Arcadia Awakens (40 page)

She still understood very little of what had happened. Florinda must have spent the afternoon driving to Syracuse with her men. Which left the question of just how much her aunt knew about the Dallamanos and their find on the seafloor. Was there a link between Lamias and Panthera, between Alcantaras and Carnevares, one that both clans desperately wanted to keep secret at any price?

More and more, she was realizing that she could take only one step at a time. The first was Florinda herself. Or alternatively—and it was hard to admit this—Rosa’s own sister. All she had seen was a Lamia, a member of her dynasty. It hadn’t necessarily been Florinda. And yet…

“Something’s burning,” said Alessandro.

Farther up the slope a fire was blazing, hidden every once in a while by the trees, then flaring again.

When they drove into the front courtyard, the basin of the fountain was aflame like a torch or a pyre, the fire bathing the facade of the palazzo in its glowing light, bringing the statues in their niches to life.

Alessandro drove slowly over to the blazing fire. “What is that?”

“Birds’ nests.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “Who’s burning something here in the middle of the night?”

“Well, who would hate birds enough to have their nests knocked out of the trees?” Florinda was a mystery to her. From the start there had been an invisible wall between them.

The flames blazed high, a crackling signal fire on the dark mountainside. You could probably see it from miles away.

The same thought occurred to both of them. They looked westward over the olive trees, out into the moonlit landscape, but saw only the tiny lights of farms and villages far away.

At the entrance to the inner courtyard, Rosa said, “I’m getting out here. Will you wait for me?”

He pointed to the revolver. “What are you going to do with that?”

She weighed the gun indecisively in her hand, felt awkward, and almost left it in the car. But then she pushed it into the waistband of her jeans. The cold metal pressed uncomfortably against her hipbone.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, climbing out. Sparks flew above the front courtyard, and the air was filled with the smell of burnt branches and leaves.

“Rosa,” he began, and she guessed what was coming next. “I can’t stay here. You saw what happened. You saw
me
. And there will be others worse than me at this hunt. Cesare is only one of them.” He shook his head. “I have to go there alone.”

She took a deep breath. Wondered how she could stop him, and knew at once that he wouldn’t let her. In his place, she would probably have done the same.

The engine roared as he suddenly stepped on the gas. The door slid away from Rosa’s hand. Dust and pebbles spurted up. The car moved forward in a curve, completed a circuit of the fiery fountain, and raced away toward the drive.

She stood motionless, watching him go. He was driving much too fast.

About fifty yards away the brake lights came on—then the car stopped. Her body tensed. For a moment she thought of following him. But Alessandro was only closing the passenger door from the inside, and he drove away again.

If the zookeeper does know where the next hunt is to take place, then we’ll hear about it, too, first thing tomorrow at the latest
, he had told her in Syracuse. But now she wondered if the captain of the yacht hadn’t already told him on the phone. If so, Alessandro must have known all along, and yet he hadn’t mentioned it to her. Because he wanted to
protect
her, for God’s sake!

Behind her, glowing drifts of sparks rose to the night sky. “You stupid idiot,” she whispered.

The rear lights of the car finally disappeared behind the olive trees. Rosa turned, hurried through the heat of the flames to the gate, and entered the dark inner courtyard.

“Zoe? Florinda?”

There was a melancholy silence in the halls and corridors of the palazzo, as well as the charred smell of the fire. Rosa’s footsteps echoed back from the walls. As she explored the rooms, she didn’t need to switch on any of the chandeliers; it was never entirely dark in this house. Lamps and wall-mounted lights were always on in some corner or other.

There was no one here. The salons and living rooms were deserted. Not a soul up in the bedrooms. Florinda’s study, too, was full of silence and shadows.

Neither Zoe nor Florinda was back from Syracuse. Maybe they were already on their way to the tribunal. Or had that, too, been just a lie to lead her astray?

She checked the bathrooms, the library, even the kitchen with its open range. A draft of air made the hanging pots and pans clink. Rosa jumped, startled not so much by the sound as by herself. Her hand went to the revolver as quickly as if she knew how to use it.

Finally she thought of looking in the locked cellars. But even as she stood indecisively in the first-floor corridor, fighting down rising panic, she heard a buzzing sound behind her.

The vibrating alarm of a cell phone.

“You?”

It was only the outline of a figure, but she recognized him at once. Not until he moved into the light cast by a table lamp did she also see his eye patch, and the white ponytail hanging over his left shoulder like a bunch of cobwebs.

Salvatore Pantaleone, the boss of bosses, head of the Sicilian Mafia. He gestured to her to be patient. Instead of addressing her, he spoke to the cell phone. “Did you recognize him?… No, go ahead, do just as he says … but make a note of the number… Yes, of course,
the number
!”

He ended the call, put the cell phone away, and smiled.

“I thought you didn’t use technological stuff,” she said.

“The circumstances leave me no choice. At the moment everything has to move very fast.”

The way she took the safety catch off the revolver must have told him how unfamiliar she was with guns.

“Rosa, Rosa, Rosa,” he said softly. “You walk into this house with a weapon, but you don’t keep it ready to use. You search all the rooms and corridors, but you never look in the corners properly. And you come here all by yourself, although you know what Florinda has done, and that she wants to make Zoe her heiress and dispense with you.”

He went over to an armchair, an antique with gilded wooden feet and red velvet cushions, and dropped into it. Then his one eye examined her with its keen gaze.

“Florinda and Zoe aren’t here,” he continued. “They went to Syracuse yesterday. From there they’ll be driving on to the place where the tribunal is to be held.”

Ah, she thought, both of them?

“You made it easy for them,” he went on. “Florinda is cunning; you should have worked that out by now. And Zoe, well, poor Zoe is putty in your aunt’s hands. Florinda enticed her to Sicily with promises of wealth and luxury, and even now that she knows it all, she still hopes the money can make her happy. That’s the most tragic part of it, don’t you think? Florinda is obsessed, just like her mother, your grandmother. But Zoe, credulous, malleable, ever-exploited Zoe—she just chases her dream of happiness.” The supercilious note gave his remarks a caustic undertone. “Florinda has promised your sister that she will succeed her. But Zoe has never understood what it means to be head of a Mafia clan
and
of an Arcadian dynasty. She’s a pretty girl, she’s not stupid, but she’s very naive.”

“What do you want from me?” asked Rosa.

“First, your confidence.”

“And you think lying in wait for me in the dark and saying horrible things about my sister is the best way to get it?”

“Those horrible things, as you call them—you know yourself that they’re the truth. You saw through Zoe long ago, her weaknesses, her volatility. If anyone knows that she’d never make an even halfway good clan leader, it’s you. Zoe, among all the other
capi
of the families? Come off it, Rosa, you might as well throw her into a pool full of sharks and see what’s left when they’ve finished with her.”

“Does Florinda know that you’re against her plans?”

“Why, of course! She’s still devoted to me, but she is also full of arrogance. She refuses to admit that she’s wrong. She thinks she has plenty of time to make something of Zoe—to turn your sister into something she will never be. You, on the other hand, Rosa, have exactly what it takes.”

She laughed bitterly.

“You are not afraid. You’ve known the dark side of fate, and it didn’t break your spirit, it made you grow. You are
perfect
, Rosa. There’s still a lot for you to learn, but the prerequisites are all there. You’re much more like your father than Zoe is, and that may be what Florinda dislikes so much. She has never forgiven him for turning his back on the clan for your mother. Maybe she’s afraid you might do something similar.”

Her mouth was dry, her gums as raw as sandpaper. She felt sick, exhausted. And here he was talking drivel about growth and perfection. “You’re crazy.”

Quick as lightning, he was out of the chair, and a few steps brought him right up to her. She was still holding the gun, but they both knew she wasn’t going to fire it. At their first meeting in the forest, he had hit her, but he didn’t try that this time. He simply looked at her with his one bright, watchful eye.

“Oh, I don’t mind if you call me names. Zoe never did. You have a will of your own, you’re a fighter. You’ll learn to show respect, and you’ll learn much else as well. You’ll find that I’m a good teacher.”

He was burly, but no taller than Rosa, and massive as he might be, he was old and worn out. She wasn’t afraid of him—so long as he stayed in human form. But Salvatore Pantaleone was also an Arcadian, and she wondered again what kind of animal slumbered inside him.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, “since I did anything but pull the strings from behind the scenes. I’ve killed men with my own hands, but that was decades ago. Later, my orders were enough by themselves to bring misfortune to others. But they’ve also made many people rich and influential. Ask any of the
capi
, and they’ll all admit that I have led Cosa Nostra into a brilliant new age.”

She tried to hit him where she hoped it would hurt. “So why do some of them secretly support the Hungry Man? Why are they waiting for him to come back to Sicily from his prison cell and take power again? Why do those men hate you so much that they’d rather follow someone who’s regarded by everyone as a monster?”

He turned, moved a few steps away, and stopped in front of a painting. It was a Sicilian landscape full of sheep and bustling, cheerful peasants.

“What this picture shows was never really true,” he said. “Nothing is what it seems. If you could see behind the laughter of these figures, you would recognize anxiety, fear of the coming night. And if you could look past the trees and farmhouses and church towers, you would find traces of us everywhere. The Arcadian dynasties have ruled the Mediterranean since time immemorial. They have set out from its coasts to go all over the world, gradually making realms old and new subject to them. These ludicrous peasants working in the field, with their red-cheeked wives and grubby children—they were never anything but our prey.”

He turned back to Rosa, but her eyes were lingering on the painting as if it had suddenly opened a window into the past.

“But times have changed,” he went on. “Back then we hunted them in packs, we ate their cattle and tore their sons and daughters apart. Today we don’t rule them through fear alone; we do it through our wealth, our ingenuity, our knowledge of their weaknesses. We draw new strength from that, and anyone who denies it is a fool … but of course there are always some who don’t see that. Some who mourn for the past. The Hungry Man is a living promise—a promise of a return to the old times, ancient customs and morals, unlimited killing and greed. He tried that approach in the past and failed, and over his decades in prison his hatred for human beings in general has grown even greater. He says he will give whatever they want to those who thirst for the blood of slaves, who hunger to dig claws and teeth into defenseless flesh once more.
That
is why they are preparing in secret for his return. Not because I didn’t lead them well.”

The revolver shook in Rosa’s hand. She was clutching it firmly, as if the gun could give her the strength she would need not to fall for his powers of persuasion. She wanted to show him that what he said wasn’t getting through, that none of it meant anything at all to her.

But of course she knew better. So did he.

Pantaleone embodied the Arcadian dynasties of the present, rich and powerful in the form of Cosa Nostra and other organizations that had carved up the world between them. But the Hungry Man stood for the barbarity of the past, when other human beings had been fair game, and the Arcadians had ruled openly, wreaking havoc. An era of wild beasts.