Greenmantle (5 page)

When she was satisfied that the room was empty except for Lewis and herself, she sidled over to the chair across from where Lewis had been sitting and settled her diminutive form upon it. She immediately looked as though she’d been there the whole night, as though the cabin were hers and Lewis the newly arrived visitor.

Lewis smiled and stirred the fire awake in the cast iron stove. He added some wood to the coals, then set a kettle of water on top. His visitor showed no sign of impatience at his slow movements, nor any inclination to break the quiet that lay easily between them. Not until the tea was brewed and a steaming mug was set in front of her did she move.

“I found this for you,” she said.

From the pocket of her jacket she took a paperback book and offered it to him. He smiled his thanks and turned it over in his hands. The book looked almost new. There was a white wolf in the foreground of the cover. Snow was falling. An almost nude woman, pendulously breasted, stood behind the wolf. Behind her was a satyr and a full moon. The title of the book was
Wolfwinter
; the author, Thomas Burnett Swann. Lewis didn’t ask where she’d “found” it.

“It ’minded me of Tommy’s dog, that wolf.”

“It does look a little like Gaffa, doesn’t it?” Lewis said.

She nodded. “Is it a good one?”

“Well, now. I don’t know that yet.”

“Will you read it to me?”

Lewis smiled. “Sure. But we won’t get through it all in one night.”

“That’s all right.”

Lewis put his glasses back on and used a proper bookmark to keep his place in the book he’d been reading. Pushing it to one side, he held the paperback up to the light and cleared his throat. Then he began to read to her.

* * *

“I like it,” she said later when Lewis’s throat started to get scratchy from reading aloud and he decided to stop.

“Do you understand it all?”

She shrugged. “The names are funny, but I do like it. Will you read me some more tomorrow night?”

“Sure.”

She regarded him for a long moment with her unblinking green eyes, her whole body languid and relaxed in the chair, then with a sudden graceful movement, she was on her feet and by the door.

“I’ve got to go now, Lewis,” she said. She opened the door, turning before she stepped outside. “I’ve seen them,” she added. “In the dark man’s house.”

“Did you go inside?” Lewis asked.

He was still facing the table and turned slowly when she didn’t answer. By the time he had turned around, the doorway was empty, the door ajar. Shaking his head, he rose from his chair and made his slow way to the door. He stood there for a long time, watching the darkness and listening, before he closed it. At the table again, he picked up the book she’d brought him and turned it over in his hands once more.

She could move like a ghost when she wanted to. He wondered how the new people in the house would feel about being haunted by her.

He stayed there for a while, thinking of her, about what the new people might be like, then he laid the book down again. He left their mugs in the sink, meaning to clean them in the morning when he’d drawn some more water. Taking the lamp, he went upstairs to his bed in the loft overhead.

4

On Sunday Ali and her mother continued to work at organizing the house. On Monday they went into Perth for the day, shopping and looking around, breaking for a late lunch at the Maple Drop Bakery before they came home. It wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon, after spending a couple of hours studying for her exams, that Ali was free once more to follow the side road that led up to Tony’s place.

When she got there, she followed the sound of hammering to the back of the house where she found Tony putting together a fence for his vegetable garden.

“Hey, kid! How’s it going?”

“Okay. I had to study this morning—history.” She pulled a face. “But now I can do what I want for the rest of the day.”

“What’s so bad about history?” Valenti asked. “It’s important to know the history of things. How are you going to know what to respect if you don’t know where it came from? Everything’s got its place, and only history’s going to tell you how it got there.”

“I guess. But this is all just memorizing dates and stuff like that. I’m probably going to flunk it ’cause I just can’t remember anything.”

“A smart kid like you? You’ll do okay.”

If this were New York, he thought, and he hadn’t lost his place in the
fratellanza
, she wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. He’d just have a talk with her teacher and if her teacher had any smarts, he’d pass her. Who knows? Maybe the teacher would need a favor someday. It never hurt to have connections. But this wasn’t New York.

“What are you doing?” Ali asked.

“It’s the rabbits,” Valenti explained. “Okay, I like ’em, but I’m trying to grow some produce here and I don’t like rabbits so much that I want to feed ’em all summer and have nothing for myself, you know what I mean? So I’m building the fence to keep ’em out. Maybe I’ll put a little sign on it—you know how to write rabbit?”

“Give me a break.”

“Okay. So maybe that’s not such a good idea.” He shrugged. “How do you like your new house?”

“Oh, it’s great. Mom and them put in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on one wall of my room and I’ve got all my books in it—you should see it.”

“Maybe I will—but with a chaperone. You got to watch who you invite into your bedroom, kid. They might not all be gentlemen like me.”

“I’m not worried about you.”

Valenti regarded her seriously. “That’s good,” he said. “Because I like you and I think we can be friends, but we don’t want people getting the wrong idea or anything. Five, six years from now, though—maybe we got a problem.” He grinned when Ali blushed. “So you like books?” he asked, changing the subject. “What kind of things do you read about?”

“Oh, all kinds. Right now I’m reading this book by Parke Godwin that’s—”

“What kind of a name is that, ‘Parke’?”

“I don’t know. What kind of a name is Tony?”

“It’s Italian.”

“No kidding?” Ali grinned. “Anyway, it’s a really good book. It’s all about Guinevere and what happened to her after Arthur died. See, everyone’s against her and she ends up getting captured by these Saxons…”

Valenti went back to working on the fence, listening to her and smiling, feeling good. The work went more quickly with her helping. When she finished describing Godwin’s
Beloved Exile
up to where she’d read so far, she went on to talk about other favorite authors. Diana Wynne Jones. Tony Hillerman. Caitlin Midhir.

“Maybe you should bring one of those up, next time you come,” Valenti said when she mentioned her Tom Brown Jr. field guides. “I’d like to know some more about what we got out there in the woods, you know?”

Ali nodded, then pointed to the gap between the ground and the bottom of the chicken wire they were attaching to the wood frame of the fence. “They’re still going to get in.”

“Only the smart ones,” Valenti said. “I don’t mind the smart ones coming, I just don’t want to feed the whole forest.”

Ali laughed. “Tony?” she asked when there was a moment’s pause in the hammering. “Remember you told me about those kids that come joyriding up here?”

“Sure. What about ’em?”

“Well, what is it that they do?”

Valenti put the hammer down and looked at her. “What happened?” he asked. “Somebody been bothering you?”

“Not exactly. It’s just that I woke up early yesterday morning and when I looked out the window, I thought I saw someone hiding in the trees out back of our place, watching the house.”

“What kind of someone?”

“I couldn’t really tell. I’m not even sure if I really saw anything or not. I didn’t tell my mom because she’s always worrying about something or other, and I didn’t know if this was worth bothering about in the first place. I don’t want to get anybody into trouble, but it’s a little creepy, don’t you think—having someone spying on you?”

Valenti nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s not so good. But it doesn’t sound like the joyriders. They just come up here Friday or Saturday night, rev their engines a lot, make some noise. You don’t see ’em much during the week.”

“Well, who do you think it is that’s watching our house?”

“I don’t know. When I first moved here I used to think there was something or someone out there watching me.”

“And now?”

Valenti thought of the distant piping, but he didn’t think he was ready to talk about it yet. “Now I think it was just some animal, like a fox or something. Say, I’m getting pretty thirsty. How about you? You want a Coke?”

“Maybe some more lemonade?”

“You got it.”

He led the way to the house, going to the back door this time. There were a couple of deck chairs by the door and Ali sat in one, turning it so that the sun wasn’t in her eyes. She noticed he had a satellite dish on the side of the house that was hidden from the road and wondered if she could talk her mother into getting one. Although it was only a few days since they’d moved, Ali was already missing all the great late-night movies that were on cable. Tony came back with her lemonade and a beer for himself and sat down in the other chair, favoring his leg.

“What did happen to your leg?” Ali asked. A look passed across his face that she couldn’t decipher and she wondered if she’d stepped out of line. “You don’t mind me asking, do you?”

“What?” Valenti asked, then he shook his head. “No, no. I was just thinking.”

* * *

He’d passed out when Mario had hoisted him up and carried him from the villa. The next thing he knew they were on a fishing boat, bound for the north coast of Africa. His shoulder wound was clean. The bullet had just clipped muscle and gone right through. But the other bullet had shattered a bone in his leg.

“We had a doc look you over,” Mario said, “and he did what he could, but you probably won’t be walking so straight no more, Tony.”

“What day is this?”

“Two days since they hit my place. We’ve been moving around some.”

“Fercrissakes! I’ve been out two days?”

Mario laid a hand on his chest and pushed him back on the rough bunk. “Take it easy, Tony. We’re gonna be okay. I’ve got a connection in Tunisia and everything’s set up. We’ll be dropped outside of Moknine where a truck’s gonna meet us and take us up to Tunis. We’ve got a place there in a hotel where we’ll be comped in style—owner of the place owes me a favor. No one’s gonna bother us, you hear what I’m saying? We’ll stay low there for a couple of months, then I go home and you go wherever.”

“You can’t go back, Mario.”

“What’s the problem? A voice on the phone tells me to hit a man that’s like my own son? I gotta do what some nobody on a phone tells me to do? Those people got a problem, that’s their problem. They can send out their own talent, but me, I’m not in the business no more,
capito?
No one’s gonna bother me when I get home, Tony. I got friends could cause big problems for the Magaddinos, you know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.
Grazie
, Mario.”

“’Ey, what’s to thank? But maybe you should think about getting out of the business too, Tony. It makes you too old, too fast. It’s not like the old days no more. Go learn another trade. I mean, what’s the family ever done for you? You see what they did to me. They let me take a fall for the
padrone
—God rest his soul—and when I’m out of the slammer, I’m deported. Christ, who do I know left in the old country? I’m ten years old when we land in New York.

“But I played ’em smart, Tony. I banked some money where they couldn’t touch it and it was waiting for me when I got out. So now I live on Malta—I’ve got a woman, two kids, a nice place. It’s peaceful now, you know? Think about it, Tony.”

Valenti shook his head. “I’m going to nail the fucker that set me up, Mario. I got no other choice.”

“Yeah, yeah. Your honor demands it. Well, you tell me: These people, did they treat either of us with honor? I tell you again, it’s not like the old days, Tony. I got no respect for them now. You wait—you’ll see. By the time you’re up and running again, it’s not gonna mean so much to you neither. Trust me. A little time goes by, you’re gonna feel different about it.”

* * *

Maybe, maybe not, Valenti thought now. He’d have to see. He looked over at Ali, took a swig of beer and smiled.

“Between you and me,” he said, “I got hit in action.” He meant to stick as close to the truth as he could; they were going to be friends, he didn’t want to lie to her.

“What do you mean?” Ali asked.

“I was a soldier.”

“Really? What army?”

Valenti’s smile deepened. He could hear Mario’s voice in his mind.
You got to go someplace where when you say you’re a
soldato
they ask what army, not what family
.