But as we descended into the city, all the day’s joy began to leach away from me. Salvo grew quiet too. The charm of the day was over. By the time we reached Palazzo San Severo the night had come. Salvo’s new life lay ahead, though we parted with promises. I had thought little of Donna Maria while I was away but when I arrived at the palace, Laura came to greet me with the news that Don Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria was in attendance on my mistress.
I looked over my shoulder to where the wagon was turning a corner. Salvo was already out of sight. I took a deep breath as a shiver passed through me from head to foot, the cause of which, I was quite sure, had nothing to do with the chill in the evening air.
Chapter Fifteen
If ever I am in need of any marble, then I will go to Naples.
We landed in the dark so missed seeing the bay spread out beneath us. In ‘Arrivals’ the first thing I saw was a huge billboard picturing the statue of David. He had a few bits missing and the slogan underneath written, for some inexplicable reason, in English: For all your marble needs. I imagined him sitting beside me on the plane home.
The lack of sleep, large amounts of coffee and brandy – to get me on any plane – all contributed nicely to my feeling that the world was a surreal place and I was in it, in a very out of it, sort of way. Perfect for accompanying my mother on her little holiday for I would float over the top of any difficulties. The warmth of the air was delicious. I stood at the luggage carousel and marvelled at the soothing nature of circling suitcases.
‘Lisa! Over here.’ My mother already had our luggage by her feet and stood with a clutch of elderly folk clustered round a young man waving a red flag.
‘Am I being sent off so soon?’ I said. Blank faces all round.
My mother hissed,’ I hope you’re going to behave,’ as we were loaded onto the coach, ‘and what the blazes have you got in your suitcase? It weighs a ton.’
I didn’t start singing and I wasn’t sick either. To be honest, our fellow holidaymakers weren’t very inspiring and I dozed on the coach only to feel truly terrible when we were turfed out an hour or so later. I had that horrible shivery feeling, mouth like a mouldy flannel and stiff as hell from too much sitting. But even in that state, I caught the scent of lavender and lemons in the air and, once the coach’s engine was turned off, a blissful quiet.
Whether I thought of Mollie before I passed out between some very welcome clean sheets, I can’t honestly remember.
‘Wake up! Come on, Lisa. Wake up.’
Mum stood over me and I had a sudden worry that I should be getting ready for school. A second later and she’d ripped back the curtains.
‘Oh, my,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, my … oh, my goodness!’
I had to get up then. She used to do that a lot when I was little and couldn’t see over walls. It’s really irritating. But when I got to the window, what did I find myself saying? ‘Oh, my …’
Breathtaking? Splendid? Tremendous? Yes, our view was all of those things. Sorrento is almost at one end of the Bay of Naples and we looked directly across the sea to where the most thrilling feature in the area, Vesuvius, rose up to the right of the distant city. My first sighting of a proper volcano, and from grey and rainy Exeter to this sparkly blue place in one night. Wow!
I had a sharp pang of Mollie-missing. She’d want us to go there at once and climb to the top. My mother wasn’t decrepit yet, and she was one of the youngest in our party. I couldn’t imagine the others would be up to climbing a mountain.
‘It is on the itinerary,’ Mum said. She held it out. ‘Of course, it’s all voluntary. We could just sit on the terrace and sip Limoncello if we wanted to.’
I didn’t want to. One of the reasons my case was so heavy was that I had bought a couple of books about Gesualdo with me. It was the opportunity to pay a visit to the scene of the crime that finally made me agree to come. That, Mollie’s insistence and the way everything had slid so very smoothly into the correct slots. Michael was away in Bayreuth but Mollie suggested Jon might like to come and stay in the flat while I was away.
Of course, I said no. The conversation about Jon I’d had with Sophie was pushed way back in my mind, especially since two-faced Thomas had erected a few more props under my suspicions about men. But after a few hours badgering by both Mollie and Mum, I rang Sophie.
‘It’s only for four nights,’ I said.
‘Me?’ she said. ‘Have Mollie to stay? Yes. That’s lovely. Of course, I will. I’m very flattered, Lisa.’
‘Oh, phew,’ I said. ‘That’s fantastic. Problem solved.’
‘But,’ she sounded anxious, ‘I don’t think I can take her to work every day.’
‘I’m going to ring Jon,’ I said. ‘And there’s, Jessica, her schoolfriend too. I expect she can go there for a day.’
‘Jessie is going to Weymouth,’ Mollie said, when I’d put the phone down.
‘Is she? Oh well. Let’s see what Jon has to say.’
He thought it not only a ‘cool’ thing to do, but also a ‘gas’. He’d take her to Paignton Zoo, the movies, busking …
‘What?’
‘Only kidding.’
His apparent pleasure at being asked meant I mentally removed one prop, that’s all, but the plan was going from strength to strength. Even more so when Sophie rang back.
‘How about I come and stay in your flat?’ she said. ‘Only next week is when they’re coming to replace the central heating. I’ll have floorboards up and no water or heating. God knows how long it’ll take.’
Brilliant. Mollie was a bit disappointed but I was glad. If you asked me, Sophie’s house full of workmen meant many accidents not just waiting to happen but eagerly jostling in the queue.
I prayed the nightmare was an isolated incident. Newspaper headlines that read Nightmare Child Abandoned By Mother, and Neighbours in Screaming Child Rescue, flashed across my mind, but I was outnumbered three to one. It was Mollie’s idea that I record a voice message on her iPod. She suggested that we played that bloody Lion King song in the background, then if she got upset in the night, Sophie should put it on. It would be sure to soothe her. We were all impressed by this idea. Perhaps instead of being an opera singer, my daughter might grow up to be a psychiatrist or behavioural psycho-whatsit.
After a couple of paracetamol at breakfast, I felt altogether better. While Mum and I drank coffee on the terrace under the mimosa trees, Mollie replied to my vastly expensive text. Having the best time! Mxxx. In that case, I would not feel guilty and I thrust the nagging anxiety about my HIV test results into a far corner at the back of my mind.
The package bit of the holiday was a whole new experience for me. I hadn’t been on holiday proper since Michael days and then we usually self-catered in England or camped in France. When I actually read the itinerary that Mum had waved at me, it struck me as punishing for someone of my age, let alone those with dodgy hips and high blood pressure. On the other hand there was a lot to see and if another trip wouldn’t be along for some time – or even, ever – then why not pack in as much as possible? Pompeii, Capri, Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast … Naples, however, wasn’t on the list. I would have to make my own way there.
I’m not sure I could describe the holiday as relaxing. Mum could talk for England and to begin with Thomas’s name cropped up frequently, but after a couple of days and due to a budding friendship with Charles – Lisa, you don’t mind sitting behind us on the coach, do you? – Thomas was signed off. Charles was from Yorkshire. I couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not. His wife had definitely died a while ago, and while it sounds like a callous thing to say, I was glad.
Missing out on a trip to Pompeii was out of the question. Seen from where we pootled about the ruins, Vesuvius had two peaks. Mum and Charles chatted together, pointing at this and that, reading their guidebook.
I wandered off. It struck me that there were two varieties of tourist: those who were happily amazed by how civilised our forebears were, exclaiming at t
heir cleverness, artistry, and architectural skills. Then there were those who would pause, and whose eyes would turn towards the mountain every third or fourth step. Not with anxiety for their own safety but as if seeking comprehension about how the seemingly impossible had happened, that that over there, could do this over here. I was one of them.
My personal volcano slept uneasily. The letter from the hospital containing my test results was yet to arrive, but there was nothing more powerful than seeing an entire town wiped out in a few hours to remind me of the transience of life.
The trip to Herculaneum the next day began with the trip to the summit of Vesuvius. My Italian is non-existent except for a comprehensive knowledge of musical terms. Piano duettists play either the primo (first) part or the secondo (second) so I was able to persuade the coach driver that primo, I would go to the volcano, but secondo, I wanted to go to Naples not Herculaneum. This departure from the norm troubled him. He frowned and gesticulated considerably but eventually agreed to drop me at the stazione. So, after two days in Italy, I was beginning to think I could get by.
‘Are we really going to the summit of Vesuvius?’ I said through the gap in the seats, once we were back on the coach.
‘That’s what it says here. I told you.’ Mum waved her piece of paper at me and Charles nodded too.
Most of our party looked as if they would find a ladder challenging let alone a mountain. In the event, the coach park was six hundred meters from the summit – a stroll up a clinker path. Walking sticks were for hire. I trusted my youthful legs might be up to it without.
More enterprising even than the walking sticks was the turnstile at the top. Why was I surprised? After all, it is a major tourist attraction. Charitably I thought that maybe they didn’t want everyone rushing at once and then tipping over into the crater although I knew that idea was way up high on the naïve/stupid scale. Once we’d parted with considerable euros and gone through, Vesuvius revealed its vertiginous hand. On one side, it spread the world beneath us while on the other we looked down into the crater. No smoke, just steep scree and a few spindly shrubs making an effort.
I felt very insecure, and in attempting to acclimatise to the altitude, found comfort in focusing on the postcards clamped to a stand as wobbly as my knees. They were nearly all bent, because of the feisty breeze that we walked into once through the turnstile. The 1944 eruption taken by an American Air Force pilot was the most impressive even though it was in black and white. It looked up at the mountain as monstrous grey clouds of ash rose above the summit. The strange thing was that snow appeared halfway down the volcano, below the hot rock above.
‘Look.’ I showed it to Mum. ‘I think Mollie will like this one, don’t you?’
She shuddered. ‘Only if it arrives after we’ve got home. You’d scare her to death otherwise.’
‘I thought I could draw a little arrow saying We Were Here.’
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to think about it like that.’
Neither did I, but I didn’t know how not to.
Charles took Mum’s arm and they picked their way round the rim of the crater. I followed, equally gingerly, wishing I had an arm to hold. I was on top of a volcano and my little girl and my little life, for that matter, felt an awfully long way away.
I picked up a fragment of the clinker and thought of all the people that had lived on the slopes of Vesuvius prior to 1631. I’d read more about Gesualdo in the books I’d brought with me. After the murders, two servants had made statements, and a third was mentioned in passing. I wondered what had happened to them all. Another thing I wondered about was the repeated mention of the silk nightdress with the black cuffs and fringing at the bottom. My character in the tableau, Silvia Albana was in charge of the wardrobe. Had she made it?
I put the clinker in my pocket, anxious to do a different sort of digging that afternoon. A copy of the frontispiece was in my bag and I was hoping to find something out about its provenance and how on earth it ended up in a Museum in Exeter.
At the Tourist Information Office at Naples central station I bought a little street map and was told it was about a twenty-minute walk to Palazzo Sansevero. It was right next to the church in Piazza San Domenico Maggiore. I suppose in my mind, I thought Naples would be a bit like Florence, the only other Italian city I had visited.
‘Walk?’ The assistant looked shocked. ‘Taxi are outside.’
She tried again, pointing this time to a row of buses. I shook my head and smiled but she tutted, shaking her head much more vigorously. Then she patted my bag and wagged a finger. ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘Take care.’
Had she filled a syringe with anxiety and shoved it in a vein, her warning could not have been more effective. I left the office with a mind to get a taxi but the sun was shining, the street was broad and the deafening noise of hooters and squealing brakes made me more fearful of wheels than my own feet and an imaginary miscreant. But vehicles can be dangerous to pedestrians as well as passengers. How to get across the road in one piece was a mystery. On a large billboard on the building opposite, I saw the same advert I’d seen at the airport. Wasn’t it odd that Italians had adverts in English? For all your marble needs. What marble needs? I could only think of gravestones.
The traffic slowed amidst much hooting, shouting and the appearance of raised fists through car windows. I decided to take a chance. But, as my foot left the pavement, both of my arms were gripped tightly from behind. Before I had breath to scream I was dragged back into one of the narrow dark alleys between the shopfronts. A man’s voice growled rapid Italian in my ear. Only two words made any sense.
‘Silenzio’ and ‘morte!’
Chapter Sixteen
Napoli 1588
In Napoli the world had changed. Not for the better either. I could hardly question Donna Maria, so my source of information had to be Laura.
‘He arrived here only a little while after you had left for Gesualdo.’
‘But how did he know we’d gone?’
Her gaze slid away from mine. ‘She sent me,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Donna Maria sent me to their house.’
I could hardly believe it. ‘What?’ I took both her shoulders in my hands and looked directly in her face. ‘She announced it to Fabrizio’s household? To his wife?’
‘No!’ She shook me off. ‘They were to borrow the forks.’
Those stupid forks; they should never have been invented. ‘And? That’s no reason for the Duke to come galloping over.’
‘I was told to deliver them to the mistress of the house with a message to say that the children were invited to come and play with Emmanuel now that Don Carlo was away.’
‘She invited the children to come and … play?’
‘Yes, that’s what I had to say.’
It was an extraordinary strategy, but it had obviously worked. I was surprised she sent Laura though, as witless as ever and even more unkempt since I hadn’t been there to straighten her up.
‘But why did you go and not a kitchen maid or the nurse?’
Laura’s face froze and her jaw twitched near to the ears. She said nothing but shook her head.
‘Well?’
‘Donna Maria said I looked too stupid not to be believed.’
‘I see.’ And I did. My mistress had been wise in that regard but only that. ‘Now look, Laura,’ I said. ‘Have you said anything to anyone about this?’
‘No, I haven’t. But everyone knows he came here.’
‘Has she seen him since?’
She said nothing but yes was written all over her face. A chill ran through me and I wished more than anything that I could be with Salvo, riding back and forth between Gesualdo and Napoli without ever arriving at either place.
‘Don’t say a word, Laura. Not to anyone. Not even me … unless I say so. Now, where is she?’
‘Silvia, how glad I am to see you.’ Donna Maria greeted me warmly as she alighted from her carriage. ‘How was your singing?’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, my lady.’ I told her the story of the crucifix falling down, but left out the hand behind it.
She gave me a long look, perhaps to see if I had sprouted horns or grown a serpent’s tail. But then she laughed and shone the light of her smile upon me as usual. We climbed the stairs to her chamber and found Laura wrestling with a ruff which had been sat upon by one of the house dogs.
‘Will Don Carlo be staying at Gesualdo for long?’ Donna Maria’s offhand tone was no disguise as to the purpose of her remark.
‘I don’t know. He was much at prayer when I left.’
She laughed and it wasn’t pleasant. ‘Perhaps we should send him Laura. They could pray for better things together.’
I didn’t reply but suggested to Laura that she took the ruff down to the press.
‘My lady,’ I said, once she had left the room. ‘I have heard—’
‘Yes? What have you heard?’
‘It’s just that …’ What could I say? Salvo was right. We were vulnerable to the vagaries of the wealthy. It also seemed to me, however, that women were equally vulnerable to men, whatever their wealth.
‘Don’t look so worried, Silvia.’ Her voice was silk. ‘You have nothing to fear.’
‘But what about Don Carlo?’ I said. ‘What if he finds out?’
‘Why should he? We shall be very careful. Fabrizio is no fool and neither am I. Besides, Silvia, you shall help us.’
Something cold crawled over my flesh then, almost worse than the hands of Don Carlo.
Later, I found Laura weeping with frustration over the ruff. It was beyond repair and I set her to unpick the stitching. The fabric needed to be washed and re-starched for it was a fact that every piece of cloth Laura touched wearied from the experience. She was very good at bed linen and hangings, but I always pressed my own clothes and those of Donna Maria.
Secret of the Song Page 10