Secret of the Song

by Cathie Hartigan

  ‘So,’ I said, brightly. ‘Whatcha been up to?’

  ‘Oh, you know …’ He hesitated again, coughed, then sat forward. ‘Actually, I’ve been really busy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got this big work project on.’

  Work project? I just stopped myself from choking on a mouthful of tea. ‘Oh? What’s that all about?’

  ‘I can’t really say,’ he said, with a pained expression. ‘It’s a big deal, you see. I’m not supposed to breathe a word.’

  ‘Oh, right. Don’t then.’ I didn’t believe him for a moment. Not even the Official Secrets Act would stop Jon talking about his advertising campaigns in the past. For God’s sake, he used to bloody well consult me! Jesus!

  ‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘I’ve never done anything like it—’

  ‘The thing is, Jon,’ I interrupted. ‘The reason I rang you …’ My heart was going like the clappers now. I wanted to cry. Wail like a baby. Noooooo … go away trouble and horribleness. I didn’t want to be at odds with him, didn’t want to confront him – didn’t want to reveal my own feelings – how upset, how angry, how afraid of losing him I was. I put my lips to the edge of the mug but couldn’t bring myself to take a sip.

  ‘Yes?’ Jon said.

  ‘The thing is, I’m worried about Mollie.’

  ‘Mollie?’ He looked surprised. And I’d surprised myself. I wasn’t exactly worried. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘No, she’s fine … but whatever it is that she’s keeping secret, it’s upsetting her,’ I said, bluntly and without adding, ‘and me’.

  A frown creased his forehead. ‘But surely …’ I didn’t say anything. The ball was better in his court after my wild serve. ‘She’ll tell you in her own good time, won’t she?’

  Damn. ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘She does seem upset.’ God, I was lying now.

  Jon put his mug down and looked stricken. ‘You don’t think anybody’s … you know, doing her any harm do you?’

  ‘No, no. It isn’t that. But ever since I got back from Italy, she’s been so secretive. And apart from that,’ I could feel a groundswell of emotion. ‘I wasn’t at all keen on you staying here, with her.’ My voice had got louder. Up, up, up I went, onto my highest horse.

  ‘We thought it was the best—’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done so without my permission.’ A voice in my head said: are you listening to yourself?

  He was shocked. ‘What are you saying?’ I’d never heard his voice sound so cold.

  I regretted what I said immediately. It wasn’t Mollie I was cross about, it was nothing to do with her. It was really all about Daniela.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, suddenly desperate to mollify. I’d tell the truth. ‘It’s just that—’

  Jon scraped his chair on the floor. A harsh and painful sound to the ears but not as upsetting as the sound of the key in the lock, the front door opening and my mum calling: ‘Cooeee … only me!’

  How could that be?

  Jon stood up. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Jon. Well, well,’ Mum said, beaming when she saw him. ‘How nice to see you. I haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at Gran’s?’ I said.

  She was taken aback by my crossness. ‘Oh, you know Gran,’ she said, mildly. ‘She said I had to go because she wanted to watch The Apprentice and didn’t want me interrupting.’

  Awful. It was just awful. Jon gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and went out. I followed him into the hall.

  ‘Listen,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘You’ve obviously got it into your head that I’m not to be trusted.’ He yanked open the door and the sudden draught flipped Duncan’s postcard on to the floor picture side down at Jon’s feet. We both leant down, almost knocking our heads together. Jon got there first.

  Yours, lonely in Naples …

  He handed it to me and left without another word.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Napoli 1590

  Surely, I was already dead. My life poised on the point of the Devil’s blade, of no more significance than a tack about to be ripped out.

  ‘Traitress,’ Don Carlo hissed. ‘I shall kill you. You cannot escape me now!’

  I had no breath to scream. Amidst the furore it was as if my spirit left my body. I was a floating thing beyond the noise and clamour. My eye remained fixed, gazing at the sharp point of the halberd. I could see the edge quiver from the tension of Don Carlo’s grip. The plunge was imminent and in this strangely stretched time I wondered – my heart or my throat? A voice I knew called from far away, but not to me.

  ‘My lord. My lord!’

  Like a pebble dropping over the edge of a waterfall I fell from my lofty refuge back to the usual dwelling place within my skin.

  ‘My lord.’ Pietro placed his hand on Don Carlo’s arm.

  Torches flamed, the smell of their burning acrid in my nostrils. Those intent on harm, more than just the Prince and Pietro, three or four at least, panting from their ascent of the stairs, blundered about like bears released from their cages. They growled and swore and smashed down the door to my lady’s bedchamber. The noise beat about the walls. Shouts and screams. Oh, my lady! My dear lady. Her hour had come and nothing could be done. I heard her cry out for mercy, for pity, for …

  Two arquebus shots, and then silence. But then, my lady! I could hear her weeping. And in it more hopeless grief than I had ever heard or wished to know.

  ‘They are both there, my lord,’ said Pietro, quietly. I looked at him, but he kept his gaze elsewhere.

  And with that, Don Carlo straightened from his crouching over me. ‘Don’t let her go,’ he said, and after jabbing his halberd close to my throat he went to the door of the bedchamber. ‘And put a torch here.’ He gestured at the portiere.

  Then there were terrible screams. Fearful screams and cries, full of terror but full of life. Then the horror of the strikes, the strange gasps and gurgles of pain and finally the heavy quiet thuds of butchery.

  The men all came out of the bedchamber. Last of all, Don Carlo. He still held his halberd but now its blade was black with blood, both hands too and the cuffs of his hunting coat. A sickly smell of shot, sweat and flesh pervaded the room and my throat clenched ready for retching.

  ‘Wait!’ said Don Carlo. ‘I do not believe she is dead.’ And with that he went back into the bedchamber! As he turned I saw all the front of his coat was spattered with blood and where he must have wiped his brow too. Then came more dreadful sounds from within, like the breathy gruntings of a dog mad with lust for blood.

  I think I swayed but Pietro was there and caught me under the arm. ‘This is no time for fainting, Silvia. Go,’ he said, under his breath. ‘Go now.’

  I took a deep breath and was away in a trice. The convent was close, only across the street. But it may as well have been in another country, for I realised I could not get out of the apartment. Two of the men, the murderers of Don Fabrizio, I guessed, had gone on before me and stood at the top of the main staircase. The only other stairs were the ones from the antechamber I’d just left. I was trapped. The nursery was the last place I could go.

  Mercifully, Margarita was at her cousin’s. Emmanuele slept in his cradle. In the dim flicker of the night oil lamp his nurse stood like a ghost in nothing but her chemise, woken no doubt, by the ghastly cries.

  ‘Save me,’ I whispered loud as I dare. Perhaps she was struck dumb with fear, for I got no reply. I glanced about, then scrambled under the bed and I hid myself there as best I could, pulling down a corner of the sheet till it reached the floor.

  The arrival of Don Carlo in the room only moments later frightened the nurse into voice.

  ‘Spare the baby, my lord!’ she squeaked. ‘For the love of God!’

  From where I lay I could see Don Carlo’s boot and the sharp tip of the blade that had so recently been at my throat. A drop of blood hung like a jewel and then splashed on the flo
or less than an arm’s length away. I needed to breathe but dare not. I saw his boots swivel one way and then round towards me. As the drumming of my heart became nearly as loud as thunder, I took a breath. Did he hear? A boot stepped nearer but, by some miracle, at the same moment, the baby woke with a little mewling sound.

  ‘Take him downstairs, woman,’ Don Carlo said, his voice its old repellent rasp. At once, the nurse gathered Emmanuele in her arms and ran to the door. ‘And Pietro,’ he went on, ‘lock up the cupboard, then lock the apartment. Silvia Albana is here somewhere. She’s a witch and a whore just like her mistress but I’ll not waste time on her now.’

  I saw his boots move away and then when they’d disappeared through the door, I heard them go down the stairs. Still, l dared not leave my hiding place. In fact, I wondered if I would ever move again for I was stiff with fear.

  The key of the closet where my lady’s jewels were kept clanked in its lock.

  ‘Pietro?’ I whispered.

  His boots appeared at the edge of the bed and he lifted the sheet. A lamp shone in my face. ‘Silvia? Why are you not away?’

  ‘There were men …’

  He straightened up, went to the door, then came back.

  ‘Don’t come out just yet. I must lock you in for now. If I keep the key, the men Don Carlo has left on guard will not be able to come in. They are all strangers to me, Silvia. Stay there, I will be back very soon.’

  I lay like the corpse I was surely soon to be. ‘I am dead as my … my lady!’ I whispered, and a great and painful blackness washed across my thoughts. Already, I was cold, although my heart still beat. Was this purgatory? My fingers felt towards the underside of the bed, so close. Had the space always been so small? Was it not bearing down on me as I lay? I could only sip the air, the tightest of stays were as gossamer in comparison to the restriction in my chest. In one swift and dreadful notion, I was in my coffin.

  In a distant place, it seemed in my mind then, there were scenes of colour and sunshine, the twinkling sea and laughter – my family and the pecking of chickens on the palm of my hand – threading needles with silk, charting patterns for blackwork – my little carved swan, Salvo… Salvo… why are you so very far away?’

  The sudden rattle of the key in the lock, stopped my breath altogether.

  ‘Silvia?’ Pietro’s voice and a flicker of lamplight. ‘They are all gone. Come out now.’

  I breathed again. Movement shocked the deadness in my limbs into trembling, but I crawled out and with effort, hauled myself to sitting up on the bed.

  ‘Oh, Pietro,’ I said, hardly recognising the hoarse whisper as my own. ‘I am dead. Dead as my lady!’ The Princess Donna Maria, lying so close, who’d hoped her beauty might protect her, her screams still echoed in my head. ‘Am I not dead, Pietro?’

  ‘No, Silvia. Here you are, very much alive.’

  I looked up at him and saw that, although servant to the devil for so long, he still bore kindness in his expression. ‘He wants me dead too, Pietro. He said as much.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The house is roused now. I shall send for the officials and the justice. They will protect you.’

  ‘But they will not come in time, Pietro.’

  ‘I think they will, Silvia. Don Carlo has changed his clothes and taken the horses. He said he was going hunting this evening and now he is. I did not know about …’ He looked towards the door, where but a room away, my lady and Fabrizio still lay. ‘I didn’t know Don Carlo had such a plan. He didn’t tell me, Silvia. Are you not surprised? Me …’ Pietro slapped himself on the chest, ‘of all people, he did not tell me.’

  ‘You have a heart, Pietro. That’s why not.’ I could feel my body returning to something I knew.

  ‘Although who can be surprised?’ he went on, not acknowledging my words. ‘We all knew about the Don Fabrizio and Donna Maria.’

  ‘I feared as much, Pietro. Ever since Laura …’

  A noise of footsteps and voices on the main stairs startled us both. I clutched Pietro’s arm.

  ‘He has come for me. He has come!’

  ‘Who’s there?’ shouted a voice I knew, but couldn’t at once place. ‘Come out so we can see you.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Silvia,’ said Pietro, gently.

  But I was very afraid and hid behind him as we went to the door.

  ‘Father Strozzi,’ said Pietro. ‘I am glad to see you.’

  Of course! Father Strozzi! I stepped from my hiding place. He was with another man I did not know but who bore a torch in one hand and an arquebus in the other. Neither were properly dressed but had cloaks to cover their nightgowns. I shrank back as the three of them spoke together. The stranger was an official of the Grand Court of Vicaria. Already, the Master, Royal Councillors, Criminal Judges and even the Magnificent Prosecuting Attorney himself had been sent for.

  ‘You girl,’ said the official. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Silvia Albana, my lord,’ I stuttered. ‘Maidservant to … to …’

  ‘Stay there, whoever you are,’ he ordered. ‘Now, Father Strozzi, would you lead the way?’

  When they opened the door to the bedchamber, I heard a cry from Father Strozzi and then the more muffled exclamations of Pietro and the official. My mind’s eye struggled to see into the room. I knew it so well, the beautiful emerald green curtains around the bed, the chair with the crimson velvet seat where I had sat so often to read to my lady. Then my mind’s ear replayed the noises I’d heard and I shivered, focusing my eyes instead on Emmanuele’s cradle and the dent in the pillow where his little head had lain.

  The men came back, their faces changed and full of horror; tight about their jaws and their eyes sunk deeper in their sockets as if they had retreated from what they had seen. The official gestured towards the large ring of keys that jangled in Pietro’s hand. ‘Do you have keys to this apartment?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Lock it up after us. Nothing must be disturbed.’ He looked at me. ‘Make sure of that. We’ll be back at first light.’

  I had time only to glance at Pietro’s surprised face before the door was closed and the muffled voice of the official demanded that it be locked.

  ‘There’ll be some clearing up to do,’ I heard Father Strozzi say, then they’d gone.

  Pietro’s oil lamp on the small chest under the window flickered from the draught of the door closing, then settled into stillness. I did not move either, but stood stupid as a chopped log. A great silence now pressed around me; surely a chasm had opened in the ground and swallowed all of the sounds in the world.

  My lady and Don Fabrizio lay dead in the bedchamber and I was locked in with them.

  The terror of lying beneath the bed in the nursery was a real thing. The glittering blade that Don Carlo held would have flipped me into death with a small swish. That I understood. But not this new dread. The one that came over me like a night sea fog, rolling inexorably towards me, dank and dark, and in which I might be forever lost. That fear overtopped everything I had ever known.

  Why had I not said my prayers more fervently? For what other armour could there be against evil? I had seen demons. Several, though they looked like men. I was no witch and had not thought witches any more than women who knew some incantations and liked to play on the weaknesses of others, but now I was not so sure. Perhaps Orlando Furioso was more true than I had thought. What was my little life but that of a miserable ant stuck fast in a tiny crevice?

  A noise! There … in the antechamber! Perhaps the creak of old wood, perhaps a mouse scurrying, the splutter of a dying candle. It sounded like none of these things. Oh, how quickly all the little hairs on my flesh rose. How my eyes wished to close but could only bulge with gazing. My ears pricked, sharp as any of the needles in their cushion.

  The doorway into the antechamber swallowed all light. The candle was out and Pietro’s lamp was the only source. Quickly, I crossed the room and delved into the candle box. At first I thought it was empty, but a short
Finger-length had fallen across the bottom. I was very fervent in my thanks to Jesus and Holy Mary and several saints. But it seemed doubtful to me that they would hear my quivering little voice. What else could I do though? I knew that beyond that was the door into hell.

  With shaking hands, I lit the candle from the oil lamp, but with the flare of light came into my mind the awful thought: who had come to fetch the souls of my lady and Don Fabrizio? And where would they go? Were they really so wicked that they would burn not with passion but with flames licking their flesh instead?

  Another noise! Low, like groaning, but getting louder. I ran to the door and beat my fists against it, screaming.

  ‘Let me out! For the love of God.’

  Some monstrous thing was coming, I was sure of it. Perhaps the souls had yet to be collected. Or their torment had started even before they reached the furnaces. This noise seemed to shake the door as if it were flimsy cloth. Trembling worse than a milk pudding turned from its mould, I looked over my shoulder and in a flash the thing itself was lit as if with a thousand moons, bright silver piercing the darkness as easily as Don Carlo’s blade sliced through my lady’s velvet flesh. The demons had come and I was trapped.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I’d acquired a new demon. A youngster, full of energy. One whose voice interrupted the dull, repetitive conversations of the old crowd who told me I was fat, stupid and boring, and lured me into believing something even more depressing. He prefers her, it taunted. Of course he does. Who wouldn’t?

  It was blowing a gale, grey clouds buffeted the finials on top of the cathedral and the river was choppy and brown. I avoided the underpass and the steps where the boy had pushed past me before he jumped. Ever since that day, I’d crossed the road instead. The sneery-voiced demon regaled me all the way into town. It was the day of the photo shoot, but I had to go to the museum first.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ said the curator stiffly, when I handed her the madrigal, ‘that when I let you take the original away, I didn’t know how clumsy you were.’