"You have become a wonderful liar, he said. I made you so.
He turned her over and took her with such ferocity, over and over again, till she pleaded with him to stop. He wanted to split her in two. He wouldn’t stop till she was dead.
It didn’t matter. When she was with him it was as if she were dead. She was nothing. She belonged to him. As soon as he arrived she started to forget how to think.
She couldn’t think as long as he was there.
He put the cuffs on her wrists and the blindfold. He wouldn’t let go of her for days, it felt like, weeks. She lost track of time again. They’d taken the radio away. Soon, he started to bring others in with him. She always knew when others were coming because they took her into a smaller room, made her lie on a soft bed with many small pillows, and attached chains to her wrists so they could arrange her any which way they wanted. They touched her ring in awe. His Lordship whispered in her ear and told her what to do.
Then he was gone again, and they brought the radio back and opened the windows. He had been there for only three weeks. She’d thought it was a year.
It took her months to feel better. To think as she’d started to think again. To be able to dare to write down a word.
Hogarth came. He told her there’d been another auction. Wasn’t she a lucky girl, to be so far away. Only forty thousand pounds. Pathetic, wasn’t it? Blame it on the war, he said the shortages. She should be grateful His Lordship was busy with the fighting. But it will soon be over. He misses you.
He stayed for a while. He talked to her about the war. She asked him questions. She’d forgotten what it was like to have a simple conversation, to know how to talk. Hogarth was helping her to remember, she thought. Hogarth didn’t want her head to be all fuzzy.
Once, Hogarth said something funny, and she actually laughed. She hadn’t thought herself able to laugh anymore.
She didn’t want to die. She was feeling much better.
She wanted the war to be over, but it was so confusing. When the war ended he would be coming back, and it would start all over again.
Hogarth was sitting at the desk when she woke up, a bottle of champagne in a bucket near a stack of papers.
"Drink up, he said. He looked very happy.
He handed her a glass. She figured the champagne was drugged, but she drank it anyway. It didn’t matter"they’d make her swallow it, or worse, if she refused. Something was going to happen. Hogarth had that expectant look on his face.
"The war is over, and we’re moving again, he said. It’s a lovely house, and we have new servants. Matilda and Markus will still be with us, of course. But they can be such bores.
She was getting dizzy. Moving meant nothing, except another room to get used to. She had no idea where she’d been for ten years.
It couldn’t be ten years. That meant she was twenty-eight. It couldn’t be. It was only yesterday that Hogarth had tricked her.
She was still having a nightmare. She’d wake up and be eighteen and in London with her silly cousin June.
He had tricked her again. Her eyes were so heavy. They tied on the blindfold and snapped the cuffs on her wrists and wrapped her in something, that heavy thing, why that, not again, oh why"
It was cold and raining. She heard the rain, vaguely, on the roof of the car. She woke when they stopped moving. Someone carried her out into the damp, chill air, up several steps, and she was handed to someone else and laid down on her side, on a narrow bed. A thick belt was strapped around her waist.
She heard engines whining. It must be a plane, she thought. He was going to take her up to the sky and push her out.
There was a swift rush as the plane sped down the runway, up into the air.
His Lordship’s fingers in her hair. Of course.
"Why are you here? he asked.
"To serve you, my lord, she whispered.
"Open your mouth, he said.
When he was finished, they raised her head and made her drink something bitter. She pretended to swallow, then turned her head away and spit it out. She didn’t know why.
Nothing mattered. It was all starting again. He was then, his hands raking her skin under the heavy thing, shoving her onto her back, picking up her legs and wrapping them around his waist.
He was never going to let go of her. He was never going to let her go.
The plane was slowing down, descending. Her ears popped. They propped her up and made her drink something else, and this time she swallowed. It didn’t matter. The plane hit the ground with a slight bump, and they taxied to a stop. She was so dizzy again. Someone unstrapped her and picked her up and carried her down the steps, into a car.
She woke up on a soft, comfortable bed. He was there; she felt him moving on top of her, but she was so tired her legs like lead, that she didn’t care. It was dark again.
With him there was nothing but darkness.
She woke again. His fingers were tracing lazy circles on her breasts.
"Welcome to your new home, he said.
"Where are we? she asked.
"What did you say? He pinched her nipples so hard she cried out.
"Nothing, my lord, she whispered. Forgive me.
"That’s better, he said but not good enough. Turn over.
He pushed her over before she could move. He took one arm, then the other, fastening her wrists so that her arms were pulled up over her head.
"You have forgotten much, I see. Shall we start your training over from the beginning?
No no no
"He was nuzzling her ear.
"I didn’t hear you, he said.
"Whatever pleases you, my lord.
He didn’t stop until he was satisfied she was too exhausted to keep screaming.
"It is indeed a lovely house, he said. Hogarth was right.
He would not take off the blindfold. It was still dark.
She had fallen off the face of the earth.
"If you’re good you will be allowed outside, he went on. There’s a small garden that needs attention. Here in your room, you’ll find an extensive library and a piano. There are additional servants. Moritz"he’s a cousin of Markus and dreadfully unpleasant. As well as two others, twins who work for me. You shall want for nothing.
Nothing, except her life.
"I’m afraid I must leave you, but I shall be here as often as I can. The war is over, and you must not be allowed to forget that I am your master, and you shall continue to do as I say. Do you understand?
"Yes, my lord, she said.
She didn’t feel well in the mornings. She was dizzy and tired, Matilda brought her tea and she threw up trying to drink it. She poured it away instead when Matilda wasn’t looking. Matilda was preoccupied lately, looking after the new house and the new servants.
She sat in the garden and watched the new servants, the twins. They were both pudgy, with curly dark hair, but their faces weren’t ugly like Moritz’s. He patrolled the grounds with a shotgun under his arm. They were afraid of Moritz, too, she could tell. They were afraid to talk to her. She wondered what His Lordship had done to them that they were here. That they were so fearful.
She felt so odd. Weightless, almost. Her appetite was coming back and she was starting to put on weight. Matilda looked at her one day when she was standing by the window and nearly dropped the tray.
Hogarth was there soon after. He looked very upset.
"Matilda told me we have a little problem, he said.
"What do you mean? she asked.
"Your belly, I mean, he replied. She had never seen Hogarth flustered before. Your belly and what’s in it. You re pregnant, are you not?
"I think so, she said. She felt flooded with calm. She was going to have a baby. She didn’t know how it had happened, or why it hadn’t happened before. It must have been in the plane, when she spit out the bitter tea. Matilda had been making her drink bitter tea ever since they’d stolen her away. There was something in the tea to stop her from getting pregnant. She’d been trying no
t to drink it for a long time.
"This has never happened before, Hogarth was saying. He was fussing with his cuffs. She was flooded with a sudden wave of intense happiness, because she was going to have a baby. Because the very idea of this baby had rattled Hogarth so.
Hogarth brought in a doctor. They tied on a blindfold before he came in. She thought he must be a member of the Club.
"Twins, the doctor said. She’s going to have twins.
Twin babies. She was going to live again. She was going to start thinking, like she had when the radio was on. She was going to force herself to start thinking and she was going to escape. Escape from His Lordship and Hogarth and all of them, the members of the Club. She was going to have her babies and get away.
She was going to live. She was going to start to write again, on tiny pieces of her watercolor paper, and when it was dark in her room she would hide the tiny slips of paper in musty books no one ever touched. She was going to talk to the new servants, the pudgy ones who were afraid. She hated them, too, but she must try to talk to them. She needed to practice, to be able to talk to her babies.
"His Lordship must be informed immediately, Hogarth said to the doctor. Then they said good-bye. Hogarth came back and untied her blindfold.
"I am having these babies, she said to him.
Hogarth didn’t know what to say. For once.
"Do you want to feel them? she asked. His Lordship would want you to tell him what they feel like.
Hogarth looked at her in some amazement. Then, gingerly, he put his hand on her hard, smooth belly. She was growing larger every day.
She looked down at his hand on her belly. Hogarth was wearing a ring. A golden ring. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. It had an intricate design of a naked woman. It was the ring belonging to all the members of the Club, she knew.
She’d felt it on their fingers before, when they’d grabbed her hands.
Hogarth had forgotten, and she saw his ring.
She smiled at Hogarth.
One of the twins started talking to her. She was very surprised that he was an American. He asked her if she needed anything. She didn’t trust him, or any man, but she needed someone. She had to get strong and get help, for her babies.
The twins would help her if she told them she was pregnant with her own twins.
He said his name was Tomasino Cennini and that his brother was Matteo. He said he was worried about her, and she didn’t want to believe him in case he was a spy for His Lordship. Tomasino said they owed His Lordship their lives, that they’d been saved from certain death. That they were from Bensonhurst, in Brooklyn, but had been in Italy during the war.
His Lordship had told them to call him Mr. Lincoln, Tomasino told her, because he freed them from slavery.
That made her laugh so hard she choked.
Then he told her what had happened to them, and she felt sorry. It was the first time a man had made her feel pity in a long time, she realized.
At first, she felt pity only because she knew they couldn’t hurt her. Not the way His Lordship hurt her. And all the members of the Club.
Then she thought about them, that they were as much prisoners of His Lordship and of Markus and Moritz and Matilda as she was. Only they didn’t quite know it.
Or perhaps they did.
But they were young and they were strong, even if they were pudgy. She looked through the library in her bedroom and found some old books about their condition. She read them quickly, to see if they could still hurt her despite what had happened to them, and was satisfied when she realized that they couldn’t.
When she felt brave and saw Tomasino, she gave him one of the books to read. He got a strange look on his face. He tried to make a joke, and she nearly smiled at him.
She would still be able to smile. She was still a person.
She would get her life back. The money was in the bank. The Swiss Consolidated Bank, Limited. The account numbered 116–614.
She decided she had to trust Tomasino. She had nothing to lose. If His Lordship found out she would be punished most severely, but she had to risk it. For her babies.
Tomasino and Matteo would help her. They were twins. Someday, she would give Tomasino the tiny pieces of paper that had become a diary and he would read it and tell his brother what they ‘d done to her.
His Lordship, and all of them.
The members of the Club.
[Note from Tomasino: Diary ends here.]
Guy finds me on the balcony outside the blue bedroom, where he had watched Belladonna in the dark during our grand plantation ball.
He hands the diary back to me, his face ashen, and I wave a bourbon bottle at him. He shakes his head. Nothing found in a bottle could dull this pain.
We sit together, not speaking, for a long time, listening to the sounds of the night. The rustling of the wind in the trees, the crickets buzzing in mindless chirps, an owl hooting in delight as it swoops on a mouse. The sky is alive with stars. Miles and miles and miles of stars.
“Don’t you want a cigarette?” I ask him eventually. “I remember you from the club, and you were smoking then. Lit your cigarette from a necklace once upon a time, if I recall correctly.”
“You do,” Guy says. “But I gave it up. I didn’t think she liked it.”
“No, she doesn’t” I sigh heavily.
“Can I ask you something?” Guy said.
“How did we escape? Where is Bryony’s twin? Why no pregnancy before then?”
Guy nods.
“I think she was right"that it was the bitter tea Matilda gave her, with some sort of herb in it,” I say. “I looked it up in some herb books. Maybe a touch of cedar oil, or frankincense. Just because doctors don’t know about such potions doesn’t mean they don’t work. Surely the members of the Club had plenty of opportunity to experiment.”
“Oh, Tomasino.” His voice is so full of anguish I think my heart will break.
“I’ll tell you the rest someday, Guy. Truly, I will. You need to know everything. But just not this minute. I’m very tired. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he says slowly.
Poor, sweet Guy. He must be bursting with curiosity. I’d be, if I’d just read a diary like that.
We sit in silence again, until my foot falls asleep. The sky is starting to lighten, with a rosy flush on the horizon.
“I’m going to London,” Guy says. “As soon as possible.”
I hand him a card with the Pritch’s contact numbers on it. “He’s expecting your call,” I say. “He’ll take good care of you. We trust him implicitly. Maybe some of the names will strike a chord somewhere. Or you may know one of them.”
“I know men tike them.” Guy’s mouth is set in a grim line. “They’re the bullies in school who get their jollies from inflicting pain on anyone or anything that’s weaker. My brother Frederick was like that. Except he preferred animals to women. Shooting them, I mean.”
“Where is he now?” I ask. Anything to change the subject.
“Charged by a rhino in Kenya, he was. Gored to death. That he had to be buried down there gave me some small satisfaction. That he wouldn’t be next to my mother and my sister.”
“Dare I suggest it served the bloody bastard right?” I venture.
“It almost made me believe there is a God after all,” Guy says bitterly. “But not quite.”
“I wish it could be some other way,” I say heavily.
“I know. She won’t see me now, will she?”
“No. But if it makes you feel any better, I doubt she’ll see me, either. She probably won’t leave her room for weeks. Matteo is on his way down. He always had a special touch with her when she was feeling poorly. But she’s never been like this. That’s because"”
“Because no one else has read it,” Guy says.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how she found the courage to write that.”
“I don’t either,” I reply. “I couldn’t ask her. She
asked me to copy it over so it was legible, that’s all. She started writing on scraps of her watercolor paper when they thought she was painting. Sometimes she wrote on blank pages of books in her room, scribbling quickly in the bathroom or at night. Somewhere where they couldn’t see her doing it. She was afraid they were watching her. Not all the time, but often enough. It’s why we’re a bit extreme with our security measures.”
“You needn’t justify anything to me. Truly you don’t.”
“I’m going to miss you, Guy. Miss you almost as much as the mint juleps I concoct with such delicacy.” My feeble joke falls flat. This is not the time for joking.
“Thank you, kind sir. I’m going to miss you, too. And Bryony.”
And Belladonna. More than"
“Find them, Guy. Please help the Pritch find them,” I say. My voice is choking. I need to go lie down. “Find her baby. Find him. We’re so close. I know we are.”
They will come to you if they don’t know who you are.
“I’ll find him,” Guy says savagely. “I won’t rest until I find him.”
Do not let the loneliness freeze your soul.
I want to tell him the dungeons are waiting, dusty, dank cells hidden behind the wine cellar. I want to tell him we’ve been waiting for this nightmare to end for nearly ten years. I want to tell him there have been so many times we have nearly given up in despair, certain that the members of the Club would forever elude us.
You will be forever captive to the vengeance if you let yourself remain obsessed by it.
I want to tell him that it’s only the sheer strength of her will, planning and plotting, that keeps us going. “My mind will not be turned around,” Belladonna once said to Leandro. “I will not succumb to the weakness … And I will make them suffer.”
Belladonna watch you die.
PART V
The Feverish Wanderings
Toward Home
(1956–1958)
Belladonna has gone far
Malice shining like a star
Green orbs glowing in the sky
Sparkling teardrops in her eye
Belladonna watch you die
19
The Members of
Belladonna Page 42