Copyright © 2012 Barbara Lambert
First ePub edition © Cormorant Books Inc. October, 2012
No part of this publication may be printed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cataloguing information available upon request.
Lambert, Barbara
The Whirling Girl/Barbara Lambert.
EPUB ISBN 978-1-77086-100-8 | MOBI ISBN 978-1-77086-101-5
Cover design: Angel Guerra/Archetype
based on a text design by Tannice Goddard, Soul Oasis Networking
CORMORANT BOOKS INC.
390 STEELCASE ROAD EAST, MARKHAM, ONTARIO, CANADA L3R 1G2
www.cormorantbooks.com
For Douglas
“Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.”
Salome, OSCAR
ONE
THE GARDEN’S KEEPER SEES a flash of a silver-dotted under-wing, then another and another, as sun breaks through the ruined wall. The butterflies skim in, a drift of mirrors. Soon, as spring warms the Tuscan woods, more endangered ones will arrive, perhaps even a shimmering False Apollo such as last year was blown from distant shores to rest its frayed transparent wings in his sanctuary. But what is he to do with such a blow of beauty, so alone? The young man hungers to shelter something rarer still, culled from the halfremembered, the forgotten, what never was.
With Second-Best Regrets
CLARE LIVINGSTON HAD KNOWN nothing about her uncle’s obituary: not that it had been published internationally (even in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Corriere della Sera) nor that — most hurtfully to her aunt — it had also appeared in the local weeklies. Only when a lawyer tracked Clare down in Vancouver and summoned her to the family farm in western Washington did she learn the scandal-making nature of her uncle’s bequest. Later, when she read the obituary, Clare realized her uncle had written it himself.
Noted ETRUSCAN SCHOLAR GEOFFREY KANE DIES AT SIXTY, IN SEATTLE RAN THE HEADER IN THE SKAGIT VALLEY HERALD.
Born in Oxford, England, Geoffrey Kane (a.k.a. “Fufluns”) travelled to Anacortes, Washington as a graduate student to assist the retired historian Perseus Livingston in compiling his research papers. Kane stayed on for fifteen years after marrying Livingston’s only daughter, before an abrupt departure for Italy where he found employment with the Rome bureau of The New York Times.
Etruscan archaeology was Kane’s passion. During his twenty years in Rome, he spent his leisure time travelling around Etruria, exploring the remains of Etruscan cities and cemeteries, and publishing a series of articles under the pen name “Fufluns.” On returning to the States to undergo treatment for what turned out to be his final illness, Kane let it be known that a forthcoming book would release spectacular information about a hitherto unknown Etruscan site.
Unlikely to be missed, Geoffrey Kane is survived by his niece Chiara Livingston to whom, with forgiveness, he leaves his Tuscan property, and by his wife Marion Livingston Kane, to whom he leaves his second-best regrets.
Clare’s aunt met her at the farm gate holding the shotgun she’d been using to keep back the local press. Clare had not seen her aunt in twenty years. Now the long braid was grey. Clare remembered it as yellow like her own. She remembered how it twitched back and forth like a lion’s tail; the feline beauty was still there, as was the ice-blue glare that could maul her from yards away.
The old farmhouse had gone grey as well, the paint finally giving a cracked and stony look to the fake Italian tower.
In a show of family backbone, Clare’s aunt had turned this occasion into an ironic wake. She invited selected relatives to drink sherry in the cavernous salotto (as generations had insisted the room be called), where the air was thick with dust motes and speculation. For surely (the murmuring suggested as they waited for the lawyer) the obituary had got it wrong. Surely the will itself would make clear that if Geoffrey Kane had managed to acquire substantial property — if he’d managed to make a prosperous life for himself after decamping all those years ago — he would not have left everything to Clare.
In the wind-rush of dropped jaws as the bequest was confirmed, Clare took the sealed envelope the lawyer handed her and fled up the spiral stairs to the tower.
She stood for a long time looking out across the acres that had been tulip fields when her great-grandfather built the folly of an Italianate villa for his bride; the fields were horse pasture now, sodden in the rain. This tower room had been the retreat of her grandfather Perseus, later her uncle’s study. Now there was some old lumber, the smell of mice. She slit the envelope with a rusty knife from the sill. There was nothing personal inside. Just the command — typewritten by a lawyer in Cortona — for Clare to carry with her, to Italy, “the bodily remains of the most lamented Signor Geoffrey Kane, to be disposed of as you will see fit, once you have arrived.”
Two weeks later, she was driving north from the airport at Rome with the disturbing cargo concealed in a plastic makeup case. Who knew what the strictures might be about bringing someone’s ashes across international borders?
Clare. Or as the obituary might have put it, a.k.a. Chiara.
(In Italian: clear, bright, light-filled, fair.)
GEOFFREY HAD HELD HER on his knee when she was little and told her tales of distant lands; she’d known she was the light of her uncle’s life. Such imaginary travels they’d escaped on — to the great lost cities of the Amazon, now overgrown with trees so tall that if you were a jaguar, stalking, you would move through constant deep and leafy gloom. He’d promised he would take her there. He would take her to far-off Italy too, to the lands of the powerful Etruscans who had left behind incomparable treasure in their lavish tombs. Safe on his knee, safe and loved, the lost civilizations rose again and beckoned, conjured by his words.
The Italian hill town of Cortona was older than Troy. That was another of his stories. Long ago, the local ruler’s wife had borne the child of Zeus, and the scandal had driven the boy to seek his fortune in Asia Minor. When he lost his hat in battle, on that spot he founded Troy.
The autostrada rolled under the rented jeep’s wheels no matter how Clare sped or slowed. Somewhere to the north, behind that ancient city of Cortona, her uncle had bought a house and olive grove, where he made a life that she’d known nothing of.
Castled towns rose and fell in the near distance. Red ploughed fields glistened against other fields that were not parched and umber, as she had expected, but a wild lush green. The wind held a hothouse softness too, though mixed with freeway fumes. After the dreary week of her stopover for research in London, this late spring fullness was a hopeful sign. She sped past exit signs for Tarquinia, Tuscania, Orvieto, hilltop cities where once those great Etruscan strongholds loomed.
To my niece Chiara Livingston, with forgiveness, the will had read. Not just the immense and shaming gift — a gift clearly designed to shock — but the twisted offer of forgiveness.
She had been left a house, a Tuscan house, a piece of Tuscan property, t
he stuff that dreams are made on. She would not allow ancient grief to spoil this. She forced her concentration back to the work she planned, the research she’d already undertaken during her week in London; she had in mind a lavish book that would delve into folk witchcraft, the so-called “old religion,” rumoured to have survived from Etruscan times. It would be illustrated with her botanical paintings, giving it the same scientific imprimatur that had garnered praise for her Amazonia book — and this time it would be a piece of work that no one could possibly look askance at if they peered too closely. Perhaps this would be the one to make her moderately solvent. She would be able to hang on to the Tuscan property, hire wily Italian solicitors to outsmart her uncle’s widow’s lawyers.
She took her eyes from the perils of the autostrada long enough to steal a glimpse of her reflection in the rear-view mirror. A young woman in a serious hat, entering a new chapter of her life. She tugged the brim of the hat lower. An Italian tour bus swooshed past. Her rented jeep shuddered in the rush of wind. Clare Livingston, reputed Amazonian explorer, tried to pull a lightly spangled veil over the dark matter of the journey, the bequest, even the druggy sense, as the road pulled her closer to his house, that he would meet her there.
The exit sign for Chiusi flashed by. “Choosy,” she said aloud; big mistake. A shutter in her head flew open and there it was, his voice: No no, Chiara, it’s pronounced Keee-oo-see with a k-sound, as in your own name. We will go there. We will hunt for the lost tomb of Lars Porsenna! We will look for scarabs in the jeweller’s field.
She skidded onto the verge, blind with sudden tears, spraying gravel, choking back all she’d been holding off, an ache so deep that she was again tainted and helpless, exactly what she had been to make him flee.
Traffic buffeted the jeep. You were not supposed to stop here. Then the crunch of gravel as a car pulled in behind. She thought of the Carabinieri at the airport with their shining boots and tidy submachine guns. They would find the ashes. She would be lost in the great jungle of Italian rules and regulations, maybe carted off to prison, maybe never seen again.
She looked up to see a 1950s model cream-coloured Mercedes. A young man was getting out, his profile reflected in her side-view mirror like a face on a coin — grand high-bridged nose, determined chin. Now he was coming forward as if she knew him, as if she would be glad, his hair blowing and then falling straight in the wind of passing cars, his linen jacket hunching up around his shoulders with the urgency of what he had to say. She felt a rush of recognition, of idiotic joy, even of rescue, as her eyes locked with this unknown person in the mirror.
She rolled down the window.
She shoved the stick shift into gear, rammed her foot to the floor; and when she saw his startled look, she tore off her hat and hurled it up over the top of the car. In the mirror she saw it hovering for a moment, flapping, before a gust from another passing tour bus sent it soaring towards the roadside field. Her hair fizzed out around her, spun the mirror full of gold.
Italy is Dangerous
ALONG THE NARROW TWISTING road that led from the autostrada, Clare passed olive groves, meadows, red fields with shadowed furrows. A stretch of umbrella pines floated like obedient clouds. No further sight of the cream-coloured Mercedes. What cheap force had flooded up in her back there? She felt another light-headed rush and then another.
Italy was dangerous. She’d been warned of that by jealous friends before she left. The place was rife with handsome roadside mashers. She’d been quite right to flee. But what an idiotic thing to throw away her hat, which she had rediscovered in a trunk and decided would be a talisman of sorts; it had belonged to the dear old relative in Vancouver who’d taken her in as a runaway when she was just thirteen. She brushed back her wild hair. What had she imagined — that an eagle would swoop down and restore the hat, heralding her triumphal entry into a new exalted state of being, the way the first Tarquin had entered Rome?
Rough purple mountains appeared in the distance. On a nearer slope a vast rocky patch appeared, disappeared with a bend in the road, swung into view again, and became three-dimensional. A whole city pulling itself up into massive walls and ochre buildings and towers, like a child’s pop-up book.
Cortona. The city older than Troy.
She rummaged in her bag for the directions the Italian solicitor had sent along with the key. The house was on a farther slope, behind the town. When she found it, would it be heartbreaking and lovely? Or would the walls ooze a toxic mix of forgiveness and guilt? Sometimes, in the weeks before she’d left Vancouver, the amazement of the bequest had opened before her like a reprieve. Sometimes it snapped shut like a trap.
She circled the base of the hill, wound through a maze of lanes, turned up onto a steep dirt track where the jeep had to straddle washed-out ruts. She peered at the notes again: “Just past some newly planted hectares of the olive, one must turn into the lane to one’s left. One is home.”
THE LANE WIDENED INTO an area of rugged grass. Geraniums in terracotta pots perched along the edge. Treetops reached from below. The house seemed to grow right out of the slope, a house of lichen-covered stone with a side arbour of wisteria. It was ancient, weathered — the stone steps that led up to the arbour, too. One large window on the upper level scattered the setting sun from its many panes. Green shutters covered the others. Clare parked under a great gnarled oak. The air was thick with the scent of wisteria, and the sound of bees.
She was shaking. She let her gaze escape across the wide sweep of the valley, towards some distant cone-shaped hills half-lost in mist. She took out the big iron key, hefted out the plastic case that held the ashes. Her clothes had gone on to some other destination, but the suitcase with her art materials had made it. She dragged it to the double door on the lower level, and into a shuttered area where the space was divided by a ladder stairway. Was this one of those old farmhouses where the lower floor had once been a cattle barn? A scorpion skittered into a dark corner. She dropped the cases, and made her way up the ladder stairs.
THE ROOM SHE STEPPED into was striking and unexpected, yet for a moment seemed foretold. She experienced the same feeling she’d had on the freeway when the young man had come striding up.
Light poured through the great window, pooled on the uneven terracotta floor. A smoky mirror caught the view of distant hills settling in a froth of golden mist. At one end of the room a great stone fireplace rose, big enough to roast a calf in; doors of heavy wood and glass led out to the wisteria arbour at the other. Down a set of shallow steps she glimpsed copper pots above a black enamel stove.
One is home.
She stretched out her arms, turned slowly, faster, whirled, catching her reflection again and again in the cloudy mirror. Dizzy, she braced herself on the heavy sideboard that held the mirror, studied the woman with the wild shining hair as if this were an illustration in an old-fashioned book where the heart of the heroine was gold and pure.
In that mirrored land, the distant olive groves on the back slope of the hill that held Cortona looked close enough to touch. A ruined fortress loomed at the top, against a sky turning amethyst. A bell rang in Cortona. Perhaps the bell from the basilica of Santa Margherita, a saint whose story began like a fairytale — an innocent country girl, barely a teen, seduced to live with her noble lover in one of those distant hilltop towns that now glimmered across the plain in the last evening glow.
But real dusk was seeping in, reflections jittering in the warped panes of windows and doors. The wrought-iron lantern above the trestle table cast the merest slick of light. Catching a flash of movement, Clare whirled around. A lizard clung to a ceiling beam, its jewelled scales attracting the lantern light, its bright eyes sharp. Then with a tiny flick, it was gone, leaving a ripple of unease. Probably Italy was dangerous. Her helpful friends had warned her of the gangs of wandering gypsies or Calabrians, and the famous Butcher of Florence who slit the throats of lovers in the woods.
Were the doors all locked? She started to check, f
irst the small oak door beside the fireplace. It scraped on the tiles as she eased it open. She stood with her hand on the door frame. Her uncle’s room. In the shuttered gloom, the dark outline of a bed. She retreated.
Back down the ladder stairs, she twisted the iron key firmly in the lock. With the light on, she discovered it was a fine space. Not a trace of a former barn, the walls lined with books, a mellow brick floor.
Above a desk, though, hung the ugliest oil painting she’d ever seen, a paint-by-numbers stream gushing diagonally down a slope between brooding trees, lumpy striped rocks breaking the flow. Worse, on a shelf below, a purple hand mirror popped into view, the back stamped with a motto in fake gothic writing: “Seek and ye shall find.”
Her heart stopped.
So many innocent games he’d devised when she was little, because she had no playmates on the farm. Treasure hunts and paper chases, even a wooden puzzle-box that had required Zen-like patience, till she worked out how to spring the lock.
Seek and ye shall find.
Hadn’t the obituary said that he’d been working on a book that would tell of some remarkable Etruscan find? Could these odd objects be clues in one last puzzle he’d set for her — this was why he’d brought her here? He must have left behind notes and papers — a true paper chase, giving further clues?
She started pulling books from the shelves, tearing open the desk drawers, checking out the alcove behind the staircase where she found a great luxurious tiled bath — then racing up the stairs, searching through the rest of the house, shying past the door into his bedroom, to pull open every drawer and cupboard.
The Whirling Girl Page 1