Rosamanti

by Noelle Clark

  Just as she decided to turn around, the flashlight beam found more steps. Uncertainty and fear played with her mind, making her uneasy. She shone the light up the stairs, searching in the darkness for a clue as to what lay ahead. There seemed to be a blockage. Oh great. Taking a deep breath, she climbed up the steps. It was a relief to be able to stand upright again. After a dozen steps, she was close enough to see brown wooden planks blocking her way. She put out one hand, touching it, feeling the edges. As she hoped, hinges lay down one side. Going to the other side, she probed and scratched until she felt the latch.

  She climbed up as close as she could and placed her shoulder against it. Dirt and debris fell into her hair. With a shove, she lifted it. Bright white light momentarily blinded her. Bang! It dropped closed again. With a heave, she managed to push it up, at the same time climbing higher on the stairs.

  “Agh!” Her voice echoed in the confined space, but the effort she put in paid off. The trapdoor opened silently into a room. Where the hell was she?

  “Hello! Buon giorno!”

  Nothing. Total silence. With trembling hands and panting from exertion, she climbed up the last couple of steps and into what appeared to be a deserted kitchen. Slowly, she crept fully into the room, her eyes darting around, trying to take in the scene. She paused. A big pot sat on a cast iron stove and a table laid for a meal lay under a smothering layer of grey dust. Straining her ears, she listened for any sound, any sign of inhabitants. Dusty bottles of wine sat on a shelf next to a closed doorway. Creeping over on the balls of her feet, she put a hand on the brass door knob and twisted it. The opening door shrieked, making her jump and her heart race. She froze still, again listening hard, as she peered into the room, her jaw dropping as she realized where she was.

  Two windows sat either side of a solid green door. Although they were shuttered from the outside, she could see enough through the cracks to make out Villa Jovis towering above her. Farther around, she recognized the view—the blue of the sea and the rolling hills and rugged outcrops of the land belonging to Rosamanti. The forbidden casa. She casually searched through the little cottage. It was eerie. Men’s clothes hung in the little wardrobe of the bedroom. A double bed with an ornate iron bedhead, lay strewn with bedding, all filthy and dusty. A little dressing table in the corner was adorned with a brush, comb and other things. If it wasn’t for the thick layer of dust, she’d say this place was lived in only yesterday. The apprehension she felt crawling through the dark and dank tunnel, and then entering this unknown place, disappeared completely. There was a vibe here, a comfortable feeling. Why did she feel as though she’d been here before?

  She went from the bedroom into a small sitting room at the front of the cottage, then found the bathroom. Bright orange rust marks trailed down from a dripping tap in the once white enamel bath tub. A table in the corner held a porcelain bowl and jug, dry green slime coating the insides where it once had water sitting for a long time. The floor was made of stone, except for a wooden area behind the door. Tilting her head to one side, she leaned forward, then kneeled down to examine it properly. Her fingers, now practiced in the mechanisms, found the hinges, then the latch. A slow smile gradually spread across her face. Another tunnel!

  The compulsion to explore was too strong to deny, even though her common sense told her to go back to Rosamanti. Her curiosity was insatiable, with the who, what and why words bombarding her brain. Question after question formed, obsessively wanting to know the answers. Adrenalin coursed through her veins, deleting any thought of danger or fear. She quickly retrieved the flashlight from the kitchen where she had left it at the other trap door and returned to the bathroom. Climbing in, her feet found the rusty rungs of a steep metal ladder. It was awkward to go down vertically and hold onto the flashlight. Her backpack was catching on the rough rock wall at her back. On an impulse, she climbed back up to the top rung, unhooked her backpack, and tossed it over the lip of the trapdoor, landing behind the bathroom door.

  With renewed determination, she again lowered herself slowly down the vertical shaft, holding tightly to the rusty rungs. Down, down she went. She smelled salt, mingled with decaying organic matter. The deeper she went, the darker it became. A thought crossed her mind, sending chills up her spine. What if the flashlight batteries gave out? Still, she persevered. Finally, just as her burst of adrenalin was about to fade, her feet found solid ground.

  Leg muscles trembling from the exertion of climbing down the long ladder, she found herself standing at the bottom of the shaft in a small space. Shining the flashlight around, she saw that there was only one way to go and that was to follow the tunnel that went off at waist height, either that or climb back up. It was pitch dark now. She surmised she had to be really deep into the mountain under Villa Jovis. She bent over and, on all fours, prepared to climb into the tunnel. She heard a crunch underfoot and shone the light down. Squashed under her shoe was a roll of filthy, yellowed paper, tied up with a red ribbon to look like a scroll. Her hands shook as she picked it up. Placing the flashlight on the ground, she began to undo the bow. The old material fell to pieces, rotten from time, and easily dropped off. As she tried to unroll the scroll, a chunk of it broke off in her hand, like a piece of thin wafer bread. With deft fingers, she painstakingly unfurled the old, dried out document. Words written in black ink stood out starkly from the cream paper. Sarah gasped as she recognized the handwriting.

  Ebano e avorio, cani e gatti.

  Her heart beat faster. It had to be another clue from Elena. She peered intently at the words on the yellowed paper. Gatti. That means cat. Cani… That would be plural for dog. She shook her head. Dogs and cats. She looked at the other two words, unable to translate them. She carefully stuffed the roll of paper into the top of her T-shirt and bent down, preparing to enter the shaft. Dropping to her knees, she slowly and awkwardly moved through the tunnel, holding the flashlight in one hand. Every so often, the beam flickered, but if she slapped it, it sprang to life again. On she went, noticing that the gradient of the tunnel floor was rising—not steeply, but gradually. As she crawled, she pictured in her mind’s eye the markings on the old map back in Nonna’s drawing room. The dotted line from the outbuilding had ended up on the cliffs.

  The passage of time was irrelevant. Pitch darkness surrounded her. Above ground it could have been night or day, raining or sunshine. The writer in her felt excitement beyond anything she had experienced. She was deep in a secret, a real life mystery, and almost certainly, she was the first person to use this tunnel for a very long time, probably since Nonna was twelve years old. As she crawled doggedly on all fours, a tingle ran up her spine. Maybe Tiberius himself used this tunnel. She knew, with considerable certainty, that she was indeed crawling under a structure built two thousand years ago.

  Her flashlight became perceptibly dimmer with each inch she moved. An uneasy thought crept into her otherwise adventure-soaked mind. What if she got stuck in here? In the darkness, she grimaced as she realized her spontaneous decision to shed the backpack could come back and bite her on the bottom. It contained maps, food and water. A lot of good it would be to her if it was back in the cottage. It was obvious to her that nobody had visited the little outbuilding for goodness knew how long. Noticing it was getting harder and harder to see up ahead, she silently cursed herself for being so impulsive. The flashlight beam dropped a pool of pale yellow light only as far as her outstretched hands could reach. Once eager to move forward, to discover whatever there was to discover, she became a bit shaky, her breathing a little shallower and faster. Her muscles ached and her hands, rough and grazed, stung with every movement forward. Dread replaced euphoria, fear replaced bravado. With each inch forward, she became more and more scared.

  “Come on, keep going. You can do it.” Her voice sounded young and scared, even to her own ears. If twelve year old Elena Lombardi could come here, surely she could too.

  A forced chuckle bubbled up from her throat. This would make a great scene in the ne
w Felicity French novel. She smiled in the darkness, the sound of her own voice comforting. Even Felicity was afraid of some things.

  There, she had said it. That “afraid” word. Just then, the flashlight dimmed and went out. She shook it, hit it, banged it on the ground. She flicked the switch on and off. It was dead.

  Bad thoughts crept in. Claustrophobia became a reality. Tiredness sapped her. Her limbs felt like lead, and she willed them on. Keep going! Keep going!

  Bang!

  Her head hit a hard object. The sound told her it wasn’t rock. A trap door? Please let it be a trap door?

  * * *

  Pietro woke to a haze of throbbing pain emanating from his leg; his tongue was swollen and dry. The slim crescent of the waning moon hovered over him in the darkness like the blade of the Grim Reaper’s scythe. It took him a minute to realize where he was. He tried to sit up, to rest on his elbows.“Agh! Madonna!”

  The freshly dried blood on his arms cracked and opened, the sand sticking in the grazes. He put his palms down beside him and slowly, carefully, lifted himself up, sending a shower of sand from his bare chest down on his thighs. Seeing his swollen knee looking white in the pale moonlight, he realized why it was hurting so much. He sighed, cursing himself. It was not only painful to be here like this, it was embarrassing. Never had he felt so useless. He longed for some water, his mouth dry and salty. He tried to lick his lips, feeling them cracked and dry.

  Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead as he noticed his heartbeat fluttering quickly, seeming less robust than normal. Even his breathing seemed shallow and fast. Light-headed and fearful, he blinked, trying to clear the blurry images of a string of small yellow lights dancing in front of his eyes. They seemed to be getting brighter, closer. He felt himself swooning, the lights coming faster now, much brighter, spinning round and round.

  “Che cosa?”

  Now he was hearing voices.

  The bright lights shone like a spotlight in his face.

  “Chiamate un'ambulanza!”

  Strong hands held his shoulders as water dripped into his parched mouth, trickling down the sides of his lips and onto his chest. He heard more voices, tasted the water.

  “Pietro?” The sound of his name entered his addled and dehydrated brain. He kept lapping at the steady drip of water. With difficulty, he focused his eyes, pulling them away from the bright light at which he had been staring. He saw faces, saw brows pulled together in concern, swaying in front of his eyes. Slowly, he recognized them.

  “Pietro? Stai bene? You OK?”

  Gradually, the haze cleared. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he breathed more easily. He had never been so happy to see the fishermen who regularly supplied their catch to the restaurant. His eyes looked over at their river nets lying on the sandy beach, their little lights, meant to attract the sardines and shrimps, still flickering in their floats in the shallow water. He nodded his head and let out a deep breath. “Si. I’m OK.”

  * * *

  Sarah’s legs ached from the effort of pushing the door. She lay on her back, using her quads like a hydraulic press, pushing as hard as she could. The pitch darkness engulfed her, heightening her senses. Fear of suffocating, alone, in this subterranean tunnel ate away at her sanity. Focusing hard, she kept pushing as if she was on a leg press at the gym. Fatigue sapped her strength. She rested now in between thrusts. Thinking she could do no more, she took a deep breath, summoning up all her core stomach muscles, willing her trembling quadriceps not to buckle under the pressure. Just one more!

  The force of the breath coming out of her chest made her cry out, sounding like a tennis player serving an ace. Suddenly, the seal from decades of disuse, seemed to crack. She distinctly smelled salt. And was that fresh air?

  Thump!

  Her quivering leg muscles collapsed, the door closing again. She lay there, her heart pounding, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Her hair was wet with perspiration. Fear and defeat took a back seat to optimism. She gathered her strength and rested. The next push would be the last. When she was able, she moved her backside forward until it was up against the door. Lying flat on her back, she planted both feet shoulder width apart on the door and lay down, her fingers digging into cracks in the rough floor of the tunnel.

  “One, two, three!”

  Her trembling legs slowly pushed, her whole body-weight straining to maintain the pressure. She slid backward. Suddenly, it gave, and her knees straightened out. She grabbed the now useless flashlight and quickly jammed it in the small space, wedging the door open. Her legs shuddered as she slowly let them relax, maintaining pressure on the door so that it closed lightly on the flashlight.

  Raspy breaths wracked her chest, the sound filling the tunnel. Rivers of perspiration ran down her face, tickling her neck as she lay there on the hard stone floor. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the strong smell of salt. An almost imperceptible puff of air floated across her, chilling the perspiration, cooling her.

  She lay there for several minutes, waiting until her breathing and heart rate were somewhere near normal. She tried to sit up, but fatigue had turned muscles to mush, all wobbly and weak, so instead, managed to pull herself around on her backside so that she could inspect the opening. Pushing with her hands, she was stunned to find that the trapdoor opened with relative ease now that the dusty seal was broken. Carefully pushing the door open and putting both her palms through the hole, she probed the darkness, trying to get a picture of what lay beyond the door. There seemed to be a floor similar to the one she was already on, and to each side, cold, damp, stone walls. Above, the low rock roof continued. With disappointment, she realized she still wouldn’t be able to stand up. In the back of her mind, she’d been worried that the trapdoor would open to an abyss, sending her crashing hundreds of feet downward and splattering as she hit the bottom. With a sense of acceptance, she moved the rest of her body through the trap door, leaving the now useless flashlight wedged in place, in case she needed to come back out this way.

  The tang of sea salt permeated the air. Every time she licked her lips, she could taste it. Every so often there was a faint roar, away in the distance, and minutes later a small, cool breeze teased the wayward tendrils of her hair. The effort to crawl along was physically difficult, but hope had replaced her sense of doom. Little Elena was probably the last person to crawl through this passage, and she had lived to the ripe old age of 97.

  Minutes turned to hours, her energy was fast depleting. But the shadowy greyness of the tunnel, replacing the total blackout, excited her. She knew in her bones that this was the way out. The roar she heard before the little breeze was clearly waves, hitting the cliff face. She was probably going to emerge on one of the many caves on the cliff face. She had no idea whether it would be high up, or at water level. But she didn’t care. Pietro would come looking for her when he got back to Rosamanti. Oh. A pang of loss shot through her heart. So engrossed was she in escaping, that she’d forgotten the events of that morning. Her crawl slowed to a snail’s pace, her shoulders slumped. The vision of his face when he left Rosamanti hovered in front of her eyes. He may never come back. He might never notice she was missing. For the first time since she’d set off on her quest to find the tunnel back in the Lombardi cellar this morning, tears pricked the backs of her eyes.

  Her arms melted, and she dropped to her elbows, her backside still sticking up as her knees, red raw and stinging, bore the brunt of the long crawl. She rested her forehead on the cold stone floor. The palms of her hands felt like they had no more skin on them. She had kept going through the pain—up until now.

  What seemed like a long time passed before she was able to summon the mental strength that had got her through many difficult, and tragic, times in her life. Never in her life had she been a quitter. Never had she been less than a tiger of a mother when it came to protecting her daughter, and she had never thrown in the towel when her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. Quite the opposite. She�
��d stood up, taken a few deep breaths, and squared her shoulders in battle.

  She turned her head and wiped her runny nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt, then sniffed noisily. Have faith. Faith in yourself, and faith in Pietro. Slowly, painfully, she hoisted herself from her elbows to her palms. It crossed her mind that she must look like a camel as it stood up in stages, its ass absurdly high up in the air and its front legs bent double on the ground. A light chuckle echoed in the confined space. “That’s more like it,” said a croaky voice, “Come on, girl.”

  When she reached the end of the tunnel, her jaw hung open, gawping at the vista in front of her. Perched on a narrow rock ledge, she saw a large, semicircular opening, very low in the rock wall opposite. Every few minutes a large swell of seawater lifted the water level to completely cover the cave opening. On the ebbing wave, grey light illuminated the cave. Maybe it’s night time? From the ledge where she was sitting, the wave rushed up, coming within inches of her. Fear of the sea brought fresh doubts. Don’t tell me that I’ve come all this way, only to drown!