Free The Villa Triste by Lucretia Grindle Page B

that her eyes were blurring, welling up.
    ‘Rico told me I should come to you, if I ever needed anything. I told him you didn’t like what we were doing. He said it wouldn’t matter.’
    ‘You’ve seen him?’
    She nodded.
    I reached up and touched the bottom of her eye with the fingertip of my glove. The fawn-coloured leather darkened, matching the smear left by my own tears.
    ‘I’m not as brave as you or Rico,’ I whispered. ‘You know that.’ She shook her head.
    ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘We’re different, Issa. I’m not like you. I’m afraid for all of us. All the time. I don’t want to fight. I just want this to be over.’
    A couple skirted around us. We began to walk again, reaching the corner and turning down towards the bridge. The smell of chestnuts hung in the air. I stopped at the next brazier and bought a paper twist of them. For a moment Issa and I walked and chewed in silence.
    ‘It’s not safe for Mama and Papa,’ I said, lowering my voice until it was not much more than a dull murmur swallowed by the crackling of the paper cone. ‘I don’t care if Papa helped to organize it. We have to take care of them. We have to do everything we can for them. That’s what makes me most angry with you,’ I added. ‘If they’re found, Mama and Papa could be shot. You have to get those men out of the house.’
    Issa nodded. ‘I know.’
    I glanced at her.
    ‘I’ll only help you if you promise – no, swear to me – that no one else will ever be in the house. Never again.’
    She nodded.
    ‘All right. Yes.’
    ‘For Mama and Papa’s sake.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘No matter what they say. Swear?’
    She looked at me.
    ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I want you to swear. On Mama’s life.’
    ‘I swear on Mama’s life.’
    ‘All right,’ I said a moment later. ‘Then tell me what it is you want me to do.’
    We had come to the bridge. Despite the fact that it was damp and cold, there were still people hurrying home or crossing from the Oltrarno down into the city. A few were feeding the fish, dropping crumbs and the husks of chestnuts into the river. Issa took my elbow and guided me to the edge. We looked down, just able to make out the dark floating shapes, the ripples in the water, the occasional snap and gaping mouth.
    ‘We have an ambulance,’ she murmured, ‘and a driver. To get them up to Fiesole. To the monastery.’
    The monastery was being used as a rest and recuperation home for soldiers with shell shock and worse. The truth was, many there would never recuperate. If they were lucky, the best they might get was a little rest.
    ‘From there the trail goes into the mountains,’ she said. ‘Remember?’
    I did. It was the start of the Via degli Dei, the pilgrims’ trail we had walked one summer with Papa that led all the way over the Appenines and down to Bologna, and the Po Delta beyond. From there, there were any number of routes north, to the Alps and Switzerland.
    I looked at Issa. She glanced at me, then back down at the fish.
    ‘There are roadblocks,’ she muttered. ‘We need someone, a nurse, who can explain why the patients are being moved.’
    I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the mist or the evening. It blossomed in my stomach and feathered upwards towards my heart. I nodded before it could reach my mouth and seal my lips.

    That night, we sat down to dinner with three frightened, cowed-looking boys who had been sleeping for the better part of a week in our cellar. Mama’s English was fluent and Issa spoke a few words. I could not say a word to them, or understand what they were saying. But they were someone’s brother, someone’s friend, and for all I knew someone’s fiancé or husband, too. Any one of them might be Lodo, or Enrico, or his friend Carlo. That I had felt angry with Issa for bringing them into the house, that I had blamed her, and them, for my own fear, filled me with guilt. For their part, they had been told of the plan. All through the meal I