Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  Iole had put a photograph of Sarcasmo on the bedside table. The dog seemed to be laughing; his eyes shone. She and the black mongrel were crazy about each other. Ever since moving into the Palazzo Alcantara, Iole had shared her room with the dog, and never left the house without him.

  This afternoon, five days after Zoe’s death, Rosa was the only visitor in Fundling’s room. Wearing a black coat from her sister’s wardrobe, she sat beside him. Out in the hospital grounds, a stormy wind shook the tall oak trees. Fundling’s condition had stabilized, but no one could say whether he would ever come out of his coma.

  “You know, don’t you?” She was looking not at him, but at the garden outside the window. “You knew more than most people all along. About TABULA, and about those … gaps in the crowd. About the Hungry Man. And the laws of Arcadia.”

  She got to her feet and leaned over him, very close to his face.

  “Where do you really come from? And what were you doing as a baby, alone in the hotel that the Carnevares burned down?” With her fingertip, she touched her lips and then his forehead. “One of these days you’ll tell me the truth. One of these days you’ll tell me everything.”

  Outside in the hallway, she met the judge.

  Quattrini had seen to it that no legal proceedings were taken against Rosa. The death of Pantaleone had been a setback for her. She had hoped that, once arrested, he would provide information about the extensive network of Cosa Nostra’s business deals, and perhaps details of the bloodbath at the Gibellina monument as well. Much of that would now remain unexplained.

  The greatest mystery, however, was Pantaleone’s death itself. Rosa claimed to have pushed him over the edge of the precipice in self-defense after he murdered her sister. But no one could explain what had caused a spiral of hematomas all around his body as he fell.

  “How is he?”

  “No change,” said Rosa. The judge seemed even smaller than on their earlier meetings. She had to look up at Rosa, but that didn’t appear to bother her.

  “I was told I’d find you here. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Rosa looked down at the floor briefly, and then met the judge’s penetrating gaze. “You’ve found Florinda, I assume.”

  “You don’t seem particularly surprised.”

  Pantaleone had called her the new head of the Alcantara clan, and he certainly had his reasons. “I broke the oath,” she said. “It was bound to happen.”

  For a moment the judge seemed genuinely distressed. “I’m sorry. About your aunt, and that stupid oath.”

  “Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it. You guessed what would happen.”

  Quattrini looked over her shoulder. Stefania Moranelli and Antonio Festa, her two bodyguards, were standing in reception at the end of the hall, staring at them. “There were indications of conflict between the families,” she said, turning back to Rosa. “I didn’t have to be a prophet to foresee that blood would flow. But what I am still not clear about is your own part in all this. And the boy’s.”

  “Fundling?”

  The judge shook her head. “You know who I’m talking about: Alessandro Carnevare.”

  “Ask him yourself. I haven’t seen him for days.” She added, more coolly, “I imagine he has a lot to do.”

  Quattrini nodded, as if confirming something that she had known for a long time. “I will ask him, don’t worry.”

  “Where did you find Florinda? And what had happened to her?”

  “She was shot. Not with the same gun as your sister, and probably some hours earlier. Her body was washed up on the shore of Panarea.”

  “Panarea?” asked Rosa, only for something to say. Her voice sounded husky.

  “Panarea is one of the Lipari Islands, north of Sicily. Did your aunt perhaps set out on a sea voyage a few days ago?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  Pantaleone must have given orders for Zoe and Florinda to be brought to him from Corleone. Maybe Florinda had resisted, and so she had been shot and her body thrown out of a helicopter somewhere over the sea.

  “I’d like to have them both laid to rest in our family vault as soon as possible,” said Rosa.

  “Of course.”

  “And Iole can stay with me for the time being?”

  “If that’s what she wants. We haven’t been able to find any living relations. Whoever eliminated the Dallamano family six years ago made a thorough job of it.”

  “You’re forgetting Augusto.”

  “He’s not alive any longer. Not officially.”

  Rosa nodded. “Good-bye, Signora Quattrini.”

  She walked past the judge and down the corridor. Quattrini did not follow her, but she could feel the woman’s eyes on her back.

  “Rosa?”

  She looked over her shoulder.

  “My congratulations.”

  “On my aunt’s death?”

  “On your inheritance,” said Quattrini. “You are the head of the Alcantara clan now. I only hope you stay alive long enough to enjoy it.”

  Rosa turned again and left.

  She didn’t burst into tears until she reached her car.

  A FAREWELL

  A COLUMN OF BLACK LIMOUSINES was winding its way up to the Alcantara property.

  Rosa stood at the entrance to the funeral chapel with Iole, watching the capi of the other clans arriving. She wondered how many of them were Arcadians behind their masks as prosperous businessmen.

  Not only did the bosses and their families attend the funeral, so did the business managers of the Alcantara companies in Palermo, Milan, and Rome, together with several of those advisers against whom Pantaleone had warned her. She knew that later she would be expected to accept their condolences. But she wasn’t here to live up to expectations.

  The mourners formed two long lines outside the chapel. Rosa had been inside it only once before, when Zoe took her to see their father’s grave. This morning she had looked at it again. Just the name DAVIDE ALCANTARA carved into the stone slab, no date of birth, no date of death.

  The sweet smell of lavender and furze flowers hung in the air, mingling with the fragrance of countless floral arrangements. Most of those had been delivered first thing in the morning. The undertaker’s staff had used them to decorate the vault and the porch.

  One of the last limousines to draw up outside the palazzo came to a halt, and Alessandro got out.

  He was wearing a well-cut black suit, and sunglasses. His hair was shorter. He somehow looked more grown-up.

  Unlike the capi of the other clans, Alessandro had come alone. No bodyguards accompanied him from the front courtyard to the chapel. He did not exchange greetings with anyone but joined the far end of the long line of mourners, took off his sunglasses, and looked in Rosa’s direction. From this distance she couldn’t read his expression.

  When their eyes met, she realized that she had thought she was armed against him, assuming that grief for Zoe would preoccupy her so much that his presence would make no difference. But now that they were meeting again for the first time since the events at the Gibellina monument, the sight of him was like an electric shock.

  Iole touched her hand and gave her an affectionate smile. In the last few days, she had undergone a remarkable change. She seemed more mature, less childishly confused than at their first meeting on Isola Luna, and she attracted curious glances from many of the mourners.

  Rosa had tied back her mane of witchy blond hair in a ponytail and had had some of the clothes from Zoe’s wardrobe altered for her by women from the village. The black skirt suit she had chosen to wear today gave her a businesslike appearance, and she looked to herself like a stranger in the mirror. She was already missing her metal-studded boots.

  Three days ago she had called her mother in New York to break the news of Zoe’s death. Gemma had not disappointed her. After expressing genuine shock, and then indulging in an outburst of grief, she had rejected Rosa’s offer to send her air tickets for a flight to Sicily. Not even her
daughter’s funeral could induce her ever to set foot on the island again. Rosa didn’t try to change her mind. She promised to call again when it was all over, but silently decided that this was goodbye once and for all. If her mother didn’t try to get in touch, then she wouldn’t either.

  The funeral itself seemed like some bizarre kind of theatrical show, a play in which someone had made her go onstage to take the leading role. She was glad when it was finally over. She still didn’t know how she was going to come to terms with Zoe’s death. The sadness of the past few days, now this ritual, which meant nothing to her—that couldn’t be all. But whatever she was waiting for didn’t happen. It was as if all her reserves of tears had been exhausted over the last year.

  Outside the chapel, men and women were waiting to commiserate with Rosa. She left without so much as glancing at any of them. These people had hated Florinda and Zoe. Refusing to accept the condolences that they were honor bound to offer was like a slap in the face for the capi. She knew that. She didn’t care.

  Holding herself very erect, she walked past the rows of guests and finally stopped in front of the one who was still standing at the end of the line, looking at her.

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s go for a walk.”

  The sun was shining through the gnarled branches as they entered the shade of the olive groves. It cast dappled light over their bodies, surrounded them like glowing tendrils, then let go of them again at the next step they took.

  “I’ve been to see Fundling in the hospital a couple of times,” he said. “I’d hoped you would be there as well.”

  “You could have just called.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “So now you’re what you always wanted to be,” she said without looking at him. “The capo of the Carnevares. Does it feel the way you imagined it would?”

  He sighed slightly. “The account my mother left has convinced the clan members that Cesare was going behind their backs. But that doesn’t mean they’re all convinced by me.” He glanced sideways at her. “How about you?”

  “I feel as if I inherited all this like an old car that no one wants to buy. Now I’m stuck with the picturesque old heap of rust and I can’t get rid of it.”

  “There ought to be plenty of people taking an interest.”

  “You?” When she realized how he might take that, she left him no time to reply. “I’m going to try to change a few things. Lose a couple of branches of the business.” A smile flickered around the corners of her mouth. “Build more wind turbines.”

  They were far enough from the house now to hear the mourners’ voices only as vague background noise. Alessandro stopped, took her hand, and gently pulled her around to face him. The sunlight breaking through the branches of the olive trees lit emerald flames in his green eyes.

  “Are we enemies now?” she asked. “Like our families?”

  “My immediate family is dead. I only have”—he shrugged his shoulders—“I only have employees. You at least have Iole. Looks like you’re going to be the big sister now.”

  Her fingers intertwined with his as if of their own accord. “You didn’t answer my question. Do we have to be enemies now?”

  “Well, the concordat will see to it that we don’t actually harm each other.”

  Frowning, she looked at him, and then saw that his dimples had almost imperceptibly deepened with laughter. “Idiot.”

  “That’s what I told myself, too, after that whole thing in Gibellina.” A shadow appeared in his eyes. “I ought to have driven to the hospital with you. Instead I—”

  “You made sure that your clan didn’t fall apart,” she reminded him, and meant it. “I managed the aftermath on my own, no problem.”

  “You ought to have left the island,” he said quietly. “I’d hoped you would be sensible and leave all this behind. I didn’t want to stop you—and then blame myself if anything happened to you.”

  “So why haven’t you given it all up? Don’t tell me it’s any less dangerous for you to take over from your father.”

  “I was born into this world. It’s what I know. But you’re different. All those advisers, and your firms’ business managers, any moment now they’ll be crowding around you, each trying to grab the biggest slice of the cake for himself.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  His eyes rested on hers. “Considering how many people would sooner shoot me in the back today than tomorrow, I ought to be thinking about Carnevare business—instead I think about you day and night.”

  She was shocked to hear him speak with such honesty, although it was exactly what she had so often wondered. They looked at each other in silence. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

  She responded to the touch of his lips hesitantly at first, then with a fervor that surprised her. It felt different from their first tentative kisses, as if they suddenly knew exactly what they were letting themselves in for.

  After a moment she whispered, “No one can know about this. Our own people would murder us.”

  His smile showed determination. As if it were a challenge that he would happily accept. “When everything has calmed down, and—”

  “Nothing’s going to calm down. The Hungry Man will be coming back to Sicily. And that’s not all.”

  “You’re talking about that statue?”

  “You want to know too, don’t you? What it means?”

  He nodded.

  “There have to be more of them down there. Pantaleone said the answers lie at the bottom of the sea. And it’s not just about Lamias and Panthera—there has to be more behind it. The dynasties, TABULA … Those gaps in the crowd. Fundling and Pantaleone both talked about them, and—”

  He cut her short with a long kiss. “This is about us,” he said. “Just us.”

  Sunlight wandered over the ground, golden and decorative, weaving the shadows of the branches together. She held him close, kissing his throat, his cheeks, and then his lips again.

  “I know it is,” she said, sounding neither affectionate nor cool, just stating the fact because it was true. “But we shouldn’t see each other for a while. Give the others time to start racking their brains over something else.”

  “How long?”

  “A month. Counting from Gibellina.” She smiled. “It’ll feel better once the first week is over.”

  “And the other three will pass quickly.” He didn’t look as if he meant it.

  “Oh no,” she said seriously. “Three weeks will be a long time.”

  She kissed him one last time.

  Then they set off on their way back, up the slope and past the double line of olive trees that met above the path.

  EPILOGUE

  THE SHIP’S BOW CUT through the blue waves of the Strait of Messina. The sky was clear and radiant; seagulls flew from the shores of Sicily in the west to the sandy bays of Calabria in the east. Open sea lay between them.

  Wearing a black neoprene diving suit, Rosa sat by the rail in a deck chair, looking out over the water. It was smooth and calm, with only a light breeze blowing, warm for this late in the year. Here on the surface there was nothing to indicate that the seafloor was furrowed like a battlefield, crisscrossed by deep clefts and underwater canyons.

  She had seen charts and diagrams, not least in the stolen Dallamano papers, which she had found in Pantaleone’s house in the forest. Florinda must have handed them over to him after the raid on the Dallamano estate in Syracuse. They clearly showed how severely the frequent underwater earthquakes had disrupted this part of the Mediterranean sea floor.

  “Nearly there,” the captain called down to her from the bridge. She took a deep breath, raised a hand to him in acknowledgment, and jumped up. This was only a small vessel with a six-man crew. She had not wanted to attract attention by ostentatiously equipping herself for a treasure hunt.

  She wanted to do the first dive on her own. She had been training for the last three weeks with a personal diving instructor, first in the Lago di Ogliastr
o, not far from the Palazzo Alcantara, then in the sea off the south coast. That would have to be enough for what she had planned for today. Not an expedition, certainly not an attempt to bring anything up. Only a look at what the Dallamanos had found down there.

  The diving lessons had been not just preparation, but also a welcome distraction from the visits of the presidents and business managers of the Alcantara companies, who came to take a suspicious look at the piccola ragazza, and on whom her fortunes would now depend. She had made an appointment with the diving instructor for as early as possible every morning.

  Her equipment was lying on deck, not far from a gap in the rail. She checked the instructions on the oxygen cylinders again. One of the crew came over and was helping her to get the cylinders over her shoulders when the captain suddenly called, “We have a visitor. Another craft to port. She’s making straight for us.”

  She wasn’t about to waste time getting the heavy oxygen cylinders and her flippers off again. Impatiently, she waddled over to the opposite rail in them. Suddenly the sun seemed even warmer.

  “I know that ship,” she said.

  The sailor beside her shouted up to the captain, “She says she knows the ship.”

  “She’s the Gaia.”

  “She’s the Gaia,” the man shouted.

  Rosa gave him a look that silenced him.

  The snow-white Carnevare yacht came racing up on a crest of foaming sea spray. The engines of both vessels cut out when they were thirty feet apart. Both of them were at the precise spot whose coordinates Ruggero Dallamano had marked on his charts. The statue of the Panthera and the Lamia ought to be standing on the seafloor a hundred and twenty feet below them.

  There was no one in sight on the deck of the Gaia, and her mirrored windows allowed no view of anyone inside the cabin.

  Then, unexpectedly, the sound of trumpet fanfares came over the yacht’s loudspeakers. Rosa recognized the introductory accompaniment at once. The next moment a song was ringing out over the water, clear as glass. A song she knew very well. “My Death.”