Massimo moved closer to Luciano, his towering physical presence shadowing the smaller man. “First of all, you will never, ever get within ten meters of my daughter. And second of all, how dare you speak to me that way?”
Luciano sighed. “You are stuck, Massimo. You are so stuck you can’t even see how stuck you are. How stuck we all know that you are.”
Massimo pulled back his right arm, clenching it into a fist just as a spark from the fire landed on a particularly dry patch of hanging wisteria. Fanned by a passing breeze, the vine caught.
Luciano tried to duck, but his reflexes lagged. Massimo’s punch landed squarely on his temple. At the impact, Luciano spun wildly, arms flailing, and flew to the ground. His face skidded against the gravel walkway with a sound like tearing cardboard. Luciano struggled to roll over, to protect his face from another blow. An explosion of pain as Massimo kicked the fallen man’s thigh. Luciano grunted and tensed for another blow, but none came. He heard Massimo’s footsteps moving away, a crunching that faded into the crowd.
Gingerly, Luciano lifted his hand to his head. His fingers came away wet, and he realized the ground beside him was damp with his blood. He staggered into a standing position, wishing for his cane. Meanwhile, a small flame popped and spread, hungrily consuming the deadened vines that laced the castle.
The fire flickered momentarily. Perhaps it would have died out without ever being noticed, as fires so often do, if there’d been even a slight bit of grace. But grace was in short supply in Santa Lucia just then.
A bracing breeze freed yet more sparks from the flames prattling around the roasting cinghiale, and they provided reinforcements for the lagging tendrils of fire.
Up above the heads of the chattering crowd, nobody noticed the gathering glow, the heat that was now cackling, gaining momentum, racing up the curlicues of vine and catching on the weathered wood of the arbor. From here it was a simple matter to leap to the straw wine holders arrayed on the table of local wares. It was at this point that the greedy flames were finally noticed.
It was Fabrizio who first spied the flames licking the dry plywood. He had come to the sagra impatient to find Chiara, but instead discovered a conflagration that could bring Santa Lucia to her knees.
His gaze held, spellbound, as he choked out the words, “Fire . . . fire . . .”
With herculean effort, he broke the magnetic thrall of the flames consuming the pamphlets. A spray of embers shot into the intensifying breeze. He ripped his vision away and faced the crowd, “Fire! There’s a fire! Where is the fire department? Someone call them! Everyone down the steps! Orderly, people, orderly!” He shouted as various screams sounded through the clotted gathering.
The irrelevant part of Fabrizio’s brain mulled that this hysteria was probably akin to the pandemonium that chased the people of Pompeii to their deaths. And that one exit would create a bottleneck of people pushing forward to escape. He offered a prayer to the God he had thought he no longer believed in, begging please, please, get everyone out safely. Where was Chiara?
Even as he had the thought, the wind whipped the fire into a demonic rainbow above the crowd. It leapt across the castle, into the vines that tethered the rock wall, and fell like a shower onto the dry grass that stretched along the olive groves.
“The trees!” Someone in the crowd shrieked, “The trees!” Whipping off coats, several of the townspeople rushed forward to try to smother the flames even now racing along the hidden roots to the beloved olive groves.
“Ai! It burns! Help! My hand!”
“I can’t get closer, the fire—”
“There’s—oh my God! More, help!”
“Oh, Madonna! Another tree! I can’t stop it!”
“Help me! HELP!”
“The arbor, watch out! MOVE, everyone, the arbor!”
With a snap and a creak the arbor—engulfed now in flames—plunged forward, cleaving the darkness with a trail of fire. It crashed to the ground, the blaze exploding upward. Fabrizio felt a burst of heat on his face. A shriek beside him. Sauro was on fire, tongues of flame spreading up his arm. The baker flung himself to the ground, rolling madly.
All around, people fell like trees or crumpled like paper. Rolling and yelling for water.
Beneath the high-pitched wailing, a bass of footfalls as people scrambled to the stairs.
The townspeople ran erratically around the walls of flames that now created dead ends along the festival grounds.
Fabrizio took off his own coat and rushed toward the rosemary hedge nearest him, already smoldering. “Ah!” He shouted as the fire catapulted to burn his leg. The olive tree burst into flame. No coat could put out this inferno. The groves were in danger of complete annihilation. Was Chiara out there?
“Chiara!” he bellowed, “Chiara!”
Magda had left the sagra early. Seeing the stupid tourists gabbing with the residents of Santa Lucia when nobody would give her the time of day was too galling. She had stayed long enough to make sure the setup matched her expectations, and to get a heaping plate of cinghiale. When she had turned with her plate to face the humming crowds, she suddenly felt ridiculous. Alone, with a plate garishly piled with too much food for one person. Vale, the town handyman, stood and shouted, gesturing for her to join him, a grin lighting his face. Immediately Magda’s heartbeat concentrated. She was wanted, valued finally for her tireless work for this wreck of a town. Her smile wavered, but she stood straight
