“But wait a minute!” I objected. “He stole Mom’s book from my hotel room and gave it to you last night! I saw it with my own eyes!”
“You’re wrong!” Umberto was clearly annoyed with me for contradicting him, and possibly a little shocked that I had witnessed his secret meeting with Alessandro. “He was only a courier. Someone in Siena gave him the book yesterday morning and asked him to pass it on to Eva Maria. He obviously didn’t know it was stolen, or he would have-”
“Wait!” said Janice. “This is too stupid. Whoever the thief was, why the heck didn’t he steal the whole box? Why just the paperback?”
Umberto hesitated, then said, quietly, “Because your mother told me the code was in the book. She told me that if anything happened to her-” He couldn’t go on.
We were all silent for a while, until Janice sighed and said, “Well, I think you owe Jules an apology-”
“Jan!” I interrupted her. “Let’s not go there.”
“But look what happened to you-” she insisted.
“That was my own fault!” I shot back. “I was the one who-” But I barely knew how to go on.
Umberto grunted. “I can’t believe the two of you! Did I teach you nothing? You have known him for a week-but there you were! And weren’t you two cute!”
“You spied on us?” I felt an explosion of embarrassment. “That is just so-”
“I needed to get the cencio!” Umberto pointed out. “Everything would have been so easy, if it hadn’t been for you two-”
“While we’re on the subject,” Janice cut him off, “how much did Alessandro know about all this?”
Umberto snorted. “Clearly, he knew enough! He knew that Julie was Eva Maria’s granddaughter, but that Eva Maria wanted to tell her in person. That’s it. As I said, we couldn’t risk getting the police involved. And so Eva Maria didn’t tell him about the ceremony with the ring and the dagger until just before it took place, and, believe me, he was not happy to have been kept in the dark. But he agreed to do it anyway, because she told him it was important for her, and for you, to have a ceremony that would-supposedly-end the family curse.” Umberto paused, then said, more gently, “It’s too bad things had to end like this.”
“Who says this is the end?” snapped Janice.
Umberto didn’t say it, but I am sure we both knew what he was thinking: Oh it’s the end, all right.
As we lay there in bitter silence, I could feel the blackness closing in on me from all sides, seeping into my body through countless little wounds and filling me to the brim with despair. The fear I had known before, when Bruno Carrera was chasing me, or when Janice and I had been trapped in the Bottini, had been nothing compared to what I felt now, torn by regret and knowing that it was far too late for me to set things straight.
“Just out of curiosity,” muttered Janice, her mind clearly wandering along different paths than mine, although perhaps just as desolate, “did you ever actually love her? Mom, I mean?”
When Umberto didn’t answer right away, she added, more hesitantly, “And did she… love you?”
Umberto sighed. “She loved to hate me. That was her greatest thrill. She said it was in our genes to fight, and that she wouldn’t have it otherwise. She used to call me…” He paused to steady his voice. “Nino.”
WHEN THE VAN finally stopped, I had almost forgotten where we were going, and why. But as soon as the doors swung open to reveal the silhouettes of Cocco and his cronies against the backdrop of a moonlit Siena Cathedral, it all came back to me like a kick to the stomach.
The men pulled us out of the truck by the ankles as if we were nothing but luggage, before climbing in to get Friar Lorenzo. It happened so fast that I barely registered the pain of banging along over the ridged floor, and both Janice and I staggered when they put us down, neither of us quite ready to stand upright after lying so long in the darkness.
“Hey look!” hissed Janice, a spark of hope in her voice. “Musicians!”
She was right. Three other cars were parked a stone’s throw from the van, and half a dozen men wearing tuxedos were standing around with cello and violin cases, smoking and joking. I felt a twitch of relief at the sight, but as soon as Cocco walked towards them, hand raised in a greeting, I understood that these men had not come to play music; they were part of his gang from Naples.
When the men caught sight of Janice and me, they were quick to show their appreciation. Not the least bit concerned about the noise they were making, they began catcalling and whistling, trying to make us look at them. Umberto did not even try to shut down the fun; there was no question that he-and we-were simply lucky to still be alive. Only when the men saw Friar Lorenzo emerging from the van did their glee give way to something resembling uneasiness, and they all bent over to pick up their instrument cases the way schoolboys grab their bags at the arrival of a teacher.
To everyone else in the piazza that night-and there were quite a few, mostly tourists and teenagers-we must have looked like your average group of locals returning from some festivity to do with the Palio. Cocco’s men never stopped chatting and laughing, and in the center of the group Janice and I walked obediently along, each of us draped with a large contrada flag that elegantly concealed the ropes and the switchblade knives pressed against our ribs.
As we approached the main entrance of Santa Maria della Scala, I suddenly caught sight of Maestro Lippi, walking along carrying an easel, undoubtedly preoccupied with otherworldly matters. Not daring to call out and get his attention, I stared at him with as much intensity as I could muster, hoping to reach him in some spiritual way. But when the artist finally glanced in our direction, his eyes merely brushed over us without any recognition, and I deflated with disappointment.
Just then, the bells of the cathedral rang midnight. It had been a hot night so far, still and muggy, and somewhere in the distance, a thunderstorm was brewing. As we came up to the forbidding front door of the old hospital, the first gusts of wind came sweeping across the piazza, turning up every piece of garbage in their way, like invisible demons searching for something, or someone.
Wasting no time, Cocco broke out a cell phone and made a call; seconds later, the two small lights on either side of the door went out, and it was as if the entire building complex exhaled with a deep sigh. With no further ado, he proceeded to take a large, cast-iron key out of his pocket, stick it into the keyhole beneath the massive door handle, and unlock the whole thing with a loud clang.
Only now, as we were about to enter the building, did it occur to me that Santa Maria della Scala was one of the last places in Siena I felt like exploring in the middle of the night, knife against my ribs or no. Although the building had, according to Umberto, been turned into a museum many years ago, it still had a history of sickness and death. Even to someone who didn’t want to believe in ghosts, there were plenty of other things to worry about, starting with dormant plague germs. But it didn’t really matter what I felt like; I had long since lost control over my own fate.
When Cocco opened the door, I was half expecting a rush of fleeting shadows and a smell of decay, but there was nothing but cool darkness on the other side. Even so, both Janice and I hesitated on the threshold, and only when the men yanked at us did we reluctantly stumble forward, into the unknown.
Once everyone was inside and the door securely closed behind us, a host of small lights came on as the men put on headlamps and clicked open their musical instrument cases. Nested in the foam were torchlights, weapons, and power tools, and as soon as everything was assembled, the cases were kicked aside.