The Contessa's Vendetta (4 page)

Two dark
eyes looked into mine. “Be calm, my lady. I commend you to Christ!” He made the sign of the cross on my forehead.

It was the monk
, and I was happy to see he had returned from his errand of mercy. Though I struggled to speak, I managed to rasp out an inquiry about the boy.

The holy man crossed himself.
“May his soul rest in peace. I found him dead.”

Dead? So soon?
I could not understand it and drifted off again into an addled state.

Time passed.
Intense, intolerable pain, tortured me. Through my delirium I heard muffled, sad sounds like a chants or prayers. I also heard the tinkle of a bell, but my mind lurched with thoughts and visions that seemed both real and false at the same time. “Not to the villa!” I shrieked. “No, not there! You shall not take me. A curse upon anyone who disobeys!”

It seemed as if someone
had dragged me into a deep hollow. The monk stood above me. I could not plead with him, could not move a limb, but through the narrow slits of my closed eyes, I caught a glimpse of a silver crucifix sparkling above me. With one last cry for help, I fell down, down, into a void of dark oblivion where time had no beginning and no end.

S
ilence and total blackness engulfed me. The gloom held me trapped. Dreamy visions fluttered through my mind, at first vague, but later more clear. In what horrifying darkness was I? Slowly my senses returned, and I remembered my illness. The monk, the innkeeper, where were they? Where had they put me? I was lying on my back upon a very hard, uncomfortable surface, without so much as a pillow, or sheet.

A prickling sensation shot through my veins. My hands were warm and my heart beat strongly. I struggled to breathe. Air! I must have air! I raised my hands, but they struck
wood above and around me. A horrible realization flashed into my mind: someone had buried me alive in a coffin! They must have believed me dead from the plague. 

Terror and fury blazed through me. I wrenched and scratched at the wood surrounding me with the entire force of my body. I strained to push open the closed lid, but my efforts were in vain.

Icy drops of sweat trickled down my forehead as I gasped for breath. Summoning my energy for one last attempt, driven by desperation, I hurled my body hard against one side of my narrow prison. It cracked and split, but no light showed through the crack, and a horrid new fear beset me. If they had buried me in the ground, what good was it to break open the coffin and let in the damp, maggot-ridden mould? It would choke and silence me forever. I recoiled at the thought and wavered on the verge of madness. A scream flew from my lips; a sound that rasped like the rattle in the throat of a person about to die. Yet, I breathed easily. Even in my bewilderment, I was conscious of air. Blessed air was rushing in from somewhere. 

Encouraged, I felt around with both hands until I found the
crack in the wood I had made. With frenzied swiftness, I yanked and heaved at the wood, but made little progress. After regaining my breath and wiping the sweat from my forehead, I tried again. Splinters cut into my fingers; my desperation kept me focused on the task. Soon, the opening widened and with one more push and kick, the entire side of the coffin gave way.

I
managed to force up the lid and stretched out my arms. No weight of earth impeded my movements. Nothing but empty air encircled me. Instinctively I leaped out of the unbearable coffin and fell to the ground, bruising my hands and knees on a stone pavement.

From somewhere beside me, s
omething heavy fell with a loud, splintering crash.

In the darkness, I breathed deeply of cool, musty air. With difficulty and pain, I raised myself to a sitting position. My limbs felt cramped and I shivered in the cold dampness. 

When my muddled thoughts cleared and some of my hysteria dissolved, I pondered my situation. My illness had likely rendered me unconsciousness. The innkeeper must have believed me dead of the plague, and panic-stricken, had thrust me into a flimsy coffin and nailed it shut with inept haste.

Had they laid me in a sturdier casket, or buried me in the earth like other victims of the plague, who knows if I could have freed myself? I cringed at the thought. One question remained. Where was I? I
searched for an answer, but could not arrive at one.

I remembered telling the monk my name. He knew that I was the sole descendant of the
noble Mancini family. The holy man must have done his duty. He had seen me laid in my ancestral vault, sealed since my father’s burial. The more I thought of this, the more probable it seemed.

The Mancini vault; its forbidding gloom had terrified me when I followed my father
’s coffin to his assigned stone niche. Somewhere in the dark was my mother’s heavy oaken casket, hung with tattered velvet and ornamented with tarnished silver. I felt sick and faint. Trembling with cold, I would not feel better until I breathed fresh air beneath an azure sky. Trapped in my family burial chamber, I was a prisoner with little hope of escape.

I recalled that a heavy door of closely twisted iron barred the entrance to the vault. From there, a flight of steep steps led downward to where I now sat.
Could I feel my way through the dark to those steps and climb up to that door? But it was locked and the vault was in a remote section of the cemetary. Even the keeper might not come near it for days, perhaps weeks. I would starve or die of thirst.

Tortured by such thoughts, I stood erect. The cold stone floor chilled my bare feet to the marrow. Fearful of contagion, they had left me fully clothed in the
same ivory and wine-colored gown with its tabbed bodice, long stomacher, and virago sleeves I had worn the day I fell sick. Since donning it, my world had changed horrifically.  

I raised my hand to my neck. When I touched the gold chain and medallion engraved with the initials of my husband and daughter, a flood of sweet memories rushed over me. I
raised the round pendant to my lips and pressed my kisses and tears, scalding and bitter, upon it. Life was worth living while my Chiara and Dario’s smiles lit the world! I resolved to fight; to climb out of this crypt, no matter what dire horrors awaited me.   

Dario, my love.
In the black gloom, I pictured his handsome face that shone like a beacon in my mind. His mournful eyes beckoned, as though I could hear him sob alone in the empty silence of our bedchamber, his hair dishevelled, his face haggard with grief. My little Chiara, too, would wonder why I did not come to kiss her good night. How I missed my baby! And Beatrice, my dearest friend! I fretted over how profound her sadness would be.   

I must escape these grim confines. How ecstatic they would be to see me again, to know that I was alive. Oh, how they would welcome me. Dario would sweep me into his arms
my beloved daughter would cling to me, Beatrice would shed tears of joy at my appearance. I smiled, picturing our reunion. My happy home blessed by faultless friendship and staunch fidelity. 

In the distance, a church bell tolled the hour. One, two, three...
I counted twelve strokes. My pleasant thoughts faded and the grim reality of my situation troubled me anew. Did the bells announce midday or midnight? I could not tell.

It
had been early morning when I took that ill-begotten path into Vicenza. It must have been before midday when I met the monk and sought his assistance for the young lad who had suffered and died alone. If my illness had lasted a day or two, as was the case with most victims who died of the plague. I might have died the following day or the next. In that case, they likely buried me before sunset. These might be the bells of midnight struck on the very day of my burial. I felt certain it could be no more than three days after contracting the illness, otherwise I would be in severe thirst.

I trembled; a tense fear
crept over me. Something dreadful resounded in the tolling of those midnight bells that echoed cruelly on my ears, the ears of a woman pent up alive in a crypt with the putrefying bodies of her ancestors. I tried to suppress my terror and summon my courage. I must escape this hell. With my hands before me, I slowly and carefully felt my way to the steps of the vault.

A long piercing cry, intense and miserable, echoed through the hollow arches of my tomb. Blood curdled in my veins. I broke out in a cold sweat. My heart beat so stridently that I could hear it thump against my ribs. The shriek seemed to come from inside the vault, and this time a flurry and flutter of wings followed it.
It is only an owl
, I whispered aloud in an effort to still my rising panic, only a harmless companion to the dead. But how did it get in here? If it could enter, it could also depart.

Hopeful,
I moved cautiously onward. Suddenly, from out of the darkness, the owl sprung at me with wretched malice. I fought with the creature as it circled my head, pounced at my face, and beat me with massive wings I could feel, but could not see. I struck at it relentlessly. The repulsive confrontation seemed to last forever. Although ill and lightheaded, I battled the beast. Finally, the huge owl halted its assault. It emitted one last vicious screech then vanished into some black corner. Every nerve in my body shook as I tried to regain my breath.  

Blindly groping with outstretched hands, I continued on my way to where I believed the stone staircase might be, but
instead, I bumped into a hard and cold horizontal barrier. I ran my hands over it. Was this the first step of the stairs? It seemed too high. I stroked it cautiously and touched something soft and sodden to the touch like wet velvet. Beneath the cloth, my fingers traced the oblong form of a coffin. A realization shot through me and I withdrew my hand swiftly. Whose coffin was this? My father’s? Or was it my mother’s oak casket?

A deep sense of despair swept through me. All my efforts to find my way through the vault were fruitless. Lost in the overwhelming blackness, I did not know in which direction I should turn. With shocking realization, the direness of my circumstances became clear.
Thirst tormented me. I fell to my knees and wept.

My
sobs rang through the vault’s arches; the sound strange and horrific to my own ears. If I could not escape this agony soon, I would go mad, confined in this place of death and darkness, with decomposing cadavers as my sole companions. I buried my face in my hands, forcing myself to remain calm and keep my mind from surrendering to the madness that threatened to possess me. 

Then
, from somewhere in the distance, I heard a cheerful sound. I raised my head and listened to the trill of a nightingale. How it reassured me in this hour of despair! I praised God for its existence and sprang up laughing and weeping for joy at its shower of lustrous warbles. A rush of courage surged through me, invigorating me with hope and vitality.

A new idea came to me. I
could follow the nightingale’s voice. It sang harmoniously, optimistically, and I resumed my journey through the blackness. In my mind, I pictured the bird perched on one of the trees outside the vault, and believed that if I could move towards its voice, it would guide me to the staircase I so desperately sought.

Stumbling along, I felt weak and my legs quavered beneath me. This time nothing impeded my progress. The nightingale
’s song drifted closer. Hope that had nearly faded, bounded once more into my heart. Barely aware of my own movements, the golden melody of the song drew me as if I were in a dream.

M
y foot tripped over a stone and I fell forward. I felt no pain; my limbs were too numb with cold. I raised my aching eyes in the darkness and cried out. One meagre ray of moonlight, no thicker than a blade of straw, flickered down on me and revealed the lowest step of the stairway. I could not see the door of the vault, but I knew that it must be there at the top.

Too
exhausted to move, I lay still as a stone, gazing at the solitary moon-ray, and listening to the nightingale, whose melody rang out with clarity. The low-pitched bell of earlier now rang out the first hour of the day. Soon, it would be morning. I decided to rest until then. Completely exhausted, I rested my head against the cold stones as if they were silk pillows. Within a few moments, I put all my miseries out of my mind and drifted into sleep.