‘Wait, Ettore! Something’s wrong!’ Chiara has her hands on him, trying to pull him back towards the door. ‘Go – run! Please!’ she says.
‘Chiara, go inside! Lock the door – do as I told you!’ Ettore hisses at her. He turns his head to her for a second, sees her fearful face and the pale golden glow of her, fresh and lovely as rain. He can’t let himself be distracted.
‘No, you must listen to me! Your uncle’s here and he’s been filling the place with guards since this morning. Armed men – I don’t know who they are! I don’t know what’s happening, but you have to run!’ Her fingers are digging into his arm; her fear is infectious, and her words have turned him cold. But it’s too late, because the aia dogs have gone wild, shattering the night with their furious voices. Cursing, Ettore knocks Carlo down with the butt of the pistol, snatches up the keys and fumbles to let Paola and the others in.
‘Go now, Chiara!’ he shouts, but still she hesitates, and then there’s the deafening crack of rifle fire, and everything turns to chaos.
Chapter Fifteen – Clare
On Sunday morning Clare comes down for breakfast on the terrace but finds it deserted; the table laid ready. Every other time, when he’s been at the masseria, Leandro has already been sitting there, peeling a fig or sipping black coffee. Since the fire on Friday night he has been morose, sunk in thought. Clare listened out for him after the party, late into the night. When she heard him return she went down, barefoot, leaving Boyd awake and bewildered in bed. Leandro was dirty, and stank of smoke; he detached her grasping hands to tell her that Ettore wasn’t hurt. Two men were dead – a peasant she wouldn’t know, who was one of the arsonists, and Federico Manzo – so badly burnt they’d only known him by the cleft in his upper jaw. How and why Federico came to be in the fire hasn’t been established, but Clare felt nothing when she heard of his death. No satisfaction, no remorse. She only had room for her relief that Ettore was not a part of it, or if he was, that he hadn’t been caught or hurt. When she got back to bed a faint smell of smoke had transferred to her from Leandro’s hands, and Boyd’s eyes were wide open, watching her. It was too dark for her to see what expression was in them, and she said nothing.
There’s something ineffably sad about the empty breakfast table, so Clare goes up to the roof to look out. It’s early and the air is still cool. Behind the muck and milk smell of the dairy is a freshness the sun hasn’t yet burnt off. The sky is the colour of forget-me-nots; it makes her think of England, but her homesickness is faint, distant. She can’t imagine going back to the quiet routine of mealtimes and letter writing and grocery shopping and tea that was her life before. She might not belong in Puglia but she no longer belongs there, either, and she has no idea where that leaves her. There’s movement to the north of the complex and Clare turns to watch. His son is dead, but Ludo Manzo is still at work. Clare sees him emerge from his trullo and run his hands through his hair before clamping his hat over it. A man she’s never seen before is holding the head of a leggy brown horse, and Ludo sets about appraising the animal, running his hands over joints and muscles, peering at its teeth. The overseer’s eyes have black rings around them, and his expression is grimmer than ever, but he moves with his same easy precision, speaks with his same clipped efficiency, and shows no outward signs of grief. Clare watches them for a while, then watches the way the sun, as it climbs, obliterates the subtle shades from the landscape – the mauve smudges under the olive trees; the pastel lemon and orange of the ripe prickly pears; the milk-coffee-coloured ground. The baleful sun bleaches them all away. What softness there is here is fleeting, and fragile.
Hearing the scrape of a chair, somebody coming out to the breakfast table below, Clare goes down. It’s Leandro, wearing one of his linen suits but no tie. His shirt and jacket are rumpled, and he hasn’t shaved. Uneasily, Clare sits down opposite him. He looks up and smiles faintly, but there’s something lacking from it.
‘No husband or wives yet this morning, it seems. Nor stepsons,’ he says.
‘I don’t think Boyd’s sleeping very well at the moment. I didn’t like to wake him.’
‘And Pip slumbers on, like all boys prefer to. I remember having to rise early at his age. I remember making a silent pact with the devil that he could have my soul if only he’d let me stay in bed.’ He isn’t smiling. ‘But I always had to get up.’
‘At least you got to keep your soul, then,’ says Clare.
‘Only to lose it at a later date, as it turned out.’ He takes a sip of his coffee, then pours a cup for Clare and pushes it towards her. Tiny fronds of steam dance on its surface, and vanish.
‘Surely not,’ Clare demurs cautiously.
‘No, you’re right. Just an old man, feeling sorry for himself.’
‘Mr Cardetta, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less sorry for themselves than you are.’ At this he does smile a little, but then he looks away and it slides off his face. For a while they sit in silence, listening to the sparrows bickering around the water trough in the courtyard. ‘I’ve… I’ve been wanting to ask you, Mr Cardetta, what it was you had been about to tell me, that afternoon in Gioia after Federico… after I’d come to find my husband. You’d been about to tell me why you’d brought us out here – Pip and me.’
‘Had I?’ He watches her steadily.
‘You said I was in danger.’ She feels her stomach clench at the memory of his words, and of that time; the memory of Federico’s kiss.
Leandro grunts, and looks down at his coffee.
‘Perhaps we are all in danger,’ he says.
‘Please,’ says Clare, in desperation. ‘Please. I need to know what you meant.’
‘You need to know? Perhaps,’ he says, looking up at her again. There’s something new in his expression, and it gives her a shiver of warning. ‘Perhaps we all have bigger and more pressing things to worry about this day. Wouldn’t you say?’ Clare doesn’t dare answer him. He sips his coffee and looks out across the courtyard. ‘It seems so peaceful here, doesn’t it? So much goes on beneath the surface. Do you know what the fascists call the peasants, and their uprising? The Bolshevik Menace. What do you say to that?’
‘What ought I to say?’ says Clare.
‘Does it seem apt, to you? You’ve got to know my nephew, and you’ve been here many weeks. Do the peasants fight for socialist ideals? Do they fight to overthrow the senate, and install a communist state?’
‘It seems to me that they fight for the right to earn enough money to feed themselves, and their families.’
‘Exactly!’ Leandro thumps the table with the flat of his hand. ‘And who could condemn them for it?’
‘Only… those blinkered by prejudice and… greed.’
‘Exactly, Chiarina. Exactly. What then should the landowners and proprietors do? What should they do when their farms are attacked, their crops burnt, their animals killed and carried off? What should they do when money they haven’t agreed to pay is demanded with menaces?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Cardetta.’ He glares at her with a slow, deep anger in his eyes; jabs one index finger at her for a second and then lowers it.
‘I make a loss, you know. It costs me money to run this place – such is the way of things when a country almost bleeds itself dry on the battlefield; and when it never bloody well rains. I wanted to show that the land could be improved, and relations between farmers and workers needn’t be bad. I’ve paid higher wages than any other man near Gioia. I’ve been fair to the giornatari; they’ve been well fed and watered in my fields…’