And she didn't stop there.
Teucer can't speak. Can't look at his wife.
She's gutted him.
Tetia has driven the blade deep into the man's body and sliced him open. Organs are spread everywhere. Heart. Kidney. Liver. She's butchered him like a goat.
Finally, Teucer turns to her. His voice is stretched and heavy with worry. 'Tetia? What did you do?'
Her face hardens. 'He raped me.' She points at the remains. 'That pig of a man raped me!' Tears glisten in her eyes.
He takes her by the hands and feels her tremble as she struggles to explain. 'He's dead and I am glad that he is. I have sliced him up so he will never reach the afterlife.' She tilts her head towards the offal of his body, organs like those she has seen her husband rip from animals in sacrifice to the gods. 'I have had his liver and Aita has his soul.'
Her words stun him. Aita – lord of the underworld. Stealer of souls. The name no netsvis dares speak. His feet are sticky with the blood of the man his wife has slaughtered – the man who debased and defiled him almost as much as her. A wave of sickness washes through him. He looks around at the carnage. It astonishes him. He never thought Tetia had the strength, let alone the anger. Gradually Teucer snaps out of his thoughts. 'We must go. We must visit the magistrate and tell him what has happened. How you were attacked and defended yourself. Everything that happened. '
'Ha!' Tetia throws her hands out with an exasperated laugh. 'And what of this?' She turns in a circle to indicate the slaughter. 'Must I be pointed at and talked about for the rest of my years? "See her! See that woman there? She was raped and went mad."'
Teucer goes to comfort her. 'People will understand.'
She pulls away. 'No!' She holds her bloody hands to her face. 'No, Teucer! No, they won't!'
He grabs her wrists, tries to pull her hands away but can't. Instead, he draws her to him and holds her tight. She's shaking. He puts his face into her hair and kisses her softly. What he's thinking is wrong. He knows it's wrong. But he also knows it's the only thing they can do.
Teucer steps a pace away, hands now on her elbows. 'Then we go and wash in the stream. We go home and burn these clothes. And if anyone asks, we have been together at home all night.'
She looks relieved.
'And we never say a word of this to anyone. Do you understand?'
Tetia nods. She folds herself in his arms and feels safe. But she also feels different. Different in a way she dare not describe. A way that will alter their lives for ever.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
CHAPTER 3
Flight UA:716 Destination: Venice Mid-Atlantic, Tom Shaman looks again at the postcard Rosanna Romano gave him.
He knows now that the painter is Giovanni Canaletto and the scene is an eighteenth-century view of the Grand Canal and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. He knows it because he searched the internet all day until he found it. It was this card and this view that made him decide leaving LA was the right thing to do. Not for a short time. Not for a vacation. But for ever.
From the moment he picked the card up off the floor near his bed, he knew his days as a priest were over. The hands that held the postcard were stained by mortal sin. Murderer's hands. They could never hold the host again. Never baptise. Never marry. Never consecrate.
Oddly, he feels both he and God are happy with this decision. Tom can't yet figure out why, but it seems as right to quit now as it did to join the clergy when he was still at college.
The cops said the girl who'd been raped went kind of crazy. Found out she was pregnant. Wouldn't leave her bedroom. Just sat there in the dark all day and needed her mother to sit with her. It broke Tom's heart to hear about it. He tried several times to visit her, but she wouldn't see him. She sent a message through the cops that she was unclean – unholy – and he must stay away.
Poor kid.
Tom still blames himself. If only he'd been more alert, stepped in earlier, been more decisive. He might have saved her. Might have spared her all this pain.
The thoughts still haunt him as the Airbus begins its descent into Marco Polo.
Dipping through thin cloud on a crisp, clear morning he catches a tantalising glimpse of the Dolomites and shimmering Adriatic. Next comes the Ponte della Liberta, the long road and rail causeway that links the historic centre of Venice with mainland Italy. Finally, the distinctive outline of the Campanile di San Marco and the meandering outreaches of the Canal Grande. The waterway doesn't seem to have changed much since Canaletto's time.
Marco Polo's runway lies parallel to the dazzling coastline and, unless you're perched on the pilot's knee, the view you get does nothing to reassure you that you're not landing in the centre of the lagoon. There's a cheer of relief and a round of applause as the plane bumps on to the blacktop and the brakes judder.
In the main terminal, everyone's in a mad hurry to get places. And the madness reaches a climax in the baggage hall.
Tom's luggage isn't there.
All his belongings, crushed into one big, old suitcase, have vanished.
The nice airline people promise to try to trace it. But Tom's heard promises like that before, usually said by people kneeling in front of him confessing their sins and then rattling out prayers like they were ordering cheeseburgers and Cokes.
By the time Tom gets out into the blinding sunlight he sees the funny side. Maybe it's right that he starts his new life with nothing but the clothes on his back.
CHAPTER 4
Venice 'Piazzale Roma!' shouts the bus driver, almost as though it's a profanity. 'Finito. Grazie.'
The small, dark cube of a man jumps from his vehicle and is outside smoking long before the first passenger disembarks. Tom slings his sports bag over his shoulder and asks directions: 'Scusi, dove l'hotel Rotoletti?'
The driver blows out smoke. Small black eyes take in the fresh-faced American with his phrasebook Italian. 'It no far from here.' He wafts his cigarette towards the far end of the Piazzale. 'Turn left at corner – at bottom you see 'otel.'
The guy's right: 'it no far' at all – Tom's there in seconds.
A woman behind a cheap wooden reception desk is polite but falls far short of friendly. She shows him to a claustrophobic bedroom that is badly furnished in bloodshot red and faded blue. A small dirty window overlooks the air-con plant and doesn't open. Tom dumps his bag and heads back to the streets as fast as he can.
After half an hour of walking, he finds himself in Piazza San Marco, dodging a million pigeons and window shopping for clothes that he soon realises he can't afford. Silk ties cost more here than he paid for a stack of shirts and pants back in the discount mall. He prays his suitcase shows up soon.
The smell of fresh-roasted coffee and the buzz of tourist chatter and laughter draws him into Florin's. He orders a cappuccino and a salade Nicoise. Aside from a blonde woman in her early thirties reading at the table next to him, everyone else is in pairs or small family groups. A middle-aged British guy sitting opposite is telling his over-made-up and under-dressed young girlfriend how, centuries ago, the cafe was an up-market brothel and high-class music club. Both Tom and the blonde look up to eavesdrop on his monologue about eighteenth-century Venice, Casanova and libertine life.
'Sounds like we arrived three hundred years too late,' the blonde whispers huskily across to Tom.
He spoons froth from his coffee. 'Not sure about that. I have enough problems with modern life, let alone Venetian decadence at its peak.' He smiles comfortably as he really notices her for the first time. 'Anyway, how did you know I spoke English?'
She brushes a fall of blonde hair away from her sparkling pale blue eyes. 'No disrespect, but you don't look or dress anything like an Italian.' She pauses. 'In fact, I'm not sure what you dress like.' A small laugh – not unkind – confident and warm. 'And I guess the big giveaway is that you're drinking cappuccino in the afternoon and playing with it, with a spoon.' She nods to the middle-aged guy across from them. 'The Brits are probably the only Europeans unsophisticated enough to drink cappuccino after breakfast. So I have you down as a fellow American, and judging from the tan, West Coast.'