Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

Then, in the small hours, the fear vanished. Desire took its place. I reached out to Faustina and eased the man’s breeches off her hips. We made love in the dark, without saying a word. I stayed inside her after it was over. I fell asleep inside her.

At daybreak, I left the bed and lifted the bar on the door. The noise woke her. She muttered something about flowers, then sighed and turned to face the wall.

I opened the door. It was a cold, still morning. A bird took off in a straight line from a scrub oak, a streak of black against the powdery ash-grey sky. Otherwise, nothing moved. Close to the front wall of the house was an almond tree, its white blossom tinged with pink. As I stood near the tree, the earth seemed to groan, like a boat that had run aground on rocks. Shivering, I set off to look for firewood.

Out by the track was a hoarstone, half smothered by the undergrowth. Nearby lay a mill-wheel that had broken into three or four large segments. On the flat land west of the house I came across some bits of stone arranged in a rough circle. The remains of a well. There was no winch, though. No means of drawing water. I kneeled by the edge and peered over. Bricks had come loose from the walls and dropped away; weeds had flourished in the gaps. Far below, I could see a smooth blank disc that I took to be water, a disc in which I thought I saw my own reflection — small, truncated, featureless.

Some time later, when I returned to the house with an armful of branches, I asked Faustina about the well.

She put a hand over her mouth. ‘I should have warned you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Nothing happened.’

She began to cry.

That afternoon, we rode down a leaf-covered track into a gully, then followed a watercourse that wound its way east through field maples, evergreen oaks and clumps of mouse-prickle. Once, I looked over my shoulder and saw the ghost house, a dim, solid shape high up in a mass of bare grey trees. We approached Torremagna from the north. A steep path took us past Vespi’s allotment and came out near the house where Faustina had grown up.

Before we could knock on Mimmo’s door, he stepped out and pulled us both inside.

‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘He has taken a room above the tavern. He’s sleeping.’

Sleeping?

That was how confident Stufa was. He probably hadn’t even bothered to lock the door.

I moved to the window. ‘Is anybody with him?’

‘He’s alone.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

I began to outline my plan, such as it was. I needed Mimmo to tell Stufa that the ghost house was Faustina’s favourite place. He should let the information slip, as if he didn’t see it as particularly significant.

Mimmo glanced at Faustina, but she had her back to him, and was staring at the boxes of stuffed birds.

‘You’re sure he’ll come?’ he said.

‘I imagine he already knows you were friends when you were children. Or if he doesn’t, he’ll find out soon enough.’ I spoke to Faustina. ‘You should stay here. Mimmo’s going to hide you.’

‘And you?’ she said, her back still turned. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’ I saw Stufa lying on his back with his eyes closed. His hands, folded on his barrel of a chest, rose and fell with every breath. His emerald sent green spikes into the air.

Mimmo and Faustina were watching me from different corners of the room. Just then, I thought I could see their future. I wasn’t part of it. I didn’t feel aggrieved, though, or envious; I was too exhausted to feel anything. I pinched the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb, wishing I had slept for longer.

I asked Mimmo where the tavern was. The other end of the village, he said. I walked to the front door and opened it. The sky had darkened. A few white flakes drifted past my face. Something clicked into place, and I found that I was smiling.

‘Is that snow?’ Mimmo said.

‘If everything goes well,’ I said, ‘you’ll never know what happened. Maybe they’ll send people from Florence to investigate. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. You won’t have anything to say. You’ll be outside the story. Free of it.’

Stufa’s eyes slid open. He yawned, then swung his legs on to the floor, the nails on his big toes wide and flat, as though they had been beaten with a hammer. He sat on the edge of the bed with his hands braced on his knees, fingers pointing inwards, elbows out. His laughter was as quiet and dry as leaves being blown across a flagstone floor. He had just remembered where he was, and what he was about to do.

I went outside and climbed on to my horse. From the doorway Mimmo told me to wait. Moments later, he handed me a bag containing some provisions. I thanked him.

Faustina stood nearby, her mouth set but not quite steady. ‘ If everything goes well. What does that mean?’

‘Look at the snow,’ I said. ‘It’s just like after you were born. When you first came here. It’s a good sign.’ I reached down and touched her face. ‘I love you,’ I said. Then I turned my horse around and rode away.

As the street bent to the left, I glanced over my shoulder. She was still standing by the green front door.

I called out to her to go inside.

She didn’t move.

The snow was light as dust, but, judging by the sky, which hung like a swollen sack over the village, it would soon get heavier. I passed the church and came down on to the main street. At the bottom of the slope, in the small, oddly shaped piazza, a group of children were dancing with their heads tipped back, trying to catch the snowflakes in their open mouths. I rode past them, then pressed my heels into my horse’s ribs. She broke into a trot.

Up ahead of me the world had shrunk. To the north, the woods and ridges were shrouded, brooding — almost violet. I looked south, towards Monte Amiata. Its stark upper slopes, coated in white, glowed in the weakening light, and for a moment I was nineteen again, Etna to the left of me as I escaped. This sudden sense of displacement unnerved me. But even more unnerving was my apparent willingness to submit to it. Had I been asked which of the two predicaments seemed preferable, I would probably have said the one I was imagining, the one I had been remembering and regretting all my life, not the one in which I now happened to find myself.

I took a mallet from the back room and carried it out to the flat land west of the house. Snow settled on my shoulders as I knocked the remaining chunks of stone into the well. I heard them bounce off the walls, but didn’t hear them land. I had no idea of the depth of the well. Still, I supposed it would be deep enough.

Once I had obliterated the last traces of the well-housing, I foraged for sticks, but Faustina had been building fires for weeks, and dead wood was in short supply. I scoured the copse on the western edge of the property, then set off down the track we had used earlier that day.

Some time later, I crept back towards the house with a bundle of twigs. I worked as fast as I could, arranging bits of wood in a criss-cross pattern over the well. If Stufa came before I finished, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Snow dropped into the round black hole and vanished. Watching the descending flakes, I began to feel weightless, dizzy, as though I were being sucked backwards, feet first, up into the sky.

I covered the sticks with weeds, leaves and blades of grass. The simple grid or lattice I had built would support a fall of snow, but it would give the moment a man set foot on it. I stood back. The last smears of light behind the trees were brown as old bloodstains. I reached for three twigs I had set aside and drove them upright into the ground around the well, then I withdrew into the house and lowered the bar across the door.