If only somebody had noticed where else the fire had caught.
A line of fire snaked through the dry grass raked to the side of the castle’s clearing. Gaining strength, a burst of flames exploded out over the edge to rain upon the rooftops below. Most of the fire fell upon stone tile and, without fuel to burn, brightened momentarily before withering. But a few of those flames fell upon l’Ora Dorata’s wooden roof. An accumulation of dry leaves prodded the fire into greater strength, until it was robust enough to begin digging into the roof itself.
Unbeknownst to the townspeople desperately protecting the groves in the clearing above, the fire gained a new intensity as it began to devour the antique wood of l’Ora Dorata’s roof tiles. The flames lost their jittery sparkle and instead grew into long, languid tongues of heat, burning blue into orange like a depraved sunset.
In mere minutes, the flames extended their range, stretching out over the roof line. The roots of the fire began to crawl deeper, creeping down into the joists and beams of the building that had stood on that site since the early 1800’s.
Bea—racing back to the castle with a fire extinguisher after shooing her chickens into the area under her house that was once a wine cellar and now functioned as a garden shed—stopped short at the sight of l’Ora Dorata’s roof alight with flames. She stood, uncharacteristically paralyzed. Bea scanned the nearby rooftops, noting that they were all stone.
From a distance she heard the sound of a siren. She offered up a prayer of thanks that someone had called the fire department. It sounded as if the truck was only now beginning the climb up the mountain, and once it arrived, it wouldn’t be able to make its way through the street, would it? Bea lingered on the realization that she’d never thought to wonder how the vigili del fuoco would attack a fire on narrow streets.
A snap recalled Bea to the present. She bolted up the stairs to the castle, ignoring the stings of shock to her arthritic knees. Grabbing the first person she saw, she gasped, “L’Ora Dorata! Fire!”
The face before her took a moment to register the news, and then turned to the crowd and bellowed, “Quick! To L’Ora Dorata! She’s on fire!”
Luigi, the owner, had feared this exact situation years ago when he bought the building and noted its uncharacteristic wooden roof. He fell to his knees. He knew he should have listened to his mother’s warning about that roof. But no, he’d been so taken by the story of the builder constructing the edifice in the style his brother’s Sienese monastery.
Edo yanked Luigi up, “Stop! We’ll save it, but we have to move quickly! You there!” He shouted to a clutch of men surrounding the arbor that seemed to now be safe, “Run down to l’Ora Dorata and see if you can contain the fire until the vigili del fuoco arrive. Take this!” He snatched Bea’s extinguisher and flung it to the men. “And we need people here to contain it from above.”
The crowd rearranged itself, snaking down the stairs to l’Ora Dorata, and whipping toward the edge of the clearing. The men on the ground in front of the trattoria aimed their water buckets uselessly at the top windows of the restaurant. The outer walls were moistened, but they were stone anyway, and weren’t in danger. Meanwhile, the fire continued down the sides of the inner walls, exploding out in bursts of flame and plaster, rushing over the spray from the one extinguisher the villagers had left.
Edo and his crew had slightly better luck from above, as they began to arrest the fire still spreading along the rooftop.
More townspeople arrived with buckets of water. Suddenly, they all stopped moving, their heads cocked at a distant wailing sound. They heard the siren enter the parking area at the edge of town, and then, remarkably, begin to make its way carefully through the street. But how?
In minutes that passed like hours, the spinning blue light of the fire truck flickered against the walls of Santa Lucia. Mingled shouts of joy and sighs of relief met the sight of the vigili del fuoco, who leapt out of their vehicle, which was as tall as the trucks that serviced Girona, but thin and short enough to navigate the streets of Santa Lucia.
The firefighters shoved the townspeople out of the way as they released ladders and attached fire hoses. A hush descended as the firefighters moved quickly to douse the fire in the building before racing up the stairs to assess the damage to the castle and threat to the groves.
“Magda! Where are you going?”
“I’m done with it, Chiara, done with it!”
“With what? Magda, you’re scaring me.”
Magda stopped abruptly and leaned against the stone wall of the alley. Breathing heavily she gazed up at the starlight, greasy now with smoke billowing from the castle. A sob threatened to choke her. She shook her hand to free herself as Chiara’s footsteps staccatoed down the alley to rest beside her.
“Magda?”
“I can’t do it anymore Chiara.”
Softly, Chiara asked, “Do what?”
“I just can’t. I can’t fight it anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
Magda breathed deeply before looking up, her eyes shining in the darkness.
“Follow me.”
She strode to her house, through the door, gesturing to Chiara to follow. Chiara waited uncertainly in the kitchen, as Magda continued to her room. She came back bearing a cardboard box, a bit larger than a shoe box.
Magda dropped it on the table and sighed, settling herself into a chair.
Chiara said nothing, waiting, hesitant to break the stillness that had descended around Magda.
Finally Magda began. In a whisper, and then gaining strength. “My parents. My parents were not good people. They . . . they were Nazi sympathizers. They hated Jews,
