Rosamanti

by Noelle Clark

  The grotto wasn’t as large as the Blue Grotto. The opening would hardly take a swimmer, let alone a boat. In contrast to the illumination and blue light in the Blue Grotto, this cave was drab, with grey-white rocks tumbled every which way. Sarah scanned the rocks above her, looking for somewhere safe to spend the night. She wondered how high the tide would come in here. Would it totally consume the cave, or would there be somewhere safe to sit? Her mind was causing her grief, making her once again fearful and shaky.

  Holding tightly to the sharp, limpet-encrusted ledge, she slowly stood. Sharp pain cramped in her back, causing her to cry out. Hunched over at the waist, she couldn’t stand, her back seized from so long without being able to stand upright. Tears of pain and anguish sprang to her eyes. Her breath came in gasps as her back clenched in painful spasms and her arms tensed as she clung to the rocks. Slowly, inch by inch, she forced herself to stand upright, each movement causing excruciating pain, making her gasp out loud. With biceps trembling, she bore the weight of her stricken body. One slip and she would fall down onto the rocks, shredding her flesh on the razor-sharp, rippled edges of the oysters and other mollusks attached around the waterline. Panting, she fought hard to gain her inner strength, as well as to calm her heart beat. Dribbles of sweat ran down from her forehead and into her eyes, making them sting with their saltiness.

  Finally standing upright, she let her eyes scan the rocks and little caves above and around her. Although the light was dim, the trough of the ebbing wave allowed light in. She glimpsed, on one such wave, a round hook protruding from the wall high above her. Her heart leapt in her chest. Signs of humanity! Carefully placing each foot and holding tight with her broken nails to tiny finger holes, she climbed over slippery, shell encrusted grey boulders until she lay panting, totally spent, at the rusty ring in the wall. The ledge here was wider, flatter, and certainly a lot higher above the swells which whooshed into the grotto, swirled around like a washing machine, and then exited with a loud rush through the tiny entrance. The noise of them alone was frightening, but the thought of being swept off the ledge and sucked down under the turbulent water was enough to make her feel sick.

  Her hands shaking, she took off her bra by undoing the back and threading it down both armholes of her T-shirt. She tied one end of her bra to the ring, the other, awkwardly using one hand, to her wrist. Positioning herself as far back as she could against the wall, she huddled with knees drawn up, her head resting on them and one hand elevated toward the ring where she was tethered. Fatalistically, she allowed herself to fall asleep, telling herself that either she was going to make it through the unknown that the night ahead would bring—or she wouldn’t.

  Chapter Ten

  “Signora! Signora Sarah!”

  Carlo’s voice called out as he entered the gravel courtyard of Rosamanti. The shiny red bike parked against the wall caught his attention. His eyes wide, he went closer to it, rubbing his hand over the glossy paint. Tilting his head and bending sideways, he checked out the mechanism in the rear wheel hub, then the battery underneath the saddle. He went to the front and inspected the little headlamp, the two wing mirrors, and the horn button.

  “Ooh, bellissima!”

  “Baa.” A pathetic bleat caught his attention, breaking the spell he was under.

  Carlo screwed up his face and cocked his head to one side. It sounded to him like Geraldina, but much too close. Curious, he walked through the archway and into the coolness of the pergola. Passing through the back entrance, he rounded the old pig pen and saw Geraldina, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

  “Baa, baa!” Geraldina jumped up, placing her two front feet on the fence, her head poking over the top.

  “Ah, Geraldina. Bambino.” Carlo went over and patted her head enthusiastically. He let her nuzzle him with her nose, enjoying the sweet goat smell of her fur. Looking down, he saw her massively swollen udders dripping milk like a tap. She looked like she hadn’t been milked for ages.

  He turned and walked back through the pergola and knocked on the kitchen door.

  “Signora? Are you home?”

  Silence. Baffled, he entered the kitchen and found the shiny stainless steel bucket that was used for Geraldina’s milk. Clutching it, he marched back to Geraldina and, pulling a large swathe of alfalfa out of the oak barrel, he handed it to her. He pulled over the tiny wooden stool and sat beside her. Resting his head against her plump belly, he pumped her udders, the milk squirting into the pail and causing white froth to form on the top. When the bucket was full, he stopped, realizing that she needed even more milking. He carefully carried the full pail up to the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator. Then he grabbed a basket and hurried down to the chickens.

  He was greeted with squawking and cackling, feathers flying up in the air as they jostled to get fed. He spread their grain and corn kernels across the yard, then entered their hutch. Eggs lay everywhere, some broken open.

  “Mamma Mia!” Something told him that all was not right with Signora. He hastily filled the basket with as many eggs as he could safely carry and took them back up to the house. Again he called out to Sarah from the kitchen.

  His heart beginning to race, he ran upstairs and checked all the rooms. Then he climbed back downstairs and checked out Nonna’s drawing room. The maps he and Sarah had looked at a few days ago still sat on the low table, spread out and open. His brows drew together, his mind processing the thoughts that there might be a connection between the missing Signora and the maps.

  He returned to the kitchen, puzzled. He knew that Sarah would never leave the animals unattended. She loved them, and besides, if she had to go away, she would ask him to come and feed them. He glanced at the hook near the kitchen door where she always hung her hat. It was empty, suggesting to him that she might have gone out walking. The tracks around the foothills of Villa Jovis were rocky and steep. Perhaps she has fallen. Hurt herself.

  Opening the refrigerator, he grabbed the pail of goat’s milk and picked up the basket of eggs from the kitchen table. As quickly as he could, without spilling the milk, he went back home. Entering the kitchen, his mother looked up, smiling at the generosity of her neighbor. Carlo put the milk and eggs carefully on the table.

  “Mama, something is not right at Rosamanti.”

  He told her what he had found at the villa. Teresa’s brow pulled into a worried furrow. They spoke rapidly, eventually deciding that Teresa would walk into Capri township and use the public phone box to call Pietro down at Maria’s restaurant. Carlo would go back to Rosamanti and search each of the tracks that led from Rosamanti up to the Cape and along the cliff edge.

  As Carlo set off, he wished they could afford to have a telephone in their house like some of his school friends. But out here on Lo Capo, none of the houses had telephones connected. People who lived up here on the Cape were happy in their isolation.

  He ran through the courtyard of Rosamanti, past the shiny red bike and began a systematic search of the yard surrounding the house. He even went down to Geraldina’s old goat shed, farther down the valley. On his way back up the track to Rosamanti, his eyes passed over, then settled on, the old goatherd’s cottage. He knew it was boarded up, and he also knew that Nonna had always made him promise he would never enter it. She said he was never to go there. But this time, he hesitated only for a second.

  He ran swiftly across the rough, rock-strewn hillside. There was no track to the cottage, but he noticed that someone had walked this way recently, seeing the long grass bent over where they had trod. He went to the faded green door. The wooden boards were still there, just as he remembered them from years ago. He moved methodically around the outside of the cottage, looking at each window to see if there was any sign of someone entering it. Nothing.

  Slowly, he made his way up again to Rosamanti and entered the kitchen, pouring himself a large glass of water. As he rested his back against Nonna’s scrubbed and smooth bench, he drank thirstily. Over the top of the glass his eyes caught
sight of several bottles of Lombardi wine sitting in the corner, near one of the cupboards. Slowly, he lowered the glass from his lips.

  “The cellar!”

  He banged the glass down on the table as he scrambled out of the kitchen and up the narrow hallway, past the drawing room, and into the utility room. Large concrete tubs stood on a stand, with Nonna’s ancient washing machine next to them.

  Carlo drew a sharp breath. The gaping, ominous dark square of the open cellar door stood out starkly against the slate floor of the utility room. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck and goose bumps covered his skin. He had never been into the Lombardi cellar. Pietro always went down and would get enough wine to last Nonna for a week. Nonna said she was afraid of the cellar and hadn’t been down there since she was a young girl. Carlo had grown up with a reluctance to ever enter the cellar. If Nonna said it was scary, then that was good enough for him.

  He looked up at the hook above the washing machine where the big flashlight always hung. It was gone. He felt himself break out in a cold sweat. Signora. She is down there!

  Moving closer to the trap door, he bent over, looked down into the darkness, and called out. “Signora. Signora Sarah?”

  Carlo’s heart beat rapidly as the silence rung ominously in his ears, signaling the distinct possibility of disaster. With shaking legs and trembling hands, he ran back to the kitchen, going straight to the drawer where Nonna used to keep her candles and matches. He grabbed two long, thick tapers and a box of matches. Running back to the cellar opening, he turned and put his feet on the top rung of the ladder. His knees quivered. His hands shook as he opened the match box and struck the match. The sulfur smell reached his nose, making it twitch. He lit the candle and stuffed the other one and the match box, deep into the back pocket of his shorts. With his spare hand, he blessed himself, then gripped the rusty rung and slowly climbed down into the dank cellar.

  Wobbly legs finally stood at the foot of the ladder. The yellow flame licked the end of the candle causing hot wax to drop onto his hand. He slowly turned around, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Racks of dusty wine bottles filled the little room. He smelled vinegar and stale wine, with a hint of salt. His legs trembled as he carefully took small, slow steps toward the wine racks, half expecting to see her body strewn on the floor. He had become very fond of Sarah. Holding the unsteady candle out in front of him, he moved forward. Reaching the far wall, the candle danced wildly. He gasped as he saw it. A small, square door stood open, revealing a black hole in the wall. He bent down and thrust the candle into the void.

  Without thought for his own safety, he crouched down on all fours and entered the tunnel.

  * * *

  Maria Lombardi had never been known for her even temper. Today was a good day to keep out of her way. The early morning phone call from Pietro sent her into a rage.

  “Zia, I have badly bruised my knee. I fell off my Vespa. I am at the hospital. The doctors said I can’t work today.” He dared not tell her he also had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days on a saline drip to counter the severe dehydration. Always feisty, she let fly with a torrent of words, using all the colorful words she could remember to vent her anger at Pietro. Where would she find another chef at such short notice? How could he do this to her, after all she had done for him?

  Pietro held the telephone away from his ear until he heard her stop for breath.

  “I am sorry, Zia, but I…”

  His words only served to send his aunt into another torrent of abuse. He wanted to tell her that he had called a friend who would come and help in the kitchen with the busy lunch and dinner periods. Poor Paulo didn’t know what he was letting himself in for. Eventually, he heard a click as Zia Maria hung up on him. He lay back on the crisp white sheets and looked at the swollen leg, bandaged and elevated in a sling hanging from the ceiling. His arms had dressings on them too. Guilt suffused him—guilt for making poor Zia open the busy restaurant without him, and guilt for getting angry with himself about something that, in hindsight, seemed trivial and irrelevant.

  His heart ached as much as his knee when he thought of Sarah, all alone up there at the villa, thinking he had walked out on her, never to return. He wished there was a phone at Rosamanti. She didn’t even have a cell phone. When she first arrived, she told him she wanted to write in a place with no distracting cell phones and no internet. He knew that he loved her. Adored her. She was everything he loved in a woman. Forthright, strong, and beautiful. Sadness overcame him. Maybe he’d lost her already.

  Several hours later, the shrill ringing of the telephone jolted him from sleep. He reached over with a stiff arm and picked it up from the table next to the bed.

  “Pronto.”

  He was taken aback to hear Teresa’s voice, strained and tense. In rapid Italian, she told him that his Aunt Maria was an ogre, a vixen, and very rude. After she had vented this accurate description of his Aunt, Teresa calmed down enough to tell him why she was ringing. Apparently, she had tried to ring him at the restaurant, only to be yelled at by Maria, who eventually told her that he was lying on his back in the hospital while she had to cook for hundreds of people on her own.

  Patient as always, Pietro listened until she had finished. Like all Italian men, he had learned that the best course of action with an angry Italian woman, was to remain silent until given the opportunity to talk. He’d had enough of being yelled at for one day. It wasn’t until she finally got to the crux of the reason for her call, that he sat up and really listened.

  The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as she described what Carlo had said. That Geraldina hadn’t been milked and the eggs hadn’t been collected. None of the cats had been fed either. Her new bike was in the courtyard. Cold and dread seeped through him, followed by frustration as he looked at his immobilized leg and the tube from the drip in the back of his hand.

  * * *

  Carlo crawled through the tunnel, not having to worry about hitting his head or jarring his shoulder on the side walls. But carrying the candle was murder. Hot wax constantly dripped down, burning his hand in the soft skin just between his thumb and forefinger. After he could take it no longer, he reached into his shorts pocket and found a grubby handkerchief. He wrapped it around his hand, stopping the burns from continuing, but he wished he’d thought of it earlier. With a sense of irony, he realized that if he’d had any sense, he would have brought with him the new pocket flashlight his mama gave him for Christmas.

  He soon reached the steps leading up to a higher level. This part of the tunnel was much lighter—he could see even without the candle, so he blew it out, careful not to spray molten wax on himself. The farther he went, the lighter it became. He spotted the next set of steps easily. Steeper this time, they seemed to go almost straight up, but his heart sang when he saw the open trap door above. He stuffed the remnants of the candle in his pocket and climbed upward like a little monkey, using his hands to steady himself.

  When his head popped out of the tunnel and into the bright light of the dusty old kitchen, he had no idea where he was. Hesitating for a minute, he wondered whether he should call out to Signora, or whether to just explore quietly. He didn’t want to annoy whoever lived here. He climbed the last few steps and crept into the room, looking around and scrunching his nose at the amount of dust.

  Carlo strained his ears, but could hear nothing. An open door beckoned him and, moving through, he found himself in a small sitting room, its windows shuttered and a faded green door bolted from the inside with a large padlock. He squinted through some cracks in the shutters.

  “Mamma mia!” His voice echoed in the empty house. “La capraia casa! This is the old goatherd’s cottage.”

  He ran to the other windows and put his face against the grimy glass, trying to see through the cracks. Positive he was right, he ran into the next room, calling out for Sarah. He entered the bedroom, shocked to see that everything was as though someone still lived here, but covered t
hickly in what looked like years of dust. A dust-covered object caught his eye. He walked over to the little dressing table. Next to a hairbrush, was a small figurine in the shape of a dog. He reached out and picked it up, wiping the dust off on his T-shirt. He drizzled some spittle onto the statue, rubbed it, then dried it off on his shirt. It was a black dog, sitting on its haunches, standing about three inches tall. It felt nice in his hands, heavy. He placed it back in the exact spot from where he had picked it up. Something about it reminded him of Nonna, but he didn’t know why. Shrugging, he resumed his search for Sarah.

  Still calling her name, he entered the bathroom. Seeing nothing of interest, he turned to go back out, when his eye caught a glimpse of a blue strap behind the door. He pushed the door shut and gasped when he saw the open tunnel, the trap door lying open on the bathroom floor—and Signora Sarah’s backpack.

  He screamed her name down into the tunnel at the top of his lungs.

  “Signora! Sarah!” He heard his own voice echo back, but not a whisper from Sarah. Fear for her safety caused him to shake. She might be hurt—even dead! He picked up her backpack and opened the flap. He saw a water bottle, her hat, and the map drawn by Nonna when she was a little girl.

  Part of him wanted to go down the tunnel, to search for her. But he was scared now, scared that he too would become lost and his mama would be all alone. He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm his racing mind, his beating heart. I need to get Pietro.

  Walking back out to the sitting room, he stared at the door, remembering the faded boards nailed across it on the outside. He glanced and the nearest window, tried to open it, but it was shut fast. Moving quickly, he tried each of the windows in the small cottage and, finding them all boarded up with shutters on the outside, he searched the house for something heavy to smash the glass. Near the old wood-burning stove, he found a heavy iron poker. Grabbing it with both hands, he went back to the window. With all his might, he swung the poker back like a baseball bat, then brought it forward, crashing against the window. The glass shattered with a deafening crash, sending shards flying through the room. One jagged piece stuck in his arm. Carlo pulled it out and inspected the wound. It bled a little, but he couldn’t feel any pain. Carefully, he picked out the remaining broken glass from the window frame before he attempted the next assault on the locked shutters. Again, he took aim, summoned all his strength, and bashed at the shutters. They moved, but didn’t open. Third time lucky, he heard the wood splinter as the hinges burst from the surrounding timber, sending one shutter flying out, held only by the padlock outside. He dragged over a chair, climbed up, and slid through the small gap.