Chapter 37 Cosimo #2
‘That kind of beauty is,’ Savelli replied wryly.
‘Men go to war over faces like hers. Seriously, I couldn’t stop staring, Cosi; she made me want to be free of here.
I scarcely slept last night.’ Savelli shook his head, giving a weary sigh.
‘I’ve got my exams coming up in a few months.
The last thing I need is a dark night of the soul. ’
‘OK, how about this as a compromise? I’ll go with you later. At least then I can see her for myself, and I can tell you whether or not you’re going mad.’
Savelli chuckled as he reached for his water glass. ‘Well, there really are no guarantees on that.’
They crossed the piazza ninety minutes later, taking all of thirty seconds to reach their destination. Savelli stopped outside a pair of green carriage doors inset in the facade of a smart villa.
‘Really?’ Cosimo smiled, glancing back at the seminary on the other side. ‘I knew the port was small, but … really?’
‘This isn’t her place. She just thought it would be helpful to meet us here instead; she thinks our days are busier than hers. Little does she know she’s saving us from catechisms,’ Savelli said drily.
‘Ah.’
Cosimo followed him through a pedestrian door into a verdant courtyard. The shade from a mature pomegranate tree offered welcome respite from the blistering sun, and the sound of water tinkling in the fountain stirred distant memories of a party and fireworks … a wall of jasmine flowers …
He shook his head as Savelli led the way up stone steps. ‘Caputo said to keep her talking till he gets here,’ Savelli was saying. ‘He has to press the flesh with the bishop first.’
‘Sure.’
They stepped into in a small, square reception hall with a kitchen leading off in front and other rooms off a salon to their left.
It was gaudy to Cosimo’s eye, with gilded Empire chairs and ceilings poorly painted with cherubim, but the bones of the place were good: historic terracotta-tiled floors, high ceilings, stone arches.
They could hear voices coming from a room on the far side of the salon.
‘Signora Giannelli?’ Savelli called through. ‘It’s Brother Savelli.’
Cosimo whipped round to face him, feeling as if the world had just tipped to a slant. ‘What did you say her name was?’ he hissed – just as the lady of the house emerged.
Cosimo watched her approach, feeling dismay and relief in equal measure. She was heavily pregnant – as she had been the last time he’d seen her, at Rafaella’s wedding. Sure enough, a little boy followed behind her, pedalling madly on a red tricycle, curious to see the visitors.
Gina, by contrast, didn’t seem to recognize him, at least not immediately; the uniform had a way of obfuscating them. But as he removed his biretta she stopped in her tracks, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
‘Cosi?’
The little boy looked up at the two seminarians with reverential awe. He had his mother’s dark brown doe eyes, but even at his fledgling age, Cosimo could clearly see Dante’s impressive bone structure beginning to emerge.
Gina had married Dante Giannelli? Or rather … Dante had actually married her? Cosimo had been sure he would leave her stranded.
‘You know each other?’ Savelli asked in surprise.
It was several seconds before Cosimo’s brain processed the question. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were showing him: a ghost from the past, his sister’s memory stirring from the tomb in which he had buried her. He couldn’t see Gina and not think of Romola. Nor of—
‘From … we’re friends from childhood,’ Cosimo mumbled.
‘Really?’ Savelli looked mildly concerned now as he witnessed their ongoing mutual shock.
‘Gina,’ Cosimo managed. ‘What are you doing in Otranto?’
‘We moved here two years ago,’ she replied.
Her voice didn’t sound how he remembered it.
There was none of her suspended laughter, as if giggles were being held in; no hint of teasing or ribaldry.
But he saw how, automatically, her hand rested on her son’s head, tousling his hair and reassuring him, her other hand on the hump of her stomach.
She was a mother now. Her life had changed just as much as his own. Beyond all recognition.
‘… Well, Signora Giannelli, I’m Brother Savelli,’ Alessio said slowly, trying to draw their attention away from the ghosts of the past and remind them of the purpose of the visit. ‘It’s good of you to allow us to meet here …’
Gina looked back at Cosimo again, paling before his eyes. ‘Actually – no.’
Savelli continued as if he hadn’t heard. ‘I’m afraid Father Caputo has been a little delayed, but he will join us shortly—’
‘This isn’t a good idea,’ Gina broke in.
‘I’m sorry?’ Savelli blinked.
‘Yes – I must ask you to go,’ she said more firmly, finding her voice and some of her old spirit again.
‘But the meeting,’ Savelli protested. ‘The children … Your sister—’
‘I know, but … I’ve just heard from her. One of the children is … running a fever. She can’t make it. She asked if she could reschedule.’
‘Oh.’ Savelli looked bewildered.
‘I must ask you to go,’ Gina repeated.
Cosimo recognized that his old friend was lying. She knew the truth – that he, not Fon, was the one who had toppled the urn that terrible night. If Rafaella hadn’t told her, Dante would have done. She must hate him for it.
He felt the old guilt and remorse beginning to push up inside him like weeds.
He could only cut them back; nothing would ever kill them off.
‘Of course,’ he said, replacing the biretta, subsuming himself into an emblem again.
No longer Cosi, but Brother Franchetti. ‘We understand. It was good seeing you again, Gina.’
‘But Father Caputo—’ Savelli tried again.
‘Alessio, now,’ Cosimo said, catching him by the sleeve and all but dragging him back out and down the stairs. He turned into the courtyard and walked straight into someone coming around the corner. His arms shot out instinctively to catch them—
Rafaella stared back at him, delicate and fragile and more beautiful than ever.
Suddenly he understood the true reason for Gina’s distress, her urgent need to get him out of here.
Too late, he realized what should have been apparent from the very moment Savelli had called out to ‘Signora Giannelli’.
His old friends were sisters through marriage, wedded to the two brothers he had grown to hate …
Of course Fon would have followed Dante here.
He was incapable of independent thought, a sheep to his brother’s wolf.
But dangerous, all the same.
‘Rafa,’ he breathed as she broke away from him with a gasp. She had a young child in her arms, two others by her legs. Her chest heaved with shock, her eyes wide as she tried – like him, like Gina – to understand how he could be here.
‘Cosi?’ She took a step back from him, the children moving with her again like ducklings, but it was too late; he had felt her warmth, her silky softness sweeping against his arms, and his soul was unfurling like a spring bud.
For four long years he had removed himself from the natural world, stepping out of the sunlight where even the shadows danced, away from the breeze that skittered and skipped, sheltered from the rain that soaked and renewed; locking himself instead into a suspended, arid atmosphere of sharp edges and precise angles, where nothing was soft, nothing was fallible.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered as her eyes ran over him, taking in the uniform with its intended blankness that stripped him of all identity.
He saw her recognize that nothing remained, in physical form, of the boy she had loved.
Her lover. It was impossible to imagine now that he’d once sat on a beach, cocky and defiant, getting sunburnt and risking heatstroke, demanding to be forgiven.
Now his pleas for forgiveness were whispered in confession booths, or while kneeling in prayer at the end of his bed.
She shook her head, her eyes feverish as a heat came to her cheeks, their past crashing over her in one devastating wave. Memories of that night – the joy and the despair – played over her face as she tried to comprehend this violent assault on the senses. He felt it all too.
What they had lost, they had lost for ever. They were both bound to vows in which they had forsaken one another. And if it was difficult living with her ghost, seeing her again in the flesh was a torture he couldn’t endure.
Nor she.
‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, turning and rushing back out through the gate with the children in her wake, her silhouette immediately bleached out in the midday sunshine as if the daylight had swallowed her whole.
He ran after her to the gate, but the little group had already rounded a corner and gone.
His heart was pounding, his veins flooded with hot blood as he felt himself colour up, his hands still tingling from the touch of her.
He wasn’t sure whether to cry or laugh, punch the sky or start dancing.
She had run from him, yes; but he knew now that she was here, and suddenly he understood that he would see her again.
Because if this proved anything, it was that all roads led to her – even the ones he had taken to forget her.