The Last Will of Moira Leahy (25 page)

Remembered Ermanno’s faltering expression—recognition, maybe—when he saw me.
You should be looking for me. Not him. Me
. Had Ermanno intended to masquerade as an
empu
, all for the
keris?
Had he developed a new plan after his first one failed?

Remembered Ermanno’s hand in my purse and his purple face at Il Sotto Abbasso.

Remembered that Ermanno, as temporary landlord, had keys to every apartment. If he’d found the note I’d meant for his brother, he’d know that I still had the
keris
after all. What could he do? Go to my room. Try the handle. Lure me away from the blade with another note. Or maybe he just wanted to turn me into another half-baked burn mark in the museum of purgatory.

Maybe I should go to the museum. Maybe Ermanno would be there and I could confront him, one last time. But I’d promised Noel—promised—and I didn’t want him to ever wonder if he should’ve jumped from that train and into the English Channel to get back to me.

“IF NOEL’S
gone and the
empu
guy’s gone, why not come home?” Kit asked for the third time when we spoke that night. I’d called to explain why I’d registered under a new name—Betheny Castine—and that I hadn’t had a psychotic break. “I’m worried about you, and your cat misses you,” she said as I unpacked in my new room. The layout was the same, but the colors were darker—coffee brown and sapphire blue.

“I’m not coming home yet because I have more to see,” I told her. “And I refuse to let Ermanno chase me away.”

“Who’s Ermanno?”

My resistance was down. I told her everything: that a guy with a love of black magic had been following me around Betheny, leaving me notes; that Noel was convinced Ermanno had lured me to Rome and was continuing to lead me around on a chase fit for a goose; that Ermanno had developed a fascination with my
keris
and seemed determined to get it; that his tenants spoke of the trickster’s butter-coated, skeleton-key fingers; that I didn’t trust him to keep those fingers away from my hotel door; that he was the reason I’d changed my location—and my name.

“Wait a minute,” Kit said. “He’s wanted the
keris
for weeks? That’s why he was in Betheny, following you around? And he has a history of breaking and entering?”

“Well”—I tried to close the drawer I’d filled; it stuck—“I can’t be sure, but—”

“Maeve, was that
keris
hidden or something the day our apartment was left open? The day the dog got out?”

I abandoned the drawer. “No, I had it with me.” At the university, then Time After Time. “Why?”

“I didn’t leave our apartment unlocked.”

“Yes, you—”

“I wasn’t home until that night, when I ran into your father and helped him bring that boat table inside.”

“Kit, are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, as I sat heavily on the floor. “I didn’t say anything because I thought you’d done it and you’d forgotten, and I didn’t want to make you feel … Well, and then your dad had that ticket to Rome, and a vacation seemed like the perfect chance for you to get your health back. Could you have left the door unlocked, Maeve? Is it possible?”

“No,” I said, remembering Sparky’s little face as we’d left that day, her distress at being the one left behind. Remembered, too, finding her barking madly on the lawn, coated with ice. Upset because she’d known a fox had been close, sniffing around.

He’d been there. Ermanno had been inside my apartment.

“Come home.”

“No. Like I said, I won’t let Ermanno chase me away.”

For several minutes, I tried to convince her not to worry, but my limbs trembled in the sheets when I lay down and I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the lamp. I kept the
keris
by my side, hating Ermanno for making me so fearful—especially after all I’d gone through, after all I’d accomplished.

Purgatory. Purge. Out with the old, in with the new. I thought of timeworn appliances flung from windows to land on the stones below, like dead crows dropped from the sky. Purge. Purify. Pure. Fresh. Free of corruption. Absolute. Cleansed.

I fell asleep like that: the lights on, slurred chords in my head. And I woke the next day with it all still there, and rose, and headed out, without stopping for coffee—and without fear—to visit Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio.

THOUGH I’D ANTICIPATED
the museum of purgatory to be an exhibition of the bizarrely morbid—as in crawling skeletons glued to the walls—I found an understated museum just off a Gothic church, housed in a little room that smelled of soup. A few people milled around inside, including a nun who smiled at me when I entered. No sign of Ermanno. I hugged my purse a little closer.

Behind a locked case, a scatter of frames held papers, documents. One bore a smudge purported to be the scorch mark of a hand, though it looked more like the print of a dove to me.

The nun stepped beside me. “What a miracle,” she said, in English.

“Do you really think so?”

“Oh! You’re American!” She giggled, covered her mouth with her hand. “I should’ve paid more attention to my languages. I can barely speak a word of Italian.”

“So many here speak English,” I told her. “You’ll be fine.”

“Yes, people have been kind.” She regarded the case again. “What a wonderful way to remind us of the power of prayer.”

“How do you mean?”

“All of these requests sent from those poor in-between souls in purgatory, asking for masses. Without prayer, these people never would’ve made it into heaven.” She smiled. “I’m sure they’re there now. These pleas were made long ago and many prayers were surely said. But I’ll pray for them all, just in case.”

“You believe in purgatory?”

Flecks of orange danced in the brown tint around her dilated pupils. “Oh, yes! All of the dead need our prayers, dear. So many do.”

What silliness. I looked again at the objects and their scars. Singed fingerprints on a book. Scorch marks on pillowcases and shirtsleeves, on nightcaps and other papers. More burned handprints on a table. Requests for prayers, for help? How easy these items would be to create. Why should anyone believe? What did it prove to trust in any of it?

“Sister Lynn. It’s time, dear.”

Another nun stood at the door, much older than the one beside me, and much sterner of face.

“Yes, sister. I’m coming.” Sister Lynn turned to me with a furrowed brow. “That woman never takes a break,” she muttered, then added, louder, “It was nice speaking with you.”

“You, too,” I said.

Alone in the room now, I read an account:
21 December 1838
. The night a hand became imprinted on a page. Reports of a presence, chill air, and hearing the voice of the dead—of a brother who asked for help to end his suffering in purgatory.

I thought of Moira, all that I used to share of her feelings. Not dead. Not dead. But …

Idée fixe
, I could not shake the thought. What would it be like to be in a coma? What would it be like to die and still breathe and breathe and breathe? My vision flashed white, to an image of me or Moira—one of us—seconds away from stabbing her shadow, and I knew even as my throat coated with acid.

Like purgatory
.

“THERE IS
a message,” Giovanni said when I returned to the hotel. He reached behind the counter, handed me a note.

Maeve Leahy, let us meet
Via della Scala —, No. 47
I will stay through January 6
Salam
Empu Putra

So Ermanno had finally come right out and claimed his brother’s identity. Little did he know his
V’s
gave him away. I wasn’t afraid this time. I was angry.

“The man who left this—you didn’t tell him I was still here, did you?” We’d talked about this yesterday. My parents, Kit, and Noel were the only people allowed access to me.

“A boy ran in and put this on the counter,” Giovanni said. “We did not see any man.”

Later that night, I heard from Noel with news that made my heart race for the right reasons: He’d found his mother. She’d been afraid to answer her door at first, then sobbed after realizing who he was. They’d talked for hours.

“We were both nervous. God, I told the worst jokes,” he said, as I remembered the boy he was, the child who’d tickled her feet. “She’s a potter. She’s going to show me her studio tomorrow.” She’d promised not to run.

I couldn’t have been happier for him and told him so, then reassured him that I was safe and not planning anything stupid. I didn’t mention my trip to the museum or the new beckoning note. I wouldn’t let him worry about me when he was dealing with something as singular and life altering as reconnecting with Faith Ryan, trying to oil her rusty smile.

I told him that I loved him. He said he loved me, too. But when I hung up, I recognized the feeling that sometimes ran wild in my blood with presentient assuredness. It would be a long time before I’d see Noel Ryan again.

I SPENT THE NEXT
seventy-two hours trying to ignore the approach of January 6, even though “Harlem Nocturne” looped through me continuously. During the day, I traversed the city. I finally saw the Forum, the Colosseum, and Michelangelo’s dome, and ate my fill of tiramisu and gelato. I watched a puppet show. At night, I stayed in, ate at the bar, spoke with Noel.

I was particularly restless on the fifth. I took a tour of Rome’s famous bridges, and even stepped over the one that led to Ermanno’s apartments. If he was there, hiding in the cool bulb at the top of a lamppost, I didn’t see him, but I could almost feel the growing momentum of that second shoe—the one that was about to drop.

That night, as I filled the sink with hot water to wash a few things, I found something theory-shattering in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

Visit Il Sotto Abbasso

This was the extra note I’d picked up about the jazz club—not the note Noel had found first. I’d forgotten all about it. Though their messages had been identical, their styles were not; this one was written with the same
V
as the initial invitation to Trastevere.

I leaned against the countertop and stared at myself in the mirror. The jazz club was the only place I’d seen Ermanno outside of the apartment building. Was there something special—?

It’s only open Sunday nights. He didn’t know if he’d see you again at the apartments; he’d hoped to catch you at the club
.

To persuade me—or frighten me—into giving him the
keris
. But why two notes?

Insurance. He saw Noel take the first one and didn’t trust him to pass it on. He thought it could be his last chance
.

If that was true—if Ermanno had left
this
note—this loopy, flourishy note—and was one of the two authors of the note left for me in Betheny, then he’d written the first line:
Visit with me in the New Year
. Why?

Because he knew his brother would be gone by then, and he wanted you—and the
keris—
all to himself
.

Suddenly Ermanno’s words made a more perfect sense.
Never enough speed, never enough luck. You should be looking for me. Not him. Me
.

Noel was right. Ermanno had been in Betheny. He’d followed me and broken into my home. He’d duplicated one note and altered another. He’d meant to intimidate me.

Noel was also wrong. Whatever the bounds of the Italian’s obsession with the
keris
, whatever its root, Sri Putra had been behind the directives.
He
had sent me to Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Villa Borghese, and Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio, and had left one of the notes about Il Sotto Abbasso. He was alive. Safe. Escaped from his brother’s sleeve. And tomorrow was January 6—our last chance to meet.

Things weren’t always what they seemed. How could I have forgotten?

In the morning, I would walk to Sri Putra’s home. One last time.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE EMPU

I
rose early and dressed in clothes Giovanni would not approve of—khakis and a button-down cotton shirt. I was prepared to defend my comfortable choice when I stepped into the lobby, but I found he’d donned something a little more casual as well: a hat, white wig, wire-rim glasses, plaid skirt, black shawl, and apron. His face looked covered in soot, and he stood beside a broom as he passed gifts to two children.

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” I asked him when the boys, who looked to be about three and five, sat before us to open their presents.

“I am good, like Santa. You have not heard of Befana?” he asked, and I shook my head. “It is the holiday Epiphany today and we like to please the guests.” He mouthed, “My mama.”

I smiled as the older boy ripped off the wrappings to reveal a panettone box. He seemed less than pleased; he sprang up, knocked Giovanni’s faux glasses onto the floor, then raced to the bar. “Mama, Mama!” he cried, as his brother continued to work at his tape.

“Who could not like panettone?” Giovanni said with a frown. “We ran out of knicky knacks two hours ago.” He picked up his glasses and settled them back on his face.

“You’re a good man, Giovanni Benedetto Chioli,” I said.

“That is right. A good man.” He smoothed his skirt.

My mood degraded a bit as I walked to meet with the mysterious Sri Putra. He and Ermanno were brothers—
half
brothers. Were they alike or not? I’d once said, in an attempt to silence my father, that chasing the
empu
might find me chopped into bits and left in a suitcase. Truth was, I
had
followed a stranger to a foreign land. Anything could happen. Anything might. I continued on, though I hoped I wasn’t treading my own personal plank.

The familiar flag of Italy slapped back at the wind as I stepped under it and into the apartment building. I pulled the
keris
from my bag, walked the hall with light steps. There was no movement here, no life. No sound either, until I lifted my hand to knock on Putra’s battered door and a thud emanated from the overcast end of the hall. I knew a stairway lurked in the darkness there—knew who used it, too.

I’d just unsheathed the
keris
when the door beside me opened. A man stood there. Not Ermanno. In fact, this man couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. His face bore deep creases, and he dressed all in black, including that funny hat I’d seen just once before.

“Good. You are brave,” he said with a light, melodic accent. Indonesian.

“You’re really real.” I shook my head, tried again. “You’re Sri Putra.”

“You are Maeve Leahy.” He smiled, and I saw that the lines on his face were forged from these smiles. “I am sorry to miss you before now. Come then. Enter.”

He left the door open, but disappeared back into the room. I stood there as that familiar scent slithered into my nose and mouth, down my spine. What was it?

“Frankincense,” said Sri Putra’s voice from within.

“Excuse me?” The aroma strung me along, until I teetered on the threshold. No sign of Ermanno.

“The smell is frankincense. You are safe here,” he said, and I realized I still held the
keris
out before me. Was the man psychic? I’d never experienced anything like that outside of my own blood. I lowered the weapon and stepped into the apartment.

All of my questions, even my apprehensions, vanished when I saw the ruin. The puppets that had charmed me weeks ago now dangled by their necks, their legs ripped off, cut off, burned, their brass tubes bent. Some were strung up by their feet, beheaded altogether. The shelves were emptied, hacked up, and splayed at haphazard splintery angles on the floor. Chimes that had once tinkled beneath the vent were torn down; a single strand hung alone now, never to make music again.

I walked farther into the room, past walls marked with large red
X’s
, to find the elaborate relief panels had suffered an active war—queens and forest animals defiled, smeared over with something I hoped was only soot. Chopped wooden figurines sat mounded on the floor along with the skinny-pot instrument I couldn’t name before—its strings pulled out, its neck broken.

“You are a musician. Why do you not make music?”

I rounded on him. “What do you know about me? Why did you go to Betheny and leave that book and the notes and pound nails into my door? What’s wrong with you people?”

“I did not do this.” He indicated the wreckage.

“Then what’s wrong with your brother?”

“Ermanno is broken, so he likes to break.” The words felt like a shrug.

“You accept this?”

“It is a sorrow, but I am still whole.” He folded his hands. “Are you whole, Maeve Leahy, or are you broken?”

He couldn’t know about Moira, though I had the sense he did know, that he knew everything. The idea twined through me like ivy, until I felt choked by it. “I don’t know how to answer that,” I said, “and even if I did, you haven’t answered my questions yet.”

“Come then. Let us speak together.”

I followed him to a nook just beyond the door, where rumpled purple pillows lay scattered on the floor beside several large unlit candles. Natural light filtered in from two adjoining rooms, though the red-
X
-ed walls were cast in shadow. I peered beyond to a small kitchen where pots hung from the ceiling, a scene strongly reminiscent of Time After Time.

Feathers lifted from the ground as Sri Putra sat on a cushion. I sat as well and crossed my legs, then sheathed the
keris
with some reluctance. Around us, several fabric shells lay deflated—slashed and emptied.

“I have many left to repair,” he said. “The table is destroyed. Are you uncomfortable?”

“I’m fine.” I imagined him on his knees, searching for feathers, stuffing them back inside their sleeves and stitching edges together. But I didn’t want to feel sorry for Putra just then. I wanted answers.

“Ask your questions,” he said. “I will answer.”

The man had an eerie knack. “Why were you in Betheny?”

“That is where many dreams took me,” he said, “so I went.”

I wouldn’t focus on Ermanno and his poisonous behavior, but this much I wanted to know—it would be a test of the
empu’s
forthrightness and my assumptions. “Was your brother in those dreams, too? Was he in Betheny?”

“Ermanno was there, it is true. I should not have stayed so long with him, but I wanted to know you were the one for the
keris.”

This made no sense to me. “How’s that your place to say?” I argued. “I won it at an auction. I paid for it.”

“I would have given it to you, but that is how it happened after I brought it there.”

My eyes bugged, kicked open at last. “You brought it to the auction? It was yours? But you bid on it!”

“I did,” he said with a hint of a smile. “I admit I doubted fate. I had to make sure there would be only one who wanted it enough to fight.”

“There was more than one, though,” I said. “Your brother wanted it. He still wants it. Why didn’t you give it to him?”

The
empu
nodded. “I believed that Ermanno understood the
keris
would choose its fate and that it was not meant for him. He knew that I had seen a woman in my dreams, and he said that he also wanted to see the
keris
find you. It was because I recognized you at the auction that I let you win.”

“Let
me?” He obviously didn’t know the power of Irish resolve. “Look,” I said, “don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I won the
keris
, but it could just as easily have been anyone else. It was a fluke I even went out that night.”

“I believe you are wrong. There is one meant for this
keris
. That is you. This at least you must believe.”

“Why must I?”

“You feel no kinship with it?”

“Kinship? I admired it, so I wanted it.”

Loved it at first glance
.

“I’m glad I have it,” I continued.

Felt sick when it was lost
.

But these feelings, bound with memory, proved nothing.

It’s changed you
.

“Has it changed you?” he asked, like a shadow sound with the power to stab. “Have you walked a bolder path since the
keris
found you?”

His wording rattled me.
“I
found
it
on a table with a bunch of other things people didn’t want anymore.”

Like music
.

“I liked it,” I said. “I bid on it, I wrote a check for it, I took it home. All actions I controlled.”

“Your mind and actions are always your own with no strings or wires.” He indicated the myriad puppets around us, their broken parts useful now only for analogy. “The
keris
would wish to help you on your true life path and that is all.”

Despite the frown on my face, his smile didn’t turn. He pulled several candles close, then lit them one by one until the shadows crept back into the creases of the wall. I noticed for the first time that the corners of the ceiling bore a scattering of sapphire blue stars.

“So you wanted me to know about the
keris,”
I said. “You left a book for me, and your address in Trastevere, but why not just tell me where I could find you while you were in Betheny?”

“I left a note for you with the book,” he said. “You were to let me know how it went with the
keris
and ask any questions you might have had. I left the phone number for my hotel.”

“I received only the book.”

“Only?” Sri Putra glanced at an empty cushion shell and blew out the match. I knew his thoughts: Ermanno had taken the note, buying himself time and ensuring my confusion. I had the feeling that Sri Putra had known little to nothing about his brother’s machinations. Time for illumination.

“This is everything I have.” I pulled out seven notes: six from him and one from Ermanno. I set those down for him to see, then handed him an eighth—the note with his address that Ermanno had altered, the one that had lured me here. Sri Putra almost seemed to age as he studied the defiled invitation, then the extra note that had led me to the jazz bar.

“This went further than I knew,” he said. “I am sorry. My mind has been elsewhere.”

The
X
-marked walls featured prominently in my peripheral vision, and I remembered the illness he’d been attending to. Had someone died?

“Ermanno’s mother died.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I mumbled automatically, and he inclined his head.

“I have stayed beside her these last days as she slept the deepest sleep of near death. Her sickness began a year ago, and so I moved here to be close. The
keris came
to me shortly after that.” He focused on a flame. “Perhaps I should not have stayed. Ermanno was intrigued by the
keris
and my way of finding you. I should not have told him as much as I did or let him travel with me, but I still have guilt.”

“Guilt?”

He regarded me. “Let us speak more of Ermanno later,” he said. “Focus now on what is in your hands. Your fate. Your questions.”

My fingers contracted around the
keris
in my lap. “Why did you travel all the way from Rome to a little upstate New York town over a dream and a
keris?”

“Why have you come so far to talk about it?” he countered.

“I lost my mind,” I said, then, “My father forced me.” Still, another response rose above the others.

Avventura
.

Yes, I’d had that during my trip to Rome. I’d played an instrument again and reconnected with my music. I’d accepted love. I’d taken a picture of a woman hanging laundry on a line.

I flashed to a memory of Moira and me in our boat, young and dressed as pirates, as sure of our futures as my grip on a
keris
. Maybe I’d wanted unwavering confidence again, to be Alvilda for a while or just have the balls Ian used to say I had. Maybe that’s why I’d bought the
keris
and come to Rome.

“I don’t know why I came,” I said.

He studied me with an intensity I thought only Noel possessed. “What have you learned? Consider your journey to know the will of the
keris
. Did you bow to the truth, the past, the present?”

His words struck hard, reverberated through me like a gong.

Truth: the Mouth of Truth, where I’d acknowledged some of my core self.

Past: the Etruscan Museum, and Borghese Gallery and the rape statue, where I’d remembered what I’d lost.

Present: Il Sotto Abbasso, where I’d reconnected with a piece of my soul, my music.

So what was the Museum of Purgatory? Moira’s present? Her future? Mine?

It’s what you fear. All of it
.

“What do you fear?” he asked.

I drew a sharp breath. How could he, this small man, this outsider, probe with such precision through layers of skin and muscle and bone, to see the secrets lodged inside of me? How could he know what my experience had been? There’d only been one who could ever do that, only one who ever should.