Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

“I have work to do now,” he said. “You will be able to amuse yourself until luncheon?”

“Yes, of course, Uncle. I’ll go for a walk in the woods. So I don’t need to take my hat.”

“Good boy.”

Alfredo wandered in a seemingly aimless manner out to the driveway in case Uncle Giorgio was watching from the study windows. For a while he simply stood and stared at the lava flow, lying massively inert in the dappled shade. At length he lay down once more, molded his body to the coarse rock and waited. This was not something he could make happen in a hurry, or even coax into happening. A bird fluted and was answered from deep among the trees. A faint breeze blew and died away. And then, slowly, slowly, the mountain drew him into itself as it had done before, and they became one. Far off and faint, he heard the singing of the salamanders.

Again he waited. The music changed, telling him they were aware of his presence. He shaped his question formally in his mind.

You have shown me how my father and my mother and my brother died, and who killed them. What proof can you give me that what you tell me is true?

The answer came instantly, in a rapid burst of excited song, and he was back in the furnace room, gazing, as he had done barely half an hour ago, at two small rectangular pans, one empty, the second half-full and with a thin molten layer covering the solid metal beneath, and a hand closing round a small gold bar.

That was all, and the salamanders showed him no more.

What did it mean? The answer came like a thunderclap. He lay and forced his mind to do the sums. Five days ago Uncle Giorgio had drawn a pan and a half from the furnace. In those five days enough more matter had passed through the salamander’s body to add little more than a film of gold to what was already in the pan. How many such fillings to fill a whole pan? Eight? Call it six, to be on the safe side. Five sixes were thirty, plus half of that was forty-five, so it had taken forty-five days to produce the gold that Uncle Giorgio had drawn the day after his return to Casa di Sala. Perhaps it was less. Call it forty, to be on the safe side again. And perhaps he hadn’t drawn any in the last few days before he left, so call it thirty-five. He must have been five weeks away from Casa di Sala, at least.

But sixteen days after the fire in the bakery Uncle Giorgio had told the priests in the cathedral that he had come posthaste on hearing the news of the tragedy. That can’t have been true. A house fire in a distant northern city? Not the sort of news that travels fast. But suppose Alfredo’s father had made arrangements for his brother to be told at once if anything should happen to him—in that case how long for the news to get to Sicily? Say five days. That would leave eleven days for Uncle Giorgio to travel north, setting up the elaborate arrangements for their escape route. Yes, it could just be done.

So if Uncle Giorgio had left Sicily only on hearing the news of his brother’s death, he couldn’t have been away from Casa di Sala for more than twenty-two days, at the outside. How much gold would have gathered in the bottom of the furnace in that time? Not enough to fill one little pan, nothing like. So he had been away from Casa di Sala much longer than he said.

He must have started out at least a fortnight before the fire.

Why?

Because he needed to be in the city for several days before it, to set up his plan, to find his informant in the cathedral, to hire the first boat to be ready and waiting to take them to the island, to rent an upper room at the inn across the road from the bakery, and so on. And then, on that final dreadful evening, to go to the room and summon his powers as Master of the Mountain, and draw the fires of the bakehouse ovens bursting out of their fire beds to burn and destroy. And all the while the salamander’s gold was settling slowly into the bottom of the furnace, until there was enough there for him on his return to tap off one full pan and half another one.

What if the priests had decided to perform the operation sooner? Or later? (That was why he had needed the informant—one of the vergers or canons—to tell him that kind of thing.) Sooner, and he’d have had to invent some story about being already traveling in Italy when he got the news, in case Alfredo asked. Later and he’d have needed to claim Alfredo before the decision had been made, but for different reasons that wouldn’t have suited him as well. What he’d wanted was what had actually happened, that he should intervene at the last possible moment to save Alfredo from the operation, thus binding his nephew to him with ties of gratitude and trust, with the tears of the salamander keeping him alive but losing their potency day by day.

Perhaps the priests had waited longer than he’d expected, and he’d hung on till what he’d thought was the last safe moment. But he had miscalculated the time it would take for the Bonaventura to sail the final leg home, and so had indeed come very near death for Alfredo’s sake.

Yes. Proof. Proof at last. And the salamanders told the truth.

Long after the singing of the salamanders had died away Alfredo lay where he was, thinking it through. But the cold fire in the rock did not die. Instead it seemed to gather itself together and flow upward, out through the surface, into his innermost body and become part of him. Thus Alfredo di Sala discovered his ancient inheritance of anger. The anger of fire. His birthright. Yes.

Now he was at last unshakeably certain what he must do. The whole of his life had narrowed suddenly to a single purpose: to take vengeance on Uncle Giorgio for the murder of his family. He still had no idea how he was going to achieve it, but nothing else mattered till it was done.

Still he lay where he was, feeding on the strength of the mountain. He must become like the mountain himself, standing calmly above the Straits, flanked with peaceful olive groves and vineyards, hiding its roiling inner furies until the time came for them in their turn to burst out and burn and destroy. Yes, it was like that that he would destroy Uncle Giorgio. With fire.

Now he must think how.

He began with the freeing of the salamander. Finding a way into the furnace room was the first serious problem. He pushed himself up off the rock and went and poked around among the outbuildings, looking for tools with which to break down the door. He found a crowbar too heavy for him to wield and an even heavier wooden mallet. Toni could have managed them if he could be made to understand what was needed, and if Annetta would have let him, but it wouldn’t be fair for Alfredo to ask her, knowing what Uncle Giorgio might do in his fury when he found his salamander gone. For himself, he was prepared to take the consequences, but just freeing the salamander wasn’t enough. He wanted more than that. Uncle Giorgio must be destroyed, and know as he perished by whom, and why, and that the salamander was free once more.

He was in the stables, thinking about this, when he found the harness for the three mules. There were several sets, used for different purposes. Above them, on a couple of brackets, lay a long contraption, two poles joined at intervals by shorter ones, hinged at the joints so that when not in use the poles could be laid side by side. A heavy iron hoop dangled from them. He could guess what he was looking at. He had seen this sort of thing down at the harbor. It was slung between two horses standing fore and aft and was used for carrying a load too heavy for a single animal—yes, this was how Uncle Giorgio had carried the salamander down from the mountain. The hoop was the right size to hold the big pot he had seen in the furnace chamber. More proof, he realized. The salamander had told him the truth, about its own capture, at least. How else could it have known about these objects, out here in the stables? Not that it mattered.