Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

“How long would that take?”

“Putting in for the stuff and then getting back on course? Better part of a morning, maybe. You ask him about that, and I’ll have a word with the skipper, tell him what the hurry is. He’ll do his best. He’s not the type to hold a grudge.”

Before he could return to his splicing Alfredo asked him about the tune he’d been whistling. It was a popular drinking song, which he sang for Alfredo in a wheezy tenor, and Alfredo then sang it back to him, ornamenting the chorus as he went. They laughed together when he’d finished and Alfredo went back to Uncle Giorgio and told him what the sailor had said. After that he read to him from a Latin book called Arcana Ignea, which seemed to be about using fire to turn things into other things, but was full of strange words Alfredo didn’t understand.

Uncle Giorgio lay and listened with closed eyes until the skipper came over and rather stiffly told Uncle Giorgio that he was now making the best speed he could, and offered to put in at Ostia for laudanum. Uncle Giorgio took out his watch, tapped it with his forefinger and firmly shook his head.

No. I cannot spare the time.

The passage took eight days. Benno, the sailor Alfredo had talked to, told him that on their usual trading voyages up and down the coast they preferred not to sail in the dark, so they anchored every night if they could; but now they were keeping watches and sailing on. The wind held and the weather was fine. The fourth day was a Sunday, and at Benno’s request Alfredo sang church music for them, the part of Psalm 107 about ships in a storm, though of course he couldn’t get the full tumultuous effect with only his single voice. By now all five of the crew had become solicitous for Uncle Giorgio’s health—not only for his sake, Alfredo guessed. It would be most unlucky to have him die on board. In the evenings, when both watches were on deck for supper, they would hold concerts for him, Alfredo singing treble, Benno and one of the others tenor, the captain a fine baritone and the fourth sailor fancying himself as a bass.

Uncle Giorgio listened unsmiling, and at the end acknowledged their efforts with a nod, as he did when anything else was done for him. He never complained or showed any sign of impatience. He endured.

IN THE DAWN OF THE EIGHTH MORNING BENNO took Alfredo up to the bow and pointed. To their left lay the landmass of Italy, as it had all along, but now it seemed to curve round, blocking their path. Straight ahead, outlined against the pallid dawn sky, stood a mountain, a single flattened cone, from whose point rose a thin plume of smoke, drifting east away on the wind.

“Etna,” said Benno. “Bloody great fire inside it, Alfredo. Bursts out sometimes. You don’t want to be anywhere near it when it does that.”

Alfredo stared. Yes, he realized; already, before he had seen it, even in his last dreams of the night, he had been vaguely conscious of that monstrous furnace, nearing.

All morning the mountain came closer and grew huger. Now Alfredo, if he closed his eyes, seemed able to trace through the layers of rock around them the channels of fiery matter that fed the smoking cauldron at the peak; and he could sense too, though much more vaguely, the immeasurable mass of fire below, a furnace the size of the turning world. He was both enthralled and terrified.

This morning Uncle Giorgio didn’t ask to be sung to, but with signs got the sailors to re-sling his hammock so that he too could watch the mountain. He had been growing steadily weaker; swallowing gruel or wine was a painful struggle; each breath he took ended with a rasping croak. “You will get him home and then he will die,” Benno had whispered yesterday. “That is something. It’s better to die at home.” But this morning Uncle Giorgio seemed a little stronger.

By noon they were sailing through a strait between Italy and what Benno said was the island of Sicily. The mainland receded on their left and the coast continued on their right. There the mountain soared, rising directly from the sea. In midafternoon they landed at a small harbor at its foot.

Alfredo said good-bye to the crew. Uncle Giorgio paid the captain, counting out several gold coins, and walked slowly but erect down the gangplank, but from there on leaned heavily on Alfredo’s shoulder, croaking with the effort of each step. Two of the crew followed with the baggage. They reached an inn where Uncle Giorgio seemed to be known, not as a friend, but as a grand person to be treated with deference. If anything, they seemed a bit scared of him. While he sat and rested in the courtyard they brought him wine and olives, which he left untouched. Two mules were led out to be saddled and harnessed. One was loaded with the baggage, and Uncle Giorgio was helped—lifted, really—onto a mounting block and thence onto the back of the other. Alfredo took the halter of the pack mule and they started up a lane that soon became a many-branching track between the vineyards that covered the lower slopes of the mountain.

Alfredo climbed in a daze, half stunned by the nearness of the central fires. He had no idea where they were going, and Uncle Giorgio sat with his head bowed and the reins slack, by sheer willpower forcing his body to last out this final stage of the dreadful journey. But the mules seemed to know the way and plodded steadily on. Now they were sidling up a spur. On the ridge Uncle Giorgio seemed to drag himself up from his trance of endurance, reining his mule back and turning it off the track. With a gesture to Alfredo to stay where he was, he headed up between two rows of vines, halted some distance into the vineyard and stared out to sea. Alfredo turned to see what he was looking at.

It was a stupendous view. This side of the mountain was now in shadow. So were the orange roofs of the harbor, but the sea beyond, though hazy with heat in the distance, glittered and dazzled. Toy boats dotted the busy sea-lane. Which of them was the Bonaventura ? There—with the yellow patch on the brown sail. Would they still have concerts each evening, Benno happily wheezing, the captain holding the others steady, the bass booming mellowly, but erratic on the note? What did they really think of their two curious passengers, the dying merchant and the choirboy? Uncle Giorgio had evidently paid them well, to buy their silence as well as their passage, but how could he rely on them once they were no longer under his eye? Benno, in particular, was a chatterbox. …

Something was happening inside the mountain, a surge, a change. The hairs on Alfredo’s neck stirred as his whole skin crawled. It was coming…! No, not here…Farther …There! Oh, Mother of Jesus!

The Bonaventura exploded into flame, the flames themselves invisible in the sunlight but the smoke surging suddenly upward in dense, churning bulges, renewed and renewed from below as the breeze thinned and scattered them. Alfredo stared, aghast, stunned, unable to think or feel. All he could do was stare at the smoke of the burning vessel as it rose in dark masses above the silky water.

A shod hoof clicked on shale behind him.

Slowly, still too numb to grasp what had happened, he turned and watched his uncle coming down between the vines. He had let go of the reins and was sitting bowed and swaying, grasping the pommel of the saddle to hold himself in place. As he reached the path the fury of the mountain seemed to recede. Alfredo felt its fires quieten beneath his feet.

Unguided, Uncle Giorgio’s mule turned on up the path. Alfredo’s mule started to follow. The tug on his arm from the reins broke the trance. Feeling returned—shock, grief, horror, terror—overwhelming thought. Terror was strongest. He turned to run, to race back down to the harbor and beg for a passage on the first boat leaving. But the halter was wound round his hand and dragged him back as the mule plodded on up the path, forcing him to follow until he could slacken it enough to free himself. He cast a despairing look out to sea as he stumbled and struggled, and now at last remembered that even there he wouldn’t be safe—hadn’t he seen what happened to the Bonaventura ? And as the distance between him and Uncle Giorgio increased, he seemed to sense the inexplicable angers of the mountain gathering themselves to strike again, as if the only safety for him lay within his uncle’s protection. With a violent shudder he pulled himself together and hurried to catch up.