Street of the Five Moons

‘I’ll have a look around. Quickly, now.’

I crouched there trying to compress myself into a smaller piece of air as the flashlight moved in closer. The second man had left . . . And so had John. He had let go of my hand when we fell flat; he must have slipped away during the conversation between the two men.

I had just enough time to think bitter thoughts about him when the stone dragon began to move. I jumped a good three inches. So did Bassano; I saw the flashlight beam shoot skyward before he got it under control. He swore again – sheer bravado, his voice was tremulous. I understood his feelings. The moving statues had looked ghastly enough in broad daylight. Bathed in a lurid glow, with shadows slipping over their stony hides like muscles twitching, they were like creatures out of a feverish nightmare.

They were all moving, now, the rusty mechanisms grating and groaning. I was debating which way to go when I saw John hugging the massive flank of the dragon, which was swinging on a curving course in my general direction. As it rolled out of the glow of the purple searchlight, its rear end was deeply shadowed. I wouldn’t have seen John if he hadn’t beckoned urgently.

Bassano and his flashlight were no longer visible. I think he ran. So did we, as soon as the dragon’s ponderous path took it near the rear gate. There was only one more garden, and then came a flight of stairs, with an artificial waterfall flowing down them, before we reached the lower terrace and the wall. But we had to hurry. As soon as Bassano got his wits back, he would know who had started the monsters moving.

I thought of mentioning this to John, but decided I had better save my breath for more important matters, such as running away. He was splashing merrily down the middle of the stairway, through the waterfall, like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. He was built like a dancer, slim and wiry, but at that moment his excellent physique was only too visible in the amber lights that flooded the fountain. He had abandoned secrecy for speed, which made sense; if our pursuers didn’t know exactly where we were, they knew where we had just been.

John was well ahead of me when we got to the bottom of the stairs and raced across the terrace. The wall loomed up ahead, the tangle of barbed wire on top looking like delicate black lace against the moonlit sky. There were trees to right and left, but not directly ahead. John decided to go right. He made a quick turn. His wet shoes slipped on the flagstones, his feet went out from under him, and he fell forwards with a splat like a large flounder being landed. At the same moment I heard voices raised in excited comment at the top of the stairs.

I skidded to a stop beside John and hauled him to his feet.

‘The heroine is the one who is supposed to fall over her clumsy feet,’ I said sweetly.

I’m sure he would have had a snappy answer if the fall had not knocked the wind out of him. He hung on to me for a few moments, whooping for breath. Then he headed for the nearest tree and started climbing, without waiting to see whether I was following.

They were flowering trees of some kind, in full blossom, and the scent was sweet as perfume. Velvety petals brushed my face and arms as I climbed.

John was above me, agile as a monkey. I had to admire his well-developed sense of self-preservation, which was uncluttered by any taint of old-fashioned chivalry. He was heavier than I was, though, and he was stuck, about six feet from the top of the wall. The branches were getting too fragile to support him.

‘Get out of the way,’ I hissed. ‘I’m lighter; maybe I can – ’

He didn’t say anything, but I stopped talking, because the voices and the flashlights were coming down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, they would fan out to right and left, and if they had the elementary intelligence to shine their lights up into the trees, we were sitting ducks – stuck, like ripe fruit in the skinny branches.

A fragrant cascade of satiny petals showered down on my upturned face. John seemed to be having a slight fit up there. Then I realized he was struggling out of his jacket – no mean task, wet as it was. He stood upright, swaying perilously, and threw first the jacket and then himself onto the top of the wall.

I climbed up to the limb he had vacated and caught his hand. He let out a smothered yelp.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. I didn’t bother to lower my voice. The boys in the background were making considerable noise.

‘You just pulled me down onto the barbed wire,’ said John. It had to be John, because he was the only one up there, but I would never have recognized his voice, he was gritting his teeth so hard. ‘Damn it, use your feet! Haven’t you ever done any climbing? I can’t possibly drag your not inconsiderable weight – ’

I got my elbows over the edge of the wall, where his jacket had padded the spikes on the wire, and hauled myself up. The pursuers were on the terrace, baying like a pack of wolves or a bunch of US congressmen debating the latest Washington scandal.

‘All right,’ John said, as I balanced precariously on the edge of the wall. His voice was almost calm now. ‘Take it slowly. The wire doesn’t quite cover the entire surface; there is a good two inches free on either side. Step over. No, not there, a little to your left. Good. It’s about eight feet down. The ground is higher on the other side. Lower yourself by your hands and drop.’

His hand on my elbow steadied me as I stepped high over the barrier of wire. I was concentrating so hard on avoiding the barbs that I was only dimly aware of the brouhaha going on in the background, not ten yards away. The searchers had gathered in a gesticulating group on the terrace. Several of them had flashlights, but at that moment they had succumbed to one of the weaknesses to which the engaging Latin temperament is susceptible. They were arguing about what to do next. Some of them wanted to go right, some left; one cool-headed character suggested they split up, but he was shouted down by the others, who were enjoying the argument too much to settle it sensibly. They were waving their flashlights around as they talked – no real Italian can converse without using his hands – and the beams reminded me of old World War II movies, with the anti-aircraft beacons crisscrossing the dark sky.

Sooner or later one of those beams was bound to find us. It was pure bad luck that it happened about sixty seconds too soon.

I was hanging by my hands, but my toes were dug into a crack in the outer surface of the wall. I couldn’t quite bring myself to let go. John said it was eight feet down, but what did he know? There might be a bottomless abyss under my feet. It was dark down there.

John was bending over me. My right hand still clutched his wrist. He must have been squatting on the barbed wire, because his admonitions to me were interspersed with profane comments. All of a sudden his ruffled hair lit up like a pop-art halo, and light focused on his face. His eyes widened and his lips parted, but I didn’t hear what he said. It was drowned out by the sound of the shot.

I let go of the wall, but I did not let go of John. I dragged him with me as I fell, and if he yelled when the barbed wire raked across his body I didn’t hear it; the crowd on the terrace was shooting up a storm. If I hadn’t known better, I could have sworn they had an automatic rifle or a machine gun.

It was about nine feet down, as a matter of fact – three feet below the soles of my shoes. I landed with scarcely a jar, then John fell on top of me. We went down in a confused tangle and continued to roll. The slope must have been almost 45 degrees, and every rock on it left a bruise on my aching body. There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. Naturally, we rolled into it. If there was a natural obstacle on that hillside that we missed, I would be surprised.

I had been holding on to John, probably out of some vicious urge to use him as a buffer, so we ended up in the same place. In the stream. I don’t mean to disparage the stream. It was a nice stream. Shallow, with a soft, muddy bed, and quite warm. I lay there with the water rippling gently across my bruised body till I got my breath back. Off in the distance there were lights, and people yelling. Somebody’s head was pressing down on my diaphragm.

‘John?’ I said.

No answer.

‘I hope it’s you down there,’ I said. ‘Because if it isn’t, who is it?’

The head moved feebly. Then a disembodied voice said,

‘Water. More water. It must have some deeper meaning. In Freudian terms – ’

‘Freud be damned. It’s a stream. We’re in it. John, we made it; we escaped from the estate.’

‘That’s nice.’ The weight on my diaphragm increased.

‘We got out, but we’re still in danger. I think we had better move on.’

We had come a long way down. The moving lights at the top of the hill looked far away, the voices sounded