Tuscan Rose (48 page)

Luciano’s face remained expressionless and he did not look at Rosa. Since the night she had told him the truth about Carlo, he had not said anything further to her. She still had no idea what he had been doing since Spain. They had never had that ‘later’ talk. She was beginning to suspect that they never would.

Luciano must have taken Starling’s words to heart because, the following month, Rosa was included in a mission. The Allies had made an arms drop to the Flock on the understanding that the weapons, ammunition and food would be distributed to the other partisan groups in the area as well. To avoid suspicion and the loss of a large stash of the precious equipment if they were caught, the partisans had to make several delivery trips. The men posed as farmers and the
staffette
as housewives. Marisa made a successful delivery of guns hidden in the donkey cart, which had been stacked with manure. Genoveffa cycled to the next town with hand grenades in her shopping basket. Rosa was to accompany Partridge and a few other men to a unit across the hills that needed someone who spoke German to help interrogate a suspected double agent, and a nurse to attend to a partisan with an infected gunshot wound. The men were to deliver machine guns and a radio.

The group set out just after dawn. It was the end of autumn and the cold air bit at Rosa’s legs until she warmed up from the exertion of negotiating her way through the forest. The route involved passing within a mile of a German camp, and the group had to use caution to avoid being seen. They were making their way down a hillside—scattered rather than together, as the vegetation was thinning—when Rosa noticed there was an unusual amount of bird activity in the area despite the season. She saw a flock of snowfinches busily darting to and from a rock crevice. Snowfinch had been Carlo’s battle name. Rosa had thought that the birds were only found at higher altitudes, but perhaps closer to winter they moved down the hillsides. She was
watching the flock with fascination when she heard a ‘click’. Her heart skipped a beat. Her first thought was that somebody had set their gun sights on her and she was about to be shot full of holes.

Before she had time to whistle the group’s warning call, two German soldiers stood up from the bushes. They were as surprised to see Rosa as she was to discover them. The soldiers’ guns were slung over their backs. One of them was holding a camera and the other a pair of binoculars. Rosa realised that the sound had been made by the camera.

‘
Buon giorno
,’ said one of the soldiers.

He and his companion smiled at Rosa. They were young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, with smooth skin and baby-blue eyes. Rosa realised that her dowdy woollen dress and stockings, mid-length coat and scarf had caused them to take her for exactly what she was posing as: a farmer’s wife collecting firewood.

‘We see many birds today,’ the first soldier told her.

Rosa’s head felt light. The soldiers were birdwatching. The moment was too bizarre to be real. Didn’t these German boys know how dangerous the hills were? Hadn’t they been warned?

The surreal moment could have ended there. Rosa could have nodded and walked on without things going any further. The young soldiers did not suspect her and they wished her no harm. But then Woodpecker and Duck burst from the trees, unaware of the situation. The German soldiers’ eyes grew wide when the men in the khaki uniforms appeared behind Rosa.

‘
Cazzo
!’ swore Woodpecker when he saw the Germans.

The two soldiers, rather than reaching for their guns, backed away and started to run. Shots rang out in the air. They came from somewhere behind Rosa. The soldiers’ bodies jerked and fell to the ground. The snowfinches fled. Rosa heard the crackle of twigs as the rest of the men arrived at the scene. Partridge lowered his gun. It was he who had fired. Woodpecker turned the soldiers over with his boot to make sure they were dead.

‘Quick, drag them behind that rock,’ said Partridge, ‘and cover them before this area is swarming with Germans!’

The men obeyed the orders. Partridge stared at the bodies and wiped his brow. ‘They were just boys,’ he said to Woodpecker. ‘Just ordinary soldiers. Not SS. I’ve got daughters that age!’

Duck and one of the other partisans took the German soldiers’ guns and ammunition. Woodpecker picked up the binoculars but saw they were broken and tossed them into the makeshift grave.

‘I had to shoot them,’ Partridge said to Woodpecker, although his fellow partisan wasn’t disputing the fact. ‘They would have told their officers they’d seen us and where we were going. Every partisan in this area would have been compromised.’ Partridge wiped his forehead again and looked at Rosa. ‘Are you all right, Raven?’

Rosa had not moved from the spot where she had seen the boys. Her thoughts were indistinct. All she knew was that minutes ago the German soldiers had been alive, animated, enjoying the beauty of nature. Now they were dead. Partridge was right though. He’d taken a decision in a matter of seconds that she would not have been strong enough to make. She would have let the boys go. But then Rosa wasn’t a soldier and couldn’t think like one.

The men finished cleaning up and moved down the hill again. Partridge signalled for Rosa to follow. She thought of a volunteer in a Red Cross office somewhere sending letters to two mothers whose sons would never come home.
Just boys. Ordinary soldiers. Not SS.

‘
Cazzo
!’ she said under her breath, before running after the men.

When Rosa refused to allow herself to think further about the death of the young German soldiers, she knew something inside her had changed. She had become hardened. Instead, she thought about what she had seen at the Villa Scarfiotti and about the stories of German and fascist atrocities that passed between the partisan groups, including the description of a young mother being beaten to death with her decapitated infant. Rosa was no longer a wife and mother. She was starting to feel detached from her family
as if she were letting them go one by one: Antonio; Sibilla; Lorenzo and Giorgio; Allegra and Ambrosio; Renata, Enzo and Giuseppina. She rarely thought about Madre Maddalena. Was this distancing a kind of survival mechanism? The only way she could help them was to save Italy; it was as if the fate of her loved ones and the fate of her country were inextricably linked.

There was news of more horrors at the Villa Scarfiotti, the latest being the murder of a group of terrified Jews who were shot as entertainment at a party the Marchesa hosted. With each new story that reached the Flock, Rosa watched Luciano’s face grow darker. She sensed it was only a matter of time before he would insist on avenging the death of Carlo and everyone else who had been murdered at the villa.

Winter was descending rapidly. The Allies’ progress was slowed and the battlefronts grew quiet. Rosa and Fiamma, with fewer wounded men to attend to, knitted socks and sweaters for the partisan army. Marisa took the socks the Flock didn’t need into the local villages to be distributed amongst other groups by their wives and daughters. Before she left, Rosa heard Genoveffa warn her: ‘Be careful you aren’t caught. If they find you with socks they will hang you as surely as if you had been caught carrying grenades.’

Before the worst of winter set in, Luciano and his men went out on one final mission. Rosa and the other
staffette
didn’t know where it was to take place or what it involved—missions were only discussed with those directly engaged in them—but Rosa noticed the partisans were packing large amounts of explosives. She assumed they intended to blow up a bridge or railway tracks. Whatever it was, she could see from the grim expressions on the men’s faces that the mission was dangerous. When the unit was ready to leave, Rosa’s heart dropped to her feet when Luciano turned around and looked each one of those staying behind in the eye. Was he bidding them farewell? Rosa was standing by the barn when the group passed by. To her surprise, Luciano stopped in front of her, his gaze resting on her face.

‘You have to trust your husband, Raven,’ he said, his breath making clouds in the cold air. ‘You have to trust him that he loves you enough to do anything to survive so that he can come back to you.’

Rosa watched the men disappear down the road and through the trees. Luciano’s words burned into her soul. If a man loved a woman, he would do all he could to return. Rosa believed that. But she wasn’t sure if Luciano had been referring to Antonio—or himself.

A
part from an Allied landing south of Rome, winter and the new year did not bring the partisans good news. Luciano and his men returned from their mission safely and with the information that Ciano and the other members of the Grand Council who had deposed Mussolini had been sentenced and shot.

‘It’s rumoured that the firing squad did a bad job of it too,’ said Partridge, shivering. ‘Somebody had to finish the wounded men off with a bullet to the temple.’

Parts of the mountains were snowed over and daily life, while still dangerous, was full of isolation and boredom. Rosa’s convent upbringing and her earlier poverty and imprisonment had strengthened her for partisan life. Even Starling commented admiringly on her capacity to stay vital on small amounts of food and her ability to remain alert with little sleep. When the men were on their night missions, it was Rosa who kept watch over the camp.

One day when she was mopping down the makeshift hospital, Starling came to see her. ‘Some Allied parachutists have come in,’ he said. ‘They are at a farm over near the ridge. One of them has broken his leg. I want you to come with me. I will teach you to shoot on the way. It’s about time you learned to fire straight.’

Rosa did her best to keep a serious face. Starling was referring to the incident a few days earlier when her pistol had accidentally fired when she threw her kitbag down. The bullet had ricocheted off a rock, narrowly missing Starling’s head. She knew his offer was a sign of how much his respect for her had grown since they’d first met. It was practical too. One of the women at least needed to know how to shoot a rifle if the men were away and the camp needed to be defended.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Rosa told him. ‘But I’m not shooting birds or rabbits. I’ll only shoot targets that deserve it.’

‘Understood,’ said Starling, holding up some rusty cans on a string. He smiled. Rosa thought it was the first time she had ever seen his teeth bared at her without it being hostile.

‘You’re quite charming when you smile,’ she told him, pulling on her coat.

‘And you’re quite charming when you shut up!’ he replied.

The partisans didn’t share much about their lives before they joined the Flock. Most of them had no idea what each other’s real names were. It was a way to protect their families in case one of them was caught and talked under torture. Rosa guessed Starling was about twenty-five years of age. She also presumed, although she wouldn’t say it, that he had been crossed in love. Why else was he so disparaging of women?

They walked into the woods and stopped when Starling found a fallen log. He placed the cans on top of it.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’ asked Rosa. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to waste ammunition?’

Starling shrugged. ‘Don’t waste it then. Shoot straight.’

He showed Rosa the correct way to hold a gun, focus on her sights and aim at the target. ‘If you keep your elbows tucked in, it will help to keep the gun steady,’ he told her. ‘And squeeze the trigger, don’t pull or jerk it.’

Rosa fired. She hit the tin she was aiming for first go.

‘Not bad,’ said Starling. ‘But you flinched. You have to get over that.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ Rosa confided, ‘I loathe guns. I hate what they stand for.’

She had spoken without thinking and waited for Starling to explode with a diatribe on the weakness of women. Instead, he patted her on the back and said, ‘That’s all right, Raven. Just as long as you learn to hate Germans more.’

There was a faithful stream of supporters in Florence and neighbouring villages who risked their lives to bring the partisans food, clothing and news. The local farmers sheltered Allied soldiers and hid young Italian men avoiding conscription. Some village priests saved Jews from round-ups by slipping them into their congregations. Luciano saw the role of the Flock as being as much about protecting these civilians as it was to fight the German army and assist the Allies.

One day, one of the supporters from Florence, a man by the name of Signor di Risio, arrived on an oxcart. He’d disguised himself as a farmer, successfully Rosa thought, in his patched pants and worn hat.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, greeting Luciano. ‘But the Germans have requisitioned my truck. The journey’s taken me longer than expected.’

The partisans were overjoyed when they saw what Signor di Risio had brought: woollen coats and sweaters, boots and shoes. The Flock had been lining their clothes with newspaper and cutting up rugs to use as insoles to keep warm.

‘Here,’ said Partridge, handing Rosa a magenta coat. She tried it on. The coat was tailored with a belted waist and shawl collar. The partisans whistled and Rosa gave them a twirl.

‘You’ll only be able to wear it at the camp, unfortunately,’ said Starling. ‘You don’t look like a farmer’s wife in it. You look like you’ve walked straight off Via Tornabuoni.’

‘That’s exactly where all this stuff came from,’ said Signor di Risio. ‘Many merchants there decided they’d rather give their goods to you than see them carted off by the Germans. The enemy
have been raiding the stores by the lorry-load and sending everything to Germany.’

Partridge adjusted the camel-coloured trench coat he had put on. ‘They aren’t paying for them?’ he asked, looking outraged.

‘Some of the Germans pay, but with notes printed off in the Vienna Mint at an exchange rate that makes it worthless for us. Mind you, for the merchants who fled after the Allies bombed Florence in September, the Germans simply take what they want from their shops, closed up or not.’

Luciano shook his head. ‘
Bravo
,’ he said. ‘Thanks to Mussolini, the Italians are now the slaves of the Germans.’

Rosa thought of the furniture she’d had to leave stored at Antonio’s shop. She pictured each piece—so lovingly chosen and cherished for its uniqueness—being carted off by barbarians who probably would not understand its true worth. Antonio might have thought that Rosa charming customers with her stories of the history of the piece was good selling, but he had never palmed off an ordinary piece of furniture as something more than what it was to even the most naïve customer, unlike other furniture dealers. Every piece had to be special. Now all that love was being brutalised and pillaged. Rosa shut her eyes. She couldn’t think about Antonio or the shop. Survival for her had become a numbness of mind. She thought only of each task before her and never about the future. There was no knowing if the peasant woman who brought them potatoes, or Signor di Risio, or any of the partisans standing around the cart would be alive the next day.
Alive the next minute
. Life had become ephemeral. Rosa could not allow herself to become too attached to anything.

The partisans thanked Signor di Risio and watched him on his way before returning to their duties.

‘Raven, come with me,’ Luciano called to Rosa.

She followed him to the storeroom. It was surprisingly cosy, with a blanket curtain across the door and a thick rug on the floor. The shutters were open to let in the weak winter light, but at night they were closed. Sometimes, when Rosa was on night watch, she
saw Marisa tramp across the yard and knock on the door. But she didn’t allow herself to think too much about what went on after that either.

Luciano pulled out a chair for Rosa and indicated for her to sit down. The storeroom was much warmer than outside but their breath still made steam in the air. Rosa pulled the tie of her coat closed and Luciano tucked his hands under his arms.

‘Do you remember when we used to tour?’ he asked. ‘It was so warm some nights we couldn’t sleep.’

Rosa recalled the hot night in Lucca when she was worried Sibilla would become dehydrated. She’d taken her to the hotel courtyard where it was cooler. In her memory she saw Luciano stepping out from the shadows, his braces down and his white singlet damp with sweat. The recollection made her warm despite the freezing air. She realised she was blushing.

Luciano smiled. ‘I think of those days when I’m on night watch and my feet are turning to ice,’ he said. ‘I force myself to imagine that I’m standing on the burning cobblestones of one of the piazzas we played in, shimmering light all around me and sweat running down my back.’

Rosa laughed. The memory created a bond between them. Luciano asked her about Sibilla and the twins. He was relieved when she told him the children were in Switzerland.

‘It’s one less thing to worry about regarding reprisals,’ he said grimly.

It was the first time since Rosa had joined the Flock that she and Luciano had spoken of personal matters. Although he had been grateful for what Rosa had done for Carlo, it had created a rift between them. Or perhaps their lack of conversation was simply because the world was upside down and the past didn’t register with anyone any more. Rosa herself could barely remember giving birth to her children, being a mother. Deep down in her heart she loved them, but it was more with the memory of the love of the passionate person she’d once been and not the machine that she had become. Passionate people didn’t survive
wars. They lost their nerve and made mistakes. Rosa had striven to master herself.
I shall gain mastery over my heart
. She winced when she remembered the words she had seen in the Marchesa’s chamber and repeated in Nerezza’s notebook. She looked at Luciano and suddenly understood what it meant. To subdue one’s emotions, one’s hopes and dreams, and focus only on survival—and, hopefully, triumph. As long as there was a war to fight, she and Luciano could not revive old feelings.

Luciano shifted his gaze to the window, lost in thought for a moment. Something was bothering him.

‘What is it?’ Rosa asked.

Luciano lit a cigarette stub and blew out a puff of smoke. ‘There is a
staffetta
coming to Borgo San Lorenzo,’ he said. ‘One of our best. She raises money from our supporters. I need you to go to the town to meet her and collect the money. You’ll be watched. You have to be careful.’

‘I’m going alone?’ Rosa asked.

Luciano shifted uncomfortably. ‘Woodpecker will take you to the stop before the factory where the other passengers get on. The driver is one of us. He’ll support the story that you are coming from Florence if anyone questions him. But once you are in Borgo San Lorenzo, you’ll have to find your own way. There’s a restaurant there where the
staffetta
will meet you. It’s a place favoured by Germans and fascist officials.’

Rosa’s eyes widened. Now she understood Luciano’s discomfort. He was sending a lamb amongst wolves. She wondered if this mission was the reason that Starling had insisted on training her not only in rifle shooting but also in firing her pistol at close range. Did he expect that she might need to defend herself?

‘It’s best in this situation to be right under their noses,’ explained Luciano, rubbing his hand over his face. ‘It’s when strangers meet in secret that suspicions are raised. Signor di Risio has obtained you a suitable dress, perfume and so on. You can wear your new coat. There will be a man with the
staffetta
so it
doesn’t seem out of place for two women to be dining unaccompanied. Hopefully that will deter any amorous Germans from imposing on you.’

Rosa sucked in a breath. She was afraid. While she was at the camp she didn’t feel danger for herself, only for the men when they went out on missions. But this was a war and she was part of the freedom army. She had to play her role if that’s what she was asked to do. Obviously Luciano had his reasons for sending her, although she was touched to see that it distressed him to be putting her in danger. Because of that, she did her best to quell the cold fear in her stomach and put on a brave face.

‘How am I going to recognise this
staffetta
?’ she asked.

Luciano smiled. ‘You’ll recognise her,’ he said. ‘Orietta hasn’t changed so much since you last saw her.’

Borgo San Lorenzo would have been an attractive town in peacetime, located on the left bank of the Sieve River and surrounded by hills. But the bombing by the British airforce the previous Christmas and the cold winter gave the place the melancholy air of a town that had lost two hundred people.

The bus driver struck up a conversation with Rosa, who sat directly behind him to avoid the other passengers seeing her face. He asked her set questions to which Luciano had given her the answers, about where she was coming from and who she was visiting, to throw any spies on the bus off her scent. But when the bus reached the station, the other passengers seemed more interested in hurrying to the safety of their homes than paying attention to the attractive stranger in the expensive coat.

At the bus station there was a dog standing to attention, looking hopefully at each passenger as they passed.

‘Ah, Fido,’ said the bus driver, pulling a piece of cheese from his pocket and giving it to the dog. ‘His master saved him from a dangerous river when he was a stray puppy,’ the driver explained to Rosa. ‘Fido is quite a well-known character in town: he always accompanied his master to the bus station each morning and
returned every evening to greet him when he came home from work.’ The bus driver patted the dog on the head. ‘Although poor Signor Soriano won’t be coming home any more, Fido still comes every evening and waits for him.’

‘The bombing?’

The driver nodded grimly. ‘They were aiming for the German fortifications, but they blew up a lot of innocent people instead.’

Rosa cast her eyes down. When was all this killing going to end?

The bus driver nodded towards a long street. ‘Now, if you walk straight ahead you will come to a piazza,’ he told her. ‘The restaurant you want is on the left.’

Rosa thanked the bus driver and patted Fido, who, the driver assured her, was being taken care of by Soriano’s widow and the people of the town, before setting off on her way. The loaded pistol she carried in her bag weighed on her shoulder.

Rosa steadied her breathing when she found the piazza and spotted the restaurant with its canopied door and French windows. She recalled how the partisans had looked at her with envy when they saw her dressed up and being taken to the forest by Woodpecker, guessing she was being sent on an assignment. Their nerves were strained by weeks of inactivity. They preferred risk to waiting. Only Marisa and Genoveffa were fully occupied with preparing food and other domestic chores, and Fiamma with three soldiers suffering from influenza. Rosa recalled Luciano’s expression when she was leaving. He didn’t utter a word but it was there in his eyes.
Come back
, he was saying. She understood then that what existed between them was only being held back by the catastrophe they found themselves in and by Rosa’s love for Antonio. The image of Fido waiting for a man who would never return came to Rosa. But as quickly as the picture formed she pushed it from her mind. She couldn’t afford to have those thoughts, particularly before a dangerous mission; that’s why she preferred not to think at all.