Tears of the Salamander

ALFREDO WOKE EARLY, DRESSED AND SAT IN THE window, breathing the soft dawn air and letting the early sunlight stream over him. It was all the same as yesterday, the same sun, the same air, the same marvelous view. But everything had changed, himself included. He felt as if he had somehow grown two or three years older during the night. He was no longer a child, letting everything be decided for him by someone else. From now on he was a person who must think and decide and act for himself. From now on he was going to cope for himself with the responsibilities before him, to his dead parents and poor Giorgio, to Annetta and Toni, to himself. Only Uncle Giorgio must go on thinking he was a child, unquestioning and obedient. But he would be wrong.

The week inched by. Alfredo teased obsessively away at the sheet of notes about the salamanders. A few of the more carefully written bits began to make sense: They have great knowledge, but little power. …Of all things concerning fire, though far from the island, they know through the fires within the earth. …(Ah, so they could after all have known what had happened in the bakehouse.) …not things to come…cannot see into the minds of men…not like the Angels of Fire, both Lesser and Greater. These have many powers…One with the Knowledge can command the Lesser Angels, but neither the Greater, nor the salamanders. …

When he had unraveled all he could he started to read his way slowly on through Livius’s history. At other times he studied old musical scores and tried to learn some of the easier pieces on the recorder, so that he could teach them to Toni. Or he walked the mountainside, until he could join Toni in the rose garden each afternoon, when for an hour or more they improvised duets together and he could forget about his hopes and his fears. He didn’t run away from these. Indeed he tried to face them, mostly when he was sitting in the kitchen before supper while Toni ate and Annetta worked at the stove.

It was easier when they were there, because they reminded him of what sort of man Uncle Giorgio must be to have used them so, as if they existed entirely for his own purposes, and nothing else mattered. A man like that might well have used and destroyed his own brother with his family, and the crew of the Bonaventura, without a thought, simply because it suited him. It didn’t prove he had—it just made it more likely—and more likely too that he was planning to use Alfredo in the same kind of way. It was going to happen next Monday as part of the Second Great Work.

How could he avoid taking part in that work? Run away? Where? Who would dare help him hide from the Master of the Mountain? How could he be sure his uncle didn’t have the power to find him, wherever he hid? And then he would have betrayed part of his own secret knowledge—and his one hope lay in his uncle’s not suspecting how much he knew. Kill himself, then? If the worst came to the worst, perhaps, but how? If he could find a cliff somewhere to throw himself over…

No. There must be a better way, if only he could think of it.

On the Tuesday morning Annetta came to his room early and laid out his church clothes for him. After breakfast he sang the chant again for Uncle Giorgio, who this time muttered a few words almost as soon as he’d begun. There were no interruptions from the Angels. Then they rode down the hill to the town. Uncle Giorgio stopped at a large, newish house opposite the church, where they were evidently expected, for a groom from the inn was waiting for them and led the mules away. Uncle Giorgio was raising his cane to rap on the door when it was opened by a wheezing old man in black, wearing a tatty wig, who showed them through a musty hallway, opened a door and announced, or rather muttered, “Signor Giorgio di Sala with the young gentleman, sir,” then stood aside for them and slipped away.

Just as they went into the room Uncle Giorgio gripped Alfredo’s shoulder and leaned heavily on it. He tottered forward.

A man rose from behind a table and started to greet them, but checked himself, stared for a moment and rushed round, pulled out a chair and helped Uncle Giorgio to settle into it, then went back to his place. He was younger than Alfredo would have expected, but stout and with heavy, dark features. His manner, like the priest’s last Sunday, was both fawning and wary.

“Signor di Sala,” he said. “I am much honored. You are …you are not well?”

“I have been stronger,” said Uncle Giorgio dismissively. “You received my note?”

“Indeed, indeed. And this is the young gentleman who is now to be your heir?”

“My nephew, Alfredo,” said Uncle Giorgio. “His parents died tragically a month ago, and he is now in my care. The last, for the moment, of our line. Alfredo, this is my friend Signor Pozzarelli, who looks after the legal side of our affairs. You will have much to do with him in time to come.”

“Indeed, indeed. I am gratified to meet you, Signor Alfredo,” said Signor Pozzarelli as they shook hands. “But let us hope it will be many years before that is the case.”

“We are in God’s hands, Signor Pozzarelli,” said Uncle Giorgio. “And as you see I have not been well. The journey to fetch my nephew taxed my strength, and I was near to death by the time I returned. I am not yet fully recovered, and the malady could strike again at any time. We must put my earthly affairs in order without delay.”

“Your earthly…?” Signor Pozzarelli began, and stopped himself. “Er…hum…a little wine in honor of the occasion? Now, let me see, let me see…”

He rang a silver handbell, then fussed with papers on his table, recovering his composure. Uncle Giorgio watched him, smiling thinly. Alfredo was puzzled. He had a feeling Uncle Giorgio was teasing the attorney, but why was he pretending to be ill and mouthing these pious phrases about his own death if in a few day’s time he was going to start living forever? And what had Signor Pozzarelli been going to say when he stopped himself?

A servant woman came in with a tray—glasses, a wine flask and a jug. Signor Pozzarelli poured two glasses of wine and glanced at Uncle Giorgio.

“A little for my nephew—as you say, in honor of the occasion,” said Uncle Giorgio, still with that teasing note, so the attorney poured a few sips for Alfredo and filled the larger glasses from the jug with what turned out to be lime water, cool and fresh. The wine was dark and sweet—the best in the attorney’s cellar, Alfredo guessed.

Signor Pozzarelli drew a chair to the table for Alfredo, picked up a double sheet of parchment and cleared his throat.

“The terms, as you suggested, are the same as for the last will—nineteen years ago, I see—save of course for the beneficiary. The list of your properties has been kept up to date, as you know, and can simply be transferred to the new will. And there is the matter of a guardian still to be settled. Last time my father had the honor…”

“Your respected father is now almost as old as I am, and we must look to the future. I suggest that this time it should be yourself, if you will be so kind as to take up the burden of my nephew’s earthly affairs. All else of course is in eternal hands, those hands which finally take care of all things, both earthly and beyond.”

“Of course, of course,” agreed Signor Pozzarelli hastily. “I shall be much honored by the task.”

This time Alfredo got it. Beneath Uncle Giorgio’s teasing tone there was something else, a note of threat, quiet but confident. And beneath the attorney’s gabbled reply there was awareness of that threat, and fear of it. And Uncle Giorgio hadn’t said the obvious “earthly and heavenly,” but used the strange phrase “earthly and beyond.” He was talking not of the justice of God, but of the powers of the Master of the Mountain, which his nephew would inherit. No attorney in his right mind would be tempted to swindle even a child who possessed those powers.

Signor Pozzarelli wrote briefly on the document, then read it through in a solemn voice. Though it was quite short, it was mostly incomprehensible. The only thing that was clear to Alfredo was that just three people were named in it, Uncle Giorgio, who was making the will; Signor Pozzarelli, who was to be guardian; and Alfredo himself, who was getting everything. There was nothing for Annetta, nothing to take care of poor Toni, Uncle Giorgio’s own son. Of course Alfredo would look after them, but how could anyone be certain of that? If only for form’s sake surely…But no. Uncle Giorgio didn’t think like that.

When he’d finished reading, Signor Pozzarelli rang his bell again, and the clerk and a gardener came to witness Uncle Giorgio’s signature. The gardener was unable to write his name, so signed with a thumbprint. Uncle Giorgio gave each of them a silver coin and rose as they left. Alfredo realized that Signor Pozzarelli was looking expectantly at him. Alfredo pulled himself together.

“I must…must thank my uncle for his great generosity,” he stammered. “I, er, will try to prove worthy of my inheritance and…and our name.”

“I have no doubt that that will prove to be the case,” said Uncle Giorgio, still with the same odd tone, as if the words had an extra meaning that only he knew. He signed to Alfredo, who helped him stand and then took some of his weight while Signor Pozzarelli showed them out of the house with obvious relief, bowing his farewells several times more than was necessary.

Uncle Giorgio seemed to recover as soon as the door closed.

“Lawyers are capable of infinite delay,” he remarked. “There is no harm in persuading one that the case may be urgent.”

He sounded really pleased with himself. He stood for a while on the doorstep, like a cat purring in the strong noon sun, while Alfredo once again wondered what it must be like to have everyone you met terrified of you. But Uncle Giorgio actually seemed to enjoy it. Strange.

Now he stalked off toward the inn, but started to lean on his stick before they reached it. Alfredo had been expecting that they would simply collect the mules and ride home, but the landlord was waiting at the door, bowing and smiling but still giving the impression that he would have preferred to run and hide in his darkest cellar.

“I trust the signor is in good health,” he gabbled.

“Feeling my age, feeling my age,” said Uncle Giorgio, speaking almost affably. “I shall need your arm up the stairs, I fear.”

The landlord helped him climb slowly to a room overlooking the harbor, where a table was laid for two.

Uncle Giorgio straightened as soon as they were alone.

“A feast in celebration of the occasion,” he said genially.

Alfredo’s heart sank. How could he eat a feast of celebration with this man whom he now believed to be a monster, a murderer? Sitting in the attorney’s office, pretending to be honored and grateful about what his uncle was doing for him—that wasn’t difficult. In a grim sense he’d almost enjoyed it, because each little deception of Uncle Giorgio became part of his secret knowledge. It was all right eating together up at the house, where often his uncle read throughout the meal and scarcely said a word, so that they might just as well have been eating in separate rooms, and where even when they talked their words seemed to be full of secret meanings. But here, like this? He thought of name-days at home, the joy, the family love, Mother’s pride in what she’d prepared for the occasion. That had been true celebration, not this. The food would be sawdust in his mouth, tasteless and unswallowable, and he must pretend to enjoy it.

No, he would not think like that. Soon, soon, before next Monday, he would find proof of what the salamanders had told him. And then…then somehow—something deep and savage stirred in him—then he would take vengeance.

They sat and the meal was brought, olives and bread and oil, of course, and grilled sardines caught fresh that morning, and a salad of wild leaves from the mountain, and a tender young pullet roasted on a bed of herbs, and a strange, sweet custard, and three kinds of wine, and lime water better than the attorney’s—indeed the sort of meal Mother would have prepared for a name-day.

Alfredo settled down to enjoy it, savoring every mouthful with the thought of his vengeance. Vengeance, he discovered, makes an excellent savor. So he ate with gusto until Uncle Giorgio pulled him up.

“We must feed you up but not make you ill,” he said, lightly enough—but still Alfredo seemed to hear the undertone of another kind of meaning. This time, though, he could guess what it was. To Uncle Giorgio each mouthful he ate, each sip he drank, each breath he drew, was not for his own pleasure, but a preparation for next Monday and his mysterious destiny.

He thought about this as they rode up the hill and wondered if he could starve himself until he was too weak to do whatever his uncle expected of him on Monday. Not easily, if he was watched all the time as he ate. But…

That evening, sitting in the kitchen and watching Annetta preparing supper, he wondered where her loyalties really lay. He decided to take the risk.

“Annetta?”

She turned from the stove, eyebrows raised.

“Can you give me something to make me a little bit sick? Not really sick, just so I don’t have to do something. Only for a morning—I can’t explain. He’d see through it if I was just shamming sick.”

She frowned for a moment, glanced at Toni and stared at her hands. Alfredo could see her thinking What if the master found out? He sighed with relief when she straightened, looked him firmly in the eye and nodded.

She laid her spoon down, crossed to her store cupboard and reached to the back of a high shelf for a small lidded pot. She fetched a mug, and her kettle from the back of the stove, took a leaf out of the pot, put it in the mug and mimed filling the mug from the kettle. She pointed at the kitchen clock and made a slow circle in the air. Wait for an hour. She then pretended to drink the contents of the mug.

That done, she tipped the leaf out onto the table and added two more from the pot, rinsed the mug carefully and laid it to drain. She pointed at the leaves, held up a finger, clutched her stomach and pretended to retch into her hands. Two fingers, and this time she was in serious pain and vomiting onto the floor. Three fingers, and she started to curl up in agony, then straightened, smiling.

“One leaf would make me a bit ill, and two properly ill, and three I’d be really sick,” said Alfredo. “If I took just one, how long would it be before I threw up?”

She pointed at the clock again, held up her finger and wrapped her other hand round the bottom half of it. Half an hour.

“And how long before I got better?”

This time she held up four fingers. Then she poured water into a bowl, washed her hands, threw the water away and rinsed out the bowl.

“Thank you, Annetta,” he said. “I won’t use it unless I have to—there may be another way.”

He took the leaves up to his room and hid them in a book. Following Annetta’s example, he washed his hands carefully before he came back downstairs.

“A light supper after our midday feast,” said Uncle Giorgio pleasantly enough. “I think we are both too tired for talk.”

Alfredo agreed, with relief, and took up his book. They did not speak again until they said goodnight. That was Tuesday.

All night Alfredo dreamed restlessly of his vengeance. He woke early, and discovered that his confidence had somehow thinned in the night, as if it had become part of the now forgotten dreams. Yesterday his decision to trust the salamanders, his new hatred of his uncle and his determination to take his vengeance if he got the chance had seemed fixed and certain. Now both trust and determination had become doubtful, and without them what right had he to hatred? And even suppose, miraculously, he found the proof he needed, he could see no way forward, and was heavily aware of how little his power was, how few and small his secrets, compared to all that Uncle Giorgio knew from his study, and his long Mastership of the mountain. Fear had returned—not full-fledged panic, but a steady underlying apprehension, a feeling that he was picking his way along a narrow track with a precipitous drop below, and dared not look down.

The sun was just rising as he went out into the silvery sweet dawn, not with any purpose, simply needing to be away from the house and all it meant. As before he found himself wandering along the overgrown driveway until his way was blocked by the old lava flow.

He gazed a while, unthinking, and then, though it was still full of the chill of night, stretched himself out on it, molded his body to it, made himself part of it, imagined himself seeping down through its hidden veins, feeling his way toward the distant central fires. Faintly now he thought he could hear the singing of the salamanders.

Oh, what is going to happen to me? he asked them.

The singing paused and resumed, but muddled and uncertain. Like a fever dream. Whoever had written the notes he had found had been right— Nobody, not even we ourselves, the salamanders seemed to be telling him, knows what is going to happen, not until it happens. Till then there is no certainty about it, no truth for us to tell.

He wasn’t disappointed. In his heart he had known this to be so, just as he knew, too, that it was no use asking them what Uncle Giorgio was planning. They couldn’t see into the minds of men. But the singing of the salamanders, and the fact that he could hear them, were comforting in themselves, so he lay where he was for a while, and then went back to the house for breakfast. As soon as they had eaten Uncle Giorgio took him down to the furnace room.

Alfredo went reluctantly. He wasn’t in the mood for grief. Doubt and fear left no room for it. But sing he must, sing the music of sorrow.

“By the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept…”

For once in his life the music didn’t seem to be part of him. Some of the adult choristers had been like that, singing their way through the services by rote, steady on the note from endless repetition, while their minds were on other things—a woman they were keen on, a bit of gossip they’d heard, their next meal. Nevertheless the salamander rose and wept. The sorrow was in the music, as Uncle Giorgio had said. That was all it needed, and its own grief, the grief of exile, which was real, and apparently unending.

How did it come to be here, in this prison? he wondered.

Alfredo hadn’t intended to ask the question—to question it at all—but it answered. As they sang on together he saw it swimming in the fiery currents of the mountain with its comrades, none of them yet fully grown. They were exploring, as young creatures tend to, the edges of their territory, daring each other to see how far they could go. A music reached them, strange and powerful. The rock above them split open and the current that carried them welled into the world above. Still the music held them, compelling them upward. The salamander raised its head above the surface and looked around. Something seized it from behind and lifted it clear of the molten rock into the killing cold of air.

It had struggled desperately, but it was gripped firm between two meshes of metal and was carried to where two huge creatures were waiting—Alfredo recognized these as a pair of horses or mules—with a large object slung on poles between them. An arm reached from beneath the salamander and opened the lid of the object, which was filled with glowing coals. It was lowered into the life-giving heat and there released. As the lid was closed upon it it could hear, close by, two human voices, loud with anger, and farther off, the horrified wails of its comrades mourning its loss.

Then darkness and endless jolting, and the embers cooling, cooling, until it lost consciousness. And finally waking to find itself in this furnace, also then filled with coals which were just enough to keep it alive, and were constantly replenished until out of its own natural process it had transmuted what was fed to it into the true stuff of the sun in which it now lived, and had lived for thirty long years.

It was an account of cruelty and horror and loss. The salamander wept, but Alfredo did not weep with it or for it. Deliberately he used his thoughts of vengeance as a kind of harness to hold his tears and his voice in check, to stay dry-eyed, to sing the notes clearly and truly. So as he watched Uncle Giorgio coolly harvesting the tears of his prisoner, his resolve seemed to harden. That his uncle should treat the wonderful creature so! And Toni, too, and Annetta. And probably, all too probably, Alfredo himself.

Yet still it was not quite enough. Some final, definite proof must be found, and then he would have vengeance on his uncle, and part of that vengeance would be somehow to free the salamander, take it back up the mountain and release it into the fiery torrents that were its home.

At last Uncle Giorgio closed the lid of the furnace and removed his spectacles. Alfredo did the same and wiped his eyes.

“That is better,” said Uncle Giorgio approvingly. “But there is still too much feeling. You must not exhaust yourself so. There is more important work waiting for you.”

He tipped the little draught of tears into his phial and started to tap off the molten gold from beneath the furnace. Trying to look as if he were simply waiting for him to finish, Alfredo let his glance wander round the chamber, all dim and shadowy after the furnace glare, in case there was anything here that would help him in his enterprise. Yes, in the corner to his left what looked like the selfsame large lidded iron bucket that Uncle Giorgio had used to carry his captive down the mountain; beside it a similar smaller bucket; and propped behind them a heavy ladle, an instrument like a large pair of tongs, each arm ending in a circular metal grill, and a stout pole with a hook at the center so that two people could carry the buckets between them.

Uncle Giorgio rose from his crouch, holding the little pan into which he had been running the gold from the bottom of the furnace, and put it back on the table. A thin film of still-molten metal covered what he had collected five days ago. Uncle Giorgio turned the full pan over, rapped it sharply with a wooden mallet and pocketed the little ingot that fell out.

Lost in his thoughts of vengeance, Alfredo gazed vaguely at the two pans, one now empty, one half full, as if they, too, might help him somehow to free the salamander, until Uncle Giorgio broke the trance.

“Yes, Alfredo, pure gold. The First Great Work,” he purred, and turned to leave.

Alfredo pulled himself together and on the way out took a good look at the door and its lock. Both seemed formidably sturdy. As usual Uncle Giorgio put the key back in his pocket as soon as he had locked the door.

“I have work to do now,” he said. “You will be able to amuse yourself until luncheon?”

“Yes, of course, Uncle. I’ll go for a walk in the woods. So I don’t need to take my hat.”

“Good boy.”

Alfredo wandered in a seemingly aimless manner out to the driveway in case Uncle Giorgio was watching from the study windows. For a while he simply stood and stared at the lava flow, lying massively inert in the dappled shade. At length he lay down once more, molded his body to the coarse rock and waited. This was not something he could make happen in a hurry, or even coax into happening. A bird fluted and was answered from deep among the trees. A faint breeze blew and died away. And then, slowly, slowly, the mountain drew him into itself as it had done before, and they became one. Far off and faint, he heard the singing of the salamanders.

Again he waited. The music changed, telling him they were aware of his presence. He shaped his question formally in his mind.

You have shown me how my father and my mother and my brother died, and who killed them. What proof can you give me that what you tell me is true?

The answer came instantly, in a rapid burst of excited song, and he was back in the furnace room, gazing, as he had done barely half an hour ago, at two small rectangular pans, one empty, the second half-full and with a thin molten layer covering the solid metal beneath, and a hand closing round a small gold bar.

That was all, and the salamanders showed him no more.

What did it mean? The answer came like a thunderclap. He lay and forced his mind to do the sums. Five days ago Uncle Giorgio had drawn a pan and a half from the furnace. In those five days enough more matter had passed through the salamander’s body to add little more than a film of gold to what was already in the pan. How many such fillings to fill a whole pan? Eight? Call it six, to be on the safe side. Five sixes were thirty, plus half of that was forty-five, so it had taken forty-five days to produce the gold that Uncle Giorgio had drawn the day after his return to Casa di Sala. Perhaps it was less. Call it forty, to be on the safe side again. And perhaps he hadn’t drawn any in the last few days before he left, so call it thirty-five. He must have been five weeks away from Casa di Sala, at least.

But sixteen days after the fire in the bakery Uncle Giorgio had told the priests in the cathedral that he had come posthaste on hearing the news of the tragedy. That can’t have been true. A house fire in a distant northern city? Not the sort of news that travels fast. But suppose Alfredo’s father had made arrangements for his brother to be told at once if anything should happen to him—in that case how long for the news to get to Sicily? Say five days. That would leave eleven days for Uncle Giorgio to travel north, setting up the elaborate arrangements for their escape route. Yes, it could just be done.

So if Uncle Giorgio had left Sicily only on hearing the news of his brother’s death, he couldn’t have been away from Casa di Sala for more than twenty-two days, at the outside. How much gold would have gathered in the bottom of the furnace in that time? Not enough to fill one little pan, nothing like. So he had been away from Casa di Sala much longer than he said.

He must have started out at least a fortnight before the fire.

Why?

Because he needed to be in the city for several days before it, to set up his plan, to find his informant in the cathedral, to hire the first boat to be ready and waiting to take them to the island, to rent an upper room at the inn across the road from the bakery, and so on. And then, on that final dreadful evening, to go to the room and summon his powers as Master of the Mountain, and draw the fires of the bakehouse ovens bursting out of their fire beds to burn and destroy. And all the while the salamander’s gold was settling slowly into the bottom of the furnace, until there was enough there for him on his return to tap off one full pan and half another one.

What if the priests had decided to perform the operation sooner? Or later? (That was why he had needed the informant—one of the vergers or canons—to tell him that kind of thing.) Sooner, and he’d have had to invent some story about being already traveling in Italy when he got the news, in case Alfredo asked. Later and he’d have needed to claim Alfredo before the decision had been made, but for different reasons that wouldn’t have suited him as well. What he’d wanted was what had actually happened, that he should intervene at the last possible moment to save Alfredo from the operation, thus binding his nephew to him with ties of gratitude and trust, with the tears of the salamander keeping him alive but losing their potency day by day.

Perhaps the priests had waited longer than he’d expected, and he’d hung on till what he’d thought was the last safe moment. But he had miscalculated the time it would take for the Bonaventura to sail the final leg home, and so had indeed come very near death for Alfredo’s sake.

Yes. Proof. Proof at last. And the salamanders told the truth.

Long after the singing of the salamanders had died away Alfredo lay where he was, thinking it through. But the cold fire in the rock did not die. Instead it seemed to gather itself together and flow upward, out through the surface, into his innermost body and become part of him. Thus Alfredo di Sala discovered his ancient inheritance of anger. The anger of fire. His birthright. Yes.

Now he was at last unshakeably certain what he must do. The whole of his life had narrowed suddenly to a single purpose: to take vengeance on Uncle Giorgio for the murder of his family. He still had no idea how he was going to achieve it, but nothing else mattered till it was done.

Still he lay where he was, feeding on the strength of the mountain. He must become like the mountain himself, standing calmly above the Straits, flanked with peaceful olive groves and vineyards, hiding its roiling inner furies until the time came for them in their turn to burst out and burn and destroy. Yes, it was like that that he would destroy Uncle Giorgio. With fire.

Now he must think how.

He began with the freeing of the salamander. Finding a way into the furnace room was the first serious problem. He pushed himself up off the rock and went and poked around among the outbuildings, looking for tools with which to break down the door. He found a crowbar too heavy for him to wield and an even heavier wooden mallet. Toni could have managed them if he could be made to understand what was needed, and if Annetta would have let him, but it wouldn’t be fair for Alfredo to ask her, knowing what Uncle Giorgio might do in his fury when he found his salamander gone. For himself, he was prepared to take the consequences, but just freeing the salamander wasn’t enough. He wanted more than that. Uncle Giorgio must be destroyed, and know as he perished by whom, and why, and that the salamander was free once more.

He was in the stables, thinking about this, when he found the harness for the three mules. There were several sets, used for different purposes. Above them, on a couple of brackets, lay a long contraption, two poles joined at intervals by shorter ones, hinged at the joints so that when not in use the poles could be laid side by side. A heavy iron hoop dangled from them. He could guess what he was looking at. He had seen this sort of thing down at the harbor. It was slung between two horses standing fore and aft and was used for carrying a load too heavy for a single animal—yes, this was how Uncle Giorgio had carried the salamander down from the mountain. The hoop was the right size to hold the big pot he had seen in the furnace chamber. More proof, he realized. The salamander had told him the truth, about its own capture, at least. How else could it have known about these objects, out here in the stables? Not that it mattered.

What mattered now was that this was how Alfredo was going to carry the salamander back. Not at once, though. When the time was right. First, though, there was the problem of getting through this coming Monday without confronting whatever destiny it was that Uncle Giorgio had chosen for him. He got no farther with this before it was time to return to the house for luncheon.