Chapter Forty-Six

Carlo Olivera breathed his last just before sunset.

This time Isabella did not have to tell Rosa that her parent had died. The child was there, holding her father’s hand. She buried her young face in his neck and wouldn’t leave him. Her grief was silent and without tears, but she kept vigil at his side all through the long hours of the night. When Isabella took her hand well before dawn and led her away from him into the damp morning air, she whimpered once but no more.

In the darkness they silently retraced their steps across the mountains, listening carefully for any sounds, but there was no sign of any guards posted. They retrieved their cars from their hiding place and drove back down the winding roads, leaving the mountains and their secrets behind. The wide expanse of the Agro Pontino plain opened up ahead of them, and Isabella was caught by surprise by the strength of her desire to return to it.

They had discussed the dangers of returning. Her father had argued against it, convinced that Roberto and Isabella would be arrested because of the fight in the mountains, but Roberto had pointed out that they were too far away across the valley to be seen during the exchange of shots and had been hidden too well among the shaded trees for anyone to identify them. They could have been any of Olivera’s fighting force. The sooner they showed their faces in town and continued with their work as normal, the better.

As they drove down onto the plain the sun rose behind them above the hunched back of the mountains and bathed the barren fields in a shimmering golden light. Suddenly Isabella could see what the plain would look like next summer when golden fields of wheat would cover the land, and she felt a fierce need to be there to see it happen.

She looked down at the shorn dark head tucked against her ribs, and she tightened her arm around Rosa’s small shoulders. Allegra Bianchi had stolen so much from Isabella, and it would take time for her to understand what drove Luigi and Allegra to do what they had done, to believe that they had the right to so much savagery. Yet Allegra had brought her a child.

This child.

She rested her cheek on the warm head and watched the tower of Bellina come closer.

“Surviving?”

“Yes. I’m good at that.” Roberto smiled up at Isabella as she bandaged his shoulder.

Her father had removed the bullet, watched with care by Isabella, and he’d stitched up the wound, accompanied by comments like “It’s only a scratch” and “You’ll be heaving pigs around again in no time.”

“Papa, he’s a photographer.”

“Was a photographer,” Roberto corrected. “What good is a photographer with no camera?”

She remembered the smashed pieces of his beloved Graflex and the confetti of photographs littering his darkroom floor. The police had taken his Leica from him when he was under arrest.

“You can start again. A new camera.”

He rose to his feet and lightly kissed her lips. “We can both start again.”

She smiled at him, but a sharp knock at the door startled them all. A stab of fear made her reach out to Roberto for a second, before she walked quickly to answer it. She swung the door open, knowing the dark uniforms would be on the other side.

“Hello, stranger, where have you been keeping yourself?”

It was Francesca, her white-blond hair gleaming like snow in the sunlight.

Isabella laughed with relief. “I’ve been in Rome, looking at stone.”

“You and your stones! Here, I’ve brought you breakfast. You haven’t been into the shop for a few days.”

She handed over a napkin wrapped around warm spicy rolls, and Isabella kissed her on both cheeks.

“Thank you, Francesca. Come on in for coffee.”

“No, I can’t now. More baking to do. But this evening I’ll come around and you can tell me what you’ve been doing.”

Isabella smiled. “Any news?”

Francesca’s pale blue eyes opened wide. “Haven’t you heard?

“No. What is it?”

“The chief of the carabinieri was killed in a fight with Communists up in the mountains yesterday.”

Isabella didn’t blink. She recalled the kick of the rifle and the weight of its barrel on her shoulder. The figure in its dark blue uniform slumping to the ground.

“But, listen”—Francesca waved her arms through the air—“the big news is that Mussolini has had Chairman Grassi arrested. He has been transported to Rome for failing to find who was responsible for the airplane crash at the rally.”

“What?”

“It’s true.” Francesca grinned. “That bastard is having a taste of his own medicine.” She glanced at her watch. “And I must get back to my oven.” She blew a kiss to Isabella and hurried away through the courtyard.

Isabella turned to look at Roberto and at her father, not quite able to believe what she’d just heard.

“They’ve gone.” The words reverberated quietly in the room. “Sepe and Grassi have gone.”

“That is wonderful news,” her father exclaimed, and his tall figure seemed to uncurl, as if a heavy weight had lifted from his shoulders. “Isabella”—he was packing his instruments away in his medical bag after cleaning and sterilizing them—“I might leave Bellina too.”

“No, Papa.” Isabella put a hand on his bag as if that small action could hold him. “Stay here with us.”

He shook his head in a tired gesture. “I’ve never liked this town, you know that. It’s too stark and modern for me.”

“Where will you go?”

“I want to go back to the old Italy, to the beautiful places I knew before. I’m thinking of returning to Milan. I can continue to help the rebels there.”

“Papa, I’ll miss you. But if that’s what you want . . .”

“It is. I only stayed here to watch over you, my daughter.” He smiled broadly at Roberto. “But now you have someone else to do that. And you have Rosa. What will you do with her?”

“Adopt her, of course. She won’t be going back to the convent.”

A sound from the doorway of the room drew Isabella’s attention, and she looked round to see Rosa standing there in her loose smock. Her eyes were fixed on Isabella’s face.

“I thought you were asleep on my bed, Rosa.”

“I heard a knock.”

“It’s all right, it was just a friend. She brought good news. Both Chairman Grassi and Colonnello Sepe have left Bellina forever.”

A small moan escaped Rosa’s pale lips, and she ran across the room to Isabella. Isabella crouched down and encircled the child in her arms, holding her trembling body close.

“What is it, Rosa?”

“I don’t ever want to go back there, but I’m frightened for Carmela.”

“Your friend at the convent?”

Rosa nodded. “She’s all on her own.”

Isabella realized at that moment how great were the complications that this child was bringing into her life, but she stroked her young cheek reassuringly. “I don’t know what the connection was between Chairman Grassi and the Reverend Mother, but now that he has gone her position is weakened. In future she will have to be more careful how she treats her pupils at the convent. Anyway, I will keep a watch on your friend Carmela and we will invite her to visit us as often as you like.” She ruffled the cropped curls. “If that’s what you want?”

Rosa’s dark eyes shone and she nodded again. “Mamma was right,” she said solemnly. “You are a good person.”

A good person?

No, definitely not. Isabella knew that good people don’t go around shooting others dead. Nor do good people feel such a turmoil of emotions toward an innocent young child. Rosa would always be a reminder to her of an act of betrayal by her husband and of his vicious deliberate violence against another woman. Both terrible and unforgivable. Yet without them she would not be standing here now beside the man and child she’d grown to need so fiercely.

A good person?

She shook her head. No. But one who had learned how to love.

When Rosa finally fell asleep once more, Isabella walked with Roberto through the town in the amber light of early morning, heading for her architectural office. Back in the Piazza del Popolo where it all began, she paused, gazing at the fine buildings around her. At last she could see a real future for Bellina. She was aware of Roberto standing close behind her and she leaned against him, feeling the strength of him at her back.

“We could leave too,” he said thoughtfully. “Start again elsewhere, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“No, Roberto, this is where I want to be. Right here. With you and Rosa. I love this town and I love my work in it. There’s so much more I want to do here in Bellina, and there are the five other new towns that have yet to be built on the Agro Pontino.” She stretched a hand out in front of her. “It is waiting for us to create the future we want.”

Roberto wrapped an arm around her. “We don’t know who will replace Grassi and Sepe, but let’s believe that whoever it is, they will have the good of the town at heart. I’ll order a new Graflex camera for myself,” he added, and she could hear the determination in his voice, “and continue to record the growth of the town in pictures. But this time it won’t be for Grassi. It will be so that in the future when everything has changed, people will be able to look at them and know what it was like here. How we built a town for them.”

Isabella looked eastward, her eyes drawn to the ancient mountains in the distance. They lay in purple shadow and watched patiently over the golden plain below.