Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  Alessandro was looking straight ahead, biting his lower lip and driving the Mercedes through the night way too fast.

  “No one’s answering,” she said at last. “We’ll have to go there. The guards down at the gate have to be warned—”

  “They’ve been waiting for years for our men to make the first move,” said Alessandro. “They won’t need any warning. They’ll be prepared for something like this, that’s their job.” He sighed softly. “Aside from that, I hardly think Cesare will set out at once to—”

  “But you saw him. Did it look to you like he was going to think the whole thing over calmly?”

  “That’s exactly what he’ll do. For one thing, he’s satisfied his thirst for blood for now. And he’ll have to calm down—the men won’t follow a raving lunatic, not in the long term, and he knows it. The one advantage Tano’s death gives him is that he can lay part of the blame on me. That’s something he’ll exploit.”

  She stared at him blankly. “But this isn’t about you. He’s killed Lilia, and he’ll do the same to my sister and my aunt.”

  If her words hit a sore spot, he didn’t show it. “Only when he’s positive that the Carnevare clan is behind him. And when he feels sure the other dynasties also consider the concordat broken. Cesare will take care to get justification for his plans, or he could soon have everyone against him. So he’ll summon a tribunal to decide the question.”

  “The question of my guilt, you mean,” she said coolly.

  “He’ll make it seem as if you fired the shot.”

  As she stared at his hands on the wheel, with the downy black hairs that were thinning out faster and faster now, finally disappearing, she remembered that those hands were the first thing she’d noticed about him. The way his fingers tensed while the plane was landing.

  Alessandro raced across an isolated crossroads. In this nocturnal no-man’s-land there wasn’t another vehicle anywhere in sight. “If he can stir up the men against me—”

  “Stop that!” she spat. “If your claim to leadership is all that matters to you—well, you might as well let me out of the car right now.”

  This time she could see that she’d hurt him. “I’m not going to let Cesare take over as the new capo of the clan,” he said quietly, without looking at her, but in a tone of dogged determination.

  “Lilia is dead!” she said furiously. She didn’t understand how that couldn’t affect him.

  “Like my mother.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, but behind their lids she still saw the beam of the headlights probing the blackness ahead. When she opened them again, garbage from the roadside was blowing past. An animal’s dead body lay in the ditch, was lit up briefly by the car lights, and then faded like a specter.

  She pressed both hands to her face, let her head lean against the back of the seat, and tried to breathe regularly. In her therapy sessions she had learned breathing techniques to use in stressful situations, but they were no good at all here. The regular breathing turned to a sob, and she felt moisture trickling through her fingers. It was a little while before she realized that she was crying.

  “Hey,” said Alessandro gently. He took his foot off the gas for a moment and reached out his hand.

  She flinched away. “I don’t want you feeling sorry for me.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said back there?”

  What could she say to that? Her knees felt shaky, and she had an urge to go and steal something.

  Taking her hands away from her face, she pressed them down on her legs to keep them still, and hated herself because she felt her lower lip quivering. She couldn’t come up with any answer, except a long look at him through her tears. In the icy blue of the dashboard lighting, he could have been a ghost.

  “Where are you going?” she finally got out.

  “Somewhere they won’t look for you.” He pointed ahead into the night. The peak of a mountain blotted out the stars. “I’m taking you to Iole.”

  She had guessed even before the castle on the peak came into sight. Castello Carnevare.

  “He’ll think you might be anywhere,” said Alessandro, “but not right here under his nose.”

  At that moment she felt strangely indifferent to what might happen to her. As the Mercedes drove along the winding road up to the fortress, Alessandro looked down at the valley. “Here they come.”

  She wiped her eyes, but still she saw flickering stars around the column of tiny pairs of lights far below on the plain.

  Alessandro turned off the headlights and drove on with parking lights only. The darkness instantly moved to within a few feet of the front of the car. “Don’t worry, I can drive this road blind if I have to.”

  She doubted that when he unexpectedly swung the wheel around and turned right off the road. But they drove halfway around the mountain on a bumpy gravel path, until they were at the back of the fortress. There he stopped and pointed to some narrow steps cut into the rock. “Can you make it up those in the dark?”

  She nodded, bemused.

  “It’s not far. The steps lead to a small wooden door. It’s one of the old escape routes from the castle. Wait there until I let you in from the inside, okay?”

  She nodded again, but didn’t get out.

  “I have to get the car back to the castle courtyard before the others arrive. They have to see me arriving on my own.”

  She pulled herself together and pushed the car door open. Alessandro took her arm. “Rosa…”

  She turned hesitantly.

  “I mean it. This is the worst possible time, I know, but…” He ran out of words, just cursed quietly and looked down.

  “You meant it about being in love with me?” she asked.

  “I meant it about being ready to die for you.”

  “You want to be capo of your clan,” she reminded him, with a sad smile. “That’s what you really want.”

  He looked downcast. “I can’t let Cesare win, Rosa. He can’t ever get what he tried to buy himself by murdering my mother.”

  “No one has to die for me,” she said, slipping out of the car. The cool night wind caught her hair and swirled it around her face; she hoped it would blow a little sense into her fogged brain.

  He said nothing for a moment. Then he asked, “You will wait up there, won’t you?”

  “Where else would I go?” She looked up at the rocks. She couldn’t see the top of the steps from here; she would have to hurry, because her pursuers would soon reach the castle.

  “Okay,” he said, and straightened up behind the wheel again.

  She closed the car door. Her eyes turned to the empty nocturnal landscape. Carnevare country.

  She heard the gravel crunch under his tires as he pulled quickly out on the narrow drive, to head back around the mountain and reconnect with the road. Only when his rear lights were out of sight did she turn around. She wiped her eyes and swept her hair back.

  In the dark, she found the steps and began to climb.

  She counted the stairs to reassure herself a little. At every other step she breathed in deeply, and then out again. Felt the air in her rib cage, concentrated on the cool of it in her lungs.

  The door at the top of the steps was wide-open. A single candle stood on the ground, flickering, casting light on part of the stone portal. Someone was sitting on the rock in front of it, wrapped in a blanket and looking at her.

  “I knew you’d come,” said Iole. “I knew it when I saw the lights. From the car. They weren’t very bright. Not as bright as usual.”

  Rosa sniffed, wiped away the last of her tears, and crouched down in front of the girl. “A candle? Is that all the light he gave you?”

  “Alessandro?” Iole grinned suddenly, and much too cheerfully for a night like this. “I found the candle for myself. Matches, too. I think it’s much prettier than the flashlight.”

  Despite herself, Rosa had to smile. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”

  “There aren’t any animals here
, like on the island,” replied Iole, shrugging her shoulders. Her short black hair smelled as if it had just been washed with apple-scented shampoo. She wore jeans and a turtleneck sweater much too large for her, with faded sneakers. She was holding a can of soda.

  “Is he going to hide you here, too?” she asked.

  “Alessandro?” Rosa grinned, realizing that she had given his name the same intonation as Iole had a moment ago. “Yes, I think so.”

  “He’s gone to a lot of trouble. He’s very nice.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You like him.”

  Rosa pricked up her ears. “I do?”

  “I knew that right away. Even on the island when you both came there. Before they took me away.”

  “Where did they take you?” Maybe it was a good idea to change the subject.

  “To a farmhouse not too far away from here. Alessandro got me out and brought me here. He says the others are looking for me.” Her voice sank conspiratorially. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like me to be sitting out here on my own.”

  “You’re not on your own now.”

  “That’s right.”

  At fifteen, Iole was only two years younger, but Rosa felt as if she were speaking to a small child.

  “Is he coming?” asked Iole.

  “In a few minutes.”

  “The other men mustn’t know we’re up here.”

  “It’s better if they don’t.”

  “But sooner or later they’ll find us.” Iole’s tone was so matter-of-fact that it gave Rosa goose bumps. “Sooner or later they always find you. Alessandro says not this time, but I know better. I’ve had to hide from them before.”

  “All that will be over soon.”

  “Is that another promise?”

  Rosa felt everything inside her tighten up. “Another promise that I won’t be able to keep, you mean?”

  Iole shrugged. “Alessandro told me you both came back to the island to fetch me.”

  Rosa nodded. Images came back to her of the empty villa, with the doors taken off their hinges, and the big cats fighting each other. She tried to put them out of her mind, but it was no good.

  “The animals were there. I warned you about them.”

  “Yes, it was stupid of us not to listen to you.”

  “But you came back because of me.” It wasn’t a question. Iole smiled, and looked past Rosa at the night sky, lost in thought. “You two like each other, and you came back because of me. That’s nice.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders, shivering. “That’s very, very nice.”

  ON THE SEAFLOOR

  HALF AN HOUR LATER the three of them entered Iole’s hiding place in the castle cellar. It was a small apartment with no windows, but it was clean and well lit, and furnished like a hotel bedroom, if a rather shabby one. The open door to the bathroom gave Rosa a glimpse of gray marble with silver fittings.

  Two closed-circuit cameras hung from the ceiling. Their cables had been cut.

  “What are those for?” asked Rosa.

  “Sometimes family members have to disappear for a while, to keep out of the way of the police,” said Alessandro. “Coming from the castle, you go through two secret doors to get here. It’s been a long time since this room was last used. I think the Hungry Man once hid here, years ago. It must have been just before his arrest.”

  “They arrested him here, in the castle?”

  He shook his head. “In Gela, as far as I know. But this was one of his last hiding places.”

  “Then he was close to your family?”

  “To him, they were what the Alcantaras are to Salvatore Pantaleone now.” He looked unhappy about this answer.

  She worked it out. “So that’s why Cesare hates us. Because the Alcantaras took your family’s special status as the closest allies of the capo dei capi—snapped it up from under their noses.”

  “That wasn’t the only reason.”

  She waited, but he offered no more explanation.

  “If you Carnevares knew him so well, why are you as frightened of him as everyone else?” she asked at last.

  “Because he blames us for his arrest. He thinks a Carnevare turned him in.” Alessandro grimaced. “If he really does come back, and if his supporters among the clans are still loyal to him, we’ll have a problem. Another one.”

  Bouncing a little, Iole sat down on her bed, drew her knees up, and clasped her arms around her legs. “Mine!” she announced, as if someone had questioned it. It didn’t seem to trouble her that she had only exchanged one prison for another.

  Alessandro saw Rosa’s expression, and lowered his voice. “I wanted to get her out of here, but I didn’t know where to take her. She has one last surviving relative, and if I can find out where he is, I can get her to him. Until then she’ll have to stay here.”

  “What about the police? Couldn’t they help her?”

  “Cesare would find out about it. He pays hush money to police officers all over the island. And he wouldn’t let Iole go running around free, talking to judges and state prosecutors. Right now he thinks she just got away without help from anyone else. His people are still looking for her in the Madonie Mountains. They kept her hidden in a hut up there after they took her off the island.”

  “And you got her out?”

  Iole spoke first. “All by himself. It was very brave of him.”

  Rosa put her head on one side and scrutinized Alessandro. “Yes, it really was.”

  He avoided her eyes and closed the apartment door. “I cut the cables of the cameras to be safe, but no one’s going to notice. It’s been so long since there was someone hiding here, it’s unlikely anyone would think to check up on the place now, of all times.”

  Rosa fidgeted uncomfortably. “I know you mean well … but I can’t stay here. I’ll go out of my mind if I don’t hear from Zoe soon.”

  “There’s no cell signal down here,” he said regretfully. “We’re deep in the rock, and even on the upper floors the castle walls are almost three feet thick.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “I’ll try to reach Zoe,” he promised. “At least stay until I know what Cesare is planning. He’ll be in a hurry to summon the tribunal. Just now, when he and the others arrived, he simply stormed past me, didn’t even ask where I’d taken you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe he was tired of walking around in public in a bathrobe.”

  The corners of Alessandro’s mouth twitched. “That’s always possible.”

  As she was wondering about her best course of action, her eyes fell on a framed photograph on the table next to Iole’s bed. There was a crack across the glass. When she went over to look, Iole snatched up the photo and clutched it to her breast.

  “It’s okay, I don’t want to take it away from you,” said Rosa.

  Iole nodded sheepishly, but she still held the picture close.

  “Are those your parents?” asked Rosa. She had seen only two outlines against a blue background.

  “My father and my uncle Augusto.”

  “He’s the one who helped a judge, isn’t he? A woman judge.”

  Iole nodded.

  Rosa sat down on the bed beside her and looked at Alessandro, who was standing there rather awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. “Is that the family member you’re trying to find?” she asked reproachfully. “A man protected by the police as a witness? Living under a false name goodness only knows where in the world?”

  “It won’t be easy,” he admitted.

  “So is Iole just supposed to stay here until you find him?”

  “Can you think of a better solution? I know it’s not ideal. But we can’t bring the police in.”

  “Because Iole would give evidence against your family?” Rosa’s eyes narrowed. “And because that would endanger your inheritance? Shit, Alessandro, this is more important than—”

  “If Iole gives evidence,” he interrupted, “Cesare will find a way to kill her. Even if he goes to prison, he’ll hire a hit
man to do it. Is that what you want?”

  Rosa took a deep breath. She was torn between her suspicion and the feeling that what he said made sense. She turned to Iole again. “May I see it?”

  Hesitantly, the girl held the photo out to her.

  “Thanks.” Rosa took it carefully and pointed to the man on the left. “Is that your father?”

  “He’s the other one.”

  “Ruggero Dallamano,” said Alessandro, who had come over to them and was crouching down in front of the bed. “The capo of Syracuse. He … died a few years ago.”

  “Your family killed him,” said Iole, in such a matter-of-fact tone that a cold shudder ran down Rosa’s back.

  The men in the photograph were wearing diving suits and gleaming with moisture. The open sea lay in the background. They were probably standing by the rail of a ship, but she couldn’t tell for certain; the photograph showed only their heads and shoulders. Ruggero Dallamano had taken off his diving mask and was laughing cheerfully. His brother Augusto, the informer, was removing the mouthpiece of his oxygen supply with one hand, so that the lower half of his face was covered. However, behind the diving mask his eyes showed that he was laughing too. The hood of his neoprene suit covered his head, and his brother’s hair was also hidden. The photograph must have been taken just after the two of them climbed back onboard. Their oxygen cylinders were still strapped to their backs.

  “If all the pictures of your uncle show so little of him, it shouldn’t have been too difficult for him to disappear,” said Rosa skeptically.

  “There were better ones,” said Iole. “But I didn’t take this photo with me because of Uncle Augusto, I took it because my father looks so happy in it. He wasn’t often happy. He didn’t laugh much. Only in this picture.” She ran her fingertips over it; her voice sinking to a whisper. “Only in this one.”

  Rosa blinked slightly as if it would help her to make out more of the man with the diving mask. “Did they go diving together a lot?” She was asking only to delay the moment when she would have to turn to Alessandro again and broach the subject of what she was going to do now. Or what he was going to do now, if he had his way.