“Andiamo!” said Cocco, waving with a submachine gun to make us all straddle the thigh-high security gate. Our hands still tied in the back, Janice and I had a hard time getting over it, and the men eventually grabbed us by the arms and hauled us over, ignoring our cries of pain as our shins scraped against the metal bars.
Now for the first time, Umberto dared to speak out against their brutality, saying something to Cocco that could only mean, come on, go easy on the girls, but all he got for his trouble was an elbow in the chest that made him double over coughing. And when I paused to see if he was okay, two of Cocco’s henchmen took me by the shoulders and thrust me forward impatiently, their stony faces betraying no emotions whatsoever.
The only one they treated with any kind of respect was Friar Lorenzo, who was allowed to take his time and climb the gate with whatever dignity he had left.
“Why is he still blindfolded?” I whispered to Janice, as soon as the men let go of me.
“Because they’re going to let him live,” was her dismal reply.
“Shh!” hushed Umberto, making a face at us. “The less attention you two draw to yourselves, the better.”
Everything considered, that was a tall order. Neither Janice nor I had showered since the day before, let alone washed our hands, and I was still wearing the long, red dress from Eva Maria’s party, although, by now, it was a sorry sight. Earlier that day, Janice had suggested I put on some of the clothes from Mom’s wardrobe and lose the bodice-ripper look. Once I did, however, we had both found the smell of mothballs unbearable. And so here I was, trying to blend in, barefoot and grimy but still dressed for a ball.
We walked for a while in silence, following the bouncing headlamps as they ricocheted along black corridors and down several different staircases, led on by Cocco and one of his lackeys-a tall, jaundiced fellow whose gaunt face and hunched shoulders made me think of a turkey vulture. Every now and then the two of them would stop and orient themselves according to a large piece of paper, which I assumed was a map of the building. And whenever they did, someone would pull hard at my hair or my arm to make sure I stopped, too.
There were five men in front of us and five men behind us at all times, and if I tried to exchange glances with either Janice or Umberto, the guy behind me would dig the muzzle of his gun in between my shoulder blades until I yelped with pain. Right next to me, Janice was getting the exact same treatment and, although I couldn’t look at her, I knew she was just as scared and furious as I was, and just as helpless to fight back.
Despite their tuxedos and gelled hair, there was a sharp, almost rancid odor about the men, which suggested that they, too, felt under pressure. Or maybe it was the building I could smell; the farther into the underground we went, the worse it became. To the eye, the whole place appeared very clean, even sterile, but as we descended into the network of narrow corridors beneath the basement, I couldn’t shake a feeling that-just on the other side of those dry, well-sealed walls-something putrid was slowly eating its way through the plaster.
When the men finally stopped, I had long since lost my sense of direction. It seemed to me that we must be at least fifty feet underground, but I was no longer sure we were directly beneath Santa Maria della Scala. Shivering now with cold, I picked up my frozen feet one by one, to press them briefly against my calves in an attempt at getting the blood flowing.
“Jules!” said Janice suddenly, interrupting my gymnastics. “Come on!”
I half expected someone to hit us both over the head to stop us from talking, but instead, the men pushed us forward until we were face-to-face with Cocco and the turkey vulture.
“E ora, ragazze?” said Cocco, blinding us both with his headlamp.
“What did he say?” hissed Janice, turning her head to avoid the beam.
“Something girlfriend,” I replied under my breath, not at all happy to have recognized the word.
“He said, ‘What now, ladies?’” interjected Umberto. “This is Santa Caterina’s room-where do we go from here?”
Only then did we notice that the turkey vulture was pointing a flashlight through a lattice gate in the wall, illuminating a small, monastic cell with a narrow bed and an altar. On the bed lay a recumbent statue of a woman-presumably Saint Catherine-and the wall behind her bed was painted blue and studded with golden stars.
“Uh,” said Janice, clearly as awestruck as I was to discover that we were actually here, by the chamber mentioned in Mom’s riddle, “‘hand me an iron crow.’”
“And then what?” asked Umberto, anxious to demonstrate to Cocco how useful we were.
Janice and I looked at each other, only too aware that Mom’s directions had ended just about there, with a merry, “and foot it girls!”
“Wait-” I suddenly remembered another little snippet. “Oh yes… ‘away with the cross’-”
“The cross?” Umberto looked mystified. “La croce-”
We all stretched to look into the chamber again, and just as Cocco was shoving us aside to see for himself, Janice nodded vigorously, trying to point with her nose. “There! Look! Under the altar!”
And indeed, beneath the altar was a large marble tile with a black cross on it, looking much like the door to a grave. Not wasting a moment, Cocco took a step back and aimed the submachine gun at the padlock that held the lattice door in place. Before anyone had time to run for cover, he blasted the whole thing open with a deafening salvo that took the gate right off its hinges.
“Oh, Jesus!” cried Janice, grimacing with pain. “I think that blew my eardrums. This guy is a total nutcase!”
Without a word, Cocco spun around and took her by the throat, squeezing so hard she nearly choked. It was all so fast that I hardly even saw what happened, until he suddenly let go of her and she dropped to her knees, gasping for air.
“Oh, Jan!” I cried, kneeling down next to her. “Are you okay?”
It took her a moment to find air for an answer. And when she finally did, her voice was trembling. “Note to self…” she muttered, blinking to clear her eyes, “the little charmer understands English.”
Moments later, the men were going at the cross under the altar with crowbars and drills, and when the tile finally came loose and fell out on the stone floor with a thud that threw up a cloud of dust, none of us was surprised to see that behind it was the entrance to a tunnel.
WHEN JANICE AND I had crawled out of the sewer in the Campo three days earlier, we had promised each other never to go spelunking in the Bottini again. Yet here we were, making our way through a passage that was little more than a wormhole, in near darkness and without a blue sky beckoning us at the other end.
Before pushing us into the hole, Cocco had cut our hands free-not out of kindness, but because it was the only way of bringing us along. Fortunately, he was still under the impression that he needed us in order to find Romeo and Giulietta’s grave; he didn’t know that the cross under the altar in Saint Catherine’s room had been the very last clue in Mom’s directions.
Inching along behind Janice, seeing nothing but her jeans and the random flicker of headlamps against the jagged surface of the tunnel, I wished I had been wearing pants, too. I kept getting caught in the long skirt of the dress, and the thin velvet did nothing to protect my scabby knees from the uneven sandstone. The only upside was that I was so numb with cold I could barely feel the pain.
When we finally came to the end of the tunnel, I was as relieved as the men to find that there was no boulder or pile of rubble blocking our way and forcing us to backtrack. Instead we came out into a wide-open cave, about twenty feet across and tall enough for everyone to stand upright.
“E ora?” said Cocco as soon as Janice and I were within earshot, and this time we did not need Umberto to translate. What now? was indeed the question.