Secret of the Song

by Cathie Hartigan

  We met at the top of the steps. Me, slightly breathless. Him, very breathless, panting noisily as if air were in short supply. He was wearing a T-shirt, black, eff off scrawled in red. His arms were … no, not a tattoo, bruised blue here and there. He had something in his hand. I couldn’t quite see. I couldn’t look either. His eyes were too arresting. Too wild. Too scary. I think I gasped or moaned. I don’t know. All I do know is that there was the slightest moment of pause, a twitch or a blink, then he pushed past me and I was knocked back.

  Fortunately I still had my hand on the rail and didn’t fall, but the boy …

  There’s a place halfway down the steps where the bank rises up on one side. The earth is worn smooth where everyone clambers over to get down to the river. Usually there’s a path along the water’s edge, but when the river’s up, it floods too.

  I don’t know what the boy was thinking. Was he thinking? Perhaps he thought the path would be on the other side and he would escape from whatever it was he was running from so desperately. But it wasn’t. When the boy jumped from the bank it was into the water. The swirling brown water that took a full-grown tree and waltzed it downstream. I saw the boy’s arm above the water just the one time.

  The couple chasing him finally made it across the road. I couldn’t take my eyes from the water. I think the man phoned the police.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ The woman put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. I think so. Yes, fine.’

  ‘He didn’t get you did he?’

  ‘Get me?’

  ‘He was running about in the shop waving a needle.’ She gestured in the direction of TK Maxx. ‘Kept saying he was going to stick someone. Course, drugs and diseases is the worry, isn’t it? I don’t know. What can you do? He didn’t though, did he?’ She looked worried suddenly. ‘Did he? Did he stick you?’

  I looked down at my right arm. I was wearing a thin shirt underneath my coat. Duck egg blue with cuffs that roll up and you can button them down with a loop. I’d undone them though and the sleeve being a bit long, protruded at the wrist. There was a rip in the fabric. Not a long one, a couple of inches, but not yet frayed. Beneath, a dark stain was spreading.

  Chapter Four

  Gesualdo 1585

  She didn’t come. For days the memory of the silver in my hands remained clear, each coin a piece of my bright future. But gradually it dulled. The days cooled. My baby sister was well again and getting everywhere on her hands and knees. I hid my silks in a box out in the woodshed behind a stack my father was saving till next year. I still sewed the seams of my crimson nightgown and I knew it was the best I had ever made but I worked with ever decreasing speed. The following spring, it was done. I held the garment up by the shoulders, first at arm’s length, then I put it against my body, against my clean apron, imagining the softness of it next to my skin.

  ‘Hey, you,’ said a voice. ‘Are you the girl that does sewing?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ I said, thrusting the cloud of crimson silk back into its pillowslip.

  A boy stood at the door. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘My name is Salvo Carlino and it’s taken me a while to find you, Silvia Albana.’ He sat on my father’s chopping block. When he spoke his voice jumped back and forth from boy to man, but he betrayed no bother about it. ‘I’ve been all over. The old woman with the bees told me where you’d be. Here.’ He pulled something from his pocket, stamped on it with his heel, then threw it upwards, caught it in his mouth and began chewing. Then he threw another something at me. I caught it and found a large almond in my hand.

  ‘You stole from Francesca?’ He didn’t look like a thief. Clean clothes and hands. I didn’t recognise him from the village. He stole the light from inside the shed too, so I went to the door better to look at him.

  ‘I didn’t exactly steal—’

  ‘Who sent you?’ I interrupted, as now I could see what I suspected. The workmanship of his jerkin, the placing on the yoke around the shirt collar. I’d seen it before. ‘Your mother?’

  He looked me up and down. ‘You’re a sharp one. Pretty too.’

  Heat burst into my cheeks and I would have run back home had he not been the bearer of a message I was keen to hear. ‘So who is your mother and why are you looking for me?’

  ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘is needlewoman to Donna Maria d’Avalos.’

  At this, I gasped. Donna Maria D’Avalos! She was to marry the Lord of Gesualdo himself, Don Carlo.

  ‘She needs an assistant,’ he went on, ‘and thinks you’d be suitable. I’m supposed to speak to your mother and then take you to the castle.’

  ‘The castle?’ My heart jumped as I glanced towards its high walls on the skyline. The decision was already made. ‘We don’t need to speak to my mother,’ I lied. ‘Besides, she’s away today. Wait here.’

  Only once in my life had I felt the earth shaking and the panic of everyone leaving their beds and fleeing to safety. The feeling I had as I rushed back home to fetch my few things seemed somehow akin to that. I would leave a message with Francesca for my mother. Quickly, I dashed some water across my face and pulled at my apron strings, wiping my hands on its coarse cloth. There was something in the pocket, the almond tossed at me by the boy. Its shell like pigskin, large and perfect. The trouble with almonds is they often look like that and yet when you open them, the nut is shrivelled, its taste bitter. You can never tell though, and once cracked open there is no repairing the shell.

  There were many things to get used to at the castle of Gesualdo, but I was kindly treated. Salvo would speak with me, too often I thought, but his mother, Signora Carlino, said nothing. She said nothing a lot. We would sit together without speaking, but listening to the strange music that echoed around the castle when the master was at home. I was yet to see any more than a glimpse of him in that first year after his wedding to Donna Maria. There’d been a flurry of excitement in the village and up at the castle when we heard that Don Carlo’s father had conceded his royal titles to the happy couple. Pietro, Don Carlo’s personal man, informed all the servants that the Prince and Princess would not take it ill, however, if we continued to address them as Don Carlo and Donna Maria. Not that it made any difference to me. I’d never seen either of them.

  For several months I sewed nothing but undergarments, but even to those I gave my full attention. I doubt there were neater seams to be found. Three of us sat opposite each other at a large table used for cutting and the laying out of clothes for pressing. Laura was a little older than me but useless with a needle. It was her job to edge and darn the bedlinen. Apart from the strangled cough uttered every few minutes, she too was silent. I did smile at her, whenever she looked up, but never received anything except a sullen stare in return.

  Then one day, Signora Carlino handed me a velvet jerkin the colour of a midnight sky.

  ‘Let me see you put the lining in this, child.’

  The main seams had already been sewn with large stitches. I knew this would be testament to my skills but I had never sewn silk to velvet before. I stroked the fabric to check the way of the nap and found that to smooth the pile required my hand to rise from waist to neck.

  ‘Signora,’ I ventured. ‘Excuse me, but is this the usual way of the fabric?’ I held the jacket up. ‘Does my lady smooth her clothes like this? Or like that? I showed her both.

  She gave me a long look. ‘Bring it here.’

  I wondered whether she would be angry. Was it insolent to ask? Signora Carlino ran her finger over the velvet, this way and that, then gave a slight laugh. ‘You have sharp eyes, Silvia and a good feeling for cloth. I’m glad you spotted this.’ To my surprise, she gripped one side of the front and with great force, tore it from the back. ‘This was my mistake,’ she said. ‘I have cut the velvet upside down.’

  Through the small window sunlight suddenly glanced, shedding light across the split seam. The face of the Signora was lit too, and her expression and something in her eyes reminded me of old
Fransceca. It took me by surprise.

  ‘Come,’ she said, rising from her seat and beckoning me to go with her. ‘We shall cut a new piece. Or rather, you will cut a new piece. Here.’ She handed me the useless front of the jacket. ‘Do what you will with this. I’m sure you will think of something.’

  I squirreled it away.

  The Princess had regained her figure after the birth of her baby boy and was demanding new clothes. I had yet to meet her but as the garment neared completion I asked what should be done about a fitting. A few days later the Signora announced it would be the next morning.

  ‘Is there anything I should know about the Princess, Laura?’ I asked her as we prepared for bed.

  ‘How do I know?’ she said, with a sharp breath that immediately set her coughing violently. It was my misfortune to share with Laura, who when she wasn’t coughing, wheezed all night long.

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘It’s you she wants to see, not me.’ She shook her head with the same violence as she coughed, then muttered under her breath: ‘Even though I’ve been here much longer.’

  So that was it.

  ‘I am sorry, Laura.’ I said.

  She didn’t reply. If there was anything curious about the Princess, I would have to find it out for myself.

  Perhaps I should not have been surprised that at my first sighting, my lady was in a state of total undress. After all, it was important that I knew her figure exactly. No one person is the same as the next, unless they are twins. Signora Carlino had taken many measurements, but the best fit was made from trying on the body. And for the undergarments, well, it wouldn’t do for them to be so big they ruckled the outer garments or so small they split under stress.

  ‘Silvia Albana, my lady. The child I told you about.’

  I curtsied at once and studied the pair of feet that were all I could see with my head bowed. They looked new, just like a baby’s, although two or three times the size. Unblemished and smooth; I didn’t think my lady had done a lot of walking. They stepped nearer and a sweet perfume enveloped me as she leaned down, gently placed a finger under my chin and raised me to my feet. I thought it best to close my eyes but curiosity would not obey, and I took in her nakedness at close quarters.

  ‘So,’ she said, as I reached my full height and felt her gaze on my face. ‘You come with high recommendation, my pretty Silvia. Shall we get on well?’

  Such honey in her voice, as warm and smooth as her skin.

  ‘I…I hope so, my Lady.’ I could hardly speak for the constriction in my throat. To be asked such a question!

  She laughed and my knees trembled. ‘That’s very good,’ she whispered. And with her fingertip traced a soft line up to my lips. ‘Do you know when to speak and when to stay silent, I wonder?’ I said nothing and she laughed, turning away and beckoning towards a shift that lay over the bed.

  ‘Can you read and write, Silvia?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. I was sent for tutoring to Father Vincentino’s with my brother.’

  ‘That was very generous of your parents. Did they not need your help at home?’ She held up her arms and I slipped the shift over her head.

  ‘Yes, but …’ I hesitated, not knowing if I should tell her about all the arguments. How I’d pleaded and wept, how my mother wouldn’t hear of it and how eventually … ‘my father took my part.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yes.’ I pulled on the hem to straighten it. ‘He thought some learning would be of help to me if I were to better myself.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Donna Maria raised her eyebrows and I saw that her eyes were not brown like mine but a dark blue, like the sky in late evening or just before dawn. I had never seen eyes like that before, and I stared for a long moment until Donna Maria laughed again. ‘What a very sensible man your father must be,’ she said.

  ‘He is, my lady.’ And I missed him suddenly.

  Later, when Laura and I were undressing for bed, I glanced across at her and into my mind came Francesca’s old nag. Poor Laura wasn’t old but coughing had already bent her body. Her skin had no bloom and there was no lustrous quality to her slack hair. I did try to befriend her, but only once, when I shared my roasted almonds with her, did she thank me. She coughed worse than ever afterwards, so I half wished I hadn’t.

  As I undid my cap and shook out my own curls, I stroked a lock between my finger and thumb while remembering Maria D’Avalos. So beautiful, I thought. And in a moment of fancy, another thought presented itself: what would be the result of mixing such beauty with an equal part of power? My skin smarted under a wave of goosebumps.

  I visited my family when I could and although disapproving of my disobedience, my mother and father recovered their good will towards me a little more each time. They were glad of the money I brought and the small items I made for the baby from the fabric remnants. No other child in Gesualdo was so well dressed.

  Often, Salvo would happen to be going to the village at the same time, and one day we were approaching the edge of the first olive grove when, without warning, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to the side of the track.

  ‘How dare …’ I started, but he shushed me, and I could tell by the look in his eye that he meant no harm.

  ‘The Prince is coming!’ he hissed, ‘and he will ride straight over us if we are in the way. Be quiet.’

  Sure enough, apart from the sound of a few small birds, startled by our disturbance of the undergrowth beneath them, I could hear the sound of horses coming. Moments later, they were in clear view, and I had my first proper sighting of Don Carlo Gesualdo, husband of my lady. Perhaps it was the same birds that we had put up which unsettled the horses, for they shied suddenly.

  Don Carlo looked sharply in our direction.

  ‘Who is there?’ he said. ‘Show yourself.’

  ‘Stay here,’ Salvo whispered to me, and I prayed the holly thicket I knelt behind was sufficient hiding place. It would not do for us to be found together. I’d be shamed back into sewing sheets faster than a stork stabs a snake.

  ‘Forgive me, Prince Carlo,’ I heard Salvo say. ‘It was not my intention to startle the horses. I was hoping not to impede your Highness on his journey home.’

  Easing a twig aside, I looked through a narrow window straight into the face of the Prince. It was as much as I could do to keep silent. I thought at once of the honeyed skin of my mistress. The golden landscape of her body with its smooth mounds and darker, hidden places. How would it be to lie with this grey-fleshed fish? He was not old, and I wondered for a moment if he were poor in health, like Laura, for it was as if the day’s bright sunshine failed in its shining when it arrived on the face of Don Carlo. From the side, his profile was not so bad for his nose was straight and not too large, but when he turned … there was the fish again, the eyes set narrow and the cheeks falling away to the smallest point of a chin, hardly wide enough to support the silvery lips, thin as splinters. A shudder passed through me from top to toe as I thought of them pressed in earnest against those of my lady.

  Salvo’s convincing worked well, and in a few moments the Prince’s troop rode on, and the cart bearing the corpses of the unfortunate victims of the hunt creaked and clattered away up the hill behind them.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Salvo said when I crept out from behind the holly.

  ‘Not a ghost,’ I said, ‘but I do not see any virtue in the Prince’s face.’

  Salvo’s expression darkened with derision. ‘Virtue? What need do Princes have for virtue? Nothing can touch them.’ He reached towards me and cupped my chin in his hand. ‘It is the likes of us who have to be virtuous, Silvia, for we are vulnerable to the vagaries of the wealthy.’

  There was a bitter harshness about his voice that I hadn’t heard before. It had been in my mind to merely say that Don Carlo was not a handsome man, but I couldn’t deny my fear. No, I had not seen a ghost, but the shadow cast across the Prince’s face seemed to me an omen, a portent of so
mething a lot more sinister than a cloud on a clear day.

  Chapter Five

  Larks should never get together with owls. It ought to be written down somewhere. If they do, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that a mummy owl might have a lark baby. That’s only all right if the daddy lark stays around to oversee the mornings.

  Mollie bounced into the kitchen, singing. I made her sandwiches with my eyes still closed. Of course, she wasn’t the only one with a tune in her head. Mine was Weep, O mine eyes and cease not … that I may drown me in you.

  I kept seeing the boy who drowned. A flashback, I suppose, is the proper term. I had two; firstly the crazed expression on his face and then his arm, a pale periscope briefly surfacing above all that dreadful water. Dreadful, dreadful … I leaned against the kitchen table, weak suddenly. My arm was pale too, but perfectly smooth apart from a square inch of plaster. I did think about repairing the tear in my shirt, but when I took it off later, I knew I would never wear it again. Four hours I’d spent in A&E, thinking about mortality. I’d rung Michael and he’d picked up Mollie from school but by his tone, it was obviously very inconsiderate of me to be in danger of death.

  I told Michael not to tell anyone, and definitely not Mollie. When I finally went home from the hospital, I had been told that the test results so far indicated that I was most likely negative. They couldn’t be one hundred percent sure for another four weeks, but I should try not to worry. I was almost fine.

  What a difference a word makes.

  ‘Miss Price said, Miss Price said,’ Mollie sang to the tune of Three Blind Mice, ‘if you like … if you like … you could see her before school … you could see her before school …’ She swallowed a few mouthfuls of Ribena and sang it all over again.

  At last. Miss Price had put off my calling in for a whole week. ‘Now let me see,’ I said. Do you think I should see her before school?’ As if I didn’t know. She put her hands on her hips and looked at me crossly for a second, but then we both laughed.