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17

Mari

Monday, April 23, 1821

O n Monday, Dante returned from Naples. He’d been gone for a week.

Lia was not with him.

When Ami saw that he’d returned alone, she fell to her knees sobbing. Mari had been sitting with her in the kitchen, the room dim despite it being midday: they had the curtains pulled closed, for Mari was secreted away at their house. Only her father and the other streghe knew she was here.

As Ami composed herself, Mari told Dante all that happened since he’d been gone: the arrival of the Lupo . The additional kidnappings. Leo’s murder.

The news had made its way quickly around the village. Through households and merchant shops, down the hillsides and around winding avenues, the whispers could be heard: Three more kidnapped, and a man killed, too.

Lia’s abduction, they all knew now, had been a glimpse of what was to come. Some of the village men wept in broad daylight, lamenting that their good fortune had, at long last, come to an end.

Signs of the incident were still visible, too. Grooves cut through the sand where the women had been dragged to the waiting tenders, and a fat bloodstain marked the place where Leo had fallen on the stone pathway after being shot.

The villagers felt helpless. The police in Naples would favor the Fratelli Mazza, as they always had. The brothers had too much money, too many friends in the right places.

To most, there seemed no explanation. The four women seized from the village—a child, a well-loved baker, and the Fontana sisters—were of varying ages and social classes. While some villagers speculated the assailants had been after a specific family—unpaid debts, perhaps—others thought the men would hold the women for ransom.

Only the other streghe knew this was not true. This had nothing to do with a ransom.

Despite the many questions circulating, there was only one question that mattered. Where were the women? Everyone wanted to bring them home.

Upon learning the most recent news, Dante sat down at the small table in his kitchen, placing his head in his hands. “I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head, his words muffled behind his palms. “So long as I can remember, Positano has prospered. Our fishermen, our children. We have been blessed with all we need. More than. And we have been safe .” He looked up at Mari, desperation in his eyes. “My child is gone. My friend is dead. What have we done to deserve this?”

He began to weep.

“I wish there was something we could do,” he went on, despite his tears. “Some way to protect these waters forever. The sight of the sea has always comforted me. Never again. From now on, I will be watching for their ships.”

There is a way to protect the waters , Mari thought, for a very long while, at least. She watched Dante swipe away a tear with the back of his hand. It is the vortice centuriaria , and any of us women would die if we recited it.

Mari turned away, shamed at the pain she’d brought upon him and Ami, the pain she’d brought upon this entire village. What an impostor she felt, too. No one, not even Ami, knew that Mari intended to abscond from this place with Holmes. If the other women knew the real Mari, they would not want her as their leader or even their friend.

In all her life, Mari had never felt so ashamed, so alone in her inner turmoil.

At least, she thought, Holmes was far away from all of this. It was a small comfort, even if it meant their plan to escape together had come to a sudden, unforeseen halt.

***

They’d settled on the details in early March when they’d last seen each other.

During Holmes’s next visit to Positano, they would meet on the beach in the middle of the night. Mari would leave a change of clean clothes in the sand to give the appearance that she’d gone for a late-night swim, but really, Holmes would be waiting in a gozzo , ready to row her to nearby Praiano, where no one knew her. From there, they would take the overland route to Naples.

Her friends and fellow villagers would wait for her. As the hours passed, they would grow worried, wondering if Mari had swum to a nearby grotto or rowed her way toward the turbulent waters around the Li Galli islets.

Soon, they would begin to search for her. Someone would be assigned the unenviable task of rushing to Mari’s home to share the news with her father, but even he would be unable to find her.

Eventually, they would assume she drowned. They would wait many days and weeks, grieving, wondering if her bloated body might wash ashore. Wondering if the sea might give her back.

They would call it fate, someday. The ocean had taken her mother, her sister. It was Mari’s destiny to fall victim to it herself, wasn’t it? Those who longed for her—Ami and Lia, especially—would comfort themselves with the belief that Mari was in a happier place now, looking down upon the sea for endless days.

Mari and Holmes, meanwhile, would be making their way north. They didn’t know where exactly they would settle, only that it would be someplace far away where the sea could not wreak havoc on Mari’s life any longer.

But now, the plan would have to wait. Mari had brought too much upon her village; she was determined to set it right.

And she would never stop looking for Lia.

***

After Dante composed himself, he informed Ami and Mari that he, too, had news to share.

He began by recounting his trip to Naples, telling the women about his futile efforts to recover Lia. Though he’d ridden his horse hard after leaving the village, he never managed to catch up to a man matching the description Mari had given him, leading him to wonder if Lia’s captor had taken her to Naples at all.

Once in the city, he’d stalked the establishments where the Mazza brothers were known to do their business. Not only their offices, but their docks along the Bay of Naples. He’d hoped to spot Matteo and, having brought a gun, he was ready to take any measure necessary to gather information on his daughter’s whereabouts.

He never found him. He did, however, encounter a young stevedore unloading cargo on the Mazza docks. Handing over a pocketful of coins, Dante begged for any information about Matteo Mazza.

The stevedore took the money and shared a few interesting pieces of information.

First and foremost, he said that the night prior, he’d helped load a case of clothing onto a small Fratelli Mazza boat destined for the nearby island of Ischia. It was women’s clothing, he said, and there were a few children’s frocks, as well.

“They are alive, then,” Ami sputtered, reaching for Dante’s hand.

He nodded. “I believe so. I asked the boy if he knew of any boatmen I could hire to take me to Ischia. He told me the Fratelli Mazza were not permitting anyone onto the island, and that only a few days ago, their men shot and killed a fisherman who got too close to the rocks.” He shook his head. “I might think the young stevedore a very good tale-teller, if not for the fact that a few others were discussing the fisherman’s death, too.”

Mari and Ami shared a somber glance, speechless.

“That is not all,” Dante said, his voice grave. “There is another Mazza vessel en route to Positano at this very moment.”

Mari went still. Could he be referring to Holmes’s brig, the Aquila ?

“It is in Naples now,” Dante continued, “and expected to arrive in two days’ time. Maybe less, depending on the incoming storm and the favorability of the winds.”

It wasn’t the Aquila , then. Holmes was well north of Rome, many days or weeks away.

Dante paused, taking a long breath. “The stevedore told me that Matteo Mazza himself is aboard. We need to leave the village,” he concluded. “All of us. It is the safest thing to do.”

“I am not leaving without Lia,” Ami disputed. “What if Vivi and Lia manage to escape? This will be the first place they go.”

“They may find us dead,” Dante argued, “given all these men have done to us so far.”

“Dead or not, I’m not leaving,” Ami said to her husband, resolute.

“Nor am I,” Mari added. Not with another vessel, and Matteo, en route. She wouldn’t dare run from the very peril she’d brought upon this village.

Besides, she had begun to settle upon a very grave idea.

***

Late that evening, the ten remaining village streghe gathered in Ami’s tiny one-room bakery, tucked at the far end of one of Positano’s many inconspicuous alleyways.

They arrived one by one, their faces grim. Many of them, Mari included, had dressed in men’s attire, with their hair tucked up in hats.

The bakery was cool inside; its stone walls were impervious to the day’s warmth, and Ami had not done any baking for days, given all that had happened. Candles lined the edges of the room. The women lingered in silence, waiting for Ami to explain the reason she’d gathered them all on Mari’s behalf. The flagstones were slick with flour, and the crowded room smelled of rotting lemons and stale almonds.

Ami sat next to Pippa, her arm protectively around the girl. One had lost her daughter; the other, her parents. Now, Pippa was staying with the oldest of the streghe , Emilia, who lived only a few houses away with her husband.

Mari walked to the front of the room. She could hardly look at any of them.

Just before Mari began to speak, Emilia raised her hand into the air. “Mari,” she said, “Pippa and I saw something strange last night. We think you ought to know.”

“Of course.” Mari frowned.

“Someone was by the side of the house, going through my garbage can,” Emilia explained. “It was after dark. My dog alerted us. When we went to the window with my husband, the person ran off.”

Strange, indeed. In Positano, no one locked their doors or worried about trespassers. “Did you get a good look at him?” Mari asked.

Pippa interjected. “We aren’t sure it was a him at all. They were slight in stature. And slender.” She wrung her hands together. “My mother complained of something similar a couple of weeks ago,” she said. “She thought she saw someone skirting the back of our house, peering in through a window.”

Mari frowned. “She never said anything about it to me.”

“She convinced herself it was nothing. She’d had a terrible headache all day. She thought she’d merely imagined it.”

Across the room, Cleila let out a frustrated sigh. “When will this end?” she asked. “I am tired of living in fear.” She put a protective arm around Paola, who kept her gaze locked on the flagstones.

Mari might have thought the trespasser a Mazza scout, if not for the description of the culprit, slight and slender. And Vivi’s sighting was strange, too. It greatly unnerved her. The Fratelli Mazza had given them enough to worry about. But a villain so close to home, someone in the village?

She shivered involuntarily, wondering who she could trust anymore.

She forced her attention back to the task at hand. “Today we learned that another Mazza vessel is making its way for Positano,” she began. “And Matteo Mazza is on it. It could arrive tomorrow, or the day after.”

Emilia leaned forward. “We must go,” she said, looking frantically about the candlelit room. “Why are we still here? Why are we not gathering our families to leave?”

“No,” Mari said, holding out her hand. “We will not run from them.”

Emilia pointed at Pippa. “They took her mother and killed her father,” she said. “You’re a fool if you think we can protect ourselves against them.”

The statement stung, but Mari forged on. She lowered her voice. “I have another idea.”

Around the room, silence.

“What is it?” Ami asked, brow furrowed.

Mari took a long breath, then said, “We sink the ship.”

A few of the women drew in sharp breaths. As far as they knew, no strega had ever sunk an entire vessel.

A few of the women began to whisper, but Mari held up her hand. “The Mazzas, cocksure as they are, have always taken the dangerous Li Galli route instead of the longer, safer path south of it.”

Indeed, only the most overconfident of captains ran their routes close to Li Galli; most merchant ships avoided the islets and their invisible whirling eddies, choosing instead to sail well south, around Capri, thus approaching Positano directly from the south.

She went on, “They are fortunate they have not had any issues around the islets. Not yet, anyhow. We will recite the incantesimo vortice .” Its potency was dependent on the number of women reciting the curse, and the number of times they recited it. Once would generate a small whirlpool, as Mari had done with Massimo. But several of them, reciting the incantation over and over and over? It would be tremendously powerful. “Three of us will recite the curse. We will generate a vortice wide and strong enough to upset the ship’s ballast, to toss her about before pulling her under.”

Murmurs of unease rippled through the room.

“Remember, we are not cursing the vessel herself,” Mari went on. “We are cursing the water upon which she sails. Given they will be going through Li Galli, the men will blame the currents. And if we are successful—which we will be—there will be no survivors to say otherwise. Everyone will believe the ship another unfortunate victim of the islets.”

Mari felt encouraged by the few nods around the room. She wanted to exploit the ocean’s existing danger—its unpredictable underwater maelstroms—and use it to their advantage. To trick the men with the sea.

“We will wait for them near San Pietro,” she said, “tucked away in one of the caves.”

“Why can we not simply shift the currents away from Positano?” another strega asked. “Like we’ve always done. Like we did last week.”

Mari had already considered this, deemed it insufficient. “These men want to seize us.” She peered around the circle of women. “They have taken four of us and killed one of our husbands. If they make landfall in Positano, it will be devastating. We cannot let them do it. And with Matteo aboard?” Mari clasped her hands together. “Think of the evil these men have brought upon the region. This will be the end of the brothers. Without them, the Fratelli Mazza, their associates…they will not prosper. Not as they have been.”

“We don’t know when the ship is coming, though,” Paola countered, “and San Pietro is a ninety-minute walk from here. How will three of us get there in time?”

“Beginning tomorrow midday,” Mari explained, “we will keep a watch from the cave overlook.” The streghe had a number of secret meeting locations, but the one near San Pietro was particularly well-suited given its panoramic view of the Amalfi coastline. This cave, like the others, already had several lanterns and floor mats. Mari and Holmes had passed more than a few evenings in the cave; the women would only need to bring food and oil for the lanterns. Mari would bring a blanket or two. “I’ll stay there as long as needed. The rest of you can join me in pairs. Every twelve hours, you will switch. That way, we’ll always have three of us in place.”

“And when we see the ship?”

The room fell silent.

“When we see it,” Mari said, “the three of us on watch will wait until it is passing by Li Galli. We will go down to the water, and once it is in position, we will perform the curse.”

Pippa made a sound of agreement, and then Ami, too. At once, the murmurs around the room began— sì , sì.

Mari seized on this. “Let’s take a vote,” she said.

These assemblies, few and far between as they were, consisted of minimal protocol. There was no formal calling of the meeting to order, and certainly no one took notes. But there was one rule, long-standing and highly revered, that the women adhered to: in the event of a vote, the majority prevailed. Given the nods around the circle now, it was clear that Mari’s idea had garnered favor among the women.

Besides, with Pippa and Ami urging the idea forward, what else could the women say? Those two had lost more than any of them in recent days.

All voted in favor.

The Mazza ship would never make it to Positano at all.