Chapter 47 Cosimo
Cosimo
The shadows were hard-edged in the moonlight, his steps silent on the flagstones as he crept barefoot past the dormitory doors and down the stairs.
Usually there was some level of activity throughout the night – the sweep of cassocks, murmured voices – but tonight there was a density to the quietude.
Everyone was in their beds and getting what rest they could. Tomorrow would be a long day.
Today had been long enough. Cosimo had spent the rest of his afternoon in the library, searching the newspapers for mentions of his brother’s fate.
To no avail. Was Fede dead or alive? He still had no idea.
There were a few accounts of eyewitness reports the day after he had been snatched, but then nothing.
Cosimo knew better than anyone that press suppression of a story was one of his father’s tactics.
A call had been made, a promise made or a deal done, pointing the reporters to another story, another politician.
It didn’t always work. Romola’s accident had been everywhere, throwing their family into the spotlight.
Death was incontestable, after all, but kidnappings could be disproved: ransom demands kept private; no body, no crime …
He tried consoling himself that there was perhaps comfort to be had in not knowing his brother’s fate.
It was the irrefutability of Romola’s death which had almost crushed him.
To live in denial was also to live with hope, surely?
Perhaps not; but the lie would have to sustain him until tomorrow.
He could do nothing while he was still in here.
He made his way down the turning staircase to the cellar, treading cautiously as it grew ever darker.
Savelli had warned him the darkness was pervasive in the basement, but he couldn’t risk flicking a switch and drawing attention to his middle-of-the-night mission.
There was no plausible reason for him to be down here; he would need to be in and out within moments.
Savelli had told him what he recalled of the layout: the rector’s wine collection was stored in the vaults by the stairs, and further along were the seminarians’ personal effects, which were stowed on admission.
Some boys arrived with trunks full of possessions, seemingly unaware they would be stripped of almost everything in their daily lives here, but Cosimo had turned up in just the clothes on his back and never had cause to go down there.
The windowless space was stale and stuffy, a strong aroma of incense ingrained in its walls.
He got to the bottom of the steps, expecting blacker blackness, but to his surprise found he could see quite well.
The space was dimly lit up ahead. He stopped on the step and peered around the corner.
Was someone else down here? He strained, listening for sounds of movement, but all was quiet.
The light was faint from here, at the far end of the long space, but hulking silhouetted shapes were clearly discernible along either side of the passage: boxes stacked, tall candelabras standing like winter trees, parts of an old organ.
He could make out some rails of threadbare ceremonial robes.
The extensive wine cellar was dusty, not so much as a gleam of light on the shoulders of the bottles, thick cobwebs binding them together like lace.
Cosimo moved past them and was halfway along when a small scraping sound came to his ear, barely audible. A mouse?
But then he heard the soft clearing of a throat up ahead – distinctly human – and he froze.
Someone else was down here after all.
The rector, perhaps? It was the middle of the night – it had been three o’clock when he’d left his bed. Who else had cause to be down here in the dead of night?
He heard a shuffle, as if something was being pushed, and then footsteps on the stone floor. They were coming …
Cosimo darted into the shadows, squeezing between some wooden boxes and dislodging clouds of dust. He felt it tickle his nose as it danced in plumes and he clamped his hand to his face, his eyes trained on the opposite wall as the light began to shift upon it. Moving …
He braced for it to grow brighter, coming closer. He couldn’t squeeze back any further and there was no room to crouch down … He would be illuminated as they passed …
But a few moments went by and he realized the light was growing fainter, not stronger.
They were moving in the opposite direction.
He heard the sound of a large key in a lock and ducked back out just in time to see a door opening at the far end of the cellar and a hooded, robed figure disappearing through it.
Savelli had told him the space extended under the seminary garden, reaching into the cathedral crypt by way of an interconnecting door that was kept locked.
The cathedral’s doors were always open, but the seminary’s were not.
He listened to the sound of the footsteps retreating beyond the door, now closed but left unlocked – whoever had gone out would be coming back. He didn’t have long.
Without the dim light, darkness spread through the space like a black mist, but he ran anyway.
His heart was pounding and he kept knocking into things as he moved blindly, his eyes trying to adapt.
There were dozens of trunks on the ground, but along the walls he saw the shelving with wooden boxes Savelli had described to him.
Small white labels blinked weakly and he grabbed one, holding it up to his face and peering closely. Cordeschi.
He moved along a little further. Endrizzi … Esposito.
Alphabetized?
Farinelli … Ferrari … Finocchario …
Franchetti.
He removed the lid and reached inside. The box was almost empty but for the loafers, trousers and shirt he had worn on the day he walked through the Lecce seminary doors …
His fingers felt the cool, familiar smoothness of his leather wallet too.
It was the only thing that mattered – his ticket out of here.
He couldn’t remember how much money he’d brought in with him, but it would be enough to get him and Rafaella a taxi and onto the train.
They could work out what to do next once they knew they were safe.
He grabbed the contents and replaced the lid, pushing the box back into position; it scraped, as if a nail was peeking through its base and catching the wooden shelf. He glanced over at the closed – but unlocked – door, checking it was safe to break cover.
All was silent and still.
He hurried back the way he’d come, moving swiftly through the passage, his relief and confidence growing as he got to the staircase and the pale lunar light falling across the floor at the top of the steps began to lead his way again; he took the steps two at a time, his growing exultation powering him through the passageways and back up to the higher floors.
He could only have been gone from his room for five or six minutes at most, but it felt as if the entire world had changed around him.
The walls had fallen in at last. He could breathe!
He was no longer trapped here with no way out!
Tomorrow was already saddling up on the dawn.
His coming freedom was a blush on the wind.
‘Did you get it?’
Savelli was waiting for him on the roof. They were both on altar service tomorrow, but sleep wouldn’t come for either of them tonight. They were too buoyed up, adrenaline pumping for the stealth mission that was going to get one of them out of here, at least.
Cosimo winked, holding up the wallet like a nugget of gold as he crept into the narrow space between the tiles and the parapet.
He joined Alessio in lying back against the roof tiles, his body stretched long, the wallet pressed against his palm as he breathed deeply, relaxing into the brief coolness of the night.
The nightmare was finally coming to an end.
‘Someone was down there,’ he whispered after a moment.
Savelli’s head turned on the tiles. ‘Who?’ he frowned.
‘I couldn’t see. They went out through the cathedral door.’
‘Did they see you?’
Cosimo shook his head.
‘Strange.’
They listened to the whistling silence, eyes trained on the peeping stars overhead. Below, Piazza Basilica lay shrouded in darkness; the dramatic cathedral lights were switched off now. Tomorrow the streets would blaze with coloured lights and banners, the port ready for the carnival—
A small creak came from below. It was no more than a yawning hinge, but the noise was distinctive in the suspended silence of night and Cosimo leaned forward, looking over the parapet wall. The pedestrian door set within the green carriage doors of Gina’s villa was slowly opening.
Rafaella had said she would stay there tonight. Was she there now? Sleeping in a bed behind those green shutters? Or was she awake too, waiting for the minutes to tick past until they could be together at last? Was this her now, coming out …?
He tensed as Dante Giannelli appeared in the frame instead.
Cosimo recognized him immediately, although it had been years since they’d last met.
The profound difference in him was striking …
Just wearing a suit, for one thing, distinguished him from the seaside lothario bombing across the water beyond the port, shirtless, on his speedboat.
But there was something new in his manner, too, that Cosimo recognized from his old life in Rome: the self-satisfaction that came with power and influence. The air of superiority.
Cosimo frowned as he watched, hidden in the shadows. It looked as if Dante was waiting for someone.
A dark figure caught his eye, emerging from the shadow of the cathedral and setting out across the square. ‘Look,’ Cosimo whispered. ‘That’s him. The one I saw in the cellar just now.’
‘Who is it?’ Savelli whispered back, crouching down next to him.
‘Can’t see,’ Cosimo murmured.