‘Mean by it? Why, I don’t mean anything by it at all. The pair of you haven’t had one of your own yet, so I guessed there must be some problem. But we reap what we sow, Clare. Perhaps this baby is your just deserts.’ For a long moment the two women stand eye to eye, and neither one speaks. Clare feels the malice of the words, is sure of it; then Marcie smiles. ‘For years of waiting patiently, I mean. You do want the kid, don’t you?’
‘With all my heart,’ Clare whispers.
‘Well then.’ Marcie carries on up the stairs, alone. ‘Congratulations. I’m sure Boyd will be delighted.’
At five to eleven Clare crosses the dark courtyard with her fists clenched at her sides and the tremors making her teeth chatter. The guard gets to his feet as she approaches, and when she sees it’s Carlo she has to fight the urge to throw her arms around him. She sways as she stands there, and her voice wobbles when she speaks.
‘Will you let me out? I’d like to go for a walk.’ She tries to smile but her face feels frozen. Carlo makes a regretful face, spreads his hands and shrugs.
‘Sorry, Signora Kingsley. I am not allowed.’
‘You can call me Chiara,’ she says. Her mouth is dry; she can feel her pulse in her temples. Outside, one of the dogs growls and goes quiet. ‘Please. I know we’re not supposed to. I know Mr Cardetta is… worried, after the fire. But I must go out, just for a short while.’
‘I don’t think…’ Carlo shakes his head, but she can sense his indecision.
‘Please. I’ll only be ten minutes, I promise. Aren’t we friends? And I’ll never tell anyone. Please,’ she says. She puts one hand on his arm and manages to smile. Carlo grins at her; he loves that she comes to him, that he has been able to grant favours; he loves the idea of her love affair. He’s really just a boy, full of mischief. Clare sends up a silent prayer for his safety.
‘Ten minutes. And we never tell,’ he says, picking up the keys and unlocking the small door, smiling at her all the while.
For a split second, Clare thinks nothing will happen. She stands there stupidly, looking at the open door, but then Ettore appears, moving fast, pushing Carlo back with a gun to his head. She can hardly believe he’s there; can hardly believe the danger he’s in.
‘Open the big doors. Do it! Now!’ Ettore says to the stunned guard.
‘Wait, Ettore! Something’s wrong!’ says Clare. She grabs him, trying to turn him, to make him listen. ‘Go – run! Please!’ she says. His eyes are avid, his forehead shines with sweat; he doesn’t seem to hear her properly.
‘Chiara, go inside! Lock the door – do as I told you!’ he says.
‘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!’ She holds him as tightly as she can; wants to shake him, daren’t raise her voice when she needs to scream. For a second she thinks she sees comprehension dawning on his face; he pauses and she thinks he’ll do as she says, but then the dogs outside erupt, and his head snaps around, away from her. He hits Carlo with a backhanded blow and the young guard staggers back, slumping against the wall. Clare stares in horror as blood trickles down the boy’s face.
‘Go now, Chiara!’ Ettore shouts. He snatches up the keys, fumbles them as he tries to unlock the big carriage doors. She has seconds; they have seconds. She wants to hold him and tell him that she loves him; she wants to tell him about their child. The doors swing open and Clare stands stunned at the sight of dark figures pouring across the aia, kicking at the dogs when they lunge for them. Then a deafening barrage of gunfire starts up from the roof; there’s a whiff of cordite, voices shouting, and Ettore turns to Clare, his face pinched with fear. ‘Run!’ he says. And she does.
She sprints across the courtyard and movement above catches her eye – the roof is crowded with men, hurrying into action, reloading. The flash of muzzle fire is blinding in the dark, the sound of it impossibly loud, filling her skull, reverberating in her chest. Idiotically, because it won’t save her, she wraps her arms across her head as she runs. Lights are still on in the long sitting room; she thinks she sees movement behind the drapes and dodges away – she can’t let Leandro see her. She races up the outside stair and then turns before going in through the door, her eyes searching for Ettore down below. The courtyard is a mass of running figures and the roof is swarming, and several figures have fallen, sprawled, across the stones. Clare stares, bewildered by fear. She can’t tell whether any of the fallen is Ettore. A bearded man appears in front of her; she vaguely recognises him as the masseria guard who refused to let her out earlier. He has his rifle in one hand and pauses before going down the steps, turning to her, shouting something she can’t understand and shoving her in through the door.
Following corridors and stairs familiar from her secret visits to Ettore, on quiet nights so different to this one, Clare hurries to Pip’s room. She expects to see his door shut; expects to knock and call out, and be let in. She expects to hug him, and soothe him, and wait it out. But as she turns the corner she stops. Pip’s door is ajar, the room inside dark.
‘Pip?’ she says, too loudly. She pushes through the door. The shutters are still open from the day. Peggy is asleep, rolled up on the bed; it’s stuffy and warm but there’s no sign of Pip. Clare stands there with the sound of her own breathing deafening her. She has no idea where he can be, no idea what can have gone wrong, why he hasn’t locked himself in as planned. Desperately, she checks her own room, though there’s no longer a key to lock it, in case he got confused. But that room is empty too. ‘Pip!’ she calls out pointlessly. Her voice tunnels along the empty corridor, all but lost beneath the battle sounds outside. A door bangs somewhere, and glass breaks; there are other people moving inside the masseria.
For a while Clare stays where she is, and hasn’t the slightest idea what to do. She racks her brains, trying to think where Pip would go. Then she thinks she knows. She races up another flight of stairs, tripping in haste and splitting her knee open on the stone. But the bat room is deserted and the door to Marcie and Leandro’s room, the highest in the whole building, is locked, and when Clare thumps her fists on it and shouts thought the keyhole, there’s no hint of movement within. She goes back down the stairs, woodenly, not knowing what else to do or where she should go. She can’t hide herself away in safety until Pip is doing the same, and not while Ettore is outside somewhere, maybe hurt, maybe dead. She thinks about going up to the roof, but knows it would be madness; she thinks about going back out into the courtyard, but the idea terrifies her. As Clare dithers, the noise outside begins to dwindle; the gunfire is getting less frequent, and silences form between each shot. She carries on down the stairs that she and Marcie climbed earlier, which lead to the long sitting room. And halfway down she stops, a startled exclamation dying on her lips.
Pip is there, at the bottom, hiding in the shadows outside the brightly lit doorway, peeping through. Clare stares. Marcie is behind him, one hand on his shoulder, also peering round, tentatively. Have you both gone mad? The question doesn’t make it as far as Clare’s lips. There are raised voices inside the room, and though she can’t understand a word she knows the voices at once – one is Leandro, the other is Ettore. Her ribs clench in painful relief. They’re arguing furiously in the dialect, and outside it has all gone quiet. The raid is over already, and Ettore is safe. Clare comes down another two steps, softly, understanding why Pip and Marcie don’t want to interrupt. Then she stops again, bewildered, because Pip has a gun in his hand – a pistol – and she can see that he’s shaking from head to toe; he’s so vibrant with tension it’s like a glow around him, like a rank, feral smell. Clare looks at him, and at the gun in his hand; she looks at Marcie’s long white fingers, holding his shoulder. They’re both staring into the sitting room and when Clare follows their gaze she see Ettore, unscathed, his face twitching in grief and rage as his uncle roars at him, flecks of spit flying from his lips. She watches, stunned, as Ettore’s arm whips around and he punches Leandro; slamming his fist up under his uncle’s chin with a meaty sound. She hears Pip gasp and can’t react, can’t move a muscle when he suddenly walks forward into the room, into the light, and in the shocked silence raises his hand, points the pistol at Ettore and fires.