Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  Nina was lying on an uncomfortable bed in a strange room, and the light coming in from the window was all wrong. It took her a moment to recall where she was, and who belonged to the lovely, low voice, and when she did remember she was tempted to bury her face in the pillow and have a good, long cry. Instead she got dressed and packed her bag and went downstairs to join the stranger who was pretending to be her husband.

  Zia Elisa gave them polenta with warm milk for breakfast, and for Nina there was a soft-boiled egg as well—a true sign of his aunt’s affection, Niccolò whispered. “I could be lying on my deathbed and she still wouldn’t give me an egg for breakfast.”

  Zia Elisa had prepared a basket of food to see them home, and only after listening to her itemize the contents, and accepting embraces and farewells and felicitations and blessings, were they able to clamber onto the wooden seat of Bello’s cart and continue on their journey to Mezzo Ciel.

  Their second day of travel was even worse than the first, for Nina was sore from the endless jostling of the cart, and still weary, though she had slept well enough on the lumpy mattress, and before long she was hungry and thirsty and headachy and ready to scream from the misery of it all. She would have, except Niccolò was so unfailingly pleasant, and he insisted on giving her most of the food, and he didn’t seem to mind that she was too sad and wretched to do anything more than sit in Bello’s horrible cart and try not to faint from the heat and dust and awful stench of the mule’s very unclean and far too proximate backside.

  Nor could she forget that he was doing this for her. The why of it mystified her, but he had said he was friends with Father Bernardi, and the priest was her father’s friend, so it did make some kind of sense. And if he could endure the long hours of travel so serenely, then she could at least try to get through the day without collapsing in floods of tears.

  The sun was edging close to the horizon when Niccolò finally stopped the cart by a low and sprawling hedgerow that bordered a grassy field.

  “We’re not all that far from Mezzo Ciel, but it’s safer to stop before the sun has gone down.”

  “Even though we’re close?”

  “We won’t make it there until long after sundown, and I don’t want to risk being caught on the road after curfew. We’ll rise at dawn, though, and be home by late morning.”

  “All right.”

  “Will you hop down and hold Bello’s bridle for a moment while I open this gate?”

  “But he’ll—”

  “He’s just as tired as you, and he wants nothing more than to rest and eat his supper and go to sleep. He won’t move a muscle.”

  “Are you sure we’ll be all right here?”

  “We’ll be fine. My cousin Sandro owns this field. We won’t get in trouble for staying here. Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “It’s only . . . what if it rains?”

  “No chance of that after such a fine day. It won’t be as comfortable as my aunt’s house, but we’ll be warm enough, and there’s enough food in the basket for supper. What more do we need?”

  He took Bello’s bridle and led the animal into the field, and without asking or receiving any help from her, he unhitched the mule and left him to graze, filled a wooden bucket from the cask—they’d passed a fountain not long after they’d stopped for lunch—and took it to Bello. Then he made up a bed for her from a stack of folded blankets that had been stowed in the cart, and set out the last of their food on a clean napkin.

  “Not quite a feast, but we’ll survive. There’s bread and cheese, and we still have most of the wine that Zia gave us.”

  They ate in silence, and even though the bread had gone hard and stale, she ate every crumb of it. He poured some of the wine into the tin cup, and she drank just enough to wash down the bread and no more.

  “I’ll check on Bello, so if you need some privacy to attend to, ah . . . there are some shrubs in the far corner. No one can see you from the road.”

  She scurried across to the shelter he’d indicated, and though he kept his back turned he must have been listening for her, since he turned around as soon as she returned.

  “We might as well go to sleep now. The sun is almost gone, and I’d rather not light the lantern. Best to let our eyes grow used to the dark.”

  She took off her boots and stretched out on the makeshift bed he’d made. Niccolò lay down about a meter away, once again wrapped in a single blanket.

  The sun sank into the western sky, the moon began to rise, and the countryside fell silent. She felt perfectly safe with Niccolò so close by, but sleep did not come, no matter how earnestly she tried to empty her mind and banish her fears.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered at last.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching the stars.”

  Nina rolled onto her back and looked up, and her breath caught in her throat. The dome of the sky was ablaze with stars, far more than there were people on earth, and set against the sweep of the heavens she could see, all too clearly, that she and her worries were only the merest specks of stardust.

  “There’s so much I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m not even sure what I’m meant to say to people when they ask how we met.”

  “Why don’t we figure that out now? If you aren’t too tired.”

  “You don’t have a story ready?”

  “Not really. I do have some ideas. We could say we met at the hospital—remember that you were a student nurse. I’d come in with a complaint of some sort. A broken wrist, or a cut that needed stitching, and you helped to care for me.” He paused, and then he sighed, a low, grumbling sort of noise that might have been drawn from Bello’s lexicon.

  “What is it?”

  “If we tell her that, my sister will worry about me even more than she usually does.”

  She decided to ignore the question of why his sister was given to worrying about him. “What if we tell them a romantic story? That’s how people meet in books, and in films, too. They bump into one another, or the heroine drops something, and the hero rescues it for her. People will forget about the other parts if they have that one story to remember.”

  “Very well. How did the hero and heroine meet in our story?”

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the wondrous starlight, and made herself imagine a different life, a different her, in which she was the heroine and life was a series of charming romantic vignettes, and the hero was a man who looked and behaved exactly like Niccolò. She’d never been terribly interested in romantic stories, but this one might end up holding her interest.

  “I was getting on a vaporetto at Rialto,” she began, “and the strings were frayed on my bag of shopping, and the onion I’d bought fell out and was rolling around the deck. It was about to go into the canal, and you stopped it with your foot and picked it up and wiped it off with your handkerchief. And you gave it back and said something funny . . .”

  “How about, ‘Here’s an onion you don’t have to cry over’?”

  “Yes! Oh, that’s perfect. We started talking, and when I got off you alighted, too, and we kept talking as we walked, and then we were at the front door of . . . where would I have been living?”

  “Not at the hospital, since it isn’t anywhere near Rialto. Hmm. What about one of the university residences in San Tomà? Or maybe those are just for men. A boardinghouse for female students?”

  “Yes. Yes, that would work.”

  Now Niccolò took up the thread of the story. “I asked if you might agree to meet for a walk the next day, and even though you didn’t know the least thing about me, you agreed.”

  “We went for a walk every day until you had to leave.”

  “But I wrote to you—”

  “And you came to see me every time you were in the city—”

  “And I asked you to marry me in the summer, the last time I was there, and even though it meant giving up your studies you agreed. We were married the day before yesterday.�
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  “And now you’re bringing me home to your family,” she finished.

  “Yes.”

  “I think they’ll remember the onion. Good night, Nico—sorry. I meant to say Niccolò.”

  “Nico will do. You’re family now.”

  THEY WERE AWAKE at dawn.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have anything for breakfast, but we’ll be home in a few hours. Do you mind walking for a while? Bello is feeling the damp this morning.”

  “I don’t mind, no.” Walking had to be better than another day spent on that horrible cart, and if she was walking she wouldn’t have to dwell on how tired and anxious and sad she was.

  They walked and walked, the sun climbing ever higher in the brightening sky. The road rose slowly, steadily, the flat plains giving way to soft, low hills and the distant, stony spine of the mountains beyond.

  She’d forced herself not to ask the question before, but now she gave in. “How far do we have to go?”

  “Not far at all. We’re just outside San Zenone now. My mother was born here. She died when Carlo was born.” And then, as if anticipating her next question, “I have six siblings still living. The eldest of us was Marco, but he was killed in Tobruk two and a half years ago. Then there’s me, then Rosa, then two babies who died. Then Matteo—he’s seventeen now—and after him there’s Paolo, Agnese, Angela, and little Carlo. He’s nine.”

  So Rosa was his sister. The one who worried and would expect to be told everything. “Who took care of them after your mother died?”

  “Rosa did, with some help from my aunts. I wasn’t living at home then—I went away to school when I was fourteen. I only returned after Marco was killed. Papà couldn’t manage the farm on his own, and Matteo and Paolo were still too young to take on the heavy work.”

  “I’m sorry. About your mother, and Marco, and the babies, too. That must have been very hard.”

  “It was. Still is. And I should also tell you—”

  “What is it?” she asked, instantly apprehensive.

  “I was in the seminary. I was training to become a priest. When I came home to help my family, that’s what I left behind.” His expression, already solemn, grew graver still.

  She nodded, taking it all in, and then she remembered: Catholic priests weren’t allowed to marry. “And now you can’t ever go back. Because of me.”

  “That may be how people see it, but you and I know the truth. As does Father Bernardi.”

  “Your family will be upset. Your father—”

  “He knows I’ve been questioning it. My vocation, I mean. He’ll understand.”

  “What about your sister? Mario said she’ll have questions for you.”

  “Rosa has a good heart. She wants the best for us, for all of us, and she’s never been happy that I left the seminary. So my having married may . . . upset her.”

  “Upset her how?” Nina pressed. “Will she be sad? Or angry?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted, and his accompanying smile was rueful. “I think a little of both? But she’ll come around. I know she will.”

  “All right. Well, thank you for telling me.”

  She was grateful for his honesty, but his admission made her anxious. The journey a man took to become a Catholic priest wasn’t something Nina had ever thought about, but she did know it was a position of some status. And now she had become the impediment that prevented him from attaining that position, and never mind that he hadn’t truly married her or broken any sort of vow he might have made in the past. To his family, she would be the woman who had made him abandon, forever, his dream of becoming a priest. She wouldn’t be surprised if they all turned their backs on her.

  They were walking through a village, the first since they’d left Campalto; Niccolò had taken care until now to keep them to the quieter side roads. It wasn’t much more than a cluster of buildings at a crossroads, with a public fountain and a church that loomed over the other buildings, and as they passed by one of the outlying farms a woman waved at them and greeted Niccolò by name.

  “Good day, Zia Nora. Your garden is looking fine,” he answered, but he kept walking, and the woman, still smiling, returned to the basket of beans she’d been shelling.

  “A cousin of my father,” he explained.

  “You have cousins everywhere.”

  “I do. My father is one of twelve and my mother was one of seven. I have cousins upon cousins upon cousins.”

  “It was only ever me and my parents. They married late, and my grandparents died before I was born. My mother had a sister, but she was much older than Mamma. I was still a little girl when she died.”

  “You’ll be surrounded by family in Mezzo Ciel. Everyone will want to know your business. Everyone will have an opinion.”

  “It was like that in the gh—”

  “Shh,” he warned, shaking his head.

  “Yes, sorry. I meant to say that my neighborhood was very close-knit.”

  “I know it will be hard to not speak of your family or your friends, but it’s far safer. You can tell me about them when we’re alone.”

  They were approaching a crest in the road, and now he stopped and pointed to a cluster of buildings in the middle distance. “Can you see the church and campanile? The sun makes them look very white. That is Mezzo Ciel.”

  “But it’s halfway up the mountain!”

  “I swear it only looks that way. We’ll be there in another hour. Maybe a little more.”

  They walked on, and the sun grew hotter and hotter, and before long her hair was plastered to her nape and temples. She’d lost her handkerchief at some point, so she mopped at her face with her sleeve and kept moving.

  “Are you all right?” Niccolò asked.

  “Yes. The sun is warm, that’s all.”

  She concentrated on walking, just walking, for there was nothing she could do about her hair or sunburned face until they arrived. All she could do was walk.

  “Here.” He handed her a folded cloth, damp and blessedly cool. “Take this. It’s clean—Zia Elisa used it to wrap the bread.”

  Never had anything felt so good as that cloth against her face and neck. “How far?” she managed.

  “Not even a half hour. If you look up you’ll see—one more hill and we’re there.”

  She was too tired to look up. She was too tired to think of how stiff she was after sleeping on the ground, how hungry and hot and wretched she felt. She wouldn’t think of the blister on her left heel or her sunburned face. She wouldn’t let herself think of how sad and lonely and adrift she felt with her parents so far away. She wouldn’t think of all she had lost. She wouldn’t—

  “We’re here, Nina. This is Mezzo Ciel.”

  Chapter 6

  They stood at the edge of a small, sloping piazza, its far corner dominated by the church and campanile that Niccolò had pointed out earlier. Its few modest shops—a cobbler, a general store, and a bakery—were shuttered for lunch, and outside the square’s lone osteria, a trio of white-haired men sat dozing in the midday sun. The buildings were old, though not old enough to be interesting, and their stucco was cracked and faded, but every window was clean and every stoop was freshly scrubbed.

  “There isn’t much more to it than this. The two main streets meet here at the piazza—via Mezzo Ciel and via Santa Lucia.”

  “How far are we from the farm?” she asked, hoping it wouldn’t be more than a few kilometers.

  “It’s just past the church,” he answered, and then, in response to her disbelieving look, “I swear it isn’t far.”

  They crossed the piazza, taking the road that led past the churchyard’s flanking walls, and almost immediately found themselves in the countryside again, the stone giving way to shambling hedgerows, the cobbles of the piazza vanishing into a dusty roadbed, and Bello was straining at his bridle and grumbling at Niccolò to hurry, hurry—and suddenly they were there.

  The farmhouse was set back from the road, with a tidy courtyard of old cobbles in
terspersed with patches of gravel, and stables that met the main building at right angles, their stalls and pens just visible beyond the open doors. The house stretched to three stories, the bottom of fieldstone and the upper two of a mellow, rosy brick, though the top floor was only two-thirds the height of those below. The windows that faced the courtyard, four to each story, were shuttered against the midday sun. The entrance was set into the center of the bottom floor, its threshold shaded by the silvery boughs of an ancient olive tree, and next to it a pair of low stools sat waiting for occupants.

  A rangy, rough-coated dog came barking toward them, then two girls and a boy emerged from the house, their cheers of “Nico! Nico!” rising in counterpoint to the dog’s delighted yelps, the hawing of an agitated Bello, and the laughter of their brother as he lifted them high and swung them round and round.

  Two teenage boys came striding out from the stables, followed more sedately by an older man who so resembled Nico that he had to be his father. He smiled readily enough, coming forward to greet them, but faltered when a woman came out of the house. She, too, had the family face—she might even have been Nico’s twin, with the same dark, solemn eyes and honey-colored hair.

  “We weren’t expecting you back until next week at the earliest,” the older man said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Nico steered Nina forward, his arm a bracing weight around her shoulders. “Nina, this is my father, Aldo, and my sister Rosa. I’ll introduce you to the others in a moment. Everyone, this is Nina. My wife.”

  “Your wife?” Rosa clutched a hand to her heart, just as people did when they received news of a tragedy. Whirling around, she rushed back inside.

  Nico’s arm tightened a fraction, but he made no move to hurry after his sister. It would be up to Nina, then, to smooth things over. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Signor Gerardi.”

  “And I am delighted to meet you—but please, no signor here. You are my daughter now. Papà will do.” He took her hands, kissed her cheeks, and offered a tremulous smile. “Welcome to our family.” And then, calling to the older boys, “See to the mule and cart.”

  He ushered her into the kitchen, the low door set deeply into the stone walls, and gestured for them both to sit at the long table. The room was dominated by an enormous hearth that took up most of the far wall; opposite the table was an iron range and a wall-hung enamel sink with a single faucet. So there was running water, and electricity, too, judging by the overhead light fitting and the walnut-cased tabletop radio that sat on a shelf next to the door.