‘No, Mr Cardetta. I want to go home, and so does Pip. Boyd may even come too, if I can convince him. You have been an excellent host, but I don’t understand why my husband can’t work on his plans for your new façade from somewhere else. He won’t tell me… he…’ She shakes her head. The trembling has stopped, outwardly, but she can still feel it in her gut, like aftershocks. ‘He insists that he must remain here with you, even if he won’t explain why. So – please – let him go. Let him come away with me and Pip.’
‘Stay, for his sake. Even I can see that he’s happier, and works better, when you’re with him. We can all see the good you do him.’
‘But you just said yourself, there’s a war on here! How can you ask us to stay?’
‘Stay for his sake, and… stay for Marcie’s sake. Please. I have a masseria outside of Gioia – a farm deep in the countryside, in a tranquil place where none of these troubles will come near you. You and Marcie and the boy can go there, Boyd and I can travel back and forth as we need to. Mrs Kingsley, I know my wife isn’t happy here. I’m not blind. If only you could see how much good it’s done her to have your company! These past three days she’s been more like she was when I first knew her – more like she was in New York – than at any time since we moved here. Please. Go to the masseria. My wife needs you, and your husband needs you, and I need your husband.’
Leandro keeps his steady black eyes on her until she feels skewered, and knows that however much she twists there’ll be no breaking free. She has that same choking feeling that she knows so well, that feeling of something around her throat. It helps her not to agree; the silence grows until it seems to ring. ‘This is very important,’ says Leandro eventually, softly, still not breaking his gaze. ‘I may not speak freely about everything that concerns me, and I can only ask your forgiveness for that. But I can’t allow you to leave yet. I’m afraid I will not allow it.’ Clare stares at him, stunned mute. She can’t quite believe what she’s heard, but there’s no mistaking that Leandro is entirely in earnest. He is steely with it, too sharp to touch. ‘Do you understand, Mrs Kingsley?’ In his face, in his tone, she sees the truth. She is entirely subject to his will, entirely at his command; they all are. When Leandro goes off it’s like a volcano, Marcie said. Clare’s pulse flickers in her neck; she has to swallow before she can speak.
‘Very well,’ she says, and Leandro’s answering smile is warm and relieved, and all trace of the threat disappears.
Word is sent ahead to Cardetta’s masseria – the Masseria dell’Arco – to be ready for their arrival, and they stay the rest of the day in Gioia while Clare and Pip repack their things, and Marcie fills a steamer trunk with clothes and shoes and make-up. She seems as giddy about the change in plans as if they’ve decided to go on a picnic or to a gala of some kind.
‘You’re going to love the masseria, Pip,’ she declares, as they sit down to dinner and Clare has the manic sensation that they’re all fiddling as Rome burns. She glances from face to face to see if anyone else senses anything amiss, but they are all acting as though nothing has happened, and she can’t work out if it’s her who’s unreal, or if it’s them. Only Pip can’t keep his disquiet from showing. He’s bounced back from his shock with the resilience of youth, and by sleeping fourteen hours overnight, but he’s still quiet and his eyes, when nobody’s talking to him, have a far-off look. ‘It’s like a kind of castle, really. Built to keep out marauding bandits, aeons ago. Lots to explore, and lots of animals too. Do you like animals?’
‘Yes. I like dogs – I should like to have a dog.’
‘Well, we have plenty of dogs there!’ Marcie beams at him. ‘Plenty of cows and horses and mules too, but they’re far less fun, I know.’
‘They’re farm dogs, mind you,’ Leandro cautions. ‘They’re not pets, so don’t try to play with them until they know you.’
‘Oh, darling, of course he won’t! Pip’s not silly,’ says Marcie. ‘And the stars! You won’t believe the number of stars.’ When the food arrives everybody eats, including Pip, but Clare finds that it all tastes of nothing; her tongue seems numb, and even though her stomach feels caved in with hunger, when she tries to swallow it almost makes her gag. Boyd takes her hand under the table and squeezes it with a quiet intensity. She doesn’t look at him, and drinks her wine too quickly.
Federico drives the two women and Pip out to the farm in the red Alfa Romeo. The men will follow in a couple of days, and as they leave Clare turns to look up at Boyd from the back seat, so that her last view is of his face thrown into shadow as the car pulls away. He stands with his shoulders slumped, and when he kissed her goodbye minutes before there was something feverish about it, something frantic in the press of his lips that almost made her recoil. The car’s headlights lance ahead through the darkness; a plume of dust and fumes trails behind it. Clare thinks of her promise to Pip – that they would go home soon – and wonders if he remembers it. If he will challenge her about it. Right now he seems distracted enough by Marcie and her constant talk. She sits in the front seat next to Federico, and turns back to face them.
‘Do you know, there’s a raised area in one of the old bedrooms at the masseria – it used to be where the bed would have stood, but we don’t use that room at the moment because there’s a hole in the corner of the roof and bats get in and swing from the rafters – bats! Can you believe it?’ She shudders theatrically. ‘I’d smoke ’em out, if it was up to me, but Leandro says to let them be. Let them be! We don’t need that room! Well, he has some strange notions, sometimes. But – anyway – the platform would make a very fine stage. What say you and I have a few acting lessons together, Pip, and maybe put on a bit of a play? What do you say?’
‘All right. That’d be good. What play should we do?’
‘Whatever you’d like. We’ve no texts, of course, but we can do our own version of whatever story you like. We could even write a script ourselves.’
‘How about Dracula? Then we could use the bats as extra members of the cast,’ says Pip with a grin, and Marcie chuckles.
‘How about Macbeth – we can use real wool of bat for the witches’ potion!’
‘How about Antony and Cleobatra?’
‘The Merry Bats of Windsor?’
‘The Taming of the Bat?’
Marcie tips back her head and laughs, and Clare is grateful to her because Pip is laughing too, pleased to have amused her, and he seems to have forgotten what they saw yesterday. Clare can’t even find a smile. She feels as though somebody is pressing a knife to her throat; she hardly dares move. She leans her forehead against the cool glass and stares out at the walls and scrubby trees blurring past as the car rumbles along the dirt road, its headlights giving the world a sickly caste. And then they pass a man, sitting slumped against the wall beside the road with his face turned up to the sky. They are past him in a heartbeat, and Clare turns to look back but he has vanished into the darkness. It’s late in the evening and they are far from town, and something in his posture makes her think he’s not just resting, not just star-gazing – he’s in trouble. In her mind’s eye batons rise and fall, and she fears for him, takes a breath, and for a moment the words hover on her lips: Stop the car. Go back. But she stays silent and he is behind them, and this is one more thing that she doesn’t say, and has no power to change. She feels exhausted and afraid. She feels like surrendering but doesn’t know to whom, or what her battle is. They arrive at the masseria soon afterwards and go straight to their beds. Clare has the impression of massive stone walls and the smell of cow manure. She’s so tired she can barely climb the stairs, but then she sleeps only fitfully, skimming through dreams that she knows would frighten her if she could see them clearly.