Cittagazze
Guilietta gets out of bed, and throws a warm wrap over her nightgown. The night sky is clear and the moon is shining brightly through the window, sharply illuminating the interior of her bedroom. She tiptoes on unshod feet over the tiled floor towards the door and opens it carefully. Fortunately, its hinges don't squeak. Her father is a light sleeper and he would be angry with her if he found her wandering about the house in the middle of the night. Hugging the wall to keep to the shadows and avoid any loose tiles that might rattle and give her away, she inches down the passageway towards her brother's room. He is still awake, she can see. A flickering yellow light is escaping from underneath his door.
She pushes the door open carefully and enters her brother's room. Like her own it is lightly furnished; there are a bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. Under the window stands a large rectangular table, piled high with books and papers, and in front of it there is an upright chair. Her brother Giancarlo is sitting in the chair, hunched forward with his elbows on the table, studying a book by the light of the candle whose yellow beams were visible from the hallway outside. Distracted from his studies by Guilietta's entrance, he turns round. He is about to speak when he sees that his sister has pressed a finger to her lips. He nods, acknowledging her demand for silence.
Giancarlo points questioningly to the window above the table. Guilietta nods. He climbs up onto the table and opens the window. Guilietta, standing on the chair, follows him. He opens the window, climbs through it onto the red pantiled roof beyond and lies flat, extending his hand down towards the girl who is now waiting for him on the table below. She takes hold of it and he lifts her up onto the roof next to him.
'The harbour?' he asks.
'Yes. Our usual place,' she replies.
They tread carefully across the roof, making sure not to break any tiles, until they reach the back of the house, where a plane tree's branches brush against the wall. Giancarlo makes a leap for the strongest branch and Guilietta follows him, catching his hand. They wriggle along the branch to the trunk of the tree and swarm down it to the ground. They turn and look towards the house. There are no sounds, no lights. Nobody has been disturbed by their departure.
They run across the leaf-dappled ground to the gate, which stands half-open. Slipping through it, they join the dusty lane which leads from their home down to the sea.
Hand in hand, clinging to the whitewashed walls, keeping to the shadowed side of the streets, they pass silently down the lanes and steps from their father's villa in the hills on the outskirts of the town of Cittagazze towards the harbour. Everywhere it is quiet; brilliant white or pitch dark under the full moon. Above them, the bright stars shine down, faithful and constant. The night air is springtime-cool; the blazing mid-days and breathless nights of summer still a month or two away.
Both Giancarlo and Guilietta love the nights of Cittagazze. Giancarlo, because one January night ten years ago he led his dying father back home from London. Home to the place he thought he had lost forever and on to a new reason for living. Guilietta, because she is naturally drawn to the magic of the night and also because it was it was on a July evening that she first met her brother, whom she has adored ever since.
A little more confidently now that they are out of earshot of home, the brother and sister tread softly past the abandoned palazzos and hotels which cluster together near the seafront. They cross the promenade and then, turning left, they follow the harbour wall until they find the gap where a set of stone steps leads down to the waterside.
Theirs is the ninth step down from the pavement – just far enough to be invisible from the roadway, still high enough to be able to see over the far harbour wall to the bay beyond. This is their place; where they can tell each other their secrets and their stories, and share their hopes and fears.
Guilietta sits with her knees drawn up in front of her, making a tent of her nightgown. Her brother, in shirt and trousers, stretches out between her and the harbour wall. She snuggles up next to him.
'I'm glad you came,' he says.
'Is the studying so very hard?' she asks.
'No, it's not the studying. Though that's bad enough.' Guilietta has not started school yet; not seriously, anyway. She spends two hours a day with her aunt Dorabella, having the rudiments of reading and writing dinned into her head. Aunt Dorabella is a formidable lady, and a stern taskmistress.
'Is it a girl?' Giancarlo smiles at his little sister's precocity.
'No, little Guili, it's not a girl.' He has grown into a very handsome young man and more than one love-struck young woman has tried to use Guilietta's influence to help her to get his attention.
The air has been still up to this point, but now a soft breeze blows offshore for a minute or two, carrying the scents of lavender, rosemary and thyme down from the soft green hills above the town. The boy and girl are silent, each safely wrapped in the other's love, each waiting for the other to speak but content in the meantime to sit and watch the gentle waves as they lap against the fishing boats in the harbour below.
Giancarlo puts his arm around his sister's shoulder. 'Signore Fratelli came to see me again this afternoon.'
'Signore Fratelli? The man who wants the Knife?'
'Yes. Only he brought another man with him this time. He was… different. Fratelli's an idiot really, though he talks big. This new man didn't say much, but he frightened me.'
Guilietta is amazed. Her big brother Giancarlo, frightened?
'He didn't say much, but he didn't need to. He, or the people who sent him, want to use the Knife for their own reasons. I don't think they care much about the damage it would cause.' And, Giancarlo thinks, they may not care very much about the people they hurt. He looks at Guilietta, who has had, as yet, little experience of the evil things that men do when they follow a cause, and hugs her a little closer to him. She looks up to him and smiles in a way that tears at his heart. How can he live up to the trust she has in him? Suppose that Fratelli, or his new associate, decide to use his father or his sister as a means of persuading him to do as they wish?
'Why do they want it, Carlo? They can't use it. Only you can do that.'
'Yes. I am the Knife-bearer, and there can only ever be one.' Giancarlo takes the Subtle Knife from its sheath at his side. He has never let it out of his reach since that night in the other world when it passed to him. He holds it up in the moonlight, where it shimmers with an eerie gleam. After all these years, it is still the most beautiful and deadly thing that he has ever seen; and he has seen many strange things in his young life.
The reflected light from the Knife shows up Guilietta's face in the darkness, pale and concerned for him. Giancarlo puts it safely back in its sheath.
'No, they cannot take the Knife from me by force, for I would kill them, and even if they did take it they couldn't use it unless it consented to leave me and go on to one of them.'
'But what do they want it for?'
'They want to bring back the old days'
'The old days? You mean with the Spectres?'
'They don't want the Spectres back, that's for sure. But they do want the other things the Knife of the Torre degli Angeli brought.'
'What things, Carlo?'
Giancarlo waves his hand in the direction of the town, up the steps behind them. 'Our town; it's called the City of Magpies, yes?'
'Yes, Carlo.'
'And what do magpies do, mia cara?'
'They fly about, and,' she giggles, 'they poo on the buildings and people and…'
'Yes?'
'They steal things. Pretty things, like my silver bracelet that went missing last year.'
'That's right. They steal things. So did we, for years and years and years.'
'We did? What sort of things did we steal?'
'Anything. Everything. Food, to put in the refrigerators. Electricity, to light the streets and work the refrigerators. Gas, to work the stoves to cook the food. Clothes, and other goods, to fill up the shops. You've never had a fizzy drink, have you?'
'A fizzy drink? What's that?'
'It's a coke, or a pepsi, or an irn-bru. It comes in a tin can and you keep it cold in a refrigerator and you take it out and pop the top open and drink it straight from the can, and it's full of bubbles like vino spumante, only it doesn't make you feel funny like wine does. It just makes you burp a lot. The thing is, because of the Spectres there were no grown-ups to make the drinks. They had to be stolen from the world they were made in, which meant that they had to be taken through the windows the Knife had cut.'
Guilietta understands little of what her brother is saying, but she nods to show that she is following him.
'We stole everything. We forgot how to look after ourselves. We just took what we wanted from the worlds that the Knife opened up for us. And when the Spectres came, we thought that perhaps they were not such a terrible price to pay, if only a few of us died every year, if only we could carry on getting the things we wanted for free, without having to work for them, or think how to make them for ourselves.
'That life ended twelve years ago, when the windows were closed. When Papa and I were stranded in the other world where we had gone to live with my mother.'
'Was she my mother too?' Guilietta asks sleepily.
'No, silly. You know what happened. Your mother… died, and then you came to live with us.'
'Yes, that's right.' Guilietta likes this story. 'Mama was taken away to Heaven by the angels, and they took me and led me to you and Papa and we all live happily together in our lovely vine-covered villa above the beautiful town of Cittagazze.' She recites this in a sing-song voice that shows that she is nearly asleep.
'Come on, Guili. It's time we were going home.' Giancarlo gets up and pulls his sister up the harbour steps behind him. Retracing their path up the hill, they enter the pathway that leads to their home.
'Hell!' There are lights shining out of the ground-floor windows. It looks as if their nocturnal escapade has been discovered. They will both be in trouble now. 'Stay here, Guili.'
Giancarlo runs to the unshuttered window and peers through the corner. Who is up? Is it his father or his aunt Dorabella?
It is his father. But he is not alone. There are two men with him, and their voices are raised.
'Bellini, it is no good lying to us.' That is Fratelli, the head of the town council.
'But it is true. I do not know where they are.'
'You do, and you will tell us.' The other man, the dangerous-looking man who came to the house earlier, steps forward and slaps the back of his hand hard across Giovanni Bellini's face. He falls backwards into a chair. The man leans forward over him.
'Let me make this absolutely clear to you. We will have the Knife, and the boy. You have no right to stop us. There has been a decision made, and an Order passed in Council. It is the law. You must tell us where Giancarlo is, or suffer the consequences.'
'Perhaps he really doesn't know.'
'Shut up, Fratelli. You are a fool. Now, old man, tell us!' The man punches Giovanni Bellini hard in the stomach. He folds up, retching.
Giancarlo knows that he can rush into the room, draw the Knife, and kill the two men who are tormenting his father. Or he can simply hand it over to them and obey their orders. But he remembers the words of Will Parry at Stonehenge, ten years before:
|
'There are three important things that you must learn. They are the laws which every Knife-bearer must obey. Some of them didn't obey them and a lot of harm came from it. 'The first law is this: use the Knife only when you have to. Do not use it lightly, or just for fun, for it is a dangerous tool. 'The second law is to open a window for the shortest time possible. An open window causes great damage to the life of the Universe. 'And the third law is the most important one: never leave a window open. When its job is done, close it.' |
He knows that these men know nothing of the Laws of the Knife and that they would not obey them even if they did. And that if he used it to kill, the killing would never end.
Their only possible choice is to run away, in the hope that the men will realise that his father is speaking the truth and leave him alone. They are wretchedly badly prepared for flight – they have no food or water and Guilietta is wearing only her nightclothes and a wrap, and she has no shoes. He returns to the gate, where his sister is waiting.
'Guili, sweetheart, we must go away now, very quickly,' he says softly.
'Why, Carlo?'
'The bad men have come back and they are looking for us. Our only chance is to get as far away as we can.'
'Can I fetch Freda?'
'No, sorry. She'll be safe at home. Come on, we must go!'
The boy and girl run up the lane away from the town and into the hills; Giancarlo sick with worry for his father and Guilietta weeping bitter tears for the favourite doll that she has had to leave behind.