Bella Donna

“What had he done?”

“He started a small underground newspaper. Marco helped him. After his father was arrested, the Blackshirts came to the house. They wanted Marco. Claudia was there alone.”

Teresa wiped her eyes with a corner of her shawl, but her steps didn’t falter. “She couldn’t tell them where Marco was, because she didn’t know.” Her voice grew steady, flat. “They raped her, then they tied her to a tree and poured castor oil down her throat. Then they stuffed a live toad in her mouth and made her chew it.”

Emma’s legs trembled and her heart thudded like a wild thing as she imagined the poor girl surrounded by black uniformed louts. “My God!” She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with shaking fingers.

Teresa kept her eyes firmly on the path, but her voice shook with emotion. “It is a common punishment for those who do not cooperate. Very unpleasant and painful. They laughed when she vomited, and then of course, the castor oil took effect. They thought it great entertainment. But Claudia had never been strong. She had a heart murmur since she was a child. It was all too much for her. She died.”

The words hung in the mountain air against the faint sounds of the birds and the whisper of the breeze. Now Emma understood why Marco had been so afraid for her.

Chapter Eight

Marco and his band had met no one as they scrambled along the narrow, winding trails made by animals rather than humans. Darkness fell just after they had completed the trek from the caves and arrived at the point they had chosen to ambush the convoy. About an hour later having checked the terrain and positioned his men, he settled into the ditch by the side of the road. The latest information from the spies confirmed that the commander of the Blackshirt garrison was in place, ready to lead the convoy at first light.

They had about eight hours to wait.

Eight hours for him to think about Emma. Emma on his lap. Emma in his arms. Emma responding to his kisses. Emma on her back for Giovanni…

His breath whistled from between his teeth and he rose to his knees. The bustle of the departure from the caves had served to mask his pain for a few hours, keeping his mind and body fully active. But now there was nothing to do but wait. And remember.

A darker shape materialized against the velvety blackness of the moonless night.

Pietro slid into the space next to him. “All men in place,” he muttered.

“Where is my cousin?” Marco wasn’t sure why he asked the question.

He felt rather than saw Pietro’s shrug. “He told his unit he was going out to check on the guards further down the road. He’ll be back.”

“Of course.”

Marco stood and stretched. Restlessness skittered through his nerves. “Maybe I’ll join him.”

Pietro reached up and pulled on his arm. “No, dottore,” he said. “We can only risk one man out at a time. That’s your own rule.”

“Of course,” Marco said again and stepped back into the shallow trench.

When he was hidden, Pietro rose and slid like a snake from the ditch. The two men clasped hands and then the lieutenant melted away into the blackness.

Marco made himself as comfortable as he could on the hard ground. His grandfather had fought in the trenches in the First War. The Great War, they called it. The War to end all wars. In the darkness he smiled bitterly. Another war was coming, what with the maniac Austrian ensconced in Germany and Mussolini leading Italy to battle with Ethiopia. God only knew where it would finish once it started.

He no more wanted to contemplate that prospect than he wanted to imagine Emma with Giovanni. He dragged his thoughts away and made himself go through the preparations for tonight once more.

The convoy would be moving guns and money to support the government crackdown on a small rebel movement on the east coast near Bari. So what Marco and his men did tonight would help those brave souls a few hundred kilometers away.

They would seize the armaments and the gold, and put them to good use, but more importantly they would take the strongbox of documents.

Marco’s gut clenched at the thought of the commandante who would have the box under his personal supervision. In it were the stolen title deeds to all the lands he had usurped from their rightful owners. There would be lists of farms, houses, fields and livestock. Plus reports of rebels interrogated. The bile rose in Marco’s throat. This was the man who had tortured and killed Claudia. Each of Marco’s men had some grudge against him. For some, it was the rape of a daughter or a sister. Others had lost their land and their farms. For a few, a son had disappeared into the interrogation rooms, never to be seen again. It had been a long wait until they could be sure of waylaying Il Comandante. It would give all of them great pleasure to deal with him as he deserved.

It was a cloudless night. A half moon and the stars lit the terrain with a luminous glow. There was enough light to see movement and to make out a man’s features. He would have preferred cloud and total darkness, but he hadn’t the luxury of choosing his battleground.

Pietro reappeared out of the darkness like a gray ghost. “The men are all in place,” he whispered.

“Has Giovanni returned?”

“Not yet.”

Despite Pietro’s previous reminder about the rules, Marco scrambled from the ditch. “I’ll go half a mile or so out,” he said. “Something is wrong. I’ll do my own patrol.”

Emma felt as if she had spent half her life walking in these hills rather than a mere two or three days.

The birds had fallen quiet as dusk crept over the peaks. Night fell quickly this far south with none of the lingering twilight of England in summertime.

Soon after they started out the sun had sunk low, sending long shadows across the rocks, then disappeared completely, taking with it warmth and light. But it wasn’t only the chill in the air that pierced Emma to the bone, making her draw her shawl tighter around her. Ever since the account of the torture and death of Claudia, both she and Teresa had fallen silent. She could not rid her mind of the image of the laughing, sadistic men and the helpless girl. How many times had Marco reminded her she was no longer in England? She’d scoffed at him. Italy boasted a civilization going back centuries. The Romans had been building centrally heated apartments when her own ancestors had still dressed in skins and painted themselves blue with woad.

What had gone wrong? Only the rise of a dictator who believed he knew best. Such men would always bring out the worst in men, and women too. She remembered Johnny Westmarland saying that.

At long last, she understood what Marco was fighting for.

Now they walked by the light of the moon and the stars. Under other circumstances it would have been magically beautiful, but she had little time or thought for beauty.

The tramp of their feet and the panting of the dog were the only sounds to break the mountain stillness. They set a fast pace and when they paused at the top of a slope to catch their breath Teresa tore a piece of bread from the loaf in her basket, handing it without a word to Emma. She nodded her thanks and ripped at it with her teeth as they continued walking.

The dog had resumed his patrol of the path on all sides of them. Just as they swallowed the last of the bread, he suddenly froze two paces ahead. He stood immobile, only his ears betraying him with a slight twitch every few seconds. Emma’s palms instantly turned sweaty, and her heart began to pound. She put out a hand to Teresa to halt the girl’s steps behind her.

Strange how silence could sometimes convey greater menace than the most violent noise. She peered into the gloom, trying to see what Mickey had seen, to hear what he had heard. Was it an animal that had set Mickey to quivering? Or the Blackshirts? Or Giovanni?

“Buona sera, signorine.”

The whisper came from behind and above. Emma twisted around so fast that she wrenched her sore ankle and grabbed at Teresa to stop herself from falling. She looked up slowly, the taste of fear metallic in her mouth,