Rogue Spy

Thirty-eight

The family gave her a small, pretty room at the back of the house. The clothing bundled onto the seat of the chair would fit somebody about twelve and the handwriting in the half-finished letter on the desk was the hand of a young girl.

She told them, “I don’t mean to push someone—is it Maria?—from her room. I can sleep on a trundle bed somewhere.”

“For this first little time, you are guest as well as kinswoman.” Great-Aunt Fortunata herself stuffed a feather pillow into a clean pillowcase.

“Maria is beside herself with excitement to give you her room. ‘Puffed up,’ as they say in English.” Aunt Grazia, comfortable and maternal, made the bed and pulled a coverlet over the top. “I sent her to the park with a clutch of children so you may bathe in peace. The house will be quieter for a while.”

“Sleep if you can,” Aunt Fortunata said. “Sleep through supper. There will be food in the kitchen even in the middle of the night.”

They keep feeding me. “I’ll be fine.” A fire the size of a spaniel dog burned in the grate, lit there as much for company as for warmth. Tea was made and set upon the table. A kettle vibrated on the hob. At the edge of the mantelpiece, little cakes were neatly stacked on a plate. There seemed nothing they would not do to welcome her here.

“The boys will be back late,” said Aunt Grazia, “clattering in, talking at the top of their voices, and starving. You need not worry about waking the household. They will do that.”

By “the boys” she meant Tonio, Giomar, and Alessandro, who’d gone out to wander the neighborhood of Semple Street in picturesque guises.

“I won’t even hear them.” Her heart and mind were stretched tight as twisted string, yet she must sleep. She was so desperately tired. Maybe, in dreams, she’d see a way to close her fist around the Merchant and snatch the human bait from the trap he would set.

I renounced the lessons I learned in the Coach House. I resolved that I would not kill. I would not spy. Maybe I became too ordinary.

The curtain at the window was pulled back to show sunset, a high wooden wall, and the three large sheds in the complicated kitchen yard. The roof of the nearest shed was directly below the window, a nothing to get to. Perhaps young Maria wriggled out this window and went wandering London at night. There was a certain look of devilment in Maria’s eye that argued the possibility.

Aunt Grazia held up a night shift. “You’re much of a size, you and Amalia. We’re making this for her trousseau, but there’s plenty of time to make her another. The embroidery is not quite finished.”

“Because Lucia does not tend to her needle.” But Aunt Fortunata sounded indulgent.

Aunt Grazia draped the night shift over the back of a chair, absentmindedly stroking it smooth. “Amalia has a blue dress she will lend you for tomorrow. It will be most becoming. And for Monday, a dark green, inconspicuous and easy to run in. Would you like a gun? A second gun, I mean.”

“One cannot carry too many guns when going to meet an enemy.” Fortunata plumped the pillow on the bed and centered it carefully. “There.”

“Let me lend you one of mine,” Grazia said. “A lovely little Austrian cuff pistol my oldest brought back from the battle of Millesimo.”

“After having been told to keep well away from the fighting.” Fortunata clucked her tongue. “Headstrong.”

“The payroll funds were simply too tempting.” Aunt Grazia laid a round ball of soap in the dish beside the towels. “She is Baldoni, after all.”