North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  He took off his tie, rolled up his sleeves, opened the top button of his shirt. He studied himself for a moment in the scrap of looking-glass on the wall. That buttoned-down collar was straight from Madison Avenue. He took out his penknife and with its small blade carefully cut through the threads that held the buttons. Strange how laundries could remove buttons so easily, he thought as he sawed away. But he admitted the finished effect was more in local colour once he had crumpled the collar still more.

  Then he remembered the jacket which he would have to leave in this room. He went through its pockets and removed the handkerchief with the Evans photograph. Cigarettes and matches, too. And his keys. But passport, traveller’s cheques, his wallet? The cheques could be left here, in his suitcase. The passport was another matter. He hated to part with it. It could fit into his trouser pocket and probably stay there if he didn’t have to run, but he couldn’t always be clamping one hand to his thigh to make sure the passport was still safe. Then he found he was smiling: in a play, a character would probably make a grand exit without giving a passing thought to all the damned documents he had to stow away about him; everyone bulged when he travelled nowadays. But he wasn’t writing a play. All right, he decided, and opened his suitcase and stowed away his passport, his cheques, a note-book, his heavy wallet, and his jacket. Then he locked the case and carried it into the storeroom along with Joe’s discarded jacket. He laid them behind an open sack of down feathers. Someone hoping for a new mattress? He closed the door and returned to the bedroom, looking carefully around him, picking up the cigarette stub. He was leaving as little noticeable sign of his stay here as Joe had. The farmer wouldn’t get into trouble from any prowlers. As Joe would say, you never could tell in this game.

  He pocketed the neatly folded handkerchief and some lire notes he had taken from his wallet. No bulges, at least. He looked at his watch again, and wondered when the bus would come. He was ready to go.

  21

  Distantly, there came the bugling of a bus horn, and then the muted drone of a powerful engine pulling up the hill to Montesecco. Bill Lammiter, lying on the bed, fallen into that strange state of waking dream when the body accepts sleep but the mind holds it a short distance away, roused himself and swung his legs on to the floor. The drone was louder. It could be a truck, but it might be the bus. He glanced at his watch once more. With a shock, he saw that it was almost noon.

  He went to the window and waited there. At least, he felt rested. And less depressed. Joe hadn’t come back, but that didn’t worry him very much: Joe had left with several purposes and he had told Lammiter only one of them. He wondered now what commands the princess had given old Alberto on the telephone at three o’clock in the morning. He could imagine the operator, roused out of bed, cross but curious, forgetting about cold feet as she listened to the princess. But the princess would imagine that, too: perhaps her directions to Alberto had been so cryptic that Alberto was still puzzling them out. What had she thought Alberto could do, anyway? Lock Pirotta in his room like a disobedient schoolboy?

  Impatiently, he watched a boy cycle out of the gates, an enormous bundle of dried twigs on his back, and then veer well in to the side of the narrow road. A farmer with two yoked oxen, pulling a cart laden with barrels, looked back downhill over his shoulder and hauled the beasts off the road close to the trees, to give safe passing-room. The loud engine throbbed, changed down to an extra low gear to cope with the last hill outside the gates, and then the bus came into sight. Briefly. For behind it there was raised a cloud of dust from the loose surface of the road. The bus eased its way through the gates and gathered a spurt of speed from the rough pavement now under its wheels.

  Bill Lammiter started downstairs, a little impressed by the bus. It was not so large as the C.I.T. or Europabus giants, which he had seen so often leaving Rome for destinations as far off as Venice or the Swiss border, but it looked new and shining. The people of the hill towns were better served than he had imagined. Good, he thought: they must be tired of watching well-fed, well-dressed tourists who could afford to spend four weeks without working. And yet, as he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the cool shadows of the yard, he couldn’t remember any signs of grudge or hostility or hidden jealousy from any of the people in the month he had spent among them. “Enjoy yourselves; smile: we only ask for politeness,” they seemed to say to the visitors. “If we had your money, bless it, we’d do the same. And perhaps we shall, someday. Who knows? There’s the lottery, there’s my uncle in America, there’s that job I may get if the typewriter factory opens near my home.” They were a concentration of optimists—how else would they have survived so many centuries of invaders and looters?

  Borrowing some of the Italians’ perpetual hope, he crossed the shadows of the farmyard and entered the white blinding sunlight of the olive grove. Above, the sky was cobalt blue and cloudless; from the dry grass came the cicadas’ constant chorus. Round the gate, activity had died away. The meal of the day was approaching, and the women were in their kitchens. Only an old man stood there, a lonely sentinel leaning on a stick, squinting in the strong glare, supervising the plain below. “Buon giorno!” he said to the passing stranger, and looked back at the view. “Buon giorno!” Lammiter said, and stepped into the town.

  The street ran straight up from the gate for no more than three hundred yards, and entered, at the top of its hill, into the beginning of a piazza. He glimpsed three or four tourists waiting for someone. They must have arrived with the bus. He dodged into the first small side street leading to the right, so narrow that one car would only scrape through at considerable risk to its paint work. He didn’t imagine Pirotta would drive down here, with a bright smile and a wave of his hand to the children who played in the shade. Neither the children, nor the old men sitting at the doors, nor the women who had come out for a moment to make sure their street was still there; paid much attention to him after the first all-over glance. He noticed two girls, foreigners, taking photographs of an old doorway a little ahead of him. So he dodged again, into the first street on his right, and hoped it would bring him near the wall. His plan was to walk all round the town, following the inside of the wall wherever possible. He was curious to see not only the layout of the town, but how many entrances Montesecco had. When he found Eleanor again, a knowledge of this little town might mean the difference between entrapment and escape.

  He had entered by the west gate. When he reached the south gate, he saw that it led nowadays only to a road that had degenerated into a rough track leading out to fields and trees. This couldn’t have been the entrance Rosana and Joe had used: it would only have led them into the little street where he now stood. He walked on, towards the east. And then, suddenly, he saw he had reached a high-walled garden of some size, adjoining a three-storied house, dominating everything else on this street. A house? It was a small fifteenth-century palace, built to withstand an army. This wall of the house, rising blankly from the cobblestones, was formidable: there were few windows, and all of them covered in elaborated patterns with iron bars three inches thick.

  He slowed his pace, for ahead of him was the gateway, which probably led into an interior courtyard. And then he saw that its massive doors were closed. They were enormous, these doors, of heavy timber studded with iron nailheads the size of a man’s fist. Above them was a shield, carved out of stone, painted in red and gold and blue: a wolf’s head and three beehives, telling him what he had already guessed. This was the Casa Grande. This was where Eleanor...

  Careful, Lammiter, he told himself, and kept his steady pace. He had seen all he could bear to see, at this moment.

  He swerved across the little piazza in front of the main gates (it was more of a respectful retreat by the other houses in the street than an architectural design) and took the first calle that would lead him away from the Casa Grande. Careful, he told himself again, for this street was taking him to the main piazza, to the heart of the little town. He swerved again, to his left, into
an alley that twisted and turned between crowding houses. Direction was difficult without the town’s wall to guide him. He would have a little trouble finding his way back to the south gate that led out to the fields and the wood. For somewhere beyond or near that wood must lie the back entrance to the princess’s house.

  He had more than a little trouble: this alley twisted like a snake. Suddenly it ended, right back on the main piazza itself. He halted, staring in surprise and anger at the open paved square before him, with its central fountain, a church on the opposite side, a town hall as big as the Casa Grande and as impregnable; and here, almost beside him, a sad little café-restaurant. A few people sat in the shade. It all looked peaceful enough, and safe. Then he noticed a bus drawn up against the wall of a museum, just around the corner from where he stood.

  He had, after that one sweeping glance, been ready to retreat down the alley. But the bus—he looked at it again. Either it had forgotten its schedule, or it was not the local morning bus at all. As an answer, in the comic way that life so often presents its explanations, a small dust-covered bus came rattling and bouncing into the piazza. It stopped in front of the town hall. A woman with a large basket and a small boy got out. Three people, soberly dressed in their Sunday clothes, rose from their seats in the shade and climbed on board. That was the local bus all right. Now it was swinging around the piazza to leave by the way it had entered, bugling its horn gaily at two young girls who had suddenly emerged from one of the side streets. Americans, he decided as he noted their clothes and cameras. He gave up all idea of taking a short cut along this side of the piazza to reach a south exit to the town wall.

  Just as he was turning to retrace his steps down the alley he saw the two American girls stop as they looked across at the church, grasp each other’s hands, and then run towards the nearest street. They were laughing. He glanced over at the church. Now he saw what had driven the girls away: a flutter of tourists, all shapes and sizes, was coming slowly out of the church with the anaesthetised look of those who had just swallowed a lecture, while their guide still talked as he shepherded them towards the little café-restaurant. He had his amusing moments, too, to judge from the sudden gust of laughter that blew across the piazza. He was a small man, thin, neatly dressed in a grey suit with a panama hat worn at a jaunty angle. Something in his movements, a quick grace, caught Lammiter’s eye.

  For a moment, Lammiter froze, staring at the man across the square. Then instinctively, he turned on his heel and retreated down the alley, no longer cursing its curves and twists. Salvatore Sabatini...that had been Salvatore. Or have I got him on the brain? he wondered. He wished now that he had waited to see the guide’s face more clearly, or that the man had taken off his hat to mop his brow and show the colour of his hair. But the guide had not been so obliging. He had only walked with a light step, made a dramatic gesture towards the town hall, raised a laugh with some merry quip, and then led his flock relentlessly towards the restaurant.

  But I couldn’t wait, Lammiter thought: once he was near enough to be identified, he could have seen me, too. Then Lammiter put aside all speculation and concentrated on his direction. His only aim was now to get back to the farmhouse. He hoped to heaven that Joe was there, waiting.

  He had some more trouble, for he must not appear to be a man who was in a hurry. Or a man who was going anywhere. He tried to look like a tourist who was wandering around by himself. It took him ten minutes to fight his way out of the labyrinth of small streets and alleys, twice retracing his steps, once almost back on the piazza itself. But at last he came to the main street of the town, which would take him down to its entrance gate. Carefully, he made sure there were no tourists in sight. No, they must be back at the restaurant, settling down to plates of heaped spaghetti. And there, thank God, was the gateway itself.

  He passed under its huge arch and a blast of heat engulfed him as he stepped on to the dusty road that led down the hill of olive trees to the plain beneath. The farmhouse dozed among its warm terraces. The cicadas were starting the ninety-fifth movement of their daily symphony.

  “Mr. Lammiter!” The voice was young, surprised, and soprano. “Why, Mr. Lammiter!”

  If only to silence a third “Mr. Lammiter!” ringing out over the countryside, he halted and looked around. The two American girls he had avoided in the town had been standing to one side of the gateway, studying the posters plastered up on the old wall. Now they ran towards him, bare feet sure in flat-heeled sandals, their wide skirts and crisp blouses looking cool and uncrushed even in this wilting heat. They had broad smiles on their pretty faces, flashing sets of very white and even teeth at him in delight. He didn’t share it. Who the hell are they? he wondered.

  The blonde one said, tossing back her horsetail of hair like a young colt, “Mr. Lammiter—don’t you remember me?” Her voice, fortunately, had dropped back to normal.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I’m not Lammiter.” He tried to walk on, but her child’s blue eyes looked at him so accusingly that the moment of escape was lost.

  “But you are, too,” she said, hurt. Her friend with the Italian haircut was fixing the strap of her camera most tactfully. Then the blonde suddenly smiled again. “Oh—you’re travelling incognito! I see—” She looked at the red-haired girl with relief. “He’s travelling incognito, Julie. They always do that. I told you.”

  “Goodness,” said the soft puzzled voice of Julie, “all my friends spend all their free time writing novels and things. But I don’t think any of them know they’ll have to travel incognito. I don’t think any of them know that. Or they wouldn’t be writing. I mean, why do you get famous if you don’t want to be known?”

  “Oh Julie!” the blonde said, taking charge. Then to Lammiter. “We saw you before. I thought it was you. I waved, but—”

  “Was that in the piazza?” he asked quickly. He hadn’t noticed any waving.

  “No. In a little street, about half an hour ago. Just after the bus arrived.”

  “Did you point me out to the others from the bus?” He was smiling, playing it as easily as he could. But, again, his stomach muscles knotted and tightened.

  “No!” the little blonde said most decidedly. Then she laughed. “We aren’t speaking to them!”

  “We’re isolationists, temporarily,” Julie said with a giggle.

  “We’ve been abandoned,” the blonde said, “abandoned on the doorstep of a little hill town. And it’s frustrating. Because over there,” she waved to the north section of the wall, “you can look out of a gate and see Perugia on a hill of its own.”

  “Look—this sun’s pretty hot,” Lammiter said. The approach to the town felt more open with every passing minute. His eyes searched for the nearest adequate cover. And it lay, unfortunately, in that row of trees at the edge of the road almost opposite the farmhouse. He looked in despair along the trail that circled the outside of the wall. At some distance, there was a patch of trees and another farmhouse. “What about walking along here?” he suggested. “There’s shade among those trees.” He pointed northwards.

  “Too far,” the blonde said, shaking her head. “These trees here are much nearer,” and she set off down the main road, Julie following her, handbags and cameras swinging blithely. Lammiter hesitated, debating whether it would be possible to steer them away from the direction of the farmhouse and on to the subject of the guide instead.

  “Could you give us a lift to Perugia?” the blonde girl asked suddenly, turning around to wait for him.

  “I haven’t a car. Sorry.”

  “Then we really are stuck here until the five o’clock bus,” she told Julie.

  “Four hours!” Julie said in despair. “And we’ve photographed everything already. Except the white bulls. Where have they all gone? They were here. I saw two beauties just in front of the gate as we arrived—and a wooden yoke—and bells on the ends of their horns—and now there isn’t even one in sight. It’s maddening!” She stopped and opened her camera. “Just a moment! Thi
s might be something interesting.”

  Lammiter walked on quickly, veering towards the opposite side of the road from the farmhouse. “Why don’t we sit here for a few minutes?” He stepped on to the grass, and then behind a tree. “Did your guide tell you what happened to the olives last winter? It seems that—”

  “You don’t remember me,” the blonde said in a low voice, giving a quick look over her shoulder to make sure Julie was far enough away. “But it was only yesterday, and I sat on your suitcase and you wrote—”

  “Of course I remember,” he said quickly. He did, now. “Today you’ve got a green bow on your hair instead of blue. Very mixing.”

  “I’m Sally—Sally Maguire.” She looked around again. But Julie was still on the road, her head bent over her camera’s view finder.

  “Burbank, California.”

  “Now I feel much better!” She smiled delightedly.

  He wished he did. He’d have to wait at least three minutes before he mentioned the guide again. “Have a seat,” he suggested.

  She looked at the sparse dry grass doubtfully, but she sat down, gathering her wide skirts tightly and carefully around her legs. “Where are you stopping?”

  “Oh, I just walked up here for exercise.”

  “You walked? From the valley?” She was horrified.

  “I’m walking back for lunch, right now.”