The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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the odd little vial with what looked like blood in it, the red pouch, the tweezers with the tricolored ribbon tied round it.
Nothing seemed missing. What had they been looking for?
Of course, Angie had the medallion with her at Georgetown.
Las Vegas - July 20, 2008
The internist on ER duty at Valley Hospital was drinking a coffee by the vending machine. The night shift was never easy. There were always young people who'd been butchered or mangled in car crashes. Then there were the overdose cases. And a heart attack victim or two.
He'd taken up the cruel habit of making bets with the nurses; they called it 'The Who's Next?' game. Like on TV, there was an accumulating jackpot.
Tonight he was on a winning streak. He'd guessed five cases out of five.
When they paged him, he'd just wagered on a new heart attack case: "Male, sixty years old, been with a prostitute."
Reading the cell-phone page from the ER admissions desk, however, brought a doubt to his mind:
"On the double. Come see."
Come see? he wondered.
No, he'd never seen anything like it before. Through a fog of consternation, he heard a male nurse say that the young woman had been dumped at the entrance from a car which had then taken off at high speed. "Apparently there was a shiny reflecting wrap over the license plate, and so none of the TV cameras recorded the number. Probably was coming from downtown," he added.
The internist leaned over the bloody human pulp at its middle, which looked a hell of a lot like the cadavers he'd poked at in medical school. The difference was that there still was, by God, heaving life in it, in her. Life, despite the slashed open abdomen, the hacked off breast nipples, the missing teeth and fingers…The poor creature. A piece of a hand moved, and then a faint wheezing came from her mouth, together with a drool of bloody bubbles.
He managed to bend over what had been a head and face in time to hear a wheezed, "Stop him." Then the breath came no more.
Rome, Italy - April 28, 1849
Their arrival in Rome took place in a thick haze of fatigue and after so many hours of crossing fields in the dark without food that they were—Laffranchi croaked—ready to eat each other. To make things worse, they found, at dawn, an immense market crowd waiting to cross the Tiber at the Milvio Bridge and had to wait their turn. Sandor nudged Goffredo and nodded in the direction of the closed-mouthed youths on carts piled with wooden chests that had been ominously nailed tight. "Guns," he said.
When it was finally their moment on the bridge, Laffranchi called out to three nearby fishermen standing up to their knees in river mud. He asked them where the volunteers were gathering for the defense of the city, but none of them paid him any mind. The little company of volunteers followed the farmers and wagon drivers. "Look," Goffredo murmured to Sandor at a span of ancient aqueduct lit up gold in the morning sunlight. And then there was the Flaminia Gate itself—white and colossal. His head craned, Goffredo passed under the largest of its three marble arches; the grandeur excited him, but the huge Papal crest adorning it stirred up his blood. As for Sandor, he could not believe how easy it was to enter the Eternal City. Nothing like in Budapest or Vienna. Where were the gate guards? And above all, why was that stray soldier wearing a torn uniform of the Army of Piedmont arguing with a bread seller?
"TAKE IT. This IS money, I tell you!" A banknote fluttered to the ground.
"Worthless," said the old bread seller.
"Give me the bread," the soldier commanded, grabbing at the loaf under the vendor's arm and breaking off a piece to shove in his mouth.
"Don't steal his bread," Laffranchi intervened.
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"It's a disastrous situation. None of them will take our money."
"Who do you mean by 'our'?" Laffranchi asked.
"I hear your accent, as you do mine," the soldier said cautiously. "You're from the North."
"From Pavia."
The soldier nodded. "Cuneo, myself. And how much the Romans expect of us already."
"They expect you to win."
"They're loyal to us and helpful and all but...well, look at this river of theirs. Call it a river. Good God, with those untamed, muddy banks and all that overgrown marsh. If the water rises even a few inches, entire neighbourhoods go under. This river is an enemy to Rome. Why don't they do something about it?"
Hearing this, Goffredo felt more on the side of the Romans than of the soldier from Cuneo. Rivers aren't enemies, what a thing to say. And as they entered the first dirt lanes on the edges of town he began to think that the Romans knew how to appreciate water in general. He wondered, for example, at a monumental fountain standing outside a peasant's shabby house and stable. He'd never seen a fountain so beautiful. Of course it was a fountain, and as such served a clear purpose, but who had put such a fine one there and why? All the while he was wondering this, the buildings in sight became higher and all crowded together, and still other fountains appeared that made the first seem ordinary. Then too, there were everywhere more domed churches than Goffredo could count, which Sandor called 'baroque.'
As it got on towards midday, Goffredo began to feel very hungry. But he told himself it was best to hold off. After having seen the bread seller at the bridge refuse the soldier's money, the wisest thing was to keep going until he felt faint, at which time he would spend one of his few soldi for food for Sandor and himself. Following the many other new arrivals, their little company now poured into a labyrinth of narrow cobblestone streets, emerging onto a stretch of ancient paved road.
"The Imperial Forum of ancient Rome," Laffranchi the student announced.
"What is?" Goffredo asked.
"All of it."
Dotting the grass on either side, there were detached columns looking like teeth in a broken comb. Sandor and Laffranchi said they were the ruins of buildings that had belonged to famous emperors. Goffredo finally found something he himself recognized at the end of the old road: the Coliseum. A drawing of it had been in the book his school master had used with him in Bassignana.
In the grassy open space round the Coliseum as they approached, a man in green livery was attempting to repair a broken wheel on an elegant black carriage. Motionless next to the carriage with its glittering bowed windows stood two women. Laffranchi took in the graceful long neck and black hair of the one who was uncommonly tall.
"I'd know her anywhere. All Pavia would. Princess Cristina di Belgioioso," he murmured, turning to look at Sandor, as one who could appreciate this happy circumstance "The most famous and richest princess loyal to the cause of Italian unity. I have always wanted to meet her. A journalist and benefactor. Exiled in the past for her ideas," Laffranchi gushed. "They say her old husband gave her syphilis. See how pale she is? You can imagine how delicate her health must be. If she's here, it can only be true that Mazzini's asked her to set-up a hospital."
Goffredo had never before heard a man say so much about a woman in a minute. He'd never seen nobility in person before either; he'd only seen a painting of the king. He eyed the Princess thoughtfully.
"That's bound to be her daughter's tutor, Miss Parker." Laffranchi's eyes gleamed with pedantic satisfaction as he nodded at the second woman, who was stout and wearing glasses similar to his own. The two ladies were deep in conversation.
Walking past the carriage on the side of the vexed coachman, Goffredo glanced in the open window and saw there was a little curly-haired girl on the red cushions, asleep.
"Damn the dirty dog to hell!" swore the coachman, sprawling backwards to the ground and taking the broken wheel with him.
Goffredo turned. "That's not the way to change a wheel."
"Go to the devil."