The Blind Contessa's New Machine (25 page)

“Fifty white roses, from the kitchen bush,” Giovanni announced. “Master sent the order, but I picked them all myself.”

Carolina’s heart choked, then began to race with fear. “What a job that must have been!” she said, sitting up in bed. “I hope the thorns didn’t prick your hands.”

“I cut all the thorns off them,” Giovanni said stoutly. “See?”

When she turned her head, he brushed the bouquet over her cheek, clumsily but with enormous tenderness, like a boy still learning how to kiss.

“I’ll put them on the table,” he said. “Where you can reach.”

“Thank you,” she said. Her heart began to slow, but now her mind ran to catch up. “Is it a little late?” she asked. “Was there any trouble in the kitchen?”

“Someone took the cook’s sugar jar,” Giovanni said, emboldened by the intimacy. “So she had to open the bag she’d put away to take for herself.”

Carolina smiled briefly at the fierce old woman’s dilemma. Then reason set in and her smile faded.

“You don’t have to tell Master,” Giovanni said anxiously. “She doesn’t steal much, just sugar and chocolate, and oranges in winter.”

“But they didn’t find it?” Carolina asked. “The sugar was gone?”

“Someone took it,” Giovanni repeated. When she was silent, he confided: “I think it was the ghost.”

At the word, her whole body turned cold. “The ghost?” she forced herself to murmur.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Giovanni told her. “When I go after it, it always runs away.”

“I don’t see why Carolina wouldn’t enjoy going out in a boat,” Pietro said agreeably. “You don’t need to see to swim.”

“No one said anything about swimming,” Contessa Rossi replied, unable to resist an imperious tone despite the fact that she had come to ask a favor. Her parties always marked the open and close of the summer season. This year, as fall set in, she’d conceived a final event that traveled over water. The idea was to embark at Pietro’s river landing and float down the current to refreshments and music at Carolina’s lake. Carolina’s father had already agreed to the use of his property. Now the contessa just needed Pietro’s blessing—and Carolina’s cooperation for the pièce de résistance: invitations from Turri’s machine.

“I don’t know,” Carolina said. “I hate to use it too often.”

“Well, I’ve been to Turri,” the contessa said. “A number of us have. I asked him his price and he asked for half our ancestral land. He told Marta Scarlatti he’d need six live pear trees, plated in gold. Sophia says it’s because he can’t remember how to do it again. So I’m afraid yours is the only one in the valley.”

“How many boats do we have?” Pietro broke in. He sat beside Carolina on the divan. That afternoon, without precedent, he had taken to smoothing down the curls that fell over her shoulder as an idle game. With one stroke, a curl would lie flat under his palm, until he released the lock and it sprang back into a dark wave. The unfamiliar gesture worried her, but the action was also calming, like water breaking on sand.

“Perhaps a dozen,” Contessa Rossi said. “The servants can row them back upstream after each group lands.”

“Fine,” Pietro said. “I’ll provide the wine. All our servants can set and serve.”

“Wonderful,” said Contessa Rossi. “And as for the invitations, my dear, I don’t want you to go to any trouble. If you’ll just have the machine sent around, I’m sure I can learn to use it myself.” Her attempt at warmth was grating, like a singer reaching for notes far beyond her range.

“That won’t be necessary,” Carolina told her.

Carolina didn’t like walking through Pietro’s house in her dreams. The replica in her mind was full of traps and secrets: she would cross the dining room to the kitchen door, step through it, and find herself back in the dining room again, or climb the stairs to find the second floor had disappeared and a flock of birds now rested, single file, on the narrow ledges formed by the walls of the rooms below. Closets were filled with clouds of black moths. Candles were liable to set fresh bouquets on fire. Handles turned round and round but never moved a latch. There was even a child who roamed, like her, from room to room: a little girl so pale that some days her lips seemed blue, with thick black hair that fell past the white apron tied at her waist. The child was always carrying something, a cup or a twig or book, and as soon as Carolina appeared, she always hurried to leave the room.

After Carolina had learned to fly, she made a habit of leaving the house as quickly as possible when she found herself in it—usually through the nearest window. In tonight’s dream, the one by the foot of her bed was already open. She padded over to the low sill and crouched to climb out.

Dawn was breaking. The fading stars hung in unfamiliar patterns: the spoons and the hunter were gone, but she picked out a bird, wings lifted to land; a boat in full sail; a crouching man.

She stepped off the roof and soared over the yard. When she reached the forest, she dipped into the crowns of the trees, and came to rest on the crest of a small hill that had sprung up beside her lake.

Turri was already there, tying off a complicated web of red rope that held together a filigree of broad sheets of parchment in the general shape of wings. The wings were supported by a skeleton of sticks he had constructed on either side of a pair of ordinary armchairs, nailed down to a small wooden platform. Between them on the platform sat a bucket of lemons that looked as though they had been rolled in soot.

“What did you do to those poor lemons?” Carolina asked, stepping closer.

“Don’t touch them!” Turri said. “They’re full of gunpowder.”

Carolina crossed her arms.

Turri circled his machine, rattling the parchment, flicking at the sticks, and tightening a few of the ropes. “They’re fuel,” he offered in explanation when he emerged again on the other side. “Are you ready?”

Carolina nodded. He indicated one of the chairs, and she sat down in it. Turri took the seat beside her, selected a lemon from the silver pail, and dropped it into an evil-smelling black tube positioned just behind his chair.

With a sound like distant thunder, the contraption lurched about three feet off the ground and hung there, shuddering. Turri looked at her with delight, then selected another pair of lemons and flung them down the tube. This gave their conveyance the courage it needed to make its break with gravity. It lifted them steadily into the sky, cresting over the tops of the trees in the time it took Carolina to take in and let out a single breath. Their valley spread out below them, the shadows of all the trees and buildings enormously long in the early light.

“Look at that!” Turri exclaimed. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Before Carolina could answer, the dark tube behind them coughed, then gagged. Turri quickly dropped another lemon into it, but an instant later the long-suffering yellow fruit shot back out again, in flames, and punched a hole the size of a man’s fist in the unlucky parchment that arced over it. Their little platform rocked like a boat on a rough ocean. Turri twisted to drop another lemon into the tube. The machine groaned, then began to hum again. The platform steadied. He took her hand.

An enormous thunderclap exploded overhead, followed by what sounded like a hail of pebbles dropping onto the wings that supported them in the air. Then burning bits of rind began to fall through the parchment, which curled away from the heat of the flames as they grew in strength.

As they hurtled toward the earth, Turri kissed her, very gently, as if he didn’t know whether he meant to wake her or not.

Turri kissed her again.

Carolina opened her eyes.

“There she is,” Turri said gently. “What have you been dreaming about?”

Carolina sighed and turned her head in the curve of his neck.

“You built me a flying machine,” she said.

“I’m very resourceful in your dreams,” said Turri. “Under no circumstances should you ever agree to leave the ground in anything I build in real life. Was it a success?”

Carolina only hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” she told him. “It was shaped like a swan, with a walking deck and a captain’s cabin, and it ran on lemons.”

Turri laughed and kissed the side of her face. He stroked her hair.

“It didn’t work, did it?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Here we are,” Turri whispered when they reached the kitchen garden. “This is the door.”

“I know,” Carolina whispered back.

“You don’t,” Turri said. “I could have brought you to the gate of some fantastic palace.”

“No,” Carolina insisted. “I can smell the roses, and the knob always rattles in my hand.” The latch came free now with a gentle clank. She pulled away from his final kiss and slipped in.

As she always did, she paused one step past the threshold, leaned back against the door, and listened, just like another woman might have waited for her eyes to begin to pick shapes out of the darkness. The house was silent. The scents of garlic and coffee still lingered in the air from dinner. She crossed through the small room to the kitchen.

From here, as long as she didn’t panic, she was safe. There was no reason that she, as the lady of the house, shouldn’t have wandered down for a cake or something to drink. She steadied herself against the door frame and bent to remove her telltale damp shoes. Then she glided quickly across the kitchen and paused on the verge of the dining room.

Outside in the yard, a dove cooed sleepily, which meant that Turri had been wrong, or had lied to her, about how close they’d come to morning. She struck out across the dining room, caressing the backs of the chairs that told her the way, and ducked into the hall.

At the far end, by the front door, someone took a step and stopped.

Carolina buried her shoes in the folds of her skirt and froze.

“Carolina?” Pietro asked after a moment, startled. “Are you all right?”

Carolina’s hand flew to the throat of her dress. With relief, she found she had remembered to fasten it. “You frightened me!” she said.