...............
It was Mike Davidson's first trip to Europe. Because of the driving rain, he squinted through the windshield, barely able to read the sign: "Uscita. Lucca. Mezzo kilometro."
"The Lucca exit," he said to himself, "half a kilometer. This is where I get off." He eased his foot slightly from the gas pedal, in preparation for exiting the autostrada.
Three days ago, after he and Bill Thomas, his assistant had completed their business in Milan, they had parted company. "I want to visit Florence before flying home," he had said. "If they can't do without me at the office for a few days, then they aren't paying me nearly enough!"
Bill had smiled. "Well, I'm not an important exec like you," he had said. "I don't dare take time off! I'll take a morning flight home tomorrow. Enjoy Florence, and I'll see you at home."
"Thanks, Mike had said. "I want to rent a car and see Lucca as well. National Geographic did an article on it a while back. It's supposed to be an enchanting old Etruscan city. Le Mura, the walls that encircle it, are said to date back to the Eleventh Century...some parts to even earlier."
"You deserve the respite," Bill had said. "You did a great job in Milan. I'm sure we'll get a big chunk of their business."
"No, I don't think so," Mike had said.
"What do you mean? They said they were very impressed! They said they're a little strapped financially at the moment, but that in the spring, when things are predicted to improve, we will be hearing from them without fail."
"No, " Mike said. "That was just Italian etiquette speaking. He was turning us down. He wasn't impressed with our product at all."
"You've done business with the Italians before?" Bill had asked.
"No. This is my first time in Italy."
"Then how do you know?"
"I sense it," Mike had said. "Don't ask me how I sense it; I just do. I 'd bet my next promotion that I am right! Funny, isn't it?"
Now the exit to Lucca curved sharply on a bend, and the Fiat swerved on the wet pavement. The rain augmented; lightening momentarily illuminated the road, and thunder followed. "I should have rented a heavier auto," he thought. "What a night! If I were a mystic-kind-of guy, I'd think the fates have some dire purpose in store, staging such weather for me in these Tuscan hills!"
He missed Porta Sant'Anna, the first entrance after the autostrada to Lucca proper, and after five minutes, found that he was on the road out-of-town, heading toward the suburbs. It was by this time after nine o'clock, or what the Italians call "vent'un ore, twenty-one hours." Through the heavy downpour, the car's headlights just barely defined the road. Were it not for occasional bolts of lightening, he would have been able to see no more than scant inches ahead. Loud thunder punctuated his route, until finally, in the dark and the rain and the flashes of light and the cacophony of the storm's thunder, the Fiat's engine gave a few death-gasp sputters and stopped.
"Shit!" Mike said aloud, torturing the starter over and over to no avail. On his right, he peered through the car window, and through the spray of rain droplets chasing themselves down the pane, he was able to make out a long driveway leading to an old, large, beautiful, well-lit villa. He got out of the car, and pulling his jacket up to cover his head, he locked the car door and ran through the pelting rain. By the time he reached the massive front door of the estate, his jacket and trousers were drenched, and his socks sloshed in his wet shoes. He pressed the buzzer.
A tuxedo-clad man opened the door.
"Do you speak English?" Mike asked. "Please! My car has broken down. I must telephone. God! What a night!"
Under the light at the entrance door, the man scrutinized Mike's face and then, looking down at Mike's left fifth finger with its missing top joint, took a sharp intake of breath. Mike, long ago assuming he had been born with the deformity, gave it little thought, but now that it had been so obviously noted, he self-consciously curled the little finger into his palm. The man stepped to one side, motioning for Mike to enter. "Venga per piacere, signore....come in, please, sir."
"That's strange," Mike thought. "Just like that! No questions asked...just 'come in'!"
"My car broke down," he said again. "May I use your phone?" Then he saw the man's formal attire. "Oh, I'm so sorry," Mike said. "Am I interrupting a formal occasion?"
"No! No!" the man said. "Venga! I am Giullio, the maggiordomo."
"Maggiordomo?"
"The butler," he explained. "Come into the salotto...the parlour. But please keep your voice down. The padrone, the man-of-the-house, il Conte, is a light sleeper with a heavy temper. It would not be wise to disturb him."
"Conte? You mean he is a nobleman...a count?"
"Si... yes," Giullio said, "Il signor' Conte Lorenzini."
"Well, now," Mike thought. "On such a night as this, to happen upon the 'castle' of a count, wouldn't you think this should be the Draculan hills of Romania instead of Italy?"
Giullio bade him sit in the parlour. "Si reposa...you rest," he said, indicating the settee, "and I will telephone the garage in Lucca about your car. They may not be able to come out tonight, but if not, we can make you comfortable until morning." His English was stiffly correct. "I will be but a moment, mio caro signore."
"My dear sir?" Mike wondered. "He's being a little affectionate for having just met me, isn't he? Maybe it's just a colloquialism."
Mike looked around. The room was exquisitely furnished in white furniture with gold inlays. Two settees, pillowed in down-filled, cream-colored satin, flanked a delicate white table, graced with a museum-piece figurine of a man and woman. The porcelain woman, in the man's arms, was bent gracefully back, and her porcelain lover was pressing his lips to hers. "Must be worth a fortune," Mike thought. "An heirloom!"
Suddenly he felt apprehension engulf him. The feeling that he had been here before crept up his spine and settled on his shoulders. He tried to shrug off the mood. Why was this gem of a room somehow familiar to him...to him who until ten days ago had never so much as set foot outside the United States? "Could it be that I heard stories about this villa," he wondered, "in my family perhaps? When I was very young...too young to remember consciously?" Oh, but he knew that was not possible. His ancestors, on both his father and his mother's side, had been Bostonians since the very existence of Boston itself, and before that, no doubt, had been English subjects. That they had ever ventured this far south at all was, to say the least, most doubtful. And even if they had, what kind of coincidence would have led them to this very villa, nestled in the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside?
Giullio re-entered. "The garage made no risposta...no answer," he said. "We will telephone again in the morning. I will ring for Menichina, la serva...the maid. She has not yet retired, and will make up a room for you for the night."
Mike marvelled at the hospitality. "For all they know, I could rob them blind and murder them in their beds!" he thought. "Yet, he's offering me lodging out of the storm!"
Giullio pulled a long silk cord hanging from the ceiling, and Menichina, in old-woman black, presently came into the room. Her dress, long-skirted, was covered by a crisp white apron. She, as Guillio had done earlier, gasped upon seeing Mike. She too looked down at Mike's left hand, and then immediately looked away.. She struggled, but quickly regained that impersonal composure universal to all servants.
She put a finger to her lips, and motioned for Mike to follow her. Yet, even before he did so, he knew there would be a buff-colored hallway on the other side of the parlour, and that from this hallway would be, on the right, a large sala da pranzo, the dining room, with a massive round oaken table, and twenty great, carved-backed chairs around it, and the floor would be of Carrera marble. When they arrived far enough down the hallway for him to glance into the dining room, he saw that he was indeed right, and now his apprehension intensified.
Menichina, again putting a finger to her lips, beckoned him to follow her up the wide stairway, banistered in gleamingly-polished mahoghony. A luxurious red carpet covered the stairs, and was held fast at the base of each riser by heavy, shiny brass rods with ornate knobs at the ends of each. A crystal chandelier pended over the staircase, effecting a twinkling gleam of elegance. It was then that Mike saw the large, gilt-framed portrait at the top of the stairs. It seemed to be his own face, although much sterner, looking down at him.
"Who is that?" he asked, pointing to the portrait, but Menichina made no answer. Suddenly the wind battered against a window. A flash of lightening was followed by a crash of thunder. He and the woman stopped and stood still until the noise ceased vibrating around them. His heart pounded. He became conscious of Giullio standing two steps behind him.
"Who is that?" Mike asked again of the portrait, this time to Giullio.
"Your grandfather," Giullio said.
"But how can that be?"
"Please, mio caro signore, be very quiet. When we reach your bedroom and have closed the door, I will tell you all. I promise. But for now, please....be very quiet. The Count is not a man to be crossed, even now in his eighties!"
When they were in the bedroom and Menichina had taken her leave, and Giullio had shut the door, Mike said, "Now, Giullio, as you promised....."
Giullio took a deep breath and began. "The wife of il signor' Conte died in childbirth," he said, "their first -- and only, of course...a daughter. Elisabetta was her name, and she grew to be una propria bellezza, a true beauty. But he kept her isolated, to himself, here in the villa....with only her tutors and us servants for company. We adored her, and our hearts ached for her. She was an angel, un'angela!... and she played the harp like one. The Count would sit in the salotto almost every evening and listen to her play."
One day, a handsome young falegname, a carpenter, Giancarlo by name, from the village of San' Carigniano, was commissioned to redo the fireplace panelling and bookshelves in the library. It was a job that would take several months, during which time he lived with us in the servants' quarters below. With his black, tousled curls and lively dark eyes and his happy disposition, he soon captured our affection....that is to say, the affection of all us save the Count, who hardly acknowledged his existence. The young man would stand sometimes, unseen, beyond the doorway of the salotto, listening to Elisabetta as she played the harp for her father. When il signor' Conte was not about, Giancarlo would hum the melodies softly as she played. Soon, at such times, he would join her in the salotto,and we loved how he made her laugh and be happy, as a young woman is meant to be."
Giullio cleared his throat and continued. His eyes were wet. "Before long, la natura and la gioventu, nature and youth, being what they are, the young couple became lovers. We servants knew they met secretly, late in the evenings, in the garden beyond the courtyard, but we kept our own counsel, fearing for her her father's wrath."
"She was my mother, wasn't she?" Mike asked.
Giullio's eyes glistened. He nodded.
"And she became pregnant...with me..."
Giullio nodded again, took out a white linen handkerchief and quietly blew his nose, then went on. "She and Giancarlo left before her body showed evidence of you. They lived together, without benefit of the Church, in his mother's modest house in San' Carigniano. You were born there. Your grandfather was mad with rage. "The fruit of her noble womb is diluted with peasant blood!" he shouted when he learned of your birth. He vowed to hate you forever, but even more, he hated Giancarlo, who, he felt, had betrayed his daughter and him. He sent three men to San' Carigniano, and your father was beaten mercilessly. It was Elisabetta who found his bloody and broken corpse in the vineyard. The Count forced her and the baby...you...to come back to live with him."
Giullio cried softly, unashamedly. "We grew to love you so....you were a beautiful child, but your grandfather never stopped hating you. One day he even took an axe and chopped off the tip of your little finger! I thought I would go mad with grief, but it was Elisabetta who shrieked and raved and tore her hair. Menichina and I helped her stop the bleeding and bind your terrible wound, and that night, under the cover of darkness, your mother took you and left forever. We never saw either of you again...until now." Silent sobs shook his small frame. "Forgive me, mio caro signore," he said.
Mike's voice was husky with rage. "How did he get away with it?" he asked.
"Your grandfather was...and is....a very powerful man," Giullio said.
Mike did not stay the night. "I understand," Giullio said, daring to embrace him. "I will arrange immediately for a limosine to drive you to Rome. I can phone ahead to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport to reserve a seat for you on the next flight to the United States."
...............
Mike paced the floor now in the living room of the woman who, all his life heretofore, he had thought of as his mother. "You should have told me I was adopted," he said. "You and Dad should have told me."
She twisted her handkerchief in her hands. "We wanted to," she said, "but she made us promise....Elizabeth, your mother, did. She feared her father would somehow track the two of you down and kill you. She came to work for us when you were but a baby. It was obvious she was not used to servitude, but she did her job diligently, and we quickly grew to love her...and you! She died less than a year later, the dear, lovely, sad little thing! She was ever the lady...did her chores always with a black velvet ribbon tied at her throat."
"I'm going back!" Mike said. "I should not have left without ending the story."
"Oh, Mike, dear," let it go," his mother said. "Don't let it ruin your life. How can such a story possibly end? Just let it go."
"How can such a story end, Mother? I'll tell you how. He must pay! I'm going to return and kill the son-of-a-bitch!"
"Michael, please!" she said. "Your father and I raised you to abhor violence. You mustn't go against the nature we've instilled in you!"
"The nature you strove to instill in me is one thing; the cruel blood of my grandfather that flows in my veins is another. He will die! I will see that he suffers first, and then he will die! I am the bastard grandson of Count Lorenzini, and blood will out."
................
Less than a month later it is over. Mike's cell door clangs shut, and the sound reverberates throughout death row.