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27

Mari

Friday, April 27, 1821

F rom where she stood, high on the bluff, Mari gazed out at the water, wringing her hands. The Aquila grew closer.

“We ought to go down to the water now,” Paola said to the women. “They are furling their sails.”

Mari knew what this meant: if the officers had ordered the furling of the sails, they intended to slow the vessel, to ready her anchor.

“Let’s go,” Emilia said.

Though the others nodded, Mari stayed put. She felt numb, unable to move forward.

“Mari,” Paola said, a chill in her voice. “You seem unsure about something.” Suddenly she lunged forward, thrusting her hand into Mari’s bag. She pulled her hand away, Holmes’s letter clutched between her fingers.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

“Give it to me,” Mari cried. But Paola turned her back, ripping the letter from the envelope while using her body to deflect Mari’s reach.

“Paola,” Ami interjected, voice trembling, “it’s not something we have time to discuss. Please, give the letter back to Mari. The two of you can talk about it later.”

“Talk about what?” Pippa asked. She and Emilia stood to the side, confusion on their faces.

Paola held up the letter. “It seems Mari has a lover.” She glanced out at the brig. “He’s on the Aquila at this very moment.” She turned to Mari. “How long have you known this man? And does he know about Corso?” Then, under her breath, so only Mari could hear, “I shouldn’t be surprised. Not with everything else you’ve lied about.”

Mari snatched the letter back. “This has nothing to do with you,” she hissed.

“It has everything to do with me. Corso would ask for my hand if he didn’t intend on asking for yours.”

“ Intend on asking?” Mari spat back. “He already has.”

Paola’s mouth dropped open. “When?”

“A few days ago, at Ami’s.” Mari stuffed the letter into the pocket of her dress. “I told him I don’t want his proposal or his filigreed ring. I just want to find Lia.”

“I don’t understand,” Pippa said, clutching her cimaruta . “Are we still planning to go down to the water, to sink the vessel?”

Mari couldn’t reply. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground with a sob.

“Leave us a minute,” Ami told the others. She knelt next to Mari, brushing her hair away from her face. “We must,” she said. “We must sink it.”

“I know,” Mari said through tears. She fixed her mind on Matteo instead of Holmes and thought of all the pain the Fratelli Mazza had brought upon the village. If the women let the Aquila make landfall, the men would ravage the village again. Who would they seize—or kill—this time? Mari could not bear to have more blood on her hands.

She considered what Holmes would want. He would insist she go forward with her plan. He would, in fact, be furious if he knew she’d considered otherwise, even for a moment.

“Holmes would want me to do this,” Mari concluded, grief-stricken.

She pushed herself upright, clearing dirt and leaves from her gown. She wiped her hand across her face, blinking back tears. There was no time for it now. She had a lifetime to grieve the loss of a dream, the loss of being Holmes’s wife.

Right now, however, there was a task at hand.

“Let’s go,” Mari said, motioning for the others to make their way down the hill. She took her place at the back but, after a few moments, Paola slowed to walk in step with Mari.

“How many other secrets are you keeping?” Paola hissed.

Mari’s breath caught. “I’m sorry?”

Paola came to a halt, faced Mari head-on. Ahead, the other women continued down the hill. “You’ve been living a lie,” Paola said, “but I know the truth. I know what really happened to your mother.”

Mari’s heart lurched. No . This must have been what Paola meant a few moments ago when she’d said, Not with everything else you’ve lied about.

For an instant, Holmes was forgotten. It was just Mari and Paola. And this long-buried secret, blasted wide-open.

“We both know she didn’t drown,” Paola added. “I was with my mother along the water that night, too. We saw it all.”

***

That day twelve years ago, in the early hours of the morning, eight-year-old Mari had woken to the sound of hurried footsteps. Glancing out the window, she caught her mother leaving through the gate, a bag slung over her shoulder.

Earlier, Mari’s mother had been particularly affectionate with her and Sofia, embracing the girls for a long while, planting kisses all over their foreheads. Mari remembered feeling so safe that night, so very loved.

But after seeing her mother rush through the gate, young Mari’s curiosity got the best of her. In her thin nightgown, she wasted no time discreetly following after her. Down staircase after staircase she went. Once on the beach, Mari watched in horror as her mother crawled into a gozzo with two strange men. For a moment, she thought she was not awake at all but in a strange dream.

Just before the men began to row her mother away, Mari started to run.

“No!” she screamed, her bangs sticking to her face. She nearly slipped on the pebbled beach.

Her mother looked up, startled. “Mari!” she yelled. “What are—”

“Where are you going?”

Imelda’s eyes were wide in horror. “You were not supposed to see this. You were not supposed to know.” She nodded at one of the men. “She is my cousin. Move. Now.”

Young Mari frowned. Cousin? That didn’t make any sense. The man thrust his oars into the water and began to row, but Mari threw herself against the side of the boat, pulling at it with weak fingers. The edge of the gozzo dug into her palms; later, her father would pick out a half dozen splinters.

“Please, no, where are you—”

Suddenly, a forceful current pulled her backward. She glanced up; her mother’s fingers were trailing on the surface of the ocean. The current grew stronger, and as Mari fought against it, the boat floated farther and farther away.

Mamma , she whispered, up to her waist in the sea. Mamma.

There was nothing more she could do.

Her mother had left, willingly so.

Mari returned to the house in anguish, her legs shaking. She’d vomited twice on the road. She went to Sofia’s room first. Nudging her four-year-old sister awake, she prepared to tell her that Mamma would not be coming home. But as Sofia turned over in bed, bleary-eyed and looking terribly fragile, terribly naive, Mari found herself unable to admit that their mother had just abandoned them.

It seemed easier to say she was…dead.

And so that was the story Mari told her father and Sofia, and the villagers, and Holmes, too: that she’d followed Imelda to the ocean in the middle of the night and watched as her mother went for a swim—but after diving in, she never emerged from the water. Mari, being so young, hadn’t had the strength to rescue a grown woman from the sea.

The streghe asked Mari if Imelda had been wearing her cimaruta when she drowned. Mari said yes, for her mother never took it off. Even still, the sea had been too much. The women nodded in understanding: they all knew that the talisman was a source of strength, but it did not make a strega invincible.

Everyone believed Mari’s story, then.

The sea had taken her mother.

That part, at least, was true.

Now Mari held Paola’s gaze, astounded that she and Cleila had known the truth all along. “Why were you on the beach that night?” Mari asked. “It was the middle of the night.”

“Neither my mother nor I slept well in the months after my father died,” Paola replied. “We often took late-night walks along the water.”

Paola’s revelation explained much, including why Paola had recently accused Mari of being showered with sympathy she didn’t deserve: Mari’s mother wasn’t actually dead. Paola’s father was.

It also made sense that Cleila and Paola had kept the secret. If the village knew that Imelda was still alive somewhere, it would illegitimatize Cleila’s marriage to Father.

“Anything else?” Paola hissed now. “I know the truth about your lover, your mother… What else haven’t you shared?”

Mari thought of her covert plan to escape Positano, to forgo a life with Corso in favor of one with Holmes. But what did that matter now? It had been just that—a plan. One that would not be coming to fruition. It was as good as dead.

“Nothing,” Mari said. “There’s nothing left at all.” She turned on her heel and began to walk, leaving Paola behind her.

Mari rejoined the women as they made their way down the narrow, rocky trail. Though they’d used this path a few times before, it was overgrown, and Paola cried out as sharp branches slapped against her legs. Ami nearly slipped twice.

By the time the five women arrived at the bottom, the Aquila loomed not far ahead; it would be crossing by Li Galli in half an hour, Mari thought bleakly.

They could begin le incantesimi —their incantations—shortly.

Emilia suddenly began to cry. “I do not think I can do it,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Those men, they are brothers and fathers and…”

Lovers , Mari thought to herself.

“They are captors ,” Pippa shot back, hands splayed. It seemed any talk of Holmes had been forgotten. “They took my mother and killed my father. They mean us nothing but harm.”

“Let’s get into place. It’s time,” Mari said, her bottom lip trembling. She bit down hard, willing herself to focus, though her thoughts still circled the conversation she’d just had with Paola.

She’d never been able to understand why her mother had abandoned her and Sofia. As a child, Mari wondered if she and Sofia had driven their mother away for simple reasons: their ever-sandy feet, their mess of shells in the garden, their repetitive questions about the sea and its watery mysteries.

Yet as Mari grew older, her suspicions matured. Like prying a mussel shell open with a knife, Mari eventually understood that some people—women, especially—tucked away their most tender secrets.

Secrets like greed. Had the simple life as a villager’s wife not been enough for Mari’s mother? She might have wanted bigger, grander things or a more luxurious lifestyle.

Or had it been love? Perhaps Imelda had kept someone on the side. Had she been in love with one of the men who took her away?

It didn’t give Mari peace, exactly, to consider that these might have been the reasons her mother had left, but anything was better than the idea of her and Sofia driving their mother away.

Now Mari forced her attention back to the sea.

This part of the coast formed an arc roughly twenty meters wide. Mari directed Paola to the far end, then arranged herself and the other women so they were evenly spaced apart along its remaining length. This way, the cursed tract of water encapsulated a narrow strip extending from the coastline right into the eye of the Li Galli islets.

Once in position, the women bent down, each placing her hands in the sea. Mari heard faint whispers as the other four women recited the first stanza of the incantation.

At once, the water began to pull away from Mari’s hands, as though it wanted nothing to do with her. Small waves lapped outward from her fingers, creating a concave indentation in the water.

She was filled with resistance, and this was the sea’s expression of it.

The Aquila grew near. Mari wondered about Holmes. Was he on deck or in his berth or elsewhere? Did he see the strange whirlpool building just ahead? Did any of the crew see it?

Keeping her head low, Mari began reciting the incantation. She kept her gaze on the water, the reflection of her blood-red hair shifting and swaying in the newly incensed current.