In the Tall Grass

On the shore in Sicily. Photo credit: Luce-Chiara #2 (Flickr)

Excerpt from Death of a Serpent

Rosa’s front lawn was packed with men pruning palms, tending to her flowers and pools and conservatories. A high-class house on the outskirts of Oltramari, Villa Rosa backed onto the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was shielded by cypress trees from its neighbors, the estates of British merchants who came to Sicily in the eighteenth century for a vacation and wound up staying for good. Inherited from her ancestors, Rosa’s business had remained untouched for centuries by war and economic blight.

Like her mother and grandmother, Rosa had an eye for the main chance. During the war she devised a scheme to remain open, charging Garibaldi’s soldiers a special fee—five minutes, five grani. After the war, she redecorated, hung paintings, raised fees. Velvet draped the windows. When the town installed gaslights around the train station and the promenade, Rosa had lines run into the villa and the nasty-smelling jets fastened to the walls in every room. Water ran in closets discreetly situated on all four floors. Unconventional, Rosa. She didn’t keep a full complement of servants, but she had upstairs maids, downstairs maids, a cook, a laundress, a driver, stable hands, gardeners, and now, guards.

The wheels of the trap whirred on the drive leading to the main house. Largo’s ears pricked. “Rosa’s stable boy spoils you,” Serafina said. “Apples and sea grass, is that what moves you?” When she flicked the reins this time, he trotted.

“La Signura, not down yet,” the maid told her.

“Then I’ll walk around the grounds. I haven’t seen the new conservatory she talks so much about.”

“In the back, dear lady, toward the sea. I’ll tell her you’re here.”

Serafina took the path around to the rear of the villa. The salty air prickled her skin. Fat gulls flew in the distance, circling the shore. Ahead was an octagonal glass structure filled with plants and exotic birds. Serafina opened the door, sniffed the air. Stuffy. She decided she’d had enough, shut the door, and left.

A sloping lawn led to large rocks surrounding a narrow path to the shore. As Serafina got closer to the water, the wind blew sand in her face. It whipped her skirts, and she punched them down, expelling the trapped air. She squared her shoulders and stood for a moment, her face to the gale.

Plunging ahead, she tripped, catching herself in time to avoid an ungainly fall and, looking down, noticed her laces were untied. As she bent to fix them, she saw something, a cloth object peeking out of the tall grass on one side of the wooden stairs. A nest or a purse? She reached out and grabbed it: Bella’s hat.