The Night Falling

But when, after infinite endurance, they are shaken to the depths of their beings and are driven by an instinct of self-defence or justice, their revolt knows no bounds and no measure. It is an inhuman revolt whose point of departure and final end alike are death, in which ferocity is born of despair.

Christ Stopped at Eboli

Carlo Levi

Chapter Eleven – Clare

The more Clare speaks to Ettore, the more time she spends with him, the better her Italian becomes. The latest word she’s learnt is tradimento. Betrayal. She was so sure that Boyd would guess at once that for the first few days fear chafed at her every time she saw her husband. She’d been sure he would see it in her eyes, or smell it on her – smell Ettore on her – but he’s said nothing, and shown no signs of suspicion. Since he told Clare about Leandro Cardetta and his strange, precarious relationship with the man, Boyd has been diffident with her, cautious, as though he’s not quite sure what she’ll do. Perhaps this distraction is what keeps him from noticing that nothing is how it was before – that the world is not what Clare thought it was, that they are not the same people, any of them, and that to this new version of herself, Ettore Tarano is as necessary as breathing. She fears the speed with which Ettore is healing, his leg strengthening; she dreads his departure from the masseria.

One afternoon she goes directly from Ettore’s room to the quiet chamber where Boyd works, at the back of the masseria. She goes with her hair dishevelled, her blouse untucked from the waistband of her skirt and sweat drying along her hairline, but these could be symptoms of the heat, nothing more. Boyd starts as she comes in, his body curved over his work, the desk covered in papers and pencils; he looks up and the sight of her wipes away his frown of concentration, leaving pleasure and hope in its place. The room smells faintly of him, and of wood and ink, like a schoolroom.

‘Hello, darling,’ he says, and he smiles. Clare pulse flutters in her throat; she’s alive with nerves, and yet a part of her almost wants him to guess, even if the thought of what would happen then terrifies her. She wonders if it was this same impulse that made him confess everything to her about his affair, the year before, with Christina Havers. Clare hadn’t guessed anything; she hadn’t seen or sensed anything different, until he broke down and wept, and made her sit while he knelt before her and confessed it all. Had he come home with traces of Christina on his body? Had he wanted her to guess, and felt this same frustration when she hadn’t? Nothing has changed. He said it over and over. Nothing has changed, my darling, I promise. But he’d been wrong about that, because Clare took a quick look into her heart and couldn’t even find an echo of what she’d felt for him when they wed. She doesn’t think it was his affair that made it vanish, but that gave her cause to examine her feelings. And because there was no love there was no injury, there was no anguish. There was nothing much at all.

The affair with Christina showed Clare a side of her husband she’d never seen before. Since their trip to New York she’d known there were things about him she didn’t understand, and perhaps never would. She would never know how deep his grief for Emma went, because it seemed fathomless, like his love for her. She knew there were things from that past life that he would not, or could not, put into words. But the way he rounded on Christina Havers – the young, bored wife of a client – after their affair, was a revelation. Christina had thick, dark hair, lazy eyes and bee-stung lips. She was about the age Clare had been when she’d married Boyd – eighteen or nineteen. There was still a layer of puppy fat on her figure; her big, round breasts nestled between soft arms. Boyd said she’d seduced him – got him drunk at a drinks party and came on strongly. He called her a whore, a slut, a trollop, spitting out these ugly words as if they tasted bad; he clearly hated her with a passion. But he hadn’t only slept with her once; somehow he’d found himself at her mercy four or five times before guilt and loathing overwhelmed him, and made him throw himself on his wife’s mercy.

Clare had believed his remorse – it was impossible not to when he’d worked himself into such a lather. His utter abjection made her think of New York, of the vomit and the white dots on the carpet, and the terrifying way he’d seemed like a stranger – completely, in that moment, and partially ever since. So she followed her instinct to calm him, to reassure him. She believed that he loved her, hated what he’d done, couldn’t explain quite why he’d done it, and was terrified she might leave him because of it. But she also believed his hatred of Christina, and that was what bothered her the most. She wasn’t sure what it meant; she didn’t know how he could make love to the girl and then blame her entirely, and hate her. Making love had required both of them to be there, and willing, after all. Troubled, Clare said very little on the whole subject, and Boyd took her silence as a dignified toleration of his transgression that might soon lead to forgiveness, and life returned to the way it had been before. That bitch, he called little Christina, his lips white with the word, tears shining on his rumpled face. That whore.

Now, Clare finds herself wondering what it would be like to hear those same words from Boyd directed at her. She can’t imagine it – not when he has only ever told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she is an angel, that she has saved him. But that was the Clare before Ettore. Boyd holds his hand out to her, and with the thrill of wondering if this will be what gives her away, if touch will be the sense with which he sees clearly, Clare crosses the room and takes his hand.

‘How’s it coming along?’ she says. Dry mouth; shallow breaths. Boyd turns back to look at his drawings and shrugs slightly.

‘Well, they’re almost ready to show him. As to how he’ll react to them…’ He looks up at her with mute appeal. ‘I can only hope he’ll be happy, and we can go home.’ Panic bubbles up in Clare. In the space of two weeks her goal has turned on its head, and now she doesn’t want to leave. She remembers what Ettore said – that Leandro wants to find something out from Boyd before he will let them go. It could simply mean that Leandro wants to see these finished designs, but it could mean something else. Something more. As soon as Ettore told her she’d thought of New York, and it’s on the tip of Clare’s tongue to ask, to speculate, but she stops herself. If he doesn’t know already, then she doesn’t want Boyd to hear that this missing information is what’s keeping them there. He might clear the matter up in minutes; their visit might end there and then. There’s unease behind all this silent thought – she can’t imagine what information Boyd could possibly have that Leandro might want.

Boyd squeezes her hand for attention. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he says. Clare has been staring at the drawings for a minute or more without really seeing them. She blinks, and concentrates. The new front Boyd has drawn for the house on Via Garibaldi has trulli along the roofline. Four small, stylised trulli, built of interlocking stone just like the real things, but with regular-sized cut blocks, put together precisely, so that the sides are almost faceted and they are halfway to being pyramids rather than cones. Each one is topped with a tall spike, like that of a small minaret, and the rest of the front is plain, elegant, almost austere, with four Doric columns flanking the large street door. Clare has a sinking feeling inside.

‘It’s just… wonderful, Boyd,’ she says honestly. ‘It’s so different, and yet it won’t jar with anything around it… It’s understated, but it’s striking. I think it’s one of the best things you’ve designed. Cardetta has to be pleased.’ Boyd sags visibly in relief.

‘I am so glad you think so, darling. I was hoping… that is, the building seemed to take shape as I drew it – it seemed to know how it ought to look. That’s always a very good sign. The trulli are such iconic buildings of this area. I’d never seen anything like them before I came here. I think they represent Mr Cardetta rather well, don’t you? As emblems, I mean. They’re peasant dwellings, after all, but they can stand for hundreds of years. He came from the peasantry but has constructed a far grander life, and a more lasting one, by being steadfast and adaptable.’ Boyd pauses, scrutinising his work with an anxious gaze. ‘Never mind quite what he has constructed it upon,’ he murmurs.

‘Indeed,’ says Clare, and there’s a loaded silence while they both wait to hear what will be said next.

They haven’t quite settled this between them yet – the tone they will take when discussing Leandro Cardetta, his past, his designs for them, the kind of man he is, and that Boyd has brought them here at his behest. It bothers Clare that she still doesn’t know how her husband came to meet Cardetta in the first place; that he has still never answered that question. Boyd picks up a pencil and starts to sharpen it with the small paring knife he keeps on his desk. Clare moves away from him, ostensibly to study a painting of St Sebastian on the wall, head thrown back in agony, bristling with arrows. Tradimento. Here they are talking as though nothing has changed, as though they are a team, when there is so much they don’t know about one another.

‘When will you show him the drawings?’ she says, at last.

‘Soon. I don’t know… soon,’ says Boyd. He frowns at his work again. ‘I want to make sure they’re perfect.’

‘Nothing is ever perfect. You’ve said before that you tend to overwork things sometimes.’ Clare hears her own words, incredulous. She should tell him to delay, to wait, to spoil the drawings. She should do whatever she can to prolong their stay. But then she thinks of Pip, and his sullen unhappiness, and she is torn, bewildered.

‘You’re right, my darling,’ says Boyd.

Just then, a strange sound comes from some far-off part of the house, and Clare listens for a moment before she can make it out. Then, unmistakeably, she picks out the three-time rhythm and shrill strings of a waltz.

‘Is that Strauss?’ she says, and Boyd smiles.

‘I forgot, I was meant to tell you – Marcie’s looking for you. She said something about a party.’

‘I’ll go and see.’ Boyd opens his mouth as though he will say something, ask something, but he hasn’t time to before Clare leaves the room. She goes up to the bat room, the rehearsal room, the spare room – it has these various names – the music getting louder with each step she takes, echoing along the stone corridors, and it’s been so long since she heard any that Clare is drawn towards it. It’s so profoundly out of place here at the masseria, here in Puglia. It’s music from another time, another place; it’s music from another world, and sounds alien in this sparse land, with these hard people. But it’s Marcie, of course; she doesn’t belong in Puglia any more than Clare does.

Clare opens the door to twirling figures; they are waltzing across the floor – Marcie and Pip. Pip is awkward and slightly out of time but Marcie doesn’t seem to mind and follows his lead, however halting. She keeps a beautiful frame, her neck arched back, eyebrows high and haughty, smile serene. She’s slightly taller than Pip in her heels; he has his chin up to compensate, and is concentrating hard.

‘Clare!’ Marcie calls when she sees her standing there. ‘You’ll never guess what, but Federico has only managed to fix this old gramophone! I thought it was dead and gone – it’s been in the junk room for months.’ The waltz is getting slower and slower as the gramophone winds down, so Clare goes over to wind the handle and tighten the mainspring.

‘Lord, now it’s too fast for me!’ says Pip, struggling to organise his feet, and Marcie laughs, and they dance faster, turning around and around until Clare is dizzy watching them. She’s suddenly awash with all her love for Pip, and all her pride in him, and the fact that he’s dancing when everything around him is so strange and so dark. Her eyes swell with tears and her heart with guilt, because it’s him she’s betraying too, of course, not just Boyd. Where can her love for Ettore lead her, apart from away from Pip? She has a sudden clear premonition of agony ahead.

‘No more! I’m dying!’ cries Marcie, breaking off her hold. ‘My mama told me a lady should never perspire, but in this heat who could help it?’

Clare lifts the needle out of the groove and quiet fills the room.

‘We could have carried on,’ says Pip. ‘Clare, don’t you want a go?’

‘Well, we need to save what needles we have for the party, Filippo,’ says Marcie.

‘You and I will dance then,’ says Clare. She wipes her eyes with her fingertips. ‘You looked very elegant, Pip. Any young lady would be proud to dance with you.’

‘Are you crying?’ Pip smiles.

‘Oh, Clare, whatever’s the matter?’ says Marcie.

‘Oh no, don’t worry – you should have seen her at my last school play. She cried all over the place,’ says Pip, lightly, but there’s something else underneath his words, almost like a tinge of contempt. It jars Clare, so that she clears her throat, reorders her face, and tries not to show her pain.

‘I’ve sent Federico out with the invitations. Ilaria will cook up a feast, and we’ll drink too much wine and dance until dawn! Oh, I can’t wait,’ says Marcie, coming over to Clare and gripping her arms. Her face is flushed beneath the powder, her eyes slightly frantic. ‘I wonder if Ettore would come? There must be precious few parties in his life right now. It’d do him the world of good.’

‘I’m not sure his leg is ready for dancing,’ says Clare.

‘Oh, have you seen him lately, then? I hardly even lay eyes on the kid when Leandro’s here.’

‘I saw him… on guard duty, I think. And he’s hardly a kid, is he?’ Clare fiddles with the gramophone handle, her fingertips feeling both raw and numb, like the rest of her – unbearably self-conscious.

‘Oh, they all get that weathered look down here in Puglia. Ettore’s only twenty-four though – you wouldn’t think it, would you?’

‘No.’ Clare can’t breathe for a second. She thought he was older than her; he seems it in so many ways. Suddenly she understands how young he must have been when hardship began its march over his body and face. ‘Will you be performing your play at the party as well?’ she says tightly.

‘Oh, heavens, I don’t think we’re ready, are we, Pip? Are we? No, I think that’ll have to be a bit later on.’

‘Well, I can’t wait to see it. Can’t you even say what it’s about?’ says Clare.

‘Oh, we don’t want to ruin the surprise, do we, Pip?’ Marcie aims a flash of her bright smile at Pip, and he smiles, closed-lipped, and shifts his feet.

‘That’s right. It’s supposed to be a surprise,’ he says. Clare gazes at him for a moment, because the expression on his face is one she hasn’t seen before.

The next day is one of heavy cloud and brooding humidity; stillness so complete that not a single leaf nods on the fig tree, not a single blade of the dry grass twists or bends. Clare goes for a walk after lunch and fancies she can feel the air parting to let her through, and closing gummily in her wake. She meets Ettore in the broken-down ruins of a trullo, its roof open to the blank sky. They make love first, and talk afterwards, like always. There’s little room to think of anything until their initial physical need is sated, and after a day, two days, sometimes three days, that need builds and snaps like a static charge. Clare is left with a graze on her spine from the rough stone wall, which stings, and an overwhelming sense of safety, surety.

‘You’re only twenty-four, Marcie told me,’ she says. Ettore nods. They sit side by side on the stone ledge outside the door of the trullo, and Clare thinks of all the people who have sat there before them, down the centuries: men smoking, thinking, watching; women resting, talking, hulling beans. Other lovers, perhaps, who’ve needed a hiding place and a hard stone bed on which to lie.

‘And you?’ he says.

‘Twenty-nine,’ says Clare, ashamed of her fresh face, and that she has no scars, by how untouched she is, how unmarked by the world.

‘You have never been hungry,’ he says.

‘No. No, I have never been hungry.’ Clare takes his hand and winds her pale fingers through his dark ones.

‘I can’t imagine that,’ he says, giving her a wondering look, with no rancour.

‘I can’t imagine your life. Your world,’ she says sadly.

‘Don’t try. Be happy you don’t need to.’ Ettore frowns.

‘But I want to. I want to know… to understand.’

‘Why? How can you? What good would it do you?’

‘Because it’s you. It’s who you are. So I want to understand,’ says Clare. Ettore looks up into the heavy sky and doesn’t reply.

‘It will rain soon,’ he says.

‘You don’t think I can, do you? You don’t think I can understand,’ says Clare. It’s a sad statement rather than a question, and Ettore turns to look at her, smiling slightly. His eyes, glowing with colour, are the brightest things she can see.

‘Nobody from outside could. It’s not your fault.’

‘I want… I want to make you happy.’

‘You’ll only make yourself unhappy.’ He shakes his head. ‘We should stop this.’

‘I don’t want to stop it.’

‘But we should. Sooner or later somebody will guess, and then your husband will know. We should stop,’ he says, and Clare holds her breath until she’s sure he doesn’t mean now – doesn’t mean right now. He brushes his thumb over her cheek, and kisses her.

When the first heavy drops of rain start to fall Ettore pushes Clare up and propels her away towards the masseria. She starts to walk but the sound of an engine sends her running back to the cover of the trullo, as the red car rolls past in the distance, also heading for the farm.

‘I didn’t know the road was so close!’ she says. Ettore hasn’t moved a muscle. ‘Do you think he saw us?’

‘He might not have if you hadn’t bolted like a rabbit,’ he says, and smiles briefly. ‘Nothing looks more guilty.’

‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I hope it was the servant driving on some errand, not Pip, or Leandro.’

‘If it was Pip there would have been more swerving, more noise and dust,’ says Ettore, and Clare smiles. ‘Rabbit. My uncle called you that, a while back, but he was wrong… you might be frightened but you don’t let it stop you. That’s courage, in fact.’

‘He called me a rabbit?’ says Clare. The insult hurts unexpectedly. ‘And Marcie called me mouse, once. That’s what they think of me – a weakling. A coward.’

‘What does it matter what they think?’ He smiles lopsidedly at her. ‘We know better.’

‘I’m so tired of…’ Clare shakes her head. She can’t put her finger on it. ‘I’m so tired of doing what I’m told to. Of being expected to follow where I’m led.’ Ettore frowns at her.

‘Yes. It gets under your skin, doesn’t it?’ he says softly. ‘When you are shown no respect; given no control over your own life.’

Clare lowers her eyes, ashamed.

‘I’m sorry. I have no cause for complaint, I know. I must sound so spoilt to you… It’s my own fault, anyway. People lead me because I’ve always let them,’ she says. Ettore lights a cigarette and blows the smoke high above his head, and says nothing. Clare is crouching with her face close to the ancient tufo stone wall, her fingers braced against it. She stands up and goes to sit next to Ettore. There are ants crawling around her ankles and she bends to brush them away; their bites are spiteful little pinpricks. In the distance, the last dust thrown up by the car resettles. ‘Even if it was that servant driving, we should be careful. He seems quite friendly with Marcie. Federico, that’s his name. Perhaps he’d say something to her, if he knew about us.’

‘He’s scum,’ Ettore snaps. ‘If Marcie knew what was going on, if she opened her eyes and looked, for once, she wouldn’t have him near her. Not for a second.’

‘Why, though? What’s going on? Your uncle told me there was a… crisis, a war,’ says Clare. Ettore pauses, thinking before he answers. He always does, and Clare loves the way he only speaks once he’s found exactly what he wants to say.

‘It is a war, Chiara. We’ve been fighting it for decades; it ebbs and flows, as these things will. Now we’re coming to the final act.’ He takes a long pull on his cigarette and shakes his head. ‘There’ll be more bloodshed before this summer is out. You saw a man beaten in Gioia, you told me. Attacked by a blackshirt squad.’

‘Yes. Yes, I saw it. His name was Francesco Molino.’ Clare recoils from the memory.

‘Federico Manzo leads one of those squads. He is one of them; a fascist. There is a great deal of violence in him, I’ve seen it. The same that’s in his father Ludo Manzo – violence that doesn’t need a cause, only an excuse.’

Clare stares at him. His words have turned her cold. She thinks of the posy of pale blue flowers Federico offered her, and the sweetness of his smile not quite matching the knowing look in his eyes. She thinks of him mending the bicycle puncture for Pip, and the gramophone for Marcie. She thinks of a man’s broken and bloody spectacles falling to the flagstones in Gioia, and yet again she’s assailed by the impossibility of all these things being true at once, by the unreality of this place, these events.

‘He tried to give me flowers,’ she murmurs, in English.

‘Che cos’ hai detto?’ says Ettore. What did you say? Clare gives a small shake of her head.

‘Does your uncle know about this?’

‘Yes, he knows.’

‘Then…’ Clare swallows. ‘Leandro is one of them, too? He’s a fascist?’

‘That is something I’m trying hard to find out,’ says Ettore grimly. ‘Nearly all of the other proprietors are, of course. They hire the squads, feed them, arm them, shelter them. They’re mounting an army to wipe out the likes of me, and my family. But Leandro is also my family.’ He shrugs one shoulder. ‘Or he was. Many landlords would not even negotiate with the peasant leagues. Did you know that? Not until they were forced to – and some not even then. They said that farm animals belonged in the fields, not at their tables. They said we had no right to speak. That’s how they see us – as animals,’ he says. Clare stares, shocked.

‘But… your uncle can’t think like that. He can’t. I saw how he was treated in Gioia, by the other rich men. He was… snubbed. Scorned. He can’t possibly think like they do.’

‘What my uncle thinks is a mystery to me these days. He wants to be accepted by them. I don’t know how far he would go to be accepted.’

‘But… to fight against these squads… Can that be the way? People will die… you could be hurt. There must be another way.’

‘Chiara,’ says Ettore. He tips his head back against the wall to look at her, as if suddenly exhausted. ‘The question is, what should we do when they leave us no other way?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says meekly. ‘But I can’t stand to think of you in danger. Is there no… political solution?’

‘We are all in danger.’ He drops the stub of his cigarette into the dust and grinds it with a chunk of stone. ‘And politics? Let me tell you about politics. In 1908 we had an election in Gioia. If we elected the socialist candidate we could start to make our voices heard, but Nicola De Bellis won by a unanimous vote. De Bellis, who believed he was king, and we were all his serfs. A unanimous vote, Chiara. Anyone who might have voted against him was beaten, killed, arrested, or barricaded inside. And, just in case, De Bellis made sure he owned the vote counters too. That is how politics works here in Gioia. So if you can think of another way, please tell me.’ He turns his head to look at her; his face is tense, eyes narrowed, but her defeated silence seems to calm him, and he relents. ‘You should go, before the rain really starts. I’ll follow a different way,’ he says, and Clare nods. Without having seemed to move, the white clouds have turned to grey, low and solid; fat raindrops explode in the dust and leave dark, uneven craters. Clare wants to say to him, I love you, but somehow she knows she shouldn’t; she knows he wouldn’t want to hear it, and also that he knows it already.

It’s pouring by the time Clare arrives back at the front gates, and the young guard, Carlo, lets her in with an amiable grin and water drizzling from the brim of his hat. This is the warm, wetting rain she’d hoped for before; no thunder or hail, just a steady downpour connecting heaven and earth, which plasters her hair to her shoulders and runs down her calves into her shoes. The dogs crouch beneath their meagre shelters, looking out with mournful eyes. They hardly bother to bark at Clare any more, they’ve got so used to her scent. As she walks past the raised hump of the cistern in the aia she can hear the water thudding into it below ground level. She walks a slow loop around the masseria, listening to the sluice of water in the gutter, the music it makes as it rushes along stone gullies, unseen, beneath her feet. She pauses in the vegetable garden to hear it battering the almond tree leaves, and pattering on the broken love seat. When she looks up she sees some of the guards on the roof standing out in it as she is, letting it soak them. In England people would run out of this rain, not into it, but here it’s a rarity like snow at home – something almost miraculous. But it isn’t enough to make a stream run between the fields, even for a little while. After half an hour the rain stops, like a tap turned off with a single twist, and minutes later a bloated sun emerges from the clouds and everything starts to steam.

Federico is in the courtyard, drying the red car with a leather rag. At the sight of him Clare is even more affected than before – physically repelled, like there’s a hand on her chest, shoving her away. She takes an involuntary step backwards and keeps her eyes lowered after taking one look at his face beginning to smile. But there’s no way to go inside without passing him, so she folds her arms, looks at her feet and marches by. As she does she hears a noise – a hissing, low and rhythmic, full of startling menace. She glances up and it’s Federico, hissing at her through the gap in his twisted front teeth, and his smile has turned sour and leering, and his eyes are mocking, and she knows then, absolutely, that he saw. That he knows about her and Ettore. He doesn’t stop hissing now that she’s looking at him. He wants her to see. Clare turns away and hurries inside, revolted; humiliated at the same time.

She goes into the long sitting room on the ground floor and finds it empty. She climbs the stairs and goes out onto the terrace but there’s no sign of Marcie, or Pip. She checks the bat room; the door is open, the room bright and empty. Crossing to the window with the soft sound of her footsteps echoing, Clare looks down into the courtyard. She watches Federico polishing the car, his brows furrowed against the sunlight, his arm working in rhythmic circles. He’s rolled up his shirtsleeves and the muscles of his forearms are taut ridges, and she thinks of Francesco Molino – the way he curled against their kicks and blows, after his glasses flew off, the wrong shape of his collapsed eye socket. There’s acid at the back of her throat, hot and sour. She can’t believe Federico has this normal life, that he looks like a normal man, not like a monster; it seems an outrageous dissembling. She’s appalled to have been near him when he had such a secret, and she’s frightened of him now, not just uneasy; she wants to tell somebody, to denounce him somehow. But Ettore said that Leandro already knows, and she can’t think of anyone else to tell.

Clare feels unsettled and restless, and doesn’t want to be alone. She goes to Pip’s room but that, too, is empty. The room has been made up by one of the maids – sheets stretched tight, the carafe of water on the nightstand refilled and covered, his copy of Bleak House and the photograph of Emma neatly arranged. A soft wash of air nudges in through the window, fresh and warm after the rain, and Clare goes to stand at it, looking out through the back wall of the masseria. She sees Pip on the far side of the overseer’s trullo, standing with Ludo and Leandro. He is slighter than either of them, but almost as tall. He stands with his shoulders pulled back, in discussion about something and pointing to a lone olive tree not far away. Clare watches, curious, even though she doesn’t like seeing him in their company, until she sees that they are holding guns – Pip included. She catches her breath, turns at once and goes back to the stairs. She doesn’t want to recross the courtyard but there’s no other way, so she walks fast and doesn’t look at Federico. He stays silent this time; he keeps working, but she can feel his eyes following her.

By the time she reaches Pip he’s standing with his legs wide apart and his arm extended, squinting along it. The sight of the pistol in his hand gives Clare a nasty jolt, like he’s holding a live snake – she wants him to drop it and step away. There’s a splash of white paint on the trunk of the olive tree, and Ludo is at Pip’s side, steadying his hand, looking down along it, adjusting his aim. Leandro catches her arm to stall her as she hurries towards them.

‘Wait a moment,’ he says. ‘He’s about to shoot.’

‘I don’t want him to,’ she says automatically. Leandro hushes her gently, and keeps hold of her arm. After a moment Clare pulls it away, but she stays at his side. The sight of Ludo Manzo schooling Pip is almost as abhorrent as the sight of the gun. Stepping back, Ludo checks the target once more and gives a curt nod. His eyes are narrow and sharp; he doesn’t flinch when the gun goes off, and Pip’s arm jerks back wildly before he can stop it.

The bullet smacks into the stone of the wall two metres to the left of the olive tree, there’s a cloud of dust, a shower of grit, and Ludo grins. He says something and then chuckles, and Pip’s cheeks flame. He’s breathing hard, his eyes are wide with excitement.

‘Ludo says the first time he fired a gun he gave himself a black eye, so you did good, Pip,’ says Leandro, and Pip turns to smile at him. He seems surprised to see Clare there, but pleased as well.

‘Did you see that, Clare?’ he says.

‘I saw it,’ says Clare, but she can’t smile.

‘You don’t approve?’ Leandro murmurs.

‘He’s still a schoolboy. He doesn’t need to know how to fire a gun.’

‘You never know when it might come in useful,’ Leandro demurs. ‘Especially out here.’ Clare glances sharply at him, but Leandro walks forwards before she can ask him what he means. He puts a hand on Pip’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. ‘Now you know how it kicks, so you’ll know to be ready for it. Try the shot again. Squeeze the trigger gently, and brace your arm for the recoil.’

‘All right,’ says Pip. Clare draws breath to speak but doesn’t know what she wants to say. Pip is enjoying himself, and she doesn’t want to spoil it for him, but she thinks of the naked man grazing the stubble at Ludo’s feet, and the way he grinned then, too. She thinks of Federico leading a squad in Gioia, and of Leandro, refusing to let her leave. She’s surrounded by men of violence, and she doesn’t want the least trace of it to touch Pip, or linger on him, or shape him in any way. The brutality is like a poison, like a sickness, and the thought of Pip catching it is appalling.

His second shot carves a ragged tear in the bark of the tree trunk, still wide of the target but far closer.

‘Bravo!’ says Ludo, nodding. Pip smiles, shrugs modestly.

‘I can do better, I’m sure of it. I just need to practise more. Will you tell him for me, Leandro?’

‘Of course. And of course you’ll improve – a farm is the perfect place to practise. You’ll be a crack shot by the end of the summer.’

‘But perhaps that’s enough for now?’ says Clare. She too has gone closer. She wants to catch Pip’s eye, she wants him to sense her unease so she won’t need to speak it.

‘But we’ve only just started!’ says Pip. He still has the pistol in his hand, held awkwardly and half extended away from him, like he doesn’t quite want it to touch him. ‘I need to practise more. Then Ludo’s going to teach me to shoot the rifle as well, and then I can go and shoot at rats in the barn.’

‘Well, be warned – they’re devilish hard to hit,’ says Leandro. ‘You won’t believe the speed of them. If you can shoot rats then there’s not much you won’t be able to hit.’

‘I don’t see why you need to shoot anything,’ says Clare, almost pleading. But Pip doesn’t seem to hear it.

‘I’m good at archery,’ says Pip. ‘I think I could be good at this, too.’

‘A gun is just a tool, Mrs Kingsley,’ says Leandro calmly. ‘On a farm it’s just a tool, like a scythe or a mattock.’

‘Pip’s not one of your guards, Mr Cardetta.’

‘It’s really fine, Clare. Father said it was a good idea,’ says Pip, stepping away from her, raising the gun again, staring down its sights. ‘There are brigands, you know. And packs of rebels. This way I can defend us, if I need to.’ He screws up his eyes, tilting his head to take aim. Clare stares at him in shock.

‘The boy has been upset by some of the things he’s seen here,’ Leandro says quietly, for Clare’s ears only. ‘This is how to make him strong; unafraid.’

‘No. This is how to inure him,’ she says shakily.

‘That’s how we get strong.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘No harm will come of it, I give you my word.’ Clare watches for a minute more, and knows she’s defeated. She wants to say to Leandro, and to Ludo, you can’t have him. But Pip is no longer a child, and he was never truly hers. Ludo glances up and meets her eye, and this time there’s no grin, no amusement; just a cold, steady scrutiny. Clare leaves them, and as she goes Pip’s third shot rings out. The sound makes her ears hum, and then she hears Pip’s delighted laugh, and Leandro clapping.

A day later, Clare sits out on the covered terrace with Pip, playing rummy with a deck of yellowed playing cards that he found in an empty bedroom. Clare is still tense; she feels full of things she wants to say to him, but when it comes to it she doesn’t know how to phrase any of them, so she stays silent. She can’t explain to him why it bothered her so much to see him learning to shoot a gun with Ludo and Leandro; or why she distrusts both men so deeply. For the first time ever, the silence between them feels awkward. This is another thing she wants to object to, but to acknowledge it would only make it worse. When raised voices echo out across the courtyard they exchange an anxious look and their game stalls as they listen. It’s simmering hot again, but the sky is a deep blue and there’s a gently cooling breeze. It seems an altogether too beautiful day for such an explosion of anger. It’s Leandro’s voice – instantly recognisable – and there are pauses in his tirade as if somebody else is answering him, in a voice too quiet to be heard. It could be one of the servants, it could be Marcie, or Boyd. There’s a hiatus during which the whole masseria seems to bend its ears towards the absence of sound, then Leandro shouts:

‘Is this a goddamned joke?’ There’s a bang of a door slamming and then quiet, and the sparrows in the courtyard, as though they’d been holding their breath, start to hop about and chatter again.

‘What do you suppose that was all about?’ says Pip nervously. He’s always hated shouting, raised voices, any kind of confrontation.

‘Perhaps I should go and see… and make sure everything’s all right,’ says Clare, getting up. ‘You’ll stay put?’ she says to Pip, who nods, reshuffles the cards and starts laying out a game of solitaire.

She goes down to the long sitting room. Somebody left in high dudgeon, and slammed the inner door, but she has no idea if that person was Leandro or the object of his wrath. Peeping around the threshold Clare sees papers scattered over the central ottoman, curling gently in the breeze from the open doors. She sees the back of Leandro’s silver head, his sloping shoulders and solid ribcage, and catches her breath. She’s about to slip away again when she realises that the papers in front of him are Boyd’s drawings. Her fingers curl tightly around the doorframe, her nails making a minute scratching noise that turns Leandro’s head at once.

‘Mrs Kingsley,’ he says sombrely. His face has a dragged- down look. ‘Do come and join me. You must have heard my little outburst. I’m sure they heard it in Gioia.’

‘Is everything all right, Mr Cardetta?’ she says pointlessly. She sits down uneasily, on the edge of a couch opposite him.

‘In a way I suppose it is, in fact. I fear I’ve given your husband a pasting he didn’t quite deserve. Perhaps he meant nothing by it. A misunderstanding, nothing more. I can’t imagine him being the type of man to goad another deliberately.’

‘Certainly I can’t imagine him ever goading you deliberately, Mr Cardetta.’

The proprietor delicately rearranges some of the drawings in front of him, using only his fingertips; he frowns at them in thought.

‘We all have our weaknesses, Mrs Kingsley,’ he murmurs. ‘Mine is my temper. I have such a store of anger in my heart, you understand.’ He taps his chest to show her. ‘Such a store of it. Nobody could be born poor here and not grow up to have it. It doesn’t matter what you do later, or what changes. It never goes.’

‘You… don’t like the designs?’ says Clare. Leandro looks up at her sharply, as if even now suspecting mockery. He shakes his head.

‘You can’t see it either, can you? That rather confirms Boyd’s innocent intentions.’ Leandro makes a sweeping gesture over the drawings. ‘Trulli. He has designed it after trulli. I have worked and worked; I have done things you couldn’t imagine, Mrs Kingsley, to pull myself up to where I am. Still, my peers here treat me as peasant scum, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. And now look – after all of it, your husband would put me back in a trullo!’ He laughs suddenly, loudly. ‘In case!’ He wags a finger at her. ‘Just in case anybody should forget, and mistake me for signori!’ He laughs again, a self-mocking chuckle that soon peters out. Clare swallows nervously; the thought is there at once that if the designs aren’t right, Boyd will have to stay longer. She will have to stay longer.

‘I’m… I’m quite sure Boyd had absolutely no intention of insulting you, Mr Cardetta.’

‘Ah, you’re probably right.’ Leandro sighs and leans back in his chair. He runs one hand across his mouth, grips his jaw; the same gesture Clare has seen Ettore make. ‘Perhaps I should scrap the whole idea and save my money. Chances are the place could get ransacked anyway, before this trouble is done.’

‘Then… you don’t want him to redraw them?’ she says breathlessly.

‘You must be ready to return to your home?’ he says. ‘Perhaps this whole thing was a mistake,’ he adds softly, and she isn’t sure which thing he means.

‘No, I… that is…’ Clare can’t for the life of her think how to answer. For a mad second she almost asks him what it is he wants to know from Boyd.

She looks up to find him watching her speculatively.

‘You are not at all what I expected you would be, Mrs Kingsley,’ he says. ‘The British are often so set in their ways. So rigid in their thinking. You seem, if you don’t mind my saying, to be just the opposite of that. In fact, most of the time I find myself unable to put my finger on what it is you do think.’

‘I find the same thing myself, sometimes,’ she says, and Leandro smiles.

‘Your husband has told you something of my former life in New York, I can tell.’ He says this lightly, and Clare is instantly on her guard. She doesn’t trust any levity in him.

‘Yes,’ she says. Leandro grunts, nods.

‘You demanded to know, I’ll wager. I can’t imagine him volunteering the information. And may I counsel you not to credit everything you’ve heard, Mrs Kingsley? Your husband and I have a… complicated past. I know he would never tell you all of it. Perhaps he should have told you none of it.’

‘Will you tell me?’

‘Me? Christ, no.’ He chuckles again. ‘But I will tell you this. In the course of my life I’ve had to do things that no man in his right mind would be proud of. I’ve been on the wrong side of the law – so far on the wrong side I forgot there was a right side, sometimes. I forgot there was a law. I’ve left that behind me now; I’m not that same man any more. But it got me to where I am, it got me to where I wanted to be, and how many men can say that? Do you know what I used to dream of when I was a little boy, Mrs Kingsley?’ He leans forward keenly, elbows on his knees. ‘I used to watch the signori going into the Teatro Comunale in Gioia in the evening. I used to look at their fine suits and the dresses and jewels the women wore, and the carriages they came in, all lit up with lamps. Their horses were sleek and spirited, not broken-winded, or worm-eaten. I used to dream of being one of those men – of walking along with them with a beauty on my arm, and laughing about whatever it was the rich found to laugh about, and spending an evening well fed, watching a play. I didn’t even know what a play was, really. I couldn’t picture it – there I was, all bones and dirt, a starving, snot-nosed rat like the rest of us. And I watched them, and I dreamed. Do you know how old I was the first time I worked a full day in the fields, Mrs Kingsley?’ Clare shakes her head, mute. ‘Eight. I was eight years old,’ says Leandro, and his face drags down again, remembering. ‘You’ve no idea of the things I’ve done, and the shit I’ve waded through, to put myself where I am. And I will cut down any man who tries to take it from me. I will cut him down.’ He says this with total calm, total conviction, and Clare feels her legs twitch, the instinctive urge to run.

Suddenly, Leandro smiles. ‘I’ve lost the thread of my story. Forgive me.’

‘I can’t imagine what life must be like for the very poor here. I can be told, but I can’t imagine it,’ says Clare.

‘None of us can walk in another’s shoes, not truly. But don’t let it distress you, Mrs Kingsley. Soon you’ll be back in London, with your husband and your son, and it will be as though none of this ever happened. You need never spare a thought for poor Puglia again. Isn’t that what you want?’ She looks up sharply because the question has an undercurrent of unspoken meaning.

‘I won’t ever forget coming here,’ she says.

‘No. I don’t suppose you will,’ he says gravely.

‘Will you tell me what happened at Masseria Girardi?’ She takes a chance in asking, since they’re speaking plainly. ‘You said Ettore was angry with you about it.’

‘Angry with me about it – no. Although, perhaps he ought to be. No, my nephew is just angry about it. He’s angry about so many things. Of course he is. He was one of those starving brats, same as I was, and he’s never managed to change it at all.’

‘But what was it?’

‘It’s a hard story, Mrs Kingsley.’

‘I want to hear it.’

‘It was just over a year ago now, and all this… violence was just beginning – rumours and whispers. The harvest was a disaster – farmers were torching their own crops because the insurance money was worth more than the wheat! This is what the peasants don’t see!’ Leandro thumps one fist into the opposite palm. ‘If they drive us out of business, there’ll be nobody to pay them whatsoever! But the workers were starving, and they had the right to work – that’s what changed after the war. They believed they had the right, and masserie that refused to hire were attacked. The Girardi farm had been raided, stolen from. Then the men came and worked Girardi’s fallow fields and demanded pay, and Girardi says he saw amongst them the face of at least one man who’d been in a raiding party. And so he hit back. He filled the farmhouse with his neighbours, and with his own guards and annaroli. They all brought their guns. And when the workers came at the end of the next day, to return the tools, and Nettis – the man who spoke for them – asked to be paid… they opened fire.’

One of the dogs out in the aia barks, and there’s the sudden stutter of wings as pigeons in the courtyard launch up in fright. Clare has a hollow feeling beneath her ribs.

‘They opened fire on unarmed men?’ she says. Leandro nods heavily.

‘A shameful thing, but Girardi would say he was driven to it. It was a situation with no resolution… no good outcome.’

‘How many men were… killed?’

‘Six. Only six. Which is miraculous, really. Many, many more were injured. They fled on foot, and the guards chased after them on horseback. The youngest to die was sixteen; the oldest seventy. It was an evil day. A sad day for this country.’

‘And Ettore was there? He was one of the workers?’

‘He was there.’ Leandro nods again. ‘He wasn’t injured, but he lost friends. He lost his friend Davide, who was his sister’s lover – Paola’s lover. They’d have wed if they’d had any idea whether or not her husband was still alive. But New York swallowed him up.’

‘And the men who did it? The men who opened fire?’

‘Nobody knows for sure who was inside the masseria, except those that were there. Some have been arrested, some are on the run. Some were lynched by the braccianti in vendetta. Then men from the lynch mobs were arrested…’

‘The peasants know who was there?’

‘They think they know. They thought they knew well enough to seek revenge. Ludo Manzo knows; I’m sure he was there. I can see him itching to say something about it to me, in an offhand way, as he loves to do, but he’s not wholly sure where my loyalties lie, you see. Not completely sure. I pay him handsomely to keep this place running but he still sees a cafone when he looks at me. He hasn’t the wit to realise that I own him now. Him and his son. There are so many scores to be settled here, Mrs Kingsley. We’ll be picking away at this mess for generations.’

Clare turns to look out at the perfect blue sky and the sunlight glaring on the high white walls. She half expects to see some sign of the violence, like smoke in the sky. She half expects to feel the ground shudder with the ponderous footsteps of sorrow, hatred, death.

‘I should be afraid to be here. I was afraid, after what I saw in Gioia,’ she says softly.

‘And you aren’t now?’

‘I don’t know why not. I feel powerless, I feel weak. But not afraid. Not for myself, at any rate. Perhaps that’s a surrender of some kind.’

‘You’re safe inside these walls, Mrs Kingsley.’

‘Marcie’s planning a party. We’re to drink, and dance, and be merry.’

‘Marcie is frightened. I shield her from what’s happening here as much as I can, and she chooses not to look at the rest. All I want is her happiness. I’m helpless, Mrs Kingsley. Helpless. She has my heart – every last part of it. I’m not blind – I know she married a rich man first, and Leandro Cardetta second. But I married for love.’ He smiles wistfully. ‘Like a fool.’

‘Then why don’t you take her and go? Go until this has passed? Go somewhere safe!’

‘No man and no circumstance will take this from me, Mrs Kingsley. I may hate this place, I may hate its people – those who’ve done nothing to improve themselves for ten generations; those who scorn the poor from positions of ease that they’ve done nothing to earn – I may hate it all, but I belong to it. There’s nowhere else I belong. Nothing I’ve done would have any meaning elsewhere.’

‘And Marcie?’ says Clare, bewildered. ‘What of where she belongs?’

‘Marcie belongs at my side,’ says Leandro intransigently.

‘How can it end, a war like this? How can it ever end?’ she says. Leandro shrugs.

‘We may be about to find out, Mrs Kingsley.’

Boyd is back at his desk, stooped and miserable, but since all his drawings are still in the sitting room he’s stooped over nothing. Pencil shavings and his paring knife, and the slotted shadows falling from the window. This time he doesn’t look up when Clare comes in behind him. He runs his thumbnail along a crack in the wood, gouging out a twisted worm of the dust and dirt of ages.

‘He’s calmed down now,’ says Clare, staying where she is by the door. For some reason she can’t go any closer, she can’t touch him. He doesn’t seem like anyone she knows. Your husband and I have a complicated past. ‘He knows you weren’t trying to insult him.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ Boyd’s voice is strangely hollow, hopeless. Clare has the sudden urge to shake him. Shake something out of him. ‘But I’ll have to start again. It could take weeks. Weeks, Clare.’

‘He told me he might not bother.’

‘He what?’ Boyd turns to her; his cheeks are mottled, his thin hair limp in the heat.

‘With all the trouble in Gioia, he said he might postpone the project. He said we might be able to go soon,’ says Clare, and wonders what Boyd might make of her dispassion. But his face lights up, breaking into radiant hope.

‘Oh, I hope so! That’s wonderful, Clare…’ He blinks rapidly, casts his eyes around the room and smiles. ‘If only I’d known at the start that all I had to do was produce a design he didn’t like… We could have gone weeks ago.’

‘Perhaps we should wait to see what he decides before we start packing,’ she says coolly. ‘He’s the boss, after all. In more ways than one, it would seem.’ Boyd looks crestfallen.

‘Clare, what is it? What’s wrong? There’s a distance between us that was never there before-’

‘Is there? Wasn’t it?’

‘Clare, please – talk to me!’ he says, still wretched and hunched at his desk. ‘Please don’t withdraw from me. I… I need you so terribly much.’ The sight of him is somehow unbearable – she wants to pity him but even that urge makes her restive, irritable. He’s like the ant bites around her ankles that she wants to scratch. She can’t explain the feeling; she doesn’t know if it’s him causing it, or if it’s taking her over of its own accord.

‘I’ve nothing to say. Really,’ she says quietly. She leaves him there, shutting the door behind her and gripping the handle for a moment, as if she might keep him inside that way, away from her.

Some nights Clare leaves her husband sleeping to slip through the dark hallways to Ettore’s room, letting fear burn out the somnolence of all the sleep she’s missing. The risk is huge, but so is the reward, the feeling she has with Ettore that everything – the world, her life, herself, everything – is better, and will be well. They are quiet during these night-time meetings; there are few words. She doesn’t think about what she will say if Boyd is awake when she returns to their room. She doesn’t think about what she will say if she encounters anybody on the way there, or on the way back. She doesn’t think of them at all, and usually she sees nobody. So she’s wholly unprepared on the one occasion she nearly runs into Pip, coming up from the kitchen with a jug of water, his bare feet slapping gently on the stone stairs. Clare presses herself into a dark doorway and hopes he won’t hear her heart thudding. His face is in shadow, his hair, wild with sleep, gives him a strange silhouette. When his door clicks shut she has to wait for two minutes, three, four, before she trusts her legs to carry her; before she’s sure that he, the one other person she loves, isn’t going to re-emerge. And then the thought intrudes on her again, that these two people she loves are from different planets, and she can never have them both. It stings like the cut of a cold, sharp blade. But she carries on to Ettore’s room.

Another time, she pauses at the foot of the stairs that lead up to Marcie and Leandro’s room on the third floor. Their voices drift down to her and stop her in her tracks, first with the fear of discovery, then with the irresistible thrill of trespass, of watching unseen. Muffled words, stifled volume, but it’s unmistakably a bitter argument; one with its own energy and momentum, that rises and falls in waves as it gets the better of them and then is forcibly hushed. The hairs stand up along Clare’s arms. She doesn’t want to listen but she does, just for a few seconds. She hears Leandro say:

‘Marcie! I’ve told you, it’s impossible.’

‘No! What’s impossible is that you can expect me to stay here in this godforsaken desert for weeks on end without going completely insane!’ Marcie replies. Her voice is frayed, like Clare has never heard it before; so ragged with feeling that the words are distorted.

‘What would you have me do? Well?’ Leandro barks. Then there’s something like a wail from Marcie, a thin sound, drenched in misery, almost childlike. With a shiver, Clare moves away, and doesn’t hear anything else.

Many days pass like this – days of held breath and waiting, at once transient and ponderous. Sometimes Clare and Ettore meet far out in a distant field where the wheat has been cut and the stubble burnt, and nothing more will be done until ploughing in the early weeks of autumn. One day they hunker behind a wall with a view of the blackened ground, beneath a sky like scalding milk; there’s the tired cheep of crickets and the far-off whistle of a kite, and the prickle of smoke in the air. Ettore sits with his back to the wall and his square, bony knees drawn up; Clare curls at his side, leaning into him, and he holds her there with one hand at the back of her neck and the other reaching across to clasp her upper arm in a grip that almost hurts. He doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s doing it; he is distant, more preoccupied than ever. His thoughts, in their silences, slide away to things she can’t know. He no longer needs the crutch to walk; he has a limp, lessening all the time.

‘Tell me about Livia. What was she like?’ she says. The name makes Ettore breathe in sharply. He blinks, turning his head to look away across the field.

‘What was she like? She was…’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s hard to describe her, when it should be easy. It’s like talking about a dream.’

‘Try. I’d like to know.’

‘She was young, younger than me. Full of smiles, even when life was bloody. She was like Pino in that way – such a good heart, nothing could crush it. You know? Do you know anybody like that?’

‘No,’ says Clare truthfully.

‘She had dark hair, dark eyes; not like yours. She had this musical way of talking… I always loved to hear her talk, the sound of her voice. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid to be hungry, to go without. She wasn’t afraid of what anybody said. She was only afraid…’ He pauses, swallows laboriously. ‘She was only afraid at the end. After… after she was attacked. I think she was afraid to die. I think she knew she was going to die, and was afraid. I wish I hadn’t seen her fear.’

‘I’m so sorry, Ettore. I’m sure… I’m sure she was glad you were with her. It must have been so hard, but I’m sure she was glad. I would be.’

‘At the end she barely knew me.’ Ettore curls his hand around her head and pulls it tighter to his chest, and Clare isn’t sure if this is just a reflex, an instinctive reaction to thoughts of the girl he lost. ‘She… she had a terrible fever. She hardly knew me.’

‘You’ve suffered such loss. You and Paola. Your uncle… Leandro told me that she lost her husband; that he disappeared to America, and then her lover was also killed. Did she love him very much?’

‘Yes. As much as I loved Livia, I think. But she’s… braver than me. Stronger than me. She doesn’t let it show. Is that wrong, do you think? Shouldn’t a man be the stronger one?’

‘No. Not always. I only met her so briefly but that was how she seemed to me – strong. Like she was wearing armour. Perhaps a person can be… too hard.’

‘Not here. You can’t be too hard here. You have to be hard.’

‘And she has her son, of course. She has part of her lost lover in him, something to love and care for, and distract her from her pain.’

‘Yes, that’s true. Many women are waiting – waiting to hear from their husbands or fathers or brothers who have gone to America. Perhaps they still write, perhaps they still send money, perhaps not. Still, they wait. Not Paola. She gave her husband two years, after he went there. Two years to send her a letter, or some sign he was still alive, and if he was still alive, that he still wanted her. Nothing came. So she said to me, “Life is short,” and she let herself love another. She heals herself; she doesn’t… let herself sink. I can’t seem to stop.’

‘It’s only been half a year since you lost her,’ says Clare gently. She sits up, away from him, and Ettore turns to look at her. He seems tired and vulnerable, like there’s no fight left in him, and she wishes she knew a way to sustain him.

She looks away across the burnt land, across the parched remains of wheat stalks; it’s a devastated landscape, empty as a broken heart.

‘I’m starting to see how strong you have to be to survive here. Why you need to be strong. Working for men like that overseer, Ludo Manzo…’ She shakes her head. ‘I saw him… I saw him doing something terrible to a man. Making him graze from the ground like a sheep.’

‘Ludo Manzo likes to humiliate people. Young boys especially, but anybody he can.’ Ettore’s voice turns hard. ‘Any excuse… he will use any excuse to punish a man.’

‘But why? How did he become so cruel? And why is he allowed to do such things?’

‘He is a product of this place and all the hundreds of years of hate in its blood. There’s no other why. Many men have tried to kill him, but he has a knack for staying alive. The luck of the devil, some say. Davide – Paola’s lover, who was killed at the Girardi farm – once got a knife to his throat in the dark of the night, and yet the blade slipped in his hand somehow, and didn’t go deep. Davide said it was like some black magic protected him.’ Ettore jerks up his chin, and Clare can’t tell if he accepts this idea or scorns it.

‘No wonder you are angry.’

‘Angry?’ Ettore shakes his head. ‘Wasps are angry. Spoilt children are angry. What we feel is much bigger. Much worse.’

‘Do you think it was Manzo who shot Davide at Girardi? Do you think he recognised him, and… shot him deliberately?’

‘What are you saying, Chiara?’

‘I asked Leandro about what happened at Girardi… He said that Ludo was there that day, that he was one of the men who fired-’ She breaks off as Ettore lurches forwards. He pushes her away from him, holds her at arm’s length, eyes snapping.

‘He said that – Ludo Manzo was at Girardi that day? You’re sure?’ His fingers are digging into her properly now, painfully. She nods dumbly. Ettore is on his feet in an instant, and stalks away towards dell’Arco without another word.

Clare watches him helplessly, fearfully; she can’t go after him directly, and be seen. She waits in agony for a few minutes and then sets off on a different route, frantic with the feeling of having mishandled something fragile, and done irreversible damage. In the end she has no choice but to go to the main gates, even if she is tellingly close behind him. The wall around the vegetable garden is too high for her to climb; the walls around the aia are lower but in full view of the trullo by the gates and the guards on the roof. And what would look guiltier than scaling a wall, anyway? But just as she has her hand on the flaking metal she hears male voices, raised in anger, excitement; there’s a whoop like a rodeo cry, and whistling. Clare, compelled by foreboding, jogs around the aia to the rear of the complex. The off-duty corporals are all there, gathered, watching. There’s a rising cloud of dust, and between the onlooker’s bodies Clare glimpses sudden frantic movements.

She edges forwards, already knowing what she’ll see. There’s a shout from behind her, and she glances up at the guards on the roof who are lined up, watching. At the centre of the dust cloud Ettore is fighting Ludo Manzo. He’s astride him, snarling, struggling to free his arms from Ludo’s grasp, to be able to hit. There’s blood in his teeth; the pair of them are covered in Puglia’s gold-brown dirt, barely recognisable. Ludo’s face is murderous; a rictus of total fury. On the edge of the circle his son stands watching, arms loose at his sides, fingers twitching with desire. The tendons in Ettore’s neck stand out in hard ridges; he claws at the older man’s face, leans all his weight forwards and gets his hands around Ludo’s scrawny neck, shaking with the strain.

Clare watches with the others. She can’t move or speak; there’s a clenched fist in her chest that makes it hard to breathe, and the shouts from the others are in the dialect she can’t decipher; she feels removed, helpless. Ludo is older but taller and full of vicious malice; Ettore younger but smaller, still weak in one leg, and reckless with anger. With an inhuman growl Ludo throws Ettore off and is on his feet in a heartbeat, fighting for breath, rubbing his throat. He darts forwards and kicks Ettore’s damaged leg as he tries to stand; Ettore roars in pain and falls to his knees, and Ludo catches his hair in one hand and lifts his chin to take the full impact of a crunching blow of his fist. Ettore rolls away, gets to his feet but staggers, shaking his head to clear it. Ludo is grinning now, like he’s heard a good joke; blood drips freely from his nose, clagged up and gluey with dust.

‘I’m going to take your head off for you, boy,’ he says, his Italian so contorted with some accent that Clare can barely understand him. He jabs a finger at Ettore. ‘Then none of this will bother you any more.’ He kicks Ettore viciously in the stomach and puts him back on his knees, retching, heaving for breath.

‘Stop!’ Clare shouts. Ettore gets back to his feet, still reeling, bent over, off balance. ‘Ettore!’ She wants him to look up, wants him to see how close Ludo has got to him, how he’s coiling himself up, wiry as a snake, to deliver the next kick. Her voice is lost in the din, she tries to push forward but an arm appears across her chest, keeping her back. ‘Ettore, look out!’ she tries again, but there’s no hope of him hearing. But then Ludo freezes.

There’s a gunshot, shockingly loud, close at hand. Before the echo of it has cracked off the masseria wall the men have fallen silent and gone still; the fighters included. They stand facing one another, poised; chests heaving, eyes alight with hate. Leandro Cardetta lowers his rifle and points it casually right at them. He walks forwards slowly, and says something in dialect that Clare can’t understand. She itches with frustration, but her relief is far greater. She edges back behind the wall of young men, dipping her head, not wanting to be seen. Ludo says something in his hard, emotionless voice, also in the dialect. He jerks his thumb at Ettore, and Leandro asks something of his nephew that Ettore answers, eventually, with a single reluctant nod. Ettore starts to speak, and Clare understands the word Girardi, before Leandro cuts him off with a bark. Keeping the rifle trained on the two of them, Leandro asks a question, but neither man will answer. Clare glances across at Federico, and doesn’t like the gleeful smirk on his face. Ettore wipes one hand across his face and spits a gobbet of bright red saliva into the dust. He doesn’t speak again but turns and walks out of the circle of men, away from his uncle and the huddled, fearful figure of his lover.

He limps away towards the road and doesn’t look back, and Clare wants to shout, to tell him to wait, to know where he’s going. But she knows already – he is leaving. She can’t run after him; she has no choice but to remain amongst the crowd of men, who are deflated now, cheated of the spectacle, and mutter as they move away. Soon she will be obvious, she will be exposed, but still she can’t move. She watches Ettore’s retreating back, and longs for him to turn. He walks stiffly, one hand pressed to the ribs where Ludo’s kick landed, but he doesn’t pause. When she’s alone, standing pointlessly on the vacant patch of dusty ground, Clare can feel Leandro looking at her. She turns to meet his eye – she can’t help it. I did this, she thinks. I did this. The warm breeze sets to work, erasing the marks of the fight from the dusty ground, and Clare can only tolerate Leandro’s hard, questioning gaze for a moment before she too has to turn, and walk away.

At dinner Leandro is subdued, thoughtful, and Clare can’t put food in her mouth. The meal glistens on her plate – thin shavings of donkey meat, rolled and cooked in a thick red sauce; focaccia bread oozing oil, studded with nubs of sickly green olive. The mozzarella has wept out a puddle of whey, and the primitivo wine smells acid-sour. Anna poured some for Pip at the start of the meal, and he’s drunk it all; Boyd puts his fingers discreetly over his son’s glass when the girl returns with the jug, and Pip shoots him a rebellious look. Clare would normally be the one to do it but she hadn’t even noticed. She glances up now and sees that Pip’s cheeks are pink, and his eyes are shining and bleary. But she can’t react; she can’t find any words to say.

‘So he just went off without a word, our Ettore?’ says Marcie. ‘That’s a little rude after all the time he’s spent with us… But, these Italian men! Nothing if not passionate. Am I right?’ She looks at Clare first as she asks this and Clare flinches. But Marcie’s expression is simply puzzled, slightly injured. Clare nods once.

‘Yes, it would seem so,’ she says. Marcie puts her hand over Leandro’s and leans towards him.

‘Look at my poor husband, so sad to see him go. And to go in high dudgeon like this… What on earth were they fighting about, him and Ludo?’

‘What the giornatari and the annaroli have been fighting about for a hundred years.’ Leandro flicks his eyes at Clare and it feels like a slap.

‘What’s the matter, Clare? You look weird,’ says Pip. The wine has made him blunt, clumsy.

‘Yes, I’m not feeling terribly well,’ she says, and as she says it she realises it’s true. Her stomach quivers and then lurches up to the back of her throat, as though the terrace is pitching beneath them. The back of her neck feels cold and clammy; saliva drenches the insides of her cheeks; her fingertips tingle. She wants to go somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, somewhere she can be alone to feel this wretched, but she doesn’t think she could move without throwing up.

‘You have gone awfully pale,’ says Marcie.

‘Darling, are you all right?’ says Boyd, reaching for her.

‘Yes, please don’t-’ Clare waves her fingers but can’t finish the sentence. She shuts her eyes so she won’t see all of theirs, watching.

‘Is it the heat? Or the donkey meat? It is quite rich – I can only stomach a tiny taste of it,’ says Marcie, but all Clare’s attention has turned inwards; their voices recede into the distance, booming like a far-off sea. She hears the air rushing into her lungs and soughing out; her thudding heart and her blood moving with a seething sound. The world tilts, and goes dark.

She wakes to a room lit by a single lamp in a far corner, so that there’s no harsh glare in her eyes. She’s still dressed, lying on her back on the bed with a strange weight on her forehead. She puts her fingers to it and finds a cool, damp cloth. Pip is in a chair by the bed, and he’s finally past halfway through his dog-eared copy of Bleak House.

‘All right there, Pip?’ she says. ‘You might actually get that thing finished on this trip.’ She pulls the cloth from her head and sits up slowly. For a moment the blood thumps in her ears again, but then it fades.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps by the time I’m thirty,’ he says. His voice is heavy, his eyes hooded. The alcohol has worn off and left him sluggish. ‘Don’t faint again, will you?’ The look he gives her is that of an anxious child, just for a second.

‘I’ll try not to. Did I make a scene?’

‘You took the tablecloth with you when you went.’

‘No! Not really?’

‘Partly.’ Pip smiles. ‘You made a bit of a mess. Marcie screamed – I think she thought you were dead.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You did look awful,’ he says, and it’s almost an accusation. She frightened him.

‘Sorry, Pip. I’m fine really. I don’t know what came over me. Where’s your father?’

‘After Leandro carried you up here they went off into the sitting room with brandy. I think they’re talking about his drawings.’

‘Oh,’ says Clare. She knows the decision they might be making, and it causes her a spasm of panic.

‘Father was very worried about you, though. He looked very worried,’ says Pip, mistaking her tone.

‘I don’t want him to worry.’

‘Why did you faint?’

‘I’ve no idea, Pip.’ She smiles. ‘Women do, sometimes.’

‘You never have before.’

‘Then it must have been my turn. Honestly, Pip, I’m quite all right now.’ But all she can see is Ettore walking away, bloodied, with one hand pressed to his ribs. Gone, and she knows he won’t be coming back to Masseria dell’Arco. She tries not to think about it; she can’t let herself break down and cry in front of Pip.

‘Is this… was it because of Ettore Tarano?’ says Pip, sitting back in the chair and rubbing one thumb over the dry scabs of the dog bite on his hand. Clare is instantly afraid of his studied disinterest, the way he pretends the question is idle.

‘What do you mean?’ she says abruptly, before she can stop herself. Pip glowers.

‘You were out for a walk when the fight happened… did you see it? Was it… was it as bad as what happened in Gioia?’ Clare breathes carefully, and nods.

‘Yes – that is, no. It wasn’t as bad as what happened in Gioia. I hope nothing ever is. But I did see it. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps that’s what it was. It was horrible – they… they were in deadly earnest.’

‘And then when Marcie started talking about it at dinner it made you think of it again,’ he says, and Clare realises he needs to explain what happened; he needs to understand it, so he can know if it will happen again. She nods.

‘Yes. That’s probably it.’

‘This-’ he starts to say, breaking off, frowning down at his hands again. ‘This is all real, isn’t it? Only it doesn’t seem it. Not the way home and school and London seem real. But this is real too. More real and less, at the same time.’

‘I know exactly what you mean, Pip. I really do,’ says Clare. She reaches out her hand to him, and when he doesn’t take it she stands, and bends down to wrap her arms around his head and shoulders. ‘We’ll go soon.’ The words bruise her as she says them; she swallows tears again. ‘We’ll go soon.’ But Pip pulls away, gently but insistently. He stands up and closes his book.

‘You should probably rest,’ he says, as impersonal as a stranger. ‘They sent for the doctor to see you but he hasn’t turned up yet.’ Clare sits back down obediently, powerless to prevent the ways in which he’s changing.

Hours later Boyd enters the room quietly and comes to kneel by the bed like a penitent. Up close he is all eyes, pale and wide and anxious. His skin has a waxy look and the sour smell is back, faint but unmistakable. Clare shuts her eyes.

‘Please don’t fuss me, Boyd. I’m fine. The doctor looked most put out to have been called for,’ she says, but Boyd doesn’t try to fuss her.

‘Cardetta wants me to redraw my designs. He’s not going ahead now, but he wants the plans ready for when he does. We’re going back to Gioia tomorrow, he and I,’ he says, in a deadened tone. Clare opens her eyes, hoping he won’t be able to read what’s in them. ‘I’m so sorry, Clare. I asked him to let you and Pip set off ahead of me, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He says you oughtn’t to travel alone. I suppose he’s right. And Marcie has her wretched party next week.’ Boyd takes her hand and presses his lips to it. ‘We’ll go soon,’ he says, unknowingly echoing the words she said to Pip earlier, and Clare feels Pip’s exact urge to retreat, to pull herself away. ‘I promise we’ll go soon.’ He lays his cheek to her hand and she tries to feel for him what she would once have felt – tenderness, if not love – but it’s gone. Only ashes of it remain, burnt out by the fire of Ettore.

‘It’ll be fine,’ she says, because his news has made her happy enough to believe it. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You’re so brave, my darling. You’re an angel.’

Once Boyd and Leandro have returned to the house in Gioia, Clare waits as long as she can. It’s three days, but seems far longer; the hours drag their feet and feel like weeks. She watches from the terrace, from windows, from the roof, even though she knows she won’t see what she longs to – Ettore, coming back; the square shoulders from which the rest of his spare frame seems to hang; the economic way he moves, and the limp; his rough black hair and hard face; his astonishing eyes, full of ghosts. She knows she won’t see it at Masseria dell’Arco again, but still she watches because there isn’t much else she can do. At the end of the third day, when Marcie and Pip emerge from the bat room, she tells them that she’s feeling faint again and is going to bed early, and won’t have dinner. As firmly as she can without being rude, she refuses Marcie’s offer to check on her later, to send up a supper tray, to send for the doctor.

‘I think I just need to sleep,’ she says, smiling as she lies. There’s a specific time she must use, a specific window. It must be while they are both in their rooms, which look out through the back wall of the farm, getting ready for dinner. If she’s seen she will say that she changed her mind, and wanted a walk instead.

The key in the ancient lock to her and Boyd’s room hasn’t been turned in an age. It resists when she takes it out, and when she shuts the door and tries to lock it from the outside she has to use both hands, and strain at it until it bruises her hands. Eventually it turns with a grinding clunk. She puts the key in her pocket, where it swings and weighs her jacket down. She drapes Marcie’s loaned scarf over her hair and knots it at the back of her neck. Now when they check on her, as she knows they will, they’ll have to think she’s locked the door and gone to sleep. She doesn’t try to decide what she’ll say when they ask why she locked the door, or if the servants let on that they saw her go out, or if she’s seen in Gioia. Deliberately, she thinks only about her destination.

Carlo is on the front door and Clare’s relieved. He’s amiable and obliging; he unlocks the door with a smile and a buona sera, and Clare walks across the aia with her back rigid and the skin between her shoulder blades tight and tingling, waiting to be seen, waiting for a shout to call her back. The buildings themselves seem to watch her but the dogs don’t bark – the one she thinks is Bobby even gives an experimental wag of its tail. Her heart batters her ribs, though her excuses are ready. Somehow, she thinks they’ll know at once what she’s doing, and that she’s lying. She doesn’t know the man on the gates; he has a chiselled face, all eye sockets and angles, but since they’re used to her walking he lets her out without a word. She can feel his bullet eyes following her as she walks away along the road, but she is out. She is free.

When the road from the farm abuts another, joining it at a right angle, Clare turns in the direction with the most wheel marks in the dust, trusting them to mark the direction of town. She doesn’t know how far away Gioia is, but since Ettore’s friend carried him all the way to the masseria, she hopes it can’t be very far. She walks with the sinking sun on her left shoulder, the key to her bedroom bumping against her hip. She walks, and walks. The road is straight and featureless, flanked by low stone walls; there are no men in the empty fields. She walks for well over an hour, until the sun kisses the horizon, flooding the furrowed land with an orange light that glows on every rock, every thistle and weed, every feathered head of grass. Clare stops, hands on hips, thirsty and feeling the first nudge of unease. Night is coming quickly. If she has walked in the wrong direction, she will have to go back to the masseria and repeat the ruse again another day. Tears of frustration blur in her eyes. She’s sweating under her clothes, and has dust up to her knees. She walks on a bit further then stops again, standing in the middle of the road for some minutes, frozen in indecision. She decides she must have come the wrong way – she doesn’t think Ettore’s friend could have carried him such a distance, even though he was tall and well built. Clare hangs her head in defeat, turns around and sees a small cart approaching in a cloud of sunlit dust.

It might be one of the dell’Arco servants, sent out to find her. If it is, she will go back quietly and pretend she lost track of time; she will have little choice. Clare steps to the side of the road and when the fat woman driving the cart sees her there she yanks her mule to a halt. The woman’s breasts rest on the bulge of her stomach, but there are such hollows in her cheeks that Clare can only think she’s lost all her teeth. The scarf over her hair is black, like her eyes. She is no one Clare has seen before, and when she speaks Clare can’t understand a word of it. The woman talks at some length, and then laughs, and Clare smiles nervously.

‘Gioia dell Colle?’ she says, and the woman laughs again, patting the seat beside her.

‘Sì, sì,’ says the fat woman, and then something else Clare can’t follow. She climbs up beside the woman, who whistles the mule back into its shuffling trot. The back of the cart carries a sparse cargo of tomatoes, aubergines and peppers; the woman smells of earth and smoke, and Clare sits mute with relief as, only a short while later, the outskirts of Gioia appear up ahead.

She doesn’t know where Ettore will be – at home, or working, or wherever. She doesn’t know where he lives, but he once said he lived near the castle, in the tangled streets of the old centre, so she will go there and walk and ask, and avoid Via Garibaldi. The thought of not finding him is debilitating, but as if to make up for her long, anxious journey, a curvaceous young girl walking near the castle walls – only the third person Clare stops to ask – points into the mouth of a narrow alleyway opposite. The girl sketches a right angle in the air with one hand and points to the corner, all the while studying Clare with naked curiosity. There’s the same smell of sewage and rubbish as before, the same hush from the people all dressed in black, with their furtive eyes and famished faces, and the women’s hair covered with shawls in spite of the warmth of the evening. Dusty and tired as she is, Clare feels too fat, too clean, too pale. Too much of a stranger.

She hurries into the mouth of the alley, into the cover of its deep shade, and feels slightly better knowing she can’t possibly run into Boyd now, even if he happens to be out on the streets. When she was at the house on Via Garibaldi he stayed indoors, or in the garden behind. He never wanted to explore; he never wanted to see. Much like Marcie. A knot of barefooted children scurry past Clare, erupting from a doorway like ragged birds. Some of their heads have been shaved, the hair growing back in ugly tufts; they look wiry and feral, swamped by their clothing. They scare up a pair of hens, who shriek and flap and make Clare duck instinctively. There are doors but few windows; flights of stone steps scooped out with wear; iron tethering rings hammered into the stone, weeping streaks of rust.

After a hundred feet or so the alleyway narrows further and then turns a sharp right. At the point of this elbow a small courtyard sprouts off, away from the thoroughfare, and here Clare halts. Twilight has gathered in the corners of the tiny square, and there’s a steady silence that seems watchful. From behind a ramshackle wooden gate comes the rumbling bleat of a goat, and Clare jumps. There are two other doors, each at the top of a short flight of stairs. Clare has a sudden clear notion of the risk she’s taken, of the encroaching night and her clumsy intrusion into a life she can’t know; of her own idiocy. If she doesn’t find Ettore she’ll be alone in darkness, in a town full of desperate people. Even if she does find him, her disappearance from the masseria might have been discovered already – they could already be searching for her, and she might bring as much trouble down on him as on herself. She almost turns and leaves again, as surreptitiously as she arrived, but with the last of her resolve she walks up the nearest steps, to the door above the goat stall, and knocks.

After a pause the door cracks opens a fraction to reveal a face inside, a glimmer of eyes, and for a second of lurching hope Clare thinks it could be Ettore. But the eyes are dark. The door opens wider and she recognises his sister, Paola, who came with him to the masseria the first time. Clare smiles, though she’s uncertain of her welcome – in spite of it all, she has come to the right house – a rotting doorway in a cramped courtyard; a nook in the maze of old streets. She swallows, and is about to speak when Paola pulls the door open further and says something Clare can’t understand, though her incredulity is all too plain. Her eyes are striking in her spare face, set deep beneath black brows; a sensual mouth is the only concession to feminine softness. Clare had thought Paola to be about her own age, but since Ettore calls her little sister she must revise this guess. Paola can only be twenty-two or twenty-three, though there are lines around her eyes, and between her eyebrows, and brackets from her nose to her mouth. She wears a faded grey dress with a high neck and long sleeves rolled up to the elbow, with an undyed canvas apron over it; her feet are in shapeless leather slippers, hair hidden beneath the ubiquitous scarf. When she speaks again it’s abrupt, accusatory, and Clare can only shake her head.

‘Ettore? I was hoping to see Ettore,’ says Clare, in Italian. Paola glares at her, and now she’s mystified, and Clare understands that Ettore has said nothing to his sister about their affair. With a click of her tongue and an anxious glance around the empty courtyard, Paola ushers Clare inside and shuts the door.

It takes some time for Clare’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. She pulls up short and looks around, confused, because it’s just one room – a single room in which a few pieces of furniture are carefully arranged, and a squat stove is making it far too hot. A terracotta jar on the stove top steams slightly, and smells of vegetables. There’s one bed, pushed against the back wall, and a single oil lamp on a tiny table with three stools pulled in around it. Clothes hang from pegs around the walls, and there are alcoves here and there where tools and pots and folded cloths are kept. Clare stares around in dawning realisation – that this cramped space is where Ettore lives, with his whole family. The air is rank. Gazing into a shadowed recess in one wall she realises that the dark shape there is gazing back at her. She steps back, startled, and her eyes pick out the creased face of a man tucked into blankets, lying still, not blinking. The man is not Ettore; she doesn’t recognise him. Embarrassed, Clare turns back to Paola, who has her arms folded and appears to be waiting for her to speak.

‘Can… can you understand me when I speak Italian?’ says Clare, and Paola’s frown of displeasure is answer enough. She replies in the dialect, and the only words Clare can pick out are Ettore and Gioia. ‘Where is Ettore?’ Clare tries, spreading her hands hopefully. Paola takes in a sharp breath through her nostrils, taps her fingers against the bronze skin of her forearms, and Clare’s heart sinks. She’s suddenly sure she’ll leave again without seeing him; she’s not sure that Paola would tell her where he was even if they could understand one another.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. Paola is in front of the door and when Clare smiles apologetically and takes a step towards it, she doesn’t move. Clare has no idea what to do or say next, no idea what Paola is thinking, what she might do, and she can feel the man in the alcove staring, watching, making the hairs stand up along her arms and her throat go dry. Clare does not belong, and she is not welcome. Then there’s a high-pitched murmur behind her, followed by a soft, curious squeal, and Clare spins around, spotting Paola’s baby for the first time, wedged into a wooden box on the bed.

All that’s visible of him are his arms, his hands and splayed fingers, waving in the air above him. ‘Oh!’ Clare exclaims. At the sound of her voice the baby makes another gargled noise, an inquisitive sound, and Clare goes over to the box. The little boy peers up at her, and she can’t help smiling. He has huge eyes, dark as molasses, and a shine of spittle on a tiny red pout of a mouth. ‘Oh, he’s just perfect,’ she murmurs. ‘May I hold him?’ She glances at Paola, whose expression has softened, though she still says nothing. Clare wriggles her fingers beneath the baby’s soft weight, lifts him and puts him to her shoulder, surprised by the density of him, the incredible heat his small body gives off. She turns her face to rest against the side of his head, and feels him take a fistful of her hair and pull. Free of the confines of the box, he kicks his legs with arrhythmic enthusiasm. Clare swings him gently, side to side, patting his back. He smells of sleep and milk and the oiliness of his scalp, faintly sour and animal but not the least bit unpleasant. Holding him causes Clare a pang of yearning, hot and painful as a cramp. She looks back at Paola, still smiling. ‘He’s perfect,’ she says again, and perhaps Paola understands this word – perfetto – because she can’t help but smile too, hesitantly, as if she’s not used to doing it.

‘He is Iacopo,’ she says, in Italian. Softly, Clare hums a small tune, something she can’t name, something learnt from her nanny in her own infancy. She’s still rocking the child on her shoulder, still singing quietly and being watched with calm bemusement by his mother, when the door opens again and Ettore appears.

One of his eyes is half shut, swollen from his fight with Ludo, and there are other bruises too. He looks more incredulous than surprised, and a question, half begun, dies on his lips as he absorbs this strange scene. His lover, cradling his nephew while his father and sister watch in silence. For a moment he only watches too, and a strange expression crosses his face like a ripple in water, and Clare, seeing herself through his eyes, almost laughs. But then he shuts the door behind him and shakes his head sharply.

‘Luna told me you were here but I hardly believed her. Chiara, what in God’s name are you doing? Do you have any idea… do you have any idea?’ he says. Paola steps forward and holds out her hands for her son, and Clare gives him up reluctantly.

‘I needed to see you,’ she says. The recumbent man in the alcove speaks for the first time, something low and hoarse that Ettore answers curtly.

‘You can’t just come here like this!’ he says to Clare.

‘Is that what your father just said?’

‘It’s what I’m saying!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Without Iacopo to hold Clare doesn’t know where to put her arms and hands, or how to stand. Three days away from the masseria and Ettore looks grimy and tired; she can’t tell if the shadow under his good eye is another bruise. ‘I wanted to say sorry – if I hadn’t said anything about Ludo being at Girardi you wouldn’t have fought him, and you wouldn’t have had to leave…’ Ettore raises one hand to silence her and shoots Paola an anxious glance. Paola looks tensely from Clare to her brother and back, as though something in these words disquiets her.

‘Stop. Have you said anything to my sister of these things?’

‘No, I haven’t, we-’

‘Good. Do not.’ He puts one hand to his mouth, cups his chin the way he does when he’s thinking, worried. ‘It was high time I left my uncle’s farm. We’re almost strangers to each other now. I’d stayed too long.’ He looks up at her as he says this, and she can’t tell if he’s angry or tender. With a sigh Ettore turns, cracks open the door and looks out, then raises his hand to her. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘It’s not good for me to be here.’ Paola asks him a sharp question, and Ettore gives a soothing answer, but there are no more smiles from her as Clare nods goodbye. She is closed off again, frigid, her squirming son held tight in her arms.

The courtyard is deep grey, lit only by the gauzy evening sky, but it’s still brighter than it was inside. There’s an argument nearby – two women, shrill with anger, their words an incomprehensible tumble. Ettore takes Clare’s elbow and leads her out of the courtyard in the opposite direction that she came in. Their route twists and turns, then passes beneath a stone archway three metres thick, with rooms above it, into a larger courtyard crowded with overhanging upper storeys and stairs and doorways. Ettore tows her into the shadows beneath one overhang, in a far corner away from the street. He turns and holds her briefly, and she grabs onto him tightly, so that he winces. He has a sharp smell of sweat on unwashed clothes; she thinks back and realises he’s wearing the same clothes as when he left the farm. There’s a tidemark of dirt along his hairline, and ground into his cuticles, and for some reason this brings a lump to her throat.

‘Sorry. You’re hurt,’ she says.

‘I think that bastard cracked one of my ribs.’

‘Have you seen a doctor?’ At this Ettore only smiles, a little sadly.

‘You can’t come here. You know it’s not safe.’

‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ she says, and swallows against the tightness in her throat, the oncoming ache of tears. ‘I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.’

‘I will never go back there. Not until…’ He leaves the sentence hanging, shakes his head.

‘Then you would have just not seen me again, if I hadn’t come to Gioia? It would have been that easy for you?’

‘Nothing is easy. Only necessary,’ he says bleakly. But then he relents and brushes his thumb across her cheek. ‘You knew this was not reality.’

‘It could be – I want it to be! I want…’

Clare takes a deep breath. She sounds like a child; like a spoilt child when she wants to tell him that she can’t imagine not being with him, can’t imagine going back to London and living as she lived before. She wants to say that he has changed everything; he has changed her. That everything from before seems as flat and distant as a photograph. She has the sensation of a huge wave building up behind her, higher and higher. She has no idea what will happen when it breaks, and can’t put it into words. ‘I can’t bear it,’ is all she says, closing her eyes. Ettore puts his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her head to his chest.

‘You can bear it. You have to,’ he says quietly. ‘When I saw you earlier, holding the baby… For a moment it seemed…’

‘It seemed like what?’

‘Like… you belonged there. But you don’t. You mustn’t come here again. It’s not safe. There are men here who would kill me if they could. Do you understand? This is what’s real – this danger. I daren’t even stay in my own home, in case I cause them to come looking there again. If we are seen together, if they know that we are… close. Do you see? Being foreign will not protect you.’

‘That servant knows. Federico, with the rabbit’s lip. The one you told me was a fascist.’

‘Harelip.’ Ettore’s voice is dead flat. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. He… he hissed at me. When I came back from meeting you one day.’

‘You listen to me, now. You stay away from him. Do you hear me? I don’t care what you have to do, you stay away from him.’

‘But if he’s at the farm, how can I? He’s here in Gioia now, though. Leandro and Boyd came back here three days ago. They had a terrible argument over the designs. Your uncle is making him start again. We could be here for weeks more, you see,’ she says, smiling. But Ettore doesn’t smile.

‘Goddamn it,’ he murmurs, hanging his head for a moment.

‘Ettore, what is it?’

‘Can’t you go? Can’t you just go home, to England? You and the boy.’

‘Well, no,’ says Clare, stung. ‘Not until your uncle says so. And I want to stay. I want to be near you.’

‘But can’t you just go? Never mind my uncle.’

‘Ettore, what is it? What aren’t you telling me?’

‘I…’ He shakes his head. His eyes are lost in shadows now; she can only see the outlines of his face. ‘You are not safe there. At the masseria. I don’t understand what he’s doing, keeping you here. I don’t understand at all.’

‘Nobody is safe anywhere, from what I have seen. I could… I could come back to the house here in Gioia. All I’d have to say is that I was missing Boyd. Perhaps your uncle would allow it? Then we could meet more often, and-’

‘No! That would be worse.’

‘Ettore, I… I don’t understand.’ Clare waits, but he keeps his face averted and his thoughts to himself. ‘Who was the girl I spoke to?’ she says. ‘The girl who told me where you live?’

‘Luna, Pino’s wife. I have stayed with them, and with other friends, since I left the farm.’

‘Couldn’t you stay at your uncle’s house here? Wouldn’t you be safe there? Why do men want to kill you?’

‘Because that’s what happens in a war, Chiara!’ He gives her a small shake, and she feels childlike again. ‘I will side with my uncle no longer.’

‘I wish you would. If you’re in such danger.’ To this he only shakes his head, and watches her steadily, and doesn’t try to explain, and she is helpless, hopeless. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit pleased to see me? Even a little?’ Ettore smiles then, a sketch of a smile, more in his eyes than on his lips.

‘I could have stayed where I was when Luna told me you were here. I didn’t have to come to find you,’ he says.

‘Then I’m glad I did. I’m glad, if this is to be… if this is the last time.’

There are voices and footsteps from the alleyway beyond the courtyard, and behind the wall they’re backed against are sounds of life – the rattle of a metal pail; a man coughing; the rustle of kicked straw. But Ettore kisses Clare hard and tightens his arms around her, cinching her ribs, shortening her breath, and she doesn’t care if the whole of Gioia stops to watch. They make love in a rush, like the first time, and Clare tries to pretend that it won’t be for the last time; that she will see him again, that she will stay in Gioia and live there with him, and be married to him. But she can’t believe it, not truly. Not even then, drowning in his touch and the movement of his body, and the smell of him and rightness of it. So she lets her head be empty instead. She lets go of all her thoughts, until she has the feeling of only existing in that single point in time, with nothing in her past and nothing in her future; it’s frightening, and it’s wonderful.

When they’ve caught their breath and straightened their clothes it’s full dark. They stay for a long time, sometimes in easy silence, sometimes talking disjointedly about things far off and unconnected. They stand close, always touching. Clare has a handful of Ettore’s shirt at his waist, and the other grasping his forearm, hard as a bundle of iron rods beneath his skin. Ettore combs his fingers through the sweaty tangle of her hair, and rests it at the nape of her neck, as he likes to do.

‘Tell me about your home. Tell me about where you live,’ he says, in a languid voice. ‘It’s very different. It must be.’

‘Yes, it’s very different. Green – it’s very green. It rains a lot. All the time, it sometimes seems. It can be cold in the winter but not too much so. The summers are mild, warm. Compared to here it seems soft. In all my thoughts of it, it seems soft, and safe.’

‘And nobody is hungry.’

‘Some people are,’ she demurs. ‘The very poorest, of course. Of course they’re hungry. But far fewer people are hungry than here. And… perhaps it’s easier to find help there. There are charities… places the very poorest can go for help.’

‘Do the rich hate the poor?’

‘No. Not like here. Sometimes they don’t think of them at all, and sometimes they pity them, or scorn them… but they don’t hate them. And people are not only either rich or poor, they can be in the middle. There are lots of levels in the middle – Boyd and I are in the middle. The English are polite, and… contained. Everything is done behind closed doors. There are huge trees, and public gardens full of flowers, where anybody can go, and the children can play.’ Of all the things she has said, this seems to present the starkest contrast between England and Puglia: a public garden full of flowers, and children playing.

For a while Ettore is silent, as though picturing this scene. He breathes in, long and slow; Clare daren’t ask him what he thinks. If he would ever go with her to England.

‘I can see you there,’ he says at last. ‘I can see you in a garden. In a safe place.’

‘Ettore, I can’t go-’

‘How will you get back to the masseria? How did you get here?’

‘I walked a long way, then a lady brought me in her cart. I suppose I’ll walk back.’

‘Walk? Now, in the night?’

‘There’s not much choice, really. I… I didn’t really think beyond getting to see you, you see,’ says Clare.

‘Shit and hell, Chiara!’ Ettore shakes his head then turns to look out beneath the archway, into the alley they came along. Scraps of borrowed light show up the knots in his jaw as he thinks.

‘I’ll be all right. I didn’t see anybody along that road.’

‘Not in the daytime, perhaps. Now, you can’t. You’ll have to go to Via Garibaldi for the night.’

‘No! I told you – Boyd’s there, with Leandro. They’re not expecting me, and Marcie and Pip think I’m asleep back at the masseria. How would I explain to them all? I can’t, Ettore! They’d know for certain I was lying. I’ll walk back. It’ll be quite all right.’

‘No, it won’t.’ Ettore takes her hand and they march back out to the alleyway.

‘Ettore, wait-’

‘Come on. You shouldn’t have come – do you see now?’

‘Well I’m glad I did, even if you’re not! I’m glad,’ she says defiantly. Ettore pauses to give her a helpless look.

‘Chiara… you are bold. And foolish,’ he says.

‘You make me both,’ she says, and as he turns away she sees the glimpse of his smile again, just for a second.

Ettore leads her through several twists and turns until, though they can’t be far from Piazza Plebiscito or the castle, Clare couldn’t say for sure in which direction they might be. He stops so abruptly to rap at a door that Clare runs into the back of him, and he loops an arm around her waist to hold her, as though she might try to run. Pino answers the door, and Clare recognises him at once – his beautiful, sculptural face, his unusual height and build. She shivers; the sight of him recalls that violent moment when they arrived at the masseria and she first saw Ettore and everything changed. Now he smiles uncertainly at the sight of them on his doorstep, and behind him the pretty girl Clare spoke to earlier darts curious looks out at them. The two men talk at speed – a rapid, incomprehensible exchange that ends with Pino shrugging and coming up with a name. Ettore turns to Clare.

‘Did you bring any money?’ he asks. Clare shakes her head, and sees him sag. He sighs, pauses, then crooks his finger and lifts the thin gold chain around her neck. ‘Is this dear to you?’ Clare shakes her head again.

‘A gift. From my husband.’

‘We’ll need it,’ he says, his mouth twisting slightly in distaste. Without hesitation, Clare unclasps the necklace and hands it to him. Ettore passes it to Pino, who winds it around his thick fingers and says something to Ettore.

‘What did he say?’ says Clare.

‘He says it’s too much, and it is. But if the choice is between too much and nothing…’ He shrugs. Luna’s head appears around her husband’s arm to gaze at the precious metal, her face like a child’s at Christmas, and Clare guesses she has never seen gold before. Not up close. Pino closes his fist over it, as if to protect her from it, and Luna turns her rapt gaze onto Clare, so full of questions and wonder that Clare looks away, uncomfortable. Pino says some soft words to his wife, kisses her mouth and sets off along the street. Wordlessly, Clare and Ettore follow.

The two men seem to see better in the dark than Clare; they walk quickly, turning left and right, passing under archways, sidestepping piles of manure and rubbish, as Clare stumbles and dodges along behind them, soon out of breath. Piazza Plebiscito, as they pass along its short western edge, is a blaze of yellow streetlight, but empty. No walkers, nobody taking the air, or killing time, or smoking and gossiping. All of Gioia has the hushed, furtive air of a town under curfew, so much more so than a month earlier, when Clare first arrived. The light of the square only seems to create deeper shadows, deep enough for movement to go unseen, for watching eyes to hide. Clare stays close to Ettore’s shoulder, feeling jittery and exposed; like she’s walking a narrow ledge above a lethal drop, not across a wide pavement. In spite of everything she has seen and everything Ettore has told her, only now is she afraid. Only now does she actually feel the threat of the place.

Pino leads them down Via Roma, where the town opens out into fields and parched vegetable patches. He turns in beside a squat, handsome villa, glancing at Clare and putting a finger to his lips. Silently, they creep around to the back, to the stable block, and then around to the back of that, to a lean-to with lamplight spilling out beneath its door. While Pino talks to the tiny, elderly man inside, Ettore turns to Clare.

‘This man will take you back on the horse, once he’s finished pretending that your necklace isn’t enough payment. His name is Guido; you can trust him, I’ve known him a long time – he is Pino’s kin.’

‘You’re not coming?’

‘You know I’m not, Clare. I can’t go back there.’ Behind him, the shuttered windows of the villa stare down blindly. The sky has gone black and is brilliant with stars; the night is warm and kind, and it seems like a ruse. Now, at the moment of parting, Clare feels close to panic. It makes her dizzy, full of dread. She grabs at him, at his shirt, his arms, even as he tries to disengage her. ‘Stop. Stop it. You go with Guido. Go back to the masseria, and stay there. And try to find a way to leave this place.’

‘Ettore, I can’t.’

‘Do as I say.’ He kisses her face, her forehead, the bridge of her nose. ‘Please do as I say.’ Holding her at arm’s length, Ettore seems to think of something. ‘Wait here a moment,’ he says, and disappears into one of the stables. When he comes back he has something in one hand that he puts into Clare’s, warm and alive. She gasps. ‘For Pip. A better friend for him, perhaps,’ he says, and Clare looks down at the wriggling puppy, as it begins a sleepy examination of her arm – an examination with nose, teeth, tongue. ‘Take it back for Pip. Guido will only drown them all, otherwise.’

‘Say I will see you again. Say it, or I won’t go,’ says Clare, her voice fluttery with nerves. Ettore sighs, stares at her for a heartbeat.

‘Then I will say it. You will see me again.’

‘When?’

‘I’ll send a message,’ he says, and she knows he’s lying.

Guido, silent and unsmiling, saddles a tall bay horse, mounts and then kicks his foot out of the stirrup so that Clare can climb up behind him. Pino helps her, smiling and apparently unperturbed. Her skirt tears up the back seam as she straddles the saddle. The horse makes almost no noise on the dirt of the yard, or on the stones of Via Roma. When Clare looks down she sees that its hooves are wrapped in old sacking to muffle them. The puppy, limp and trusting beneath her arm, has gone back to sleep. Between its two pairs of spindly legs its belly is round, distended with worms; the skin shows pink through a smooth, copper-coloured coat. Clare watches the road behind them until Pino and Ettore are barely distinguishable against the darkness, and then have vanished into it. Still she watches, until her neck cramps and her head aches.

Once they’re out of Gioia Guido clucks his tongue and the horse moves into a jouncing trot. They cover the distance to dell’Arco in a fraction of the time it took Clare to walk and hitch. A baleful moon rises in the western sky, yellowish bright. Clare clings to Guido with one arm, to the puppy with the other, and lets misery smother her, almost corporeal. She feels older; she feels empty and bereft. And she feels sick again, the motion of the horse and the wrench of leaving Ettore are making her stomach judder and roil. She dismounts at the gates onto legs that shake, and Guido turns the horse back without a word, or any acknowledgement of her quiet thanks. Keeping her face as blank as she can make it, Clare ignores the gate guard’s black look and slow, suspicious movements. He keeps the rifle in his right hand, his finger on the trigger. Carlo lets her into the masseria with no apparent wonderment, and when she asks him the time she can hardly believe that it’s not yet even midnight. It feels like a year since she sneaked out in search of Ettore. With a grin, Carlo scruffs the puppy’s ears. It wakes up, looks around blearily and yawns – a wet, pink gape edged with needle teeth. Cautiously, Clare looks up at the terrace before she leaves the cover of the archway.

‘All are sleeping,’ says Carlo, in broken Italian, and Clare shoots him a grateful smile as she sets off across the courtyard.

Up the dark stairwell on feet as soft as she can make them, with the nausea making sweat break out along her hairline and prickle down her spine; with her knees spongy and weak, and all the fear and joy and sorrow of the past few hours making her long for darkness, and silence, and oblivion. Clare glances both ways at the top of the stairs then tiptoes along the corridor to the door of her room, reaching into her pocket for the key to unlock it. Then she halts, her stomach plummeting. The key isn’t there. She checks her other pockets, in vain hope. She thinks of the rough, urgent way she and Ettore made love; she thinks of hurrying through the dark to the villa on Via Roma; she thinks of the bouncing trot of the horse, all the way back. The key could be anywhere.

Clare shuts her eyes, sways on her feet. She has no idea what to do. After a minute or two she creeps further along the corridor to the door, with the vague, desperate idea of trying the handle anyway, of the possibility that she hadn’t actually locked it. The puppy whines a little, and squirms, and she realises she’s holding it too tightly. Her dread is the opposite of panic – her heart seems to have slowed down, almost to nothing; it feels like it’s being crushed. Then she stops again. There’s a figure leaning against the door to her room, hunched and instantly familiar. She has a puppy she can’t explain; she’s locked out of the room she is supposed to be in; she’s filthy dirty, smelling of sex and sweat and Ettore, and Pip is leaning against the door, staring at her through the dark with angry eyes.

Chapter Twelve – Ettore

There’s only acquasale for dinner – boiled stale bread with a little salt and dried chilli, not even any mozzarella now that Poete no longer works at the cheese factory. After the month he spent at the masseria, Ettore’s stomach contorts and yammers at him, begging for more, for better. The money Marcie gave him, and his wages, have been spent on the settling of Valerio’s debts, on a new blanket for Iacopo, new soles for Ettore’s and Paola’s shoes, their rent arrears and some supplies of dried beans, pasta and olive oil that Paola is hoarding ruthlessly for the coming winter. She eyes him across the tiny table as he guzzles down the thin soup, scraping out every last drop.

‘Remembering what hungry feels like?’ she says unkindly. Valerio, well enough to rise from his shelf, continues to spoon in his soup with tremulous care, and pays no attention to his offspring.

‘I never forgot. Only my belly did,’ says Ettore. Paola grunts.

‘In a man, mind and belly are one. Mind and body are one. Mind and cock are one.’ She curls her lip in disdain and gives the last ladleful of soup to Valerio. Ettore bristles.

‘Is that was this is about? Is that why you’re being such a shrew?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Why should I be angry to learn you’ve been screwing another man’s wife all this time I thought you were working and suffering and in terrible pain? When I thought you were grieving?’

‘I was working! I was in pain! I am grieving.’

‘No, I don’t think you can wear your black band any more, brother. And you were fit enough to fuck her so hard she came all the way into town for more!’

‘Paola,’ he says, and pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration, embarrassment. Valerio has stopped eating and is staring at him now, his face wholly without expression. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘How was it, then? And if her husband finds out? If he doesn’t know yet he soon will – if she keeps coming here like that, bold as brass.’

‘I’ve told her not to come again.’

‘And you really think she’ll do as you say?’

‘I don’t know, Paola! Stop breaking my balls!’ he shouts, and throws his spoon into his empty bowl with a clatter. On the bed, Iacopo wakes and makes a small noise of alarm. He starts to wail and Paola gets up to settle him, shooting a venomous glance at her brother.

‘Idiot,’ she mutters as she passes.

Ettore turns away from his father’s gaze and stares at remnants of the plaster that once covered the walls; centuries old, so flaked and patchy it looks like a rash on the stone’s skin. He tries to picture Chiara there again, in that very room, the room he has lived in since he was a boy. It’s almost impossible, like it was almost impossible that she had been standing there, holding Iacopo. Hard to believe it was real, then and now, which explains the feeling he got – peculiar and shocked and also quite like happiness. The image of her there, that impossible scene, caused that same little softening he’s felt before; that same pleasant sinking, like letting go. And now he has a nagging fear that he doesn’t need; there’s an extra complication, an obligation he doesn’t want, but can’t avoid. He is afraid for Chiara. Gingerly, Valerio gets to his feet and goes back to his alcove, where the blankets are rank with the smell of him and his sickness. By the bed, Paola rocks and sings to her son, as his cries dwindle into sleep.

When Paola comes back to the table she’s calmer, more yielding. For a while the lamp’s steady hiss is the only sound, and its light sculpts itself into the contours of her face. She sighs as she pulls the scarf from her head, undoes her hair and runs her fingers through it. Her hair is long, thick, black, just like their mother’s. With it down around her shoulders, softening her face, Paola is a different creature. Younger, more fragile.

‘You’re beautiful like that,’ says Ettore.

‘Stop trying to butter me up. You do know she’s in love with you? Your pale mozzarella?’

‘No, she is-’

‘Don’t argue. Any woman could see it, plain as day. She is in love with you, and she wants another child.’

‘Not another; she has none. The boy is her husband’s only.’

‘Then it makes even more sense. Do you love her?’

‘No! Only… I don’t know. Not love. Not like Livia.’

‘Like what, then?’

‘I don’t know! Anyway, soon she’ll go home and that will be the end of it. Don’t ask me when, because I don’t know.’

‘Jesus, Ettore – do you know how much like a child you sound? How much like a sulky little boy? What did she say to you about Girardi? I heard her say something about Girardi.’

‘No.’ Ettore’s jaw goes tense. He’s too afraid to tell her the truth. ‘You heard wrong.’ Paola eyes him suspiciously.

‘Luna said she gave you her gold necklace as if it meant nothing.’

‘It did mean nothing to her, her husband gave it to her. She doesn’t love him.’ Ettore can’t help that this pleases him; he hopes Paola won’t hear it. ‘What else did Luna say?’ Paola hesitates, looking up at him through the hoods of her lashes. It’s what she does when she’s holding back, and it makes Ettore uneasy. ‘Well?’

‘She says you told Pino they have money there. Cash, a lot of it. And jewels…’

‘No.’ Ettore splays his hands on the table and leans back, arms straight, adamant.

‘We could buy weapons! We could feed ourselves – all those who would fight! We could buy animals, tools…’

‘No, Paola. Are we brigands now? Nothing better than thieves? If we raid, we raid so we don’t starve; we raid to punish those who’ve hired and armed squads to set against us; those who have attacked us first. That’s how it’s always been. Do you see yourself leading a famous gang of brigands, like Sergente Romano? Is that how this looks in your head? This grand plan?’

‘Don’t patronise me, Ettore! At least Romano did something! At least he stood up, and showed courage!’

‘Courage or no courage, he was shot to pieces by the carabinieri. Who will care for Iacopo when that happens to you? And you would steal from our own family?’

‘Spoils of war,’ she says curtly, but he see his words unsettle her. ‘We mean to take over, Ettore! Not simply punish, or find our next meal. No more tit for tat. We mean to take back control! And you said yourself Leandro is not our family any more. He’s just one more fat proprietor, and a landowner to boot. One more rich man who feeds and shelters his horses and oxen and mules all through the winter while he lays off the men to starve and die!’

‘I was angry when I said that about Leandro, and I am angry with him… but he is still our uncle. He is still our mother’s brother, and he treats the workers better than some. Better pay, better food. This plan of yours will end in blood.’

‘Their blood!’

‘And ours! Rivers of it,’ he says. Paola’s face twists in frustration.

‘When did you get so afraid, brother? “He treats the workers better than some”? Can you hear yourself, Ettore? You’re talking about a man who employs not only Ludo Manzo but his fucking fascist son as well!’

‘I know who I’m talking about!’

‘Then why do you suddenly refuse to fight for the rights that are denied to us by all men like him? Is it the mozzarella? You don’t want her to get hurt, is that it?’ She glares at him across the table, until Ettore is forced to look away.

‘You think that if we fight the good fight, they’ll have to fall? And the latifundia with them? Are you really so naive, Paola?’ he says.

‘You sound like Gianni and Bianca, and all those others who’ve given up and are ready to just… cower down.’ She waves a hand in anger. ‘We need a revolution, like in Russia. If we stood up all at once we would be unstoppable.’

‘Would we? No,’ says Ettore, raising his hand to forestall an angry retort. ‘I have not given up, Paola, but Gioia del Colle is not all of Italy. It’s not even all of Puglia… Troops will be sent. More squads will be hired. This is not the way, Paola!’

‘It’s the only way left, brother.’

‘Before this summer is out I will lay my hands on Ludo Manzo again, and his son. I swear it. But a raid on dell’Arco would be suicide! Leandro is no fool. The roof is covered in armed guards. The gates are iron, the walls are three metres thick. The dogs in the aia would kill anyone they got hold of. It would be madness to try it.’

‘Not if we had guns. That’s the idea – that’s why we strike at Masseria Molino first. The new tenant there is so nervous he’s spent all his money on rifles and ammunition and now he can only afford to keep two permanent guards to use them. And he’s recruiting for the squads all the time, and arming them, if that makes you feel better. The moron is sitting there on a huge, barely protected arsenal. When we have guns, we can shoot the dogs at dell’Arco, and the guards.’

There’s that dangerous conviction in Paola’s expression again, that righteous fire, like a hunger eating her away. Inside, Ettore is cold. ‘We do this, or we surrender, and nothing will change. We do it, or we starve this winter. You, me, him.’ She hooks her thumb at Valerio. ‘My Iacopo. Pino. All of us. Those are the choices.’ For a long time Ettore doesn’t answer. He knows what Paola says is true. But it’s a bitter truth.

‘It’s hard to shoot a guard on a roof. They would pick us off through the slits as we stood banging on the doors,’ he says softly.

‘No, they won’t,’ says Paola. Calmly, she gathers up her hair and begins to braid it for bed. ‘Not if your mozzarella opens the doors for us.’

In the night Paola sleeps soundly. Her breathing is steady and even and sure, as if to prove a point to her brother, who is restless and chased around by his dreams. He dreams of the bottomless pit near Castellana, seeping out mists and bats and spectres. But in the dream the fields as far as Gioia start to break and crack open, into jagged fissures through which Ettore can see that the abyss is vast, and right beneath their feet. There is emptiness where there should be rock and roots and earth. Dusty soil dribbles into the cracks and sifts away into nothingness. Fear turns Ettore’s bowels watery, scatters his thoughts like blown smoke and brings him to his knees, scrabbling his fingers into the mud in an effort to cling on. He wakes up dried-mouthed and ashamed, and variations of this dream of insecurity mock him until sunrise.

Ettore takes Valerio’s hat, a worn-out brown felt fedora, shiny around the band with sweat and grease, and wears it low over his forehead to throw his distinctive eyes into shadow. He wears his father’s jacket as well, which is too long in the arm for him; anything that might help him go unrecognised in the opalescent early dawn. His limp is harder to conceal, but many men limp. The piazza is as crowded as ever, and the mood is blacker than the long shadows lurking in the east end of the square. Fear and anger and confusion, violence and uncertainty; the group of men is like one body – one hungry, belligerent, frightened creature keeping its head down when it wants to fight; keeping quiet when it wants to roar. They are on a knife edge, with capitulation on one side and savagery on the other, and it’s a sickening choice because death waits in both directions. Ettore wishes he felt as certain about it all as he did before Livia, before Chiara. He wishes he knew which way was best, he wishes he knew which way the others would jump, but most of all he wishes he was far, far away. He wishes for things he doesn’t really believe in – justice and peace and fair treatment. Fantasies every bit as alluring as that of a fair-haired women waiting for him at home, and loving him.

Ettore walks right up to Pino to check his anonymity, and it seems to work quite well. He gets close enough to smell spilt machine oil on his friend’s sleeve, and a trace of wine on his breath, and Pino takes a second to notice him when Ettore bumps his arm.

‘What’s with the hat?’

‘It’s Valerio’s. To give me a chance of being hired.’

‘Good idea.’

‘Do you tell your wife everything, Pino?’ he says pointedly. He can tell from Pino’s guilty look that his friend knows exactly what he’s talking about.

‘Sorry, Ettore. I kind of do tell her everything. I forgot that women also tell each other everything.’

‘Paola can’t get the idea of Leandro’s money, or Marcie’s jewellery, out of her head. The way she goes on you’d think there was a cave full of treasure over at dell’Arco, which will somehow solve all our problems.’

‘Well, it could solve some of them.’ Pino shrugs.

‘And it’s every bit as well guarded as you’d expect. She wants me to… to make Chiara open the door for us.’ Ettore rubs his index finger across his brow, an unconscious anxious tic. Pino says nothing. ‘Leandro would shoot her without hesitation, if he knew, if he saw her. I know that much. Strip off the suits and the American accent and he’s the same ruthless bastard he ever was, and his temper’s no better.’

‘She means something to you then, this woman?’ Pino smiles at him; he has always been in love with love. Ettore is about to deny it, on reflex, but then he nods.

‘She does.’

‘So, don’t ask her.’

‘And when my sister joins the raid regardless, and gets herself killed?’

‘So, ask her.’

‘You’re no bloody help, Pino.’

‘If I could help, I would.’

‘Can you get yourself hired to dell’Arco? Pass a message to her – give it to that young guard with the snub nose, you know the one I mean? His name’s Carlo; he’s simpatico. He would pass her a message, if you said it was from me.’ At this Pino looks nervous. He has a ground-in fear of stepping out of line when Ludo Manzo is anywhere near.

‘I don’t know, Ettore.’

‘Just a slip of paper. I’ll write it out. I want to tell her to go. To get out and leave.’

‘I don’t know. Can’t you just tell your uncle?’

‘Warn my uncle that my sister and my friends are going to attack his farm?’

‘Well, no. Perhaps not.’

In the end only ten men are hired to continue the threshing at dell’Arco that day, and Pino isn’t one of them. Ettore joins a work gang headed west from Gioia, to a farm only three kilometres away. The overseer refuses to say what hours they will work; he refuses to say what pay is being offered. They are told that there is work; they are told to step forward if they want it. They are told they will be paid at the end of the day, and they must take that on trust. There is to be no negotiation.

‘This is not how men are hired any more,’ says Ettore, unable to help himself.

‘It’s how I’m hiring you,’ says the overseer stiffly. He has shifty eyes and a mobile expression. He’s trying for implacable neutrality but little tweaks of nervous excitement keep spoiling it; little spurts of glee. ‘We’ll hire at street price, or not at all. Now do you want to work or don’t you? Not you,’ he says, to one man with sombre grey eyes and shoulders knotted with muscle.

‘Why not me?’ he says uneasily.

‘Because of that,’ says the overseer, and he sneers as he lifts his stick to poke at the man’s pocket watch. ‘I’ve no use for clock-watchers.’ This is what the fascist squads have achieved, already, in so short a space of time – the foremen feel invincible again; they hate the workers all the more for the gains they made after the war, and they are jubilant now those gains are being reversed. Their hatred makes them scornful, and ruthless. Behind each man are thirty more wanting work, so Ettore and his small band of colleagues take the terms, shaken, and start walking.

It was like this before the war – decades before the war – and suddenly Ettore sees how right his sister is. The backward slide towards the bad old days is happening at breakneck speed, so fast that the giornatari are bewildered, scrabbling to keep up. It might already be too late, and that thought puts the taste of metal in Ettore’s mouth, and makes his hands curl into fists. If they do not resist, what then? He stares at the overseer’s back, riding at the head of the men with his meaty arse filling the saddle and his spine in a comfortable slouch. He remembers the moment of simple, primeval joy when he managed to get his hands around Ludo Manzo’s throat; he takes a slow breath in and lets this memory pump his blood until it’s racing through his body. It feels like waking from a daze in which he’s been aware of words and movement around him but has registered nothing, reacted to nothing. More than ever at that moment, Chiara Kingsley seems insubstantial, dangerously vulnerable; he is desperately afraid for her even as he warns himself not to care deeply for such a friable, breakable thing. He can’t let himself be crippled by that softness, that sinking. He will not lie down.

The threshing is done by hand on the farm he’s been hired to. They use old-fashioned flails – two lengths of wooden pole joined by a metal chain – to beat the grains from the stalks of each wheatsheaf. Bent backs and the circular spin of the flail end, sweat blooming through their shirts at neck and back and belly; the constant sibilant thump of each blow landing, and behind that the rattle of the winnowing machines, each turned by hand by one man who stands in place the whole day long, cranking the wheel around and around. Husks and dust fill the air, getting inside the seams of their clothes and itching, bringing up a rash; the men wheeze and wipe their streaming eyes on their cuffs. The process seems to dry out the insides of their noses, their whole bodies, drawing out the moisture until they’re like the husks that blow away, the hollow stalks of straw left behind.

Ettore works the flail with unblinking intensity, with sweat stinging in his eyes and making his hands slide on the wooden handle. He has to hold it with a grip every bit as intense as his focus on the task. The muscles in his forearms scream at him; by noon his bruised ribs have built up an ache that feels like a spike lodged in the bone. The man next to him tells him about three men who died of heatstroke the day before, threshing in full sun. The day is one of the longest Ettore can remember. His time at dell’Arco, on guard duty or just waiting for it, dozing on the roof, eating when he feels like it and meeting with Chiara, have taught his stomach to be full and his mind to wander; he’d forgotten the monotony, the exhaustion, the crushing, mindless drudgery of farm work. Stepping out of life as his leg healed makes him notice its patterns anew, and now he can see the days stretch ahead of him to the day of his death: hard, hungry and unchanging. It’s maddening. Lunch is bread and a cup of well-watered primitivo. Work doesn’t stop until the sun hits the horizon towards seven, and the pay is less than half what it should be. The men take the money and stare at it. Some of them are furious, some are resigned, some are panicky, shocked to have earned so little. But all are silent, so it makes no difference.

By the time Ettore is back in Gioia he can’t remember the exact colour of Chiara’s eyes, or the precise feel of her hair between his fingers, and he knows that the part of him mourning the loss of these things must be stifled, and pushed far down inside. Tenderness has no part in what he needs to do. He’s so tired, so distracted that he goes home without thinking, forgetting the need to hide. Paola feeds him his dinner in silence. She seems to be waiting. When he’s eaten he wets a cloth with a splash of water from the urn and wipes it over his face. He pulls his shirt off over his head to be rid of the prickling fragments of husk trapped in it. He rubs away some of the dust and sweat from his chest and arms, and the back of his neck. He peers down at the bruise on his ribs, which has gone from blue to black in a splayed shape like a handprint.

‘When is the attack on Masseria Molino?’ he says at last.

‘Not tomorrow night, but the next,’ says Paola, with no inflection, no surprise or gloating.

‘How many men?’

‘Twenty-five.’ She keeps her eyes on him, unblinking. ‘Perhaps twenty-six.’

‘So few, this revolutionary army of yours?’

‘When we have guns, more will join us. You’ll be with us?’ she says. Ettore looks over at her, standing straight, evenly balanced, with her arms at her sides and her chin dipped down. A fighter’s stance he’s too weary to emulate. But he nods in answer to her question, and when he sleeps that night, it’s dreamless.

Farm raids are frequent, more so since the massacre at the Girardi place. They are normally about stealth, in the black of night; about taking what food can be carried, or destroying something in some outlying part of the masseria, away from the guarded main house. A short and ugly act of desperation, hunger and vendetta. Farms where the overseer is cruel and a man has been beaten or humiliated; farms where the wages are lowest and the hours longest; farms where the proprietor is known to hire brute squads – these are at greater risk. But all are at risk when the men are starving. Sheep and cattle might be killed or stolen; barns or grain stores razed; anything movable or edible taken by a handful of men, and a few women too; with no weapons but rocks, cudgels, whatever farm tools are actually owned rather than borrowed each day. Living in sunken rooms with no electricity, and the long pre-dawn walks to work, begun in childhood, have given Gioia’s giornatari excellent night vision. Their faces and hands are steady when they raid; they are set, even if their hearts race and stumble with the thrill and the danger, all unseen. They dart in and dart out, leaving fire and curses in their wake; corpses very rarely. But this new scheme is something different; something far more dangerous. They will fight their way inside the masseria’s buildings; it will be a pitched battle.

Ettore has not been on a raid since Livia died, but even before that he went rarely. He has always said he wants to work, not to take. And if they won’t let you work? Paola’s same argument, over and over, from when they were twelve and fourteen years old. They wear black; she has her knife tucked into her belt, Ettore has the twisted length of olive wood they’ve kept by the door since Federico’s visit. The wood is ancient, sun-baked, as smooth and hard as bone. He rubs his thumb over its knots and close grain as they wait for the midnight bells of Santa Maria Maggiore. Valerio watches them from the alcove, his eyes blank, as though all of this is some staged drama he’s not quite following; as though they are someone else’s children, and he is far, far away. Before they leave Paola leans over her sleeping son and traces one finger down his face, wearing the expression of hopeless love and care that she wears at no other time. Then the bells begin to strike and Ettore’s heart leaps up, thudding at the back of his throat. His sister pours two small cups of wine, bought for this night, and they swallow them down, not breaking eye contact. They tie scarves across their faces, masking everything from the eyes down.

‘Ready?’ says Paola, and her voice is a fraction higher than normal, a fraction tighter. That’s her only concession to fear.

They walk fast, in silence; slipping through the shadows with no lantern. Before long other silent figures are ghosting at their sides, until they leave Gioia to the north, twenty-two men and four women; a pack with one purpose, saying nothing. An owl whistles in alarm at the sudden passage of this grim band, the scuff of their feet in the dust, the muted rush of their breathing, the sloshing of the precious can of kerosene one of them carries. Masseria Molino, named for the ruins of an ancient windmill that sits beside the small complex, is five kilometres distant, a walk of under an hour. They mass beyond the reach of the lantern above its gates, where a single guard stands with a rifle in his arms and a pistol on each hip. Ettore almost feels sorry for him. There’s no outer wall or perimeter, there are no dogs. The annaroli sleep inside but besides this gate guard only one other is young, and fit. The rest are women or youths or old men; people the tenant can get away with paying the least. The raiders watch for a while, checking for anything out of the ordinary. Waiting for some indefinable right moment. Ettore feels outside of himself, one more anonymous organ of a fighting body. He remembers this feeling from the trenches; this protective disassociation of thought from action, of mind from flesh. He has no fear, only a fatalistic sense of the possibility of death, and underneath this single-minded will to act and not think are the remnants of himself, quiet and distant.

With a quick glance around and a nod, the first man rushes forwards. He is small, thin, bald-headed and rat-faced; he’s been chosen for his violence and the quicksilver way he moves. He sprints forward, alone. In a heartbeat he’s within the circle of light and the guard jerks as though he’s been slapped, swinging the rifle up and drawing in a deep breath as if to shout. In his surprise he forgets to make a sound. The bald man is on him in seconds, taking a flying leap and planting both heels in the guard’s guts. The guard drops with a ragged tearing sound as all the air rushes out of his lungs, on the ground he’s kicked again, and again. A kick to the head leaves him boneless. The bald man picks up the rifle and both pistols, checks for signs of consciousness and then nods at the waiting darkness. The rest of them surge forwards. Still silent, no cries of attack; they are all business. The pistols are handed out, checked for ammunition. The kerosene is sloshed around the lock of the wooden gates, a match is lit and the darkness boils into orange light. The gates are ancient, the wood tinder dry. The flames burrow hungrily into the wood. Soon there are shouts from within, but by then the wood is weakened. With coats and blankets around their heads and shoulders, a knot of the biggest men rush the gates, ramming their full weight against them, and the lock surrenders with a scream of nails and splintering wood. Then the night erupts into gunfire.

One of the men who rushed the gates drops with a yell, grabbing at his thigh. When the first volley from within is spent the bald man fires his rifle through the gates and the attackers run in behind the bullets, spreading out at once, screwing up their eyes against the smoke. Ettore tries to keep Paola in his peripheral vision but she’s gone, darting away like a cat. They all know exactly where they are supposed to be. More guns are fired from the upper windows of the building, and from the arches of a ground-level colonnade around the courtyard. A bullet zips past Ettore’s ear and explodes into the stone behind him with a shower of chips and dust; a man rushes him with a snarl and Ettore ducks, swinging the olive wood cudgel. His assailant is shadowy in the smoke but there’s a satisfying crunch and a grunt as the cudgel connects. Not waiting to see if the man is down Ettore dodges to one side, through a narrow doorway, and goes up a twisting stair to the roof. The stairwell is pitch-black. He runs hard into a closed door at the top and curses, breathing hard. He can’t know for sure how many men are on the other side – it’s a curtain wall, narrower than at dell’Arco; a walkway, not really a roof. It would be easy to be thrown off, easy to be shot, and by colliding with the door he’s announced his arrival. Ettore puts his ear to the door and hears shots fired close at hand. There’s at least one armed man on the other side, and no good way to proceed, so he puts his shoulder to the door, grits his teeth and bursts out onto the wall, into the whistling swing of a rifle butt.

In the sudden quiet stars wheel across his vision – a juddering array of lights careering through his skull, distracting and puzzling him. For a moment he can’t remember where he is or what the lights mean, then an obliterating pain crumps through him so he can’t react when he feels hands on him, hauling him up, dragging him; there’s only room in his head for the pain and confusion, nothing else. He has no idea what’s happening to him. He feels hot air on his face, choking smoke and the stink of burning hair. On instinct, he resists. He strains with every muscle in his body and in the next breath he realises that the burning smell is him. He opens his eyes and sees flames, swirling sparks, the dark ground and sky wheeling dizzily beyond – he has lost all sense of up and down, of which way round things should be. The sense of it all is tantalisingly close, but trying to unravel it is exhausting. The fire has a hypnotic beauty; Ettore stares down into it and decides not to bother fighting any more, and suddenly he hears Livia’s voice in his ear. Tell me I’m your sweetheart, she whispers. Ettore frowns, and tries to answer her. Tell me I’m your sweetheart. The smoke fades to pale grey, or perhaps he does. He’s in a soft, light place and he thinks he can smell a woman – her hair, her skin, the ready wetness between her legs. A spike of longing shoots through him but then the sense of her is gone. There are no more whispers in his ear, no more tender scents; there’s darkness and burning, and the longing turns to ire.

Ettore arches his body violently, shoving back against the man who was about to wrestle him over the wall into the fire below. The pain in his head is incandescent but he shuts it out. He’s stronger than his assailant, and angrier. He braces his hands against the hot stone parapet and pushes them both back from the edge, then lets his weight drop to throw the man off balance, and break his grip. Ettore turns, swinging a fist and landing a glancing blow on the man’s jaw. The man grunts and it’s an oddly high-pitched sound. Grimacing, Ettore hits him, again and again. There’s a clatter as his assailant staggers back and kicks the rifle he dropped, spinning it on the stone.

‘You should have fucking shot me,’ says Ettore. He can hardly hear his own voice above the booming inside his skull. ‘You should have just fucking shot me!’ He knocks the man’s legs out from under him, reaching down for the rifle and wrestling it from his attacker’s hands when he grabs for it. But the man’s resistance has crumbled; he curls into a ball and covers his face with his hands, and makes a strange noise. Ettore brings the rifle up, his finger on the trigger, sleek black barrel not a metre from the guard’s head. But that noise makes him hesitate. High-pitched, familiar, incongruous. Ettore blinks, scowls, tries to organise his thoughts around the pressure building in his skull. Then he bends down and pulls the guard’s hands from his face. The man is sobbing. The man is a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, and he’s weeping in sheer terror.

Swaying and shocked, Ettore lowers the rifle. He puts one hand up to the place on his head, near the temple but mercifully slightly higher, where the pain is worst. His fingers come away bloody, and his own touch is intolerable.

‘Jesus,’ he mumbles, sitting down abruptly next to the boy. Vaguely, he pats the boy’s arm to soothe him. ‘Jesus,’ he says again. ‘I almost shot you… I almost…’ Ettore can’t make the thought or the sentence finish. The night is thudding as though the whole world has a heartbeat. From below there’s more shouting but fewer gunshots; the fire roars as it devours the gates, and from the barns come the startled noises of animals as they smell the smoke. Ettore tries to gather himself. He looks down at the quivering boy curled, fetal, beside him. He has hair the colour of earth, fair skin and a small mouth, bloodied and contorted with fear; a dark patch of urine is spreading around the crotch of his trousers. ‘Boy,’ says Ettore. He clears his throat, tries again. ‘Boy, enough. It’s over. Nobody’s going to kill you,’ he says. The boy shows no sign of having heard him. ‘You fetched me one hell of a crack around the head. Would you really have thrown me over? Perhaps you would. Fear can make us strong, can’t it? Well.’ He looks down at the prone figure. ‘To a point, it can.’ With the rifle’s help Ettore stands, gingerly, his stomach churning in protest. ‘Stay up here. Don’t come down until we’ve gone. And for God’s sake don’t attack anyone.’

Down in the courtyard the fight is over. The annaroli are in one corner, standing in a resigned huddle. Only one of the raiders needs to watch them, with a pistol in each hand – there’s no fight in them. Ettore staggers over to where most of his comrades are gathered, in the far corner of the courtyard where an arched doorway leads down into a cellar. They’re passing out weapons – rifles and pistols, belts of ammunition, even a few old officers’ swords. The drumbeat in his head is still making Ettore slow, but his eyes search out his sister. It’s hard when their faces are all covered, but he can tell her by her build and the way she moves, and when she sees him she comes over at once, her eyes bright with worry until she’s sure it’s him, and that he isn’t shot.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I got into a fight with a child,’ he says thickly.

‘You did what? Is it just your head?’

‘Yes – ah! Paola! Don’t touch.’

‘All right. But I’ll need to clean it when we get home. You big baby,’ she says, and he can tell how relieved she is that they’ve both survived. She herself is not only unscathed but seemingly unruffled. The skin of her forehead, the only part of her face that shows, is smooth and clean, with a slight sheen of perspiration, and Ettore marvels at her, even as he feels slightly removed from her. He pictures her as the cross-legged child he once knew, and it’s clear that she’s transmuted herself somehow; that she’s had to. From flesh to iron; from girl to soldier.

There’s a shout of outrage from the proprietor as he’s disarmed and brought out at gunpoint. He’s dragged into the courtyard by a man on each arm, dressed for bed in his drawers and a long linen shirt. A young man, in his thirties; good-looking and well fed, with a rosy pout of a mouth and fine, straight hair. Not a Gioia man; not even a Puglian. The cracked, sunburnt skin across his nose and cheeks is clearly not used to the southern sun.

‘Show your faces, you cowards! You pieces-of-shit bastards!’ he shouts. There’s a low chuckle from the assembled raiders. ‘I called for help as soon as you got here. I telephoned for help – the carabinieri will be here, and others – I think you know which others I’m talking about. So you’d better give up.’ The tenant’s eyes are wide, popping out of his head. He looks like he could run to the moon on the excitement.

‘You’re not in Rome any more, you moron. This farm has never had a phone connected. None of the farms have phones connected,’ says Paola, stepping towards him. The man’s lip curls in disgust.

‘A woman? You peasants let your women go out and fight? What kind of worthless terrone are you?’

‘The kind that are relieving you of these weapons. And advising you to honour the labour agreements you signed, whether the Chamber of Labour still stands or not,’ says the bald-headed man steadily.

‘You’ll be punished for this! Every last one of you… you’ll be punished! We know who you are, whether you cover your faces or not! I know who you are!’

‘Careful now,’ says another raider, stepping up to him with a cocked pistol. ‘Don’t give us a reason to shoot you.’

‘You’re finished,’ the tenant mutters, as though he can’t help himself.

‘No,’ says the raider. ‘This is just the start.’ The farmer stays silent, breathing hard, his face blanched and contorted. They gag him, and tie an old grain sack over his head.

The raiders take what they can carry from the masseria, leave the annaroli untouched and march the proprietor out through the embers of his gates, back to Gioia. When he feels paving stones beneath his feet the man starts shouting for help, and is knocked into stumbling semi-consciousness for his pains. Two men drag him all the way to Piazza Plebiscito, where they strip him naked and leave him tied to the bandstand. Then they, like the others, melt away into the dark streets as the bells strike three. Stolen guns are spirited away, tucked under the straw and sleeping bodies of pigs; wrapped in sacking and wedged up chimneys; concealed in piles of firewood. The raiders vanish into their homes, wash the soot from their faces and take to bed. They will be up in two hours and in the square for work, as though nothing has happened – their own safety depends on this. When the police and proprietors hear about the attack they’ll be on the lookout for absentees.

Ettore’s head is throbbing so severely he’s not sure if he’ll make it to work. While Paola checks Iacopo he lies down on the bed, not pausing to take off his boots, and immediately begins to drowse. He doesn’t even object when Paola cleans up the cut on his head, too tired herself to be gentle. She murmurs to him that it isn’t deep, and that a hat, worn low, will cover it well enough in the morning.

‘Try to get some sleep,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wake you in time.’

‘Oh, good,’ he mumbles, and hears her quiet huff of amusement. Then sleep has him, so suddenly and so totally it’s more like passing out.

In the nights after the raid there are more squadrist attacks, more shouts in the dark and sudden scuffles, more evictions and persecution of union men, but despite what the tenant of Masseria Molino claimed, he couldn’t name any of those who’d been amongst the attackers, so the reprisals are random, aimed at anybody deemed to have shown rebellious, socialist or ungrateful tendencies. Ettore is forced to hide in the goat stall again one evening, after a tip-off from a neighbour. After that he takes to sleeping on a dusty pew in the tiny church of Sant’Andrea, not far from Vico Iovia; jimmying the rusty lock open, and finding bolts on the inside to seal himself in. The church is like a cave of soft stone and cool shade that has stood for a thousand years or so, and long been without a human incumbent. It will not do for the winter, but now, in the heat of summer, it’s comfortable enough. The air is fresher than at home – ripe with the scent of the gently chalking walls, desiccated wood and the brittle, decades-old candle wax that cascades down the walls from niches. There’s the musty smell of bird shit from the swallows that swoop in and out through a broken window pane, and have built their mud nests in the rafters. Pigeons roost on the pulpit at night, and launch into their staccato, rushing flight when Ettore startles them. It’s been many years since the bell on the roof was rung.

At dawn Pino bashes his fist on the door to wake Ettore on his way to the piazza, but hidden away in this quiet space at the start and end of each day, Ettore feels time sliding to a stop, growing diffuse like the sunlight at evening time. The wheeling cries of the swallows seem to come from far away, and he could be a hundred miles from all the trouble. It’s so peaceful he has to force himself to leave in the morning, and it seems to him that his head only starts to ache once he has stepped outside. He remembers hearing Livia’s voice in his ear as he dangled, near senseless, over the fire during the raid. Tell me I’m your sweetheart. That lisping, musical way she spoke. He loved hearing it but it bothered him too, because it just didn’t sound right. It hadn’t at the time – sweetheart wasn’t a word he’d ever heard Livia use, before those final fevered hours of her life when she’d repeated the phrase over and over. Ettore called her his darling, his treasure, his fiancée; she called him her love, or just Ettore. Never sweetheart. He wonders where she got the word. But all his wondering and all his questioning, and all the promises he’d made to her memory had got him nowhere. He was no closer to discovering who’d attacked her that day, so callously, so ruinously. In the steady peace of the church Ettore stops making his promise to her. He stops promising he will find the man out, and accepts that he probably never will. Forgive me, Livia. I don’t know what else I can do. His defeat makes him feel small, and tired.

His headache makes him sluggish, and two days in a row he gets no work. Paola says nothing; he can sense her worry in the way she moves, even the way she breathes, as she dips reluctantly into the food she was saving for winter. The tension in Gioia only ever increases; there are rumours amongst the men, guarded carefully from the proprietors, the police and the annaroli, of the fight back that’s coming, that’s already begun. They have a run of cooler days, with a welcome breeze, but there’s no more rain. Out of town, vegetable crops are stunted and failing, and fruit grows slowly, hard and juiceless. In town there’s not much to buy but bread, and the price of that creeps up and up. Meat never lasts in the summer, but it’s still sold even when it’s slimy and off colour. The price of barrelled water rises until none but the rich can afford it, and the workers only have their allotted time at the pump in which to draw any. Wages and hours decrease as the rush of the harvest tails off; the streets are more populous with the unemployed, the unfed, and the anxious.

Ettore relies on Paola to connect him to what’s going on. She is part of the invisible web of quietly passed words that sustains the raiders in between action. She walks to Piazza XX Settembre, or out along Via Roma, with a covered basket on her hip and Iacopo on her back, and returns with news. Ettore has no idea whom she talks to, and simply waits to be told what will happen next, and when. They will wait a few days until things have quietened somewhat – that’s the word she brings. But they can’t wait too long: the proprietors are nervous; they’re strengthening their guard.

While he works Ettore finds it easier to keep his mind from wandering. But when he’s not working, the temptation is to retreat to the empty church and lie in silence inside, imagining himself removed from his life. He tries not to think about Chiara out at dell’Arco, waiting for a message he said he’d send. He tries not to think about her skin or her touch or the taste of her, or what life must be like in her universe. He tries not to think about Marcie, and her blind, hopeful eyes; or Ludo Manzo watching the youngest boys with one hand on his whip and a keen expression on his face. But he can’t not think about them, and he can’t not think about Federico Manzo, with his cocky walk and his criss-crossed gun belts. He’s not sure what’s worse – thinking of him in Gioia, perhaps bullying Paola again, or out at the masseria near Chiara. He hissed at me, she said.

Ettore’s stomach gets used to being empty again, his muscles to being weak for want of fuel. He lies in a shaft of dusty sunshine from the derelict window, both present and absent from the world, in one moment drifting listlessly as though none of it pertains to him, in the next beset by fears and anger and doubt and wanting. When it gets too much he clenches his fists until the knuckles crack, and his conscience bothers him constantly about something else entirely, until at last he has to speak.

He waits until Paola is nursing Iacopo. It’s a dirty trick, but he has to know she won’t run off at once and do something dangerous. The room is full of steam; a small pot of dried beans is boiling to softness on the stove. Paola sits on the edge of the bed to nurse, with a shawl draped over her shoulder and her breast, for modesty’s sake. Ettore doesn’t tease her about it, though they’ve had to use the prisor in front of each other since they were old enough to sit on it. Dignity must be enjoyed where it can be got.

‘What is it, Ettore?’ she says, as he works himself up to speaking. ‘You’ve obviously got something to say. What is it?’

‘It’s bad, Paola,’ he says carefully. She gives him a steady look.

‘How bad can it be? Just spit it out.’

Ettore takes a deep breath. ‘You must promise me to think before you do anything. Think before you act, once I’ve told you. You must promise me that, first.’

‘Then I promise it,’ she says, tension in her voice.

‘Ludo Manzo was at Masseria Girardi that day. He was one of the shooters.’ He says it in a rush, to have it over with. Paola stares at him for a long time, and a ripple of anguish passes over her face, filling her eyes with tears. She blinks them back.

‘The mozzarella told you?’ she says at last. Ettore nods. Paola clears her throat and looks down, peeking around the shawl at the baby. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to get yourself killed for a vendetta. I wasn’t going to tell you at all, for just that reason, but you… you have a right to know.’

‘How did that man get so full of hate, I wonder?’ she says softly. ‘It must plague him. It’ll be a mercy when I put a bullet in him. A mercy to him and everyone else.’

‘You won’t go out there alone and try anything? Promise me!’

‘No, I won’t go alone.’ Paola detaches her son, calmly turns him to her other breast; her hands and her movements are automatic, deft and tender. ‘But you wanted an honourable reason to attack dell’Arco and there you have it – Ludo Manzo is an enemy to all of us. We’ll go to dell’Arco next; when I tell the others he was there that day, they’ll agree with me. We’ll go there next, and if you want to be sure we don’t lose anybody you’d better talk to your woman. You’d better get her to open the doors for us.’

‘She’s not my woman.’

‘She is your woman. She’d do anything you asked, I saw it.’

From the alcove in the wall there’s a sudden slight movement, and they’ve got so used to there being none that it startles them. Valerio props himself up on one elbow, shaking visibly. He tries to speak, has to clear his throat and try again, and his children watch on in amazement.

‘Is this true, boy?’ he says to Ettore. ‘What that woman who was here said about Manzo?’

‘She had it from Uncle Leandro,’ says Ettore. Valerio nods slowly, just once.

‘Then you must go there, and he must die. This is the way of things. And if that woman who was here can help, then make her. This is a war, and no time for your soft heart, boy.’ With another nod Valerio collapses back down into silence, like some oracle that has spoken incontrovertibly, and is spent. Paola and Ettore share a glance, and say nothing more for a long time. When Iacopo has fed himself to sleep Paola wraps him and puts him down in his wooden box.

‘Don’t be long about it, Ettore. Can you get word to her? Get her to meet you? We must keep the momentum of this; we mustn’t let the men lose heart.’

‘You need to decide what night we will attack, and at what hour. It won’t be easy to get messages to and fro. It won’t be easy for her to come here, and I can’t risk going there. If she comes here again, I must be able to tell her everything.’

‘All right. Send a message that she should come. I’ll find out what you need to know.’

In the morning Ettore tears a slip of paper from a mouldy hymn book he finds on a shelf in Sant’Andrea. He has no pen or ink, so he uses a fragment of charcoal to write, in laborious Italian, where he is, and that she must come as soon as she can, then he gives the note to Pino and watches anxiously as his friend shoves to the front of the crowd near Ludo Manzo, and is hired to feed the threshing machine at dell’Arco. The sight of the overseer fills Ettore with a caustic, gnawing hatred. He glances around the square, half expecting Paola to come running out of nowhere and fly at him with tooth and nail. But she doesn’t. As he moves away Pino looks back at Ettore and gives him a tight nod, and Ettore can see how nervous he is of the task he’s been given; how he curls in on himself when Ludo is near, as delicately as a scorched leaf. Ettore sends a silent prayer to any watching angels for Pino’s success, and safety, for if anybody deserves to have a watching angel, surely it’s Pino.

The day is long; Ettore gets work breaking rocks to build a wall, and by the end of it there are rings of salt on his clothes and his arms have the tremor of exhaustion. But in the safety of the church in the deep of evening, Pino stops in to see him.

‘It’s done, brother,’ he says, with a smile, palpably relieved.

‘You gave it to Carlo?’

‘Yes. I said it was a love letter from you – he grinned like a little boy. Nobody saw me do it, I’m sure.’

‘Well done, Pino. Thank you,’ says Ettore. Pino lingers in the dark doorway of the church.

‘She… she won’t be hurt? The English woman? You’ll be sure to keep her safe in all this, won’t you?’ he says. ‘None of it is her doing, after all.’

‘I know it’s not. And I… I’ll do my best,’ says Ettore, ashamed that his friend feels the need to say this. That he’s getting Chiara involved in the raid. Pino has never been on a raid, and would never go on one. There’s no violence in him, not even enough to keep watch while others perpetrate. ‘I’ll do my best. The danger will be far greater if we don’t have her help.’

‘The danger will be great, regardless,’ says Pino. ‘Your sister scares me sometimes, you know that?’ A quick grin as he says this.

‘The times I’m not frightened for her, I’m frightened of her,’ says Ettore, nodding. Pino clasps his arm for a moment, and then he’s gone.

Ettore expects her to come in the evening again, like the last time, or even in the deep of night, stealing into town like a thief. Instead it’s pure chance that he’s in the church, far gone in thought, when she appears in the middle of the morning, two days later. He’s so distracted that he doesn’t react when the door creaks open, and for a moment he stares at her there, golden in the light, unable to make sense of the sight of her. Her smile is uncertain but irrepressible; he can see the breath high up in her chest, her ribs at their widest arc. A swallow flits in and sees her, circles and flies back out, but Chiara only looks at Ettore as he sits up, and it’s so incongruous that she’s there, and that they have this soft, lucent place to themselves, that he smiles. He bolts the door behind her; takes hold of her without reservation. There’s something so inexpressibly poignant in the smell of her hair, warm from the sun, that his heart aches a little, and when he kisses her he’s almost reverent, and gentler than he has ever been. Footsteps outside, back and forth past the door; the swallow comes in again and there’s the tiny scrape of its claws as it lands, the descant piping of its young – rammed into the nest, fat and silly, ready to fledge. Ettore takes off Chiara’s clothes and lets the sun fall, incandescent, on her skin. He turns her this way and that to see, touching her here and there – the notch at the base of her throat where there’s a gleam of sweat; the line where buttock joins thigh; the smooth protrusions of her elbows and knees. She has long toes and pale, narrow feet. He examines every inch and he lays her down, and he wonders if the tingle of heartbreak is in the feeling he has, right down at gut level, that this will be the one and only time he will see her like this. Glowing in the sun like one of his mother’s spirits; beautiful, untenable, not of this world.

Time passes like this, distorted and dreamlike. Time disconnected from anything outside the tiny church. Later Ettore watches Chiara dress again. She does it in a leisurely way, with no sense of impropriety or indecent haste. Like a woman in her own boudoir; languidly at ease.

‘Come here,’ he says, when she’s finished buttoning the back of her skirt, and the front of her blouse, and her bedraggled stockings into her garter belt. She puts on her shoes before she obeys him, coming to sit beside him on the pew. She sits close; he puts an arm behind her shoulders and lets his fingers rest in the hair at the back of her neck. The width of her neck fits his hand exactly, and it’s satisfying. ‘My sister says you’re in love with me.’ At this she stiffens for a fraction of a second, but then surrenders.

‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’ she says.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, but of course he did. He denied it to himself because of the bewildering way it pleased him in one second and angered him the next. There’s a hung moment in which she doesn’t ask him if he loves her back.

‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t love me back. It doesn’t change anything,’ she says simply.

‘I don’t know if I can still love anybody. Or anything. Not properly. Not as I would wish to,’ he says, and this is truthful enough. He can feel his own pulse in his fingertips, resting against the skin of her neck.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says.

‘How… how are you here? How did you get here?’

‘Carlo gave me your message the day before yesterday, but I couldn’t come any sooner. Then I said I wanted to come and see Boyd. My husband, here in Gioia. Anna brought me in the little cart, and I told her I was going for a walk before I went in to see the men… I don’t think she believed me.’ A defiant jerk of her chin. ‘But why shouldn’t I go for a walk, to stretch my legs after the ride?’

Troubled by this, Ettore thinks for a moment.

‘Anna is close with Federico. You must be careful; she might tell him and he would know why you have really come.’

‘He doesn’t know you’re here, in this church, though. Does he?’

‘No. No, that’s right. But you must go to Via Garibaldi before you go back to the masseria. You must see your husband.’ Saying this is like needlessly pressing a bruise.

‘Yes. And Pip… Pip knows,’ she says, in a mournful voice, rich with guilt. She shuts her eyes. ‘There was the most awful scene. When I got back from here last time… It was awful. He’s so hurt. I… I don’t know what to say to him.’ She looks down and a tear lands on her skirt; a small dark mark on the fabric. Ettore almost says it will be over, soon, but then he realises it would sound cruel, not kind as he means it.

‘Will he tell his father?’

‘I don’t know.’ The words are spoken on a sigh, soused in misery. Something else occurs to Ettore, something possibly more dangerous.

‘Will he tell Marcie?’

‘What? Why should he?’ she says, puzzled. ‘And what would it matter?’

‘Never mind. Listen to me, Chiara. I have to ask you to do something for me.’

‘Whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

‘Don’t say that until you’ve heard me. It… could be dangerous for you.’

There’s a pause, and in it Ettore has the choice. He can tell her the raid is coming, tell her to get out of the masseria, her and the boy and Marcie, and be far away when it happens. Or he can ask her what he must ask her. He keeps his jaw tight shut for a moment more, a moment in which she is not in great danger, and he is not the cause of it. It’s a soft, elastic moment, like the time they spent making love – the luminous space between seconds, impossible to preserve. ‘There will be a raid,’ he says at last, and the darkness creeps in. ‘On Sunday night there will be a raid on my uncle’s farm. He is in Gioia, not on the farm, so he will be in no danger, and it will go easier. I… I will be one of the raiders. My sister with me, and many others. I need you to ask the guard to open the main door for you, at exactly one in the morning. And then you must go into the main building and lock yourselves in a room – the three of you together, Marcie, the boy, and you. Can you do that?’

He can hear her breathing, high up beneath her ribs again, like when she first arrived. He can sense his words sinking into her, being absorbed, and he waits to see how she will react – if she will panic, if she even understands what he’s said. When she looks up her eyes are fearful, but there’s no panic, no refusal.

‘One in the morning is too late. They would never open the door for me then. It must be earlier. I’ve never been out after midnight before, and they were very reluctant to open the door even then.’

‘Then, you’ll do it?’

‘If I begged you to be safe… if I begged you not to do this, would it make any difference?’

‘No.’

‘Then I will do it.’ She tips her head, lets it rest on his shoulder for a moment, but she’s too agitated and lifts it again, fiddling with the frayed cuff of his shirt, running the threads through her fingertips. ‘But it must be earlier. And I must hope and pray that Carlo is on the door.’

‘What time?’

‘Eleven? Sometimes I’ve walked before bed, to help me sleep.’

‘It’s risky.’ Ettore shakes his head. ‘Gioia won’t be fully asleep… the squads will be about…’

‘Later would be impossible, even if Carlo is on the door. You won’t… you won’t hurt him, will you? If it’s Carlo? He’s so young; he’s harmless…’ she says, and Ettore agrees with her. But he’ll make no empty promises.

‘Don’t stay to see. Do you hear? You run to your room, and you lock it. That’s all you do.’ Her face clouds at this obvious skirting of her question. Ettore looks away.

‘I did not want it to be this way,’ he says. ‘But they leave us no other way. You must say nothing of this. To anyone.’

‘If you’re hurt…’ Chiara shakes her head; tries again. ‘If you’re hurt-’ Ettore lifts her chin with a crooked finger and stares into her eyes to press home his command, and make her obey.

‘Don’t stay to see.’

He keeps her there as long as he dares, after the sun has gone past noon and she’s long overdue at the house on Via Garibaldi. He has the feeling that she wouldn’t leave at all if he didn’t make her; that same inseparable mix of bravery and stupidity he’s seen in her before, that same blind urge to follow her heart against all better sense. She would stay with him in that little church, and pretend that they could live that way. At the door she turns.

‘You could come to England,’ she says; a sudden flare of reckless hope. ‘With me. You could come back to England with me. I’ll divorce Boyd… we could marry. Pip would come around… he’s almost a man. You could come away from all of this.’ He can hardly bear the look on her face, the fragility of her. In the time it takes him to reply, in the time it takes him to frame the only answer he can give, he sees her collapse into herself, and the hope burn out as quickly as it flared. In the end she slips away before he’s said anything else, dipping her chin, pulling her hand away from his.

Once Chiara has left Ettore goes to tell Paola that she’s agreed to help them, but his sister’s not at home; Valerio is alone on his shelf, sleeping soundly. Dogged by restless impatience he walks a convoluted route back to the church, and as he’s going in a strange figure comes hurrying towards him, moving in a crabbed way, keeping to the deep shade on one side of the street. Ettore braces himself for trouble, for a fight, but the figure is Pino, and Ettore relaxes for a second before he sees why his friend is walking so peculiarly. He has Chiara in his arms. Ettore stares stupidly, making no sense of this, as Pino barrels past him into the church.

‘Ettore! Shut the damn door!’ he says, sitting Chiara down on a pew. She curls forwards, her face almost on her knees. Her blouse is torn, her skirt too. There’s blood from somewhere, smudged on her cheek and her collar, and Ettore’s mouth goes dry. He slams the door, slides the bolt across.

‘What’s happened?’ He goes over to Chiara, puts a hand on her shoulder and feels her shaking. ‘Pino! What’s happened?’ Pino looks away, catching his breath; he seems reluctant to speak, like he’s almost afraid.

‘She was attacked,’ he says at last. He sucks in a deep breath. ‘It was blind luck I was passing. Work stopped early – there was nothing left to thresh. Or I wouldn’t have been back. I wouldn’t have been there to stop it…’

‘Chiara?’ Ettore crouches down and looks into her ashy face. Her pupils are huge, black, focused on nothing. Her lower lip is split, and blood is smeared over her chin; her hands are bruised, the nails broken. ‘Who did this?’ he says. She shows no sign of having heard him. Ettore looks up at Pino. ‘Was she raped?’ The ugly word rasps in his throat, turning his stomach. Pino shakes his head.

‘I got there in time. But I think it was his intention,’ he says guardedly.

‘Whose intention? You saw who it was?’ says Ettore. His own hands are shaking now; pressure’s building behind his eyes, and in a tight band around his ribs. Just then Chiara takes a ragged breath in and shudders. She says something quiet that Ettore can’t hear. He crouches in front of her again.

‘Ettore…’ says Pino; a note of warning.

‘Chiara… you’re safe here. I’m here,’ says Ettore.

‘Tell me…’ she says indistinctly. She blinks slowly, drunkenly; slides her eyes to look at him. ‘Tell me I’m your sweetheart,’ she murmurs. Ettore can’t breathe. He reels back from her, loses his balance, sits down with a bump.

‘Ettore, I saw who it was. It was Federico Manzo. He must have followed her here,’ says Pino.

‘That’s what he said. What he kept saying.’ Chiara’s voice is hoarse, whispery dry. ‘He kept saying, “Tell me I’m your sweetheart.” ’

Chapter Thirteen – Clare

Pino and Ettore start to clean her face and brush at the dirt on her clothes, but in the end they realise there’s no point. After a curt exchange in the dialect they lead her back to Via Garibaldi, and she goes with clumsy steps, dazed, and at some point realises that the only hand on her elbow is Pino’s – Ettore has gone. Pointlessly, she turns to look over her shoulder. When they’re at the door to Leandro’s house she pulls back. If you speak of this, Federico said, I will tell them where you have been. Where you have been many times. Anyway, you like Puglian men, don’t you? This said with triumphant levity, with one grimy hand clamped over her nose and mouth so she could hardly breathe; a knife in the other, its tip pressed casually into the hollow above her collarbone. No screaming, he said, as he took his hand away, reached down for his belt. Now, tell me I’m your sweetheart. A lingering kiss, a hideous mockery of tenderness. Tell me I’m your sweetheart; more insistently, when she didn’t speak. And then, miraculously, Pino was there, and Federico was running away, and the relief was so overwhelming that for a moment Clare forgot how to stand, how to speak or think or move.

Federico Manzo, mending the bicycle for Pip. Federico Manzo, offering her flowers and then hisses – from stately courtship to gleeful menace in a day, when he realised she was no Madonna. Clare looks at the door to Leandro’s house. Will Federico open it to let them in? He’s had time to get back, to compose himself, but Pino gave him a kick in the stomach that sent him scuttling off, doubled over, so perhaps he won’t be back yet. The thought of coming face to face with him brings on waves of clammy dread. If you speak of this, I will tell them where you have been. She puts her arms around Pino’s waist for a moment, presses the side of her face to his shirt. He smells of sweat and labour, of earth and straw.

‘Grazie, Pino,’ she says. When she steps back he looks pleased, abashed, and she believes everything Ettore has ever told her about this man’s good heart. He frowns in thought, searching for a word he can give her in Italian.

‘Coraggio,’ he says, and she nods. Courage.

Clare has never seen the man who opens the door before; he’s a different servant, older, stooped. She uncurls her sweaty fists. The house is quiet, could be empty. Faint echoes of her footsteps drift around the shadowy colonnades. She goes upstairs to the room she had before, but none of her things are there, of course, so she can’t change. Some of Boyd’s clothes are in the wardrobe; his shaving brush and soap are on the washstand, and there’s an inch or two of water left in the jug. Clare uses his comb on her hair, and redresses it; washes as best she can and changes out of her torn, bloodied blouse, putting on one of Boyd’s clean shirts instead. It hangs low and shapeless on her, like a bad imitation of one of Marcie’s tunics, but it covers the tear in the waistband of her skirt, the dirt on the seat. In front of the mirror she stops to stare into her own eyes – they have swollen lids and an odd emptiness that even she can’t reach into. She tries to think back to when it was that Ettore left her – at what point on the walk from Sant’Andrea to Via Garibaldi. She can’t remember. I’m here, he said, but then he seemed to vanish, and he’d had a look in his eyes she’d never seen before, hard and hungry. Pino had fidgeted nervously, moving diffidently around his friend as though Ettore was ill, or dangerous. The sunlit hour in the church, before all this, seems to have happened in another age, to another person. And she’d been fool enough to think, for that short while, that she’d never been happier.

A knock at the door and the breath squeezes out of her lungs. Boyd comes in and straight over to her; a hand on her shoulder, a wide, appraising gaze, full of concern.

‘Darling, the servant just came and told me you’d arrived. But Anna was here hours ago… where have you been? Are you all right? What’s happened – your lip!’

‘I’m all right, Boyd.’ But her voice wobbles treacherously. She doesn’t know how to be with him any more; she doesn’t know how to act.

‘Did somebody do this? Have you been attacked?’ His voice has gone high in outrage, in disbelief. Clare shakes her head.

‘I… I went for a walk around town and I… fell down some steps. Silly of me. I just lost my footing.’

‘Some steps?’ He furrows his brow, not quite believing her. She claws through her memories of Gioia. The town is level, the only steps lead to the doors of upper level apartments. Like Ettore’s.

‘Yes. The steps from the church. You know, the front steps of the Chiesa Madre?’

‘Were you feeling faint again, my darling?’ A hand on the side of her face; stooping over her. Clare feels trapped, overshadowed; can hardly stand it. She shakes her head.

‘No, not really. I just lost my footing.’

‘Why didn’t you come here first? I’d have gone for a walk with you, happily.’

‘I… I thought you’d be working, darling. I thought I’d wait until lunchtime before I interrupted you…’

‘You mustn’t walk around on your own. Please promise me. You mustn’t any more. It’s not safe, least of all when you’ve not been well.’

‘All right.’

‘But why did you come into town at all, darling? Why are you here?’

Clare looks up at her husband. Pale face, scrubbed and clean-shaven; soft, limp hair combed neatly back; his lanky height, thin shoulders slumped so as not to tower over her. For a moment she can’t make her mouth open; can’t make her tongue move. There are too many things she can’t say.

‘I… wanted to see you,’ she says, and the words are so crabbed with duplicity she’s sure he must hear it. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

‘Oh?’ His eyes search her face, worried now.

‘Yes, but I do have rather a headache now…’ She puts a hand to her forehead, as much to break his gaze as anything, but in truth her head is pounding as though there’s too much in it – too much blood and matter, too many thoughts and fears.

‘Of course. Leandro wants to see you too, but rest first. I’ll have them send up some fresh water and a cold drink for you.’

‘Thank you.’

He goes from the room as softly as he came in, moving as he always does – with steady grace, never sudden or abrupt. Sidling through the world as though he doesn’t want it to notice him. When the door clicks shut Clare sits down where she is – sinking to the floor with her back to the mirror. She needs a moment to try to think of any one useful thing, any one right thing, and she can’t seem to do it while she must concentrate on standing. Pino came. Pino came and saved her. Yet her thoughts are brimming with what might have happened otherwise – Federico’s parody of a kiss, one hand undoing his belt; the press of his erection against her stomach, and the tip of the knife at the base of her throat. I’m here, Ettore said, but then he wasn’t. There’s acid in the back of Clare’s mouth, cramp between her ribs. She can still smell Federico’s breath and feel the odd shape of his mouth on hers, his crooked teeth too prominent when he kissed her. Her stomach swims with nausea; sweat breaks out on her face.

At the end of the afternoon Clare goes downstairs because she realises that, more than anything, she wants to be out of Gioia. Her legs are unsteady and there’s still a strange taste in her mouth, at the back of her throat – a metallic kind of tang, like copper or iron. Almost like blood but different, cleaner. She finds Leandro on the terrace, studying a list of notes and figures in a ledger with a glass of wine held lazily in one hand. There’s no outward sign of her cut lip but a thin red line and a gentle swelling. Most of the damage is on the inside – caused by her own teeth when Federico crushed his hand over her mouth. Leandro puts down the ledger but doesn’t rise as she comes over to him. He crosses his legs and watches her, so unflinching and so knowing that Clare feels naked. She can’t keep her hands from shaking. Leandro sees this, of course, as he pours her wine and she gulps at it; he sees everything. The wine tastes odd – almost musty, but Leandro seems to find nothing amiss with it.

‘Somebody attacked you?’ he says mildly. Clare shakes her head.

‘I fell down…’

‘The steps of our Chiesa Madre, yes, your husband told me. Wide, even steps, and only a flight of three.’

‘I tripped.’

‘I would happily take action against the man who did this,’ he says, as if she hasn’t spoken. Again, she shakes her head.

‘Then I hope you’ll have the sense not to see him again. And not to come into Gioia by yourself to do so.’ Clare catches her breath, poised to defend Ettore before she realises that she can’t, any more than she can tell Leandro what really happened. Not without confessing her infidelity, however much she wants to denounce Federico. She can’t stand to think of him out at the masseria with Marcie, and Anna and the other servants; or in Gioia at night with the braccianti’s wives and daughters.

‘I came to see my husband,’ she says. Her voice is small and tremulous. Leandro grunts.

‘As you wish.’ He takes a swig of wine, always with his eyes on her. ‘I’m beginning to think I made a mistake in bringing you out here, Mrs Kingsley. You and the boy. I did it for a good reason, you must understand. But perhaps I’ve made matters worse. Perhaps it’s time I sent you home.’

‘Will you tell me why you brought me here?’ she says. Leandro pauses, and behind his unswerving gaze she can see the shifting of thoughts, the weighing up of things. He uncrosses his legs and leans forwards.

‘It might be hard for you to understand, or even believe, Chiara, but I brought you here for your own safety. I think you could be in danger.’

‘What can you mean? I wasn’t in any danger until I came here.’

‘Yes, I see that now. Ironic, in some ways. I must tell you, though-’ He cuts himself off as Boyd steps out onto the terrace. ‘Downing tools for the day?’ Leandro says smoothly, in the exact same level tone, and Clare has the clear impression that whatever he’d been about to tell her had been for her ears only. He shoots her a warning look as Boyd seats himself, and she bites back all the sudden questions she has for him, and all the sudden fear.

Anna comes to ask if Clare will be travelling back to the masseria with her that evening, but since she has told Boyd she wants to speak to him, and since he wants her to stay the night, she has to turn the offer down.

‘Federico can drive you tomorrow,’ says Leandro.

‘No!’ says Clare, too loudly, before she can stop herself.

‘No?’ Leandro echoes, watching her closely. When she returns to silence he doesn’t press. ‘Very well. I’ll drive you myself – all of us. We were heading back on Friday, anyway, for this party of Marcie’s. A day early won’t matter, and we can stay for a few days. I miss the clean air at the farm.’ Marcie’s party – Clare had forgotten all about it. A party on Friday night, and on Sunday night the farm will be attacked. It seems impossible. Did Ettore really tell her about it, and ask for her help? It has the same caste of dreamy unreality as everything else that happened that day before Federico. Marcie’s party; Marcie and Pip waltzing around an empty room; Pip taking the mongrel puppy from her wordlessly, as they stood opposite each other in the dark outside her locked door in that awful, bruising silence. Peggy, he’s named the puppy – after its spindly peg legs, and after he ascertained that she was a bitch. Clare’s eyes scorch with tears; she excuses herself before the men notice.

In bed, with darkness outside, Boyd curls himself around her. He seems too long, too soft, too awkward. There’s something loose but clinging about him, like the stifling drape of a heavy, heavy blanket. He doesn’t fit her neatly like Ettore does, and he doesn’t smell right. Clare stares into the shadows as he strokes a lock of her hair down over her ear. The shivers it gives her are the wrong kind.

‘Please don’t hold me so tightly. I can’t quite bear it,’ she says, and he leans away wordlessly, hurt.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he says. Clare’s thoughts are fragmentary, jarring into the distant past, into recent happenings, into the future; alighting and then skipping on so fast she can hardly follow them. Finally, she chases her unease and all her unanswered questions right back to New York.

‘What did you say to the mayor?’ she says.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘In New York, when we were there seven years ago. At the party when the three designs were exhibited, by the different architects.’ There are three steady beats of silence, a fourth, a fifth. She can hear him breathing. ‘You were very nervous. Desperately so. You didn’t speak to anybody all evening, not even me, until you went up to talk to the mayor and some other men. Then you seemed better; and then we left. What did you have to tell him?’

‘Good Lord, Clare, I really can’t remember,’ he says; an awkward parody of offhand. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Clare-’

‘I don’t believe you! I want you to tell me.’

‘Clare, don’t raise your voice. You’ll be heard.’

‘I don’t care!’ She struggles up from the bed, out of his grasp. The sudden movement makes her head swim. She stands facing him, barefoot, arms around herself like armour.

Boyd sits up slowly. The sheet drops to his waist; he’s bare-chested – a soft sag of skin around each nipple, a short run of ribs visible above his rounded stomach, a fuzz of pale hair around his navel. She shouldn’t be in bed with this man; it seems wholly inappropriate that he should be so undressed. ‘Tell me.’

‘It was…’ He shuts his eyes, passes one hand across them. ‘I had to put in a word for Cardetta. I had to put in a good word for him.’

‘Why? For what?’

‘He… they… the city waste management contract was up for review. Leandro wanted it, but there were… rumours about him. And the new mayor – the one who seemed too young to be out on his own – was making a point of clearing city hall of corruption. So he was unlikely to award the contract to a known mobster, or a suspected one.’

‘So you… you walked up to the mayor and told him who to hire?’

‘No, of course not. The… one of the other men talking to him was to raise the topic, and to mention Cardetta’s name. I was to provide a… character reference for him. Off the cuff – by chance, it was to appear.’

‘And what did you say about him?’

‘I said… I said I’d worked with him on a building project. He had interests in construction as well, for years. I said he’d built for me, and I’d found him to be honest and open in all his dealings, and had delivered an excellent standard of work. I said I believed the rumours about his… other business concerns to be malicious ones put about by rivals and xenophobes.’ Boyd sounds like he’s reading from a script and Clare realises that he has this by rote. Still, seven years after the event, it’s imprinted in his mind. She thinks back to their stay in New York, and the sudden erosion of all her hopes for her marriage.

‘It was Cardetta who came to the apartment, wasn’t it? Or his men,’ she says, and Boyd nods. ‘I thought it was people who’d known Emma. Old friends of hers and yours, and it had upset you to see them. Thrown you back into grief.’ He shakes his head and then hangs it; he looks pale and uneasy.

‘But why did you do it for him, Boyd? How did he even know you?’

‘He… I… It was a straight trade, you see. I did this for him, and he made sure that… he made sure that my building…’

‘He made sure that your design for the new bank was chosen?’ To this there’s that hangdog nod again, that reek of self-loathing. ‘But how did he find you, Boyd? How did he even know who you were?’

‘I don’t know. I…’ His brows knit in thought, still not looking at her. ‘After Emma died I… I had a rough time of it. He… we…’ He trails into silence, gulping in a breath with a spasmodic lurch of his chest.

Clare stares at him. At this point she would normally relent and soothe him. She would be too afraid to push him into a depression that might take him days, weeks, to come out of. But that was the old Clare from before, in her safe, careful, quiet life. It amazes her, now, how frightened she was then, when she had nothing whatsoever to fear. Not compared to now.

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ He glances up at her flat tone, her uncharacteristic mien. She sees a flicker of self-awareness in his eyes, a swift recalculating, and realises how easily he’s played on her fears in the past. She takes a deep breath but then he crumples. Anguish stampedes over his face, and it’s real.

‘I’ve lost you, haven’t I, Clare?’ he whispers.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. She feels far out, alone; she feels that there can be no going back from here, or any undoing of these things.

‘That was the one thing… That was the one thing I never wanted. Never, ever.’ He smears tears from his eyes with the thumb of one hand. ‘I love you so much, Clare. My darling. You’re my angel, truly. You’re… perfect. I couldn’t live without you… you must believe-’

‘Stop it!’ She has no control over her sudden shout. ‘I can’t bear it when you say those things! I can’t bear it!’

‘Why not?’ he says, shocked. Never once in their ten years together has she raised her voice to him.

‘Because they’re not true! And how can I possibly live up to them – how could anybody ever live up to them? They’re tyrannical! And they make me hate myself – you make me hate myself!’

The quiet after her outburst seems to roar in her ears; the night’s silence returns, steadily repairing the tear she made. They don’t speak for so long that it becomes impossible to. They can only wait, with this pounding quiet between them, until one of them makes a move. Clare reaches up and wipes away half-dry tears with the flats of her hands. She feels sick, exhausted, and her head is ringing. Wordlessly, she comes to the bed and lies down on top of the sheet. Boyd stays where he is, sitting up and hunched, and she’s too tired to guess at his thoughts, or what they should do next; how things can go between them from now on. She shuts her eyes and pictures herself inside a sunlit church, small and ancient; she pictures the delicate way Ettore touched her, and kissed her; the tenuous, disconnected look of happiness on his face. But however much she tries the image remains distant, already fading. She falls asleep telling herself, over and over, that it was real.

Pip comes trotting down the outdoor stairs when he hears the car, and Clare’s heart leaps up to greet him; but when he sees her he falters, and when he sees his father he halts altogether. He hasn’t seen Boyd since before the night Clare locked herself out of her room and he discovered her lie; she has no idea how he will react to his cuckolded father, or how he will act. She watches as he stops on the bottom step, squinting in the sunlight with strands of his fringe in his eyes. It’s been weeks since it was cut. He looks slightly harried and flushed; he has points of colour on his cheekbones as though he has a touch of fever. Clare daren’t put her hand to his forehead to check. She hardly dare approach him at all, when all she wants is to put her arms around him and hold him until he can feel how much she loves him, and how she can’t bear his hurt, his anger. She watches to see if he’ll blurt out her betrayal at once, and expose her publicly, or whether her punishment will be more slow-burning than that.

Peg is under Pip’s arm, squirming and mouthing at his fingers. Boyd stretches his back, standing his full height for once, and walks over to his son with a studied ease.

‘Philip,’ he says, with peculiar formality. They haven’t spent much time together on this trip – stilted mealtimes, passing moments at breakfast and dinner, and then only during the times Boyd has been at the masseria. They clasp hands, lean in for a brief press of their shoulders, Boyd’s left to Pip’s; half of an embrace. ‘How are things? What on earth is this?’

‘This is Peggy,’ says Pip. His voice sounds deeper, more adult, than even the six weeks ago that they travelled down on the train. Clare’s amazed by how things have changed since then; how many things, and how much. Pip raises his eyes to her, just for a second. A flick of a gaze, to remind her what he knows, and Clare’s stomach flutters. Her lip is still swollen, with a reddish bruise spreading onto her chin, but he doesn’t seem to notice it. ‘Clare found her in one of the ruined huts when she was out for a walk,’ he says. This is the story they agreed to tell, when, in the darkness outside her locked door, Pip said: He gave it to you, didn’t he? And Clare had nodded, dumbly. ‘We think her mother must have abandoned her,’ he adds. Boyd grunts.

‘She’s probably the runt. Best not to get too attached to her, son, they often die.’ This makes some little spark in Pip fade out, visibly, and Clare wishes Boyd would see. She wishes he wouldn’t say such things.

‘I’m sure she’ll be fine now she has Pip to look after her,’ she says, but Pip doesn’t react.

‘It’ll be full of worms – don’t let it chew you like that. And make sure you wash your hands with lots of soap.’

‘Peggy’s a she, not an it,’ says Pip.

‘Pure Gioia mongrel, through and through,’ says Leandro. He smiles, scuffing the puppy’s smooth head with his knuckles. Peg twists around and tries to gnaw his hand. ‘Tough as old boot leather; smart and loyal too. She’ll be a good dog for you, Pip.’ When Pip smiles Clare feels the pull of it in her chest, far under her ribs; a spreading warmth like a swig of brandy, swallowed fast.

‘Well, she’ll have to stay here when we leave,’ says Boyd, and Clare hates him for a moment.

‘Peggy’s coming home with us,’ she says flatly. She walks past her husband and up the stairs to greet Marcie, who has appeared on the terrace with fresh powder on her cheeks and fresh red lipstick on her mouth, her hair immaculate.

Clare looks up at Leandro’s wife as she reaches the top step, and for a second sees an expression on Marcie’s face that she’s never seen before – something flat, cold, almost hostile. She falters but the look disappears at once, replaced by that dazzling, indiscriminate smile, and Clare thinks she must have imagined it.

‘My dear Clare, what on earth has happened to you?’ says Marcie.

‘Oh, I fell. I lost my footing on some steps.’ They kiss with a light press of each cheek, like the men with their shoulders – the same not-quite embrace.

‘Sweetie! Were you faint again?’ Marcie takes her hands, drops her voice and her face towards Clare. ‘You’re not in the family way are you, honey?’

‘Oh, no,’ says Clare, at once. And then she thinks of her dizziness, her nausea, the odd tastes in her mouth, that she hasn’t had her period at all since they arrived in Italy. The shock of it causes her throat to clench, choking out a single stunned syllable. Marcie looks at her quizzically.

‘Well, come and sit down, do. How was your little trip?’ There again is something in Marcie’s tone, some note that could be a warning. But Clare can’t tell if she’s heard it or imagined it, and she lets herself be led to a chair and seated because a mad buzzing has started up in her ears, and she can’t follow what Marcie says next.

Later on Clare helps Pip dose the puppy for worms. They go down into the smoky kitchen – a cavernous space running beneath the long barn that forms the west wing of the quad, where the low vaulted ceiling is black with generations of soot, and the heat is a solid, tangible thing. There’s a huge iron range with a stack of twisted firewood beside it, and pots on every hot plate; a smell of smuts and meat, of yeast and ashes. The cook, Ilaria, has a recipe to purge the parasites; she describes it at length as she mixes it, not seeming to mind that Clare and Pip don’t understand a word, and make no reply. She grinds cloves and pumpkin seeds, dried wormwood with its bitter stink, and some other herb that Clare can’t identify. She binds this mixture into a pellet with a glob of lard, sticky and rank. Peggy squirms as though she knows what’s coming as Ilaria cranks open her jaws and shoves the purge far down her throat. The puppy gives a little whine of protest, and gags as it goes down. Ilaria wipes her fingers on her apron and gives them a satisfied nod. Job done. They thank her in Italian as they turn to leave.

At the bottom of the kitchen steps Clare puts her hand on Pip’s arm.

‘Please, wait a moment,’ she says. Up above is the bright oblong of the doorway, the blanching sunlight waiting outside, making it hard to hide. Clare wants shadows and quiet in which to speak. Pip bends and puts Peggy down; the puppy gambols between their feet and then settles down to chew the toe of Pip’s shoe. ‘Pip, listen. I…’ But Clare doesn’t know what she wants to say, exactly. Only that she must speak. Pip has saved her from herself already – it was he who suggested that they get the master key from Carlo to reopen her bedroom door, when she’d been frantic and stupid with fright and self-recrimination at losing the original.

‘Did he do that to you?’ says Pip, looking at her swollen lip.

‘No! Of course not.’ She’s not even sure how he knew, or why she didn’t deny it. You’ve been with him, haven’t you? With Ettore? That was his question, his accusation, in the dark of the masseria, outside her locked door. She could have denied it; she could have laughed, or feigned outrage. But she’d felt utterly exposed, and wretched, and she’d needed him, and all she’d had left was honesty.

‘Are you going to leave Father?’ he says.

‘No.’ She has a numb feeling, and that buzzing in her ears again, and she knows he’s really asking: Are you going to leave me? And the answer to that has always been no.

‘But you’re in love with Ettore.’ Pip shakes his head, won’t look her in the eye. Clare wonders if he can see this love on her, somehow; then she realises that he simply can’t conscience her being treacherous for anything less.

‘But I’m married to your father, darling.’

‘I’m not a child, Clare! Stop treating me like one! You think you can give me a puppy – a puppy he gave you – and that’ll make everything all right? That I’ll be so busy playing with her I won’t notice you lying and sneaking?’

‘Ettore meant the puppy to be for you. Pip, please.’ She catches his arm again, as he turns to go.

‘I want to hear the truth, Clare. I can’t… I don’t want you to lie to me. To hide things.’ He’s working hard not to cry.

‘All right, Pip. All right. I… I am in love with him. But I’m not going to leave you.’ She can’t bring herself to say she won’t leave Boyd; she can’t make herself imagine what life will be like if she stays with him, for ever. But that is what she promised when she married him. It’s like being crushed by a heavy, heavy weight. Are you in the family way? If she is, there’s no possible way the child can be Boyd’s. How can their marriage continue under those circumstances? Yet beneath her panic there’s a rising arc of elation. A baby; Ettore’s baby. Pip’s face contorts and for a moment she thinks he’s going to cry; then she realises its disgust.

‘How could you, Clare? He can barely speak Italian, let alone English! I bet he can’t read or write. He’s a… a dirty peasant!’

‘Pip!’ Clare is stunned. ‘How could you be so hateful? A dirty peasant? You sound like…’ She searches her mind, because these words are familiar but they don’t sound like Pip’s. Then she realises – they sound like Marcie’s. Clare shuts her mouth abruptly, and Pip’s cheeks blaze. He looks stricken, ashamed of himself but defiant.

‘Well, anyway, you won’t see him any more, will you? You won’t keep going to Gioia,’ he says.

‘No. No, I won’t go again.’

‘And you still love my father? You always told me it was possible to love two people – the way Father loves my mother, and you as well.’ There, in the midst of this frighteningly adult conversation, is a snatch of the childishness that hasn’t quite left him.

‘Yes, you can love more than one person. And your father is my husband,’ she says, and they both know that this is no answer at all. But she can’t lie to Pip, ever again, if she wants to keep him.

Pip looks down at his feet, where Peggy is cavorting on her back: a pot belly and waving legs, eyes rolling, ears inside out. Clare waits for some sign from him that this talk has improved things between them. She feels the weight of her promise not to go to Gioia again, dragging at her. It’s all so much, so heavy. She longs to lie down and steadies herself against the wall with one hand, noticing the rough cobbles, the film of dust on every upward surface. It’s an ancient wall, hundreds of years old, six feet thick, built in another age to keep out raiders and thieves. And now raiders and thieves are coming again, and Clare will be one of them.

‘How did that happen?’ she murmurs, shaking her head to Pip’s questioning glance.

‘Is he coming to the party tomorrow?’ says Pip darkly.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Not of course – you know Leandro loves him, kind of. And Marcie’s never had a family before – cousins or siblings or nephews or anything.’

‘You’ve become good friends, haven’t you? You and Marcie. I’m… glad.’

‘Well I haven’t had much choice, have I? With Father in town, and you…’ Pip pauses, looking away again. ‘With you busy. Out walking. What was I supposed to do, all that time?’

With this twist of the knife he sets off up the stairs, and Peg scrambles after him. Clare stays a while in the shadows – not in the kitchen, not out of it; halfway between worlds, between lives. She puts the flat of her hand to her middle. There’s nothing to feel, of course, it’s far too early. If anything, she has lost some weight since they came to Italy – her stomach is almost concave between her hip bones; the skin is taut, smooth, no different to the touch. And yet she knows. She is completely certain. And in that halfway place where she can imagine, for a while, that no grief will come of it, she smiles.

Clare tries to be wherever Boyd is not. He has his work but he’s restive and rises from it often, to pace the sitting room and the terrace, to emerge into the courtyard only to stall there, stock-still, as though he can’t remember why he went. Clare tunes her ears to the sound of his steps, and keeps out of sight. She and Pip have spent much longer at the masseria than Boyd; they know it far better – its hidden corners and stairs, the way to the roof, the cracked love seat in the vegetable garden. She goes along the corridor to what was Ettore’s room, and stands in the white emptiness of it. She lies down a while on the bare mattress. No scent of him, no trace. The father of my child. Clare turns the words around in her mind, over and over. Somehow she’s sure Ettore will be happy. In a place with so much death, mustn’t new life be a welcome thing? She thinks of Iacopo, and the way he is treasured – he is illegitimate, the child of Paola’s lover who was killed at the Girardi massacre, and it doesn’t seem to matter at all. She’s desperate to tell Ettore, and to look into his eyes as she does. But soon the room gets too empty, too quiet, and Clare’s thoughts are too loud in comparison, so she roams on.

From outside the bat room she hears Marcie’s laugh, and Pip’s muffled voice. There’s music playing so she can’t hear what they’re saying, even though she remembers Marcie saying that they ought to save the gramophone needles for the party. It had been when Clare had been about to dance with Pip. She puts her hands to the wooden door and presses her ear to it, shuts her eyes and feels a hundred miles from them, from Pip. She lets the knife turn in her heart – that she has left him so much alone to be with Ettore; that she turned her back on him from the very first moment Leandro’s nephew collapsed in front of her on the terrace. When she can stand it no longer she knocks and goes in with a tentative smile, hoping to be absorbed into their fun, hoping to see Pip laugh. She expects to see them dancing again, like before, or up on the dais, but they are sitting side by side on the old couch. Marcie has her feet tucked up like a girl, her arms linked under her knees, her body turned towards Pip. She’s listening to what Pip’s saying with rapt attention, and for a moment they don’t notice Clare there, they haven’t heard her come in.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ she says. Pip breaks off mid-sentence and blushes.

‘Clare!’ says Marcie, unfolding her legs. Her feet are bare, smooth and pale; her toenails are shell pink. She looks as though she’ll stand up, but then changes her mind. Pip doesn’t get up either, and Clare is left standing over them, awkwardly, trying to talk from a different eye level. ‘We were just… discussing the play,’ says Marcie. ‘Weren’t we, Pip?’ Her teeth and tongue are stained, and Clare notices two sticky glasses on the floor, and a jug of red wine, dark inside. She can smell it in the air; she can smell it on Marcie’s breath. She glances at Pip, searching for the same traces on him, but he keeps his mouth shut and nods to answer the question, so she can’t tell.

‘Oh. I see,’ says Clare. She looks at Pip again, and because he won’t look at her she knows he has been drinking too, and doesn’t want her to see. ‘All right there, Pip? How’s it going?’ she says.

‘All right, I suppose,’ he says. The words pitched halfway between gruff and petulant.

‘I was thinking about going for a walk – do you fancy coming with me? Protect me from these bandits and rebels I keep hearing about?’ She smiles. She wants to grab his arm and drag him from the room, and knows she can’t. Not any more.

‘Perhaps later on. After lunch,’ he says. His eyes flick up to hers briefly, guilty and defiant.

‘Yes. It is rather early, isn’t it?’ says Clare. She looks at Marcie, whose cheeks and eyes are pink, and whose smile has gone as hard and flat as glass.

‘Oh, there are few such rules here. This isn’t England,’ she says, too loudly, and her tone dares Clare to argue. There’s a glitter in her eyes, a simmering anger, and Clare thinks of the row she overheard, deep in the night – the frayed edges of Marcie’s voice, the hint of mania there.

‘No more it is,’ Clare murmurs. She can’t hold Marcie’s gaze so she looks at Pip again, but he’s peering at his hand and running his thumb over the bite marks – dry and flaking, almost gone. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she says, with a desperate feeling, like she might cry.

‘Enjoy your walk,’ Marcie calls after her, and though Clare wants to look back and see if this is mocking, or serious, or angry, somehow she can’t bring herself to.

From a narrow window, sunshine pouring through, she sees Leandro Cardetta on the roof of the opposite side of the quad. He’s standing near the edge with his arms loose at his sides, his chin high; lord and master of all he surveys. The weather is restless and threatening. There’s a hot, dry breeze, the kind that spreads fires, and blackish clouds on the southern horizon. The air catches at Leandro’s hair and shirt; they are the only things moving in that still scene – the parched ground and stone walls behind him look like a painted backdrop. He stares fixedly into this menacing distance and Clare realises that, despite all the time she has spent as his guest that summer, she can’t even guess at his thoughts. In Gioia he had been about to tell her the real reason he brought her and Pip out to Italy, she was sure of it. He’d said she was in danger. But then Boyd had appeared, and he’d cut himself off. What did that mean? That he didn’t want Boyd to know the reason, or didn’t want him to know that he intended to tell Clare?

She stares at Leandro; is every bit as still as him. In spite of all that has happened to her, all that has terrified her, she hasn’t quite got the courage to interrupt him. He is a closed book; stern face, implacable eyes. Leandro Cardetta is a very dangerous man. For the first time Clare looks at what Boyd said from a different angle – beyond the obvious fact that Cardetta is a man who’ll use his own means to achieve his own aims. Dangerous beyond that – dangerous to Boyd in some specific way? She watches his windblown figure with growing unease until the black car pulls into the courtyard and Federico Manzo climbs out of it. Then she shrinks back to her own room, keeping close to the walls; jittery with revulsion and wishing there was still a key she could turn in the lock.

On Friday evening, the night of the party, Marcie comes alive. The furniture in the long sitting room is pushed back to make room for dancing, and the gramophone is set up on a side table. Torches outside the main gates and every lantern in the place are lit to beat back the dark. On the terrace the long table is laid with twelve place settings. For all the invites she sent, for all the expectation and preparation, Marcie has only managed to find seven people, beyond her husband and houseguests, willing to come to Masseria dell’Arco for dinner. In defiance of that she fusses as though the King of Italy will attend, and is wearing her silks and jewels; the light swoops over the shallow curves of her hips, the deeper ones of her chest, and glitters from her ears and neck and fingers.

Clare is dowdy in comparison, and doesn’t care. She washes her hair and leaves it loose to dry, so that it hangs without shape or bounce. She puts on clean clothes and the only pair of evening shoes she has with her, but pays no attention to the outfit. She catches sight of her reflection as she’s about to go down and only then sees how pale she is – a strange kind of pallor that seems to come from within, since the sun has coloured her skin for weeks and brought out freckles. Beneath the suntan, her face is bloodless. She rubs some blush into her cheeks and puts on a little lipstick, but somehow these touches only make it worse. When Marcie sees her, her face falls. But she takes Clare’s hands and squeezes them together.

‘Clare, honey. Are you sure you’re up to this evening? You look pale, and I know you’ve been feeling under the cosh lately.’

‘Aren’t we all under the cosh here? But I’m fine, thank you,’ she says. Marcie smiles.

‘Tonight’s going to be so much fun. We can pretend to be normal wives, leading normal lives. Won’t that be grand? Just for a little while,’ she says. Her eyes sparkle, and Clare wonders if she even remembers their tight exchange in the bat room. Marcie takes a deep breath; her grip on Clare’s hands gets tighter, and tighter.

‘Perhaps we are normal wives. Perhaps this is just what life is like,’ says Clare. Marcie drops her hands at once and takes a step back, shaking her head.

‘Don’t say that. Well! Try to enjoy yourself, anyway, Clare. It could be your last chance to before you go home, and the only exciting evening we’re likely to get this summer. God, I need a drink.’ She stalks away, the high heels of her silver shoes tapping and glinting, and Clare watches after her with a seasick feeling, thinking how wrong she is. A more exciting evening, exciting for all the wrong reasons, crowds the steps of this one.

It’s Friday night, and in two nights’ time, on Sunday, Ettore will come, the farm will be raided and she must play her part, and play it well, or risk harm coming to him. The thought stuns her, blindsides her, every time it comes into her head. It’s like a sudden cacophony that drowns out everything as the other guests start to arrive, and Pip appears from his room in his best clothes, and Boyd comes up from the sitting room with Leandro at his side and a glass of whisky in his hand. The other guests are the doctor who treated Ettore’s leg and Clare when she fainted, his wife and teenage son and daughter; a stern man called Labriola, a retired teacher who likes to practise speaking English; and Alvise and Carlotta Centasso, a witless pair from Gioia too dazzled by Leandro’s wealth and Marcie’s jewels to mind that they are American arrivistes. They drink milky, almond-scented rosoglio on the terrace and Clare gulps at hers, longing to be feel numbed, to feel serene for a time. The drink is hot in her stomach, but doesn’t settle it.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ says Boyd, close to her ear. Clare shrinks from him; she can’t help it. She nods wordlessly and moves away towards Leandro, who is grand and groomed in his evening suit, a black silk tie fastened with a perfect knot at his throat. So it’s by pure chance that she’s standing next to him and not next to her husband when Federico Manzo comes up the terrace and crosses to Leandro to murmur some message in his ear.

Clare is hung; she can’t take her eyes off him, or move away, however much she wants to. All she sees now are the muscles beneath his clothes, and the ease with which they overpowered her; she sees his mouth and instantly recalls the feel of its odd shape against her own, and the taste of his saliva; his broad hands, and how just one was wide enough to prevent her breathing. She rocks back on her heels; wants to run but is paralysed. She feels stripped naked, humiliated; the blood roars in her ears and when Federico turns to go he looks at her and the glance is sullen, coldly hostile. For the short moment his eyes brush over her it’s like the unwanted touch of his hands again, the intimate press of his body. It turns her cold.

When he’s gone she grabs at Leandro’s arm without thinking, only needing the support. He smiles down at her and then notices her distress and draws her immediately to one side.

‘What is it, Chiarina?’ He uses the diminutive of her Italian name with such concern, such warmth it almost undoes her. She swallows tears.

‘Federico,’ she says quietly.

‘What of him?’ he says, but Clare can’t answer. She looks away, looks down, and can’t prevent a shudder going through her. There’s a long pause. ‘He did this, didn’t he?’ says Leandro then, in a very different tone; touching one finger softly to her chin. Clare nods. ‘But why? I thought it was my nephew you’d fallen for?’

‘You know?’ says Clare, stricken.

‘But of course. My dear, not much goes on around here that I don’t know about. Tell me – why did Fede hit you?’

‘He just… I was alone, in town. He must have followed me, and…’ She can’t finish this, can’t say the words. Leandro’s face gets that dragged downward look she’s come to recognise – his features weighted with anger, black eyes snapping.

‘Forgive me. This is my fault,’ he says, in a voice flat with fury. ‘He attacked one of the kitchen girls last year. Spun me a yarn about how they’d been courting, and how she’d given her consent and was lying about it after the event. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘No. The fault is mine,’ says Clare. ‘He saw me… he knows about Ettore.’ She raises her eyes to him wretchedly. ‘Don’t tell my husband! Please, tell no one. Not even Marcie,’ she whispers.

‘No, no. We won’t speak of it. And Federico Manzo won’t set foot here again, I promise you that. I’ve no need for a man like that – no better than an animal. It’s the duty of the men in my household to protect the women, not endanger them! I’ll go now and see to it. Are you steady now? Here – take another drink.’ He passes her his own glass and watches her drink, then steers her by her elbow to Marcie’s side, where she can hide in the shadow of his wife’s radiance.

‘There you are, Clare,’ says Marcie, seeming to think nothing of the way her husband deposits her there. ‘Have you ever been to watch the horse races back in England? I’ve never seen one – is it fun? Mr Centasso was just telling me about his new racehorse – a thoroughbred, no less! The signori here do love their horse races. Oh, do promise you’ll invite me to watch your horse run, Mr Centasso,’ she says. ‘And I promise I’ll bet on it.’ Clare watches after Leandro as he excuses himself and leaves the terrace.

A short while later Leandro draws her to one side again, and walks her to the far end of the terrace from which the aia and the main gates are just visible. He points, and in the wash of light from the farm a figure is visible, walking stiffly and fast, as if propelled. Clare recognises Federico at once.

‘Dismissed. From my service and both of my households. His father will have words with me; perhaps he’ll leave as well. But some things are rightly done, even if they make waves.’ He pats her shoulder gently. ‘You won’t see him again. I’m sorry that harm has come to you here.’

‘Thank you,’ Clare whispers. Leandro gives a weary grunt.

‘Don’t thank me. I brought you here.’

‘But you are kind. When you told me of your… old life, I thought that you couldn’t really have left it behind. I thought you must still be that way, and ruthless, and a… bad man. But you’re a good man, Mr Cardetta.’

‘Good?’ He shakes his head, almost angrily. ‘No, you mustn’t say that. You mustn’t think that. I don’t deserve to be thought of as good.’

‘Well, you’ve been kind to me. You knew of my… bad behaviour, and you didn’t inform my husband. And now you’ve dismissed a loyal servant, without question, on my behalf. I will always think well of you.’

‘Your bad behaviour?’ He smiles. ‘When I saw Marcie for the first time, up on stage in her sequins and feathers, she cracked open my chest and stole my heart right out of it. I was married at the time – I’d made promises I ought to have kept. But there are things we can’t foresee, and things we can’t help but do, where the heart is involved.’ He taps two fingers lightly on her chest, against the bone. ‘How can love be a sin? Hate is a sin, but love – never.’ Clare’s eyes are hot with tears. She looks down, struggles to hold them.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says.

‘Ah,’ says Leandro. ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.’

‘Please don’t send us away yet. Don’t send me away with my husband.’

‘Sooner or later it’ll have to happen.’

‘But not yet. I need… some more time. I need a few more days.’

‘Very well. But listen to me, Chiara. Nothing is set in stone. If you don’t love your husband, then don’t stay with him. It could be even more dangerous to do so than to leave him.’

‘Dangerous? You said that before – will you tell me what you mean?’ she says, but Leandro shakes his head.

‘Now is not the time – look, they’re bringing out the supper dishes. Try not to be afraid. Of any of it, Chiara.’

Anna and another of the kitchen girls have brought out platters of meat and vegetables, cheeses, bread and wine, and the table gleams with oil and silverware. A confusing mixture of Italian and English is spoken, and the red wine dulls their teeth as it brightens their eyes, and Clare feels a million miles from it. She hears herself answer questions directed at her, but minutes later can’t remember what she’s said. She’s aware of quizzical looks aimed at her, as though the guests aren’t sure if they’re misunderstanding her English, or her Italian, or simply her.

She never questioned, for a second, the rightness of the coming raid. She accepted it as part of the war, and that Ettore would choose to make war on his own uncle didn’t really register. But now she must question how well she’s repaying Leandro’s kindness by aiding the attack; by not warning him. But the choice is simple: she must betray Ettore, or betray Leandro – so it’s no choice at all. She thinks of the massacre at the Girardi place; she thinks of the unarmed peasants, shot down by men hidden safe behind high stone walls. Picturing Ettore in such danger makes her knees ache, her stomach swoop with fear. He is here in Gioia, Ettore had said, meaning his uncle. It will go easier. But Leandro was at the masseria, and still would be on Sunday. The raid would not go easy. When she realises this Clare jolts upright in her seat, wanting to run to Gioia, to warn Ettore, to make him call it off.

After dinner they go down to the sitting room. The music starts and Marcie dances with each of her guests, and with her husband, time and again. She laughs, and flirts, and smiles, smiles, smiles. Such total abandon that Clare finds it bewildering, as though Marcie is a language she can’t pick up. More and more, it bothers her. He’s a dirty peasant. Pip watches Marcie with a cautious kind of smile, and takes his turn dancing with her, and also dances with the doctor’s daughter. She’s a year older and a head taller than him, but it’s the daughter who blushes, and Clare tries to see Pip through her eyes – a handsome young man, not a boy; least of all a child. Surely he wouldn’t disappear from her life if she disappeared from Boyd’s? Not now, when he is so grown. Not unless Clare stayed in Puglia with Ettore. She has to remind herself that Ettore has made no such invitation, and then she thinks that perhaps he might, when he hears about the child. Her thoughts pace around in this circle, again and again; she’s like the aia dogs at the ends of their chains, dizzy and tired. The party is a kind of madness; they’re laughing as the ceiling cracks, dancing as the ground falls out beneath their feet. Madness. Clare declines several invitations to dance until one comes from Pip – a wordless, almost shy extension of his hand, a declaration of peace.

The dance is an old-fashioned waltz, and though Marcie and Leandro are spinning, filling the floor, Pip leads Clare cautiously, holding her as if she might break. His face is flushed from the heat, the dancing and the wine; a stubborn lock of hair has escaped the oil he’s combed through it. Clare tips her head back to see him clearly, and then smiles slightly.

‘You’ve got taller this summer, you know. You’re growing so fast I can almost see it happening.’ Once he would have been pleased, but now he frowns a little. Clare needs to weed out the things she said to him when he was a child, and find a new way to talk to him. ‘You made the doctor’s daughter blush,’ she says, and at this he looks pleased.

‘I don’t know why, it was only a dance.’

‘I think she’d like another,’ she says, and smiles again. Leandro turns Marcie too close to the gramophone; she shrieks in dismay as her heel bumps the table leg and jolts the needle from the groove. There’s a loud, awful tearing sound, and laughter. Clare flinches from the noise, and then the sudden silence.

‘Clare, what’s wrong? I mean… there’s something really wrong, isn’t there?’ says Pip.

‘Oh, Pip…’ She shakes her head.

‘You have to tell me what it is – you promised.’ He sets his jaw when he’s said this, and for a few moments Clare says nothing. The music restarts and the dancing with it. Beneath her hand Clare feels Pip’s shoulder sag as the tension, the fake belligerence, leaves him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ he says helplessly. ‘Please, Clare. I can’t stand you not saying… don’t you trust me?’

‘Darling, of course I trust you. You’re… you’re my best friend. I want you to know you’ll be safe. Whatever happens, you’ll be safe.’

‘What do you mean, whatever happens? What’s going to happen?’

In that moment Clare has another choice – to keep her word to Ettore, and say nothing of the raid, or to win back Pip’s trust and keep him safe when the trouble begins. She hesitates, but she has to warn him. The thought of him hearing strange sounds on Sunday night and blundering down into danger is too dreadful.

‘Swear to me you won’t repeat what I’m about to tell you to anybody. Swear it,’ she whispers. Shocked, wide-eyed, Pip nods. ‘Swear it, Pip?’

‘I swear it.’

‘There’s going to be a raid. Here, at the masseria… you know what we saw in Gioia? The gangs, and the beatings? It’s a war, Pip, and… and Ettore is one of the people fighting it.’

‘He’s going to attack his own uncle?’

‘No, no – he’s not leading it. I think… I don’t think he likes the idea. But raiders will come, and he will be one of them. They don’t want to hurt anybody – it’s very important for you to understand that.’ She thinks of Ludo, of the other guards laughing as he flicked the whip at the naked man, making him graze. Ettore wants to kill Ludo Manzo. ‘Not you or your father, not Marcie or Leandro. In fact, Ettore thought his uncle would be in Gioia, out of the way…’

‘Then why would they attack this place?’ Pip’s voice is tight with nerves. ‘We have to warn Marcie and Leandro!’

‘No! No, you promised me, Pip – you swore you wouldn’t!’ She grips his arms so hard that cramp starts in the heels of her hands.

‘Ow! All right! But… what do they want? If it’s not to hurt anybody?’

‘I… I’m not sure. Perhaps they only want to show that they can do something. Perhaps they only want to be heard – and treated better.’

‘What… what should I do?’ He swallows convulsively, fearfully.

‘Don’t be frightened, Pip, and don’t do anything. Stay up in your room. Does the door lock? Then lock it. Don’t come down no matter what you hear, and you’ll be safe. Promise me you’ll do as I say! And please, please, say nothing. If the guards know they’re coming…’ It’s Clare’s turn to swallow, because her mouth is dry, her throat in a chokehold. ‘If they’re ready for them, then people will die. Do you understand?’

Dumbly, Pip nods, and Clare sees him glance around and realise that they’ve stopped dancing even though the music is still blaring. He looks at Marcie, at Leandro, at the doctor’s pretty daughter making eyes at him from across the room. She can see him trying to assimilate what she’s said, struggling to continue with real life now that he has this unreal knowledge; now that the stakes have changed so drastically. ‘If only we’d gone,’ she murmurs, too quietly for him to hear. ‘If only we’d gone right after what we saw in Gioia, like I wanted to. Before any of the rest of this happened, and we came to this point.’ But though she’d do anything to keep Pip safe, she can’t regret Ettore – can’t regret loving him; can’t regret the child now planted in her. She holds Pip tightly, subtly leading him to the end of their dance, and realises that Sunday night, when she opens the door to the masseria, might be the last time she ever sees Ettore. She and Pip dance on, woodenly, disjointedly, as if they can’t hear the music.

Late in the evening Clare walks out under the archway to stand by the doors with Boyd and the Cardettas and see off the last of the guests. Pip has gone to bed; he didn’t seem to enjoy himself much after Clare spoke to him, even though Marcie jollied and cajoled him, and looked hurt when he didn’t respond. The Centassos’ little trap pony spooks at the aia dogs as it trots past them, and Clare takes a lungful of the night air, which somehow tastes different to that within the masseria. There are few stars and no sounds of night birds or insects; there’s a preternatural stillness, hunkered down like a stalking animal. Movement catches Clare’s eye and she sees a fragile curl of ash, drifting down from the sky like a dirty snowflake; then she notices the tang of smoke, and turns to glance at Leandro. He’s staring northwards, where an ugly orange glow is smudged along the sky, and at once they’re all uneasy; at the colour of the fiery sky, and the fixed way Leandro stares at it. The fire isn’t close, but it’s on his land.

‘Marcie, take our guests inside,’ says Leandro. She’s still waving after the Centassos, though they haven’t turned to see. ‘Marcie!’ he barks. She starts, turns to him. ‘Go inside.’

‘What’s up, honey?’ she says. But then Ludo Manzo appears through the gates on his horse, cantering towards them. He has his rifle in one hand, his face is streaked with sweat and soot and has a murderous look. When he reaches Leandro he yanks the horse’s mouth to halt it and unleashes a violent burst of his accented Italian.

‘What’s he saying, Clare?’ says Boyd, at her side. Clare shakes her head.

‘I can’t follow it.’ Her heart is racing with nerves – that this is somehow related to her, to Federico’s dismissal.

Ludo and Leandro talk for a short time, then the overseer wheels his horse around and rides away fast. Leandro turns to them, and his face is set and grave. But he doesn’t look at Boyd, or at his wife – he looks at Clare. And Clare goes cold.

‘What is it?’ she says, not caring if Boyd wonders at her question. Leandro’s face twists then; he sucks in a breath. ‘What is it?’ she says again, with an edge of panic on the words. ‘Tell me!’

‘I must go. I have business…’ he says, still looking at Clare. ‘Go inside. Stay there.’

‘Sure we will, darling,’ says Marcie. ‘Come on, Clare. And you, Boyd – whatever this is I’m sure Ludo and Leandro can handle it… Do come on. It’s best to do as he says when there’s trouble on the farm.’ She’s still glimmering in her finery, fluttering her hands to herd them. Leandro turns and starts to follow his overseer, but Clare runs after him. She takes his arm.

‘Is it him? Is it Ettore? Tell me!’ she whispers. In the distance the sky glows with steady menace, and smoke blooms upwards like some vast tree. Leandro stares down at her; she sees anger, pain and something else in his eyes – something intractable.

‘Go inside, Chiara,’ he says, so adamantly she has no choice but to obey. Boyd puts his arm around her shoulders when she reaches him. Clare’s head feels detached from her body; she stumbles, letting Boyd steer her.

‘You understood more of what was said than you’re letting on, didn’t you?’ says Boyd. ‘What were they saying, Clare?’ The masseria door closes behind them with a thump, and Clare can’t bring herself to speak. She has never been more afraid.

Chapter Fourteen – Ettore

When Ettore tells Gianni and Benedetto that he’s found Livia’s murderer, their silence is long and has a solidity that seems unbreakable. But Bianca breaks it; Livia’s mother. She’s on her stool by the stove, and she makes a little sound like a whimper of fear, but when Ettore looks at her he doesn’t see fear. He sees hunger. Fat black flies buzz around in circles, drowsy after dark. The noise of their wings is almost more than Ettore can stand – he feels he could snatch them out the air with his eyes closed. He’s so on edge his eyes catch every movement, his ears every sound. The air sits high up in his chest; he can’t unknot his shoulders. Not while Federico Manzo walks and breathes and smiles. He doesn’t think about Chiara – he can’t. Livia is enough, and thinking that the same man has touched Chiara might tip him off this point of fine balance, and break his tenuous grip on control. Images of her distended pupils, her bloody lip, appear in front of his eyes now and then, and he twitches his mind away from them. There’s nothing for him to sit on in the cramped room; Livia’s two brothers sit on the mattress with their legs out in front and their backs against the wall; Ettore crouches on one knee in front of them to deliver his message, like a supplicant.

Gianni is staring at him as though it’s Ettore he would kill. He has always made Ettore feel like a boy, ineffectual as a child, and as he draws breath Ettore thinks Gianni will ask if he’s ready for what will come; or tell him to leave it to him and Benedetto. But he doesn’t.

‘And you are sure of this, beyond all doubt?’

‘Yes.’

‘It will be hard to get him by himself. It should be done with as little noise as possible. I’ve no time for a pitched battle with his mazzieri scum companions. Can you think of a way? Can you get him to come out of your uncle’s house?’

‘Not without arousing suspicion.’

‘Yes. We must be nameless, faceless,’ says Benedetto, in his bass voice. ‘It only matters that he knows us, in his last moments. That he knows it’s for her.’ There’s a dull fire in his eyes; a gleam of famished violence.

‘He goes to and from Gioia to the masseria, you say. Does he ever go alone?’

‘Sometimes, but if he did so it would be by car.’

‘Then it will have to be here, in town. You say he attacked your new woman, so he must go around by himself sometimes. We’ll keep watch – one of us must always watch for him, in turn. If the opportunity comes, it must not be missed.’ Benedetto rolls himself a cigarette and lights it calmly; the scratch of the match gives Ettore a shiver.

‘Yes.’ Gianni nods once with the word.

‘You first, Ettore. Then Gianni the day after. Then me.’ Through the haze of his cigarette smoke Benedetto’s face is murky and indistinct.

‘I can get a gun,’ says Ettore, thinking of the pistol Paola took from Masseria Molino.

‘Forget it,’ says Gianni. ‘Too quick.’

‘But to force him to some quiet place?’ he says. Gianni glances at his brother.

‘Yes. Let whichever one of us is watching for him keep hold of it,’ says Benedetto. The three men nod. Then they have nothing more to say to each other and the silence returns, and Ettore can’t stand the buzzing of the flies and the stinging smoke another second. He rises abruptly from the floor and turns to go, and Bianca catches his arm. Ettore looks down into her rabbity face, all scored with years of grief and hardship; her stained eyes are clouding up with trachoma.

‘Don’t stay your hand, boy,’ she says, in her soft, whispery way. ‘Think of my girl, and don’t stay your hand. She’ll have justice no other way.’ Ettore pulls his arm free, nods again and leaves. His flesh feels as raw as the rest of him – he can’t tolerate her touch.

Keeping to the smallest, blackest streets he can, Ettore makes his way to Vico Iovia, where the lights at home are out and the doors are shut, and only the smell of that morning’s spilt sewage betrays that anybody lives there at all. He lets himself in quietly, to not wake the baby or Valerio; lies down on the bed next to Paola and reaches for her hand. When he finds it he meshes their fingers, like he did when they were little and Valerio beat their mother. He squeezes her fingers tightly enough to know it must hurt, but Paola doesn’t flinch.

‘You spoke to them?’ she says, in the lowest of murmurs.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘As soon as we can, we’ll take the debt from his flesh.’ He says this dispassionately, when what he feels is passion, conviction. He has seen soldiers, just boys, blown apart in the war; seen their blood pooling, warm and dark, in pocks of frozen mud. He has seen his fiancée beaten and raped and left to die; his mother killed in two days and a night by cholera – scoured out from the inside. So much death, so many ways to die and no such thing as justice in any of it. Life is not cheap, but death is easy – this he knows. Never before has he actively planned a killing; never before has a killing been so right. His conscience is clear. Murder is just another term, like prosecution, like unlawful, like judicial process, that belongs to the wealthy, not to the peasants. The braccianti have always had their own kind of justice.

Paola turns to face him. He can’t see her but he can feel her breath on his cheek, and the weight of her plaited hair as it falls against his arm.

‘Livia can be at peace once it is done. But can you?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says at once. ‘That is, perhaps. Perhaps no; perhaps never. But it wants doing, either way.’

‘Can it not wait just a few days, Ettore?’ she says urgently. ‘Just a few days! We should do nothing to put them on their guard before the raid. Afterwards, there need be no such concern. Three more days, only.’

‘It’s already begun, Paola. From this moment, when I leave here, one of us will be watching for him, and if the moment comes I won’t let it pass. Any more than Benedetto or Gianni will. Perhaps we’ll find him after the raid, perhaps before.’ Paola takes a deep breath and exhales slowly.

‘So perhaps he will be lynched before Sunday, and the corporals will be twitchy, and we must be at dell’Arco at eleven at night to begin the attack – we’ll have to leave Gioia so soon after dark! I don’t like it, Ettore… there’s so much at stake.’

‘This is how it must be, Paola. And we can attack dell’Arco later, if you wish. But not with Chiara’s help.’

‘She’d better do as she says she will.’ Paola is angry, anxious. ‘If she chickens out I’ll skin her myself, and-’ She cuts herself off when Ettore’s grip tightens convulsively. He feels the little bones in her hand shifting. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it,’ she says.

‘She will do as she said she will. She has always done what she’s said she’ll do.’

‘Tell that to her husband,’ Paola snorts.

‘Enough, Paola. Please.’

‘I need you to work! I need your wage. You’re no good to us skulking around Gioia, waiting to ambush this man. He’s looking for you too, don’t forget.’

‘One day of three, I will stay in town. The work is drying up, anyway – nobody’s being hired all week long. And you keep telling me that after Sunday we’ll be rich and well fed. And he put a gun to your son’s head, Paola. Have you forgotten that?’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’

‘Then stop! You can’t always be the boss of everything. This is the way things must go, and I’m not going to argue with you about it.’ There’s a long pause; he relaxes his grip on his sister’s hand and lets their fingers slide apart.

‘All right then,’ she says softly. Ettore grabs her plait and tugs it gently, like when they were little. Then he gets up, tilts his hat low over his face and goes back out into the night.

He spends the next day moving steadily around town: from the castle walls to the Chiesa Madre; from the Teatro Comunale to the market stalls in Piazza XX Settembre; Santoiemma’s wood mill to the bakeries; Via Roma to the station and the slaughterhouse. He talks to a few men he trusts; puts the word in the right ears that Federico Manzo is sought. That he has a debt to pay. The workers know who Federico is – his harelip makes him easily recognisable, and besides, of late he has been prominent, in his black shirt and his emblems. Before that, even, he was famous for being Ludo Manzo’s son, and none of the workers have any reason to love Ludo. But no word comes back to Ettore all day. No useful word – Federico has been seen driving Cardetta’s black car out towards the masseria; he hasn’t been seen coming back. Troubled, Ettore asks after his uncle’s whereabouts, and hears that Leandro drove the red car in that direction himself earlier the same day, and has also not yet returned.

Febrile with impatience, Ettore walks the same loose circuit of Gioia again and again. Into cobblers’ shops and scrapyards and blacksmiths and bars. He’s angry, and disappointed – he wanted to be the one to find Federico, and he’d wanted it to be that day. No waiting, no delay; the man should not be allowed to enjoy another day of freedom. The stolen pistol is cool and heavy, tucked into the back of his trousers, concealed beneath his waistcoat. Ettore fantasises about drawing it out and putting the barrel to Federico’s head. Come with me, he would say. With all of Benedetto’s stony depth, and Gianni’s emotionless delivery. Come with me. And Federico would go with him, and what was coming would come. And after that, he’s not quite sure what he’ll do with all his thoughts.

As night falls he buys some cheap, end-of-day bread and takes it to Pino and Luna. Luna slices it, rubs it with a finger dipped in olive oil and then the open side of a cut chilli pepper. They eat it with mashed fava beans and dark green chicory, and only water to drink, and Ettore tells them about Federico. Luna stops chewing, and can’t seem to swallow. They have stools to sit on, but no table. They eat from cracked bowls in their laps, with their feet tucked beneath them like schoolchildren; tall Pino hunched and folded with the ease of long habit. He has worked all day and has the smell of hard labour on him, and he eats ravenously, regardless of what is said. But when his bowl is empty he clears his throat.

‘When you find him, I’ll go with you,’ he says. Ettore shakes his head, puzzled. Pino always avoids violence.

‘No. Why get involved? It’s not your fight – keep your hands clean.’

‘I saw him, Ettore,’ says Pino, and his face shows his revulsion. ‘I saw what he was doing to Chiara. What he would have done, if I hadn’t put my boot in his guts. A man like that is like a mad dog – the duty falls on all of us to put him down. Or do what? Wait for him to attack my Luna next?’ He casts a glance at his young wife, whose eyes have gone wide in alarm at her husband’s words. ‘Besides,’ says Pino, taking Luna’s hand. ‘We loved Livia too.’

‘We did, poor Livia,’ says Luna. She looks at Ettore. ‘You must keep our Pino safe. You must.’

‘Manzo will be by himself. Helpless, like the women he preys on. We will be four strong when we take him,’ he says.

‘Yes. But still,’ says Luna.

Ettore watches the house on Via Garibaldi all through the night; tucked out of sight in a doorway. He sees a gang of blackshirts about their work, armed with pistols and cudgels, but Federico is not with them. The night is long, and mild, and with his eyes fixed on the street door Ettore’s mind wanders, skirting the weird and hazy world between sleep and waking. His thoughts turn into dreams and then jolt back into reality, over and over. He has Chiara in his arms; he is in the trenches at Isonzo; he is listening to Livia and the sweet, slight lisp when she spoke; he is a boy, hunting fossils in the dry stone walls; he is falling into the darkness of the hell mouth at Castellana. He’s made of stone, but at the same time he’s as weightless as the air. He’s smoke and smuts, blowing in the breeze, and Chiara is a dream he once had – a dream of longing, of another life completely.

At daybreak on Friday morning Ettore walks back into the old streets of Gioia and hands the pistol to Gianni, who takes it without a word. Then he goes to the church of Sant’Andrea, lies down on a pew and wraps his arms across his face to block out the light. He sleeps for hours, and when he wakes is on his feet at once, restless and hungry. It’s dark when Benedetto comes to find him; evening but not yet night. Ettore is in the bar opposite the castle, watching men argue and lose money at zecchinetta, when Livia’s oldest brother puts his head through the door, catches his eye and nods. Ettore’s pulse triples; he has to force himself to walk, not run.

‘Ready?’ says Benedetto. ‘We got lucky – Manzo was walking back towards town, all alone. Gianni was coming back from Vallarta with some others and saw him. He sent a friend back to tell me. He was walking out in the middle of nowhere, all alone! I think God must want him dead, too.’

‘He must do. Why walk, and not drive?’

‘Who knows – who cares? You want to get a knife? A club?’

‘Gianni has the gun? Then no,’ he says, when Benedetto nods. ‘But I must…’ Ettore pauses, about to say he must fetch Pino. In truth he doesn’t want his friend anywhere near this – it will be brutal, bloody. It will be everything Pino is not, and with anything like this there’s risk. There’s danger for all of them, of being discovered, of there being reprisals. But ignoring Pino’s request would be an insult to him, and the danger is small if they are smart about it. ‘I must go and bring Pino. He was fond of Livia. He wants to help.’

‘Come on then, and be quick,’ says Benedetto. Spoken sotto voce, his words sound like the grinding of rocks. ‘I’ll go with you.’

They walk out in darkness, along the south road, and turn off about three kilometres short of Leandro’s farm to go across country. Climbing over walls, trudging across stubble fields, stumbling over rocks. They don’t speak. Benedetto carries a club over his shoulder, as casually as a work tool; Pino and Ettore have empty hands, and none of them speak. Then out of the darkness looms the huge, pale shape of a straw rick, three metres high, waiting to be taken to a barn. With a slight misgiving, Ettore realises that they’re on dell’Arco land. Paola will be furious. But at the foot of the rick is Gianni’s dark, triumphant form, and in the light from his lantern, face down on the ground at his feet, is Federico. Hog-tied, hands to ankles behind his back, a filthy old rag stuffed into his mouth and a cut above one eyebrow oozing blood. Ettore feels Pino hesitate – a hung moment between steps, a quiet intake of breath. He turns to his friend.

‘If you want to go, it’s no shame,’ he says. ‘You should. This is not your problem.’ Pino swallows, and shakes his head. Gianni and Benedetto watch him steadily. Then Gianni almost smiles. He gives Federico a poke with the toe of his boot.

‘Stick around. Haven’t you ever seen old women watching a riot from up on a balcony? Gossiping and chewing their gums? You can be like one of them,’ he says, and Benedetto grins.

‘I’ll stay. For Livia,’ says Pino. Ettore clasps his shoulder briefly. Then all eyes turn to the figure on the ground.

Federico’s eyes are mad with anger; he’s breathing hard, kicking up the dust under his nose. When he sees Ettore he tries to say something, tries to spit out the rag.

‘I think he has something to say to you, Ettore,’ says Gianni, crouching over Federico like a hunter over a kill.

‘Let’s hear it,’ says Ettore. Gianni shrugs, reaches around and pulls the rag from Federico’s mouth. Benedetto lifts the club down off his shoulder and rests it in the palm of his hand. His eyes never leave his sister’s killer.

‘You!’ says Federico. He tries to spit but has no saliva. ‘So this is because I felt up your English whore? Are you in love with her?’ he asks scathingly.

‘I made a promise, nearly every day for the past seven months,’ says Ettore. ‘Do you know what the promise was?’ He feels calm now; the unnatural calm on the far side of crisis. Federico struggles against his ties, breathing through clenched teeth, saying nothing. ‘I promised my fiancée I would find out who attacked her, and left her to die, and that that man would burn.’ As he says this Ettore realises why Gianni has brought them to this straw rick – he realises that Livia’s brother has the same idea. He crouches down, speaks close to Federico’s ear. ‘You’re a dead man, Federico Manzo. How does it feel?’

‘You’re all dead. You’re all dead!’ Federico shouts, nearly incoherent with anger.

‘How many have you raped? How many killed?’ says Benedetto. Federico grins hysterically.

‘Hundreds! Fucking hundreds! I’ve had more pussy than any one of you limp-dicks will ever have. You’d better kill me, cafoni! You’d better kill me or you’ll all die, and your families with you!’

‘Don’t worry,’ Benedetto chuckles. ‘We’re going to.’

‘So I had your sweetheart, did I?’ Federico leers at Ettore. ‘Fucked her to death, did I? I wish I’d known she was yours. I’d have taken more time on her.’

‘Son of a whore!’ Pino exclaims. ‘Can’t you hear yourself? What kind of animal are you?’

‘I’m not afraid of you! Any of you – you see that? I’m not afraid of you!’ But Federico’s eyes say different; his face says different, all twisted up, writhing. Ettore nods.

‘Her name was Livia Orfino. I loved her. We all did – these are her brothers, Gianni and Benedetto Orfino.’ He points to them in turn. ‘You’ve had this coming a long time, and if you’d been even a little bit sorry I’d have knocked you out cold before this next part. But you’re not sorry. You’re proud. And you tried to do the same thing to Chiara. So.’ He shrugs.

Before Federico can say anything else Ettore stuffs the rag back into his mouth, muffling his stream of curses and threats. Benedetto hoists him up roughly, onto his shoulder; Gianni and Ettore climb up onto the rick and haul Federico up behind them. Then they jump down and step back. Ettore catches sight of Pino’s face, bloodless as bone, his mouth slightly open in horror. Benedetto strikes a match and walks right around the rick, setting it alight every few paces. Then he rejoins the others, as smoke starts to rise. They stand shoulder to shoulder, the three of them, with Pino edging back behind them, breathing hard. The darkness gets a flicker to it; a breeze teases the flames, puffs at the smoke. The quiet rushing sound of it gets louder and louder by steady increments. Ettore watches, and feels nothing. This is cause and effect. This is the logical end of this man’s life. He feels no pleasure, no satisfaction. It’s a thing that must be done, and he’s relieved to have fulfilled his promise at last. Cause and effect. The night vanishes into a storm of yellow and orange; the minutes tick by. At some point Federico gets the rag out of his mouth, and for a while they can hear him screaming at the heart of the buffeting roar of the fire. Ettore watches, and thinks nothing, and is only half aware of Pino lurching away to one side to throw up.

Once the screams stop Benedetto cuffs Ettore’s shoulder to rouse him. He nods his head at the darkness.

‘Time to go. They’ll be able to see this right back in Gioia,’ he says. Ettore blinks – his eyes feel gritted up, stinging from the smoke; he’s sweating from the heat of it. He nods and turns to follow. He’s the last – Gianni’s marching off, Pino’s already fifty metres away, at the edge of the fire’s glow, about to vanish into darkness. Then there’s a sudden strange noise up ahead, and a yell, and a man on a horse comes galloping out of the darkness with an overarm swing of a cudgel that smacks into Pino’s head. Pino drops full length, felled like a tree. Ettore hears Benedetto shouting, a massive roar like the bear he is; he sees the big man swinging his own cudgel and bringing down another man from his horse. The horse’s eyes are white and rolling, it shies away from the fire and bolts. On instinct Ettore drops to the ground as the man who knocked Pino down rides past him, and the club swings over his head with a whistle. He’s up and running before the man can turn his horse.

‘Pino! Get up!’ he shouts. But Pino stays down. There’s the deafening crack of a shotgun nearby. Ettore feels something snag his shirtsleeve; there’s a sting like ant bites on his arm, and to his right the ground erupts into dust and fragments. He changes course, zig-zagging as another shot is fired, and misses him. He sprints as fast as he can, with stones rolling under his boots. His weak leg wobbles, threatens to give way; it feels like his heart will explode. There are shouts behind him; he thinks he can still hear Benedetto roaring, or perhaps it’s Federico howling. But he’s reached Pino, so none of it matters.

The cudgel blow has staved in the side of his head, above his ear. The hideous dent is a hand span long, five centimetres deep in its centre; dark with a matted mess of blood and crushed skin. Pino’s eyes are half open, sightless. His face is as perfect as it ever was; there’s dust in his hair, and the top two buttons of his shirt are missing. It seems entirely impossible that he has this wound, and that he is gone. Ettore collapses to his knees beside his friend. He puts his fist on Pino’s chest, at the open neck of his shirt. For a while he can’t make his hand uncurl – can’t make the hand do what he tells it. The air in his lungs doesn’t work; he’s gasping and it feels like he’s drowning. When at last he manages unclench his fist and press his fingers to Pino’s throat he knows he won’t feel a pulse, not with that gruesome head wound. But still he hopes, like a child.

‘Ettore! Move!’ shouts Gianni, running by. ‘More are coming! Move!’

‘No,’ says Ettore. His voice is thick and slow; he sounds idiotic. ‘No. I’m staying with Pino.’

‘Benedetto!’ Gianni shouts over his shoulder, as he runs on, out of the light into the sheltering dark. The firelight is flickering in Pino’s eyes and making him look alive. Ettore puts out a hand to close his lids but it’s shaking so badly he doesn’t manage it on the first try.

‘Pino… Not you. Not you,’ he says. Then huge hands haul him to his feet and drag him along, stumbling.

‘Leave him, boy. If we try to carry him back we’ll be caught. Move! Take your own weight and run!’

‘Wait,’ says Ettore, still struggling to breathe, struggling to speak. ‘I think… I think Pino’s dead.’

‘Yes, he’s dead,’ says Benedetto, his rough voice unsuited to being gentle. ‘And it won’t help if you die too.’ So Ettore runs, and the last vestiges of the child inside him, the last part of him that knew how to laugh, stays behind in the dust, with Pino.

When he tells Paola she says nothing. Her eyes blaze and her lips press hard together, and for a while she stands as still as a statue. Then, quick as a snake, she grabs the pignata full of soup from the stove and hurls it across the room with a screech that sounds like it’s tearing her throat. Then she wets a rag and scrubs frantically at the soot on Ettore’s face and hands. Traces that could give him away. When he tells Luna she drops slowly to the floor, buckling downwards, falling in slow motion. She curls herself up, knees to her chin, and then she doesn’t move or speak. Ettore knows exactly how she feels. He stays with her the rest of the night, and because her eyes are as sightless as Pino’s he doesn’t have to hide his tears from her.

‘We should have left as soon as the fire was lit. But we wanted to be sure Federico didn’t escape – roll clear or something. But he didn’t. We could have gone straight away. Or just shot him. No need for a fire that the corporals would see. But we wanted him to pay, you see; wanted him to burn, like Livia burnt with the fever he gave her. Pino shouldn’t have come with us at all; I should have told him he had no place there. Livia didn’t belong to him, like she did to me, like she did to her brothers. He owed her nothing. I shouldn’t have fetched him when we found Federico – I could have lied. I could have said I didn’t have time to come and fetch him. It’s my fault. All of it,’ he says, but Luna shows no sign of having heard him. She stays huddled down where she is, threshed out like the wheat, the living heart of her gone.

There’s no work on Saturday. Ettore can’t stay still so he walks around Gioia del Colle, openly, without caution or his hat tipped low to hide his eyes. He watches the world with flat disregard and waits to be stopped, waits to be arrested, since everybody knows he and Pino were friends. But he isn’t stopped. Nobody approaches him, nobody seems to have noticed that something utterly, abhorrently wrong has happened, and Pino is dead. He’s incredulous; furious. Pino’s body is brought to the police barracks, identified and returned to Luna, whose mother takes custody of it since her daughter is still mute and incapable. Ettore is on the street corner when the barrow comes out with Pino’s body on it, and a lad wheels it to the mortuary to be laid out. A growing number of people come to walk alongside it, to accompany him. Pino was well liked, well loved. Ettore doesn’t walk with them, though the wrongness of that makes him queasy. He doesn’t feel he has the right. The procession goes past him, and the trolley with its creaking wheels. Some of the followers turn to look at him, puzzled, frowning. He welcomes their disapprobation.

Ettore has the sense of being hundreds of years old; the feeling gets stronger and stronger. He is not Ettore Tarano but merely one of a million cafoni who have lived and died in Puglia for centuries. He’s one of a silent multitude who have broken themselves against the rocks and hard ground, who have starved and toiled and ground a life out of dust, and afterwards have given back their bones for the privilege. Short lives, anonymous lives; lives lived hand to mouth, with their fleeting moments of joy like tiny sparks that flare and are then snuffed out. He’s ancient man, he goes back thousands of years; he has worked with stone tools, then bronze, then iron; his eyes, the colour of the Adriatic, have looked out from his dark face and seen ages creep past, never changing. He is the blood and soul of this land, he is its constant march, and he’s tired. So tired.

Paola watches him closely, but when she speaks he can’t find the energy to reply. He must walk – when he stands still all those millennia pile up around him, crushing him. And yet he doesn’t see how anybody can be expected to carry on when they’re as tired as he is.

‘Ettore…’ says Paola, shaking his arm as the light begins to fade on Sunday. He stares at her from far away, then blinks and looks around. He’s in Piazza XX Settembre, frozen in the middle of its triangular space, with no recollection of arriving there. ‘I need to know you’ll be all right tonight. I need to know you’ll come back for it,’ she says. Her face is careworn; grey hairs have started to thread through the black. For a second Ettore sees their mother.

‘Come back?’ he says.

‘From wherever the hell you’ve gone!’ She smacks the side of his head with the flat of her hand. She sounds frightened.

‘I’ve gone nowhere. I’ll never go anywhere – neither will you.’

‘In a few hours we go to dell’Arco – are you listening? We will go as planned and we will attack it, and kill Ludo Manzo, and take what we need. What we deserve. Will you be with us? Your mozzarella might panic if she doesn’t see you… she might cause trouble – sound the alarm, who the hell knows. So?’

‘Chiara?’ he says, and the thought of her causes a faint sting, quick as a fitful sigh. Paola shuts her eyes. She takes hold of his sleeve, leans her forehead against his shoulder for a second.

‘Please, Ettore. Please don’t do this. We need you. Di Vittorio has resigned. He’s left Cerignola, and fled north. All the socialists are fleeing north. Everything’s falling apart… I need you.’

Somehow the warm press of her head reaches him, touching some place that’s still tender and living. He reaches up, holds the back of her neck for a moment.

‘Don’t be frightened, Paola,’ he says. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go with you.’ With a sudden shimmer of unreality, a sudden slipping of time, he remembers saying the exact same thing to her on her first day of school. His sister looks up at him, relieved.

‘All right,’ she says, nodding. ‘All right. Good.’ She steps away and smooths out his torn shirt sleeve, bunched up where she grabbed it. There are three ragged tears in it where lead shot winged him on Friday night; three corresponding scorch lines on the skin underneath. ‘Don’t wander off again. Don’t vanish. Go to Sant’Andrea; I’ll fetch you in a few hours, when it’s time.’ Ettore nods, but when he doesn’t move she sighs and takes his arm again. He lets her march him; he has no will of his own. He is callused hands and an aching back; he is wounds and bruises; he comes from nothing, and nowhere. He is deep beneath the ground, falling.

In the soft darkness of early night Ettore walks at his sister’s side, his breath stifling beneath the scarf tied across his face. Faceless, nameless; one of a number. He moves with them and lets them inform him, this gang of thirty-three souls. There are guns amongst them, tucked into belts and pockets; knives, cudgels. Ettore will be the first in; he has a pistol because he might need to use it on the door guard. He is distant and wholly calm until they are at the top of a slight rise in the land, looking across at Masseria dell’Arco with its lights blazing out, shining from the high white walls. It’s beautiful and serene, but a fortress nonetheless. Looking down at it, Ettore feels his heart beat harder. He takes a deep breath in, and with a tingling at the back of his neck he feels himself wake up. It’s just like in the war, just like at the Isonzo front; drunk and freezing, thought obliterated by fear and the bursting of shells, and yet when the whistle blew, when the firing started, his mind went crystal clear, and he focused, to the exclusion of all else, on doing what needed to be done – on staying alive.

His throat has gone dry but he’s steady. They have circled and approached from the south, to be downwind of the dogs. There’s some fine timing to be managed. The gate guard will be silenced just before Ettore goes over the aia wall at the corner of the quad, and sprints to the doors at exactly eleven, when Chiara will have them opened from inside. Then he will remove the door guard and the others will cross the aia as fast as they can, and be inside before the roof guards have got themselves together to fire down at them. The raiders stand, bunched together, silent. Waiting. One man has a pocket watch in his hand; he squints down at it intently.

‘I hope you remembered to wind that thing,’ Ettore says softly. There’s a low collective chuckle, and beside him he feels Paola relax minutely. At five to eleven the man with the watch nods to another, who sets off with a knife in his hand, low to the ground and fast, towards the gates. They wait, listening hard. There’s a tiny noise, like a foot dragged through dust. The nearest dog barks furiously for a moment, then growls and goes quiet. They have no way of knowing if their man has been successful; they can only trust. At one minute to eleven, Ettore gets the nod.

He runs on silent feet down to the wall. It’s near two metres high but made of huge chunks of rough tufo, easy to climb. He’s over in seconds, drops as softly as he can and freezes. The nearest dog growls, gargling the sound deep in its throat. Ettore hardly breathes. The dog comes as close as it can to where he is, sunk in the deep shadow of the wall. It strains on its chain but doesn’t bark, and he wonders if it’s familiar with his scent, if it recognises him at all. He can’t trust in that. When he moves, it will have to be like lightning – as soon as he does he’ll be within the dog’s reach. He waits, the muscles in his legs burning, wanting to straighten up. But he’s waiting for a specific sound. The seconds tick by and his heart thumps twice as fast, and he thinks eleven o’clock must have come and gone, and Chiara has not done as she said she would. As clear as day, he sees the end of them all in gunshots fired from the darkness above, in the jaws of these dogs, in swinging clubs, buckling skulls. Then he hears it. The soft, high sound of her voice coming quietly from inside, and the jangling of the door keys. He has a split second to be grateful and then he’s up, running with every shred of effort he can find.

The dog snarls and launches itself at him. He smells the greasy stink of it, its meaty breath as its jaws snap centimetres from his face. But he’s past it and the small door is opening, swinging inwards, a hand’s breadth, then two. He’s through it without hesitation, and has the guard back against the side of the arch, the pistol pressed up under his chin. It’s Carlo, his pleasant face sagging in shock.

‘Open the big doors,’ he whispers. He sees Carlo recognise him, feels him relax a fraction. He drags him forward then thumps him back again, harder, gouging the gun into his soft gullet. ‘Do it! Now!’

‘Wait, Ettore! Something’s wrong!’ Chiara has her hands on him, trying to pull him back towards the door. ‘Go – run! Please!’ she says.

‘Chiara, go inside! Lock the door – do as I told you!’ Ettore hisses at her. He turns his head to her for a second, sees her fearful face and the pale golden glow of her, fresh and lovely as rain. He can’t let himself be distracted.

‘No, you must listen to me! Your uncle’s here and he’s been filling the place with guards since this morning. Armed men – I don’t know who they are! I don’t know what’s happening, but you have to run!’ Her fingers are digging into his arm; her fear is infectious, and her words have turned him cold. But it’s too late, because the aia dogs have gone wild, shattering the night with their furious voices. Cursing, Ettore knocks Carlo down with the butt of the pistol, snatches up the keys and fumbles to let Paola and the others in.

‘Go now, Chiara!’ he shouts, but still she hesitates, and then there’s the deafening crack of rifle fire, and everything turns to chaos.

Chapter Fifteen – Clare

On Sunday morning Clare comes down for breakfast on the terrace but finds it deserted; the table laid ready. Every other time, when he’s been at the masseria, Leandro has already been sitting there, peeling a fig or sipping black coffee. Since the fire on Friday night he has been morose, sunk in thought. Clare listened out for him after the party, late into the night. When she heard him return she went down, barefoot, leaving Boyd awake and bewildered in bed. Leandro was dirty, and stank of smoke; he detached her grasping hands to tell her that Ettore wasn’t hurt. Two men were dead – a peasant she wouldn’t know, who was one of the arsonists, and Federico Manzo – so badly burnt they’d only known him by the cleft in his upper jaw. How and why Federico came to be in the fire hasn’t been established, but Clare felt nothing when she heard of his death. No satisfaction, no remorse. She only had room for her relief that Ettore was not a part of it, or if he was, that he hadn’t been caught or hurt. When she got back to bed a faint smell of smoke had transferred to her from Leandro’s hands, and Boyd’s eyes were wide open, watching her. It was too dark for her to see what expression was in them, and she said nothing.

There’s something ineffably sad about the empty breakfast table, so Clare goes up to the roof to look out. It’s early and the air is still cool. Behind the muck and milk smell of the dairy is a freshness the sun hasn’t yet burnt off. The sky is the colour of forget-me-nots; it makes her think of England, but her homesickness is faint, distant. She can’t imagine going back to the quiet routine of mealtimes and letter writing and grocery shopping and tea that was her life before. She might not belong in Puglia but she no longer belongs there, either, and she has no idea where that leaves her. There’s movement to the north of the complex and Clare turns to watch. His son is dead, but Ludo Manzo is still at work. Clare sees him emerge from his trullo and run his hands through his hair before clamping his hat over it. A man she’s never seen before is holding the head of a leggy brown horse, and Ludo sets about appraising the animal, running his hands over joints and muscles, peering at its teeth. The overseer’s eyes have black rings around them, and his expression is grimmer than ever, but he moves with his same easy precision, speaks with his same clipped efficiency, and shows no outward signs of grief. Clare watches them for a while, then watches the way the sun, as it climbs, obliterates the subtle shades from the landscape – the mauve smudges under the olive trees; the pastel lemon and orange of the ripe prickly pears; the milk-coffee-coloured ground. The baleful sun bleaches them all away. What softness there is here is fleeting, and fragile.

Hearing the scrape of a chair, somebody coming out to the breakfast table below, Clare goes down. It’s Leandro, wearing one of his linen suits but no tie. His shirt and jacket are rumpled, and he hasn’t shaved. Uneasily, Clare sits down opposite him. He looks up and smiles faintly, but there’s something lacking from it.

‘No husband or wives yet this morning, it seems. Nor stepsons,’ he says.

‘I don’t think Boyd’s sleeping very well at the moment. I didn’t like to wake him.’

‘And Pip slumbers on, like all boys prefer to. I remember having to rise early at his age. I remember making a silent pact with the devil that he could have my soul if only he’d let me stay in bed.’ He isn’t smiling. ‘But I always had to get up.’

‘At least you got to keep your soul, then,’ says Clare.

‘Only to lose it at a later date, as it turned out.’ He takes a sip of his coffee, then pours a cup for Clare and pushes it towards her. Tiny fronds of steam dance on its surface, and vanish.

‘Surely not,’ Clare demurs cautiously.

‘No, you’re right. Just an old man, feeling sorry for himself.’

‘Mr Cardetta, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less sorry for themselves than you are.’ At this he does smile a little, but then he looks away and it slides off his face. For a while they sit in silence, listening to the sparrows bickering around the water trough in the courtyard. ‘I’ve… I’ve been wanting to ask you, Mr Cardetta, what it was you had been about to tell me, that afternoon in Gioia after Federico… after I’d come to find my husband. You’d been about to tell me why you’d brought us out here – Pip and me.’

‘Had I?’ He watches her steadily.

‘You said I was in danger.’ She feels her stomach clench at the memory of his words, and of that time; the memory of Federico’s kiss.

Leandro grunts, and looks down at his coffee.

‘Perhaps we are all in danger,’ he says.

‘Please,’ says Clare, in desperation. ‘Please. I need to know what you meant.’

‘You need to know? Perhaps,’ he says, looking up at her again. There’s something new in his expression, and it gives her a shiver of warning. ‘Perhaps we all have bigger and more pressing things to worry about this day. Wouldn’t you say?’ Clare doesn’t dare answer him. He sips his coffee and looks out across the courtyard. ‘It seems so peaceful here, doesn’t it? So much goes on beneath the surface. Do you know what the fascists call the peasants, and their uprising? The Bolshevik Menace. What do you say to that?’

‘What ought I to say?’ says Clare.

‘Does it seem apt, to you? You’ve got to know my nephew, and you’ve been here many weeks. Do the peasants fight for socialist ideals? Do they fight to overthrow the senate, and install a communist state?’

‘It seems to me that they fight for the right to earn enough money to feed themselves, and their families.’

‘Exactly!’ Leandro thumps the table with the flat of his hand. ‘And who could condemn them for it?’

‘Only… those blinkered by prejudice and… greed.’

‘Exactly, Chiarina. Exactly. What then should the landowners and proprietors do? What should they do when their farms are attacked, their crops burnt, their animals killed and carried off? What should they do when money they haven’t agreed to pay is demanded with menaces?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Cardetta.’ He glares at her with a slow, deep anger in his eyes; jabs one index finger at her for a second and then lowers it.

‘I make a loss, you know. It costs me money to run this place – such is the way of things when a country almost bleeds itself dry on the battlefield; and when it never bloody well rains. I wanted to show that the land could be improved, and relations between farmers and workers needn’t be bad. I’ve paid higher wages than any other man near Gioia. I’ve been fair to the giornatari; they’ve been well fed and watered in my fields…’

‘You’ve employed Ludo Manzo, who beats and mocks them.’

‘Ah. Ludo Manzo. Is he the reason I’m attacked by arsonists, then?’ Leandro’s voice has gone dangerously quiet. Clare swallows. ‘Is he the reason I’m lumped in with all the other masserie?’

‘I don’t know. How can I know? But… perhaps it’s only the case that…’ Clare hesitates. ‘Perhaps it’s only the case that you can’t be on both sides at once.’

‘Ha! It’s strange to hear my nephew’s words coming out of your mouth, Chiara,’ he says.

‘They’re my words, Leandro. You said to me, weeks ago, that down here politics is something that happens to you, not something you can choose to ignore. And you were quite right. These are desperate men, and desperate times, so it seems to me. I don’t see that anybody can remain on the fence. Not even you.’

For a long time after Clare says this Leandro watches her; he’s inscrutable, she can’t tell how he feels or what he thinks, yet she senses hostility, a new chill. Eventually he says:

‘No, you’re right. It’s time I came down off the fence.’ And the hairs stand up along her forearms. It sounds like a warning. Then the aia dogs start barking, their clamour ringing in the still air and echoing from the walls. Four men on horses have arrived at the front gate. There they pause, the horses tossing their heads and stretching out their necks, while one man talks to the gate guard. Then they carry on around to the rear of the complex. Clare and Leandro watch them until they are out of sight below the walls, and Clare feels anxious knots forming in her gut. The men all have rifles across their backs, or holstered behind their saddles. Leandro says nothing; he turns back to his coffee and reaches for his cutlery as Anna brings out a fresh omelette and puts it in front of him. And even though Clare knows she shouldn’t ask she can’t help herself.

‘Who are those men?’

Leandro chews carefully, and swallows, his eyes on his plate.

‘An insurance policy,’ he says, not looking up.

‘Signora?’ says Anna, gesturing to the omelette. Her eyelids are puffy and red, as they have been since Federico died. Clare shakes her head, and the girl goes. She doesn’t even want her coffee. She doesn’t dare ask Leandro what he means, but sweat starts tickling along her hairline, and when she thinks of the coming evening – what she will do, and what will come afterwards – she has a cold, creeping feeling of dread.

All day as they sit, or drink, or read, Clare is gnawed by anxious thoughts. This is what they’ve done every Sunday of the summer, and yet it now seems as though they’re faking it, deliberately killing time, stiff in their roles; as if they all know something’s coming, somehow, though only Pip does. Clare sees more mounted men arriving, and then six others in a mule cart, who clamber out and stand beneath the masseria walls, stretching out their shoulders and backs, some of them joshing each other, some grim-faced and quiet. She paces the roof, watching, powerless. The door creaks and thumps as several of them come into the complex, vanishing into the servants’ rooms and storerooms in the front wing of the quad. After lunch, Clare decides she must warn Ettore. Whatever the purpose of these men is, he thinks the masseria will have its normal handful of guards, and that Leandro is in Gioia. Her prescience of violence is like seeing black clouds gathering upwind, and knowing there’ll be no sheltering from the storm when it breaks. But when she tries to leave, planning to walk into Gioia and warn him, the guard on the front door refuses to let her out.

‘The master… rules nobody to go,’ he says, in tortured Italian. ‘Much trouble. To be safer, inside.’

Breathing too fast, and with her cheeks scorching, Clare can only retreat. Her heart sinks. If she gets the same response that night, at eleven, what then? The only possible hope is that Carlo is on the door, and can be persuaded. She feels close to tears; close to breaking. From the terrace she sees Leandro watching her, and she dithers for a while before setting out across the courtyard. His level gaze is like a searchlight, and Clare does everything she can to clear her face of expression. She goes to sit with Pip in the long sitting room as he finishes the last pages of Bleak House, running one of Peggy’s silky ears between his finger and thumb, again and again. He frowns at the text, and after a while Clare realises that his eyes are completely stationary, and he hasn’t turned the page. Time is rushing on too quickly; she wants the sun to stay up for ever, and the night to never fall.

And then, of course, with Leandro and Boyd in residence dinner is later, the whole evening longer. Without them, Pip, Marcie and Clare would likely have retired by eleven, for want of something else to do. Sick to her stomach, Clare barely touches the food. Full dark falls and it is nine o’clock, then ten, and they are all still at the table on the terrace surrounded by sticky little glasses and various bottles of liqueur, with smoke from Leandro’s pipe clinging to their skin and hair. There are tremors in Clare’s bones – like after Francesco Molino was beaten, like after Federico attacked her – juddering up through muscle and blood, her own personal earthquake, and she can do nothing to stop it. It’s half past ten when they finally quit the table and go down to the sitting room, and Clare walks close to Pip.

‘Go to your room now,’ she whispers to him, and he stiffens.

‘Do you really think they’re coming?’ he says.

‘I… I don’t know. I hope not.’ She has the wild thought that they’ll somehow have heard about the extra men arriving, or at least that Leandro is here. That they’ll call it off. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeats. ‘But just in case. Will you go, please? And lock the door. I’ll come up and join you soon.’

‘All right.’ He gives her a look then; a strange, appraising look, quite alien to him. Startled, Clare says nothing else.

She almost gasps in relief when Marcie excuses herself minutes later, yawning conspicuously.

‘I’m done in. I think I’ll hit the hay,’ she says, taking Leandro’s hand and smiling as he kisses her knuckles. ‘And I’m sure you boys can’t wait to be shot of us so you can discuss business and broads. Will you be up for hours?’

‘It’s not true! And no, honey, not hours,’ says Leandro. Clare carefully doesn’t look at him. She stoops, gives Boyd a brief peck on the cheek.

‘I’ll go too,’ she says, flushing when nerves turn the words shrill. She wants to take a deep breath, wants to steady herself, but she can’t seem to exhale properly. Boyd reaches up and cups her neck gently for a moment, and she’s sure he must be able to feel her pulse thudding.

‘Good night, darling. I’ll be right behind you.’

‘Walk me up, Clare?’ says Marcie, proffering her arm. ‘What’s bothering you?’ she says softly, as they climb the stairs. ‘Come on now, I can see there’s something.’

‘I…’ Clare’s mind goes blank. ‘I think perhaps… perhaps I may be in the family way, after all,’ she says desperately. There’s a startled pause and then Marcie laughs. It echoes up and down the stairwell, and has a sardonic edge that jars Clare with instant suspicion. ‘Is that funny?’

‘Oh, no! I mean – well, I’d thought it was something awful!’ Marcie gasps, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Why should that make you look as though you’ve the weight of the world on your shoulders?’

‘Well, I… I’m not sure how Boyd will take the news.’

‘Oh, I bet you’re not!’ says Marcie. Clare stops climbing. Beneath her hand Marcie’s arm is smooth and slender, but strong.

‘What do you mean by that, Marcie?’ she says. Marcie’s smile lasts a second longer, and then it vanishes. Her eyes are unreadable.

‘Mean by it? Why, I don’t mean anything by it at all. The pair of you haven’t had one of your own yet, so I guessed there must be some problem. But we reap what we sow, Clare. Perhaps this baby is your just deserts.’ For a long moment the two women stand eye to eye, and neither one speaks. Clare feels the malice of the words, is sure of it; then Marcie smiles. ‘For years of waiting patiently, I mean. You do want the kid, don’t you?’

‘With all my heart,’ Clare whispers.

‘Well then.’ Marcie carries on up the stairs, alone. ‘Congratulations. I’m sure Boyd will be delighted.’

At five to eleven Clare crosses the dark courtyard with her fists clenched at her sides and the tremors making her teeth chatter. The guard gets to his feet as she approaches, and when she sees it’s Carlo she has to fight the urge to throw her arms around him. She sways as she stands there, and her voice wobbles when she speaks.

‘Will you let me out? I’d like to go for a walk.’ She tries to smile but her face feels frozen. Carlo makes a regretful face, spreads his hands and shrugs.

‘Sorry, Signora Kingsley. I am not allowed.’

‘You can call me Chiara,’ she says. Her mouth is dry; she can feel her pulse in her temples. Outside, one of the dogs growls and goes quiet. ‘Please. I know we’re not supposed to. I know Mr Cardetta is… worried, after the fire. But I must go out, just for a short while.’

‘I don’t think…’ Carlo shakes his head, but she can sense his indecision.

‘Please. I’ll only be ten minutes, I promise. Aren’t we friends? And I’ll never tell anyone. Please,’ she says. She puts one hand on his arm and manages to smile. Carlo grins at her; he loves that she comes to him, that he has been able to grant favours; he loves the idea of her love affair. He’s really just a boy, full of mischief. Clare sends up a silent prayer for his safety.

‘Ten minutes. And we never tell,’ he says, picking up the keys and unlocking the small door, smiling at her all the while.

For a split second, Clare thinks nothing will happen. She stands there stupidly, looking at the open door, but then Ettore appears, moving fast, pushing Carlo back with a gun to his head. She can hardly believe he’s there; can hardly believe the danger he’s in.

‘Open the big doors. Do it! Now!’ Ettore says to the stunned guard.

‘Wait, Ettore! Something’s wrong!’ says Clare. She grabs him, trying to turn him, to make him listen. ‘Go – run! Please!’ she says. His eyes are avid, his forehead shines with sweat; he doesn’t seem to hear her properly.

‘Chiara, go inside! Lock the door – do as I told you!’ he says.

‘No, you must listen to me! Your uncle’s here and he’s been filling the place with guards since this morning. Armed men – I don’t know who they are! I don’t know what’s happening, but you have to run!’ She holds him as tightly as she can; wants to shake him, daren’t raise her voice when she needs to scream. For a second she thinks she sees comprehension dawning on his face; he pauses and she thinks he’ll do as she says, but then the dogs outside erupt, and his head snaps around, away from her. He hits Carlo with a backhanded blow and the young guard staggers back, slumping against the wall. Clare stares in horror as blood trickles down the boy’s face.

‘Go now, Chiara!’ Ettore shouts. He snatches up the keys, fumbles them as he tries to unlock the big carriage doors. She has seconds; they have seconds. She wants to hold him and tell him that she loves him; she wants to tell him about their child. The doors swing open and Clare stands stunned at the sight of dark figures pouring across the aia, kicking at the dogs when they lunge for them. Then a deafening barrage of gunfire starts up from the roof; there’s a whiff of cordite, voices shouting, and Ettore turns to Clare, his face pinched with fear. ‘Run!’ he says. And she does.

She sprints across the courtyard and movement above catches her eye – the roof is crowded with men, hurrying into action, reloading. The flash of muzzle fire is blinding in the dark, the sound of it impossibly loud, filling her skull, reverberating in her chest. Idiotically, because it won’t save her, she wraps her arms across her head as she runs. Lights are still on in the long sitting room; she thinks she sees movement behind the drapes and dodges away – she can’t let Leandro see her. She races up the outside stair and then turns before going in through the door, her eyes searching for Ettore down below. The courtyard is a mass of running figures and the roof is swarming, and several figures have fallen, sprawled, across the stones. Clare stares, bewildered by fear. She can’t tell whether any of the fallen is Ettore. A bearded man appears in front of her; she vaguely recognises him as the masseria guard who refused to let her out earlier. He has his rifle in one hand and pauses before going down the steps, turning to her, shouting something she can’t understand and shoving her in through the door.

Following corridors and stairs familiar from her secret visits to Ettore, on quiet nights so different to this one, Clare hurries to Pip’s room. She expects to see his door shut; expects to knock and call out, and be let in. She expects to hug him, and soothe him, and wait it out. But as she turns the corner she stops. Pip’s door is ajar, the room inside dark.

‘Pip?’ she says, too loudly. She pushes through the door. The shutters are still open from the day. Peggy is asleep, rolled up on the bed; it’s stuffy and warm but there’s no sign of Pip. Clare stands there with the sound of her own breathing deafening her. She has no idea where he can be, no idea what can have gone wrong, why he hasn’t locked himself in as planned. Desperately, she checks her own room, though there’s no longer a key to lock it, in case he got confused. But that room is empty too. ‘Pip!’ she calls out pointlessly. Her voice tunnels along the empty corridor, all but lost beneath the battle sounds outside. A door bangs somewhere, and glass breaks; there are other people moving inside the masseria.

For a while Clare stays where she is, and hasn’t the slightest idea what to do. She racks her brains, trying to think where Pip would go. Then she thinks she knows. She races up another flight of stairs, tripping in haste and splitting her knee open on the stone. But the bat room is deserted and the door to Marcie and Leandro’s room, the highest in the whole building, is locked, and when Clare thumps her fists on it and shouts thought the keyhole, there’s no hint of movement within. She goes back down the stairs, woodenly, not knowing what else to do or where she should go. She can’t hide herself away in safety until Pip is doing the same, and not while Ettore is outside somewhere, maybe hurt, maybe dead. She thinks about going up to the roof, but knows it would be madness; she thinks about going back out into the courtyard, but the idea terrifies her. As Clare dithers, the noise outside begins to dwindle; the gunfire is getting less frequent, and silences form between each shot. She carries on down the stairs that she and Marcie climbed earlier, which lead to the long sitting room. And halfway down she stops, a startled exclamation dying on her lips.

Pip is there, at the bottom, hiding in the shadows outside the brightly lit doorway, peeping through. Clare stares. Marcie is behind him, one hand on his shoulder, also peering round, tentatively. Have you both gone mad? The question doesn’t make it as far as Clare’s lips. There are raised voices inside the room, and though she can’t understand a word she knows the voices at once – one is Leandro, the other is Ettore. Her ribs clench in painful relief. They’re arguing furiously in the dialect, and outside it has all gone quiet. The raid is over already, and Ettore is safe. Clare comes down another two steps, softly, understanding why Pip and Marcie don’t want to interrupt. Then she stops again, bewildered, because Pip has a gun in his hand – a pistol – and she can see that he’s shaking from head to toe; he’s so vibrant with tension it’s like a glow around him, like a rank, feral smell. Clare looks at him, and at the gun in his hand; she looks at Marcie’s long white fingers, holding his shoulder. They’re both staring into the sitting room and when Clare follows their gaze she see Ettore, unscathed, his face twitching in grief and rage as his uncle roars at him, flecks of spit flying from his lips. She watches, stunned, as Ettore’s arm whips around and he punches Leandro; slamming his fist up under his uncle’s chin with a meaty sound. She hears Pip gasp and can’t react, can’t move a muscle when he suddenly walks forward into the room, into the light, and in the shocked silence raises his hand, points the pistol at Ettore and fires.

The air is dragged out of Clare’s lungs. She can’t make a sound, can only stumble after Pip with her arms out wide for balance because the ground is no longer flat, no longer solid. She’s dimly aware that Leandro has sunk lopsidedly to one knee, with his head bowed like he’s praying and his hands clamped around his jaw. Boyd is off to one side, pale and mute. But all she can really see is Ettore on his back, his legs a jumble, a spatter of red droplets across his face and all around him. She collapses next to him and he looks up at her with that same mix of confusion and wonder as when they first met.

‘Ettore! It’s all right, you’ll be all right,’ she says, in a voice she doesn’t quite recognise. He reaches up and she grabs at his hand. ‘You’ll be all right.’ She peels back the lapel of his jacket. Pip’s aim was erratic, he was still raising the gun when he fired and the bullet has gone into Ettore’s right shoulder, just above his armpit. There’s blood spreading out beneath him, and blooming through his shirt, but Clare chokes up with relief. The wound is nowhere near his heart, or lungs; it ought not to kill him. She struggles out of her blouse, wads it up and presses it gently over the bloody entrance wound. ‘Lie still, my love,’ she says. ‘You’re going to be all right. We’ll get the doctor back… you’ll be fine.’

Her vision is blurred, her thoughts scattered. She glances up and sees the gun in Pip’s hand, still raised and trembling at the end of his arm, frozen at the point it went off. His face is bloodless, even his lips; his eyes have a look of such blank terror that she wonders if he even intended to fire.

‘Pip, what are you doing?’ she says raggedly. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Pip doesn’t even blink. Clare feels the heat of Ettore’s blood, soaking up through the thin fabric of her blouse and onto her hands. Behind Pip, Marcie comes into the room, her eyes huge in a drawn, stunned face. Clare looks to Leandro but he’s still on his knees, shaking his head, dazed. It’s Boyd who comes over to them, moving unhurriedly, like he’s on his way to fetch a book from the shelf. ‘Boyd – take the gun away from him. Take the gun away from him!’ says Clare. Boyd stares down at her for a second and then does as she says, prising the pistol from Pip’s clenched hand. Clare relaxes, turns back to Ettore and touches her fingers softly to his face. Boyd moves a step closer to them, and Clare knows she’s given herself away. But the baby in her womb had done that already – would have done it, sooner or later. She swallows, and looks up at her husband. His face has that melted look she’s seen before, slack with grief and fear. His mouth hangs open, his eyes are swimming. He looks just as he did in New York, drunk and drugged, right before he collapsed, and Clare goes cold. Boyd looks down at the gun in his hand; he’s holding it by the grip, his finger is curled around the trigger. Keeping his eyes on it he raises it slowly, turning its barrel upwards, towards his own chin.

‘Boyd,’ says Clare, as softly as she can. ‘Boyd, no. Don’t.’ He freezes for a moment, not even seeming to breathe; the pistol quivers in his hand, he sticks his chin out a little and the barrel touches his skin. He sucks in a breath, a ratcheting sob. ‘Boyd, no,’ says Clare.

‘No,’ he says, with a twitch of his head. He’s shaking all over and his eyes are fixed on her now, cutting into her. Then he straightens his arm, points the gun at Ettore and fires.

‘No!’

For a second Clare thinks she herself has shouted this out, but it can’t be her because her heart has stopped beating and her teeth are clenched, impossibly tight. It’s Marcie. ‘No, no, no!’ she screams. Her voice sounds weird and sluggish; the gunshot is ringing in Clare’s ears. She can’t move. She watches as Boyd repositions his feet for better balance, turns his torso and levels the gun at her face. She struggles to focus her eyes past the perfect black circle of the barrel. Boyd’s face, above it, is now so empty that he almost looks calm. But there’s a muscle ticking beneath the tears on one cheek, trapped in some mad dance of nervous trauma, and his eyes are furious. They stare at each other and while the moment lasts Clare has no sense of time passing. She looks up at this man and her death, and can’t recognise either one. Boyd jerks the trigger and the gun clicks, but doesn’t fire. He frowns at it, hesitates, then brings it in to check the cylinder. Then Leandro is on him, knocking him down, driving his fists into him, again and again. The gun clatters to the floor off to one side and Clare finds herself staring at nothing. Then she looks down at Ettore.

Boyd’s shot was clean. It has left a perfect dark circle above Ettore’s temple, an exact replica of the barrel Clare was just staring into, and his eyes are half-shut, and he’s too still, and even though she knows he’s gone she can’t let herself believe it. She picks up his right hand and puts it at the back of her neck, underneath her hair, as he liked to do. His hand is still warm; she imagines the fingers curling, imagines his grip, pulling her closer; imagines him taking a breath, still with her.

But these are imaginings, nothing more. She kneels there in silence, holding his limp hand; putting it to her face, her lips, the back of her neck again. The weight of his arm is surprising; the skin of his palm is hard and callused; he smells of earth and blood. She can’t believe he’s gone, and she doesn’t know or care what the others are doing – why Pip had a gun, why Marcie is next to her, sobbing brokenly over Ettore’s body; where Leandro has gone with her husband. She doesn’t care about any of it. She doesn’t care when Paola marches in, unarmed but ferocious, with a guard at her shoulder keeping a close eye on her; doesn’t care when the girl sees her brother lying there and her mouth drops open, and she emits such a terrifying howl of pain that it feels like a knife in Clare’s skull. Paola rushes over to them, grabs Marcie by her shoulders and tries to haul her away. Marcie fights her, snarling through her tears; they jostle Clare but she stays where she is. She holds Ettore’s hand, and lets go of everything else.

Sometime later Clare is lifted up and seated on one of the couches; a glass of brandy is held to her lips and tipped into her mouth when she shows no signs of drinking it.

‘Come on. All of it,’ says Leandro. Clare swallows and then gags, coughing. ‘Ah, Ettore! My poor boy. To survive the Great War and this fascist strife, only to be shot by a coward when he was down.’ He shakes his head; he’s leaden with sorrow. ‘I’m too old to expect justice in this world, but still. Some things are far too bad. Drink the brandy. We all need it.’ The pistol is tucked into his belt. He moves like an old man; his knuckles are bloody and his chin is bruised. Clare looks down at where Ettore lay but he’s not there any more, just the blackish stain of his blood. She can’t remember them taking him; far beneath her shock she senses grief and panic, scrabbling for the surface like a trapped animal.

‘Why are you crying like that? For him?’ says Pip. Clare looks at him but he’s sitting next to Marcie, and speaking to her. Marcie’s face is a ruin; her make-up is streaked and grotesque.

‘You weren’t supposed to shoot him. Nobody was supposed to shoot him!’ Marcie gasps, between sobs.

‘I was protecting you! Like I promised I would – like you asked me to! But why are you crying like that? It’s… it’s me you love! You said so!’ he says. Clare stares at him, horrified; Leandro grunts as he sits down.

‘You’ll find that not much that comes out of my wife’s mouth is altogether true, boy,’ he says.

‘We’re in love,’ says Pip defiantly. He takes Marcie’s hand. ‘She’s going to leave you! She doesn’t love you any more, she loves me. We’ve been together for weeks.’ But Marcie shakes her hand free.

‘Shut up, you little idiot!’ she snaps at him. Pip keeps trying to catch at her hand. His face is almost comic with hurt and confusion.

‘What?’ Clare manages to say, but too quietly for anyone to hear her. The brandy spreads out into her blood. She takes another sip and looks around the room. No sign of Paola or the guard, and Boyd is sitting in the corner with his knees drawn up, his arms wrapped around them and his face down, like a child. It’s so absurd Clare almost laughs.

The sound of Marcie crying is all they hear for a while. Pip stares at her, abject, bewildered; he keeps trying to take hold of her hands. Clare’s head is ringing.

‘Do you know how I knew, Clare?’ says Leandro. ‘Clare, are you listening to me? Do you know how I knew you were in danger, and why I brought you out here? It was to protect you, you see. Isn’t that rich?’ He swigs his brandy, nods at Boyd. ‘I brought you out here to protect you from him. I thought he meant to have you killed. He said to me – when he first got out here and I asked about you – he said “She’s an angel. A perfect angel”, and straight away I was frightened for you, because that’s what he said about his first wife Emma, you see. That’s exactly how he described her to me, with that same… desperation, that same passion, when he bought me to kill her. I’ve got to tell you, Clare, I think the man you married is sick in the head.’

‘What?’ says Clare. She can’t follow him, can’t unpick the meaning of these bizarre words. Pip has gone very silent, very still; he’s stopped trying to grab at Marcie’s hands. Clare doesn’t like his colour, or the way his eyes are glazed and shining.

‘What else would you call it? The irrationality of it… I had nothing but contempt for any of the people who hired me in that capacity – because what were they all except cowards? Hypocrites. Killing but keeping their hands clean. But Boyd was the worst; the weakest. He was shaking like a leaf when he came to find me, and couldn’t look me in the eye the whole time we talked – not until I asked him why. I asked him, what had she done? Then he looks up with this sudden calm, this total conviction, and tells me his wife is a perfect angel.’ Leandro shakes his head. ‘Tells me it like he’s affronted by the question. So I turned him down at first, I didn’t think he was serious; I didn’t think he knew what he wanted. But he kept offering me more money, and in the end I took it. I wish I hadn’t; God knows I wish I hadn’t. But I did and there’s no getting away from that.’

Slowly, his story sinks into Clare. She frowns in disbelief, looking over at Boyd’s hunched figure as though he might react, as though he might stand up and deny this outrageous accusation. But he’s motionless. She thinks of the perfect circle of the gun barrel, the hollow click when he fired it at her.

‘No. No… Emma got ill and died. She died of a fever. Everybody knows that; everybody said. How can she possibly have been… murdered, and nobody know about it? It’s ridiculous.’

‘It was in the New York papers, for a while.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘But not on the front page. And Boyd was never implicated – I don’t think the police even figured out Emma had been cheating on him, and he did a good job of looking heartbroken. They just thought it was a street robbery. Then Boyd went to England, found new friends and spun them a prettier story – for the boy’s sake, he could have told anyone who heard a rumour – and I’m sure all you Brits were far too polite to enquire any further. But believe me, she was murdered. I ought to know.’

‘Are you saying… are you saying you’re an assassin, Mr Cardetta?’ says Clare.

‘I was, yes. That’s how I started out; how I started to get rich. Killing people for money. All of this’ – he spreads his hands to encompass the fine room, the masseria, the land around it – ‘is built on that. So, do you still think I’m a good man, Chiarina?’ Clare has no answer for him. ‘But Emma Kingsley was one of the last. That was the moment I felt like I’d lost my soul, you see,’ he says, sounding sad and distracted. ‘Do you remember I said so? It was killing that lovely young woman. Killing her for money, when all she’d done was fallen in love. I knew it was wrong but I told myself it was business, and it didn’t matter. Well, it was business, but it did matter. I felt the injustice of it in my blood, like… like a sickness. It bothered me. And it bothered me that it didn’t seem to bother him at all.’ He points a finger at Boyd. ‘Perhaps I thought we should both be punished. I don’t know. But he’s stuck in my mind, all these years. It joined us somehow. We were in it together, him and me.’

Clare sits mute and tries to think. Her mind is slow, everything is languid and unreal, like it’s underwater. She’s in an alien element, far out of her depth. She thinks back, goes through her memories, tries to fit them into this reality and finds, astonishingly, that she can.

‘It did bother him. He was afraid. He was always afraid,’ she says, woodenly. ‘After you came to see him in New York, seven years ago… after you found him he tried to… he tried to end it all.’

‘Did he?’ Leandro grunts and nods. ‘Well, fear is a kind of sickness, I suppose, it can drive a man mad. I would have left it at that, if he hadn’t called you what he did. “A perfect angel.” If he hadn’t said that, I’d never have tried to intervene.’

‘Why did you even contact him again? Why did you even want him to design for you?’

‘I’m not even sure myself, truthfully. Moments like that in life – moments when things turn a corner, when you step off the path you’re on and go a different way – those are important moments. And he was there with me for perhaps the most important of mine. He was the author of it, and I never forgot him, not completely. After all this time I wanted to… I wanted to see him again. I wanted to see how this thing we shared was affecting him. If it was still affecting him, like it was affecting me.’ He shrugs. ‘The urge to find him wouldn’t leave me alone. Then he spoke about you as he’d spoken about her and I… I couldn’t let that go. I needed to see how he was with you, how you were with him. I needed to know if he’d changed, or if history was repeating itself.’

‘How did you think you could help me?’ Clare is still bewildered, fighting to keep up.

‘Again, I hardly know. I wanted to warn you, I suppose. Or frighten Boyd so much with the consequences of something happening to you that nothing would. Or persuade him to simply let you go, if it had come to that. And what do you do when you get here? You cheat on him! You fall in love with Ettore, and make goddamned sure he’s got cause to kill you! Ha!’ Another swig of brandy; he rolls his lips back over his teeth as it goes down. ‘There was something about that blue-eyed mongrel, that’s for sure. My wife fell for him, same as you did, when he was here with us last winter, although as far as I know the boy held her off. He showed me that much respect, at least.’ He fixes Marcie a look, blackly simmering. ‘All those English lessons, all that fussing and nursing; always pestering me to make him stay longer.’ Finally, Marcie stops crying and starts to look afraid.

‘You knew?’ she says.

‘Honey, I love you but I’ve got to tell you – you’re a bad actress. Really bad.’ Leandro runs his hands across his hair and down over his face, like he’s wiping something off. ‘Things haven’t gone quite as I planned them,’ he says, to nobody in particular.

After a few seconds of stillness Marcie takes out a handkerchief and starts to wipe her face, as if shocked into propriety. She sits up straighter and smooths down her hair, and beside her Pip watches her every move as if searching for clues or instructions. His eyes are bloated with tears; before long they start to slide down his face.

‘Pip,’ says Clare. She has the sudden clear image of him standing, shaking, pointing the gun at Ettore and pulling the trigger. She shuts her eyes. ‘Pip, come and sit with me,’ she says, holding out her hand; but Pip ignores her, like she hasn’t spoken. He turns his head slowly towards Boyd.

‘Father… it’s lies, isn’t it? Tell them it’s not true. My mother got sick and died. Just tell them!’ Pip’s voice turns shrill. Boyd shifts minutely, like something’s coursing through him, causing a ripple. But he doesn’t look up, and he doesn’t reply.

‘It’s not lies, Filippo. I’m sorry for it, and I’m sorry you’re hearing it now, but you need to. Your mother didn’t deserve what happened to her, not for the crime of falling in love. A man will be angry to be cuckolded, yes.’ Leandro glances over at Boyd, who doesn’t move a muscle. ‘Angry, yes. So divorce her if you want, or cut her off, but accept it. Life’s like that; the heart is like that. These things happen and we can’t help them – I don’t see why women should be expected to resist the strength of such feelings, any more than men.’ He looks hard at his wife again. ‘But seducing a boy, little more than a child, out of spite? Doing it with a cold heart, deliberately to wound me?’ His voice has risen to a bellow; Marcie flinches. ‘That’s low.’

‘I wasn’t trying to wound you, Leandro, I swear, I wanted to-’ she says, and breaks off, flicking angry eyes at Clare.

‘You did it to hurt Clare? Why? Oh… I see. Because Ettore fell for her, and not for you.’ Leandro nods. ‘That’s still vile, Marcie. It’s still vile.’

‘You made Pip tell you? About Ettore and me?’ says Clare. Marcie glares at her.

‘I knew weeks ago, you fool. I saw you two together – I saw you go into his room at night, in your slip. Before he had a chance to close the shutters! I’ve known all along.’

‘You saw me through the window? But… your room doesn’t look out that way.’

‘I wasn’t in my room, I was-’ Marcie stops short again, snaps her mouth closed.

‘Watching his window from some vantage point?’ says Leandro softly. Marcie’s cheeks redden. ‘Like a love-struck teenager?’ He shakes his head, wistful. ‘There was a time you held such a candle for me, Marcie. Do you even remember it?’

‘You brought me out here and left me to rot,’ she says, her voice trembling.

‘I brought you out here to love and support me! To be my wife!’ he shouts. ‘Woman, you make my heart sore.’ With a small, broken sound Marcie puts her hands over her eyes. Her mouth is a set, flat line and she’s no longer crying. Clare remembers her advice to Pip: If it bothers you to see, don’t look. She wants to tear Marcie’s hands away and open her eyes, but she hasn’t the will to move.

Leandro levers himself up and goes around with the brandy bottle again, topping up all of their glasses. Only Boyd doesn’t have one. ‘Drink it. All of you. We need to restore some fucking sanity here.’

‘You… you killed my mother?’ says Pip. His lips have gone ashen again; the skin around them almost blue.

‘Drink your brandy, Philip. You look ready to die of fright,’ says Leandro. ‘Yes, I killed her. A single shot to the head, as she walked home from her boyfriend’s house one night; and then I hit the boyfriend too, right afterwards. That’s what your father paid me to do. If I was the gun that shot your mother, then it was your father who pointed me and pulled the trigger.’

‘Leandro, that’s enough,’ says Clare. Pip is breathing far too fast; she can’t imagine what he must be feeling. She doesn’t try to imagine what she herself is feeling. All she knows is that when she’s able to feel anything again, she’ll wish she can’t. When she looks at the folded-up figure of her husband she realises that the nagging feeling she’s had all this time was right. She doesn’t know him at all.

‘The cat’s out of the bag already.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘And since my wife’s spent the last month making a man out of the kid, I guess he’s grown up enough to hear it.’ But he’s not, Clare knows. Pip is crying like a child; he can’t possibly be taking everything in, it’s too much. It’s too much for Clare.

Two young men come in from the courtyard, wearing the dark uniforms and peaked caps of the carabinieri. They sweep their eyes uncertainly over the room’s mixed and broken inhabitants. ‘You’ve rounded them all up?’ Leandro asks them in Italian.

‘Yes, Mr Cardetta.’

‘How many dead?’

‘Seven; and twenty-one wounded.’

‘And my niece?’

‘We have her, unharmed. Shall we take her in with the others?’

‘No. Have my men put her somewhere here for now, and keep watch on her.’

‘Paola?’ says Clare. Some thought nudges for her attention. ‘No… her baby. She must be allowed to get back to her baby.’

‘In due course,’ says Leandro, and his tone brooks no argument. ‘I want to talk to her first. But take that one.’ He points at Boyd. The carabinieri exchange a look. ‘Yes, yes – take him! He shot my nephew, Ettore Tarano, in cold blood, for a vendetta. We all saw him. He must be kept in custody, and sent to Bari for trial.’

‘Yes, Mr Cardetta.’

‘Please – you must at least send someone to fetch Paola’s child to her. He can’t be left all alone, he’s too little,’ says Clare.

‘Perhaps she should have thought of that before she came here to rob me!’ Leandro’s sudden bellow is shocking, but there’s a treacherous sparkle in his eyes. He glares at Clare but she isn’t cowed. Ettore is dead; she has nothing else to fear. Leandro relents. ‘All right. Have someone go to Vico Iovia; the Taranos have an apartment there, in the courtyard. Fetch her baby and bring him here.’ The carabinieri nod. ‘Anything you want to say to your husband before they take him?’ he says to Clare.

The two officers pull Boyd to his feet and he looks across at Clare. His face is shiny and flaccid, he’s as colourless as whey, his long body is limp. When he looks at her his eyes are quite empty.

‘You were perfect,’ he says. She can’t make out his tone of voice – it’s heavier than neutral; past calm, into somewhere else. ‘You were perfect. No man had touched you until… until you let that… peasant…’ He swallows convulsively, as though the very thought nauseates him. That’s what’s in his voice, she realises. Disgust; even revulsion. ‘No man had ever touched you. You were pure.’ Boyd shakes his head, and Clare understands what he means. Before, she’d wondered if they’d ever made love at all, given the barrier that was always between them. Now she knows they had not, and that this had been his intention – to keep her pure. That bitch, he called little Christina Havers, after their affair. That whore.

‘You dare to look disgusted with me?’ she says softly. ‘Ettore was twice the man you are. A hundred times the man!’ Her voice is rising; she wants her words to scar him. ‘I loved him more than I ever loved you! And I loved making love to him!’

‘Shut up! Shut up, you whore!’ Boyd roars.

‘Enough! Take him,’ says Leandro. In silence, the carabinieri march out with Boyd stumbling between them. Clare realises that she has referred to Ettore in the past tense, twice; a strange, raw keening starts up in her throat, and for a while she can’t stop it. She puts her hands over her mouth but the sound leaks out through her fingers, and she can smell blood on her skin – she has Ettore’s blood all over her hands.

The sun rises on Masseria dell’Arco as though the new day is the same as any that went before, and Clare wakes with every muscle aching, to the sound of splashing and sweeping. The servants are scrubbing blood from the courtyard stones with long-handled brooms and buckets of water. She looks in on Pip, still sound asleep, then wanders out onto the terrace, barefoot and dressed in her slip, to watch the clean-up. She’s still not able to absorb everything she’s seen and heard and learnt. That Marcie seduced Pip, and he thought himself in love with her. That Marcie was in love with Ettore. That Boyd had Emma killed, when she wasn’t as perfect as he wanted her to be. That Boyd killed Ettore, and that he aimed the gun at Clare, and pulled the trigger. She feels nothing whatsoever about the fact that the chamber was empty when he did. She can’t decide if it was good luck or bad, and she doesn’t care. Ettore is dead. None of these events, none of these things she’s learnt, will settle into a sensible order in her mind; an order she can read, and understand. It’s all a dark jumble and every time she feels some small satisfaction that she need never see Boyd again, that she is safe from him, it’s followed closely by the raw pain of remembering that Ettore is also gone. It’s exhausting. Trying to think it through is exhausting.

She goes back to Pip’s room and watches him sleep for a while. The room is full of the soft smell of him – skin and hair and breath. He’s sleeping off his shock, his double heartbreak; the trauma of losing his father, of having to rewrite his own history; the strain of sifting the truth from all the lies. To Clare it seems as though he’s cocooned himself in sleep – that this stupor hides a metamorphosis of some kind, and she can only wait to see what form he will take when he emerges from it. When she thinks how Marcie used him it kindles a slow-burning anger; she tries not to dwell on it. Marcie hasn’t yet come down from the high room she shares with Leandro, to which she retreated at some point in the night, and more than anything, now, Clare wants to be gone, and see none of them again. She wants to take Pip and leave. She thinks of all those hours he spent with Marcie in the bat room, listening to music or supposedly rehearsing a play that will never be staged. She thinks of the dusty old couch they dragged in there, initially for Clare to sit on and watch them. Perhaps it was all a play to Marcie, but Pip thought it was real. I was protecting you, he said, after he shot at Ettore, like I promised I would. She pictures Marcie playing the helpless, frightened woman, making Pip feel like a man. It’s all too easy to imagine. And she knows how word of the raid got to Leandro in time for him to prepare its defence. From Marcie, who heard it from Pip, who had sworn to Clare that he would tell no one. But she has no blame for Pip, only for herself. She abandoned him to be with Ettore; she left him to be lonely and uncertain – left an open wound for Marcie to heal.

Clare can’t eat. Not even when her hands start to shake with hunger and black flecks jig around the edges of her vision when she moves too quickly. Carlo is back on duty at the front door as though nothing has happened. His nose is swollen and bruised, split open across the bridge, and his eyes are bloody. When Clare apologises to him he turns his face away and doesn’t answer. He tries for a stony expression but he’s too young and too sweet; he looks like he might cry instead. Clare asks him where Paola Tarano is and Carlo jerks his thumb at the stairs behind him, still refusing to look at her, and she goes up in silence.

Paola is in a small room high up in the front wing of the masseria. There’s a little window overlooking the courtyard but Paola has her back to it, curled on her side on the narrow bed with Iacopo asleep against her stomach. These are servants’ quarters, and the room doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while. The nightstand is thick with dust, as is a rickety chair against one wall – the only other furniture. Someone has taken up a jug of water and a plate of bread and cheese, but they’re untouched. Paola moves nothing but her eyes when Clare knocks softly and goes in. For a second Clare hardly recognises her because Paola’s hair is loose, released from its usual knot and scarf. It reaches down past her elbows, black, and wavy from braiding. She looks younger, prettier, but her eyes are ancient with grief. For a while Clare simply stands there and says nothing, and their shared pain hovers between them. There’s some other resonance as well, something else they both feel – it takes Clare a moment to put her finger on it. She can feel her own guilt over Ettore’s death seething inside her, and she’d expected Paola to blame her, and be furious. But Paola is sodden with guilt as well; Paola blames herself.

Gently, to not stir the baby, Clare sits down on the edge of the mattress. She takes Paola’s hand, and though the girl’s black eyes fill with unease, even suspicion, she doesn’t pull away. They stay like that for a while. There’s nothing Clare can say to explain, nothing she can say to make things better, even if she could make this hard-faced girl understand her Italian. In the end she lifts Paola’s hand and presses it to her middle, low down, beneath the waistband of her skirt. Paola gazes at her, confused.

‘Ettore,’ says Clare. Paola still stares, so Clare points to Iacopo, then taps the girl’s hand on her abdomen. ‘Ettore’s baby. Bambino,’ she says, and sees comprehension dawn, and as it does Clare’s eyes flood with tears, and she can’t seem to stop them. She hangs her head and lets them run. ‘I never got to tell him,’ she says. ‘He’ll never know.’ Paola keeps hold of her hand but says nothing.

Clare stays for an hour or more, unwilling to leave because she’s sure that this will be the last time she sees Paola. The girl’s kinship to Ettore is a precious commodity now; the tantalising hint of him she has about her is a grain of comfort. When she gets up to leave she stoops and kisses Paola’s forehead, before the girl can jerk away, and Paola watches after her with an odd mix of anger and vulnerability. Clare can see how she hates to be cared for; how she doesn’t want sympathy, and mistrusts affection. She has a strength in her that Clare can’t hope to emulate, but then she thinks that if Paola won’t bend she must break, eventually.

Restless, searching, Clare paces the rooms and corridors of the masseria like a ghost. She would go out into the landscape but she can’t stand the thought of seeing the places where she met Ettore; can’t stand the thought of having to return to the masseria once she’s left it. Perhaps she wouldn’t return – perhaps she’d just keep walking, and she needs to be there when Pip emerges. She can’t go without him, but there’s a kernel of terror inside her that somehow, when he’s reborn, the bond between them will have vanished. That Marcie and Ettore will have somehow erased their affinity, that invisible tie they had, which is not motherhood, and could dissolve without trace. He would be justified in blaming her, after all – for all of it. Even for his father being taken away. He might refuse to leave while Boyd is still in Italy; he might want to stay with him. Clare’s walk drifts to a halt. Could that happen? Could she be forced to choose between Pip and staying for ever in a place that has begun to feel like a vast prison? It could happen. The idea makes it seem like the air itself is crushing her.

When she walks past the door to what was Ettore’s room Clare shrinks back, and doesn’t stop. From a high window she sees Leandro on the roof, in the same place he stood two days earlier, staring out in just the same way. For a second her thoughts scatter into wild imaginings of it really being two days earlier – of how she would do things differently if she was given the chance, if she really had walked back through time. How she would force Leandro to let her out, so she could warn Ettore about the extra guards at the farm. How she would rush down the stairs as soon as she saw Pip and Marcie waiting at the foot of them, and snatch the revolver from his hand. How she would take it from him after he’d shot Ettore in the shoulder, instead of leaving it to Boyd to disarm him. How she would refuse to help the raiders by opening the door, so that perhaps they would call it off. She tortures herself with what might have happened if she had not done the things she did, in the order in which she did them; pouring salt into her wounds until she can’t take any more. Then she goes up to the roof and stands beside Leandro.

He turns to look at her briefly, his expression unchanging. He looks older, and tired; he stares off into the far distance as if he can see the future there, so Clare follows his gaze and tries to do the same. The landscape hasn’t changed, and that seems unreal because it feels as though great seismic shifts have shaken everything to pieces. She expects to see ruins, giant fissures in the earth. But she sees the flat, long land with its brown grass, its burnt stubble fields; she sees the same gnarled olive trees that have witnessed generations of human lives flickering out at the end of their time like the stars at dawn. She sees the dry stone walls and the dusty road; the madly bored aia dogs and the trullo by the gates where Ettore first kissed her, and they first made love. The breeze rolls softly from the north. It moans over the stone parapets of the complex and the low field walls; it runs through Clare’s hair and flutters her shirt against her ribs, filling her ears with quiet noise. It’s impossible that all this should still exist when Ettore does not; Clare wonders whether perhaps she doesn’t exist either. She feels like thistledown; she’s the same weight as the air – she could blow away at any moment, and drift, disperse, vanish.

Leandro’s voice, when he speaks, is sombre.

‘You want to leave. You must do. Do you want to see Boyd before you go? It could be arranged.’

‘No,’ says Clare. ‘No. Never again. But… Pip might.’ She must sound afraid because Leandro turns with a speculative look.

‘You can’t think he’ll want to stay here, with his father?’

‘I don’t know. He… he was very angry with me. About Ettore.’

‘Jealous of your attention, only.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘He’ll want to be with you. He doesn’t love his father like he loves you. I saw that from the start. And now he knows how his mother died…’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Clare pauses. ‘There… there was something you wanted to find out from Boyd before you would let us go home. Ettore told me. Was that it? Was it whether or not he might harm me?’

‘That was it.’ Leandro nods. ‘Killing that girl changed me. Killing Emma Kingsley. It may be hard for you to believe, but she was the only woman I ever harmed and, by Christ, she haunted me afterwards. And I changed; I went into business. I’m not saying I was a model citizen ever after, but… but I was never as low and dirty again as I was that night. The night I shot her and her lover. I wanted to see if Boyd had changed as well.’

‘But couldn’t you tell straight away that he was just the same?’

‘Not for sure, and even when I suspected it I wasn’t sure what to do about it. How to change things. He… it was cowardly, you see. It was cowardly to have her killed, rather than to confront her, or just let her go. It was cowardly not to kill her himself, if that was what he wanted. But why kill her at all, when she had a child that needed her? There was no need. But he’s unbalanced; he doesn’t think the way I think, that much is obvious.’

‘No, he does not. I was a thing to him – an idea, not a person. I think I’ve always felt it, though I couldn’t quite define it. And when you say he’s a hypocrite you don’t know how right you are. He has been unfaithful to me – with one woman that I know about, and perhaps others that I don’t. And yes, he is a coward. I thought he was grieving, but it was guilt. I thought he was afraid to let me know how deeply he’d cared for Emma, but he was only afraid of me finding out what he’d done – of anyone finding out. I thought he was vulnerable, and ultimately kind. But his vulnerability was just… weakness, and his kindness was a fraud. I tried to love him but I… I never could.’

‘Who could love such a man? But you stayed for the boy? For Pip?’

‘Yes. I stayed for him. And because I had no idea there could be an alternative. It never occurred to me to look for one.’

‘I wanted you to come here for Marcie – that was also true. I could feel I was losing her, and I wanted her to be happy. But after Boyd spoke about you that way I needed to meet you, too. I needed to… see.’

‘I’m grateful to you. I owe you my life.’

‘No. I risked your life,’ says Leandro.

‘But I’m free of him now, and it’s your doing.’

For a while the two of them stand and watch the world, and wait. There’s no hurry. Clare breathes in, and breathes out, and feels calmer for being by Leandro’s side, and knowing that he is waiting too. Waiting for thoughts to come, and go; waiting for the next moment, and what it will bring. ‘Will you write to me and… keep me informed as to Boyd’s whereabouts? And what happens to him?’ she says, at last.

‘Yes. If you want me to.’

‘Not for me, but for Pip. And I’m sorry, Leandro. I’m very sorry that I betrayed you, and didn’t warn you about the raid,’ she says. Leandro smiles faintly.

‘Ettore gave you little choice. I understand that. And besides, I’m too angry with my niece, and with Marcie, to be angry with you too. I might give myself a stroke if I tried.’

‘You’re angry with Paola?’

‘Of course I am. She was always the firebrand, always the instigator. Left alone, Ettore would have fought with reading and propaganda, with speeches and strikes. He would have fought with his brain, you understand? But Paola’s as spit-and-claws as they come. She’s already told me the raid was her idea – she’s proud of it. Attacking her own family…’

‘What… what will you do with her?’

‘Do? Oh, nothing much, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He takes a long breath in, lets it out slowly. ‘I only want her to stop fighting. It’s over. She must stop being a soldier and start being a mother to that baby.’

‘Will you take care of her? She has nobody else now, nobody to support her. Valerio is too sick to work.’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll take care of her. She’ll come and work in my house in Gioia, whether she likes it or not. It’s either that or she can go and be tried as a brigand with the rest of them. She won’t like it,’ he says, grinning sourly. ‘So I get to punish her and take care of her at the same time.’

‘What about Marcie? What will… what will you and Marcie do?’

‘What will we do?’ He shrugs. ‘Again, nothing. We will do nothing. If she wants to leave me, she can, but she’ll leave empty-handed. I’m staying here, in this place. This isn’t the first thing she’s done to hurt me since we came here. I know she hates it here, and I know part of her hates me for bringing her here. But I love her – what can I do? How should I punish her for what she did?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Clare. ‘Pip’s only fifteen years old. She used him… she’s broken his heart.’ She can’t hide her anger.

‘None of us emerge from this spotless, Chiarina. Pip will recover, and he’ll have learnt something important about this world, and the people in it. In time he’ll hardly think about it any more – the young are like that. It will take you and me far longer to mend, I think.’

‘I feel like… I feel like I shouldn’t go on living,’ says Clare. Fresh tears are choking her, aching in her throat, but she’s sick of them and forces them back. ‘This summer has been… it has been the best and worst time of my whole life. The best and the utter worst.’

‘But you will go on living, and you have my great-nephew to think about. Or great-niece. Marcie told me,’ says Leandro. He puts one hand on her shoulder for a moment, squeezing it. ‘Perhaps in time, when all of this is less raw, you’ll let me visit you, and the child? Or you’ll come here to visit us? I have precious little family left to me.’

‘I’ll never come back here.’

‘Never? And if Pip wants to visit his father in jail – because Boyd will be jailed, I’ll make sure of it – you’ll make him come on his own?’

‘No.’ Clare hangs her head. ‘No, I won’t make him come on his own.’

‘Life is a catalogue of things we must do for the people we love, whether we want to or not. The only way to avoid it is to never love, and what would be the point of anything then?’

They are silent again, letting more time pass. The wind rolls around them and the hot sun is in their eyes, and it seems as though they might ossify, slowly, if they stayed there long enough; they might become a part of Puglia’s bones. Clare can see the land’s hard beauty, then; the harsh glory of it. It makes her think of Paola; it makes her see that you’d need that stony strength of heart to live there. ‘This war is almost over,’ says Leandro. ‘You asked me how it could ever end and here’s the answer – with the rich crushing the poor in an iron fist. The braccianti have already lost; in a few more weeks they’ll have to admit it, even to themselves. The proprietors have won. We proprietors, I should say. Every time the workers resist, they will be beaten down.’ As he speaks, Ludo Manzo rides past the gates on his new brown horse, kicking up dust from its hooves. He rides easily, sitting back in the saddle, holding the reins loosely. ‘They may happen to call themselves fascists right now, but there have always been men like that to beat the peasants down, and there always will be,’ says Leandro, nodding towards his overseer. ‘The Manzos. At least we’re down to one of them.’

‘Ettore said that Ludo has a knack for staying alive.’

‘That he does, more’s the pity. His son was the one that killed Ettore’s fiancée. Did you know that?’

‘Federico? No… I didn’t know.’ Even in her detached state, Clare feels the shock of it.

‘Despicable. I’m sure my nephew had a hand in Federico ending up in that fire. He and the girl’s brothers; and I don’t blame them one bit – he had it coming. The man that was killed that night was Ettore’s good friend. The one who looked like a movie star – I think his name was Pino. So I’m sure Ettore was there.’

‘Oh, not Pino too.’ Clare thinks of Pino’s kind face; his young wife peering out past him at their door, and the way he kissed her before he left. She thinks of him saving her from Federico, and searching for the right word to say to her afterwards. Coraggio. Somehow his death seems the worst injustice of all. ‘This place is horrible! It’s brutal!’ she says bitterly. ‘How can you love it?’

‘Love it? No, I don’t love it. But it owns me.’ Leandro turns to her and smiles sadly. ‘Whenever you’re ready, I’ll take you and the boy to the station.’

Clare packs her things. She leaves Boyd’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe, his shaving brush and soap on the washstand, the rubber sheath in its flat box, tucked into the bedside drawer. She doesn’t know or care what will happen to these things. She goes up to Marcie and Leandro’s room and finds the door shut, the corridor outside in shadow. She stands at the door for a long time, with the hair on her arms prickling; gripped by such knotted emotions she can’t pick one from the other. You nearly made a murderer of Pip, she wants to say. Kind, sweet Pip. You broke his heart out of spite. Or was it simply boredom? And then she wants to say, I know you’re miserable. I know you hate it here, but you can’t leave. I know you didn’t want Ettore to die.

‘Marcie?’ she says. The word bounces back at her from the wood. Perhaps she imagines it, but the silence inside seems to take on a sentient quality. She’s sure Marcie can hear her. She raps her knuckles against the door. ‘Marcie? Can I come in?’ There’s a tiny sound of quick, panicked movement; a rustle of cloth against skin. But that’s all. Clare waits for a long time but the door doesn’t open and she doesn’t knock again. ‘We’re leaving soon. We’ll be gone, so you won’t have to see either one of us,’ she says. And even though she’d planned to say much more she doesn’t, because she can’t say sorry, and she can’t lay blame; she can’t demand an explanation, and her anger is already burning itself out. So she turns her back and walks away, and leaves Marcie hidden there in silence. And then she realises that there could be no greater mark of regret from Marcie, no clearer expression of grief, than silence.

Clare goes to Pip’s room and her heart jolts at finding his bed empty, the door ajar and the windows open, blowing out the fustiness of sleep. She takes a deep breath and grips the bedpost until she feels steady. Then she gathers up all his things and packs them into his trunk, and drags it over to the doorway. It only takes five minutes. We’ll leave and everything here will carry on without us. And we will carry on. It’ll be like we were never here. As if in answer to this, as if to deny it, a wave of nausea forces her to sit down on the lid of the trunk, drenching her forehead with cold sweat and her mouth with saliva. She wipes her face and then puts both hands on her midriff. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you,’ she tells the baby quietly, and almost smiles. She knows then that the child will give her back the notion of joy, in time, and that even if the world must think the child is Boyd’s, she will tell it about its real father – about his wild blue eyes, and his strength and his gentle heart; how it had felt like she’d always known him, and that she’d loved him instinctively, right from the start.

Time passes and she stays there, on the lid of Pip’s trunk, trying to picture what it will be like to be back in Hampstead, back in the house that was Boyd’s before it was ever hers. She pictures the slow turn of the hands on the clock in the empty hallway, and the silence that will settle once Pip is back at school, and she knows in that moment that she won’t stay there. Not for any longer than she absolutely has to. She will have to find work, and a flat to rent, and she doesn’t know what or where she will do or go, but an image of the sea on a summer’s day comes into her mind – the deep, deep blue of it, with the mirroring sky above. She longs to have this shade of blue in her life, this saturation of colour.

The thought of starting over, of a town full of strangers, holds no fear for her. Instead she wonders how she can have been so afraid of such trivial things before. Before Puglia, before the Masseria dell’Arco, before Ettore. She realises she’ll always be better for coming here; she will always be more alive; she feels like some of Ettore’s strength has bedded into her alongside his unborn child. And when enough time has passed she’ll be able to divorce Boyd, and cut herself free of him. She doesn’t care that she will be gossiped about; she doesn’t care what anyone will say. The Kent coast, or Sussex; a small town by the sea where Ettore’s child can be born, and Pip can come in the holidays, and the puppy can run about. Boyd’s house in Hampstead can sit and wait for him, if he should ever return to it. Clare will not be waiting; she will go her own way.

She finds Pip in the bat room, curled up on the old sofa. His hair is messed and greasy; he’s still in his pyjamas. He has Peggy on his lap and the puppy sits up when Clare comes in, staring, perking her ears. Pip frowns at the puppy like she’s misbehaved in some way, and as Clare walks across to them she finds herself holding her breath. Her footsteps echo in the rafters; light pours in through the windows and dazzles her. From high on the wall, that one watching eye of the mural stares down, and Clare tries not to think about everything it has witnessed that summer. She comes to stand right in front of the couch and Pip still won’t look up, and fear makes her palms clammy. This is the moment when she’ll know if she’s lost him. This is the moment when she’ll know if their bond has survived, or has shattered under the strain.

‘All right there, Pip?’ she says, and can’t keep her voice even. Some emotion clenches his face, and his cheeks mottle with blood. She waits for a moment, in case he’ll speak, but when he doesn’t she turns her body slightly, towards the door. ‘It’s time to go, I think. Don’t you?’ She tries not to let the weight of everything sound in her voice; she doesn’t want him to feel it, or have to share it.

‘Home?’ he says hoarsely, almost whispering.

‘Home,’ she says. Then she holds out her hand to him, and they can both see it trembling. Pip looks away and opens his mouth, and seems afraid to speak.

‘I didn’t…’ His brows pinch together. ‘I didn’t mean to shoot him.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Clare says at once. She waits a while, but Pip stays quiet. ‘Coming then?’ she says. She holds her breath again, until it burns and her heart lurches in protest. Then Pip gathers Peggy under one arm and takes Clare’s hand.

‘All right, Clare,’ he says.