IN ALL THE TIME she’d been there no one had bothered to bring her either food or drink. Nor had anyone demonstrated even enough compassion to release her long enough for her to relieve herself. Fortunately, she’d eaten so little in the last few days that she was scarcely bothered by such matters.
The dead mouse still lay on her chest like some mark of shame, and not all of her twisting and squirming seemed able to dislodge it. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before the boy would be back. Having had a taste of tormenting her, there was no doubt he would soon be craving more. She was certain that the next visit would be more of a trial than the first.
Overhead, the footsteps persisted, restless, unceasing, tracking back and forth. By then, she’d almost gotten used to the burning of her eyes and throat, and the cruel itch of the burlap next to her bare skin. She wondered about Borghini. Where was he? Why hadn’t he come down to taunt her, too?
She guessed it was going on toward dusk, or roughly 7:00 P.M. The stream of air whistling through the pinhole behind her had grown cooler—hot days, cool nights, all typical of a Roman autumn. She wondered where the cat was. She longed to see it in much the same way someone in troubled times longs for the comforting presence of an old friend.
Behind the wall, beyond that fading pinprick of light, she could hear traffic noises—the wheeze of diesel trucks and buses, the vital buzz of the marketplace, where people came and went freely. She tried to imagine Fiesole and the Villa Tranquillo, all of its cozy dilapidation, and Erminia, frightened and wondering where she was.
Throughout that afternoon while her mind had wandered, full of regrets and unspoken fears, she had been working at her bonds, trying to loosen them by the simple act of stretching, then relaxing her muscles beneath them. It came down to mere mechanical repetition of identical movements. After a while, she did them automatically, not even aware of her actions as she turned, twisted, swiveled her wrists about until the edges of the belt had burned a raw red line into the back of her hand.
The noises from above appeared to increase, suggesting heightened activity. She was certain that activity had something to do with her, and knowledge of that served as a goad to her flagging strength and spirits.
When the cat finally did reappear, it was a blessing. Slinking its lank way up to her, it spied the mouse on her chest and stopped dead in its tracks. Eyes riveted to the maggoty little heap of fur, it crouched, tensing its powerful rear haunches, then sprang.
It seemed surprised, perhaps even disappointed, when the mouse neither ran nor attempted to resist. Mesmerized, Isobel watched the cat’s jaw open, then clamp down hard, taking the animal headfirst into its mouth, leaving only the limp, stringy tail still dangling from its lips, switching right and left across the floor as the creature scurried off with its prize.
Isobel took that as a good omen and resumed with feverish zeal the business of attempting to work herself free. The incessant stretching of her muscles, constant expansion and then contraction, was exhausting. If only she could use her mouth, she thought, she might gnaw through her restraints with her teeth the way animals caught in the vise of hunters’ traps have been known to gnaw off a limb in order to get free. She understood why animals would do that now. She would do that, she told herself, if only she could.
Her ordeal continued. Oddly enough, it was the bottom strap, the one wound round her ankles, that gave first. Odd, in that it was the strap upon which she’d been able to exert least pressure; throughout her ordeal, she’d been concentrating her efforts on those encircling her middle and upper body.
Now, in some surprising, totally unexpected way, the lower strap suddenly sagged and, like a fist loosening its grip, gave way. She wasn’t sure how much until she started to stretch and wiggle her feet, and with that the belt yielded as if the buckle had failed. Almost at once, she found that she could raise her legs off the cot, raising them straight up from the waist like someone doing stomach exercises.
For all of her efforts, the remaining two straps were as begrudging as ever. They pinned her tightly to the cot, while her wrists, badly skinned, may as well have been cemented together. Having freed her legs, she wasn’t sure what advantage, if any, she’d gained. But with time running out, she intended to test the question to its limit.
Trying several maneuvers, she concluded she’d not gained much. However, at the completion of a few more frantically acrobatic moves, she discovered that her now-freed legs enabled her to slowly arch her back, raising it slightly from the cot while at the same time applying somewhat greater pressure to the upper restraints.
In the next quarter hour, she waged a sweaty, harrowing battle between herself and the middle restraint, alternately arching her back, then throwing her legs up and back as far as they would go. She was like someone working out on a mat in a gymnasium. She had by then achieved a certain momentum, and with each thrust she went faster and faster, until finally hitting a near-frenzied pace.
The act of throwing her legs up and back over and over again failed to loosen the midstrap noticeably. However, the same action was not without a plus side; all of that frenzy had, with each thrust, the net effect of inching her body lower toward the bottom of the cot. Simultaneously, the top strap had begun to creep its way upward from breast level toward her shoulders. If she could get it to reach that point, she reasoned, she might conceivably manage to work that strap up over the top of her shoulders and thus into the shallow well between shoulder and throat. That might possibly give her upper body more purchase to push and heave against the midstrap. But even if that gave, she still had to contend with the upper strap, which was hanging somewhat more loosely around her neck, pinning her to the cot. Above all, there was still the rope around her wrists. To all intents and purposes, she was still very much a prisoner.
All the while she’d been flailing against the cords and leather, the cot had responded with much groaning and creaking. Several times, the legs actually moved, scraping against the bare concrete floor. In the past several minutes it had grown silent upstairs, and now she feared that to continue meant she risked being overheard.
She wondered if the sudden silence above indicated that whoever was there had begun to think about dinner, or if they’d actually gone out in search of some, or, more ominously, if they were now huddled together somewhere, preparing to do Whatever it was they were planning to do with her.
The latter possibility brought her back to the struggle with renewed drive. Opting to run the risk of being heard (she had no other choice), she resumed arching her back and kicking her legs. Ten hard minutes of that left her winded, cold pockets of sweat chilling her armpits. She paused momentarily, to rest. When she resumed the kicking, it seemed to her—or was it merely her imagination?—that each time she did so she was able to kick her legs back farther. With her last thrust, she’d been able to bring the tips of her toes back almost to ear level.
Maintaining that position for any length of time was almost impossible, since it so greatly increased the crushing pressure of belts against her chest and shoulder. A minute of it left her breathless.
But with each kick, she continued her agonizing inch-by-inch descent toward the bottom of the cot. After several additional thrusts, just as she’d calculated, the uppermost strap slipped over the tops of her shoulders and dropped into the hollow between scapula and throat. At the same time, the lower half of the strap sagged loose beneath the cot.
She had no way of knowing where all of this was leading. She was still securely lashed to the cot. All she knew was that she now had far more mobility within her restraints than she’d had a half hour ago.
The kicking and flailing went on for another ten minutes. She labored bravely. Her greatest deficit was the absence of any assistance from her hands. The cords that bound them were as tight as ever and the effect of all the kicking had badly abraded the skin on her wrists. They’d started to bleed; at first, it was only a trickle she could feel in the dark. Then it came somewhat more freely. With each kick and thrust of her legs, her wrists felt as though the hot blade of a knife had been drawn across them.
Yet that, too, had a plus side. During the same time she’d kept kicking and inching farther down the cot, the lower half of her face—namely, the chin and mouth—had slipped beneath the loose strap dangling from her neck. She reasoned that if she could continue that same frantic motion, her head would eventually slide beneath the strap, thereby freeing the upper part of her body. The question utmost in her mind was whether she had the time.
In the next several minutes, by alternately kicking and heaving, then twisting her head at a cruelly unnatural angle, she managed not only to continue her inch-by-inch descent down the length of the cot but, at the same time, to slip her head beneath the topmost belt. The upper half of her body was suddenly free.
She was pinned to the cot now by just one remaining lashing—the one bound around her middle, which she judged to be the tightest and most unrelenting. The frustration of having bound hands seemed suddenly harsher and far more perverse than ever.
For the next several minutes, she struggled valiantly against the middle strap, arching and stretching and thrusting against it. She hoped that, like the bottom strap, persistent, sheer brute force applied to it might undermine the buckle, finally causing it to give.
After five minutes more of desperate thrashing, she lay panting and exhausted on the cot. The silk gag round her mouth cutting off half of her air did little to help. But in the course of these exertions, her legs from roughly midcalf to toe hung out in midair over the bottom edge of the cot. Lying there in that clumsy, immobilized position, it occurred to her that she might possibly be able to stand.
It meant, of course, that the cot would still be lashed to her by means of the middle strap. But it was a light, flimsy thing, just sticks and some cheap white duck cloth stapled together. In all, it couldn’t weigh more than three or four pounds. Assuming she’d be able to get to her feet, walking in the cluttered confines of the cellar would be extremely awkward. She wasn’t sure what advantage it would gain her, but she was determined to find out. The first few times she attempted to stand, she couldn’t get her feet down to the floor. She stretched and writhed, trying to slide lower on the cot, but the lashing around her middle was far too tight. She tried to stand and fell backward, the rear legs of the cot clattering so noisily that she thought for sure someone above would have heard and be down at once to check.
She lay there panting in the half dark, waiting for the stairway door to fly open and footsteps to come clumping down. But when nothing happened, she whispered three Hail Marys (something she hadn’t done since childhood).
The fact that there appeared to be no one upstairs for the moment made her more keenly aware than ever of time running out. If she was going to get out of this situation, it had to be within the next few minutes. She was certain her captors wouldn’t run the risk of leaving her unguarded much longer.
She renewed her struggle. Heaving, thrashing, writhing on the flimsy cot, she resembled someone striding on air, her legs free and pumping powerful strokes. The burlap sacking she wore felt like the tips of a million needles piercing her bare skin. The cot clattered and shook while she spat and drooled into the silk gag. Her sides and ribs heaved like those of a winded hound having run too hard.
For all that exertion, it seemed to her she’d gotten precious little in return. The final lashing was no looser than when she’d first started. However, this time when she tried to stand, she felt, to her amazement, her bare feet graze the chill, damp floor of the cellar. In that same instant, the cot rose, wobbling through an upward rotation of ninety degrees.
She was standing.
She stood for some moments, slightly dizzy, unsteady, puzzled to find herself upright, her mind already leaping forward to anticipate the next move. When at last that came, it was a bumpy, lurching thing, with the bottom edge of the cot alternately banging her ankles and the floor.
Fortunately, the ceilings were high. She passed beneath them easily, only once or twice smashing the top of the cot into one of the overhead joists. The illumination was poor, only just enough so that she could make out the clutter of bizarre bric-a-brac scattered around the cellar.
She negotiated a treacherous path of sinks, tables, workbenches, shelves all chockablock with bottles and jars, many containing a murky broth she was loath to inspect.
Passing the area she first thought to be a large black floor stain, she discovered it to be a kind of subterranean pool, but not of water. It contained something else, a dark, still fluid, somewhat heavier than water. She had no idea what it was. All she knew was that as she passed in its vicinity, her eyes teared more and the burning sensation in her nostrils increased.
Turning to flee the spot, the tip of the cot on her back banged into a flensing table. On that, she saw what gradually took the form of a human shape. It lay spread-eagled on the table. Fully half the skin had been peeled like a fruit from the bony frame beneath and lay draped over the edges of the table like a discarded garment.
A wad of something undigested rose in her throat, and she turned to run. She had no idea where she was running or what she was looking for until she actually saw it. It lay on a table amid a lot of other debris she couldn’t immediately identify. But once she saw it, nothing could deflect her eye. It glittered like a jewel in the gloomy light—a fine, light coping saw, its blade slim and graceful as a steel thread. It sat amid a chaos of other tools. She thought they were carpenter’s tools, but some had a more clinical look, like surgical instruments.
Moving about now, the cot still lashed to her back, she found the going easier, the way she imagined one grows accustomed to crutches or an artificial limb. The sight of the coping saw lying there, so near, so accessible, sharpened her determination. Forgetting that her hands were bound, she lunged for it. As she did so, the top of the cot clipped a naked lightbulb dangling from a bare wire in the ceiling.
A dull, rushing pop followed and she was standing in a shower of glass. More startled than injured, she barged forward and nearly shrieked as the scattered shards of glass bit into the bare soles of her feet.
Reaching the saw was more difficult than she’d imagined. While her fingers were free, the cords round her wrists were so tight that her fingers had stiffened and grown numb. Moreover, the saw lay at a far corner of the work-table. With a low joist overhanging the table and the cot lashed to her back, it couldn’t be reached by merely walking around to it. The only way to reach it was by stretching herself directly across the table from where she stood. That involved folding herself nearly in half over the table’s edge and inching her way to it with the cot bouncing and bumping about on top of her.
Stretching and twisting until her limbs ached, when she actually touched the saw, numbed fingers grazing the cold, ridged metal of the blade, all she could manage was to slap and flail at it helplessly. Several times, she succeeded in pincering it between two fingers, but each time she dropped it and had to start in anew. That went on for a time, until she devised a. method of using the cord that linked both wrists as a means of dragging the saw across the table toward her.
In the triumphant moment that she held the saw dangling between thumb and forefinger, she heard the outside door upstairs slam and the anxious, hurried tread of someone entering.
Panting heavily, still bent over the worktable, she peered up at the creaking ceiling above her, her eyes tracking the footsteps as they crossed overhead. She followed their sound as they moved off to another room to her left. Moments later, she heard something like a chair being pulled out from beneath a desk, followed by the rattle of a phone being dialed. Then someone was talking. The sound of it drifted to her in a rapid, breathy murmur. No one had to tell her who it was.
The thing she imagined would be the most difficult turned out to be the most simple. Perhaps it was the return of the boy, the prospect of awful things to come, and the terrible certainty that time was running out that focused the last of her dwindling energy.
Under no circumstances did she wish to encounter Beppe again, particularly not while strapped down to a cot in a filthy cellar. The numbness in her fingers still prevented her from holding the saw in her hands. Instead, she pinned it blade upward between her knees and proceeded to push down hard on the cord between her bound wrists, rubbing it back and forth over the blade. It was a matter of two or three strokes, no more. So sharp was the blade, the cords were no match for it. They yielded quickly.
With her hands suddenly free, numbness and prolonged lack of circulation made them feel distant and ungainly, as though they were no longer a part of her body. But clenching and unclenching them, a rush of warmth entered her hands. Circulation returned, and in the next moment she tore off her gag and was tearing at the last belt—the one around her middle. The buckle had been lashed so tightly she could scarcely budge it.
Overhead, the conversation had ended. She heard the phone bang back into the cradle and the chair scrape over the floor. The footsteps started back out from the other room. They crossed directly overhead, moving toward the cellar door at the top of the stair, roughly thirty feet away.
The door swung open with a hard, angry yank, sending a shaft of mote-filled fight streaming down the stair. Inhaling deeply, she sucked her stomach inward as far as it could possibly go. All the while, her free right hand tugged hard at the belt. Still the prong would not disengage the buckle.
The first footstep hit with a thud at the top of the stair. She felt a rush of adrenaline surge through her. It moved like a current of electricity down the muscles in her arms and shoulders. She felt her hands and wrists tauten and, with a final desperate suck inward, she pulled, and the prong slid loose.
Through the slats of an upright ladder, she could see cut off at the waist the trousered legs of someone up ahead. They appeared and disappeared, then reappeared with each shift of position their owner made. The figure, halfway down the stairs, drove her backward into the dank gloom at the rear of the cellar.