It was Zina who expressed the mood of that room. She suddenly switched to the Damnation of Faust and the angry, violent music throbbed through the room. No one was talking now. We were all watching her. Her eyes were fixed on her hands and her hands expressed all the bitterness and hate that was in her and us. I shall always remember her sitting there, playing that damned piano. Her face was white and shiny with sweat and there were lines on it I hadn’t noticed before. Her hair was damp and sweat marks began to show at her armpits, and still she went on playing and playing. She was playing the same piece over and over again as though condemned to play it for the rest of her life, and she was playing it as though her very life depended upon it, as though if she stopped she was doomed.
‘I think your Contessa is going to break soon,’ Maxwell whispered to me.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It was as though the music had mesmerised me. It seemed to clutch at my nerves, stretching them, yet holding them at the same time.
Then suddenly it happened. She looked up. For a moment she was staring straight at me. Then her eyes roamed the circle of our faces while the notes of the music died under her fingers. ‘Why do you all stare at me?’ she whispered. And when none of us answered she crashed her hands on to the keys and through the thunder of the chords she screamed out, ‘Why do you stare at me?’ She bowed her head over the piano then and her shoulders shook to the violent gust of passion that swept through her.
Sansevino started towards her and then stopped, glancing over at me. I could see his dilemma. He wanted to quieten her and the only way he could do that was to give I her the drug her nerves were screaming out for. At the same time he didn’t dare leave me alone in the room with Maxwell.
And then, as though he had been waiting for his cue, Agostino came in. He stood blinking in the doorway, his old peasant face beaming and his eyes alight as though he’d seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin. ‘Well, what is it?’ Sansevino snapped at him.
‘The ash, signore. It is finished. We are saved. La Madonna, ci ha salvati!’
Sansevino went over to the window at the far end of the room and swung back the shutters. Agostino was right. The ash had stopped falling and now we could see Vesuvius again. A great glow burned in the crater top, igniting a pillar of gas that writhed up over the mountain and spread in a black cloud across the sky. And down the slopes ran three wide bands of fire. The hot glare of the lava flow invaded the room with a lurid light.
Sansevino turned to face us. ‘Maxwell — you and Miss Tucek better get back to your car right away. You, too, Mr. Racket. The sooner we’re out of here the better.’
‘It sounds like good advice, Mr. Shirer.’ Hacket was already moving towards the door.
I glanced at Maxwell. He hadn’t moved. He was watching Sansevino. ‘I’ll come with you,’ I told him.
Hilda Tucek moved close to me. Her hand gripped my arm. ‘Please, Mr. Farrell — is he up here?’ Her eyes were fixed on the horrid glare of the mountain slopes. ‘I must know.’ I could feel her trembling and I began to think of Tucek. Was it possible that he was here in this villa?
But before I could decide what to do Zina had rushed forward. ‘Quick!’ she said, clutching hold of my hand. ‘We must get out of here. Roberto! Roberto, where are you?’ Her voice had risen to a note of hysteria. ‘Get the car. Presto, Roberto — presto!’
Her fear seemed to paralyse the others. They stood rooted to the spot, staring at her. I could see her breasts heaving at the thin silk of her dress, smell the sweat of her fear through the strong scent of her perfume. Her eyes were bulging as she tugged frantically at my hand. She swung round on Roberto who was standing quite still, staring at us, his face sullen and passionate. ‘Don’t stand there,’ she screamed at him. ‘The car, you fool! The car!’
Sansevino moved then. He moved very quickly. ‘Control yourself,’ he hissed at her in Italian. Then he was at the door. ‘There is no hurry. We can make an orderly evacuation. Maxwell, will you take Miss Tucek to your car. Hacket, you go with them, too.’
But Zina’s terror was too great to stomach any delay. She dragged at my hand, screaming at Roberto to get her car. And I went with her for my one desire was to get out of the villa where I could talk to Maxwell alone. Roberto was moving towards the door now. The three of us were converging on the door and Sansevino stood there with his hand on the handle, his eyes narrowed to two angry slits that seemed to bore into me as though he were saying — ‘ You will have no anaesthetic. First the knife, then the saw. …” I felt the blood hammering in my ears. And I knew suddenly that this wasｻthe moment that all that night had been leading up to.
Sansevino shut the door in our faces. ‘Pull yourself together, Zina.’ He took her by the shoulders and shook her. Then he whispered something to her. I heard the word morfina. She seemed suddenly to relax and I felt her fingers slide out of my hand. His eyes were staring into her face, willing her to be calm, hypnotising her into a state of relaxation. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘go and get the car, Roberto. You can go with him, Zina.’ He had the door open and I was about to follow Zina when he stopped me. ‘You will come with me, Farrell.’
All my fear of the man returned as I stood there staring into his eyes.
‘No,’ I said, and I could hear the tremor in my voice. ‘No, I’ll go with Zina. I think she needs—’
‘I am the best judge of what she needs,’ he snapped. ‘Kindly stay here.’
But Zina had turned and caught hold of my hand. ‘Come quickly, Dick,’ she said.
Sansevino caught hold of her hand and with a twist forced her fingers to release their hold on me. ‘Go to the car, Zina,’ he ordered. ‘Farrell comes with me.’
‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘I know what you are going to do. But I will not—’
‘Shut up!’
‘Then let him come with me. You want him to stay with you so that—’
‘Shut up — do you hear?’
‘I will not go without him. I will not let you—’
He caught hold of her and pushed her roughly back into the room. ‘Very well, then. Stay here until our guests have gone. Hacket. Will you please go now. And you, Maxwell. I am afraid the Contessa is not herself.’
I saw her face set hard. ‘You cannot do this thing. Do you understand? I will not be responsible—’
‘You are not responsible for anything. You can stay here with him, since that’s the way you want it.’
Her eyes widened in sudden fear at his tone. ‘I know what you are going to do,’ she screamed at him. ‘You will let us all be buried alive up here. You can do that to the two you have at Santo Francisco. I do not care about them. But you cannot do that to—’
‘Shut up — damn you!’
Zina stamped her foot. Her mood had slid from fear to anger. ‘I tell you you cannot do this to me. I do not wish to die. I will tell these—’
Sansevino hit her then, hit her across the mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Shut up, will you,’ he hissed. His ring left a streak of blood across the pallor of her right cheek.
There was a sudden, stunned silence. I felt my fist clench. A desire to smash his face to pulp, to hammer him to bloody pulp welled up inside me.
But before I could move Roberto had hit him. He hit him with all the force of pent-up passion. His face was bestial with the desire to kill. It wasn’t human. It was something primitive and violent. I heard the crack of bone breaking as Roberto’s fist smashed into the centre of the man’s face. The force of the blow flung Sansevino across the room. He stumbled against Hacket and fell sprawling on the floor.
For a moment he lay there, staring across at Roberto. The young Italian was breathing heavily and licking his bloody knuckles. Then he began to move in on Sansevino. He came forward deliberately and with relish, his face coarsened by some urge that was akin to lust. Sansevino saw him coming and reached into his jacket pocket. His hand came away with a glint of metal. There was a spurt of flame, an earsplitting crash and Roberto checked as though he’d been stopped by a blow in the stomach. His mouth fell open and a look of surprise crossed his face. Then with a little choking cough his knees folded under him and he crumpled up on the floor, his eyes open and staring.
Zina started forward, but I caught her by the arm. Sansevino was on his feet again now and the muzzle of the gun was pointed at her, a thin twist of smoke coming from the end of it. His eyes had a murderous look. ‘Mascalzone! Sporco scifoso mascalzone!’ Zina poured her hate of him out in a spate of Italian. And then suddenly she was crying. ‘Why did you have to do that? It wasn’t necessary. There was no need. I would have stopped him from hurting you. Why did you do it?’
It was at this moment that Hacket intervened. He cleared his throat as though about to address a meeting. ‘This is a very terrible thing you have done, Mr. Shirer. I don’t know how you stand in Italian law, but in America at best you’d be guilty of third degree murder. Better hand over that weapon before anything else happens.’ I saw Sansevino trying to collect his wits as Hacket came towards him. Then suddenly he had him covered. ‘Stand back!’ he ordered.
‘Come, Mr. Shirer. Be sensible. You’re a fellow countryman of mine and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.’ Hacket walked straight up to him. There was something impressive about his complete fearlessness. For a moment he dominated the room with his quiet, almost suburban matter-of-factness. Sansevino hesitated and in that moment Hacket had reached him and had taken the gun out of his hand. Sansevino stood there with a dazed look on his face, rubbing his twisted wrist. Hacket glanced at the weapon curiously and then with the calmness of a man who did this every day of his life, he pointed it at a corner of the room and emptied it by firing. The room shook with the sound of the gun. It seemed to go on and on. Then suddenly there was silence and all we could hear was the sound of gases escaping from high up on the flaring top of the mountain. Hacket tossed the empty gun into the corner and walked over to where Roberto lay, a smudge of blood staining his singlet. He knelt down and lifted the man’s head. Then he got to his feet, wiping his hands. ‘I guess we’d better have a drink now,’ he said. ‘Maybe it will help us to decide what ought to be done.’ He went over to the table and began to pour drinks.
‘Well, you certainly are a cool customer.’ Maxwell’s voice seemed part of the easing of tension.
Hacket took a large cognac over to Sansevino. ‘Better knock that back.’ He was like a doctor handling a difficult patient and I suddenly felt as though I wanted to laugh. ‘A guy as hot-tempered as you shouldn’t go around with a gun in his pocket.’ He got out a silk handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘Guess this mountain has a lot to answer for.’
He turned back to the drink table and in the silence I became conscious of a dry sobbing sound. It was Zina. She was sitting crouched on the floor and she had Roberto’s head in her lap and was crooning over it, stroking the damp hair with her fingers as she rocked back and forth with the tears streaming down her face.
‘So. Roberto was your lover, eh?’ Sansevino spoke in Italian and his voice was a mixture of contempt and anger. ‘Pity you didn’t explain. I would have acted differently if I’d known.’ He wiped the blood from his nose.
She looked across at him. ‘There was no need to kill him. I would not have let him hurt you.’ Her voice was sad. And then suddenly she flung Roberto’s head out of her lap as though she were throwing away a doll that had been broken. ‘I will make you pay for this,” she spat at him.
Hacket handed her a brandy. ‘Drink this. It’ll do you good.’
‘I do not want to be done good.’
‘A drink always helps.’
‘No.’
‘Listen, lady. A drink will—’
She smashed the glass out of his hand. ‘I do not want your damn’ drink.” She turned and pulled at Roberto’s belt. Then she got to her feet in one smooth, lithe movement. She had a knife in her hand and she moved towards Sansevino. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. It was as though we were a group of spectators standing watching a scene from Grand Guignol.
Sansevino retreated towards the window as she advanced slowly and deliberately. She had forgotten her fear of the mountain. She had forgotten everything in her hatred of the man. And he was afraid. I saw it and the knowledge sang through my body like a lovely song. She was going to murder him. It was there in every slow languorous movement of her limbs. She was going to kill him — not with one blow, but with slash after slash of the knife. And she was going to love every minute of it. ‘Remember how you gave me my first cigarette, here in this room?’ Her voice was soft as a caress. ‘Remember? You said it would help me to forget my husband’s beastliness. You said you had been a doctor and that you knew what was good for me. You made me drunk and then you gave me that cigarette. And after that there were more cigarettes. And then injections. You drugged me till I was your slave. Well, I am not your slave any more. I will kill you and then—’ She was literally purring. She was like a tigress.
Sansevino had backed until he was brought up by the wall. He moved along it, his eyes wide with fear. Then he was in the corner and could retreat no farther. ‘Don’t let her do it,’ he screamed. And when nobody moved he started to bargain with her. ‘If you kill me you will get no more of the drugs. Listen, Zina — think what happiness it gives you. Think what it will be like when your nerves are screaming out for—’
‘Animate!’ She darted at him and then away again and I saw the knife was bloodied. His shoulder was ripped and the white of his jacket stained crimson. I was staring fascinated at a macabre ballet played in real life.
It was Maxwell who stopped it. He went behind her and twisted the knife out of her hand. She turned on him, her face distorted with rage and her fingers clawed at him. He flung her off. ‘Get hold of her, Hacket, and make her have that drink. I want to talk with this fellow.’
Hacket caught her by the arm. She struggled for a moment, and then suddenly she went slack. He half-carried her to the sofa. She was sobbing again, dry, racking sobs that seemed to fill the room. Through them I heard Maxwell say, ‘Now then — suppose you tell me first who you really are.’
‘You know who I am.’ Sansevino’s eyes were wide, but I could see he was getting control of himself again.
‘I know who you’re not,’ Maxwell snapped. ‘You’re not Shirer.’
‘Then who am I?’ His eyes were looking past Maxwell, searching the room, trying to seek out some chance of escape.
I couldn’t help it. I suddenly began to laugh. It seemed to well up inside me and burst from my lips uncontrollably. It was relief to nerves stretched too taut — it was rage and bitterness and mental exhaustion all wound up tight and uncoiling in this horrible sound. I seemed to be standing outside myself, listening to that wretched laughter, wanting to strike myself, do something to stop it. But I couldn’t and gradually it subsided of its own accord and I was suddenly silent and very weak. They were all staring at me.
Maxwell came over to me. ‘Why did you laugh like that?’ he asked.
‘His name is Sansevino. Il dottore Giovanni Sansevino. He’s the man who did the operations on my leg in the Villa d’Este.’
Hacket left Zina on the couch. ‘I just don’t understand,’ he said. ‘This place belongs to a man named Shirer. I know, because I asked in the village. If this guy isn’t—’
‘Keep quiet, can’t you,’ Maxwell cut him short. ‘Now, Dick. If this is your Doctor Sansevino, what happened to Shirer?’
‘I found him the morning after the escape slumped over Sansevino’s desk, dressed in his uniform with no moustache and wearing dark glasses. I thought it—’ My voice trailed away. I had an almost uncontrollable desire to start laughing again. It was the thought that I’d been looking at Walter Shirer that morning.
‘Then it was Sansevino who escaped with Reece that night?’
I nodded.
‘And when you met this man in Milan you recognised him?’ It was Hilda who put the question to me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise him. I just kept on seeing him as the doctor, that was all. They were very much alike, except for the moustache and the glasses.’
‘And that is why you left Milan?’
I nodded. My eyes seemed held by hers, for I sensed sympathy there and I clung to it. Anything to stop myself laughing. ‘I was scared,’ I said. ‘I thought I was seeing things — going out of my mind.’
The room was suddenly lit by a brighter glow. We all glanced involuntarily towards Vesuvius. The whole top of the mountain flamed as great gobs of molten rock were hurled out of the crater and up into the column of black gas. And through the window, quite clearly in the still, oppressive heat of the night came the creak of wagons and the shouts of people urging cattle along the road to Avin.
‘We must hurry, Max,’ Hilda said. ‘I am so afraid he is somewhere up there.’ She turned to Zina. ‘What was it you said about two men up at Santo Francisco?’
But Zina seemed to have fallen into a coma. She didn’t answer. ‘I’ll have to get it out of this little swine then,’ Maxwell said. He turned to Sansevino. ‘Where is Tucek?’ The man didn’t answer and I saw Maxwell hit him. ‘You picked him up at Milan Airport. Tucek and Lemlin. You were after what he was bringing out of Czechoslovakia, the same as you were with the other poor devils. Well, where is he?’ There was a scream of pain.
Then Hacket had Maxwell by the shoulder. ‘Because the guy’s killed someone, it doesn’t entitle you to third degree him.’
‘You keep out of this,’ Maxwell said sharply.
‘Then leave the guy alone.’
‘This isn’t the first man he’s murdered. You heard what Farrell said.’
‘I’ve heard a lot of nonsense about doctors and assumed identity and I’ve heard the man who made that accusation laughing like a maniac. Now you just leave the guy alone and I’ll telephone the carabinieri. It’s their responsibility.’
‘Listen, Hacket. This man has kidnapped Hilda Tucek’s father.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not. Go out and telephone the carabinieri. Meanwhile—’
It was at this moment that the lights dipped. They did it twice and then they faded away. For a moment we could see the filaments in the candle bulbs of the chandelier glowing faintly and then they vanished and the room was a red glare full of moving shadows. ‘The plant must have run out of gas,’ Hacket said. At the same moment Maxwell shouted. A figure slid by me. The door opened and slammed shut. Maxwell dashed past me, had it open in a flash and disappeared into the darkness of the hall. I got my torch out and followed him.
The front door was still bolted. ‘Through the servant’s quarters,’ I said.
We dived into a passage. It led to the kitchen. Beyond were outhouses and here we found a door hanging open. We went out, sinking to our ankles in soft ash. We could see his footsteps in the ash leading out of the shadow of the villa into the red glare towards some outhouses. As we ran over the sifting surface of the ground there was the roar of a motor and Zina’s cream cabriolet came slithering round the corner of the house, the back wheels sending up twin sprays of ash that caught the light so that they looked like firemen’s hoses in the glow of a fire.
I had a brief glimpse of Sansevino at the wheel, then the big car was charging straight at us and we were jumping for our lives. He just missed us and I heard him change gear as he rounded the corner of the villa. ‘Quick! See which way he goes.’ I followed Maxwell as fast as I could to the front of the building. The car’s headlights cut a swathe through the red night as it hurtled down the track through the vineyards. We could see carts and people straggling along the road to Avin and Maxwell’s car shrouded in ash standing by the open gateway. With blaring sirens Sansevino nosed out on to the refugee-strewn road and turned right. ‘He’s going up to Santo Francisco. Come on! We’ve got to follow.’
Hacket and Hilda had joined us now and as we started off down the track to where the cars were parked, Zina came flying after us. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she whimpered, clutching hold of my arm. ‘Please don’t leave me. I’ll show you where they are.’
Maxwell heard her and turned. ‘You know where Tucek is?’ he asked her.
‘I do not know anything about Tucek,’ she replied. ‘But I know where he kept the others you speak about. It is in the old monastery of Santo Francisco.’
‘Come on then.’
By the time I caught up with them Max had the car turned and he was waiting for me with the door open and the engine running. The stream of refugees seemed already to be thinning. Most of those who had fled on foot had already passed. Only those who had stopped to salvage some of their belongings were still on the road. We passed bullock cart after bullock cart piled to a crazy height with furniture, bedding, children and livestock. As we forced them off the road, with the blare of our horn the loads canted over at a crazy angle.
Zina was in the front beside Max. I could see the shape of her head against the white swathe of the headlights and the glare of the lava streams. ‘Hurry. Hurry, please.’ She was getting scared again. It was hardly to be wondered at. The scene was like something out of the Bible — the bullock carts and the terror-stricken people fleeing from the wrath of the Lord. And then I caught a glimpse of the village of Santo Francisco, a black huddle of ancient houses outlined against the blazing wrath of Vesuvius. The red glare of the lava streams was ahead of us and on either side of us. Santo Francisco was doomed and I thought of the fire and brimstone that had put an end to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. It must have been very like this.
‘Pray God we’re not too late.’ It was Hilda who had spoken and I realised suddenly that she was clutching my hand.
On the far side of the back seat Hacket said, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been mixed up in.’ He leaned towards me across Hilda. ‘Farrell. Do you mind telling me what it’s all about?’
Hilda answered for me. ‘It’s my father. This man Sansevino has shut him up somewhere in Santo Francisco.’ I think she wanted to talk, for she went on, telling him about her father’s escape from Czechoslovakia. I looked at my watch. It was just after four. In little over an hour it would be light. A great shower of sparks rose out of the crater glare and lifted to the black cloud above that was shot with intermittent stabs of forked lightning.
‘Any moment that damned mountain’s gonna blow its top,’ Hacket muttered. His voice trembled slightly. But it wasn’t fear. It was because he was excited. He had come all the way from America to see this volcano and I think he was as near to being happy as he’d ever be.
We were entering the village now. The crimsoned stucco fronts of the houses closed in on us, throwing back the roar of the car’s engine and blocking out the sight of Vesuvius. The streets were quite deserted. The last of the refugees had left. There wasn’t a cat or a dog, not even a chicken, to be seen. It was as though we were entering a lost town.
We passed a shop where a candle still guttered on the counter and vegetables piled the shelves. The doors of the houses gaped open. In a small piazza a cart stood forlornly, abandoned because one of the wheels had broken under the strain of the furniture heaped on top of it. By the village pump a small child sucked its thumb and stared at us with big, frightened eyes.
‘Did you see that kid?’ Hacket asked as we swept by. ‘We mustn’t forget him when we leave. The poor little beggar must have been deserted by his parents.’
‘Ecco!’ Zina was pointing to a big stone archway. The gates were open and we drove into a stone-paved courtyard. And there was the cabriolet. ‘Thank God!’ Hilda breathed.
Maxwell slammed on the brakes and we piled out. ‘Where now?’ he asked.
‘Through here,’ Zina cried. She made for a low stone doorway. A gleam of metal showed in Maxwell’s hand. At least he was armed. But I hung back. I was thinking what I’d do if I were Sansevino. If he could blot us out — all of us — he’d be safe then. The lava would obliterate Santo Francisco and there’d be no trace of us. I caught Hilda’s hand.
‘Wait,’ I said.
She wrenched herself free. ‘What are you afraid of?’
The contempt in her voice stung me. I caught her arm and twisted her round. ‘Max told you my story, did he?’
‘Yes. Let me go. I must get to my—’
‘You won’t reach your father any quicker than Maxwell,’ I said. ‘And if we go in a bunch we may walk straight into it.’
‘Into what? Let me go, please.’
‘Have some sense,’ I snapped at her. ‘Sansevino got here ahead of us. He knew we’d follow him. And if he could kill us all—’
‘He would not dare. He is afraid now.’
‘He’s as cunning as the devil,’ I said. ‘And cruel. He’ll use your father as a bait.’
She was trembling again now as she realised all the possibilities. ‘Perhaps he has come up here to kill him,’ she breathed.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘So long as we’re alive he may need your father in order to bargain with us.’
‘Bargain with us?’
I nodded. ‘I have something that he wants. You see that doorway over there?’ I pointed to an opening in the stone wall on the far side of the courtyard. ‘Go and wait for me there.’ I turned to the Fiat. As I lifted the bonnet I heard her crunching through the ash of the courtyard. I removed the rotor arm and closed the bonnet again. I immobilised Maxwell’s Buick in the same way. Then I joined Hilda in the doorway. ‘If the others are successful—’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘If not, then we’ve still got a chance.’
The courtyard was full of vague shadows that seemed to move with the varying intensity of the glare. It was an incredible scene, like a stage setting of the sunset glow on Dunsinane.
‘Do you still think me a coward?’ I asked her.
I could see her face against the red glare of the upper half of the monastery buildings. It was like a cameo — the firm set of the jaw, the little tip-tilted nose. She hadn’t moved. She was watching the doorway through which the others had disappeared. Then her hand found mine and gripped it as she had done in the car coming up. It seemed an age that we stood there, waiting and watching that doorway.
‘Will they never come?’ The words seemed forced out of her and her grip on my hand had tightened.
There was nothing I could say. I just held her hand and stood there in the shadow of the doorway, knowing what hell she was going through and unable to do anything to help her. At last she said, ‘I think you are right. Something has happened.’
I looked at my watch. It was nearly half-past four. They had been gone well over a quarter of an hour. Why hadn’t Sansevino come out to the car? But I knew why. He was watching, waiting for us to make the first move. ‘I’m afraid it is going to be a cat-and-mouse game.’
She turned her head. ‘How do you mean — cat-and-mouse game?’
‘Whoever moves first must give away his position.’
The glare in the courtyard suddenly deepened as though Hell’s flames had been banked up. Shadows moved and flickered. ‘I do not think we have too much time,’ Hilda said.
I nodded. I wished I could see what the lava was doing. ‘I think we must go in search of the others,’ I said. The blood was hammering in my head and my foot and my hands felt cold. I was quite convinced now that Sansevino was watching that courtyard just as we were watching it. I gripped her hand, nerving myself for the dash to the doorway, for the groping along endless corridors and through huge, silent rooms expecting every shadow to materialise into that damnable doctor. I had that void in the very core of me that I’d had on my first solo, on my first combat flight.
And then Hilda said, ‘Listen!’
Somewhere out in the unnatural stillness of the village was a murmur of sliding stones. It was like a coal truck being tipped and it went on and on. Then suddenly everything was still again — unnaturally still. It was as though the whole village, all the living stone of it, held its breath, waiting for the thing it dreaded. ‘There it is again,’ Hilda whispered. It was like clinker falling in a huge grate. And then there was a crumbling sound. A shower of sparks flew up beyond the monastery towards the billowing column in the sky that marked Vesuvius. ‘What is it?’
I hesitated. Some instinct told me what it was and I didn’t want to tell her. But she’d have to know soon. A haze of rubble dust was rising, the particles reflecting the flickering gleam of flames below. ‘The lava is entering the village,’ I told her. She was so close to me that I felt the tremor that ran through her body. The heat was becoming intense. It hung over us like the heat from the open door of a furnace. ‘We must do something.’ Her voice was on the edge of panic.
‘Yes,’ I said.
I was just about to tell her to run for the doorway through which the others had gone when she cried out, ‘Look!’ She was pointing to the roof of the monastery buildings opposite. For an instant I saw the figure of a man outlined against another shower of sparks. He was running along the roof.’ Is that him?‘she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The lava’s scared him. He’s coming for the car.’ I got out the little automatic Zina had given me, loaded it and stood there waiting.
He wasn’t long. He flung out through the doorway and jumped into the Fiat. I heard the starter buzz. Then the sound was drowned in the crumbling roar of another building going down. The dust rose as the sound died. Sansevino was still pressing the starter button. Then he abandoned it and dived into the Buick. Again the buzz of a starter. I could see his face in the dashboard light. The eyes glittered with panic and I suddenly wanted to laugh. I’d have stood in the very path of a thousand streams of lava to see fear so stamped on the man’s face.
When he realised it wouldn’t start he got out and went back to the Fiat. He tried the starter again. Then he opened the bonnet. It didn’t take him long to realise what the trouble was. He straightened up, looking about him as though sensing our presence. For an instant he stared at the doorway where we were standing. His hand reached to his pocket and he began to come towards us.
At that moment a great vomit of fire sprawled into the sky. He turned and glanced upwards, his body crouched as though to ward off a blow. He stayed like that as though petrified while the arch of flame spread over the underbelly of the black, billowing gases that covered the sky and the roar of the mountain shook the ground under our feet. There was a whistling sound and something fell with a thud into the courtyard sending up a little puff of ash. Then he straightened up and at the same moment a rain of stones descended on the courtyard, hot stones that smouldered where they fell. They clattered against the stone of the monastery building and rolled to our feet, smouldering and stinking of sulphur.
Sansevino was running now, slithering and stumbling on the loose ash. In the ruddy glare I could see his face twisted with terror. He almost made the main gateway, but then suddenly he was struck down. It seemed to catch him by the shoulder and send him sprawling in the ash. Above the sound of the mountain and the thump of falling stones I heard his squeal of fear. He twisted over and over, his body contorted, and then he was up again, limping painfully and making for the archway. He reached it and disappeared into the shadows.
The fall of stones ceased as abruptly as it had begun. I gave Hilda one of the rotor arms. ‘See if you can find the others,’ I told her. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘Why not let him go?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He may be the only one who can lead us to your father. I must try and stop him. You get the others.’
I left the shelter of the archway then and crossed the courtyard. ‘Please be careful,’ she called after me. I floundered in the sifting surface of ash. It made my leg very difficult to handle. The sound of my feet on the clear paving stones of the main archway seemed unnaturally loud. Then I was out in the street. I could see the piazza with its pump and the cart lying drunkenly on its broken wheel. The ash was pitted by the fall of stones as though there had been a brief shower of heavy rain. Not a living thing moved in all that street. It was as though a grey desert had moved in and destroyed all life.
I turned then and looked back up the narrow rise of the street. Sansevino was standing in the middle of the road, quite still, his back towards me. He was staring up the street and I saw why he’d stopped. It was a truly terrifying sight. The road was narrow like a cutting between the sheer walls of the houses. But instead of going up out of the village into the open vineyards of the mountain slopes, that street ceased abruptly in a great wall that towered as high as the houses. In the lurid glow the narrow cut seemed choked with an enormous coke pile.
There was a sudden shifting sound as the coke spilled forward and as it spilled a white molten glare filled the end of the street. The house fronts flickered with light, their faces seeming to be twisted in agony as they saw their doom, and a blast of furnace-hot air ran down the shaft of the street, blistering hot and chokingly sulphurous. Then the light died as the outer surface of the lava-spill cooled.
Sansevino turned and started down towards me. I was so astonished by the sight of the lava that I did nothing. I just stood there in the middle of the street and watched him trying to run towards me, his right side twisted with pain. He didn’t see me for a moment. When he did he stopped. He had the startled, frightened look of a thing trapped. He gave one glance over his shoulder at the spilling face of the lava and dived into the open doorway of a house.
If he’d had a gun he could have shot me down from the shelter of that doorway. But he hadn’t got a gun. His gun was lying in the villa, one bullet in Roberto’s body, the others embedded in the floorboards. As I followed him through the doorway where he’d disappeared there was a crumbling sound and I saw one of the houses at the end of the street topple into the lava stream in a cloud of mortar dust.
The building was very dark after the glare of the street. It smelt of garbage and earth closets. Dusty windows gave the shadows a reddish gleam. I listened. I could hear no sound but the distant gaseous hiss of the crater. He wasn’t climbing the stairs. Either he was waiting in the shadows for me or else he had gone straight through the building. I switched on my torch. The beam showed stone steps leading upwards. A passageway led past these to the back of the house. The stone floor was worn smooth and deep by the footsteps of many generations. It led to a back room. There was a big double bed with huge Birmingham brass knobs, an old chest of drawers and a table supported at one corner by a packing case. The place was littered with household things all mixed up with straw on which animals had been bedded. The door on the other side stood open.
It led to a small patch of ground backed by a low wall and then more houses. And in the ash that covered the garden I saw the track of a man’s feet. I followed them, over the stone wall, to the back of the next row of houses. They ended at the steps to a balcony. The balcony was arched with pillars of stone. Stone steps led upwards from one corner and down the funnel of the stairs I heard the sound of footsteps climbing.
I followed. At each floor there was a balcony with stone arches and as I climbed higher the arches became blacker as they stood out against the lava glow. At each balcony I caught a glimpse of rooms that had suddenly been vacated. The panic litter of clothes and household things bore dumb witness to the haste with which the occupants had fled. At last I reached the top floor. A wooden ladder ascended to the roof. I switched my torch off and went cautiously up, gripping the tiny automatic in my hand.
The roof when I reached it looked red hot. It was quite flat and as my head emerged through the trap-door I saw Sansevino not fifty feet away, his body a black silhouette against a huge flow of lava that ringed Santo Francisco to the west. He was climbing the low balustrade to the next house. I followed him, running as best I could on the treacherous surface of loose ash. I glanced up to my right and saw the mountain leaning over me. The great welts of the lava flow streamed down towards the village. There were four flows — one reaching down to the houses, one to the west and two of the east. And over it all was_the red, roaring mass of the crater column of gas like an oil gusher that has been fired. Looking up at the incredible sight I trod on a stone and fell with my face in the ash. I think it was the ash that saved me from hurting myself. I spat it out of my mouth and got to my feet, rubbing my eyes.
Sansevino had reached the end of the block now. I saw him hesitate at the edge and turn back. Then he disappeared into a doorway. The stump of my leg was beginning to ache and a piece of ash had got into my left eye, hurting damnably. The filthy stuff was in my mouth, too, and as I clenched my teeth against the pain of my eye they gritted unpleasantly.
I reached the doorway where Sansevino had disappeared and stumbled through. There was a ladder like the one I’d come up. And then I was descending through stone arched balconies, hearing Sansevino’s footsteps clattering ahead of me. I nearly slipped on a patch of oil — olive oil spilled from a big pottery jar that someone had dropped on the steps.
At the bottom we came out into a garden full of stunted orange trees, the fruit glowing like little Chinese lanterns. I followed his footsteps to another row of houses, taller this time and in bad repair with the plaster hanging in great mouldering slabs. Here were big rooms littered with beds on bare wooden boards. Many people had slept and lived and kept their livestock in those overcrowded, dirty rooms. An old stone archway led in from the shadow of a narrow street that smelt of rotting garbage and in the far corner of one of the rooms I found a narrow ramp running up to the floor above. It was cobbled and ridged with stone. I could hear Sansevino climbing above me and I followed.
The ramp was slippery with manure and smelt of horses. With the beam of my torch lighting the way I struggled up to the floor above and then to the next. Here a gaunt, big-boned mule stared at me with rolling, frightened eyes and wisps of straw hanging from its sulky mouth. It twitched its long ears in the light of the torch, laid them back and looked as wicked as hell.
The ramp finished there, but stone steps led on upwards. I was beginning to feel very tired — a combination of nervous exhaustion, lack of sleep and the ache in the stump of my leg. I stumbled and the tin of my leg clanked against the stone where the treads had been worn into two deep little hollows. I thought of all the people who had climbed up and down those stairs every day of their lives. Generation after generation of them. Parts of these old houses had probably been in constant occupation for well over a thousand years, and in a few hours they would be wiped off the face of the earth.
The room above was less dirty. There were family pictures on the walls and a little shrine stood in one corner. I went on up. Another floor with a broken bicycle and a small blacksmith’s forge and a smell of charcoal. Would I never get to the top? I felt pretty well at the end of my tether. I seemed to be stumbling on and on, up never-ending flights of worn stone.
Then suddenly I was out again in the eruption glare. There was a breath of suphurous heat on my face and I had a glimpse of a building, black against the red glow of lava, toppling slowly, toppling and crumbling as it crashed downwards. Then something smashed against the side of my head and I was falling, like the building had done, falling in a shower of sparks to a red, eyeball-searing glow.
I felt something wrenched out of my hand and then I was struggling back to consciousness with a voice I knew saying, ‘I hope I do not hurt you.’ The voice was the voice I’d heard on the operating table and I screamed.
‘Ah! So now you are frightened, eh?’
I opened my eyes to find the face of il dottore wavering over me. The cruel lips were drawn back in a thin smile. I could see the tongue flicking over them and the pointed, tobacco-stained teeth. His eyes gleamed like red coals.
‘Don’t operate again,’ I heard myself say. ‘Please don’t operate any more.’
He was laughing at me now and suddenly I saw that he had no moustache. The face dissolved into Shirer’s face. But the red, sadistic excitement of the eyes remained.
Then my head cleared and I knew where I was. I was in Santo Francisco and Sansevino was bending over me. A torch was switched on and his face vanished in the blinding light of it. He had my automatic in his hand and he was laughing, a horrible, tensed-up, tittering sound. ‘Now, my friend, perhaps you will be good enough to let me have a look at your lovely new leg.’
His hands were tearing at my trousers. I jerked upright at his touch. He hit me in the face with the torch then, knocking me back into the grit of the ash that covered the roof-top. I felt the blood trickling down from a cut above my right eye. It reached my mouth. I licked at it with my tongue. It was salt and full of grit. He had pulled my trousers clear of my thigh now and his hands were working at the straps of my leg. Involuntarily I flinched. He gave a soft snicker. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said. ‘I do not have to operate this time to remove your leg. See, it is only held by straps — leather straps; the living tissues have gone.’ I could hear his tongue savouring the relish of his words. And all the time I was thinking there was something I had to do. Fear clutched at me at the touch of his hands. I fought it, struggling to clear my brain, to think what had to be done. I couldn’t think with those bloody fingers moving over the flesh of my thigh, touching the cringing skin of my stomach.
Then suddenly he had my leg free. ‘There. You see. It is quite painless, this operation.’
I sat up. He stepped back quickly. The metal of my leg gleamed a dull red. It looked absurdly horrible as he held it in his hands — like looking at my own leg, severed from my body in one lump and bathed in blood. He had switched off the torch now and he was smiling at me. ‘You can do what you wish now, Mr. Farrell. You’re not very mobile.’ It was Shirer’s voice. But almost in the same instant he had reverted to il dottore. ‘I make a nice job of that leg, eh? The stump has healed well.’
I cursed him then, mouthing obscenities in an effort to drown my fear. But he only laughed, his teeth a red, pointed gleam. Then he had ripped the pad out of the artificial limb and turned the contraption upside down. He gave a little cry of satisfaction as a chamois leather bag and a roll of oilskin fell into the ash. He picked the bag up, tearing excitedly at the cord that bound it, his eyes gleaming with greed.
‘So!’ He peered into the mouth of the bag, crooning to himself. ‘Tucek told the truth. Bene! Bene!’
‘What have you done with him?’ I cried.
He looked at me. Then he smiled. It was a wicked, devilish smile. ‘You need not worry about him. I have not hurt him — very much. He is quite safe. So is Maxwell and the lovely Contessa. The stupid American is safe too.’ He laughed. ‘He come all the way from Pittsburgh — where I come from, eh? — to see Vesuvius in eruption. Well, now he has a grandstand view. I hope he likes it,’ he added venomously.
‘What have you done with them?’ I demanded, anger suddenly getting the better of my fear.
‘Nothing, my friend. Nothing at all. I give them a good view of the eruption, that is all. Would you also like to see how a village can disappear under a mountain? You see all these houses?’ His hand indicated the roof tops of Santo Francisco. ‘This village is built in the days when Rome is a great power. And in a few hours it will be gone. And you will go with it, my friend.’ He re-tied the mouth of the leather bag and slipped it into his pocket. Then he stooped and picked up the oilskin package.
He was coming towards me now and suddenly I knew what it was I had to do. I fumbled in the pocket of my jacket, found the rotor arm and showed it to him. ‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Ah, you think to barter, eh?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t barter with a murderous swine like you. You can try and get out on foot.’ I struggled up on one elbow and flung the little bakelite and metal arm as far as I could. He ran after it. But it fell clear of the roof. He stopped at the edge, staring down into the black pit into which it had fallen. Then he came back, his face livid with rage. He lashed out at me with his foot, kicking at the bare stump of my leg, mouthing curses at me in Italian. I felt grit searing the flesh and the pain of his kicks ran up the left side of my body and struck like hammer blows on the nerves of my brain. Then suddenly he turned, picked up my artificial leg and flung it after the rotor arm. I watched it fall with a red gleam of metal beyond the edge of the roof and a sickening feeling of fear took hold of me. It was silly to be frightened by the loss of an ugly metal attachment. But without it I was helpless and he knew it.
‘Now try to get out of Santo Francisco on your bare stump,’ he snarled.
The black vault of the night flared redder as the mountain blew off again. He glanced up to the glare. I could see the sweat shining in drops on his face. He turned to me, lashed out at my pelvis with all the frustrated violence of a man who is scared of death. I rolled over involuntarily and caught the kick on my thigh. He didn’t kick me again, but bent down, searching through the pockets of my coat and trousers. ‘What have you done with it?’ he screamed at me.
‘Done with what?’ I asked.
He drove his fist into my face. ‘The other rotor arm, you fool.’
‘I haven’t got it,’ I mumbled through my broken lips. ‘Maxwell has it.’ I thought the lie might send him back to them and give them another chance.
He beat at my face with his clenched fist until the mountain flamed again. Then he dived for the door of the roof and disappeared. I heard bolts being shot home and then I was alone in the red glare of the mountain.
I wasn’t frightened — not then. I was too relieved at his departure. Fear came later with the dawn and the lava eating at the buildings across the street and the heat of it withering my body.
After he’d gone I crawled to the shelter of the door and lay there for a while recovering my breath and trying to sort things out. Stones fell clattering against the stonework, throwing dust in my face. Huddled close to the door they missed me and when the shower of lapilli had ended I started on a painful tour of my roof-top prison.
It was about fifty feet by thirty, surrounded by a stone balustrade a foot high. On one side was a drop to a street and on the opposite side, the side where I’d thrown the rotor arm, the house dropped to a garden carpeted in ash. In the middle of it I could see the faint metallic glimmer of my tin leg. The house was one of a row, but it was separated on either side from the neighbouring houses by a narrow alley, a sheer crevice about five feet across. There was no hope of crossing the gap and there was no way into the house from the roof other than by the door. If there’d been a clothesline, even an old piece of wood to act as a crutch I would have felt less helpless. But there was nothing, just the flat expanse of the roof, covered in ash, the foot-high balustrade, and in the middle the stone-built rabbit hutch with the door that led to the floor below. I hadn’t even a knife or any implement with which to set to work on the door.
I felt utterly helpless. My only hope was that Hilda would find the others and that they would come to look for me. At least I could call out to them, signal to them. I had the freedom of that roof-top. I could see what was happening. I wasn’t locked away in some evil-smelling room waiting for death to come suddenly in a fall of masonry. I could move about and watch what happened, and that did more than anything to sustain my courage in the hours that followed.
The stones that had fallen were pumice and hard and sharp. And since the door was my only hope of escape and the stones my only tools, I set to work to rub away the wood. I think I knew it was hopeless from the start. But I had to do something to keep my mind off the red glow of the lava flow piling into the village.
The streams on either side seemed to move faster, flowing down through the open country and curving round below Santo Francisco like two columns mounting a pincer attack on the village of Avin two miles lower down the slopes. The flow coming into Santo Francisco was narrower and slower. But it ate steadily into the village and I could mark its progress by the sound of crumbling buildings and the shower of sparks it set up as it ground over the ruins. I worked it out that it was destroying a house every ten minutes which meant roughly that it would reach my own house in approximately one and a quarter hours. It was then a quarter to six. I had until seven.
I suppose I worked away at that door for half an hour. Then I stopped. I was completely exhausted and dripping with sweat. The heat was already beginning to prick at my skin and my flesh felt tight and shrivelled. I had scraped about a quarter of an inch of wood away on a strip little more than a foot long. It was quite hopeless. The door was of tough, seasoned wood and a good inch thick. I hadn’t a hope of getting through it in time.
Dawn was beginning to break. I brushed the sweat from my eyes and slithered away from the door so that I could look at the mountain. The glow of the crater was fading and in the faint, cold light I could see the dense pall that covered the sky — a writhing, billowing cloud of utter blackness. The lave flow no longer showed as a fiery streak. It was a huge black band coming out of the side of the mountain near the top of the ash slope. It came down like a thick wrist, broadened out into a palm and then split into four fingers. Smoke rose from it in a lazy cloud and the mountain behind it trembled in the heat.
The stump of my leg hurt abominably where Sansevino had kicked at it. My head ached and my lips were swollen and blubbery. I pulled up the leg of my trousers. The flesh where it was drawn tight over the bone was bleeding and coated in grit. Sitting there in the ash I did my best to clean it and then bound it up with a strip torn from my shirt and tied it with my handkerchief. I could have done with some water, not only to cleanse it, but to drink, for my throat was parched with the heat and the acrid sulphur fumes. But it didn’t seem to matter much. The lava was very near now. Buildings were crumbling continuously all along the wide front of its advance into the village and the sound of their falling seemed so close that more than once I looked to see whether the next house had gone.
Then the sun came up. It was an orange disc barely visible through the haze of gas and ash that filled the sky. And as it rose higher it got fainter. I thought of the mountains up there on the back of Italy. The villages would be basking in clear, warm sunlight. And beyond would lie the blue of the Adriatic. And yet here I was under a cloud of ash, faced with a stinking, suffocating end. Something glittered in the ash. It was Zina’s pistol. Sansevino had dropped it in the blindness of his anger. I slipped it into my pocket — if I couldn’t face the lava, then …
I don’t think I was frightened so much as bitter. I could so easily have not been here. If I hadn’t gone out to that villa — if I hadn’t arranged my trip so that I went from Czechoslovakia to Milan. But what was the good of saying If. If I’d been born a Polynesian instead of an Englishman I wouldn’t have lost my leg in three operations that made me sweat to think about. I folded my empty trouser leg up over the stump of my leg and tied it there with my tie. Then I crawled across the roof to the side nearest the lava.
It was full daylight now, or as near to daylight as it would be. I could see the black band of the lava flow broadening out as it piled up against the village. It was only three houses away and as I watched the third house crumbled into mortar dust and disappeared. Only two more houses away now. Three little nigger boys sitting in a row…. The damned bit of doggerel ran in my brain until the second house went. And then there was one. Away to the right I caught a glimpse of the front of the lava choking a narrow street and spilling steadily forward. It was black like clinker and as it spilled down along the street, little rivulets of molten rock flowed red.
The air was full of the dust of broken buildings now. My mouth and throat were dry and gritty with it and the air shimmered with intense heat. I could no longer hear the roar of gases escaping from Vesuvius. Instead my world was full of a hissing and sifting — it was a steady, unrelenting background of sound to the intermittent crash of stone and the crumbling roar of falling plaster and masonry.
Then the next building”began to go. I watched, fascinated, as a crack opened across the roof. There was a tumbling roar of sound, the crack widened, splitting the very stone itself, and then the farther end of the building vanished in a cloud of dust. There was a ghastly pause as the lava consolidated, eating up the pile of rubble below. Then cracks ran splitting all across the remains of the roof not five yards away from me. The cracks widened, spreading like little fast-moving rivers, and then suddenly the whole roof seemed to sink, vanishing away below me in a great rumble of sound and disappearing into the dust of its own fall.
I And as the dust settled I found myself staring at the lava face itself. It was a sight that took my breath away. I wanted to cry out, to run from it — but instead I remained on my hands and one knee staring at it, unable to move, speechless, held in the shock of seeing the pitiless force of Nature angered.
I have seen villages and towns bombed and smashed to rubble by shell-fire. But Cassino, Berlin — they were nothing to this. Bombing or shelling at least leaves the torn shells and smashed rubble of buildings to indicate what was once there. The lava left nothing. Of the half of Santo Francisco that it had overrun there was no trace. Before me stretched a black cinder embankment, quite flat and smoking with heat. It was impossible to think of a village ever having existed there. It had left no trace and I could scarcely believe that only a few minutes before there had been buildings between me and the lava and that I’d seen them toppling, buildings that had been occupied for hundreds of years. Only away to the left the dome of a church stood up out of the black plain. And even as I noticed it the beautifully symmetrical dome cracked open like a flower, fell in a cloud of dust and was swallowed completely.
In my fascination I leaned forward and peered over the balcony. I had a brief glimpse of a great wall of cinders and rivulets of white-hot rock spilling forward across the rubble remains of the house that had just vanished, spilling across the narrow alley and piling up against the house on which I stood. Then the heat was singeing my eyebrows and I was slithering back to the far end of the roof in the grip of a sudden and uncontrollable terror.
To be wiped out like that, obliterated utterly and all because of a wooden door. I heard myself screaming — screaming and screaming for help through grit-sore throat. Once I thought I heard an answering call, but it didn’t stop me. I went on screaming till suddenly a crack ran splintering across the roof, splitting it in two.
The sudden realisation of the inevitability of death gripped me then, stifling my screams, stiffening my nerves to meet the end. I knelt down in the soft ash of the roof and prayed — prayed as I used to pray before those damned operations, praying that I’d not give way to fear, that I’d face what had to be without flinching.
And as the crack widened out I felt suddenly calm. If only the end would come quickly. That was all I prayed for. I didn’t want to be buried alive in the rubble and wait half-suffocated for the lava to roll over me.
The crack widened steadily — a foot, two feet. Then the farther half of the roof split into fragments and folded inwards, sinking down towards the lava in a heat blast of dust. And as it fell I saw the stone housing of the doorway disintegrate.
I scrambled towards it. It was a chance in a million. Through the choking dust I saw the wooden stairs intact leading down to the room below. I hesitated. I think any one would rather die in the open than be caught like a rat in a trap inside a building. But it was still a chance and I took it. I swung myself over the edge, dropped on to one foot and jumped the whole length of the stairs. I landed in a heap on the boards of the room below. The farther wall was missing and through it I could see the heat curling up from the top of the lava.
The stone staircase, thank God, was behind me. I scrambled to the top and slithered down. On the second flight I almost broke my arm as I fell against the side of the archway at the bottom. I could feel the building trembling now and the room I was in was full of a vicious, suffocating heat.
As I picked myself up I saw through the choking dust clouds, a long face with ears twitching and eyes rolling. It was the poor wretched mule, lashing out with its legs as it strained at the halter that held it. A long-bladed butcher’s knife lay on the floor. I grabbed it, hopped over to the animal and slashed it free. I had a childish fear that if I let the creature die, I should die too.
God knows why I did it. Some pilot’s instinct, I suppose, to have a mascot. But the mule was nearly the death of me. It leapt free and ran careering and screaming round the room, hoofs lashing and teeth grinding in its fear. Then it found the ramp and went thundering down, slithering the last part on its haunches. I was so close behind it that I saw the sparks kicked up by its hooves as it pawed itself to its feet at the bottom.
Those ramps were easier than the stone stairs. They were slimy with dung and I slithered down them, lying on my back and thrusting myself forward with my hands. I could feel the building rocking as I descended and at each floor I could see the burning face of the lava where the farther wall had once been. As I reached the ground floor there was a series of splintering crashes and I knew the house was disintegrating above my head. The way to the street, the way the cattle had been brought in, was gone and in the ragged gap I saw the white heat of the lava face and felt the scorching breath of it singe my hair.
The mule had gone out by a window, crashing through it and taking the whole frame with it in its terror. I followed and as I fell to the ground I realised I was in the garden of the house and there lying almost beside me was my leg.
It was one of those strokes of luck that fate is kind enough to offer once in a while and looking back on it I can’t help having an instinctive feeling that it was all because I paused to free the mule. I know it sounds stupid. But there it is. We had odder beliefs than that when we were flying night after night over Germany.
I picked up the dented limb, hopped to the wall and scrambled over. And as I fell into the next garden, the house I’d been imprisoned in disintegrated, filling the narrow space between the houses with noise and dust. I got through the next house and came out into a narrow street that was blocked at one end by the lava. The place was a cul-de-sac, and there was my mule, standing at the end of it with his face to the lava and whinnying.
I dropped my trousers and strapped the leg in place. The lava grit embedded in the stump of my leg hurt like hell when I put my weight on it. But I didn’t care. It was such a relief to be able to stand upright like a human being again. It’s a horrible feeling to have only one leg and to be forced to crawl around like the lower order of creatures. To stand upright again and move normally gave me a sudden surge of confidence and for the first time that morning I felt I might win out in the end.
I went down the street towards the mule. He stood quite still, watching me. His ears were laid back, but the whites of his eyes weren’t showing and there was nothing vicious about his expression. He was standing by a door leading into one of the houses. I opened it and went in. The mule followed me. And when he followed me like that I wouldn’t have parted with that mule for anything. I swear the animal seemed almost human. It was probably just that he’d lived all his life close to people and was used to going in and out of houses. But at the time I didn’t bother to try and explain it. I just knew that his presence gave me courage like the presence of another human being.
The door led to a stables and on the far side daylight showed through the cracks of big wooden doors. I slid back the securing bar and we passed out into a track. The mule turned right. I hesitated. I was completely lost. I hadn’t an idea where the monastery was. In the end I followed the mule. The track was narrow and flanked by the tall backs of houses with here and there the open doors of stables. It swung away to the right and then I saw it was blocked by the lava.
The mule turned. Pain was shooting up my leg from the grit that was being ground into the flesh. Big stones jutted out from the wall of the building I had stopped beside and this gave me an idea. I caught hold of the halter of the mule and it stopped at once. I got it close to the stones, climbed up and so on to the animal’s back. A moment later I was trotting comfortably back along the track. The animal seemed quite placid now.
The track led out into a wider street. I tugged on the halter and the mule stopped. ‘Where now, old fellow?’ I asked. Its long ears twitched. The monastery was up towards the lava so I turned left, kicked the animal’s ribs and started off at a trot. I passed a trattoria where an overturned cask dribbled wine into the grey ash that covered the floor. The little wooden tables looked grey and derelict. Close by on the wall of a building was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary. It was surrounded by tinsel and coloured lights, and at the foot were jam jars full of flowers that had been killed by the sulphurous air. Nearby a rude figure of Christ hung from a wooden cross. This, too, had jam jars of dead flowers and there were one or two sprays of artificial blooms under a cracked glass globe.
The street swung to the right. The tall houses seemed to close in on it as it climbed. And then it ended abruptly in a wall of black cinder nearly as high as the buildings. I had a sudden sense of being trapped. Every street seemed to lead up to the lava. It was like being in a partially excavated Pompei. All I could see was the facade of the houses flanking the street and the abrupt, unnatural end of it.
The mule had turned of its own accord and we trotted back the way we had come, past the decorated figure of the Virgin Mary, past the trattoria. And then I heard my name called. ‘Dick! Dick!’ I pulled up and looked back. It was Hilda. She had come out of the house next to the trattoria and was running towards me, her dress all torn, her hair flying. ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she gasped as she reached me. ‘I thought I heard somebody screaming for help. I was afraid—’ She didn’t finish. She was staring at my face. Then her eyes dropped to my clothes. ‘Are you hurt?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘What about the others? Where are they?’
‘I couldn’t find them.’ Her eyes were frantic with worry. ‘I went all through the monastery — they weren’t there. What do you think has happened to them?’ And then in a rush. ‘We must find them. The lava’s almost reached the monastery. I called and called, but they didn’t answer. Do you think—’ She didn’t finish. She didn’t want to put her thought into words.
‘Where is the monastery?’ I asked her.
‘Through this building.’ She nodded to the house next to the trattoria. I turned the mule and slid off at the door. The smell of the trattoria made me realise how parched I was. ‘Just a minute,’ I said and dived inside. There were bottles behind the counter. I reached over and took one, knocking the top off against the counter edge. The wine was warm and rather sharp. But it cleared the grit from my throat. I passed the bottle to Hilda. ‘You look as though you could do with some.’
‘We haven’t time to—’
‘Drink it,’ I said. She did as I told her. When she’d finished I threw the bottle away. ‘Now, let’s get to the monastery.’
She led me through the open doorway of the next house. Broken wooden stairs climbed to the floor above. ‘I was at the top of this house when I thought I heard you call,’ she said. We passed the foot of the stairs and along a stone-flagged passage. There was a clatter of hooves behind us. ‘What’s that?’ She turned, her eyes wide and startled. I realised then how near to breaking she was.
‘It’s only George.’
‘Oh — the mule. Why do you call him George?’
We were out of the house now and crossing a dusty patch of garden. Why had the name George come automatically to my mind? My mascot, of course. ‘George was the name of my mascot,’ I said. It had been a little shaggy horse Alice had given me. It had gone all through the Battle of Britain and then flown all over prance and Germany. Some bloody Itye had pinched it just before that last flight.
We were in the next row of houses now. ‘Funny the way he follows us through the house.’ She was talking to keep control of herself.
‘George is used to houses,’ I said. ‘He’s lived all his life in a house, in the same room as the family.’
We were out in the street now, and there was the piazza with the cart leaning drunkenly on its broken wheel. In the instant of recognition I glanced to the left. The lava had moved a long way down the street since I’d last seen it. The twenty-foot wall of black, heat-ridden cinder was not a dozen yards from the main archway of the monastery. I stood there, staring at it, realising that in half an hour the face of it would be about where I was standing and the monastery of St. Francis would have disappeared. ‘Hurry! Please. We must hurry.’
I caught her arm as she turned impatiently towards the main archway. ‘Steady,’ I said. ‘We must decide what we’re going to do. You say you’ve searched the monastery?’
‘Yes.’
‘Every room?”
‘I do not know. I cannot be quite sure. You see it is very confusing inside.’
I hesitated. ‘Did you go round the outside of the buildings?’
She shook her head. ‘Why should I? I was searching—’
‘Most of the rooms will have windows, or at least gratings. They will have hung something out to attract attention.’
She stared at me, her face suddenly lighting up with hope. ‘Oh, why did I not think of that for myself. Quick. There is a way through to the back by the entrance they went in.’
I limped after her, the mule following at my heels. But the clip-clop of his hooves ceased just before we reached the archway. I looked back. He was standing in the middle of the road, his ears laid back, sniffing at the smoking cinder-heap of the lava. ‘You stay there, George,’ I said. ‘We’ll be back later.’
Hilda was running across the courtyard as I passed under the arch of the entrance. The stone square of the courtyard was beautifully cool after the heat of the lava-blocked streets. I glanced up at the windows. They were sightless eyes staring down at me unwinking. No sign of a scarf or handkerchief or anything to show that the others were in any of those rooms.
I entered the monastery buildings. It was almost dark inside and full of the damp coolness of stone. I felt suddenly fresh and full of vigour. Hilda called to me. I crossed a big refectory room with high windows and a long table laid for breakfast. Then I was in a wide stone passage and the walls were echoing the limp of my leg. Hilda was calling to me to hurry and a moment later I passed through a heavy, iron-studded door into the monastery grounds. There was a small flower garden and then vineyards flanked with orange-laden trees. I joined Hilda who was staring up at the monastery.
Parts of the building were very old, especially the section away to our left where a great rounded tower was falling into ruins. The building had been added to at various periods and though it was all constructed of tuftstone it presented a scattered, haphazard appearance which was enhanced by the fact that the stone varied in colour according to the extent to which it was worn. There was a chapel with some fine stained glass and a line of outhouses ran out in a long arm. Smoke still curled up from one of the chimneys here and even in the sulphurous atmosphere I could detect a smell of burnt bread. Evidently the eruption had started whilst they were in the middle of baking.
‘ I bet Hacket has the full guide-book history of the place,’ I said. I had to say something to cover my disappointment, for the windows were all as blank as those in the courtyard. ‘Better try the side nearest the lava.’ I was just turning away when Hilda caught my arm.
‘What is that?’ She was pointing towards the great rounded tower. There were no windows in this ruined keep, only narrow slits. And from the topmost slit something hung limp. In that unnatural twilight it was impossible to see what it was. It looked like a piece of old rag.
‘Did you have a look at that tower when you searched the monastery buildings?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘No. I did not find it.”
I pushed my way through some azaleas, skirted a sewage pond and reached the base of the tower by a footpath that ran through coarse grass. There was a. garbage heap there and the flies buzzed and crawled amongst broken bottles, rotting casks and all the refuse thrown out by the monks. Looking up I could just see that the piece of rag was clean and new and bright blue. I remembered then that Racket had been wearing a blue silk shirt. I cupped my hands round my mouth and called up, ‘Max! Max! Zina! Racket!’ I called all their names. But when I stood listening, all I could hear was the sifting, spilling sound of the lava, punctuated by the rumbling crash of falling buildings.
‘Can you hear anything?’
Hilda shook her head.
I called again. In the silence that followed my shouts I could hear the lava move nearer. I glanced back across the huge, buzzing pile of the rubbish heap to the brown line of the outhouses. Reared up above them was the advancing wall of the lava.
Hilda suddenly gripped my arm. ‘Look!’ She was pointing upwards to the slit. The piece of cloth was moving. It waved gently to and fro and then suddenly seemed to take on life as though the end of it were being violently shaken. Sleeves fell out towards us. ‘It is Hacket’s shirt,’ I cried. Then cupping my hands I shouted up, ‘How do we get to you?’
The shirt waved. I thought I heard somebody shouting, but the noise of the lava drowned it and I couldn’t be sure. Hilda tightened her grip on my arm, tugging at me. ‘Quick! We must find a way to reach them.’ I loosened her grip on my arm. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Max will try to get a message down to us.’
I was staring up towards the slit. There was a great, rumbling crash and I heard Hilda say, ‘Oh, my God!’ I glanced down at her and saw she was gazing towards the outhouses — or rather where the outhouses had been, for they were gone completely. A rising cloud of dust marked the spot where they had stood and in their place was the shifting, red-shot face of the lava.
Something struck my arm and fluttered to the ground. It was part of the silk lining of a coat, one corner of it weighted. I picked it up and untied the corner. The weight was a silver cigarette case and inside the case was a note. We’re all here. To reach tower enter by arch in courtyard, turn right in refectory room and follow passage to chapel. There is a flagstone with a ring bolt in robing room to right of altar. This leads to passage connecting Chapel to tower. We are in the top cell. Door is wood and can be burned down. Spare can of petrol in my car. Bless you, Max.
I glanced up. The shirt was no longer hanging from the slit. But there was something there that shone dully and I realised that it was a mirror being held out on the end of a piece of wood. They couldn’t look down at us from the slit, but they were watching us through a primitive periscope. I waved my hand in acknowledgment and then turned back along the path. ‘Run and get the can of petrol,’ I told Hilda. ‘I’ll go straight to the chapel.’
She nodded and with one terrified glance at the lava front ran back into the monastery. There wasn’t even a dust haze now to mark where the outhouses had been and the frightful slag heap had slithered half across the flower garden where we’d stood, blistering the trees with its heat and withering the flowers. The first section of the main monastery building was crumbling as I dived into the coolness of the interior.
I found the passage leading off the refectory room and reached the chapel. There was no difficulty in finding the robing room or the flagstone with the ring bolt. I had lifted it up and thrown it back by the time Hilda arrived with the jerrican. Stone steps led down into a dank, cold passage. I switched on my torch. The walls were solid lava rock, black and metallic-looking. We passed right through the foundations of the Chapel and then we were climbing stone steps worn by the tread of men who’d come this way centuries past.
The tower was clearly a ruin. The wood of the big iron-studded doors was powdery with worm. One we passed had almost no wood at all and was just a lacing of wrought-iron and studs. I shone my torch in as I passed and caught a glimpse of mouldering floorboards and rusty iron chains secured to the wall and what looked like a rack standing beside some rotted iron implements of torture. The tower had evidently been a religious prison.
At last we reached the top of the spiral staircase and my torch showed a new door of plain oak. Beyond it a builder’s ladder led to a square of dim light that was the roof. Here the smell of sulphur was strong again and ash had sifted down on to the stone platform outside the door. I pounded on the wood. ‘Are you there, Max?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was muffled by the door, but quite audible. ‘We’re all here.’
‘My father?’ Hilda murmured. She couldn’t nerve herself to voice the question aloud. I think she feared the answer might be No.
I had taken the can of petrol from her and was forcing back the cap. ‘Is Tucek there?’ I called through the door.
‘Yes. He’s here.’
I heard Hilda give a gasp of relief.
‘Get up the ladder to the roof,’ I said sharply. I was afraid she was going to faint. ‘Stand back now,’ I called. ‘I’m sprinkling the door with petrol.’ I had tipped the can up and as the petrol ran out I flicked it with my hand on to the woodwork of the door. I put about half a gallon on and around the door. Then I hauled the can up the ladder and passed it through the gap to Hilda. ‘Are you well back from the door?‘I called.
‘Yes, you can light the bonfire,’ came the answer.
I climbed out on to the roof. ‘Pull the ladder up, will you, Hilda,’ I said. I tipped the can of petrol up, soaking a strip of cloth in the stuff. Then holding one corner of it, I leaned down through the opening, struck a match and lit it. As the handkerchief blazed I tossed it down into the darkness below. There was a whoof of searing flame, a blast of hot blinding air and I flung myself backwards on to the roof of the tower.
‘Are you hurt?’ I felt Hilda’s hands grip my shoulders, lifting me up. I wiped my hand across my face. It smelt of petrol and burned hair. ‘The damned stuff had vapourished,’ I mumbled. My face felt raw and scorched. Flames were licking out of the square hole in the roof. I crawled to the edge of the roof and leaned over the crumbling battlement above the slit. ‘Are you all right down there?’ I shouted. I was scared I’d put too much of the stuff on the door.
It was Hacket who answered. ‘We’re fine, thanks.’ His voice was faint and muffled. ‘Quite a fire you started.’
I stood up then and looked down on the stone roof of the monastery. Half the building had gone already. Beyond lay a flat, black plain of lava slanted gently upwards and thinning out to a dark gash in the mountainside. Above the gash the conical top of Vesuvius belched oil-black smoke shot with red lumps of the molten core of the earth which rose and fell, rose and fell like flaming yoyos in the crater mouth. Higher still, faint streaks of forked lightning cut the billowing underbelly of the cloud that hid the sun and blotted out the light of day. Hilda gripped my hand. She, too, was staring up at the mountain and I saw she was scared. ‘Oh, God! Do you think we shall ever get out?’
‘We’ll get out all right,’ I said, but my assurance sounded false and hollow. The lava seemed to be advancing faster. Already it had obliterated the flower garden where we’d stood and was pouring across the vineyards beyond in a slow, inevitable wave. Another section of the monastery fell with a crash and an up-thrust blast of dust. Soon it would reach the chapel. We must get out before then or …
I went forward to the opening that led into the tower. The flames had died down now and in the light of my torch I saw the door was charred but still solid. ‘We need more petrol,’ I said. I didn’t dare pour it down. I needed some sort of a container. Hilda still had her handbag looped over her arm. ‘Give me that,” I said. I opened the bag, filled it with petrol and tossed it down through the opening. There was a sound like an explosion and flames leapt up through the square again.
I stood watching them, praying that the fire would soon burn through the door. Another section of the monastery fell in a blaze of sparks. I glanced across to where I had been imprisoned on that other roof. I could gauge the spot by the position of the monastery. There was nothing there, just the flat desolation of the lava. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’
‘What do you say?’
I realised then that I had spoken aloud.
She must have read my thoughts for she said, ‘What happened over there, before I found you? Did you catch that man?’
‘No. He caught me.’
‘What happened? You looked terribly hurt.’
‘Nothing happened,’ I said. She wanted to talk — anything to take her mind off the waiting. But I couldn’t tell her what happened. It was too close to our present situation.
At last the flames died down again. I went to the battlements and called down, ‘Can you break your way out now?’
I could not hear their answer. It was lost in the sound of the lava. ‘They are kicking at the door now,’ Hilda called. She was leaning over the hole. A shower of sparks shot up and she flung back, coughing, her face black with smuts. ‘I think it breaks down now.’
There was a sudden shout, the sound of splintering wood and more sparks. Then Max’s voice called up: ‘We’re almost out now.’ More sparks and then a crash. ‘Where are you?’
‘Up here,’ I answered.
Hilda and I pushed the ladder through the smoking gap. ‘Go on down the stairs,’ I shouted. ‘We’ll follow.’
The light of a torch flashed in the opening. Then I heard footsteps on the stone stairway. ‘Quick!’ I said to Hilda. ‘Down you go.’
She stepped into the smoking gap and scrambled down. As I stood there holding the end of the ladder the last section of the monastery before the chapel fell in. The lava was right across the monks’ vineyards now, slithering in towards the base of the tower. I glanced behind me, towards Avin and the way out to safety, and my heart stood still. The lava streams that had swung past Santo Francisco on either side were curving in like pincers. I remembered how I’d seen this pincer movement from that other roof. But now it had developed. The two ends of the pincer were curved in towards Avin. One arm was already eating into the village. The other was only just outside it, following the slope of a valley.
‘Dick! Hurry, please.’
I realised suddenly I was sweating with fear. ‘I’m coming,’ I called. I swung myself on to the ladder. The air was choked with smoke, and wood still blazed at the foot of the ladder. I heard someone coughing below me, then my eyes were streaming and I fell suddenly into the charred wood. I put my hand out to break my fall and felt a searing burn on the palm. Then I was clear of the charred debris and on the stairway.
‘What happened?’
‘One of the rungs had burned through,’ I told her. I had my torch on now and we hurried after the others. We caught them up in the passage leading to the chapel. It was with a sense of wonderful relief that I climbed out of the passage into the robing room. I had had an awful feeling of claustrophobia there, picturing the lava slithering over us and imprisoning us for all time underground.
We went through into the dim light of the chapel just as Max came out of the archway leading to the refectory room, his arm upraised and his eyes showing white in his blackened face. ‘No good,’ he gasped. We stood there for a moment staring at him in a daze. I was dimly aware of Zina, her clothes torn and charred, and Racket with his chest naked under his jacket and matted with singed hair. He was supporting two other figures, whose bodies drooped. Hilda ran forward, clutching one of them and called hysterically, ‘Co se stalo, tati?’ It was Jan Tucek. I barely recognised him.
I think Hacket and I moved forward at the same moment. We came together in the doorway and stopped there, holding our arms up to shield us from the heat and staring in blank hopelessness. There was no passage any longer, no refectory room — no courtyard, no main archway. There was nothing there but a pile of broken stone and beyond it the lava heaped twenty, maybe thirty feet above us.
‘The abbot’s room,’ Max shouted suddenly. ‘There’s a window there.’
We scrambled back to the robing room in a body, choking the doorway. The window was high up, narrow, and of stained glass, leaded and barred. Hacket seized hold of a crozier. I saw Zina’s mouth open in horror at the sacrilege. But it was just the thing we wanted and Hacket was essentially a practical man. Max and I dragged chairs in from the chapel and piled them up while the American smashed the glass in. The lead was thin and bent easily. He smashed at the crossbar. The iron gave and broke under his blows. ‘Up you go, Countess. And you, Miss Tucek.’
They scrambled up. ‘Feet first,’ Max called. Zina was halfway through when she looked down. Then she cried out something and clung frantically to the stone frame of the window. ‘Jump!’ Hacket shouted at her.
‘I can’t,’ she screamed. ‘It’s a long—’ Her voice died in a fluttering scream as Hilda, who had seen more of the lava and realised the urgency, pushed her through. Tucek and Lemlin we got up that crazy scaffolding of chairs somehow. They seemed weak and in pain. Hacket went up with them and helped them through. ‘They’re drugged,’ Max explained. ‘And the bloody swine had them chained.’
‘Chained to the wall?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Imprisoned in the fetters they used for heretics. Fortunately they were rusty and we were able to smash some of the links. You go on, Hacket,’ he called. ‘Now you, Dick.’ I hesitated. ‘Go on, man. I’ll give you a hand up, if it’s your leg that’s worrying you.’
I scrambled up, caught hold of the stone of the window and slid my legs through. Max was right behind me. It happened as I clung there, steadying myself for the drop, getting my tin leg under me. There was a crumbling roar. I caught a glimpse of the roof cracking and falling and then I let go. I fell on my good leg and rolled sideways, conscious of a horrible jar on the stump of my left leg and hearing a thin scream that for a second I thought was myself screaming with pain.
But it wasn’t I who had screamed. It was Maxwell. He had his head half out of the window and his face was contorted to a frightening mask of pain. Above the window rose the dust cloud I’d seen so often in the past few hours. We were looking at a wall with nothing behind it. I shouted up to Maxwell. He didn’t say anything. Blood was running down his chin where he was biting through his lower lip as he heaved at the rest of his body. ‘It’s got my legs,’ he hissed down.
‘Try and pull’em clear,’ Hacket shouted. ‘We’ll catch you.’ He signalled to me to join him under the window. ‘Easy does it, fellow. Come on now. Get out of that and we’ll soon have you safely tucked up and comfortable.’
There was a sudden shifting of masonry and a cloud of dust swirled through the broken gap where Maxwell’s head was. ‘I’ve got one leg free,’ he hissed. ‘The other one’s broken, but I think I’ll—’ He screamed then and suddenly slumped over the sill of the window, his face running with sweat that dripped down on to us. It was only a momentary black-out for a second later he was hauling himself forward.
He fell head first on top of us, tumbling us in a heap. We scrambled up and dragged him clear of the wall. ‘We must get him to the car,’ Zina said.
We were on a path and I could see gates wide open leading to the street. ‘I’ll get the car,’ I said. ‘Hilda. Give me the rotor arm.’
She stared at me. Then her mouth fell open. ‘It — it was in my bag. I put it in my bag — the one you filled with petrol.’
I stared at her blankly. I felt dazed and sick with tiredness and the reaction.
‘You don’t need to worry about the cars,’ Hacket said. ‘There aren’t any cars. Come on. Help me get him up. We got to get away from the lava.’
‘No cars?’ Zina exclaimed. ‘But we’ve two cars here. We parked them—’ Then her eyes widened as she realised that the courtyard was now buried under the lava. She began to cry. ‘Get me out of here. Get me out of here can’t you. You brought me here. You made me come. Get me out—’ Hilda slapped her twice across the face with the flat of her hand. ‘You’re alive and you’re not hurt,’ she snapped. ‘Pull yourself together.’
Zina gulped and then her face suddenly seemed to smooth out. ‘Thank you — for doing that. I’m not frightened. It’s just my nerves. I’m a — a drug addict, and I haven’t—’ She turned away quickly. She was crying again.
‘Only a nurse would have known what to do, Miss Tucek,’ Hacket said. ‘You have been a nurse, haven’t you?’
Hilda turned to him. ‘Yes. During the war.’
‘Then see what you can do for this poor fellow.’ He nodded to Maxwell, who lay writhing in agony on the ground. ‘We’ll get him down to the street, clear of the lava first. Then you go to work on him while we rig up some sort of a stretcher.’
We got Maxwell and the other two to the street and went down as far as the piazza. We were safe there for the time being. There was a pile of bedding on the broken cart and we laid Maxwell on a mattress and covered him with some blankets and a quilt. Hilda said she thought she could set the leg temporarily at any rate. ‘What we need is some sort of a conveyance,’ Hacket said to me. ‘There’s those other two guys can’t walk far and we can’t carry Maxwell, let alone them. You look about all in and I’m not feeling so fresh myself.’
I told him about the other lava streams then and how they threatened our line of retreat through Avin. He nodded. ‘We’ll have to hustle.’
I suddenly remembered. ‘George!’ I said. ‘George may get us clear in time.’ I looked about the piazza. There was no sign of a living thing. ‘I wonder where he’s got to?’
‘Who’s George?’
‘My mascot. A mule I rescued from a building. I let him go just outside the monastery.’
‘He’s probably bolted out into the country by now. Come on. We got to find something.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’ll have bolted. He’s the sort of animal that likes the company of humans. I don’t think he’d go out of the village.’ I began calling.
‘How do you expect him to recognise a name you’ve only just given him?’ Hacket said irritably. ‘Come on. We’ve got to do something practical.’
But I was feeling obstinate. Perhaps it was because I was so darned tired. But I had a feeling that I’d saved that animal to meet just such an emergency. ‘He’s probably in a grocery store somewhere,’ Hacket said sarcastically.
‘A greengrocers.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Zina,’ I called. ‘Where’s the nearest greengrocers’?’
‘Greengrocers? What is?’
‘Where they sell vegetables.’
‘Oh. Fruttivendolo. There’s one just down that street there.’ She pointed past the pump to a narrow, dirty-looking thoroughfare. ‘The others have all gone I think.”
I crossed the piazza.. The fruiterers’ was the third shop on the left and there, sticking out of the doorway, was the bony rump of my mule. I called to him and he backed out and stood looking at me, some green stuff hanging from his mouth. I went to the shop. It was asparagus he’d been eating. I filled a basket with the neatly tied bundles and he followed me back towards the piazza, nuzzling at it. The last house in the street had big doors gaping wide and the smell of manure. It was a stables and inside I found collar and traces.
Hacket stared at us as we crossed the piazza. Then he began to laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’ I snapped at him.
‘Nothing. I was only thinking …‘He stopped laughing and shook his head. ‘Guess I thought the mule wasn’t real, that’s all. Now all we’ve got to do is clear this cart, hack the back part off and we’ve got a buggy.’
We set to with a will. The need for haste drove me and gave me strength. We pushed the pile of furniture overboard and then got to work with axe and saw which we got from a nearby shop. This was the first opportunity I’d had of questioning any of the others and I asked Hacket what had happened after they had entered the monastery.
‘We were had for suckers,’ he said. ‘That’s about all there is to it. We ought to have known considering the door wasn’t locked. But seeing those two poor devils chained to the wall — well, we just forgot everything else. And the next we knew the door had closed and the key was grating in the lock. The doctor fellow must have been waiting for us on the roof. The son-of-a-bitch had the nerve to wish us bon voyage. If I ever get my hands on the bastard…’ He swung the axe viciously.
It didn’t take long to smash the back half off the cart. The wood was old and rotten. Then we harnessed George and backed him in. By the time we’d finished, Hilda had set Max’s leg. ‘I’ve done the best I can for him,’ she said.
‘How is he?‘I asked.
‘Not good. He says much that I do not understand, but he knows what is happening.’
We lifted him on to the cart. Then we got the others on.
‘Can you drive?’ I asked Hacket.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve forgotten how. But I was an artilleryman in the first war.’
‘You carry on then,’ I said. ‘I never held a pair of reins in my life.’
He nodded. ‘Okay, then. Here we go.’ He clicked his tongue and flicked George’s back with the reins. The mule started forward at a walk. Hacket slapped the reins. Still the. animal ambled. I could have walked faster myself and I thought, My God, we’ll never get through Avin before the lava streams cut us off.
I think Zina had the same thought for she called out to Hacket, ‘Swear at him in Italian. He requires many curses to make him go fast.’
‘ Via!’ Hacket shouted.’ Via!’
‘Oh, you do not understand what I mean by curses.’ She moved over to him and took the reins. She jerked at them and then she began to scream curses at the wretched animal. She screamed them at the top of her voice, using gutter language, many of the words quite unrecognisable to me. George laid his ears back and then suddenly he had broken into a trot. ‘Ecco! Now we move.’
We must have presented an extraordinary spectacle if there’d been any one to see us, the cart swaying and slithering on the shifting surface of the ash and Zina standing there balancing herself to the swing of it like a charioteer, her black hair streaming in the wind. Behind us the mountain belched a red glare of farewell.
‘I think he has been very kind,’ Hilda said to me.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Vesuvius. We have had no more falls of hot stones.’
I nodded. ‘But pretty near everything else has happened.’
She smiled and put her hand over mine. ‘Now tell me what happen when you go off after that — that man?’
We were past the last of the houses now and in open country, forlorn-looking under its mantle of ash. I looked back at the remains of Santo Francisco and I knew I’d never in my life be so glad to be out of a place. Then I told her all that had happened on the roof of that house, and as I was talking I was looking at Jan Tucek. He was barely recognisable. He looked like an old man and he met my gaze with eyes that were dull and lifeless as though he had suffered too much. His companion — Lemlin — a big man with a round baldish head and china-blue eyes was the same.
When I had finished Hilda said, ‘You have been lucky, Dick.’
I nodded. ‘The devil of it is that swine got away with your father’s things.’
‘What does that matter?’ she said sharply. ‘You are alive. That is what matters. And I do not think he will get far — not now.’
‘Have you found out what happened to your father?’ I asked her.
Her eyes clouded. ‘Yes — a little. He will not tell me all. He and the general letectva landed at Milan as arranged. They were met by this man Sansevino and another man. They have pistols and they tie Lemlin and my father up and then they fly to the villa where we find you this evening. They land in a vineyard of very young bushes. The next night my father is brought up to the monastery, chained to the wall in that terrible tower like a convict and then tortured. When this Sansevino learn that my father has not what he wants and that you have it, then he leave. An old man called Agostino bring them food every day. That is all. They see no one else until Maxwell and the Contessa arrive.’ The grip of her fingers tightened on my hand. ‘I think he will wish me to say he is sorry to have involve you in this business. He will tell you himself when he is recovered.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m only sorry—’
‘Do not reproach yourself please. And I am sorry I was so stupid that time in Milan and again in Naples. I did not realise then. …” Her voice trailed away and she dropped her eyes. ‘You have been wonderful, Dick.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I was scared stiff. That man who posed as Shirer—’
‘I do understand. Max told me all about what happened to you at the Villa d’Este.’
‘I see.’
‘You do not see,’ she said angrily. ‘It makes what you have done—’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I cannot put it into words.’
The blood was suddenly singing in my veins. She believed in me. She wasn’t like Alice. She believed in me. She offered hope for the future. I gripped her hand. The grey eyes that stared up at me were suddenly full of tears. She looked away quickly and where the dust had been rubbed from her skin I saw the freckles reaching to the neat shape of her ears. I looked past her to the gaunt remains of Santo Francisco and the mountain behind it with the great belching column of smoke and the broad bands of the lava and I was glad I’d been there. It was as though I’d been cleansed by fire, as though the anger of the mountain had burned all the fear out of me and left me sure of myself again.
‘Stop! Stop!’ It was Hacket and he was shouting at Zina. She tugged on the reins and the American jumped down. … He ran back up the road and picked up something lying in the ash at the side.
‘It’s the little boy,’ Hilda said.
‘What little boy?‘I asked.
‘The little boy who was sucking his thumb by the fountain when we drove into Santo Francisco.’
Hacket handed the small bundle up to Hilda. She took the little fellow in her arms. His brown eyes opened wide in sudden fear, then he smiled and closed them again, snuggling close to her breast.
‘He’s probably lousy,’ Hacket said. ‘But you can get cleaned up later.’
He climbed in and we started off again. I caught Maxwell’s eyes looking up at me. His lower lip was in shreds where he’d bitten it. ‘How much farther?’ he asked. I scarcely recognised his voice.
I looked past Zina’s skirt along the road ahead. I could see the entrance to the villa now and beyond it, down the straight, tree-lined ribbon of the road I caught a glimpse of Avin lying in a huddle under a cloud of dust. ‘Not far,’ I said. I didn’t tell him a great sea of black lava was reaching into the village. Away to the left, beyond the villa, the air shimmered with the heat of the other lava flow. It ran past the back of the villa and on down towards Avin. On either side of us was lava — nothing but lava. ‘How’s the leg?’ I asked.
‘Pretty bad.’
The dust and sweat on his face had caked into a mask that split and cracked as he moved his lips.
‘I wish we had some morphia,’ Hilda whispered to me.
I glanced up at Zina. ‘There’s some at the villa,’ I said.
Maxwell must have heard, for he said, ‘No time. Must get through before we’re trapped by the lava. I’ll last out all right.’ The cart jolted violently in a rut and the beginnings of a scream was jerked out of his throat. He clutched at Hilda, catching hold of her knee. She took his hand and held it as the cart rocked and swayed and he writhed and bit at his lip in pain.
Then we were entering Avin and suddenly it was hot and the air was full of dust. A smell of sulphur hung over the village. It was as though we had returned to Santo Francisco.
The cart came to a halt. I heard Zina say, ‘What do we do now?’ and I looked past her at the narrow village street that had been full of children and carts when we’d come through the previous day. It was utterly deserted now and it finished abruptly in a wall of lava. I don’t remember feeling any sense of surprise at finding our way out blocked. I think I’d known all along we’d find it like this. There’d been such a narrow gap when I’d looked towards Avin from the top of that tower. I heard Zina sobbing with vexation and Hacket saying, ‘Well, we’ll just have to find a way round, that’s all.’ And I sat there with a sense of complete resignation.
‘Come on, Farrell. We got to find a way round.’ Hacket was shaking me.
‘I don’t think there is a way round,’ I said. ‘Remember what I told you back in Santo Francisco? The two streams have converged.’
‘Come on, man. Pull yourself together. We can’t just sit here.’
I nodded and got out of the cart. The stump of my leg was very painful when I put my weight on it. The lacerated skin seemed to have stiffened and as I moved I could feel the grit working into the flesh again. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. All I wanted to do was to sit still and wait for the end. I felt resigned and at peace. Hilda believed in me. It wouldn’t be so bad going like that with someone believing in me. I was very, very tired.
‘This lava flow is coming in from the right.’ Hacket’s voice seemed far away, almost unreal. ‘We’ll just have to work along the flank of it until we can find a way round.’
I rubbed my hand over my face. ‘There isn’t a Way round,’ I said wearily.
He caught hold of my shoulders and shook me. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he snapped. ‘If we don’t find a way round we’ve had it. That lava flow behind us will push its way through Santo Francisco. Then we’ll find ourselves driven into a smaller and smaller area. We’ll be slowly burned up. We got to find a way through.’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘That’s better.’ He turned to the others, still huddled on the cart. ‘You wait here. We’ll be back soon.’ They looked like refugees, a cartload of derelict humanity fleeing before the wreck of war. How many times had I see them — on the roads in France, in Germany, here in Italy? Only they weren’t fleeing from war. I glanced back again at the dim, smoking ruins of Santo Francisco and the mountain hanging over it, spilling death out of its sides, belching it into the sunless air, and I found myself thinking again of the end of Sodom and Gomorrah.
‘Come on,’ Hacket said.
Hilda smiled at me. ‘Good luck!’ she said.
I turned then with sudden, violent determination. I had to find a way through. There just had to be a way. Seeing her sitting there, calm and confident in me, the little bambino asleep in her arms, I felt there had to be a future. I couldn’t let her die up here in this world of utter desolation. If I had to tear a way through the lava with my bare hands I’d got to break a way through into the future for her and her father.
We went down towards the lava, found a track that ran to the left and started along it. Then Hacket stopped and I saw there was a man coming towards us. He wore no jacket and his shirt and trousers were burnt and torn. ‘You speak Italian, don’t you?’ Hacket said. ‘Find out whether there’s a way through.’
I limped forward. ‘Can we get through?’ I asked him.
The man stopped. He stood staring at me for a moment and then came running towards us. Something about the stockiness of his build and the square set of his ash-caked jaw seemed familiar. ‘It’s Farrell, isn’t it?’ he asked in English.
‘Yes, but—’ And then I knew who it was. ‘Reece!’
He nodded. ‘Where’s Maxwell?’ He was panting as he stopped in front of us and his eyes looked wild.
‘Back on the road,’ I said. ‘He’s hurt. Is there a way through?’
He brushed his hand through his matted hair. ‘No. We’re completely cut off.’