Fire in the Hills (14 page)

“No. We'll travel by night and sleep by day. It's safer.”

They continued up into the hills, climbing slowly, all night long. The land grew drier the higher they went. The leaves underfoot crunched now.

In the morning they came across a dirt road. It ended in front of a large home. Lupo headed for it. But Volpe Rossa caught him by the arm. “It's not a farmhouse. It's a country home for rich people. A second home.”

“So what?”

“If there's anyone there, they're rich.”

“No one's rich in Italy anymore.”

“Perhaps you're right.” Volpe Rossa dropped her hand. “But every
partigiano
I know comes from a farm or a factory, or used to work as a cleric in an office. We don't have houses like that.”

Lupo rubbed his eyes. He felt like he could fall asleep standing. “Maybe there's no one there. Who goes to a country home these days?”

“Look at the chimney.”

A faint curl of smoke rose there. Lupo felt stupid. “We could peek in the window—see who's there.”

“We're not hungry enough or tired enough to take that kind of risk yet.”

“Not tired enough?” said Lupo. “I can't get more tired than this.”

“Poor baby boy,” Volpe Rossa said mockingly. She gave a quick laugh. “You'll see. This is nothing. We've been pampered, living in cities for so long.” She led him into the trees, to a pine grove littered with brown needles.

“Bed,” said Volpe Rossa.

Lupo curled into sleep.

 

He woke to sunshine filtered through pine needles. It was a balmy day for early November. The storms of the past couple of months seemed to have ended. The air was placid. Then he realized what had woken him: a car motor.

Lupo crawled to the edge of the wood and watched a plume of dust thrown up by a retreating car.

He woke Volpe Rossa. “A car just left the house.”

She yawned and rubbed her teeth with the side of her index finger. “Did you see how many people were in it?”

“No.”

“There could still be people at the house. How hungry are you?”

“I'm thirsty more than anything.”

“That cursed spider.” Volpe Rossa stretched and got to her feet. “If it hadn't been for that spider, I'd have thought to bring canteens.”

Lupo found himself grinning.

“Stop that.” Volpe Rossa flicked Lupo's arm with her fingers. “You could have thought of canteens. Anyway, I'm thirsty, too. We can't wait till night. Let's find a stream.” She pointed. “Over there.”

Lupo looked. He couldn't hear water, but the trees were thicker where she pointed. He followed her eagerly, his eyes taking in her slender back, the easy rhythm of her shoulders. He was so intent, he almost knocked into her when she stopped.

A middle-aged woman and a servant girl stood facing them. The woman held a bucket of water; the girl held two. The woman blanched. Then she put a hand to the base of her throat, in a gesture of relief. “You frightened me at first. Are you thirsty?” She held her bucket forward.

The servant girl fell back a step and silently mouthed the word no.

Volpe Rossa shook her head. Lupo did, too.

“Don't be shy. You must be. And I bet you're hungry, too. Come with us to the house.”

Volpe Rossa gave an embarrassed smile. “My boyfriend and I had a little picnic in the woods.” She picked twigs from her hair self-consciously. “We thought there might be a stream up here to dip our feet in.”

“Don't be silly,” said the woman. “It's too chilly for that. Come inside and have something hot to drink, at least.” She stepped forward. Her skirt swung. The right side bulged at her hip. Was there something heavy in her pocket?

The servant girl mouthed, “No, no, no.”

The woman's hand moved toward her pocket.

“Run!” shouted Lupo as he lunged. He caught the woman around the waist, and they fell together, overturning the bucket. Water sloshed across his back. A gun went off. He heard a scream. He flailed and found the woman's right arm. The pistol in her hand shone wet in the sun.

He rolled with the woman, disoriented at her unexpected strength. That scream had scrambled his brain. Who made it?

The woman bit him in the neck. She kicked. But Lupo finally wrested the gun from her and got to his feet, pointing it down at her. “Stay there.” He stepped back, so she couldn't twist around and bite his ankle. He looked quickly behind him.

Volpe Rossa sat with both hands holding her side. She rocked back and forth in pain. He started for her. “No! Don't worry about me,” she said. “Keep your eyes on her. Keep that gun on her.”

The servant girl stood behind her mistress. She still held two water buckets. Her face was stricken.

“Listen,” he said to her. “Help us or I'll kill your mistress. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded.

“When is the car coming back?”

“Not till tonight.”

“Go get rope. Hurry.”

The girl put down the buckets and ran.

“My husband's in the house,” said the woman. “He'll kill you. Your only chance is to run for it now.”

“Don't talk,” barked Lupo. If there was anyone at the house, he'd have come out at that gunshot. They'd be dead already. “Lie flat.”

“There's a rifle in the house. My girl will shoot you from the window. Run for it now.”

Lupo was almost sure that girl wouldn't shoot them. She'd warned them, after all. But he couldn't give her away to her mistress. He pointed the gun at the woman's heart. “My finger's on the trigger. If a bullet hits me, killing you will be my last act. So you better hope she's smart enough not to shoot.”

Volpe Rossa hummed in pain behind him.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Maybe not so bad. I think maybe it's just a graze. Not so bad.”

The servant girl was quick. She brought rope and twine and tape and a bread knife.

“Help me or I'll shoot you both,” said Lupo, for the sake of the show.

They tied the woman's ankles together, then her knees, then her wrists behind her back. They cut a rope for around her waist and another for around her neck and then tied the two together tightly, so that the woman's torso curved forward, and she couldn't look anywhere but down at her own body. They put tape over her mouth, and left her there.

Then Lupo lifted Volpe Rossa gingerly and carried her to the house. He set her down on the sofa.

The servant girl put the two buckets of water on the floor beside them. She ran and got soap and clean cloths.

Lupo cupped his hands and filled them with water. He held them in front of Volpe Rossa's mouth so she could drink. He filled them over and over.

Then he gently pulled Volpe Rossa's hands away from her side. He peeled up her bloody blouse. The bullet had hit in the side near her waist, and gone on by, taking a small chunk of flesh. It was more than a graze, but not much more. He'd seen a lot worse in the clinics. He washed the wound and doused it with the strongest alcoholic drink they had in the house—grappa.

Volpe Rossa screamed.

He pressed a clean cloth into the wound and taped it in place. “We'll need to take a little pile of clean cloths with us,” he said to the servant girl, who had been watching him closely. “And the tape, too. And she needs clean clothes.”

“You both do,” said the girl. “Use the rest of the water in this bucket for washing up yourself and your girlfriend, and I'll get you clean clothes. Then I'll make you a meal.”

His girlfriend.

Lupo flushed. “You help her wash up and change. I'll make the meal.”

The girl laughed in embarrassed surprise. “You cook?”

“Badly. But we're hungry, so it doesn't matter.” Lupo carried one of the buckets into the kitchen.

From the window he could see the woman lying up on the hill, like a trussed boar. She rolled over as he watched. It clearly took a huge amount of energy.

Over to one side was a well. He didn't see anything else of interest.

He drank right from the bucket. He hadn't been this thirsty since that time he'd sat with Maurizio in Turkey, watching the house of the man who owned the yacht.

He set a pot of water to boil on the stove. The shelves held jars of tomatoes. He poured some in a pan and set it to boil, too.

“Here, let me take over.” The servant girl came in. “Go wash yourself.” She peeled two cloves of garlic and chopped them. “I couldn't find you any clean clothes, though. I'm sorry. The only shirts my master has in the house are black. I didn't think you'd want a Fascist shirt.”

Lupo hesitated in the doorway. “You have a well. Why were you getting water from the stream?”

“The
partigiani
threw a dead cow down the well. By the time we got someone to pull it out, the whole place stank. My mistress thinks it's too polluted to use yet.”

Lupo went into the living room. Volpe Rossa was leaning back on the sofa in a fresh skirt and blouse. In those fine clothes, she looked like a lady. She was gorgeous. “You look good.”

“Wash your face and go find us some toothbrushes.”

“How do you feel?”

“Hungry.”

They ate a meal of spaghetti with tomato sauce, then cold, thinly sliced roast pork, then fresh pears. They packed a dinner of the rest of the pork, boiled potatoes, and a bunch of pears and nuts. And they packed a sack of cloths for bandages, and the bottle of grappa, just in case. And one bottle of water.

“Come with us,” said Volpe Rossa to the servant girl.

“I don't want to. I've seen how the
partigiani
live. I can't do that.”

“Wait till about a half hour before you expect your master home, then cut your mistress free,” said Lupo. “Don't do it any sooner than that. We'll be moving slowly. Give us as much time as you can.”

“Okay.”

“She'll know we left earlier,” said Volpe Rossa. She picked up a kitchen pan. “She has to believe you were out cold and you cut her free as soon as you could. Come here.”

The girl put her hand over her mouth, but she nodded. Volpe Rossa smacked her on the side of the head with the pan.

Lupo gasped as the girl reeled backward and fell.

She looked up at them with tears streaming down her face. The spot where she'd been whacked was deep red.

24

T
HEY WALKED SLOWLY the rest of the day. The stream ran north, so they stayed as close to it as the vegetation allowed. Lupo carried the food and bandages over one shoulder, shifting regularly. In his pocket the woman's gun lumped and thumped. Volpe Rossa didn't complain. She didn't make even the smallest whimper. They sang, and her voice was as strong as his.

They stopped at dusk to eat.

“You were right,” said Lupo as he made a bed of pine needles for them to sit on. “The people in that house were Fascists. I've been thinking about it all day. Not all rich people in Italy are like them, though.”

“Of course not. But richness isn't just a matter of money. It's how you think. The upper classes believe in order. That's what the Fascists offer.” Volpe Rossa sat slowly, and then carefully lowered herself to lie on her good side. “Me, I like the creative exuberance of disorder.” She laughed, then stopped with a wince. “Chaos, even.”

Maybe there was no one in the world with more exuberance than Volpe Rossa. Lupo spread out the food.

“Do you think,” asked Volpe Rossa in a small voice, “do you think there's enough grappa that I could drink a little? Just to ease the pain.”

“Sure.”

“That looks like a good meal,” said a man, coming out from behind a tree. He spoke Italian with a German accent that made Lupo's neck hair stand on end even more than the rifle he pointed at him.

“Don't be alarmed,” said another man, behind him, also pointing a rifle, this one at Volpe Rossa. He was Italian, and his accent told Lupo he was definitely from somewhere near Venice.

The combination of hearing a voice that gave him the sense of being in mortal danger and another that felt so familiar and friendly made Lupo dizzy.

“We've got these guns on you,” said the Italian, “just to make sure you don't do something stupid like shoot us before you figure out what's up.”

They were filthy. And skinny. But they looked strong, and their rifles didn't waver. Lupo put his hand on the outside of his pocket, but there was no point in going for that gun. These men would certainly shoot—and Lupo wouldn't.

“Put your gun on the ground,” said the German man. “The one in your pocket.”

Lupo couldn't believe he'd given himself away so easily. He lay the gun on the ground.

The Italian picked it up and put it in his own pocket. Then he sat down with his rifle across his lap. “Let's eat.”

The German sat, too. “What is it?” he said to Volpe Rossa in a friendly way. “What happened to your side? Want to show me? I'm not bad at medical things.”

Lupo bristled. “How do you know about her side?”

“We've been following you. She favors one side. She's obviously in pain.” The German smiled. “You sing good.
‘Wo man singt, da setze dich ruhig nieder, denn böse Leute haben keine Lieder
.'”

“‘Wherever people sing, there set yourself peacefully down, for evil people have no songs,'” Lupo translated, for Volpe Rossa's sake. “Who are you?”

“Shall we do formal introductions?” said the Italian. He held out his hand. “I'm Struzzo—‘Ostrich.'”