Street of the Five Moons

Chapter Nine

PIETRO HAD BOASTED that the night lights of the garden made them as bright as day. He hadn’t exaggerated by much. There were patches of shadow, but the lights made our job of getting out of the gardens about a thousand percent harder.

A cute little dangling lantern was practically on top of us. We moved away from it into the concealment of a giant rhododendron, and sat there musing aloud.

‘How many of them are there?’ I asked. ‘The bad guys, I mean.’

‘I know what you mean. Not many of the servants are in on the plot, but that doesn’t matter. They will all be looking for us, you can bank on that. The Boss will have concocted some plausible story to explain why we must be apprehended. And,’ he added, ‘don’t get your hopes up. Some of them will be armed. We won’t know which ones until they shoot at us. What’s the quickest way out of here? I haven’t explored the grounds as thoroughly as you have.’

I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I think better with my eyes closed. The plan of the gardens was fairly clear in my mind.

‘The quickest way isn’t the safest,’ I said, after a while. ‘But if we cross the English garden and pass the Fountain of the Turtles, we’ll be in the rose garden. After that it isn’t far to the wall . . .’

My voice trailed off in dismay as I remembered that wall. It was twelve feet high, with barbed wire on top.

‘We’ll worry about the wall when we come to it,’ John said. ‘The way my adrenaline is pumping, I could probably get over it in a standing jump.’

I really hated to leave that rhododendron. It had gorgeous purple flowers and lots of nice thick foliage. We went scuttling along behind the wall, which ended in an open, trellised summerhouse. We skirted this and struck out across the grounds. I was thankful it was spring, when the grass was lush and soft, and there were no fallen leaves underfoot to crackle.

The English garden was enclosed by a high hedge of boxwood. This particular plant gets very thick and high when it is old. It is sometimes used for mazes because it is so difficult to break through. Keeping in its shadow, we found a place where the hedge was a little thinner, and peered through.

The garden was one of Pietro’s favourites. He had not stinted on the lights. One look and I knew it would be impossible to cut directly across. It would be like walking onto a lighted stage.

We didn’t cross the English garden. We circumnavigated it, crawling on our stomachs next to the roots of the boxwood. I do not recommend that means of locomotion. But we saw no one, and when we reached the entrance to the long avenue, I thought we had it made. Tall, pointed cypresses lined the way like living pillars. There was plenty of shade under the trees, and the low lights lining the path did not reach far into the shadows. The avenue sloped down, following the contours of the hillside. We made good time. We were almost at the end of it, near the rose garden, when I heard a sound that startled me so much I tripped over a petunia. It was a dog barking.

‘Bloodhounds!’ I gasped.

‘Don’t be an idiot.’ John had stopped to listen. ‘It’s worse than bloodhounds. It’s Caesar.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Oh, yes. He’s the only dog on the premises. You would have to be an animal lover, wouldn’t you? Hurry.’

We plunged down the hillside, abandoning caution in the need for haste. Caesar could mean big trouble for us. Bloodhounds would follow a trail out of a sense of duty, but good old Caesar would be anxious to find his buddy who had fed him the pâté and the smoked oysters, and rolled around on the grass with him. Dogs have long memories for things like that, bless their hearts. They also have excellent senses of smell.

When we reached the bottom of the avenue, I veered left, towards the rose garden. John’s hand closed on my arm and yanked me around.

‘What the hell,’ I began.

‘Forget the rose garden, we need water. Running water . . . Get that damn dog off the trail . . .’ He was panting, and I didn’t blame him.

There was plenty of water. However, the fountains were magnificently illuminated. We splashed recklessly through one of the largest of them, tripping over nymphs and water gods. John slipped on the wet stone and clutched at one of the nymphs to keep his balance. The affectionate tableau was so funny I started to laugh. A spray of water hit me in the mouth, and the laugh turned to a gargle, which won me a hateful look from John as he untangled himself from the outstretched marble arms. He was too out of breath to comment, which was probably just as well.

We climbed over the parapet of the fountain and rushed on. I had completely lost my sense of direction, but John seemed to know where he was going, so I followed him, spurred on by the sound of joyful barking somewhere in the distance. But when I saw what he had in mind, I stopped dead.

One of the showpieces of the Villa d’Este is the Avenue of a Hundred Fountains. Each ‘fountain’ is a simple jet of water, but en masse they look impressive, lined up as they are in a long basin. Not to be outdone, Pietro’s ancestor had constructed an avenue of two hundred fountains. From where we stood at the bottom of the slope, looking up, the fine spray seemed to mount straight up into the sky. John took a long running jump, landed flat, and made swimming motions.

I don’t know what was the matter with me. Hysteria, perhaps. I laughed so hard I had to hang on to a carved dolphin to keep from falling.

John pulled himself to his feet, clutched another dolphin – the fountain was lined with them, all the way up – and glared at me.

‘The salmon do it,’ I gurgled. ‘Upstream. To spawn.’

He was streaming with water, from his soaked hair to the bottoms of his pants. He flung out his arm, his forefinger extended.

‘Swim, damn it!’ he shouted, and started to climb.

The rush of falling water almost drowned out his voice, but I got the idea. I climbed into the basin.

We didn’t swim. It would have been impossible, the fountain was only three or four feet deep and about six wide, and the water poured down like a flood. It would have been hard enough to climb without the current dragging at our feet, but we did it, thanks to the dolphins. The two hundred fountains of water poured from their mouths, and there was one of them every three or four feet, so we were able to pull ourselves along by means of them. I wish I had a movie of that performance. Even then I was occasionally convulsed with laughter at the sight of John’s drenched figure doggedly dragging itself forwards just ahead of me.

We got about halfway up without being seen. I had gotten into my stride by then – step, slip, grab the next dolphin, step, slip, grab – and was fully prepared to keep on doing the same thing till we reached the top. We were still some distance away from that goal when John took a giant step up onto the head of one of the dolphins, caught the top of the wall, and pulled himself up. Squatting there like a dank frog, he extended a hand towards me.

‘I was just beginning to enjoy myself,’ I said mildly, as he yanked me up beside him. ‘Where now?’

He shoved me off the wall.

I landed in a clump of azaleas. If you think azaleas aren’t prickly, try falling into one. Before I could start swearing, he landed next to me and slapped his hand over my mouth.

Then I heard Caesar. He was hot on the trail, too close for comfort. The first fountain hadn’t confused him at all. We could only hope that he would lose our scent at the bottom of the Two Hundred Fountains complex, and that, if the men who guided him were smart enough to realize we had taken to the water, they would try casting about at the top of the slope.

In the meantime, it behooved us to make tracks. We did so, back down the hill we had climbed with such effort. It was not until we had gone some distance, and Caesar’s excited barks had taken on a frantic note, that I realized where we were going. Our best route now was through the garden of the monsters. To avoid it would double the distance to the outer wall and would necessitate passing through some of the most open areas of the grounds.

In the smoky green and purple lights the monster garden was straight out of Lovecraft. The great hollow head was lighted from within by a powerful red lamp; its slitted eyes glowed like those of a demon out of hell, and the fangs looked as if they had been dipped in blood. John took my hand. His was wet, but it felt warm and hard and comforting. I don’t think he was trying to comfort me, though. He was just as scared as I was. I heard his teeth chattering. We were soaking wet, but it was a nice warm night.

Some of the smaller monsters weren’t illuminated, and I would have fallen over a baby dragon if John hadn’t been holding on to me. The adult dragon, which had come so close to running me down, was ahead of us, looking unpleasantly lifelike in a rippling lavender searchlight. Then I heard a sound behind us, near the great guardian head.

A flashlight beam sprayed out. Its white light seemed sane and normal compared to the ghastly tints of the other lights, but I could have done without it. Simultaneously, without discussing it aloud, we both dropped to the ground. Then something really unpleasant happened. From the opposite end of the garden, near the exit, another flashlight appeared.

I invoked my Maker in a one-word whisper, and was promptly shushed by John. My whisper could not have been heard; someone spoke at that precise moment. His voice was soft, but I could hear him quite clearly. He was that close.

‘Alberto qui.’

The other man identified himself.

‘Bassano. Have you seen them?’

‘No. I have just come from the back gates.’

Bassano let out a string of lurid curses.

‘Get back there, fool. The gates must be guarded.’

‘What about this garden?’

‘I’ll have a look around. Quickly, now.’

I crouched there trying to compress myself into a smaller piece of air as the flashlight moved in closer. The second man had left . . . And so had John. He had let go of my hand when we fell flat; he must have slipped away during the conversation between the two men.

I had just enough time to think bitter thoughts about him when the stone dragon began to move. I jumped a good three inches. So did Bassano; I saw the flashlight beam shoot skyward before he got it under control. He swore again – sheer bravado, his voice was tremulous. I understood his feelings. The moving statues had looked ghastly enough in broad daylight. Bathed in a lurid glow, with shadows slipping over their stony hides like muscles twitching, they were like creatures out of a feverish nightmare.

They were all moving, now, the rusty mechanisms grating and groaning. I was debating which way to go when I saw John hugging the massive flank of the dragon, which was swinging on a curving course in my general direction. As it rolled out of the glow of the purple searchlight, its rear end was deeply shadowed. I wouldn’t have seen John if he hadn’t beckoned urgently.

Bassano and his flashlight were no longer visible. I think he ran. So did we, as soon as the dragon’s ponderous path took it near the rear gate. There was only one more garden, and then came a flight of stairs, with an artificial waterfall flowing down them, before we reached the lower terrace and the wall. But we had to hurry. As soon as Bassano got his wits back, he would know who had started the monsters moving.

I thought of mentioning this to John, but decided I had better save my breath for more important matters, such as running away. He was splashing merrily down the middle of the stairway, through the waterfall, like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. He was built like a dancer, slim and wiry, but at that moment his excellent physique was only too visible in the amber lights that flooded the fountain. He had abandoned secrecy for speed, which made sense; if our pursuers didn’t know exactly where we were, they knew where we had just been.

John was well ahead of me when we got to the bottom of the stairs and raced across the terrace. The wall loomed up ahead, the tangle of barbed wire on top looking like delicate black lace against the moonlit sky. There were trees to right and left, but not directly ahead. John decided to go right. He made a quick turn. His wet shoes slipped on the flagstones, his feet went out from under him, and he fell forwards with a splat like a large flounder being landed. At the same moment I heard voices raised in excited comment at the top of the stairs.

I skidded to a stop beside John and hauled him to his feet.

‘The heroine is the one who is supposed to fall over her clumsy feet,’ I said sweetly.

I’m sure he would have had a snappy answer if the fall had not knocked the wind out of him. He hung on to me for a few moments, whooping for breath. Then he headed for the nearest tree and started climbing, without waiting to see whether I was following.

They were flowering trees of some kind, in full blossom, and the scent was sweet as perfume. Velvety petals brushed my face and arms as I climbed.

John was above me, agile as a monkey. I had to admire his well-developed sense of self-preservation, which was uncluttered by any taint of old-fashioned chivalry. He was heavier than I was, though, and he was stuck, about six feet from the top of the wall. The branches were getting too fragile to support him.

‘Get out of the way,’ I hissed. ‘I’m lighter; maybe I can – ’

He didn’t say anything, but I stopped talking, because the voices and the flashlights were coming down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, they would fan out to right and left, and if they had the elementary intelligence to shine their lights up into the trees, we were sitting ducks – stuck, like ripe fruit in the skinny branches.

A fragrant cascade of satiny petals showered down on my upturned face. John seemed to be having a slight fit up there. Then I realized he was struggling out of his jacket – no mean task, wet as it was. He stood upright, swaying perilously, and threw first the jacket and then himself onto the top of the wall.

I climbed up to the limb he had vacated and caught his hand. He let out a smothered yelp.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. I didn’t bother to lower my voice. The boys in the background were making considerable noise.

‘You just pulled me down onto the barbed wire,’ said John. It had to be John, because he was the only one up there, but I would never have recognized his voice, he was gritting his teeth so hard. ‘Damn it, use your feet! Haven’t you ever done any climbing? I can’t possibly drag your not inconsiderable weight – ’

I got my elbows over the edge of the wall, where his jacket had padded the spikes on the wire, and hauled myself up. The pursuers were on the terrace, baying like a pack of wolves or a bunch of US congressmen debating the latest Washington scandal.

‘All right,’ John said, as I balanced precariously on the edge of the wall. His voice was almost calm now. ‘Take it slowly. The wire doesn’t quite cover the entire surface; there is a good two inches free on either side. Step over. No, not there, a little to your left. Good. It’s about eight feet down. The ground is higher on the other side. Lower yourself by your hands and drop.’

His hand on my elbow steadied me as I stepped high over the barrier of wire. I was concentrating so hard on avoiding the barbs that I was only dimly aware of the brouhaha going on in the background, not ten yards away. The searchers had gathered in a gesticulating group on the terrace. Several of them had flashlights, but at that moment they had succumbed to one of the weaknesses to which the engaging Latin temperament is susceptible. They were arguing about what to do next. Some of them wanted to go right, some left; one cool-headed character suggested they split up, but he was shouted down by the others, who were enjoying the argument too much to settle it sensibly. They were waving their flashlights around as they talked – no real Italian can converse without using his hands – and the beams reminded me of old World War II movies, with the anti-aircraft beacons crisscrossing the dark sky.

Sooner or later one of those beams was bound to find us. It was pure bad luck that it happened about sixty seconds too soon.

I was hanging by my hands, but my toes were dug into a crack in the outer surface of the wall. I couldn’t quite bring myself to let go. John said it was eight feet down, but what did he know? There might be a bottomless abyss under my feet. It was dark down there.

John was bending over me. My right hand still clutched his wrist. He must have been squatting on the barbed wire, because his admonitions to me were interspersed with profane comments. All of a sudden his ruffled hair lit up like a pop-art halo, and light focused on his face. His eyes widened and his lips parted, but I didn’t hear what he said. It was drowned out by the sound of the shot.

I let go of the wall, but I did not let go of John. I dragged him with me as I fell, and if he yelled when the barbed wire raked across his body I didn’t hear it; the crowd on the terrace was shooting up a storm. If I hadn’t known better, I could have sworn they had an automatic rifle or a machine gun.

It was about nine feet down, as a matter of fact – three feet below the soles of my shoes. I landed with scarcely a jar, then John fell on top of me. We went down in a confused tangle and continued to roll. The slope must have been almost 45 degrees, and every rock on it left a bruise on my aching body. There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. Naturally, we rolled into it. If there was a natural obstacle on that hillside that we missed, I would be surprised.

I had been holding on to John, probably out of some vicious urge to use him as a buffer, so we ended up in the same place. In the stream. I don’t mean to disparage the stream. It was a nice stream. Shallow, with a soft, muddy bed, and quite warm. I lay there with the water rippling gently across my bruised body till I got my breath back. Off in the distance there were lights, and people yelling. Somebody’s head was pressing down on my diaphragm.

‘John?’ I said.

No answer.

‘I hope it’s you down there,’ I said. ‘Because if it isn’t, who is it?’

The head moved feebly. Then a disembodied voice said,

‘Water. More water. It must have some deeper meaning. In Freudian terms – ’

‘Freud be damned. It’s a stream. We’re in it. John, we made it; we escaped from the estate.’

‘That’s nice.’ The weight on my diaphragm increased.

‘We got out, but we’re still in danger. I think we had better move on.’

We had come a long way down. The moving lights at the top of the hill looked far away, the voices sounded like insects buzzing. But I was not deceived.

‘John,’ I said. ‘Some of those men have guns.’

‘Too true.’ John sat up. ‘You weren’t joking, were you? We really are in a stream. I have never seen such a damp country. The English climate is considered wet, but this – ’

‘It was the dog,’ I said. ‘We could have avoided some of the water if it hadn’t been for the dog. John, I am worried about Caesar. That Bruno is no fit keeper. Once we get out of this – ’

‘Thanks for reminding me.’ John got slowly to his feet. ‘So long as we’re in the stream we may as well stick to it, in case they fetch Caesar.’

‘We couldn’t be much wetter,’ I said.

John made no reply to this cheerful speech except for a grunt.

We went downhill, walking in the stream. Gradually the banks rose on either side until we were splashing through a miniature ravine, with trees leaning down from above and roots reaching out of the muddy sides like gnarled arms. To judge from the cries of inquiry and alarm behind us, the search had not been abandoned, but I began to relax. The dog couldn’t track us through the water, and the human pursuers couldn’t see us unless they shone lights straight down on us. In some places the banks were severely concave; the stream must run high and fast at certain seasons in order to have cut out so much dirt. The only difficulty was that it was hard to see where we were going. The steepness of the sides and the branches overhead cut out most of the moonlight. I reached out and caught John’s sleeve. It was very wet – soggy, in fact. He stopped when I touched him, and his breath came out in a sharp gasp.

‘Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,’ I hissed. ‘I can’t see. I just wanted to – ’

The truth began to dawn on me then; not all at once, but a little bit at a time. The first thing to strike me was the strange feel of the fabric I was touching. It was wet, all right – wet and sticky. Before my feeble brain could go on to the next step, John collapsed into the water with a splash that sent water sloshing up my shins.

The water was only three or four inches deep, but that’s deep enough if you are face down in it, which he was. I don’t suppose it took me more than a few seconds to turn him over, but it seemed a lot longer. He didn’t help any. For the second time in a few hours he was out cold, and I must admit that I didn’t draw a deep breath until his breath came out with a watery gurgle, and I knew he was alive.

The water was trickling up around his face, so I dragged him out onto the bank, which was deeply undercut at that point. He was so wet I had a hard time figuring out where he was hurt. I couldn’t see anything except the faintest glimmer of fair hair, since even his shirt was muddied and dark. But I finally decided that the major damage was a bullet hole in his arm. He must have lost quite a bit of blood; it was still flowing freely.

It never rains but it pours. I was plucking frantically at my scanty attire, trying to figure out what I could spare for a tourniquet and bandage, and wondering how I was going to do the job in absolute darkness, when something above my head snapped and dirt dribbled down into the water. One of the searchers must have heard the splash and decided to investigate. He had been walking in darkness; now he switched on his light and shone it down into the ravine.

Luckily for us he was on the same side of the stream. I had pulled John completely out of the water, so I could check him over, and we were pressed up against the undercut side of the bank. The flashlight beam illumined the opposite bank, and a good part of the stream itself.

If the searcher had been as smart as he thought he was, he would have noticed that a miniature tide had gone in and out over that far bank in the last few minutes, and he might have drawn some interesting conclusions. It was so obvious to me that I held my breath, expecting a shout that would summon the others.

We were saved by an animal. I don’t know what kind of animal, because I never got a good look at it; it was only a sleek, shining blur as it slid through the shallow water and popped into a hole in the opposite bank. A water rat, maybe. Anyhow, the man up above must have assumed that it was responsible for the splash he had heard. He muttered something and threw a stone at the animal – which shows you what kind of person he was. It missed by a mile. The searcher turned back; I heard him crunching through the weeds, no longer trying to move quietly.

His light had served one useful purpose. In its reflected glow I had gotten a good look at John’s arm. With an inaudible sigh I started squirming out of my blouse. It was as clean as any other garment we owned – not very clean, in other words. But it would have to serve temporarily. I was going to feel a little peculiar, trying to hitch a ride without a blouse, but the moments of illumination had told me something else – if I looked as disreputable as my companion, a blouse more or less wouldn’t matter.