We got Maxwell and the other two to the street and went down as far as the piazza. We were safe there for the time being. There was a pile of bedding on the broken cart and we laid Maxwell on a mattress and covered him with some blankets and a quilt. Hilda said she thought she could set the leg temporarily at any rate. ‘What we need is some sort of a conveyance,’ Hacket said to me. ‘There’s those other two guys can’t walk far and we can’t carry Maxwell, let alone them. You look about all in and I’m not feeling so fresh myself.’
I told him about the other lava streams then and how they threatened our line of retreat through Avin. He nodded. ‘We’ll have to hustle.’
I suddenly remembered. ‘George!’ I said. ‘George may get us clear in time.’ I looked about the piazza. There was no sign of a living thing. ‘I wonder where he’s got to?’
‘Who’s George?’
‘My mascot. A mule I rescued from a building. I let him go just outside the monastery.’
‘He’s probably bolted out into the country by now. Come on. We got to find something.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’ll have bolted. He’s the sort of animal that likes the company of humans. I don’t think he’d go out of the village.’ I began calling.
‘How do you expect him to recognise a name you’ve only just given him?’ Hacket said irritably. ‘Come on. We’ve got to do something practical.’
But I was feeling obstinate. Perhaps it was because I was so darned tired. But I had a feeling that I’d saved that animal to meet just such an emergency. ‘He’s probably in a grocery store somewhere,’ Hacket said sarcastically.
‘A greengrocers.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Zina,’ I called. ‘Where’s the nearest greengrocers’?’
‘Greengrocers? What is?’
‘Where they sell vegetables.’
‘Oh. Fruttivendolo. There’s one just down that street there.’ She pointed past the pump to a narrow, dirty-looking thoroughfare. ‘The others have all gone I think.”
I crossed the piazza.. The fruiterers’ was the third shop on the left and there, sticking out of the doorway, was the bony rump of my mule. I called to him and he backed out and stood looking at me, some green stuff hanging from his mouth. I went to the shop. It was asparagus he’d been eating. I filled a basket with the neatly tied bundles and he followed me back towards the piazza, nuzzling at it. The last house in the street had big doors gaping wide and the smell of manure. It was a stables and inside I found collar and traces.
Hacket stared at us as we crossed the piazza. Then he began to laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’ I snapped at him.
‘Nothing. I was only thinking …‘He stopped laughing and shook his head. ‘Guess I thought the mule wasn’t real, that’s all. Now all we’ve got to do is clear this cart, hack the back part off and we’ve got a buggy.’
We set to with a will. The need for haste drove me and gave me strength. We pushed the pile of furniture overboard and then got to work with axe and saw which we got from a nearby shop. This was the first opportunity I’d had of questioning any of the others and I asked Hacket what had happened after they had entered the monastery.
‘We were had for suckers,’ he said. ‘That’s about all there is to it. We ought to have known considering the door wasn’t locked. But seeing those two poor devils chained to the wall — well, we just forgot everything else. And the next we knew the door had closed and the key was grating in the lock. The doctor fellow must have been waiting for us on the roof. The son-of-a-bitch had the nerve to wish us bon voyage. If I ever get my hands on the bastard…’ He swung the axe viciously.
It didn’t take long to smash the back half off the cart. The wood was old and rotten. Then we harnessed George and backed him in. By the time we’d finished, Hilda had set Max’s leg. ‘I’ve done the best I can for him,’ she said.
‘How is he?‘I asked.
‘Not good. He says much that I do not understand, but he knows what is happening.’
We lifted him on to the cart. Then we got the others on.
‘Can you drive?’ I asked Hacket.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve forgotten how. But I was an artilleryman in the first war.’
‘You carry on then,’ I said. ‘I never held a pair of reins in my life.’
He nodded. ‘Okay, then. Here we go.’ He clicked his tongue and flicked George’s back with the reins. The mule started forward at a walk. Hacket slapped the reins. Still the. animal ambled. I could have walked faster myself and I thought, My God, we’ll never get through Avin before the lava streams cut us off.
I think Zina had the same thought for she called out to Hacket, ‘Swear at him in Italian. He requires many curses to make him go fast.’
‘ Via!’ Hacket shouted.’ Via!’
‘Oh, you do not understand what I mean by curses.’ She moved over to him and took the reins. She jerked at them and then she began to scream curses at the wretched animal. She screamed them at the top of her voice, using gutter language, many of the words quite unrecognisable to me. George laid his ears back and then suddenly he had broken into a trot. ‘Ecco! Now we move.’
We must have presented an extraordinary spectacle if there’d been any one to see us, the cart swaying and slithering on the shifting surface of the ash and Zina standing there balancing herself to the swing of it like a charioteer, her black hair streaming in the wind. Behind us the mountain belched a red glare of farewell.
‘I think he has been very kind,’ Hilda said to me.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Vesuvius. We have had no more falls of hot stones.’
I nodded. ‘But pretty near everything else has happened.’
She smiled and put her hand over mine. ‘Now tell me what happen when you go off after that — that man?’
We were past the last of the houses now and in open country, forlorn-looking under its mantle of ash. I looked back at the remains of Santo Francisco and I knew I’d never in my life be so glad to be out of a place. Then I told her all that had happened on the roof of that house, and as I was talking I was looking at Jan Tucek. He was barely recognisable. He looked like an old man and he met my gaze with eyes that were dull and lifeless as though he had suffered too much. His companion — Lemlin — a big man with a round baldish head and china-blue eyes was the same.
When I had finished Hilda said, ‘You have been lucky, Dick.’
I nodded. ‘The devil of it is that swine got away with your father’s things.’
‘What does that matter?’ she said sharply. ‘You are alive. That is what matters. And I do not think he will get far — not now.’
‘Have you found out what happened to your father?’ I asked her.
Her eyes clouded. ‘Yes — a little. He will not tell me all. He and the general letectva landed at Milan as arranged. They were met by this man Sansevino and another man. They have pistols and they tie Lemlin and my father up and then they fly to the villa where we find you this evening. They land in a vineyard of very young bushes. The next night my father is brought up to the monastery, chained to the wall in that terrible tower like a convict and then tortured. When this Sansevino learn that my father has not what he wants and that you have it, then he leave. An old man called Agostino bring them food every day. That is all. They see no one else until Maxwell and the Contessa arrive.’ The grip of her fingers tightened on my hand. ‘I think he will wish me to say he is sorry to have involve you in this business. He will tell you himself when he is recovered.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m only sorry—’
‘Do not reproach yourself please. And I am sorry I was so stupid that time in Milan and again in Naples. I did not realise then. …” Her voice trailed away and she dropped her eyes. ‘You have been wonderful, Dick.’