The Flight of the Falcon

by Daphne Du Maurier

  I had forgotten—for over an hour I had been wearing the golden wig and the saffron robe. He saw my sudden realization, and laughed.

  “It’s easy, isn’t it,” he said, “to go back five hundred years. Sometimes I lose all sense of time. That’s half the fun of it.” Now, in his own suit, the disguise discarded, he looked as normal as any other man.

  We walked through the Room of the Cherubs and the throne room, and so to the gallery. The page was waiting for us, to light us with his flare down the stairs and across the quadrangle to the side entrance. It was the page who now seemed out of place, a mummer dressed for a pageant, and the walls of the ducal palace, the silent quadrangle, held no more menace than a darkened, dead museum. We went out into the paved way and to the floodlit piazza Maggiore. The Alfa-Romeo was parked outside the center door, and beside it, as though to watch for loiterers, stood two carabinieri. I hesitated, but Aldo walked straight on. The men recognized him and saluted. One of them opened the door of the car. Only then did I follow Aldo.

  “All quiet?” asked my brother.

  “All quiet, Professor Donati,” said the man who had opened the door. “A handful of students without late passes, but we’ve dealt with them. The great majority were sensible. They want to enjoy themselves during the next two days.”

  “They’ll do that,” laughed Aldo. “Good night, good hunting.”

  “Good night, professor.”

  I got in the car beside him and we drove off down the via Rossini. The street was as quiet as it had been the first night of my arrival almost a week ago. But tonight no snow, no freak reminder of past winter. The air was warm, with a soft humidity about it coming from the Adriatic across the chain of hills.

  “What did you think of my boys?” asked Aldo.

  “They do you credit,” I said. “I wish I had had their chance. No one watched over me when I was a student in Turin and groomed me to act bodyguard to a fanatic.”

  He paused by the entrance to the piazza della Vita. “A fanatic,” he repeated. “Is that really what you think of me?”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked.

  The city was truly dead. The cinema had closed. The city stragglers had all gone home.

  “I was,” he said, “when I first sought out those boys, and picked them for their birth and background. In each one of them I saw you. A child abandoned on some bloody hill, torn by bullets or a bomb. It’s different now. One becomes inured, if never reconciled. Besides, my emotion was wasted, as it turned out. You survived.” He swerved into the via San Michele and drew up at 24. “Nurtured by Teutons, Yanks and Torinesi,” he said, “to flower finally as a courier to Sunshine Tours. Those whom the gods love live long.”

  Doubt was with me once again. Doubt and dismay. Doubt that anyone who mocked with so much justice could be mad. Dismay that whatever he had done for those orphaned boys was done for me.

  “What happens now?” I said.

  “Now?” he echoed. “The immediate now or the hereafter? Tonight you fall asleep and dream, if you care to do so, of Signorina Raspa across the way. Tomorrow you can wander at will about Ruffano watching the preparations for the Festival. You dine with me. After that, we shall see.”

  He pushed me from the car. As I climbed out I suddenly remembered the letter in my pocket. I pulled it out.

  “You must read this,” I said. “I found it quite by chance this afternoon. Tucked between the pages of a book among the volumes we were sorting in the new library. It’s all about you.”

  “About me?” he asked. “What about me?”

  “Your prowess as an infant,” I said. “Listen, I’ll read it to you, and then you shall keep it as a memento of your lively past.”

  I leaned across the open window of the car and read aloud the letter. When I had finished I looked up at him and smiled, throwing the letter on his knee.

  “It’s touching, isn’t it,” I said, “how proud they were of you.”

  He did not answer. He sat motionless, his hands upon the wheel, staring straight ahead, his face expressionless and very pale.

  “Good night,” he said abruptly, and before I could answer the car shot away down the via San Michele and round the corner out of sight. I stood there, staring after it.

  17

  Why had the letter produced that effect upon Aldo? I could think of nothing else, either as I went to bed or when I awoke the following morning. I could not remember the letter line for line, but it spoke of “our young fellow’s” progress and his promise of good looks, and thanked Luigi Speca for his great kindness during a period of trouble which was happily over. As Luigi Speca had also signed the baptismal register in San Cipriano I judged him to be both godfather and the doctor who had attended Aldo’s birth—which, from the double entry, must have been difficult, with Aldo nearly losing his life, and perhaps our mother hers. This would be the “time of trouble” referred to in the letter. But why should Aldo mind? The letter had moved me, but not as deeply as all that. I had expected him to laugh, and even make some quip about having passed for dead. Instead, the hard immobile face, the swift departure.

  I did not rush the next morning to arrive at the library on time. We should all be kept there until late, for in the afternoon students and their relatives were to be permitted to view the new library premises, due to be officially opened after the short Easter vacation. I breakfasted alone, my fellow lodgers having already left.

  Just as I had finished the telephone rang. Signora Silvani answered it, and came to tell me it was for me.

  “Someone of the name of Jacopo,” she said. “He wouldn’t give a message. He said you would know who it was.”

  I went into the hall, my heart pounding. Something had happened to Aldo. Something had happened because of last night’s letter. I lifted the receiver.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Signor Beo?”

  Jacopo’s voice was steady, without anxiety. “I have a message for you from the Capitano,” he said. “The plans for the evening have been changed. The Rector, Professor Butali, and Signora Butali have returned from Rome.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “The Capitano would like to see you here sometime this morning,” he went on.

  “Thank you,” I replied, and before he rang off I said to him “Jacopo…”

  “Signore?”

  “Is Aldo all right? Is anything worrying him?”

  There was a second’s pause. Then Jacopo said, “I think the Capitano did not expect Professor Butali back so soon. They arrived late last night. The luggage was being taken in when he passed the house on his return home just before eleven o’clock.”

  “Thank you, Jacopo.”

  I hung up. A letter written some forty years ago was now the least of my brother’s problems. The sick man had got his own way with the doctors and had returned, if not to take active charge at least to be on hand for consultation.

  I heard Signora Silvani moving in the dining room, and left the house quickly before she could start a conversation. I must somehow see Signora Butali before Aldo did. I must urge her to use her influence to try to stop the Festival, how and with what excuse God only knew.

  It was half-past nine. After the Butalis’ long journey yesterday the signora would probably be at home this morning—ten o’clock might be a good moment to call. I turned into the via San Martino and started walking uphill to the via dei Sogni. The sun was already hot, the sky cloudless. The day promised to be one of those I remembered well from childhood, when the distant slopes and valleys shimmered in a blue haze of heat and the city of Ruffano, set proudly on its two hills, dominated the world below.

  I came to the gate set in the wall of our old garden, passed through it to the front door of the house and rang the bell. The door was opened by the girl I already knew, and she recognized me too.

  “Is it possible to see the signora?” I asked.

  The girl looked doubtful, and said something about the signora being engaged—she and Pr
ofessor Butali had only returned from Rome late last night.

  “I know,” I said, “but it is urgent.”

  She disappeared upstairs, and as I stood there waiting I noticed that once more the atmosphere of the house had changed. The dull vacuum of Monday morning was no more. She was home. Not only were her gloves lying on the table, a coat flung loosely on a chair, but an indefinable scent clung to the hall, a reminder of her presence. Only this time she was not alone. The house, instead of containing her only, and by so doing becoming the more mysterious, the more tempting, so that anyone calling like myself on my first mission, and afterwards on the Sunday, was secretly disturbed and furtively attracted—the house now held her husband too. It was his home, and he was master. That stick placed in its stand was like a totem pole to tell the world. The overcoat, the hat, a suitcase still unpacked, parcels of books—there was a male smell about the house that had not been before.

  The girl came running down the stairs and I heard, in her wake, the sound of voices, the sound of closing doors. “The signora will be down in a moment,” she said, “if you would please come in here.”

  She showed me into the room on the left, the study that had been our dining room. Evidence of the husband’s presence was here too. A briefcase on the desk, more books, letters. And a faint but distinctive odor of cigar, smoked last night on arrival, not yet faded in the morning air.

  I must have waited there ten minutes or more, biting my knuckles, before I heard her footsteps on the stairs. Then panic seized me. I did not know what I was going to say. She came into the room. At sight of me her face, though ravaged, tired—for she seemed in some way to have aged within four days—but also expectant and alive, fell in disappointment and surprise.

  “Beo!” she exclaimed. “I thought Anna said Aldo…” Then, swiftly recovering, she crossed the room and gave me her hand. “You must forgive me,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. The silly girl said, ‘The signore who was here for dinner on Sunday night,’ and in my stupidity and rush…” She did not bother to finish her sentence. I understood. In her stupidity and rush the signore who came to dinner on Sunday could signify one man only. And it was not me.

  “There’s nothing to forgive, signora,” I said. “I have to apologize to you. I heard, through Jacopo, that you and your husband were home, that you arrived late last night, and I would not dream of disturbing you so early and on your first morning home if I didn’t think the matter was urgent.”

  “Urgent?” she repeated.

  The telephone rang in the music room above. She exclaimed in annoyance, and was turning to leave the room with a murmured, “Excuse me,” when we heard slow footsteps overhead. Then the ringing stopped and a male voice murmured indistinctly.

  “Exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” she said to me. “If my husband once starts answering the telephone, and talking first to this one, then the other…” She broke off, straining her ears to listen, but the murmur was too faint. “It’s no use,” she said, shrugging. “He’s answered it, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I was wretchedly aware of the trouble I was causing. I could not have called at a worse time. There were hollows under her eyes that told of fatigue and strain. They had not been there on the Sunday night. On Sunday night the world about her could have died.

  “How is the Rector?” I asked.

  She sighed. “As well as he could be, under the circumstances,” she said. “What happened earlier in the week was a great shock to him. But you know already…” She flushed, the color appearing on her naturally pale face like a sudden stain. “I believe it was you I spoke to on Tuesday night,” she said. “Aldo told me. He telephoned me later.”

  “I have to apologize for that as well,” I said, “I mean, for hanging up. I did not want to embarrass you.”

  She moved the letters on the desk, so that her back was turned to me. The gesture was one of withdrawal, a warning that to probe would be unwelcome. My mission became more difficult than ever.

  “You were saying,” she said, “that you had something urgent to tell me?” Even as she spoke, the voice overhead grew louder. We could distinguish nothing, but prolonged discussion had obviously begun.

  “Perhaps I should go up,” she said, anxiously. “So much seems to have gone wrong these last few days. Professor Elia…”

  “So you’ve heard?” I asked.

  She gestured, her hands outspread, and began to pace quickly up and down the room.

  “The first telephone call this morning was to give my husband an exaggerated account of something that happened on Tuesday night,” she answered. “Not from Professor Elia himself, or from Professor Rizzio, but from one of the busybodies in whom this place abounds. In any event, the damage has been done. My husband is greatly distressed. Your brother is to come here later to explain things and to soothe him down.”

  “Signora,” I said, “it is about Aldo that I’ve come to see you.”

  She stiffened, and her face became a mask. Only the eyes betrayed awareness. “What about him?” she asked.

  “The Festival,” I began. “I’ve heard him speak to the students about the Festival. It’s become as real to them as it has to him, and therefore dangerous. I think it should be canceled.”

  The anxiety behind her eyes vanished. She broke into a smile. “But that is the whole idea,” she said. “It is always the same. Your brother makes the story—whatever it is they act—so vivid and so real that everybody taking part feels himself a character out of history. I know we all did last year. And the result was magnificent. Anyone will tell you.”

  “I wasn’t here last year,” I said. “All I know is that this year will be different. It won’t take place in the ducal palace, for one thing, but in the streets. The students will be fighting in the streets.”

  She looked at me, still smiling. Her relief that I had not touched upon her relationship with Aldo was manifest.

  “We went in procession in the streets last year as well,” she told me, “or rather my husband did, as Pope Clement, with his very lifelike entourage. I was with the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, awaiting his arrival in the palace quadrangle. I promise you there will be nothing to fear, the police are used to it, it will be most orderly.”

  “How can an insurrection be orderly?” I asked. “How can students, told to be armed with any sort of weapon, keep themselves in check?”

  She gestured with her hands. “They were armed last year,” she replied, “and surely if any of the students get out of hand it will be easy enough to stop them? Don’t think me unsympathetic Beo, but we have been running these Festivals in Ruffano for the past three years. Or rather my husband has, with your brother to help him. They know how to handle these affairs.”

  It was useless. My mission had been in vain. Nothing I was likely to say would convince her, unless I betrayed Aldo direct. Told her what I had heard from his lips the night before. And this loyalty forbade.

  “I find Aldo changed,” I said, trying a different line, “more moody, cynical. He will switch from laughter and chaffing to sudden silence.”

  “You had not seen him for twenty-two years,” she reminded me. “You must make allowances.”

  “Take last night,” I pursued, “take last night in particular. I showed him an old letter of our father’s that I’d discovered by accident in one of the library books. A letter to Aldo’s godfather, a doctor, I believe, saying what a fine fellow was his son. I thought Aldo would be amused. I read it to him. He didn’t say a word, but drove away.”

  Her patient, rather pitying smile was maddening. “Perhaps he was too much touched,” she said, “and didn’t want you to know it. He was devoted to your father, wasn’t he, and your father very proud of him? Or so I’ve always understood. Yes, I think I can understand, why he forgot to say good night. He may seem cynical to you, Beo, but it’s on the surface only. In reality…”

  She broke off, emotion suddenly breaking to the surface, giving
the lie to frigidity, to reserve. That was how she must have looked, I thought, on Sunday night, in the music room above, when Aldo returned to her after bidding me good night, and the vespas spluttered and roared, encircling the city, and the masked students broke into the women’s hostel to fake their assault on Signorina Rizzio. “The wife of the leading citizen had been profaned.” The question was, which one? I had no doubt about the answer.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ve taken up too much of your time. Please say nothing to Aldo about my visit when he sees you. But warn him to be careful.”

  “I’ll do that certainly,” she replied, “and anyway my husband will want to hear all the details of the Festival program, though he may not be well enough to attend himself. Listen…”

  The conversation above had ceased. The footsteps moved across the floor to the door and on to the landing. They began to descend the stairs.

  “He’s coming down,” she said quickly. “He’s not supposed to walk up and down the stairs.” She went swiftly to the door, then turned. “He doesn’t know who you are,” she said, the telltale spot of color in her cheeks, “I mean, your relationship to Aldo. I told him someone had called on business, that I was not sure who it was.”

  Her guilt communicated itself to me. I followed her to the door. “I’ll go,” I said.

  “No,” she answered, “there isn’t time.”

  We went into the hall. The Rector was already halfway down the stairs. He was a man who might have been any age between fifty-five and sixty-five, broad-shouldered, of medium height, gray-haired, with the fine eyes and regular features of one who had been handsome in his youth and was so still, though the gray texture of his skin gave proof of his recent illness. He had the air of authority and distinction of one who must immediately command liking and respect, even affection. My guilt increased.

  “This is Signor Fabbio,” said his wife as he paused at sight of me. “He came with a message about the library, where he is working as assistant. He was just going.”