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The officer mutters something that Mirella takes to be “Loony old bat.” She follows him anxiously from room to room as he inspects the property. “Kinderheim,” she says, taking a cue from the contessa. “This is a children’s home! Do you understand?”
He leaves the house and confers with the other officer, who has evidently inspected the outbuildings. The children have been herded outside into the downpour. Many are crying. Angelo has Stefania by the hand; he glares at the Germans, who don’t notice, thank God.
“Alles,” the commander says, gesturing. “We require the whole farm.”
“But the children? Die Kinder?” she asks helplessly.
The officers climb into the backseat of the car. “We will return tomorrow,” the commander tells her.
Mirella turns her back to the muddy gravel spun up by the staff car’s wheels. Those who’ve hidden until now gather in the courtyard, waiting in the rain for her to tell them what to do.
Il maggiore is trapped in Milan— Allied planes swoop down and strafe any vehicle they spot. There hasn’t been so much as a note from Iacopo since January, and the last time she saw any of Renzo’s men was when Claudia was here. Was his band the one wiped out at Montebianco? Is it time to move everyone into the woods? How much longer will the fighting last? How many babies and old people would die of exposure? Are the woods any safer than the villa?
Mirella hardly notices the strength leaving her legs, but she lets someone take Rosina out of her arms. I’m used up, she thinks, sitting in a puddle. There’s nothing left.
Behind her, the contessa stands in the doorway, watching the German car disappear down the drive. “A Prussian of the worst sort,” she declares before addressing the crowd. “The Germans want this place for a hospital. They want us out by tomorrow.” She waits for the cries of dismay to die down. “My late husband,” she says clearly, “was an admiral when he died. I asked him once why he had chosen the navy and not the army as his career. He said, ‘If you’re going to be killed in battle, it’s better to sleep in a dry bed the night before.’ ” She folds her hands over a small potbelly swathed in silk. “You may do as you please, but I intend to stay right here.”
Shrugging fatalistically, the others disperse, to make whatever decisions are left to them. Mirella leans back, propping herself on her hands, unspeakably weary. “Signora, why didn’t you help before?”
The contessa looks down, brows arched. “You seemed quite capable.”
Too tired for courtesy, Mirella says, “I thought you were crazy.”
“Possibly,” the contessa allows, going back into the house, “but I am not the one who’s sitting in the mud.”
Sometime that night, Angelo jostles his mother’s shoulder. “Mamma? Mamma!” he whispers. “Stefania wet the bed!”
Mirella hauls herself upright, cleans herself and the children, turns the mattress over. Dry bed, she thinks, and falls asleep before she can laugh or cry.
Troops arrive at dawn. Not hospital perso
Mirella gets the children up and dressed in layers. “Stay here with the girls,” she tells Angelo, “but be ready to go.”
A young officer sits in the kitchen. Dirty, utterly worn out, he raises his head. “Guten Tag,” he says, and mumbles something she doesn’t understand.
He seems civil and sounds reassuring. “Kinderheim,” she tells him. “Many Kinder. What should we do?”
He looks beyond her. Mirella turns. Angelo is standing on the stairs behind her. The girls clutch his hands, wide-eyed. The officer pushes himself to his feet, approaches Rosina, cups her chin in a filthy palm. He says something Mirella can’t make out, but she catches the word Keller. She points toward the stairs.
Knees buckling from fatigue, the soldier descends partway into the cellar and looks around. “Das ist gut.” He beckons. “Kinder, ja?”
Something whizzes past the kitchen window with an eerie moan, and explodes an instant later in the garden. Shouting orders, the officer pounds back up the stairway and runs outside. A second shell explodes. “Angelo!” Mirella screams. “Take the girls downstairs, and stay there!”
“Mamma, where are you going?”
“To get the other children— they’ll be safer in the cellar!”
“Mamma, don’t leave us!” Stefania begs. “Please, Mamma! Don’t leave me again!”
Mirella’s heart jolts. She lifts Rosina, starts down the staircase. “Angelo, take Stefania’s hand!”
There’s machine-gun fire, shockingly loud, just beyond the kitchen. Another Allied shell hits, nearer. They say you never hear the one that gets you, but how could anyone alive kno
May 1945
SANT’ANDREA BLUFFS
Renzo is chain-smoking Gold Flakes, but his eyes are clear and he is not so lame now that they’re close to the coast. He grins at Claudia’s unspoken assessment. “Peak of condition, relatively speaking.” A good thing, too, given that the brigade is under attack, and badly outnumbered.
They’d have been in real trouble, if not for her. Camped in yet another stone ruin crumpled atop yet another scrubby mountain, the brigade posted sentries, and everyone else went to sleep. Claudia woke up, queasy with cramps, and went to the makeshift latrine. There, she squatted, watching starlight sparkle on Porto Sant’Andrea’s bay. Something nearer caught her eye. Noiselessly, she pulled up her trousers, grabbed her submachine gun, and found a vantage behind the low stone wall.
Several platoons of Republican soldiers had slipped past the guards and crept, heavily armed, toward the hilltop. She opened up on the nearest, all of whom had their hands full with climbing. A minute later, two hundred partisans were ru
With surprise gone, the Republican assault troops have been pi
Behind the brigade’s line, young women and younger boys break open airdrop packing, make aprons of their shirts, scuttle forward with their deliveries. In the shelter of a stone wall, partisans salute their Englishman with raised chins, grins, small waves of appreciation. Since Simon Henley jumped into the thin air over Piemonte in February, arms and ammo and crisp pound notes have dropped like confetti on this unit.
Renzo draws deeply on the butt of one cigarette and lights the next with its glowing end. “Grenades,” he coughs, “on my command.” Claudia runs crouched in the shadow of a stone terrace, relaying orders. At Renzo’s shout, a veritable orchard of pineapple grenades fly downhill. One-sided slaughter continues until a no-man’s-land is established.
Again Claudia moves along the line. “Shoot now only when you see a good target,” Otello tells Simon, although the lovely green-eyed girl has said considerably more than that. Before she finishes her route, Renzo yells something even Simon understands.
“Conserve ammo?” Simon asks. “But why? We have crates of the stuff—”
“Don’t worry, Simon! The boss knows what he’s doing.”
Renzo closes his eyes, concentrating on the topographic maps he sees in his head. Claudia summons three men to his side, and he sends their squads into the wooded ravines that rib the mountain. By Simon’s count, this move leaves 120 or so to hold the high ground. Splitting your forces is rarely wise, and the odds against them are of Agincourt proportions, but none of the others seems concerned.