A Shadowed Fate

by Marty Ambrose

  ‘I pray that it is so.’ After slipping the Ravenna memoir into my bag, I extended a hand to Trelawny.

  ‘We should still arrive in Bologna before dusk,’ he said, escorting me to the carriage, where Raphael already sat next to the driver; Paula and Georgiana were inside, positioned on opposite sides with the glass windows shut tightly. I took my place with them and found neither inclined to talk after the trauma of Georgiana’s disappearance. Secure in the knowledge that Trelawny rode near the carriage, I decided perhaps it was best to simply soak in the woodland scenery while our emotions had time to recover.

  Once we set out for Bologna along a narrow road, our journey went rather quickly as we descended to the Po Plain at the foot of the Apennine Mountains and arrived at the outskirts of the city in fewer than two hours. We trooped into the hotel and took to our rooms for an early night. I turned in almost immediately, too tired to pick up my reading where I had stopped. Drifting off, though, I found my thoughts drawn back to the tense moments Byron had described at the Palazzo Guiccioli, when he anxiously awaited the dawn in the company of his wounded driver.

  The stakes of his gamble with the Carbonari were high: life and death.

  That night I dreamed of the fateful summer of 1816 in Geneva. The sun had broken through a thick layer of clouds, and the air smelled fresh. I was strolling happily up the short path between the Maison Chapuis, where I stayed with the Shelleys, and Byron’s much grander Villa Diodati. Suddenly, I could not find my way and began to stumble blindly through the underbrush of thorny vines. They scratched at my ankles, drawing blood as I hurried my pace. Panic flooded through me. I called out for Byron or Shelley, but no one responded. Black clouds gathered above – thick and heavy – and I grew frightened.

  I kept running.

  Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder rolled in with deep, pounding waves. I covered my ears and halted, not knowing whether I should go back.

  The storm’s ferocity grew into a violent dance of light and booming explosions.

  Then rain began to fall in cold, hard sheets, and I sank to my knees.

  I could not go on.

  I heard Byron call out my name, and I struggled to my feet. I moved in that direction, feeling more surefooted on the path as I grew closer to the sound of his voice.

  Finally, I emerged from the trees and saw him standing in the open ground with a child at his side, wearing a blue dress, matching bonnet, and a gold necklace. She smiled.

  Allegra.

  They were waiting for me.

  Just then, a jagged streak of lightning hit the space in front of them, and they vanished and were gone forever.

  I awoke with a gasp as I realized it was but a dream … then a few moments of sadness followed. I rarely dreamed about Allegra, but now that we were drawing closer to Bagnacavallo, she was constantly in my thoughts.

  Growing stronger day by day.

  As I joined the rest of our little group in the morning room for a light breakfast, I said nothing about the dream, although my muted demeanor elicited a few sidelong glances from Paula and Raphael. Having regained their lively spirits, they finished up and took Georgiana into the courtyard to play in the sun before she was shut up inside the carriage again. Trelawny and I remained alone with our coffee and fette biscottate.

  ‘You seem very quiet, Claire. Are you having second thoughts about journeying on after what happened yesterday?’ He sat back in his chair, his head tilted to one side, regarding me intently.

  I took a sip of my coffee – a deep roast. ‘Quite the contrary. I am more resolved than ever to continue on our quest, as long as Georgiana is protected.’

  ‘Agreed. Raphael and I discussed it early this morning, and we proposed that one of us will always have her in sight. There will be no more “incidents,” believe me.’

  ‘I do … and I, too, will remain on guard.’ I set my cup on the table.

  He still watched me, eyes flicking over my face. ‘Is there something else on your mind?’

  Setting my hands in my lap, I looked down at the faint wrinkles that fanned across my fingers in delicate lines. The hands of a lady – or at least those of a woman who had never done hard, manual labor. Not an easy life, but not a grindingly difficult one either. In that, I had been fortunate.

  ‘Claire?’

  ‘Last night I dreamed of Byron during the time we spent together in Geneva. He looked young and handsome – the way I remember him. He was waiting for me at Diodati as I tried to find my way there through a terrible storm. I was lost and desperate yet, somehow, found my way to him. Then I saw he was with Allegra.’ I paused, not wanting to relate the next part.

  ‘Was that all?’

  I shook my head. ‘A bolt of lightning struck, and they disappeared.’ My hands clenched, gathering the fabric of my cotton dress. ‘As if they never existed.’

  ‘But they did,’ Trelawny said with deliberate emphasis.

  ‘Yes, so long ago …’

  ‘It may seem that way at times, but in the grand tapestry of life, it was not that far in the past.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Perhaps having lived to this age, I see the flow of time in decades, not years. Some of it blurs a bit, but other parts seem even more vivid than when I actually experienced it.’

  ‘I, too, have memories that seem burned into my mind – forever real.’ I flexed my fingers again and smoothed down the crumpled dress. ‘There was one part of the dream that seemed different, though. When I saw Allegra, she was not wearing the little necklace of carnelians that I had given her. Instead, she wore a tiny horn-shaped pendant on a thin, gold chain … the kind Italians wear to protect themselves from the malocchio – the evil eye.’

  ‘Ah, the cornicello – little horn.’ Its significance dawned on him immediately. ‘You probably saw someone wearing the charm yesterday and then recreated it in your dream. It is perfectly understandable.’

  ‘But every other time I have dreamed about her, she wore the carnelian necklace – a mother’s gift,’ I protested. ‘And she never removed it while she lived with me.’

  Mulling over my words, Trelawny turned meditative in his expression. ‘I think it simply means that, like most mothers, you wanted to protect your child, but you could not. No mother could have done so. And now you want to see the place where she supposedly died – find out what happened to her and finally banish the “evil eye” that has hovered over your life.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Casting a doubtful glance toward him, I conceded that everything he said sounded plausible – perhaps even possible. Still, I felt uneasy.

  He rose. ‘I shall buy you a cornicello when we arrive in Ravenna; it will stave off any self-doubt, as well.’

  Double protection. As a Catholic, I acknowledged that it seemed more appropriate to pray to one of the many saints for safety and security; as a mother, I preferred to confront the malocchio from many angles. ‘It cannot hurt … Raphael keeps one in his pocket.’ I drained the last of my coffee and followed him out to the carriage – ready for whatever awaited us.

  By midday we arrived at the Convent of San Giovanni near the heart of Bagnacavallo – a small cluster of neoclassical buildings that formed the town center. We stopped in front of the convent, and I scanned the medieval structure with its unremarkable Baroque façade. Such a forbidding exterior. The kind of stern, reclusive appearance that spoke of nuns who rarely traveled outside its walls.

  Poor Allegra.

  Trelawny swung open the carriage door, saying, ‘I sent word to the Abbess that we would arrive today, so she should be here to greet us shortly.’

  I alighted with Paula and Georgiana at my side. From my niece’s expression, I could tell that she, too, found the convent a bit too cold and austere for her taste. Her arm slid around Georgiana in a shielding embrace.

  Although the day had turned fine with a bright, sapphire-tinted sky, I found my focus on the convent’s stark exterior. It lacked trees and flowers – and all the beautiful touches of nature that gave li
fe to stone and brick. Just bare spaces.

  ‘I cannot believe my daughter lived here – such a lifeless place,’ I muttered to Trelawny.

  ‘Perhaps only on the outside,’ he replied. ‘When Shelley visited Allegra in 1821, he told me she seemed happy and much improved from the fearful child she had become in Ravenna. She even played a prank on the nuns by ringing the church bells to summon them from their cells before he departed. They were not cross with her at all.’

  I sniffed. ‘He told me much the same story, though I am not sure how much he embellished it to pacify me.’

  Before I could say more, a plump woman about my age appeared in a head-to-toe black habit. She apologized profusely to me in Italian for her lateness.

  ‘Sono appena arrivato qui,’ I responded, assuring her that I had just arrived.

  ‘Bene.’ She then inclined her head toward each member of our little group and patted Georgiana’s curls. ‘Bella bambina.’

  A glow emanated from the Abbess’s small-featured, wrinkled face – compelling in its warmth – and I found some of my initial impressions of the nunnery shift slightly.

  Trelawny did the introductions, and then the Abbess ushered us inside. As I listened to her explain the origin of the convent in English, I found myself intrigued to hear that it had begun in the fourteenth century as a monastery and was later damaged in an earthquake in the 1600s and then abandoned. The Capuchin nuns acquired the property a century after that and opened a boarding school for daughters of noble Italian families. Grudgingly, I had to admit the convent had a distinguished background.

  Its hushed interior also had a stately quality with wood-beamed ceilings, white walls, and religious artwork. A place of worship and beauty.

  Not at all what I expected.

  ‘Do you still accept young ladies as students?’ Paula asked, keeping a tight hold on Georgiana’s hand as we passed a delicate china statuette that sat atop a table.

  ‘Only a few. The convent education does not seem as fashionable as it was in the past,’ she said with a shrug as she led us down a long corridor. ‘Are you inquiring for your daughter?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She edged Georgiana closer. ‘I prefer to have her with me.’

  The Abbess smiled and nodded.

  ‘I can see why your numbers have dwindled … It is a bit isolated.’ I took in the small, square stained-glass windows positioned in a neat row above the corridor’s archways. Sunlight filtered through the opaque glass with slanted beams against the opposite wall, providing only faint illumination.

  ‘Though Ravenna is only twenty kilometers to the east,’ Raphael added, trailing behind us.

  A half-day’s ride at most.

  Yet, unlike Shelley, Byron never visited Allegra in the convent, not even after I repeatedly asked him to do so. I never understood how he could abandon her so completely … but the situation was more complicated than I knew.

  ‘Signora?’ The Abbess held open the door to her office.

  Quickly, I moved inside with Trelawny, but Raphael and Paula demurred, asking instead if they could take Georgiana outside to the interior garden for her to play.

  She gave her permission, probably sensing, as I did, that Paula did not want her young daughter to hear the adult conversation that was about to take place. I could not blame her.

  Once inside the large office, the Abbess seated herself behind a carved desk as Trelawny and I slid into two high-backed chairs across from her. A gilded cross, suspended from the ceiling, loomed behind her as the sole wall decoration, other than a painting of the Madonna holding the baby Jesus in her lap. The room smelled of incense – deep and pungent.

  ‘Signor Trelawny did not state the purpose of your visit,’ she began, folding her hands atop the desk. ‘But I assume it has something to do with your daughter, Allegra.’

  My breath caught in the back of my throat. ‘You are most frank, Madre.’

  ‘After running this convent for many years, I have found there is no point in being indirect. The role demands candidness.’ She met my glance squarely, but her tone was gentle. ‘And that I follow the will of God in all matters.’

  I crossed myself.

  Per grazia di Dio.

  Trelawny merely raised a brow. ‘I cannot claim to know divine intent, but I believe that some force guides us to our better selves if we allow it, which is why we are here – to find the truth.’

  ‘Indeed, I wish for that, as well.’ The Abbess shifted slightly in her chair as if she was ready to hear a confession. ‘And to assist you in any way that I can.’

  Taking in a deep breath, I began to explain the incredible shifts in my life over the last fortnight, including the discovery that Allegra might have survived the typhus epidemic that swept through the convent all those years ago. The Abbess’s face registered very little reaction until I mentioned the murder of Father Gianni; at that point, she visibly started, causing me to pause in my story. ‘Did you know him?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I ask because you seemed to recoil when I touched on his death,’ I pressed.

  ‘Only the manner of his death took me aback. When a priest is killed inside his own basilica, it sends shudders through my soul. A holy man should be seen as sacred even by those who are not believers.’ Her lips murmured a brief Italian prayer. ‘But I need not tell you that since it seems as if you also lost a dear friend in him.’

  The image of his face flashed in my memory, compassion radiating from his eyes. ‘I did. He taught me about love and forgiveness – and brought me to the light of faith. I shall always honor him in my heart.’ As I spoke the words, I also heard Matteo’s warning echo through my mind: Father Gianni was not all that he seemed.

  My priest. My advisor. My salvation.

  Was it possible he deceived me?

  ‘A man can have no greater praise,’ the Abbess pronounced solemnly.

  Trelawny gave a guttural snort of impatience. ‘I appreciate your sentiments over the priest’s nobility, but we came here to learn if you sent Father Gianni any information about Allegra,’ he said. ‘At Signora Clairmont’s behest, he wrote to you a few weeks ago, asking about her daughter, and the day he died, he was supposed to relate some information that he had found—’

  ‘But I received no inquiry,’ she interjected, blinking with bafflement. ‘Nor, as I said, was I ever acquainted with Father Gianni. When I received Signor Trelawny’s note about your visit yesterday, it was the first time I had ever heard that Allegra Byron’s mother still lived in Italia. Firenze is a world away from Bagnacavallo, and we live very quiet lives here.’

  I stared at her, speechless.

  Truly?

  Father Gianni had never sent her a letter?

  He had deceived me.

  I felt Trelawny squeeze my arm in reassurance, but it was cold comfort as I stammered, ‘I … I must say that I am astonished. It is not the behavior of the man I knew. When I appealed to him in Florence to intervene on this matter, he promised me that he would write to you. And I believed him – there was no earthly reason to doubt his honesty.’ Was it possible that yet another person whom I held so dear had misled me? Byron. Trelawny. And now Father Gianni. All of them.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘Could it be that his note was lost along the way?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ More likely that Matteo had spoken the truth that day at Le Murate. What an irony. And a painful one, no less. Father Gianni’s lessons in charity had been as hollow as his vow to help me.

  Slumping back in my chair, I let this new reality settle into my heart. Even though I had made my way through the world with my instinct to survive, I always believed in the kindness of those who befriended me. Perhaps that had been my greatest mistake …

  ‘The post can be slow and unreliable,’ Trelawny added, though I knew it was simply to assuage my feelings. ‘Even if Father Gianni’s letter is still en route, we are here now to conduct our inquiry about Allegra in person, but I will let Claire make the ap
peal.’

  The Abbess inclined her head.

  Trelawny nudged me gently to proceed, but I found myself at a loss to speak. It all felt a bit futile right now. Maybe the tides were turning against me in this part of the journey, so much so that I might never reach the shore that I so desired.

  ‘Claire?’ he prompted.

  Instead of responding, I fixed my glance on the painting of the Madonna and the Christ-child who sat in her lap, nestled in the folds of her scarlet dress. Mary’s eyes half shut, she gazed down at her baby with love and sadness. His youth would soon be gone as he grew into a man and, even worse, he would be taken from her far too soon. But he smiled, holding out a strawberry plant sprig with two leaves – the Father and Holy Ghost. An offering that could not be denied. He would be restored to her in ways that she could not even dream.

  The Trinity of Hope.

  She never gave up. Nor would I.

  Taking a few moments to compose myself, I began on a note of appeal. ‘Considering what I have learned recently about my daughter’s supposed death, I want to prevail upon you to open the convent’s records from April 1822 – if they still exist – so I can see if something about the typhus epidemic had been altered to hide her true fate … I ask you this as a Catholic and a mother.’

  The Abbess remained immobile for a few moments, her hands still folded on the desk. Then she finally replied, ‘You realize what you are asking? For many reasons, all of our records are sealed for the sake of the privacy of the young women who attended the convent as students. Many powerful Italian families placed females here because they did not want their identities revealed. Not everyone is as open about a child’s paternity as you, Signora Clairmont.’

  I knew what she meant: illegitimate offspring were enrolled here – and came from even the best families.

  Trelawny leaned forward. ‘If I may add my voice to hers, Byron himself told me that Allegra survived the typhus—’

  ‘And you waited all this time to reveal it?’ Her brows rose a fraction.

  ‘Only because he made me promise never to tell anyone, and I followed his wishes for my entire life – until I knew it was simply a matter of time before the whole truth came out. But I freely admit that I lied.’ Regret threaded through his voice. ‘That is my sin, and I must live with it. But now I have a chance to make it right again.’