The Ancient Curse

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Fabrizio. ‘There’s milk and biscuits.’

  The boy nodded yes.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Emilio brought me. He delivers mineral water to the tavern. I like driving around with him.’

  ‘How did you know I lived here?’

  ‘Once I saw you going in the gate while I was riding around in Emilio’s truck.’

  ‘Do your parents know you’re here? They’ll be worried. How about if we give them a call?’

  Fabrizio put his hand on the phone. The boy shook his head hard.

  ‘You must have parents . . .’

  ‘I live with my stepmother and she beats me for no reason. I hate her.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t do as she asks and she has to punish you.’

  The little boy shook his head again but said no more.

  ‘Why did you come all this way? You know I saw you at Le Macine.’

  ‘Because I want to dig like you do. I want to be an archaeologist.’

  ‘How do you know what I do?’

  No answer from the child.

  ‘Was she the one who told you? Your . . . stepmother? Or did you hear her talking to someone about me?’

  The boy said nothing. He seemed intent on dipping biscuits into his milk. Then Fabrizio noticed that he was looking out of the corner of his eye at the blown-up photograph of the lad of Volterra.

  ‘Do you like him?’ asked Fabrizio.

  The boy shook his head once again and then, a few moments later, said, ‘So, can I stay?’

  Fabrizio took a seat opposite him.

  ‘I’m afraid not. A child has to be with his family. I’d like you to stay here, but then your mother would come looking for you. She’d talk to the carabinieri, you know? They’d call it “abduction of a minor” and you go to prison for that.’

  ‘Better to be in jail than with her,’ said the boy.

  ‘Not you. Me. I’m the one they’d put in jail for kidnapping a minor, and that’s you. You see?’

  The boy shook his head again and Fabrizio sighed. How could he refuse to help this sweet child who seemed to have no one caring for him?

  ‘Angelo, listen . . . you have to try and understand,’ he began again.

  The boy got up. ‘I’m not going back to her,’ he said. ‘I’ll run away.’

  He started towards the door. He acted like a little man; no crying or betraying any sign of weakness. Fabrizio’s heart swelled.

  ‘Wait!’ said Fabrizio. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Hold on a minute. Listen, for reasons I can’t explain right now, the carabinieri come by here really often. If they see you here with me, they’ll start to say, “Who is this kid and where is he from and who are his parents?” and so on and so on.’

  He suddenly thought of Francesca and was pleased to have an excuse for phoning her.

  ‘OK, wait. I have an idea. I have a lady friend who could maybe take care of you for a little while and then well decide what we should do, all right? You stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’

  He went out into the corridor, where there was another phone, so Angelo wouldn’t hear him. Francesca answered on the first ring, at her office in the museum. ‘I figured if you weren’t dead, you’d turn up sooner or later. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything as soon as I see you. In the meantime, I have an emergency to deal with that might even help us out in the long run. A little boy has just shown up here. He lives with that woman at Le Macine, who he says is his stepmother. He’s run away because she mistreats him. I think he may know something . . .’ No answer. ‘Francesca, I’ve succeeded in translating that thing, but I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. I have to see you, as soon as possible.’ Dead silence on the other end of the line. ‘Francesca, please,’ he added.

  ‘All right. But you could have called me. Even just to say hello.’

  ‘You’ll understand when we see each other. Please, Francesca, come right away.’

  ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

  Fabrizio hung up and went back into the kitchen, but the child had gone. Nothing more than an empty glass on the table and a few crumbs.

  Fabrizio dashed outside and searched all around the house, calling loudly, but Angelo was nowhere to be found. Fabrizio couldn’t believe he’d got so far away in such a short time. Feeling defeated, he sat on the stone bench by the front door and waited for Francesca.

  ‘Sergeant Massaro is right out there in his grey Uno,’ said the girl as soon as she arrived.

  ‘I thought so. Come on in, please.’

  Francesca continued to act a little peeved at first, but after she’d taken a good look at Fabrizio’s face, she realized there was no point in staying offended. He was pale and his eyes were shiny as if he had a fever. She watched his hands shake as he passed her a cup of tea.

  ‘I translated the inscription,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working on it since the moment I left you. That’s why I guess I don’t look so good. Actually, I’m exhausted . . . but unfortunately, without that missing segment, I don’t know what’s likely to happen next.’

  Francesca shook her head, regarding him with an air of affectionate condescension. He was still seeing ancient curses everywhere.

  Fabrizio told her about his fruitless trip with Reggiani to the tavern at Le Macine and then about the sudden appearance and disappearance of the little boy.

  ‘If I try to leave in my car, Massaro will set off on my heels. You could hide me in the back of yours and we could drive down the regional road and see if we can find him somewhere. You didn’t see a little boy walking all alone as you were driving here?’

  ‘No. I would have noticed.’

  ‘Then he didn’t head back home. He must have gone in the opposite direction. I’m afraid he’ll get lost. That he might meet up—’

  ‘Yeah, I get it,’ Francesca said, cutting him short to banish an ugly premonition. ‘OK, let’s get moving.’

  Fabrizio left the light on in the kitchen, then slipped out and crouched down on the floor of the Jeep, hiding until he was out of sight of his guardian angel. They drove several kilometres before he had to admit that if the child had set off in that direction, it would have been impossible for him to have wandered so far.

  ‘Let’s try down the country roads,’ proposed Francesca, resolutely pulling off on to a track heading east towards the hills.

  ‘I have the translation with me,’ said Fabrizio, who in the meantime had come out of hiding and was sitting comfortably on the back seat. ‘Want to hear?’

  ‘Of course I want to hear. I can’t wait.’

  Fabrizio began to read, and as the words came out of his mouth, his voice changed, distorted by the violent, unexpected emotion unleashed in his head by saying those words aloud. He had to stop more than once and take a deep breath, trying to recover lucidity and the strength to continue. When he had finished, his head dropped to his chest and he fell silent.

  ‘My God,’ said Francesca, without taking her eyes off the road, which was now running along the edge of an escarpment.

  ‘I think that there are too many coincidences for this to be a product of chance. But even if there is no connection at all, even if we are dealing with a series of coincidences with no rhyme or reason behind them, I still think – actually I’m firmly convinced – that we have to find the seventh fragment and analyse what it says.’

  ‘How can you say you’re so sure?’ asked Francesca, turning towards him. ‘Nothing is certain when you’re dealing with such a distant past.’

  Fabrizio continued as if he hadn’t heard her: ‘The meaning I’ve been able to glean from the first part of the text will certainly help in reading the last fragment, if and when we find it. In any case, we’ll have interpreted an exceptional find and turned it over to science. But if I’m right, we’ll also have found a way to stop this massacre, or maybe avoid something even worse.’

  They continued to
search the countryside for hours and hours, stopping just once at a little shop to buy a couple of salami sandwiches. When it began to get dark, Fabrizio decided to call the tavern at Le Macine. He got the number from directory enquiries, but the phone rang twelve times without anyone answering.

  ‘Where could he have gone?’ he wondered, pressing hard on his forehead as if to crush a nightmare.

  ‘It’s useless racking your brains over it,’ replied Francesca. ‘He could be anywhere . . . somewhere you’d never think of. A friend’s house, for instance. He’s just a kid. He couldn’t still be wandering out here alone in the middle of the fields at this hour. Stop worrying.’

  ‘He didn’t look like a kid who had friends to me. He looked like a kid who was always alone and never saw anyone.’

  ‘Fabrizio, all we can do now is go back. If Massaro realizes you’re gone he’ll send out the troops.’

  ‘Why couldn’t I have taken a drive in the country with my girlfriend?’

  Francesca tried not to smile. ‘And who would this girlfriend be?’

  ‘In the city!’ said Fabrizio a moment later, in an entirely different tone of voice.

  ‘Who, your girlfriend?’ prompted Francesca.

  ‘No, him. Angelo. My girlfriend is here, at the wheel of this car.’ He squeezed her hand tightly.

  ‘Why do you think he may be in town?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘It’s only a hope, really. I remember seeing him slip behind the door of the Caretti-Riccardi palace a few days ago. Now that I think about it, I’m sure it was him.’

  ‘You can’t possibly be sure of such a thing! That old mansion has been closed for years. It’s falling apart and no one lives inside. I’m very sure about that.’

  Fabrizio recalled the last call from Signora Pina, telling him about the strange lights coming from the cellar, and turned to Francesca. ‘Are you very, very sure?’

  14

  FRANCESCA TURNED the Jeep around and headed towards the city.

  ‘This way you’ll be convinced that there’s absolutely nothing in there and that the palace has been locked and bolted for years,’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t have dreamed of seeing the boy there,’ said Fabrizio.

  ‘I’m not saying that, but it’s a fact that sometimes we see what we want to see or what we expect to see. The brain is a very powerful machine, much more so than you or I can imagine . . .’

  Fabrizio looked at her with a strange expression. Could she read his mind? Was there some secret memory there, buried deep in his unconscious, that was responsible for what he’d been experiencing?

  Ten minutes later they were back on the regional road and could see that the grey Uno was still parked in its place, although probably someone had come to relieve Massaro. In the distance they could see the Semprini farmhouse with the downstairs lights on.

  ‘Do you suppose that’ll be enough to keep them thinking I’m at home?’ asked Fabrizio.

  ‘Maybe yes and maybe no. But if Reggiani calls there and you don’t answer he’ll smell a rat. They’ll be turning over the rubbish bins looking for you.’

  ‘Reggiani’s a smart guy and that agent sitting in the car is a sort of alibi for his conscience. I’m sure he knows I’m out somewhere and he also knows that trying to keep me in a cage is counterproductive.’

  ‘And the beast? Where do you suppose it is now? You know, since I saw it myself the other night, it hasn’t been easy to keep it out of my mind. I find myself thinking: where’s its den? What does it eat? Who’s in there with it?’

  Fabrizio didn’t answer.

  ‘Don’t you wonder about that?’

  ‘I do. And maybe I’m starting to form an idea, but don’t ask me yet what it is. I need to get a few things straight first. What about you? Are you still so sure that these killings have nothing to do with the inscription and the finds inside the Phersu tomb?’

  ‘You believe that the human bones you found inside the Rovaio tomb belong to that Turm Kaiknas in the inscription, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I imagined as much. And you also believe that this stray dog that wanders around seeking prey at night is that creature reborn, the creature whose bones your friend Sonia is putting together.’

  ‘Yeah, something like that,’ said Fabrizio without batting an eye.

  Francesca brought her hands to her face. ‘Christ, I feel like I’m living in some kind of graphic horror novel . . . Come on, Fabrizio, I understand that all these weird coincidences are pretty spooky. But that’s all they are. Coincidences. And when this whole thing is over, you’ll agree with me.’

  Fabrizio didn’t speak. He seemed lost in thought, very far away from the present time and place. Francesca drove past the fortress and soon entered the city through the great stone arch.

  VOLTERRA was deserted. Not a soul was on the streets. Even the bars were half empty; the rare customers inside sat playing cards and drinking wine in a smoky atmosphere. A carabiniere squad car passed them, its blue roof light slowly revolving to cast a spectral reflection on the ancient facades. Marcello Reggiani was keeping watch over that urban desert.

  Francesca parked her Jeep at a corner, then they got out and went on foot towards the Caretti-Riccardi palace. They walked close to one another and close to the walls, as if they wanted to blend into the old city stones. Francesca held Fabrizio’s arm and his hands were plunged deep into his pockets. The cold wind blowing down the narrow streets of the medieval city made the telephone lines stretching from one building to another vibrate like a harp’s strings. In less than ten minutes, they’d arrived at the palazzo and Fabrizio gave the door a hard shove. It didn’t budge.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ asked Francesca. ‘That door has been bolted for years.’

  She hadn’t finished speaking when a howl sounded in the distance. It was very faint, but Fabrizio’s ear was trained to sense that sound and he jumped, becoming visibly pale.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

  Francesca shook her head, but then the howl rang out louder and more clearly, carried by the wind, and she could no longer pretend not to have heard it.

  ‘Do you hear it now?’

  ‘I heard something,’ admitted the girl. ‘But I’m not sure what it was. We can’t lose our heads, Fabrizio. We have to find an explanation for all this or we’ll go crazy.’

  ‘And that kid could be out there. Oh, holy Christ!’ said Fabrizio, as if she hadn’t spoken. His voice was shaking. ‘I have to find a way to get in here.’

  He looked around, examining the wall of the facade. There was no name plate, no number, no bell or even any trace of there ever having been any, as if no one had ever lived between those walls. Heavy iron grilles covered the only two windows on the ground floor, but the openings had been walled up with bricks. The windows on the upper floors were covered by heavy wooden shutters with massive wrought-iron hinges. Huge time-blackened oak beams supported the fourth-floor roofing. There was a single distinctive feature at the centre of the facade: a stone shield with a badly worn and barely recognizable coat of arms.

  ‘It’s impossible that a building of this size has no owner and that that owner never comes by,’ commented Fabrizio.

  ‘Wait,’ said Francesca. ‘I have an idea. My laptop’s in the car and I’m practically sure I’ve downloaded the local land registry map. I just hope there’s enough power left. You stay here. I’ll be right back. Don’t move!’

  Before Fabrizio could stop her, the girl had already dashed across the little square in front of the palazzo and had disappeared behind the corner and down the street. He found himself alone. All he could do was strain his ears to try to make out any growling in the silence of the night. Instead he heard the whir of helicopter blades and saw a spotlight scanning the terrain to the south-west. Reggiani must have heard the howl himself and sent out his scouts. Fabrizio wondered whether he might not give the go-ahead for the operation sooner than he’d promised. On the one hand, t
hat wasn’t such a bad idea. If Angelo was still wandering through the countryside or if he’d found himself an unsafe shelter, say in a stable or sheep’s pen somewhere, maybe the carabinieri would get to him before the thing did.

  Francesca was back in no time with her big leather bag. She sat on the kerb, pulled out her laptop, set it on her knees and switched it on. She opened the land registry file and soon zoomed in on the Caretti-Riccardi palace.

  ‘Here it is,’ she said, beginning to enlarge the grid. ‘Let’s see—’

  ‘Listen,’ Fabrizio interrupted her, ‘Signora Pina, the lady who owns the trattoria, told me that more than once, after dark, she’s seen light from down below, from the basement of the palazzo. If she’s right, that means that there are cellars down there and maybe an air shaft that connects them with the outside. That’s a pretty common feature in these ancient buildings.’

  ‘You’re right about that. And it might even be that illegal immigrants have found a way to get down there and are using it as a shelter. A lot of old, abandoned buildings are occupied. OK, here you go. The property belongs, or rather belonged, to Jacopo Ghirardini, a Volterra nobleman who hasn’t been seen or heard of in the last five years. Current whereabouts unknown. Apparently no heirs have come forward to make a claim.’

  ‘Five years ago,’ murmured Fabrizio. ‘Five years ago is when that woman suddenly showed up here, and Reggiani told me she had been working as a housekeeper in Volterra . . . Here, maybe?’ He vaguely remembered Signora Pina mentioning something of the sort that first time he’d eaten at the trattoria.

  ‘Seems strange to me. I’ve always seen it closed up. But I can try to find out. Someone must have lived here at one time. Here, see, take a look at this. This rectangle on the edge of the outside wall is certainly an air vent for the basement.’

  ‘It’ll be bricked up like the windows,’ mused Fabrizio. ‘Or closed by a grating.’

  ‘We’ll never know unless we go and look. Here, according to the map it’s on the right wall when you’re facing the facade, along Via Cantergiani.’ She closed the file, turned off the computer and slipped it back into her bag. ‘Shall we go?’ she said, getting to her feet and walking towards the right side of the building.