David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

‘So you told me,’ he said, watching the stream of visitors too. ‘But it doesn’t matter, does it? That it’s all a myth?’

‘It didn’t matter to you. I told you it was all fantasy. The painting by Guido Reni. The idea that Beatrice was some virginal teenager, like that English girl. And what did you do with it?’

‘Nothing,’ he said quickly.

‘Quite.’ She smelled the flowers again and smiled. ‘It was terrible the way that story ended. The English girl, I mean. But at least she was vindicated, wasn’t she? Both her and her father. It was that horrible man, Santacroce. Or whatever his name was.’

She hadn’t really listened to the fairy-tale about St Peter and Simon Magus, and perhaps that was for the best.

‘It was that horrible beast all along,’ she went on, then said, very firmly, ‘If it had turned out that young girl was guilty, as the papers said, I couldn’t have borne it. I would have gone back into that convent. This world of yours. .’

‘. . of ours.’

‘This world of yours is hard and cruel and too, too real for me at times. I held that girl in my arms that dreadful night her father died. I felt her innocence as surely as I feel the presence of God when I walk into church. I would not have stayed and watched her punished like some common criminal. You know that, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘I had an idea.’

‘Good. And now it’s past. What next?’

He reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and made a point of turning it off.

Then he picked up the second helmet he’d brought and held it out in front of her.

‘The sights,’ he said. ‘From here to the Aventino, then. .’ His arm swept the glorious panorama in front of them, the campaniles, the hills, the monuments he loved so much.

‘I know all those places already!’

‘Not from the back of my Vespa. And then Baffetto. Pizza.’

‘Pizza?’

‘The best there is, or so they say.’

She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, slowly, gently, amused by the clumsiness of his response.

‘You’re worse at this than I am,’ she told him. ‘Why is that?’

‘Lack of practice,’ Costa replied with a shrug. He dangled the helmet once more. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Not yet.’

She jumped off the wall and strode to the church, the bouquet in her hand. Costa followed, watched in silence as she bowed and made the sign of the cross. Agata Graziano walked to the altar where Beatrice Cenci’s shattered corpse had once been interred and gently placed his roses, lilies and gardenias alongside the mass of colourful blooms laid there earlier.

Then she knelt in silence, her hands in prayer. He watched, unable to respond, to think, to envisage any way to touch this part of her.

In a minute or two they were outside again, struggling to put on their helmets, laughing, happy, carefree, if only for a little while.

The Vespa started first time. He knew this little machine now. Slowly they rode to the summit of the Gianicolo hill then wound their way down to the city below.