied his flushed face, willing him to take a deep, clear breath, open his eyes, and offer his usual, “Then the boy saw a farfalla!” But Matteo slept on.

“He saw a butterfly,” she continued, “and it was all the colors in the world. The boy followed the butterfly farther into the forest, forgetting everything to run and chase it, but then the forest grew dark. The boy was lost, and he thought he was alone, and he was afraid. But then, he remembered the sky. He looked up, and there were stars looking down at him, and he didn’t feel alone anymore. He started to walk, and he knew where to go. And as he walked, he saw the forest was beautiful, even at night. He just had to travel through it to find his way home.” She squeezed his pale fingers. “Matteo, do you know how much I love you? As much as all the stars. And the stars are always with us, even when we can’t see them.”

She watched his labored breathing, unable to take her eyes from his flaring nostrils, and suddenly, air-raid sirens erupted outside. They pealed three times, bouncing through the city beyond the convent walls. Lucia set Matteo’s hand on the bedspread, wiped at her eyes, and went to the window, lifting the curtain. For months, the sirens had been silent, quieted by the myth that Rome was an open city. But all pretenses had fallen away since the invasion in Anzio, and now they shrieked constantly. A hum grew in the wake of the sirens, and Lucia’s pulse throttled to life. She scanned the band of sky over the convent. The droning expanded, filling the air. Were the planes as close as they sounded? She craned her neck, eyes darting, and her breath caught as the first dark shape lumbered over the visible sky. There was no time to react, no time to hoist Matteo and scramble downstairs.

Before she could even turn around, the bomber released its load. A thud and a blast roared outside the convent walls. The air vibrated, and Lucia sprang to Matteo, covering his body with her own. His eyes blinked open while another explosion thundered, sucking all sound from the air, drowning the screams in his lungs. The windows burst, and Matteo’s weak arms circled Lucia’s neck. She felt the ping of shattering glass on her back and pinned her eyes shut, whispering a prayer.

“God, protect my child. Please God, protect my child. I have you, Matteo. I have you.”

The roar died down, replaced by screams in the streets, shouts in the convent halls, and Matteo’s feeble weeping. Across the room, the other boy whimpered, and the door flung open. Footsteps crunched over the broken glass, and Suora Chiara’s voice called out to Lucia.

“You all right, signora?”

Lucia struggled to find her voice. She let Matteo sink back onto the mattress, and his hot little hands slid from her neck to her palms. He gripped her weakly, his eyes darting around the ceiling. “Are we all right, Mamma?”

“We’re all right.” She kissed his forehead and glanced at the sheets surrounding them. Sunlight poked through new slits sliced by exploding glass.

“Franco,” the old nun murmured across the room. “Let me look. Just the cheek, caro?”

An uncertain voice answered, “Sì, Suora.”

“We’ll stitch that right up. Did the glass get you anywhere else? Thank goodness for curtains . . .”

Another voice, belonging to a young nun, called into the room. “It was a hit across the street. Shattered windows all over this side of the building, but nothing more. The curtains caught the worst of it.”

“Grazie a Dio,” Suora Chiara answered, and the halls outside the sick room bustled to life. Lucia stayed where she was, murmuring assurances to Matteo, watching him while he drifted back into his feverish sleep.

A few hours later, the room had been swept, the other boy’s cheek had been stitched and bandaged, broth had been spooned into Matteo’s slack mouth, and Lucia remained on her wobbly stool. The sun fell beneath the rooftops beyond the empty windowpanes, casting an orange glow over the room. The door opened and closed, and Suora Chiara’s footsteps crossed the floor to the other child’s bed. Lucia listened to the nun’s melodic voice.

“Buonasera, Franco. How are you feeling? Sleepy? At least with these open windows you’ll hear the birds singing in the morning.”

There was the sound of a stool dragging across the room, and then a quiver and a sigh as the older woman sat. “You know, I think you’re almost well enough to join the other children downstairs. Maybe just another day or two. Ready to say your prayers, Franco?”

“Sì,” a child’s voice whispered. “But will we be safe tonight, Suora? No more planes?”

“No more planes. And I’ll return to check on you, caro mio. Now, shall we?”

There was a pause before their voices joined together in a soft chant.

“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.”

Lucia cocked her head, taking in the ancient words, her mouth falling open. She had no idea what they were saying, yet she recognized it. Lidia had said the same words every night before bed. Lucia held her breath to listen to the rest of the Hebrew prayer, spoken by a nun and a child, until their voices faded away.

The stool slid again on the floor, followed by the creak of aging joints. Lucia glanced at Matteo, smoothing his hair, before standing herself. She slipped through the sheet concealing his cot and looked at the other boy, Franco, his dark eyelashes already closed over his freshly bandaged cheek. She met the nun’s gaze and followed her quietly from the room.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Suora Chiara turned and faced Lucia. She peered up with her small eyes, laugh lines crinkling around them. “You may think it was strange, what you overheard.” She tipped her chin up, resolute. “But I believe the children hiding here mustn’t forget who they are, so I learned their prayers when they first came to us. We pray the way their parents did with them, before bedtime. I trust you to understand.”

“I do.” Lucia had to clear the pain from her throat. “And I admire you for it, Sister.”

Suora Chiara waved that away. “There’s nothing to admire. Now, how is your little boy?”

“The same. Is there nothing we can give him?”

The old nun sighed. “In normal times, I’d prescribe sulfonamides, but there are none, you see. I’m so very sorry.”

Lucia hesitated. “Could a person find it on the black market?”

Suora Chiara looked at her doubtfully. “I’ve no idea. But even if you could, you’d have to pay for it somehow. With the cost of black market oil and flour? Allora, I can’t even imagine what they’d charge for medicine.”

Lucia nodded, her thoughts running, her heart lifting. Because in her mind she saw an oilcloth bundle, full of jewels. She could indeed pay for medicine, if only someone could find it.

She bade Suora Chiara good night and turned on her heel, walking fast down the stone hall, on her way to find a nun who wasn’t really a nun at all.

If the medicine still existed in Rome, L’Allodola could track it down.