Everyone had gone for the day when the ground rumbled and shifted again, shaking up through Cesca’s bones and making her cup rattle on its saucer. All the specialists in their hard hats and hi-vis vests had packed up; she had heard their cheery farewell shouts a short while ago as they departed, leaving the hole in the ground just as they had found it a few days earlier. It was still big, still there, and Elena’s initial ‘laissez faire’ demeanour was becoming more strained. It was an ‘eyesore!’, she exclaimed, fretting that all the exploratory digging work gave her headaches; she said she was tired of these ‘workers’ milling about her garden ‘like ants’.
Cesca had been watching them all week from her office too, wandering over to the windows during her tea breaks and observing as they sent people down into the hole and then back up again. She wondered exactly how they were supposed to fill in something of that size. Was it a matter of simply trucking in replacement soil? Elena had mentioned they would fill it with mortar, but the sheer volume that would be required was staggering.
Not that they appeared to be in a rush to close it up again. And was this why? Had they known it wasn’t done yet, that there would be aftershocks? Might it continue to grow? She held her breath, not daring to move anything other than her eyes, which were darting around the vaulted ceiling looking for cracks and falling plaster, and skimming the ground searching for fissures in the floor or any signs that the sinkhole had encroached too close to the palazzo after all, the building now made unstable and unsaveable. Should she turn and run?
But everything was still again. The rumble had been only a few seconds long, not so much an earthquake as an earth-quiver. Moving hesitantly, she stepped towards the French doors and looked out. Perversely, everything looked unchanged – the sinkhole seemingly no bigger to her eye than it had been before. Deeper, then? Did the earth just continually fall away, layer by layer?
She waited, but nothing else happened. No rumbling. No vibrations. She could almost think she’d imagined it.
Curiosity got the better of her. No one was around – Elena was at a wedding in Florence for the weekend and, without his boss around, even starchy Alberto was taking things down a notch in this oppressive city heat. The weekend beckoned – Cesca’s own promised reward of Friday night drinks with Alé and the guys was only a tantalizing hour away now and she had been looking forward to it all day. It had been a long week, what with the vagaries of Elena’s unpredictable mood swings, the somewhat unsettling lunch with Christina, and the weariness that came from sifting a life story from photographs. Not to mention the time-consuming process of diligently following up on the facts that Elena had given her so far, a task that was as wide-ranging as putting in a request for a copy of her subject’s wedding certificate to checking the pedigree of the Olympic stallion that had sired her prize mare, Miss Midnight. She was being unnecessarily thorough, doubtless, but whether she was writing a coffee-table book or a legal paper, professional pride meant Cesca would never leave a stone unturned in her presentation of the truth.
Though a wedge of sunlight still spilled into the furthest reach of the garden room, the courtyard was completely in shadow as she stepped outside and crept over to the edge of the sinkhole. Ducking below the tape, she peered in again. Her stomach dropped at the vision before her: crushed pipework and steel, snapped trees, layers of stone and earth and concrete tumbled together as if weightless, neon ropes dangling in the dusk and pooling at the bottom. There was something apocalyptic about the scene – it really could have been the aftermath of an earthquake or a war, a scar in this beautiful garden, a brutal reminder that nature couldn’t ever be tamed.
She took a step back. It didn’t seem much different from when she’d seen it the other day and she didn’t want to linger on this wholly unnatural sight, like an open wound on an animal’s flank. It had a primordial menace to it. Elena was right – the sooner it was filled in, the better.
She turned away, done for the day. It was time to meet her friends—
‘Hello?’
She froze. The voice was distant. So far away, it could have been coming from the street on the far side of the thick palace walls. But that wasn’t possible. Because the voice had come from below her.
‘Is anyone there?’
She ran back to the edge and peered over again, looking frantically beyond the big chunks of broken earth and concrete slabs, scanning for detail – a face, a boot, a hard hat; something human to put with the voice. Instead, she saw the tiniest movement of earth, as though a mole was about to break through and nose the air.
She watched it, her heart pounding wildly, with no idea what to expect. If a fire-breathing dragon suddenly emerged, she wasn’t sure she would be surprised. Instead, it was a finger – dusty, muddy, the pink fingernail caked in red soil – wiggling the earth loose and making a small hole.
‘Oh my God!’ she gasped. There was someone down there, buried beneath a two-metre heap of earth. Unlike most of the soil, which was pale and dried out from the week’s exposure to the sun, this was darker, as though freshly dislodged. She realized now what she had heard – there had been a landslip.
She couldn’t jump down there. It was too far, for one thing, and the ground was unstable; her weight could end up making the sinkhole deteriorate further. ‘Oh my God! Help!’ she shouted as the adrenaline hit, jumping to her feet and looking every which way for something, someone.
Nothing.
Not a damned—
She saw a harness on the floor, laid out on the grass like a sunbather, the contraption connected to the rope by a carabiner-clip, ready to go to work on Monday morning. She looked down at the length of rope – it reached to the bottom of the sinkhole.
There wasn’t time to think about it. She stepped into the harness, having to bunch up her long skirt into her knickers so that it looked ridiculously like a nappy. Snapping shut the clips, she pulled on the rope, checking it would hold. The rope quivered tightly, and she lowered herself off backwards. She didn’t know if she was doing it right, it was just the way she’d seen mountain climbers do it in films – weight back, feet flat – but it seemed to work. The rope had a sort of ratchet attached that kept her stable and even though the walls of the sinkhole curved away – inwards – almost immediately, leaving her dangling in open air, she didn’t fall.
Hands trembling with panic – how much air did that person have? – she lowered herself slowly, almost flinching when her feet gently touched the soil a few moments later. Unclipping the harness from the rope – it was quicker than getting out of the harness – she stumbled over to where she had seen, or thought she’d seen, the finger. But where was it? Everything looked different down here; from this perspective one heap of mangled mess looked much like every other. Exposed wires, jagged-edged clay pipes, twisted metal rods thrust and jabbed at her and up close she saw the debris of centuries of Roman life – broken pots, carrier bags . . . And the smell – of seeping sewage, of fetid earth. She felt herself gag and heave but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn away.
She heard something and turned to see tiny rivulets of earth and pebbles falling down a solid mass of earth. The one wiggling finger had now become four.
‘I’m here, I’m here!’ she cried in panicky Italian, running over, having to climb over the upended trunk of one of the orange trees, the branches scratching her bare legs. ‘Can you hear me?’ she cried, reaching the fingers and grasping them. They grasped back and, for a moment, all was still, their two hands touching. She squeezed harder, then released her grip. ‘I’m going to get you out of here,’ she shouted, hoping the person could hear.
Apparently they did, because they formed their hand into a thumbs-up sign before withdrawing it from sight.
Scrabbling her hands like a squirrel hiding a nut, she managed to dislodge and move the top layer of earth quickly – but it had slumped atop a heap of rubble, like a mudslide above a building site. ‘Oh God,’ she whispered, looking at the huge slabs, some of them bigger than her. Without the extra depth of the soil, the arm – surprisingly muscular – could push through an irregular crack between rough concrete boulders almost to the elbow, but the body it was attached to was stuck behind this perilous wall, as though entombed.
‘Don’t worry, I’m coming,’ she said again, trying to sound braver than she felt. She ought to have gone for help first. Or called Guido or Matteo; they didn’t work far from here. She looked back up – only the uppermost level of the palace walls was visible from this depth, the sky a blushing peach, occasionally dotted by stray pigeons heading home to roost. How was she even supposed to get up from here herself, anyway?
Quickly, she texted her friends, asking them to get here as quickly as they could, before she turned back to the arm. ‘Can you breathe okay? Have you got enough air?’
‘Yes.’ The voice, though still distant, was certainly closer now. It was masculine – and it came back in English.
‘There are some big boulders here so it might take a while, but I won’t leave, I promise you. Help’s coming,’ she fibbed.
‘It is fine. There is room here to move.’
Scrambling up the rocks at the side – fearful of sending the whole lot collapsing down on the man – she got her arms around one of the higher boulders and, with a grunt, managed to heave it off the top of the mudslip. It scraped the skin of her inner arms when she didn’t manage to move them out of the way quite fast enough, and sent a thick plume of dust into the air as it landed on the rubble, bouncing erratically on the rough surface.
One down, she thought with satisfaction, looking back at the pile still to clear.
She went again, using her full body weight, rocking and pushing the jagged slabs – anything to topple them – sometimes getting out of the way in time, at other times not quite. Within a few minutes, her legs were grazed and her skin coated in a grey dust shroud, but gradually the rock pile began to crumble, the debris falling to the new bottom of the hole, allowing air and light to peek through small pockets into the tomb. She glimpsed dark curls, now white with dust; proud eyes, now humbled; a t-shirt, now torn; strong muscles, now trapped and inert.
‘We’re nearly there,’ she said as cheerily as she could, hoping to sound optimistic as she scrambled back down the rubble. ‘There’s just this last bit to move.’
But the worst had been saved till last. This final remaining slab was unlike the rest of the rockfall. Smooth on one side, it was a large section of the paved parterre which had fallen down into the sinkhole, slamming shut on the man like a door, rigid as a wall. She put her shoulder to the side of it, pushing hard, using all her weight, but the pile of debris and soil at the foot of it meant it didn’t budge. She tried again. Nothing. And again.
‘Oh God,’ she panted finally, bloodied hands on her scraped knees. She had been digging for twenty minutes now and was exhausted, but still this man was trapped. She couldn’t do it on her own. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t move it. I’ve got to go and get help.’
‘Wait!’ The man’s voice was much closer now. Stronger.
She straightened up at his tone. He didn’t sound scared, but authoritative, decisive. ‘There is a small gap here.’ She looked and saw his hand again, the fingers wiggling through a narrow channel between the rocks. ‘Is there anything you can use as a puller – a lever?’
‘A . . . a lever?’ she echoed, looking around frantically at the mess surrounding her. There were broken pipes, but they were made of clay; tree trunks, but they were far too long and heavy to move. But a few metres away she saw a metal rod, of the type that builders used as strengtheners. One end of it was sharp and lethal-looking, the very top of the other gloved in the remains of a concrete cylinder.
She scrabbled over to it, the clips on the harness jangling prettily as she stumbled over the rocks. ‘There’s this,’ she panted, bringing it back and holding it up to the narrow gap.
The eyes blinked. ‘Try it.’
She slid the rod through the gap. It fitted.
‘Okay. Stand behind the bar and pull it backwards,’ he said. ‘Pull as hard as you can.’
Cesca heaved. Nothing happened. Her hands, slick with blood, slipped on the metal. ‘I’ll try the other way. Pushing’s easier,’ she said, ducking under the bar and beginning to push against it instead. For a moment, nothing happened again, her feet treading the ground, gaining no distance. And then suddenly—
The lever switched back and she fell face first into the rubble heap. The sound of the slab crashing forwards came a second or two later, a huge muffled thwump that made the hole shake again, yet more rocks falling, soil sliding. A mushroom cloud of dust filled the cavity and Cesca coughed, choking on the solid concrete-flecked air.
She felt hands on her back. ‘Are you okay?’
But she couldn’t stop coughing, grit in her lungs and eyes. Her cheek stung and she put a hand to it, feeling the shallow groove of fresh scrapes on her skin. She looked up and saw the ghost-man. Her first thought was to wonder whether she was as white-looking as he was. Her second—
‘You!’ She couldn’t believe it. She got to her feet in an ungainly fashion, the harness clips jangling noisily as she tried to balance on the unstable ground. ‘If I’d known it was you—’ she panted, glaring at him.
‘What?’ The whites of Cantarelli’s eyes looked super-bright against his dulled skin, his lips extra pink, his eyes ultra dark, trying to catch up with her rage.
But she couldn’t finish the sentence; angry though she was, it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t have left anyone down there.
‘You are—’ He put his hand to his own cheek and wiped it gently. She echoed the movement on herself, her fingers coming back red. It stung. ‘We should get that cleaned up.’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied indignantly, refusing to allow him the opportunity to take control of this situation, to reverse the roles as though she was the victim in this. ‘I’m not the one who needed rescuing.’
She saw the way his eyes flashed at her words, highlighting his momentary vulnerability. He looked back at her with that unsettlingly direct look of his. ‘Thank you—’
It was like forcing a toddler to hand back an ice cream.
‘—But I would have been fine.’
Cesca’s mouth dropped open. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You did not need to trouble yourself. I would have been able to get out.’
‘Oh! You think so, do you?’ she asked sarcastically, gesturing to the fresh heap of newly dislodged earth and rock, to the giant slab of parterre at their feet. ‘I guess that’s why you were calling to see if someone was there, then?’
He didn’t reply but his displeased expression pleased her. He was in her debt and they both knew it.
‘What were you even doing in there on your own anyway? Aren’t there rules against that?’
‘I knew what I was doing.’
‘Yeah. It looked like it.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘You realize everyone else has gone? Alberto would never have heard you from inside. Elena’s away. You were lucky I was around.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Was I?’
Cesca gasped in full-blown indignation. ‘You could have died!’
‘No.’
‘. . . What?’
‘I would not have died. There was another way out.’ He gestured to the cavity where he’d been trapped – the space behind it was regular and smooth.
Open-mouthed, Cesca walked towards it and stared in. The passage extended back towards the west wing to her right and the east wing to her left. Small niches, carved into the walls at regular intervals, were blackened with scorch marks, indicating where candles had once sat, lighting the way. Presumably, there would be a door or entrance of some kind at either end, back into the palazzo.
She looked back at him, feeling her anger rise again. She had put herself in danger for him; hurt herself because of him. She glanced down at her bare and bleeding legs, her bunched-up skirt now ruined. And he wasn’t grateful. It hadn’t even been necessary. ‘So then, what the hell were you doing, trying to get out this way?’
‘I cannot tell you that. It is confidential.’
Cesca’s jaw dropped. She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. She wanted to slap him, kick him, knock ten bells out of him. How dare he behave like this when she had tried to help him? ‘That’s all you have to say after I just moved that crap to get you out? I thought you were suffocating! I thought you were going to die! And you can’t tell me why I bothered because it’s “confidential”?’
He saw the stress in her face and how her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips trembling, her knees bleeding, her knuckles scraped. She noticed him close his right hand. ‘And I thank—’
‘What’s that?’ She pointed at his fist.
‘Again, that is confidential.’
‘Is that the reason why you just endangered your life and potentially mine?’
‘No one was going to die.’
She straightened up. She’d had enough of this. Of him and his jobsworth pettiness. ‘Show it to me. Show me or I’m going to report this entire charade to your bosses. I don’t care what you say. There’s no way your health-and-safety people would allow you down there alone.’
He glowered at her, still so shrouded in the dust he could have been a stone statue, only the anger in his eyes animating him. Slowly, and with visible resentment, he raised his arm and opened his fist.
Cesca looked down at the tiny fragment of a tile in his palm. ‘That’s it?’
He shrugged, his mouth set in a grim line.
‘Hey!’
They both looked up to see three faces peering down at them: Alberto, Guido and Matteo.
‘What is going on here?’ Alberto demanded, looking furious.
‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’ Matteo asked, grinning wildly, the smile sliding off his face as he took in her expression. ‘Hey, baby, what’s happened?’
‘You okay, Chess?’ Guido asked, immediately protective.
She shook her head, feeling tears suddenly threaten at the sight of her lovely friends. She’d had enough of this man. Not only was he ungrateful, he was consistently rude and arrogant. And he’d drawn blood again. She was going to have yet more scabs on his account!
‘Just get me out of here,’ she said, stumbling over the rubble and towards the rope, hands shaking as she tried to fasten the carabiners to the harness again, Cantarelli’s eyes like bullets in her back.