When he left, Franco put his arm around Maria, and they watched the young priest stop to look up and down the street intently before he turned in the direction of the priests’ residence. “His face is like death,” Franco said. “His hand shook so he could barely get the food to his mouth.”
“And his eyes…” Maria pressed her hand to her bosom. “A tortured soul.” They stood staring out the window long after the priest had hurried out of sight.
Vittorio returned to the priests’ house and went to his room. Alone, he tried to imagine what circumstances brought Ottavia to the city. Could she be looking for me? Why she is here is not important. The important thing is that she is here and I must find her. Here, in these teeming streets, I must find her.
****
Ottavia spent most of her time in Lucia’s house, tending her sister, who was near to giving birth. Seeing her sister’s weakened condition, she was glad that she had agreed to come. Lucia needed to stay in bed if she was to have the child she wanted. Ottavia left Lucia only for a short time every day, when she and Federico Vittorio went out to buy meat, fruit, and vegetables for dinner. At the child’s urging, each day they explored a different route to the market. As Ottavia became more used to the city, she began to enjoy their outings together, sometimes walking along the wide Via Cavour to the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that crossed the beautiful Arno River, looking from the Via Acciaioli above to the gentle waters below; sometimes walking along the Via Del Oriole to the Piazza Del Duomo in the shadow of the magnificent cathedral that dominated the city, an opulent jewel at its very heart. At other times they explored the Via Tornabuoni, filled with shops that sold clothing, leather goods, and ornately carved furniture and accessories to the rich, finished with the matte gold for which Florence was famous.
She and Federico Vittorio lingered longer than usual one day, admiring some carved toy soldiers in a shop window. When they returned, Lucia, gripping the bedsheets, was calling out to her.
“Ottavia, help me. It’s time.”
“Stay here, Vittorio.” Ottavia dropped her bag of vegetables and first ran across the street to tell the midwife, then raced to Lucia’s doctor.
When she returned with the doctor, Ottavia stayed with her sister as doctor and midwife worked together to bring the child into the world. Ottavia held her sister’s hand, letting her squeeze it until Ottavia’s fingers grew numb. “It will be over soon, Lucia. You will have the baby you have been longing for. Think of that, Lucia. Soon.”
At last Lucia held in her arms a healthy, wailing baby boy. The two sisters laughed and wept for joy until Lucia, exhausted, fell asleep, and Ottavia gently lifted the infant from her sister’s arms.
“Is it not as I told you?” Ottavia asked, kneeling at her sister’s bedside when she awoke.
“No.”
“What?”
“It is better.”
After weeks of helping Lucia care for little Carlo, Ottavia felt Lucia had become comfortable with tending to the baby and told her sister that she should be going.
“Stay a while longer with me,” Lucia begged. “Stay at least until the feast in September. All the children fly kites on that day, knights joust in the piazzas, and at night, candles float in the Arno, their reflection like a thousand floating stars tossed down from the heavens.”
“I can’t resist the magic you describe,” Ottavia said. In her heart, the magic she desired was to find Vittorio, to look into his eyes and feel his touch.
****
The monsignor, a man adept at reading people’s thoughts and desires, and using them to his advantage, noticed a change in Vittorio di Rienzi. He was distracted and could hardly carry on a conversation without apologizing and asking the speaker to repeat what he had said. When he was at home, he took to staring out the window, though lately he was at home infrequently. He took long walks, walks that took hours, and returned looking unsettled.
The monsignor, being a worldly man, considered the possibilities: a lie, a fraud, an indiscretion. He did not know which, but he was determined to find out.
On the day of the feast, Monsignor Tulano caught Vittorio as he finished his morning bread and coffee. He stood over the young priest as he put down his empty coffee cup. “What are your plans for the day?”
“I have art records to work on this morning,” he said, “cataloguing the rest of the church’s art treasures in the city.”
The monsignor rocked on his heels. “Very good. And this afternoon?”
“I plan to walk around and enjoy the kite flying and the medieval pageantry. The city is always so colorful on this day.”
“Wonderful. Just as I had planned. We’ll go together.” Tulano stared intently at Vittorio, trying to gauge his reaction. A momentary flicker of protest crossed his eyes, but the young priest knew what was required of him. He nodded his head. “I’d be pleased if we could go together.”
Vittorio folded his napkin and went to his office, wondering if he could finish there in time to search the streets alone before he had to accompany the monsignor. When his work was finished, he had less than an hour for himself, but he rushed into the streets anyway. He had a feeling of expectancy that day, and turned every corner with anticipation. His heart skipped at the sight of every slim young woman, only to have it plummet when it was not Ottavia. Perhaps she had gone back to Argiano. Since he had no idea why she was here, perhaps the visit was brief. He returned to the priests’ residence downhearted but tried to hide his feelings, chatting with the monsignor over the dinner table lest he begin to ask questions.
After their second cup of cappuccino, they set out to enjoy the pageantry. It was a brilliant day, Vittorio noticed for the first time, and a brisk wind powered hundreds of kites, gliding and dodging in the azure sky. They were splashes of bright reds and yellows and greens. The monsignor pointed out particularly pretty ones, forcing Vittorio to look up, interrupting the quest that had consumed him these last few weeks.
As they walked through the crowded streets, the atmosphere of gaiety contrasted to Vittorio’s darkening mood as they headed toward a joust in the Piazza della Signoria. In past years, the reenactment of medieval pageantry had always charmed him, the knights on horseback, the brightly colored flags, the rebirth of a time long gone. Now, the crowd packed into the piazza made it impossible for Vittorio to continue his search. Ottavia, you remind me of these beautiful kites, a momentary joy that slips through one’s fingers, possessed briefly before it is claimed by the wind and flies away, leaving its owner earthbound and wanting. Suddenly, the pageant that he had enjoyed over the years seemed meaningless. He turned to Monsignor Tulano. “Shall we leave?”
****
“Hurry, Mama.” Federico Vittorio tugged at Ottavia’s hand as they walked along the Via Del Oriole, a few streets from the Piazza della Signoria. “I want to see the joust.”
“Vittorio,” Ottavia said, laughing, “you wear me out.” She started to slow her pace, but seeing the disappointment in her son’s face, she instead rushed along with him. After all, this may be the only time in his life that he will see something as magical as this.
Whenever they went out, the chance that they might meet Vittorio filled her thoughts. What is the possibility in a city so huge? I do not know where he lives, where his work takes him, or even if he still lives here. In seven years, he could have been sent to Venice or Milan or even Rome. And yet on this day she sensed his presence. Vittorio has walked these streets. She knew it, and her heart flooded with anticipation.
They turned up the Via Verdi for a short while, then decided to cut through the narrower streets on the way to the Piazza. Everywhere they looked, kites flew, and Ottavia tried to concentrate on the excitement of the day.
They finally reached the Piazza Della Signoria, and Ottavia gasped at the crowd assembled to see the jousts. They stood twenty deep, so that anyone coming or going had little room to squeeze by behind the onlookers, and little Federico Vittorio was too small to see the pageant from behin
d so many people. Fortunately, people came and went, staying long enough to enjoy the scene enacted before them, then moving on, for it was a day to enjoy as much of the city as possible.
Federico was small enough to wiggle his way into the crowd, people smiling indulgently as the little boy, his beautiful mother in tow, made his way to the front so he could see.
Vittorio di Rienzi, still with Monsignor Tulano, stood directly across the piazza from Ottavia and their son, separated by the men in medieval armor, the horses prancing in colorful dress, the women in long gowns, veils flowing from their pointed headdresses, and dozens of flags snapping in the wind.
There was a break in the crowd of actors that held everyone’s attention, and for a moment or two, Ottavia and the child were plainly visible from across the square. Even if she were simply dressed, her beauty would have made her outstanding in the crowd, but today, wearing a bright yellow dress of her sister’s, a more sophisticated one than she owned herself, she caught the eye of many a man in Florence. As the monsignor took Vittorio’s attention, two tall men, the Fates, Vittorio would have called them, stepped in front of Ottavia and Federico, obscuring them from view.
The young priest felt buffeted by an uneasy feeling. He did not want to go, but he could not bear to stay. “Shall we go?” Vittorio asked the monsignor, deciding to walk, still clinging to the hope that he might catch sight of Ottavia down one crowded street or another.
If a horseman had not swept in front of them, Ottavia might have caught sight of Vittorio as he made his way through the crowd, the tall, slender priest following the short and portly monsignor. As the horseman passed, the back of Vittorio’s head was visible just as the crowd enveloped him.
The two clerics headed toward the Arno, strolling down the length of it along with half the city, the kites overhead airborne and shimmering. At the edge of the city, as they turned back to retrace their steps, the late afternoon sunlight, the people, the river below, and the colors above melded in a rainbow haze. The city is ripe in its beauty, about to explode with color—rose, yellow, peach, cerise. And I am being seduced by the day because I think that a beautiful woman, in a dress as bright as the sun, holding a child’s hand and walking serenely toward me, is Ottavia.
She was talking with the child, and they were laughing, enjoying each other’s company. He pointed to something on the river, and they walked to the railing to look, leaning over, head to head, engrossed in each other.
Another step closer and Vittorio’s heart began a furious dance. He stepped up his pace to reach Ottavia, and the monsignor, who had just asked him a question, stopped and stared. Vittorio was already far in front of him.
Ottavia was unaware of him until he called her name. She turned her head to look up at him, her mouth open slightly, her eyes wide in shy surprise. It seemed to him that she turned in slow motion, a glint of sun upon her lips, her hair swinging against her cheek.
“Vittorio,” she said. She stood up from the railing and faced him. She said nothing more than his name; her eyes said the rest.
Vittorio was close, seeing the smoothness of her skin and aching to touch it, his being filled with tenderness for her. “What brings you to Firenze?” he asked, keeping his hands in his pockets lest they, on their own, reach out to embrace her.
“I came to help my sister when she had her baby.”
There were pauses in the conversation, when they marveled at the presence of each other. Words were mere frills; being near was all that mattered.
“Which sister? I remember you had many.” God, I want to touch her.
“Lucia. Lucia Simonelli.” I will drown in his eyes.
“Ah, yes, I remember her.” Her beauty tears at my heart.
“I’ve been here a few weeks.”
He nodded. How well he knew that she had been there.
“Is this your son?”
She put her arm around the little boy, who leaned into his mother’s leg. “Yes, he is.”
“He’s fine-looking. What’s your name?”
“Federico,” the boy said shyly.
Vittorio smiled at the handsome young boy, suddenly wishing that he were his child, a visible tie that bound them and their love.
“I’m sorry about your husband, about Federico.”
“It was meant to be…God’s will.” The way she looked at him when she said it, there was no regret, and though he shouldn’t have been, he was pleased.
The monsignor had stood there quietly, taking in the meeting, the beauty of the young woman, the look in Vittorio’s eyes, the conversation mere foam upon the sea. While Vittorio introduced Ottavia and the monsignor, the child climbed up on the railing and reached out for an ownerless kite that floated by. They saw him at the same time. In his eagerness to grasp the kite string, his footing slipped; he was too far forward, at the point of falling to the water below.
“Vittorio!” she screamed.
With a swift arc of his arm, Vittorio grabbed the boy around the waist and caught him in his arms. The frightened child flung his arms around Vittorio’s neck and clung to him. Vittorio held him tight, understanding that the line between joy and tragedy can be measured in a millisecond. The boy, still in Vittorio’s arms, pulled back from him, and they studied each other approvingly. They were profile to profile, and the monsignor noted the same gold highlights in their hair, the same warm brown eyes, the same elegant nose and patrician chin—the child a smaller version of the man.
The monsignor thought of recent events—Vittorio’s restlessness and his long walks, the young woman’s beauty and the tender looks they shared, and of course, the child, the very image of his father.
With his charm and polished breeding, Father di Rienzi was the perfect aide to the monsignor. He and the priest had places to go in the church, brilliant futures. There was no way he would allow this woman to destroy a priest’s future and impede his own calculated rise within the hierarchy.
“Shall we go, Vittorio?” he said, with a curt bow to Ottavia. “We have an early dinner meeting this evening.”
The priest had picked up the child again, and the three lingered over goodbyes. “Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll catch up to you?” Vittorio suggested.
Monsignor Tulano moved next to Vittorio. “I’ll wait. We must move on to important matters.” Though he addressed Vittorio, he stared straight into Ottavia’s eyes until she took the boy by the hand and said that they, too, had to go.
Though he left with the monsignor, Vittorio vowed silently, “I will not be so close to Ottavia and let her slip away. We will be together again…forever.”
Chapter 12
It seemed to Liam that the big steamship was a world unto itself, with its hopes and dreams and fears, its loving and its fighting. They were a week into the voyage, halfway across the ocean, and already three children had been born and two people had died. It was life itself, moving on relentlessly, not caring that this island of humanity was far from land and civilization, and requiring that each man, woman, and child cope with the lot he had chosen, or had had thrust upon him, and make the best of it.
They shared steerage with a thousand others leaving Ireland, packed together so tightly that the air grew rank with the odor of living. Far too many people slept below, but each was grateful to have been able to book passage, and for the most part, no one complained. An occasional fight broke out. Feisty young men with too much energy and too much idle time used their fists almost as a diversion. And love bloomed in the improbable, teeming quarters where men and women, bundled and huddled together against the winter cold, discovered the beauty of shared dreams.
For four days and nights, the seas were so rough that Liam and Maeve, along with everyone else, were constantly seasick. They ate nothing, and divided their time between lying on their cots below, where every roll of the ship intensified the queasiness, and staying on deck, where the cold air helped at first, but eventually grew too bitter to tolerate, and they had to go below once again. It was a bless
ing, Maeve said, that little Dermot escaped the sickness, for many other babies cried into the night, everyone feeling sorry that ones so little should be so miserable.
The passengers thought they could endure no more, and some of them spoke wistfully of conditions back home, wondering whether those could be any worse than weeks in this hellhole, packed in so close you could not turn on your bunk of burlap-covered straw without pressing your back against another human being or wake with a start when the next sleeper planted his arm across your chest. On the second Sunday they were at sea, as a priest on board said Mass, and as he bent over the host during the Consecration, the sun came out, warming their spirits more than their bodies, and the weather turned glorious—cold, crisp, and sunny for the rest of the voyage.
Liam and Maeve became fast friends with Eamon Murphy and Daniel O’Hanlon, and after a nip or two of whiskey, Liam would profess his undying gratitude to the two big men, which he meant from the bottom of his heart.
He got the chance to pay them back sooner than he expected, as they stood in line, mess kits in hand, waiting to be served their dinner of stew. A hotheaded young man, who had caused trouble before, accused Eamon of stepping in front of him in line. The half-finished bottle of whiskey in the young man’s jacket pocket was proof he could no longer listen to reason. The crowd gasped as he pulled a pistol from his waistband and pointed it at Eamon’s chest. Daniel was ready to tackle him head on, but Liam urged him not to, afraid the gun would go off in the scuffle. Instead, he approached the man casually.
“Do you know who I am and why I’m heading for America?” Liam asked. “Do you see my limp? I was shot in the leg as I went for a British soldier. The bullet didn’t stop me, didn’t even slow me down. I killed him with my bare hands.” He spoke with chilling confidence, holding up his work-worn hands. “Choked him ’til his British eyes popped.”
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