Belladonna Read online

  “I’ve told you before,” Belladonna says. “I have nothing but time. I can wait. Don’t you think finding them is worth waiting for?”

  To that, Leandro has no answer.

  “You know, the world is a brute of a place,” Belladonna says to me several months later, handing me an airmail letter from one Mr. Jack Winslow, P.I. Those initials are supposed to mean private investigator, yet to me they stand for pathetically incompetent. Perhaps I am just being my usual impatient self, but he’s dug up nothing worth mentioning so far, so I think he’s useless.

  Leandro had given us the name of a former detective chief superintendent at Scotland Yard named Harris Pritchard, who before that had been some high muckety-muck in the Special Branch, a hotshot he’d used to crack a smuggling ring years before. That was before our cheeky chappy had discovered how many vitamins there were in a pint of Guinness. On his first visit down to Ca’ d’Oro, the Pritch, as I called him to his obvious disdain, told us he often worked with an American based in New York, the one and only Jack Winslow. Meticulous, tenacious, strong, and determined, he claimed our fair Jack to be. Ex-spy and ex-cop, who wouldn’t suck up to the old-boy network of bribe-ridden brass. Fine, we said, how saintly. Do whatever you have to do. Fly wherever you have to fly. Trample whatever alleys you have to trample. You, Pritch, calling yourself an Enquiry agent, inquire away. Stoke your beer belly up with as many pints as necessary; plonk your bowler hat back on your thinning ginger hair; poke around in dusty dank corners with your umbrella and your rheumy brown eyes and our boy Jack"as long as you deliver.

  So far, niente. Botheration. Now that we’ve actually started to look for a real person, we are alarmingly anxious, although we pretend not to be. We hide it from Leandro, who, as usual, asks no questions. The days slip by in a hazy blur. Bryony is growing strong and fair, her hair delectable ringlets of strawberry blond and her blue-green eyes holding the same penetrating gaze as her mother’s. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, and I don’t know how on earth it could be when I am so utterly fascinating, but at this stage Bryony-prefers Matteo to yours truly. Perhaps because I spend so much more time with Leandro.

  Or perhaps it’s because children so often want things they can’t express. This the silent Matteo understands. His patient ingenuity in communicating with little speech and the playfulness he is rediscovering with the magic tricks he now performs seamlessly, conjuring sprigs of rosemary directly under Caterina’s nose to tickle her with, is awfully endearing. For such a rough giant, he is artfully gentle with Bryony, especially when she balks at bedtime, wanting to stay out on the terrace with the grown-ups long into the night. “Sam is yawning,” he tells her, “and he needs you to put his nightie on.” This works like a charm. She starts yawning, and is soon out like a light.

  Sam will wear only the finest dainty lace nightgowns, like his mistress. But as soon as she wakes up, Bryony is off racing around the estate, playing with the staff’s children laughing and talking with them in Italian. Dino gives her rides on the pony Leandro gave her for her fourth birthday two weeks ago; Roberto still spoils her with sweet biscuits. Like her mother, she could have charmed the feathers off Fluffy, if Fluffy hadn’t croaked a few weeks ago. Except for Bryony, we are all secretly glad, even Leandro. The silly thing got loose from its pen, trampled the tomatoes, squashed the basil, then invaded Caterina’s private herb garden and scrabbled up one of her prize mandrakes. If a few bites of the plant hadn’t killed it, Caterina surely would have. She’s been nurturing the twisted roots for years. Her mouth set, Caterina sewed Fluffy’s feathers onto a mask as a rather unusual reminder of the price paid for willfulness.

  In the meantime, we try not to wait too anxiously for the mail or the phone to ring, if, of course"this being Italy"there is even a dial tone. June Nickerson can’t be that hard to find.

  Unless she’s dead.

  It is with great relief that we wake one morning to see the Pritch’s bowler hat on the terrace table and the great man himself, fanning his florid cheeks with a rolled-up copy of the London Times and dunking one of Caterina’s hard rolls in a bowl of cappuccino.

  “Morning, Pritch,” I greet him. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “Hmmph,” he says. “Too bloody hot.”

  “Yes, and we’re glad to see you, too. I bet a lot of your clients are equally happy to see you, considering your line of employment.”

  He ignores me. Smart guy. I don’t know why I’m ragging him. Maybe I just don’t like Brits. Or ex-coppers. Or licensed snoops. I am, of course, a highly unlicensed, unprofessional snoop.

  Guess I must be jealous. Try, Tomasino, to keep it shut for once in your life.

  “I once locked up a man whose mistress rejected him. It drove him right round the bend. He wouldn’t let her alone. When he disguised himself as a postman, delivering registered letters she’d have to sign for, well, that’s when she called me,” the Pritch says, slurping down his coffee and helping himself to a grappa chaser. Maybe I could learn to like turn after all.

  “He was a right proper shirty fellow,” he goes on, “ringing me up"mind you, he thought he was contacting the Yard"to inform me that she was suffering from a serious opium addiction and was a very disturbed woman. Opium … disturbed woman indeed. Hadn’t thought of that in donkey’s years till you mentioned it.”

  “I mentioned it?”

  “Always happy to see me, she was.” He smiles, then wipes his mouth with surprising daintiness and pats his sparse ginger hair. “Now, shall we set down to the business at hand?”

  “Let me find Belladonna.” Then I look up. She is standing on the edge of the terrace, waiting. I wonder how much she’s heard.

  The Pritch attempts to get up, but she hastily waves him down as she seats herself. “Please,” she says. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

  “Yes, mum,” he says, instantly deferential. It isn’t just that she’s the boss; it’s her immediate effect on people. Her otherworldly aura, as if she were lying still, a coiled cobra waiting for the right moment to pounce. Even a hardened professional like Pritch easily falls sway to the spell of Belladonna.

  If I could bottle her essence I’d be one rich and happy fella.

  “Right.” Pritch clears his throat, and I pour him another grappa. “Mr. Winslow has found your Miss June Nickerson,” he says, pulling an envelope out of his briefcase. “Her name is now Mrs. George Hauxton and has been since"let me see … May 1936.”

  “A year later,” Belladonna says to herself.

  “She resides at Two six six five Cedarhurst Lane in Kansas City, Missouri, with the aforementioned husband; George; their daughters, Helen, age fourteen, and Caroline, age thirteen; their dog, Rover; their cat, Sandy; and their maid, Tallulah,” Pritch says, continuing to read. “George Hauxton is proprietor of Hauxton Enterprises, a firm started by his grandfather, dealing in cattle futures and other highly speculative ventures, et cetera et cetera. Not surprisingly, it seems that Hauxton Enterprises is leveraged, as Mr. Winslow says here, up the wazoo.” He grimaces at the slang. “In other words, should one choose to approach and thereby infiltrate Hauxton Enterprises with the offer of financial assistance, one may be fairly certain of a welcome.” He wipes his face, then resumes reading. “Mr. George Hauxton is a staunch Presbyterian, Republican, Rotary Club member, treasurer of the Groveside Country Club"what one might call exclusive, or so Mr. Winslow says here.”

  “Busy beaver,” I say.

  “Hmmph,” says Pritch. “Mrs. June Hauxton is an avid golfer and bridge enthusiast, member of the Planning Committee at the Groveside Country Club. Et cetera.”

  “Eager beaver.” I can’t help myself. “What about her parents?”

  Pritch consults his notes. “Parents … parents … ah. The mum and dad. Yes. Paul and Blair Nickerson, residing at One one five Miller Lane, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He retired in 1949"bad ticker, allegedly…. The grandchildren usually spend their vacations up there in Minnesota at … it says here, a summer camp. Camp Minnetonka.�
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  There is not a puff of a breeze. I am afraid to look at Belladonna. Pritch glances up at her, then quickly away. He clears his throat again, wipes his hand on a linen napkin, and resumes reading.

  “Mr. Winslow has chosen to represent himself as a potential investor in cattle futures, using the sums you’ve allocated for this purpose. In such capacity, he has met quite often with Mr. and Mrs. George Hauxton as their guest at the aforementioned Groveside Country Club. During the course of their conversations, he has elicited that the then June Nickerson does indeed remember her youthful jaunt to London in the spring of 1935 and the disappearance of her cousin, one Isabella Nickerson, at that time.”

  “Don’t say that name again,” I warn him.

  He nods without looking up. “Mrs. George Hauxton claims her cousin had run off with a prominent gentleman introduced to her at a costume ball in the country by an acquaintance of June’s named, ah, Henry Hogarth. After receiving several letters from her cousin, then residing happily, she was told, in a rather inaccessible corner of northern Scotland with her new husband, Mrs. Hauxton returned to her parents in Minneapolis and thought no more of it.”

  “The letters were forged,” I say.

  Pritch’s eyes flicker at me; then he goes on. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Winslow notes here, Mrs. George Hauxton was rather peeved on the topic of her cousin. She was still angry that her cousin had found herself a ‘prominent,’ as she put it, man of the landed-gentry persuasion, and had disappeared to the fresh country air without so much as a by-your-leave or an invitation for a weekend visit. Mr. Winslow adds that June thought her cousin had, and I quote, ‘poisoned her with something so that she, June, was unable to attend the costume ball in the country and get her tiara.’”

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “That is, I am afraid, it. Very much it indeed.”

  “Never contacted the police, or wondered why she never heard from her cousin again.”

  “It seems there was this matter of youthful jealousy at play, one might say.”

  “After nearly twenty years she’s still pouting about a tiara.”

  “It appears so.”

  “They’re all living the American dream, right there in Kansas City.” Soon to be the American nightmare, if you ask me.

  “Mr. Winslow is awaiting any further instructions, mum,” Pritch says.

  “Give me the papers,” Belladonna says. He hands them to her. “Thank you and Mr. Winslow for your diligence. You will be contacted when your services are once more required.” She gets up and whispers in my ear, nods good-bye to Pritch, and walks off into the morning haze.

  Pritch knows better than to ask any questions. He downs his drink with a smack of satisfaction.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, and hurry off to the safe in the closet of the tower reading room where we keep a stash of cash. Belladonna has instructed me to double their fee. They’ve earned it, and now will be more than willing to drop everything next time we need them. Pritch looks at me with his usual bland expression when I hand him the wad stuffed into an envelope. If he says aforementioned one more time, I’ll choke him with it.

  “We do not expect more than the agreed-upon fee,” he says.

  “Take it,” I say. “You’ve earned it.”

  “Very well.” He’s no dummy. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  “And thank Mr. Winslow for me, as well. No doubt we shall have the pleasure of his acquaintance someday.”

  “Someday soon, I gather.”

  Like I said, he’s no dummy.

  “They found her. June, I mean,” Belladonna is telling Leandro later that afternoon on their usual walk past the lavender. “What do I do now?”

  “If you do not know what to do then you are not ready to do it,” Leandro says soberly.

  Belladonna bites her lip. For all her plotting in private, it appears she may not be as ready as she wants to be after all. “I should talk to Caterina,” she mumbles.

  “You talk quite enough to Caterina. She has taught you everything you ever need to know about roots and herbs and medicinal cures.”

  Permanent cures for breathing, he means.

  “I don’t want to go to Kansas City,” she says eventually.

  “One can hardly blame you,” he says. “You’ve not left my home in three and a half years. Before that, you hid in Merano. Before that, well … There is a world outside and you have chosen to live without it. My darling, your first journey back to life should not be to Kansas.”

  “Where, then?” Her voice is ragged.

  “A small village not far from here. If you are willing, we shall go the day after tomorrow. Bryony will quite enjoy it. And then, should you agree, we shall go to Firenze.”

  He means to take us to Saturnia, the Cascate del Gorello. The whole family, and Orlando, so Belladonna feels safe out in public, Pasquale and Guido driving us in two cars. I’ve heard of it, the stream meandering from the spring through fields of sunflowers, gushing in heated, furious cascades, reeking of sulfur, in a waterfall over rocks stained a coppery green. The locals sit in it for hours, bathe their babies in it, cure their gout and whatever else ails them.

  What is still ailing us. The waters helped us once before, brought us together. The waters will help us again.

  “The Etruscans discovered the spring,” Leandro tells us as we eat dinner on the piazza of our hotel in the village of Saturnia, “and the Romans had a rule that the waters were available to all warriors. Here, the most bitter of enemies laid down their swords together in order to heal.”

  “So they could go out and fight one another all over again,” I venture.

  “Of course.”

  “I could never lay down my sword next to my enemy’s,” Matteo says.

  “Nor I,” Belladonna says.

  “They will come to you if they don’t know who you are,” Leandro says. “Besides, the Roman Empire is no more.”

  As usual, there is no arguing with his logic. I wouldn’t try, anyway. He looks tired, and I’m worried about him. Perhaps the waters will ease the aches concealed behind that facade of imperturbable confidence and vigor. I feel a pang of deep affection for this man who has turned us away from what could have been a life of nothing but bitterness and confusion. Yes, Belladonna is still full of bitterness and confusion, but under Leandro’s tutelage she is in the process of transforming her life and herself. She is learning precisely how to use her"how shall we say"emotional deficits with skillful perfection.

  That night, while Orlando and Matteo stay with Bryony, I drive Leandro and Belladonna to the waterfall. It is a short walk from the road, down a slight hill, and we hear only the rush of the water and the crickets chirping. The warm summer sky is alive with the constellations. As we sit on the rocks and let the steamy current rush over us, I feel as if the stinging force of the water is a baptism of sorts, pounding the rage and the fear out of my neck, and out of my darling Belladonna, washing away the fears and doubts and the pain of her self-inflicted torture.

  The scent of sulfur is so strong that this could be the water springing straight up from hell. Sent by the devil himself to strengthen the resolve tightening around her heart.

  We stay there for days, taking the waters. It is a difficult cure, and we do little more than read or laze around during the day, or perhaps take a drive on the Montemerano road through the countryside. Belladonna does not seem to mind being away from home, perhaps because we interact so little with the locals. She doesn’t notice that they treat both Leandro and herself with grave deference, or that they call her la fata, “the fairy.” With her piercing green eyes and chestnut hair spilling down her back like Rapunzel’s and her aura of odd remoteness, she seems conjured straight out of the imagination of an old granny telling a bedtime story to a little child.

  She has lived so long away from the reality of the world that she no longer seems a part of it.

  As soon as the night grows dark we go to the cascade, sitting in silence under
the stars, the water pummeling our shoulders. It is not like Merano, but rougher, more vital somehow. Our skin is glowing and I swear my hair has grown an inch. We all exude a faint odor of sulfur, no matter how much we bathe. I’ve never been so exhausted and exhilarated at the same time, and I am keeping a careful eye on Leandro. His color is improving, I’ll say that, so when he asks us if we are ready to leave for a day or two in Firenze, where he has business, I shove my anxiety aside and quickly agree. Belladonna hides her reluctance, but when Orlando tells her he won’t let her out of his sight, that she will be safe, she cannot bring herself to disagree. I think she’s relieved, after all this time.

  She needs to visit a proper city; she needs to move among people. She needs to realize that to strangers she is but another woman, strolling through the streets, of no importance to their lives. Hidden under a broad straw sun hat and large tortoiseshell sunglasses, she trails behind Matteo and Bryony, Orlando and myself at her side, window-shopping on the Via Tomabuoni. No one is looking for her or at her. No one cares. No one can see her face, even if they try.

  It is very reassuring to see her shoulders relax, to murmur politely at shopkeepers when I am deeply engrossed in some serious shopping accidents, glutton that I am, scooping up the finest lambskin leathers, wallets and notebooks and shoes. I find a tiny shop crammed with scented inks in the oddest colors and fat marbleized lacquer fountain pens, and I buy reams of handmade paper, just because it is so lovely. I make her handle the money and hail a taxi and order her meals in restaurants, like a normal person. She hasn’t done so in sixteen years. It must be a bit of a shock, standing on concrete as traffic whizzes by. But Firenze is a small, beautiful city, and its scale is not overwhelming. The locals are friendly, and she understands their language. She has already found a favorite place in the Boboli Gardens, the big Oceanus Fountain surrounded by a moated garden, down at the end of what Bryony calls “the cypress street.”