“Do you hear that?”
Paul said, “The violin? Yes.”
Now she heard a horn playing. As they passed a building, she saw a sign for a music school.
The driver downshifted again, grinding the gears. The car lurched, bouncing them around. A larger auto passed going the opposite way, its horn bleating, forcing their driver to move to one side and stop his ascent. Images of the present were flooding Callie’s mind, as if she were snapping photos to be remembered.
The driver put the car in first gear, sliding backward several feet as he let out the clutch, swearing. Aggressively, he pulled ahead to the top of the hill, scattering ambling pedestrians.
At the summit was a church, construction scaffolding blocking its entrance. Beyond were several palazzi, one restored as a hotel.
“This is good,” Paul said. “Please let us out here.”
The driver pulled over.
Paul opened Callie’s door, and she got out, flexing her leg muscles. Beyond the towering cathedral she could see a deep ravine and, far past that, a hill.
She had never seen light like this or felt the air in such a way. The music had faded. There were no sounds at all now. She could see birds across the canyon, but she couldn’t hear their calls. There was something otherworldly about the place, alien and familiar at the same time.
Paul paid the driver. They stood and watched the car descend the hill. A man came out of the hotel, nodded a greeting, then walked across the piazza and disappeared down an alleyway, his footsteps echoing on the stone and then fading to silence.
Paul picked up their suitcases and gestured for Callie to follow him down an alleyway marked Via Riscatto. Stone houses lined its boundaries, their foundations carved into the sides of the hills. Some were occupied, many more stood empty. Callie heard the echoing sound of a hammer growing louder as they approached and then fading again as they made their way past.
They turned left at the corner, and the alley wound downward, the view opening every so often to reveal the colors of the canyon. A dog passed them, paused to drink at a puddle of water, then disappeared up a set of steps.
They stopped at an old monastery that had been turned into a hotel. There were flowerpots by the front entrance and a sign: CASA DEL PELLEGRINO LE MONACELLE. Callie followed Paul inside. A woman was reading a book behind the desk; she looked up and smiled. She welcomed Paul back in Italian, then, hearing him translate to Callie, she changed to English, offering her hand for Callie to shake in the American style.
“Welcome to Matera,” she said. Then turning to Paul: “How long are you here for this time?”
“It depends how long it takes to finish the restoration,” he said. “I’m not sure how far the team has gotten without me. Probably a few months.”
He’d rented Callie a suite for the two weeks she intended to be in Italy.
“Follow me,” he said now. “I’ll show you where you’re staying.”
Paul led Callie up a stone stairway to a room that had two levels: The first contained a dark wooden desk and a few chairs, a small sitting room, and a tiny kitchen. On the second level, located up a stairway, was a loft with a bed. Beyond the bed was another stone stairway leading to a blue door.
“Can I collapse here?” Callie asked.
“Not yet! Come with me,” Paul said, taking her hand and leading her up the stairs. He opened the door to reveal a private roof garden and a much steeper, crumbling stone stairway leading to the campanile’s bell.
“My rooms are just over there,” he said. “Right across the courtyard. Ours are the only two suites on the rooftop level.”
He led her not toward his quarters but toward the stone steps. There must have been at least forty of them.
“Not more stairs!” Callie said. But she followed him, winded and exhausted, to the top.
The two opposing hills of the Sassi were spread out before them. Callie grabbed the railing for balance and was awed. The hills looked like the figure of a bird in flight. Below, the river wound deep into the ravine. Across the canyon, she could see dark spots on the distant hill.
“What are those dark places?” she asked, pointing.
“Those are entrances to the caves that have been carved out of the tufo. Whole families lived in them for generations, until disease and poverty forced the government to empty them. They built apartments to rehouse the people.”
Paul pointed out other caves, and soon Callie saw them everywhere.
“Artists have started moving in, and some of the families are moving back as well, despite the hazards of living in constant porous dampness. They missed their homes so much they were compelled to return.”
Paul held Callie’s hand. They hadn’t done more than hand-holding since Rose’s death, and Callie was grateful for that. She’d been too depressed, too angry. The last time she’d seen Rafferty, she’d yelled at him. “Find Leah Kormos,” she’d demanded. “Lock up the killer.”
“I’m not sure she is the killer,” Rafferty had said.
“Just fucking find her!”
She’d alienated Rafferty certainly, but she couldn’t help it. In what world was the police force so incompetent that they couldn’t locate a woman given twenty-five years?
She feared her outburst had alienated Towner as well. Their last conversation had been polite but perfunctory.
Despite the sessions she’d booked with Zee, nothing seemed to help.
Paul had been attentive, but he’d also given her space, being there in case she wanted to talk, but not pushing.
“Why don’t you drop everything here and come back to Matera with me?” he had finally said.
She’d been surprised. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“I don’t care about that.”
She’d been skeptical.
“It will help,” he’d said. “Trust me. No strings attached.”
Emily had agreed. She and Finn wanted to get away as well, to their home in Palm Beach. “Go,” she’d said. “Get away from all this death. It’ll do you good.”
And almost immediately, away from Pride’s Crossing, Callie could feel her spirits lifting. Standing abreast of the hills of the Sassi, she understood that part of her revived emotional state had to do with the tufo and the company. But the bulk of it, she realized, as she gazed out across the ravine, was that, with the exception of a small orange plant on the balcony of a neighboring palazzo, there wasn’t a single tree in sight.
Paul had stayed with her the first few days, walking her around the hills of the Sassi, pointing out landmarks.
He took her to see the rock churches, including the one he was working to restore. There were more than 150 of them in and around the area, carved into the sides of the ravines with primitive tools, places of worship dug into the soft sedimentary stone, revealing the fossils of St. Jacques shells embedded in walls and ceilings that had once been ocean floor. When religion had come out of hiding, visible churches had been built on top, like the houses built over the caves of the Sassi. Paul took her to see a number of these old churches; most had rooms beneath them—sometimes small chambers for the Basilian and Benedictine monks who used them for meditation, and sometimes burial crypts for the faithful who, according to local tradition, were buried sitting up in coffins carved into the tufo walls. They’d spent one whole morning exploring the huge and ancient cistern that ran under the Sassi itself. “This is a place where hidden wonders are everywhere,” Paul told her.
On the third day, he’d had to get back to work, and he’d left her in the piazza, heading down the hill and into civilization as she headed away from it, deeper into the Sassi, with its hidden stairways and empty shells of houses. She didn’t care where she ended up, and so she followed every stairway she could find, until her thighs burned from the climbing and descending. When she was completely lost and exhausted, she turned and headed back.
Every day, she took a new path, and every night, she met Paul in the piazza for a late
dinner, holding his hand as they climbed back up the hill to the monastery, where he said good night, then went to his own rooms to record his findings of the day, and she tumbled into bed, too tired to light the candle, undressing by moonlight and leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor.
There were dreams. The same awful ones she’d had before that awakened her from deep sleep, but in this place, the dreams seemed more distant, muted like the light on the tufo.
Tonight, she awoke from a dream she couldn’t remember. There was no moon. Across the rooftop courtyard, Callie could see the candle Paul had left burning in his window. “In case you need me,” he’d told her. The air smelled musty and damp. She watched the flame for a long time, her unclosing eyes dry and itching. Finally, the flame flickered and died, replaced by the flicker of another brighter candle; a door opened and closed. Rose’s house. The back bedroom. Callie watched from her mattress on the living room floor as the men came and went. She could hear their whispers, the faint strains of harp music as the Goddesses welcomed them. The air was hot and smelled of rosewater and patchouli.
All night long and every night,
When my mama puts out the light,
I see people marching by,
As plain as day before my eye.
The scene shifted, and Callie, an adult now, stood naked at the front of the bedroom at Hammond Castle, her bare feet against cold stone, reciting the letter from Morrigan to Dagda.
“My Love,”
Her hands were locked in the elocutionist’s pose. Her breasts were exposed.
“Meet me tomorrow night in our secret place.” Cheeks burning.
“And I will show you an ecstasy you have never known.” Heart pounding.
“Our bodies will be as the god and goddess.” Heat moving downward in waves.
Piercing blue eyes, unable to look away.
“I will touch you as the Morrigan touches Dagda.”
Paul’s eyes.
“Our heavenly tryst unleashing all the powers of the universe.”
Eyes locked, holding her in place.
Callie jolted awake to find herself standing naked, not in Hammond Castle but in Paul’s room, the candle not extinguished but still burning. He lay as still as stone, his bare muscled shoulders above the blankets, his eyes watching her. Though she wanted to turn and run, her hands were still clasped, her feet immovable. Realizing she had spoken the words aloud, she stopped, a shameful blush spreading its heat along her skin. She could not bring herself to recite the next line of the letter, the words far too embarrassing and far from her own. Instead, she remembered its final line, and the words came to her as truly as if she’d written them. Her voice shifted from the lyrical tone of her dream to one of certainty. She spoke each syllable separately and listened to her own voice as if hearing it for the first time. “We have waited long enough, my love…”
She didn’t cling to the dream traces that remained. Instead, she locked her eyes on Paul’s, taking one baby step forward and then another, until, finally, she was standing over him. “Another nightmare?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded. She could see herself in the half-silvered mirror on the wall, looking every bit the pale spirit.
“Make them go away,” she commanded.
Keeping his eyes on hers, he pulled back the covers, revealing his naked body underneath, strong and ready.
They didn’t emerge from the monastery until long past dinner on Sunday night. The few restaurants at the top of the hill were already closed. Nothing was open in the square, either, and there were few people around. Paul remembered seeing a pizza place down a side stairway and looked to her for approval.
“Pizza sounds great.”
The stairway was crumbling, winding another hundred steps down, crossing left over the rooftops of empty buildings, flat for a few steps, then descending again, along the outer rim of the Sassi. Their footsteps echoed on the stone. “There’s really something down here?”
“I don’t know. I hope so,” Paul said, starting to doubt his memory.
Callie had taken to measuring every journey in terms of steps. Five steps down, three up. Descending and climbing. Twenty more steps now, past darkened shells of deserted stone residences.
“If it’s not around this corner, I give up,” Paul said.
A string of white lights hung over the entrance to the pizza place, a cave that Callie could see served as the foundation for the house that sat above it.
The owner looked surprised to see them so late, but he was delighted when Paul spoke in melodic Italian. The man agreed to serve them, and he led them into a deep chamber carved out of the soft stone, seating them at a table at the far end.
The cave was dimly lit, smelling of pizza and dampness. Sitting across from Paul, Callie found it difficult to look at him directly. She hadn’t much experience with what happened after; she rarely stuck around long enough to find out. But sex with Paul had been like nothing she’d ever experienced. This had been so intimate, so different—so connected.
Paul took her hand and made her look at him. “Did I make the nightmares go away?”
She had to laugh. “Too soon to say—you didn’t exactly let me sleep.”
“That was my plan.”
Callie ate most of the pizza and didn’t protest when Paul ordered another. She was so hungry. She was thirsty as well. They polished off a bottle of Aglianico and another of sparkling water.
The string of lights flipped off as soon as they exited, leaving them in darkness again. He held her hand during the long climb to the top of the hill. By the time they reached Via Riscatto, her thighs were aching. When the path descended again toward the monastery, she was grateful.
He waited while she unlocked her door. Then he followed her inside and up the five steps to her bed. This time they both slept.
It was the first nightmare-free sleep Callie could remember.
The Sunday before she was scheduled to leave, Paul told her he wanted to take her to church.
“Confession?” she asked, nodding her head at the crumpled bedclothes that surrounded them.
“Just the opposite, actually. I want to take you to the solfeggio mass before you go back.”
“Really? There’s a mass?”
“I just heard about it,” he said. “They’re going to celebrate the medieval Hymn to John the Baptist in Latin, composed in the solfeggio scale. It’s a healing service.”
“Wow,” she said. “The Catholic Church is really getting progressive.”
“Or regressive,” he said. “Depending on your perspective. In any case, people seem quite excited about it.”
“Do they do it in one of the caves?”
“No. It’s going to be a really big event at a very beautiful old church. The music school is participating as well as some Gregorian monks.”
“I’d like to see that,” she said. “Or, rather, hear it.”
“I thought you might.”
The church stood at the top of the Sassi, where the light was brightest. It was one of the earliest churches in the area, Paul explained, built just after Christianity stopped hiding in the darkness of the caves and began to celebrate the mass publicly. They’d built it out of tufo high on the hill, and, unlike most of the churches in the Sassi, which were still dark and cavernous, it had long windows, which flooded the entire structure with light.
The sanctuary was crowded. Paul directed her to a seat midway down the long center aisle, where the sound was the best. “It’s like being in one of your bowls,” he told her.
The students from the music school filed in first; they spent several minutes adjusting their instruments, retuning to the slightly different tones of the ancient scale. When they began to play, the congregants went silent. The sounds of the medieval hymns were echoing off the walls.
Callie had never experienced anything quite like it. She closed her eyes and slipped into an easy meditation. Time stood still as the notes moved across and through each other, creating
a tickling sensation inside her head.
It was one of the simplest and deepest meditation experiences she’d come into contact with—and definitely healing. She didn’t open her eyes again until they had stopped playing and she could ease herself back into the world. She glanced at Paul, and he took her hand.
If she’d found the music to be healing, the Prayer to St. John the Baptist was sensory on every level. When the monks began to chant the Latin words, the air shifted. The room filled with light as if the sun had emerged from a cloud, and those dreamily calmed by the music just moments before seemed to awaken all at once. Not only was the air vibrating with the tones of the ancient scale, as Callie had expected, but the vibration seemed to bounce off her skin, starting with the scar on her palm, then raising the hair on her arms and the back of her neck, then moving on to the next person, that same tickling bringing everyone to life and tying them together with invisible strings.
She noticed the smell of jasmine first, then of pine, though neither had any logical presence. And just the lightest scent of oranges. She could taste nutmeg and cinnamon on her tongue.
Then something even stranger happened. The white walls, empty canvases just moments before, began to fill with color and pattern, like photos of water crystals she’d seen, or snowflakes, but with color and movement, mandalas being created by the notes themselves. She’d heard about people who could “see” sound, but she’d never quite understood it until now. As the tones shifted, the mandalas—for that’s what they were—changed as well, drawing and redrawing their patterns as the music of the spheres—which she sometimes heard faintly during her meditations—absolutely filled the church.
Then, in her mind’s eye, she saw Olivia and the others, as they had been on their last night. Dressed in their costumes. So young. Free. Not wise, maybe. Naïve certainly. Unaware of consequences. And she knew something she hadn’t known before. They weren’t evil. They were full of life. They weren’t surrounded by death. And neither was Callie.
She opened her eyes. She looked at Paul. He was here, and so was she. They were together. They were both very much alive. It wasn’t twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t even a month ago. It was right now.
The Fifth Petal Page 34