In Love In Lucca Read online

  At the same time he had no alternative.

  “Write this!” he ordered her abruptly.

  “I am a prisoner and this is my hair.”

  Paola wrote down in English what he had said.

  He looked over her shoulder as if he was trying to read it and then he continued,

  “If you don’t give us the ring by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, my capturers will send you for every day you make them wait one of my fingers and then one of my toes.”

  Paola gave a little shriek.

  “You cannot – mean that! How can you be – so cruel, so – wicked?”

  “You write what I tell you!” the Big Man shouted. “Or I’ll send him the tip of your nose now!”

  Trembling at the way he spoke, Paola wrote down what he had said.

  “Put the ring,” the Big Man went on, “outside the garden gate, but if anyone follows or arrests the man who is sent for it, I will die and you will never see me again.”

  His guttural voice ceased and Paola whispered,

  “You – cannot mean – this!”

  “I mean it!” the Big Man grated. “Now sign your name.”

  Paola lifted her pen again and then she wrote,

  “I shall be watching every minute that passes until the sun rises, praying that you will save me.

  Paola.”

  “What have you said that I have not told you to say?” the Big Man asked angrily.

  Paola translated it for him back into Italian.

  She thought that he might protest, but instead with an unpleasant smirk he said quickly,

  “That should bring me the ring, before I cut off your finger.”

  Although she did not want to show how frightened she was, Paola took her hands off the table and pressed them against her body.

  The Big Man made her read again what she had written.

  Then he put the letter into an envelope together with Paola’s lock of hair and he gave it to one of the Indians with a number of instructions as to where he must leave it.

  Paola did not listen. She was only praying the Marchese would receive it before the Big Man cut off her finger.

  She felt that this was some horrible nightmare that she could not awake from.

  She looked at the strength of the walls.

  The great rounded bastions outside had resisted enemy after enemy over the ages and she could not think of any way that the Marchese could break in and save her.

  She could only go on praying as she had said in the letter she would.

  Now she was asking God and St. Francis to make the Marchese understand that she was in a watchtower and it was on the East side of the City.

  ‘Make him understand, God,’ she prayed, ‘and let him save me before I lose my finger.’

  She felt her whole body shivering at the thought of the agony of it.

  Then she knew that only by a miracle could anyone rescue her from the vast Medieval bastions that encircled Lucca.

  *

  The Marchese was fast asleep when Ugo came into his room. He was carrying a candle, which he set down by the bed.

  Then he said in a low but clear voice,

  “Wake Master. Wake up!”

  The Marchese opened his eyes.

  For a moment he thought that it must be morning and then he realised that the room was dark.

  “What is it? What has happened?” he asked.

  In answer Ugo held out an envelope.

  “Where did this come from?” the Marchese asked as he sat up in bed.

  “A man threw it over the gates at the Policeman guarding them,” Ugo replied. “He had come swiftly out of the darkness and had gone before they could even see him.”

  The Marchese opened the envelope.

  As he pulled out the paper, a lock of Paola’s golden hair fell onto the sheets.

  He stared at it and then read what was written.

  When he had done so, he sprang out of bed, picking up his robe, which lay over a chair.

  He opened the door and carrying a candle, ran down the corridor and burst into Paola’s bedroom.

  By the light of his candle saw at one glance what had happened. The empty bed from which two blankets had been removed and the wide open window.

  He looked outside and saw two Policemen lying on the ground apparently unconscious or dead. Other policemen were bending over them.

  He went back to his own room and started to dress.

  While he did so, he was reading again and again the letter Paola had sent him.

  He was sure that she had put somewhere in it an indication of where she was being held.

  Then almost as if he could feel her speaking to him, he knew that she was praying that he would understand and he did.

  It was four o’clock in the morning.

  He ran down the stairs to find the Policeman who was in charge of the others waiting for him.

  “What has happened? How could this have occurred?” the Marchese asked sharply.

  “I can only apologise, Signore Marchese,” the policeman replied, “but when you told us there were Indians who were threatening you, we did not understand that they were Thuggees.”

  “Thuggees!” the Marchese exclaimed.

  He knew only too well that they were the most dangerous tribe in India and that they had been almost exterminated in the past twenty-five years.

  Yet their method of strangling a man so quickly and so efficiently that he was dead before he could struggle had been an art known to a number of much feared tribes.

  “Both the Policemen at the back of the villa have been strangled,” the Chief Policeman was saying. “No one saw what happened or how the men managed to reach them without being observed.”

  The Marchese knew that this was all part of Thuggee, but there was no point in explaining it to an Italian Policeman.

  He merely said,

  “I want your most reliable and experienced men here as quickly as possible, all of them armed. And I want to know which of the ramparts on the East of the City are being repaired.”

  “There is only one, signore,” the Policeman told him.

  “Then hurry and assemble your men,” the Marchese said sharply.

  He glanced up at the sky as he spoke.

  He was afraid that the evening stars would already have gone and the first rays of the sun were appearing.

  As he did so, he was quite sure that he could hear Paola calling him.

  He felt as if his whole body responded in answer to her prayer.

  ‘I will save you! I swear I will save you!’

  He was not certain if he said the words aloud or in his heart.

  But he had a strange feeling that they would reach her.

  *

  After the man had been sent away with the letter, the Big Man and the other Indians moved out of the room where Paola was.

  She could hear them talking next door, but the walls, however, were so thick that she could not distinguish what they were saying.

  They had left her without undoing the ropes round her ankles, but she now managed with some difficulty to untie them. They had been very tight and hurt her.

  The men had left one candle behind and now she could see more clearly what sort of place it was where she was imprisoned.

  The Contessa had told her how thick the walls of the ramparts were and she had also said how unusual it was to find intact Medieval ramparts like those that encircled Lucca.

  “There are four miles of them,” she had said proudly, “and everyone in the City is prepared to subscribe to keep them in good repair.”

  Paola peeped through the door the men had left open behind them and she could see that this part of the ramparts was definitely in need of repair.

  Bricks had fallen onto the floor, there were holes in the floor itself and at one place near the end of the passage she could see that the ceiling had fallen in.

  She guessed that this was why the Big Man and his Indians had been able to find a way into th
e ramparts.

  It made a very effective prison and she was quite sure that no one would think of looking for her in such an unlikely place.

  She had understood that the ramparts were kept closed and locked except when they were opened for visitors.

  Would the Marchese understand or guess from what she had written that she was in what the English would call a watchtower?

  There was a very different word for it in Italian.

  Would he understand from her writing, ‘until the sun rises’, that the watchtower in which she was held was on the East side of the City?

  It had been too risky to make it any clearer, but surely the Marchese, who was so astute and had travelled so much, would comprehend what she was trying to tell him.

  She went back and sat down in the chair.

  It was the only piece of furniture in the room except the table.

  Even as she did so, the Big Man came in from the next room.

  “I’m locking you in,” he said, “so you’ll not be able to escape. If you try, I’ll kill you. Just you stay put and hope the ring comes or you’ll lose the first finger of your left hand.”

  He was deliberately provoking her and, although she was so terrified, Paola managed to raise her chin.

  “I believe God will help me,” she said quietly, “just as He helped me escape from the last place you imprisoned us.”

  “I’ll take care you don’t do that again,” the Big Man snarled in an ugly voice, “but, of course, that Marchese you fancy may decide he has plenty of other women besides you!”

  He almost spat the last words at her and Paola felt that it would be undignified to answer him.

  She turned her face away and the Big Man shouted in a sudden fury,

  “I’ll have that ring back from him, if I’ve to kill him for it. That’s what I’ll do, sooner or later, you mark my words!”

  He turned away as he spoke and slammed the door to behind him.

  It was very heavy and, when Paola heard the key turn in the lock, she knew that she was imprisoned in a place from which there could be no escape.

  She had the feeling, after what the Big Man had said, that even if he got the ring back he would still take his revenge on the Marchese and on her.

  ‘If I have to die,’ Paola thought, ‘I hope he is with me. I should be even more frightened – alone.’

  As she thought of it, she wanted to scream and go on screaming.

  She was shut in and the thickness of the walls made it impossible for anyone to break out.

  ‘I don’t want – to die,’ she was thinking. ‘There is so much in – the world I want to see. There is so much I want to do.’

  The Marchese had promised to show her his treasures and she knew that his Picture Gallery would be entrancing.

  She felt again that strange feeling she had felt when he had held her hand in both his and when they had gazed into each other’s eyes.

  He was so handsome.

  Yet, as the Big Man had said, he had so many women, why should he worry about her?

  Perhaps he would just ignore the threatening letter and let her die. He would have every excuse to say that he could not find her.

  Now her whole body was reaching out towards him.

  She was pleading with him and praying for him to come to her.

  She felt as if her prayers were like doves flying out from her breast towards him. And they would tell him where she was.

  ‘Come to – me! Save – me! Save – me!’ she begged.

  She felt that she could see his eyes gazing deep into hers.

  She could feel his hands and the closeness of his body.

  ‘Come to – me! Please – come to – me!’

  It was a prayer that came not only from her heart but from her soul.

  She was so convinced that he must hear her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Paola opened her eyes.

  She thought that she had been praying for so long that she must have dozed off. She was still sitting on the chair beside the table.

  The Big Man had left on it the ink that she had used for the letter to the Marchese and also a lantern that had burnt out.

  Then Paola realised that there was some light in the room.

  She saw what she had not noticed before.

  That in the wall at the far end there was an arrow-slit aperture.

  It had been dark outside when she had been brought here and it had never struck her for a moment that there was a window or any way of looking out from the enormously thick walls that enclosed her.

  Now she saw that there was a faint light coming through the arrow-slit and it was dawn.

  It was then, as if someone had struck her a blow, she realised that the sun was rising in the East and the Marchese had not come to save her!

  He could not have understood her subtle message or perhaps he was no longer interested.

  She could not believe that this was the truth, but the mere thought of it was like a knife turning in her heart.

  Stiffly pulling the blanket around her, she walked towards the arrow-slit and she discovered if she stood on tiptoe that she could just peep through it.

  The glass with which it had been filled in later was thick and very dirty.

  But Paola was right in thinking that the dawn was breaking.

  There was only a faint twinkle of the stars overhead and the light was rising into the sky.

  She stood trying to look out and at the same time she felt a dull despair that the Marchese had not understood.

  She could hardly believe that the Big Man would really cut off her finger.

  But she could see the gap in her hair, which hung over her shoulders, which was where he had cut away a piece over four inches long.

  ‘Nothing can – save me now,’ she trembled, as the light grew brighter.

  Then there was gold in the sky and a few moments later the first tentative fingers of the sun.

  She felt as if she was watching the last flicker of her own life.

  When the Big Man did come, he would not only cut off her finger but perhaps kill her!

  It was at that moment she heard his voice, gruff and grating.

  He was saying something to the men he had spent the night with in the adjacent room.

  His voice was getting louder and Paola found it impossible to breathe.

  She turned round from the arrow-slit as she heard him put the key in the lock.

  The door swung open and, as he came in, she could see that he was carrying in his right hand the long sharp knife he had used to cut off her hair.

  He stood there looking at her, she thought, with an evil enjoyment. She was his victim and she could not escape.

  Then he walked forwards holding up his knife so that the light from the sun glittered on it.

  Paola screamed.

  Even as she did so, there was a resounding report that seemed to echo and re-echo round the room.

  The Big Man toppled forward with a crash.

  Behind him in the doorway was the Marchese.

  He was there, seeming to fill the whole place with his presence, with a smoking revolver in his hand.

  Paola gave another cry, which came from her very heart.

  She dropped the blanket she was holding round her and ran just in her nightgown towards the Marchese.

  She flung herself against him.

  As his arms went round her, she cried,

  “You – have – come! You – have – come! You – understood! I have been – so frightened! So very – frightened!”

  “I knew you must be,” the Marchese said, “but I had to wait for that devil to unlock the door.”

  As he was speaking, he was gazing down at her and at her eyes looking up into his with the tears running down her cheeks.

  He thought that it was impossible for any woman to look so lovely but at the same time so much in need of protection.

  Just for one moment he did not move and then his lips were on hers.

>   To Paola it was as if the Heavens opened and the miracle she had prayed for enveloped her completely.

  The terror that had shaken her whole body seemed to evaporate and a warmth that might have been from the sun crept through her lips down into her breast.

  The danger was past.

  The Marchese was kissing her and it was Heaven to be in his arms.

  It had all happened so quickly.

  Then, while his lips held hers captive, there was the sudden explosion of other shots being fired in the adjacent room.

  The Marchese raised his head.

  “I must get you out of this!”

  Paola could hardly understand what he was saying, as he set her on one side and walked across the room.

  He picked up the blanket she had left lying beneath the arrow-slit and brought it to her.

  He put his revolver in his pocket and, wrapping her in the blanket, lifted her up in his arms.

  She hid her face against his shoulder so that she did not see what had happened in the other room as they passed it.

  The Marchese hurried along the passage and down the steps to the entrance.

  Outside the arched door his carriage was waiting.

  There were several Policemen beside it, but the Marchese ignored them.

  He first put Paola inside the carriage and then joined her and the coachman, as if on his orders, drove off immediately.

  As he did so, the Marchese put his arm round Paola and drew her close to him.

  “It’s all over,” he said, “and you have been very brave!”

  “I was – frightened! Terribly – frightened that – you would not – understand.”

  “I understood,” he said, “and I knew what agony you must be suffering. But when I came along the passage to where you were hidden, I had to wait until the door was open.”

  “And you – killed him!” Paola murmured.

  “He deserved to die. He has already committed a great number of murders and his men killed two of our Policemen.”

  “And – now at last – you are – safe from them.”

  The Marchese thought that no other woman would be thinking of him at this moment rather than of herself.

  “You saved me when you climbed up that appalling dirty chimney and now I have saved you. I think we both have a great deal to be thankful for.”