She stuck her hand out, bracing herself to find a tomb or an effigy. She touched a ledge. Marble, and very, very cold. She tried to rise to follow the ledge.
She was startled by a fierce thud from behind her, from where she had lain just a second ago. And then every nerve within her seemed to scream in silent agonized panic as she heard the laughter again. Soft throaty laughter. A light blazed in her face; she threw her hands up to her eyes, but she was blinded. Instinctively she backed away from the light. She bumped into another ledge; she reached behind her to steady herself, and she touched something dry and brittle and wispy. She glanced down—and started to scream.
It was a centuries-old corpse. The hair remained about the skeletal head; the toothless jaw of the skull seemed to mock her scream. The bones were dressed in decaying silk.
For aeons it seemed that she screamed; only the sound of that cruel laughter brought her horror to a halt. She was desperate to survive; some inner sense told her that the skeleton belonged to the world of the dead. The skeleton could not hurt her.
The danger to her life came from the living figure who wielded the flashlight.
Chris vaulted over the marble ledge that held the corpse. The cavern was filled with ledges, and bejeweled and bedecked skeletons. She had to use them, to stay behind them, until she could discover the way out….
Poised to spring, Chris stared at the hooded figure, which was rising now. The figure, too, had taken the secret way down, knowing full well where it would lead.
Chris narrowed her eyes, trying to see beyond the blinding light. But it seemed that the game of disguise was over. As Chris watched warily, ready to vault again at a second’s notice, the figure pulled back the hood and allowed the cloak to drop to the floor.
“Sophia!” Chris said. She should have known. The key. It was Tuesday. Tuesday—when Gina di Medici was always out.
“Si, bella Christi. Sophia,” she said nonchalantly. She laughed again. “You are stunned, yes? But then, you were so anxious to blame poor Gina. Poor, long-suffering Gina! Twenty-one years ago I did her a favor…and she never had the sense to appreciate it.”
“I don’t understand,” Chris said slowly. She didn’t understand, and at the moment she wasn’t sure that she cared. But she had to play for time. Time to find a way out. As terrified as she was in the dank and macabre tomb, she still refused to believe that this could be the end. Perhaps no one believed that they could die…until the moment came.
She had to believe! She had to believe and fight. Marcus! He would come home; he would find her gone. He would search for her—relentlessly—until he found her. Dear God! He had to. He had to search for her. She loved him; he had to love her….
Sophia shrugged pleasantly, as if they had met at a sidewalk café. “Perhaps I’m doing you a favor, too. Life, cara, is not sweet with the di Medici men. I warned you about that. But you are a little fool, hopelessly in love with Marcus. He’s so much like Mario. And you see, I knew Mario very well.”
“You…knew Mario…very well?” Chris breathed.
“Yes, but of course,” Sophia murmured. “They all thought it was over the stupid statuette! We were on the ketch that day because they were trying to decide what to do about its disappearance, but the arguments…they had nothing to do with it.” She smiled like a friend, like one woman expecting understanding from another. “You know how Marcus is…the attraction. I had been with Alfred for several years, but then, by chance, Mario and I were thrown together at the strangest times.”
“You had an affair with him,” Chris said.
“Yes. An affair. Wild and chaotic and as passionate as heaven! But Mario was in love with his little mouse of a wife. And I liked my life with Alfred. I never had money…I cherished his.” She paused. “Mario wanted to tell them both about the affair. Gina would have forgiven him. Alfred would have thrown me out. Your father and Mario did get into a fight that day, over the statuette. I was on deck when it happened. They struck each other several times, then made up like little boys. When James went back into the cabin I determined to talk to Mario again.” Sophia smiled again, very nicely. “You were out on deck…you don’t remember?”
Chris shook her head. She didn’t remember any of it; she couldn’t believe that she had been there and had erased it all from her mind. She also wanted Sophia to keep talking.
Sophia sighed. “I thought that you had seen it all, that someday you would remember. I believe James thought you knew something too, something dangerous. That is why he left Venice.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Chris whispered, moistening her dry lips. “What happened?”
Sophia leaned against one of the ledges, heedless of the corpse lying on it. The flashlight hung easily from one hand, her knife from the other.
“Ah, yes! You should get to die at peace, shouldn’t you? All mysteries solved here, among a host of di Medici brides. Very dramatic, don’t you think? I’m getting ahead of myself. I tried to reason with Mario, but he was set upon confession. We began to struggle. Alfred came out then. Poor Alfred! He thought that Mario was trying to hurt me. He came into it and pulled Mario from me, throwing him against the mast. He just struck it…wrong. His neck was broken, you see.”
Sophia ran a hand along the marble slab of an open tomb, pausing. “Poor, poor Alfred! Such a good man. He was horrified. I had to convince him that he might lose his life for murder if he did not toss Mario overboard.”
Chris tried to speak as conversationally as Sophia while hiding her desperation as she looked for a way out. She could see nothing, just stone walls, shadows and corpses covered with spiderwebs and decay. But there had to be a way out! Sophia had taken it on another night, the night Chris and Marcus had found the cloak in the tunnels….
“What about Genovese?” Chris asked. “Did he…see what happened?”
“Yes, yes he did. And he did quite well for a number of years because of it. But then he became too greedy. When it seemed that you would have money, he was willing to sell the truth.”
“But why did you kill Alfred?” Chris demanded.
“Alfred no longer wished to pay. He wanted to confess the whole thing. He spent his lifetime worrying about your father and you. Then you reappeared, and he was an old fool. I knew he was meeting you to tell you the truth. I couldn’t let him do that. But…I did not have to kill Alfred. He very conveniently dropped dead for me.”
Chris began to breathe very quickly. She had seen something. A crack in the wall, an uneven place where it appeared that the stone might move. If she could keep Sophia talking just a minute longer…
“You know the palazzo very well,” she murmured.
“Yes. When I started working for Mario di Medici—Conte di Medici!—I was very young, and very beautiful. I had dreams…. I loved the palazzo. I dreamed of being a di Medici bride, you see. I hated Mario for being a fool. He denied me everything. But he died…and I remained in his palazzo. I learned it all. The history, the architecture. But, Christina, you became the di Medici bride. You are the one with the right to remain here forever and ever.”
“Sophia…”
“I’m sorry, Christina. Your time has run out. It has been drifting away since you came. You see, I was always terrified that you would remember. You should have left it alone.”
She started walking toward Chris, very smoothly, as if she knew every slab and every skeleton so well that she didn’t even need to look around. Chris leaped over another slab, putting distance between them. She was younger, she reminded herself. Far more agile. She had a chance. Perhaps she was even the stronger of the two of them.
But Sophia had the knife.
“Fredo! Fredo Talio!” Chris exclaimed, causing Sophia to halt. “He was downstairs at the galleries. Is he in this with you?”
Sophia frowned. “No, of course not. He was at the galleries?”
“Yes, yes he was. He saw both of us. He heard me screaming.”
“So?” Sophia queried, quite pleased
with herself. “He will have seen you…and a mysterious figure in a cloak. Nothing more.”
“Sophia! How long do you think you can keep this up? Death after death…you will be caught.”
“No, cara Christi, there is no proof. Genovese is gone. Alfred is gone. And you…you will stay. Here with those lucky wives who came before you!”
Was Sophia insane, or just deadly? Chris didn’t know, nor did it matter. Chris knew that she would have to pass Sophia to reach the break in the wall. But Sophia was coming toward her again. Chris instinctively set her hands upon a slab, ready to move, seeking a weapon, any weapon, to use against the other woman. Her fingers grasped bone and rotting silk; she couldn’t even let herself think about what she was doing. She threw her skeletal club at Sophia, catching the older woman off guard. As Sophia gasped and stumbled back, stunned, the flashlight fell to the floor; shadows careened and danced. Chris leaped over the slab and raced for the break in the wall, her only hope.
She could barely see the wall. The dank mustiness of the ages clung to her like a shroud. She passed slab after slab of granite and marble, veering from the blank grins of skeletons, half sobbing, half listening for the woman who would surely pursue her again.
Then the shadowed wall before her seemed to move. It did move. It was as if the skeletons had come to life, as if a host of di Medicis had risen to embrace and restrain her.
They were reaching for her; shadows were reaching for her. She started to scream.
“Christina!”
The arms that wound around her were living and real, not just bone, but flesh and blood and muscle and warmth. The di Medici who held her was not a remnant of a forgotten past, but vital and strong and secure.
“Marcus!”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Tony, take Chris…”
“Chris, come on.” A second set of arms swept around her. She saw Tony’s smile, reassuring against the shadows and darkness and death. But Marcus was gone.
“Tony, wait. Sophia is there. She’s got a knife.”
“Marcus will be all right,” Tony assured her. “The police are right behind us.”
They were; the wall was moving again. Several men—alive and well and purposeful—were moving in. Lights were flooding the tomb. Chris shivered, not so much frightened as she was sad, touched by all those bygone lives, frayed silks, rotted furs, the mockery of elegance.
“I don’t see Marcus!” she said with sudden alarm.
“There must be another exit,” Tony muttered. “Come on, I’m supposed to get you out.”
“Marcus—”
“Will be careful. He’s a grown man.”
“She killed Genovese.”
“Marcus will be wary. Chris, come on.”
She couldn’t fight him; he had a lot of his brother’s tenacity. And she did want very, very badly to leave the subterranean caverns of darkness and death behind.
* * *
There was another exit; Marcus knew there had to be when he could find no trace of Sophia. There was a marble slab on the floor, slightly askew, and as he moved it, he marveled at the woman’s strength. It was heavy, but once it was shifted he saw a flight of slippery well-worn steps leading downward.
They led to a narrow walkway, one beneath the water level, but where the walkway ended another flight of steps began, leading upward. They, too, were well-worn. In days of political upheaval they would have been a wonderful escape route.
Just as they were now. Dank and slimy and worn smooth, they still provided an escape.
When he reached the top he was on a small via facing a bridge.
On the bridge he saw her, her hooded cloak on again. She stared back and saw him, then started to run.
Marcus started over the bridge. She rounded an alley. For a moment he lost her, and then he saw her again, on the next bridge. “Sophia!”
He heard a shrill whistle; the police were behind him now. Sophia heard the whistle, too, and saw that men were coming from either end of the bridge. She hopped up to the wide carved stone railing and jumped.
Marcus hurried to the bridge and vaulted over. The water was cool as his body sliced through it, as he kicked his way cleanly to the surface. There was no sign of her. He dived again. It was dark, very dark. The lights of the city glittered on the surface, but did not come into the canal.
He jackknifed his way downward again, reaching out. His hand found fabric, and he tugged at it. He managed to grasp her chin, to raise them both to the surface. He hauled her to the nearest dock; an officer was there to pull her out, to help him.
She lay there, swaddled in her cloak. Marcus, panting and gasping, dragged himself over to her. Her eyes opened, and she smiled. He saw that she still had her knife, and he wondered why she hadn’t used it on him.
She reached out to touch his chin. “Never you, Marcus. Never you,” she said gently in Italian. “You are…his son.”
She smiled again, a little weakly. Her hand fell to her side. She shuddered a little, and then her eyes closed. Stunned, Marcus tugged the cloak away, certain that she couldn’t have drowned.
He paused, lifting his hand away. A crimson splotch was running quickly over her side. Sticky. She had either taken her own life with her knife as a final escape, or else she had inadvertently stabbed herself when she hit the water. He would never know.
He rose, dripping wet, weighted down with the sorrow and anger of it all. So many people whom he had loved so dearly had been broken and destroyed because of warped passions he wasn’t sure he would ever understand. His father, dead. James Tarleton’s life ruined in a haze of suspicion. Alfred… Genovese…and Sophia.
But his mother was innocent. And Christina was alive. He shook himself furiously. He would never allow the past to darken the present again.
The officer began to speak to him, telling him that it would all have to be sorted out for the official reports. Marcus already knew that, but tonight he wanted to go home and try to salvage the present.
He needed to hold Christina, to cherish her—and convince her that they could start anew, with all skeletons cleared from the closet, the specters of their youth laid to rest.
* * *
Gina di Medici, appearing very lost, stunned—and anxious with worry about Marcus—was still trying to understand the whole story.
But she wasn’t alone. Chris met Umberto that night. He was a middle-aged banker, quiet, reassuring, supportive and as confused as Gina.
They were gathered at the courtyard table, as they had so often been before.
Neither Tony nor Chris was helping much. They both broke into explanations at different times.
“You see, Gina,” Chris tried again, taking a huge sip of espresso laced with sambuca, “I knew my father couldn’t have murdered Mario. He was too gentle and honest.”
“And your father,” Tony reminded her. He grimaced at his mother. “So she suspected us.”
“Oh!” Gina cried out, hurt and incredulous as her eyes found Chris. “You thought that I would have killed my own husband!”
Chris wanted to crawl beneath the table. “Not really,” she lied. “I—I didn’t know who to suspect…or who to trust.”
Gina looked blankly at Tony. “I still don’t understand. Why would Sophia have done this? She and Mario were friends, and Alfred and Mario were the best of friends.”
“It was really an accident,” Chris said. “A fight that got out of hand.” She wasn’t going to tell Gina now that the husband she had adored had been having an affair. Not when Mario had been so determined to straighten things out with his wife that he had lost his life because of it.
Gina shook her head. She held tightly to Umberto’s hand. “For twenty-one years I lived with the people who had killed Mario. They stayed in his house…. They were my family. Christina, I did you a great wrong. And I did a greater wrong to your father and your mother.”
“You couldn’t have known, Gina,” Chris said.
> “Of course not,” Tony assured his mother, rumpling Chris’s hair. “Only a daughter could be so completely guided by blind faith.”
“Daughters, wives, brothers…and lovers.”
The assertion came from the rear of the courtyard. They all started, turning around. Marcus was standing there, his hair wet and as dark as jet, plastered against his forehead. Little pools of water were forming at his feet; his face appeared strained and weary.
“Marcus!” Chris knew that her glad cry was repeated around the table. She didn’t think; she jumped up, knocking over her chair to run into his arms. He was soaked through and through, but she didn’t care; she barely noticed. All she needed or wanted was the way that he held her in return, his hand slipping about her waist, his kiss touching the top of her head, his chin nuzzling a little absently over her forehead.
Tony was on his feet behind Chris.
“Sophia…?” he asked his brother.
“Is dead,” Marcus said briefly. He squeezed Chris’s hand, then walked past her to kneel by his mother and take her hand. “Are you all right?” he asked her quietly.
She smiled at him. “Now that I see you, yes. I’m not sure that I understand completely, nor that I want to. It hurts to have it all come to the surface again, but not so badly. I am sorry for them all. Get off your knees. It is a humble position, one in which I am not accustomed to finding you. You need dry clothing.”
Marcus grimaced and rose. Umberto handed him a drink, which Marcus accepted gratefully.
“I have a bit of a surprise for you all,” Gina murmured, smiling at Marcus, then at Umberto. “Perhaps this is not the night for such news, but since we are all making confessions…Umberto and I are going to be married.”
“What?” Tony gasped, then laughed. “Mamma mia! Salute!”
Umberto was flushing. “You are pleased?” he asked Gina’s sons.
“Enormously,” Marcus informed him, grinning broadly at last as he gave the older man a handshake. He kissed his mother, then Tony kissed her, too. Chris hung back a little awkwardly. Gina noticed her over Tony’s shoulder, smiled and stretched out her arms.
The Di Medici Bride Page 25