Epilogue Rafaella
Epilogue
Rafaella
The church bells sounded, pealing into a peerless sky above a vivid cyan sea.
Distant boats moved on the horizon but the Tricase fishing boats were still in port; harried wives up and down the Via Borgo Pescatori were telling their husbands the hauls could wait another day as they fastened their neckties and brushed the lint from their Sunday best suits.
Villa Aymone’s yellow shutters had been pushed back against the walls and Rafaella stood on the balcony, letting the sun warm her face.
She was wearing the new dress her sister had made for her – white silk printed with poppies – and her hair in a low bun, with a fresh flower that Cosimo had picked and brought up with breakfast.
Below, Fede was wandering in the garden with a watering can, drenching the flower beds before the shadows moved to the other side of the wall and sunlight became the enemy.
Gardening had become his passion after his release from the trullo; ever since Fon’s death he’d had a yearning for abundant life, as if the colour and scent and teeming activity of a garden were an antidote to his weeks of sense-starved privations.
He had inherited Villa Agosto after their father’s sudden death last year.
Pills and a note had been found beside the body, but that had never made it into the papers, which reported Filippo’s death as a heart attack.
Now Fede came down from Rome most weekends to work on the garden – and on theirs, after Cosimo, with his share of the inheritance, had bought Villa Aymone.
She looked over the treetops towards Villa Blanca.
It sat slightly forward of them here, fronting onto the coast road, but she could see on the near side that the doors onto its grand balcony were open outside the master bedroom.
Gina would have been up for hours already; her nights were finally getting better now that Angelica was almost two and Lorenzo had recruited her as a playmate.
It hadn’t been easy for Gina, coming back here.
There had been real anger among the villagers towards Dante as the extent of his depravity came to light.
No one would ever forgive him for the murder of Mattias Lobascio, and his parents had been forced to slip away in the dead of night.
But Gina never once defended him or tried to talk people round.
She let them have their anger – it was justified, she said, nothing if not a pragmatist. She had loved Dante once and he would always be the father of her children, but she was glad that he was dead.
Rafaella knew she would never forget the look on her friend’s face when she’d shared what they had learnt at the abandoned farmhouse.
Gina had returned to the port – and her family – almost immediately, taking up residence in the newly renovated Villa Blanca.
Her baby’s birth was imminent, and it was no time to be alone.
At first everyone shunned her, too; she had profited from his crimes, they said.
She must have known! But her refusal to defend the indefensible soon showed them that she was still the girl they had always known – and when her mother was seen hurrying to the villa and the news spread that her waters had broken, the village women had gone over anyway with clean towels and salts, delivering her baby with laughter and tears.
Rafaella saw the anziani coming slowly along the street now, talking all the while, walking sticks tapping the cobbles as they made their way towards the church, where Father Tommaso awaited them. She turned back towards the bedroom.
‘We should go,’ she said, smiling as Cosimo – so handsome in his shirt and tie – looked up from the bed. ‘Mamma wants us to greet everyone as they arrive.’
‘Certe,’ he murmured, but making no move. This was their sanctuary. Neither one of them liked leaving it.
She sank onto the mattress beside him, her hand cupping around the tiny silken head of their daughter in his arms. ‘She’s so beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘Like her mamma.’ Cosimo’s eyes held hers and she leaned in to kiss him, their lips lingering. ‘… No,’ she smiled, knowing that look. ‘We have a baptism to get to.’
‘Fine,’ he conceded with a grin, knowing they would be picking it up later. Their hunger for one another was still rabid, fifteen months after their wedding. ‘You take her while I put on my jacket.’
Carefully he laid the baby in her arms and Rafaella kissed her pretty face over and over, and then over again.
She cooed and smiled down at her, admiring too the christening gown the nonnas had spent months working on in Silvana’s atelier.
Their lace was always beautiful and meticulously made, but even by their standards, this was extra fine and extra soft.
It had to be special, they had said. This baby was a gift to them all, a salve to Tricase Porto’s greatest hurt.
Rafaella cradled her child tenderly as she got up. ‘Come, then, little one,’ she whispered, stroking her cheek with a crooked little finger. ‘It’s time to be blessed, Romola Rossanna Franchetti.’
She looked up just in time to see a sad look flicker over Cosimo’s face, like a shadow running over the ground. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Of course,’ he said quickly, looking away and fiddling with his cufflinks.
‘… You just wish she was here,’ she said for him.
He shrugged, deflating at the simple truth. ‘She would have loved all this.’
‘Of course she would. She loved any opportunity to celebrate! She’d be bossing us on the flowers, or she’d be making me change my dress, or my hair. The only thing she would approve is our choice of name.’
He smiled, but his eyes were still haunted. How many prayers had he offered up in the seminary, asking for forgiveness? Begging for a sign he was absolved? Rafaella didn’t think he would ever find peace with his part in Romola’s death.
‘I miss her so much.’
She walked over and rested her head against his chest, the baby lying tranquil in her arms. ‘Me too.’ She knew he felt Romola’s presence here, that coming back to the port had been a way for him to feel closer to her.
‘We mustn’t be late,’ he said, kissing her hair. ‘I don’t want to get in trouble with your mother.’
‘My mother loves you more than she loves me,’ Rafaella laughed, following him downstairs.
‘Fede, time to go!’ Cosimo called, knocking on the window at his brother. ‘… Fede!’
Rafaella could see her brother-in-law refilling the watering can at the tap. He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of water.
‘I’ll get him,’ Cosimo murmured.
He went outside, taking the steps two at a time and running over the grass, tapping his brother on the shoulder. They talked for a moment, Fede checking his watch and looking surprised by what it showed him. He always lost track of time in the garden.
Rafaella watched them from the window as she rocked the baby, kissing her downy head. The brothers had grown close in the past year and a half, bonded by everything they had lost but also, increasingly, by what they had gained. Coming back to the port had been a homecoming for them all.
Fede bent down to wash the soil off his hands, the spray from the tap catching the sunlight and casting out tiny rainbows. He was saying something to Cosimo when a small barn swallow flew down suddenly from the lemon tree, settling on the handle of the watering can, right beside them.
It was the first swallow Rafaella had seen this year; they must be nesting nearby, but they were rarely so tame.
She saw Cosimo look at it too, no longer listening to his brother but watching as the bird ruffled its feathers in the periphery of the soft spray, preening in the morning light. It basked for a moment before taking off again and settling, incredibly, on Cosimo’s shoulder.
He completely froze, Fede too. They all knew barn swallows were shy and cautious creatures but this bird was unafraid on its tailored perch as it began to twitter and cheep excitedly.
From Rafaella’s vantage point, it looked almost as if the bird was chattering to them, and she saw the brothers exchange stunned looks.
The swallow flew off Cosimo’s shoulder onto Fede’s – making him, too, freeze – and then back again to Cosimo’s, hopping lightly as it chirruped in the morning sun.
Rafaella pressed closer to the glass, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. Cosimo was saying something to Fede now, and Rafaella felt her skin tingle at the look dawning on Fede’s face as he watched the tiny bird play.
She saw a change come over Cosimo too, starting in his eyes, then his mouth, his muscles softening and expanding with each passing moment, as if he was somehow being released from the trusses that had bound him so tightly for the past six years.
She saw his chest heave, the tears gathering in his eyes, as at last the bird took off from his shoulder, and through the glass she heard his delighted shouts as it began swooping around him and Fede in joyous ellipses.
Both brothers were crying and laughing, hugging one another as the barn swallow began darting around them and cutting through the air.
Rafaella was crying, too, as she watched from the window, somehow understanding.
She wanted the moment to crystallize and keep them all contained within it for ever.
But gradually, inevitably, the swallow began slowly gliding up, up on the thermals and they could only watch, entranced, as she danced through the peerless sky, a portent of another summer and all the happy days still to come.