A Prince Without a Kingdom (24 page)

And the treasure? He had one third of it: the share belonging to Mazzetta and his donkey. Like a pirate, Vango had hidden it on his island in a cave that no one else would find. The remaining two thirds had disappeared with Cafarello.

Vango picked up the dictionary and the book and made his way over to the window.

Suddenly, diving headfirst to the ground, he rolled into a ball by the fireplace. This took less than three seconds.

He put the two objects down next to him and waited for his heart to stop racing. Scanning the room, he sat up slightly before moving toward another window, still crouching low. He peered through one of the gaps in the shutter, then bent down again.

Vango crawled toward the door. This time, he didn’t even need to take a peek. A crackling noise could be heard in the undergrowth from that side too. The house was surrounded. He had seen at least five shadows, and there were likely to be two more at the back.

No doubt about it. They were on his trail again. He turned the key in the lock.

Vango took the bucket of water he had used to wash his face, emptying its contents onto the remaining embers, which barely sighed as they were extinguished. The room was plunged into darkness. Vango heard the door handle squeaking. He had locked the door just in time.

Someone was walking on the roof. Vango knew that he hadn’t taken any precautions on reaching the island. He hadn’t been able to resist playing with the children, who had carried him in triumph: and all because of the tribulations of a chick! He had calculated that by arriving into the small port of Rinella, he wouldn’t be spotted. He could have made immediately for the wild coast, staying close to the sea. But he had clowned about first, to win the smiles of three little girls, in memory of Laura Viaggi and her sisters.

How was he going to escape now? He knew this whitewashed cube like the back of his hand. There was no way out. All the windows were being watched. The chimney flue was barely wide enough to squeeze an arm up it. There was no cellar or attic or hidden nook. All he could do was fight back.

A few paces from him, he saw a wooden lever smash through the first shutter. A small pool of starlight spilled through the glass, which immediately shattered. Then a hand burst through the hole and turned the handle. Vango had swiftly crouched beneath the window, where he remained hidden in the gloom.

A shadowy figure stepped through the window. Noiselessly, Vango grabbed hold of it and pinned it to the ground. He struck the man on the back of the head, and his victim promptly fainted. When a second shadow chanced its luck, Vango put it out of action in the same manner. All that was audible from the outside was the rustling of clothes. A minute went by. Vango could hear the sound of muffled voices on the other side of the house. Despite the cold, he was drenched in sweat, and the sensation of those two bodies pressed against his legs made him feel panicky. His eight years as a fugitive had sharpened his survival instinct: he feared what his own hands were capable of doing.

The third man got away from him, and they rolled together toward the fireplace. Vango had gagged the man’s mouth with his hand, but his opponent was putting up a real fight. On feeling the Russian dictionary against his shoulder, Vango grabbed hold of it and, with one heavy blow, knocked out the enemy. The man slid to the ground. Vango also picked up the metal flask and crawled back under the window, armed with these two weapons.

A voice was mumbling at his feet. One of the men was coming around, but he was talking gibberish. Vango was about to acquaint him with the heavy dictionary when he recognized what the man was saying.

It wasn’t Russian, but ancient Greek: the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John. “In the beginning was the Word . . .”

Vango put the dictionary down.

“Brother John?”

“Vango?” gasped the man, wincing in pain. “Is that you?”

When another voice called through the window, Brother John replied, “I’m here. It’s Vango!”

A fourth man hopped over the windowsill.

“Vango? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question!”

“We’re hungry over there.”

“Hungry?”

“Pippo Troisi told us this house had been lying empty for ages. We’re on the hunt for anything to eat. Where are the others?”

“Over there.”

“And what about Brother Pierre?”

“I think he took a knock to the head. I’m sorry.”

“Who did that to him?”

Vango shrugged. The monk understood.

A final shadow appeared. There were five of them. Five monks turned gentleman-burglars, with sacks over their shoulders, clad in the color of the night.

“Fill the bucket in the well,” ordered Brother John. “I’m going to try reviving the others. We’ve got to carry them as far as the boat.”

“I’ll lend a hand,” offered Vango. “I want to talk with Brother Marco.”

“Have you got anything to eat?”

“Eggs.”

“How many?”

“Two dozen.”

“Pippo will be waiting for us down on the beach.”

Pippo wasn’t on the beach. He had sailed around the cliffs to the port of Malfa, in order to tie the boat to a mooring buoy. Next, he had slipped into the sea and swum over to the dock. Now he was sitting with his back against the hut belonging to the lady of the port, Pina Troisi, and he was listening.

Pippo Troisi did this every time he ferried the pilfering monks. On Christmas Eve he had dared to get close for the first time, and he had heard his wife talking to somebody: Doctor Basilio. She was telling him about what it was like to wait, to be patient. She had talked about the boat that would bring Pippo back to her one day. Basilio got her to recite the boat timetables, together with the ports of departure, and Pippo would listen in, feeling confused.

Whenever he came by in the evening, he nearly always heard the doctor’s voice. Pina and Basilio had become firm friends, and the doctor was always ready to listen to Pippo’s wife. He was interested in understanding her world and what had brought her to this point. And he in turn would talk about his patients.

She would prepare a light supper for him, its aromas assailing Pippo Troisi’s nostrils. Tonight he recognized the smell of the pasta-style dish she was making from zucchinis. Pippo was salivating. All he could hear was the flame inside the spirit lamp, behind the thin wooden wall, like the sound of a sheet being unfurled.

“I’m just back from Lipari,” Basilio declared.

“I saw you arriving this morning, on the nine twenty-seven.”

“There’s an old man over there who lives under house arrest. He’s spent seven years in the former penal colony. He’s about to die.”

“Are you looking after him?”

“Yes. He’s a Communist from Venice. Signor Mussolini doesn’t like him, so he put him there, seven years ago.”

“I’ve never met a Communist,” Pina admitted. “What are they like?”

On the other side of the partition, the question made Pippo smile.

“He’s not even really a Communist anymore. He spent four years in Moscow, and that changed him. But he kept pretending he was one, just to annoy the authorities.”

He wiped his mouth.

“If your Pippo comes back one day, he’ll be different too. He’ll have changed a great deal.”

“So will I,” mused Pina. “Which is just as well.”

Pippo Troisi strained to hear.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes, I’m afraid. Which is just as well.”

And then she added quickly, as an afterthought, “What about you, weren’t you afraid at first, with her?”

The two friends sometimes talked about the woman Basilio could never stop thinking about. Mademoiselle.

“I barely shook her hand, you know.”

“How long has it been?” she asked.

“I’m not counting. What about you?”

He knew how much Pina loved numbers. “If I don’t count the days,” she would say, “then what’s the point of one day more?”

“Well?” Basilio asked again.

“He left one hundred and twenty-two months, two weeks, and three days ago.”

Pippo Troisi headed off, feeling emotional, as he did every time he dropped by. He ran down to the sea and swam out to his boat, nearly capsizing it as he climbed on board. He was sopping wet as he began to row beneath the stars. He was thinking about Pina.

“You know that letter I told you about — the letter she sent me?” Basilio had said, in Pina Troisi’s tiny hut.

“Yes. How did that sentence go again that you liked?”

“‘Being far away from our home makes me feel rather differently about things.’ ”

“Yes, ‘far away from our home.’ I remember.”

“Well, there was also an envelope for the boy. Vango.”

“Vango, the wild kid from Pollara,” she said.

“He hasn’t lived here for a long time now. Anyway, I don’t know if I did the right thing, but I opened the letter.”

“Today?”

“No, weeks ago.”

“You didn’t mention it to me.”

Basilio gave an embarrassed smile.

“The letter is written in Russian.”

“So it’s as if you hadn’t opened it.” She tried comforting him.

“The old man from Lipari translated it for me today. The Venetian. He speaks Russian.”

There was a pause from Pina Troisi, and then she asked, “What does she say in the letter?”

He didn’t answer her right away.

“She says everything. She tells Vango the whole story. In five pages. I wrote it all down. You can’t begin to imagine. . . .”

Basilio seemed to be of two minds about going on.

“Do you remember how they arrived on the beach, and then at Tonino’s inn, one stormy evening?”

“Yes, I remember. Pippo was there.”

“She tells him all about where they came from, the little one and her. Vango’s parents . . . You can’t imagine, Pina. You can’t imagine what’s in that letter. She tells such secrets.”

“Well, then keep them to yourself.”

Pippo Troisi could make out six figures on the narrow beach at Pollara. Most of them were lying on the pebbles. As he drew close, he recognized Vango, who was standing in the sea with the water up to his knees. Pippo got everybody on board, both injured and able-bodied, and shook Vango’s hand vigorously. The sails didn’t even quiver.

“You vanish, but you always come back,” said Pippo.

They pulled away from the beach in order to navigate the rock of Faraglione.

“Life has become very difficult,” Pippo added as he rowed.

“Has Marco taken over for Zefiro?” asked Vango.

“Not really.”

“Who’s replaced him?”

Neither Pippo nor any of the monks had an answer. It was cold. A long silence accompanied their voyage toward the islands. In the end, a voice from the back replied, “Fear. Fear has replaced him.”

They were the words of Brother Pierre, who was coming to his senses again. As the boat headed for Arkudah, the only sound was that of the oars slicing through the water. The sail was redundant.

“I’ve come to speak with Marco,” said Vango. “I have news of Zefiro.”

Inverness, Scotland, three weeks later, March 1937

An odd-looking person walked into the shop to shelter from the rain. Andrei recognized him instantly, and proceeded to stare at him.

Boulard was wearing a square-framed pair of glasses with thick lenses that made his eyes look strangely close together. He sported an oilcloth rain hat and a matching custard-colored raincoat. The superintendent had stuffed the bottoms of his trousers, which were too long for him, into a pair of black ankle boots. No doubt about it — he was in disguise. Incognito. And to prove it, he was whistling.

With his hands behind his back, he started looking at the color samples.

Andrei had been working in the shop ever since he’d left Everland. He had stopped here, in the first town he had come to, rather than return to Vlad the Vulture. He had been hired to work as a stockroom-cum-delivery boy for the paint shop opposite the station. His boss was getting a good deal, since he only paid a part-time wage despite Andrei working nonstop and even sleeping at the back of the shop.

The boss appeared from behind the cash register and headed over to Boulard. Andrei stayed at the back.

“Are you looking for something?”

“Yes.”

“Are you French?”

Boulard bristled. How could anyone tell?

“
Well . . .
Ah, some of my ancestors came from France,” explained the superintendent, trying to speak the Queen’s English as airily as if he were a member of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club. “You have a sophisticated ear, Mr. . . . Colors.”

He had just spotted the shopkeeper’s name on the notice above the till:
GREGOR’S COLORS
.

“Mr. Gregor,” said the boss, putting him right. “Francis Gregor.
Colors
is the name of the shop.”

“Yes, of course. Now, I’m on my way to see a charming young lady friend of mine on the other side of Loch Ness. It’s a surprise visit.”

Boulard tried winking, but his heavy glasses slipped down his nose, and he ended up jabbing his finger in his eye as he tried to push them up again.

“I’m sure she’ll be delighted!” commented Gregor, taking in the superintendent’s old-dog look, his cardboard suitcase disintegrating in his grip, and the excessive amount of trouser fabric spilling over the top of his boots.