to nothing but cold moist air, I wept without control, and a part of my brain went into panic, frightened that my weeping would be heard.
God was merciful, everyone had left. I crawled out of the earth, and I walked out of that forest of death into a field and saw the early sunlight rising over the mountains. I was alive, but there was no life for me. I could not go back to the hills for surely I would be killed, yet to go elsewhere, to arrive at some strange place and simply be, was not possible for a young woman in this island country. There was no one I could turn to, having spent three years a willing captive of my padrone. Yet I could not simply die in that field with God's sunlight spreading over the sky. It told me to live, you see.
I tried to think what I might do, where I might go. Beyond the hills, on the oceaWs coasts, were other great houses that belonged to other padrones, friends of Guillaume. I wondered what would happen were I to appear at one of them and plead for shelter and mercy. Then I saw the error of such thinking. Those men were not my padrone; they were men with wives and families, and I was the whore of Villa Matarese. While Guillaume was alive, my presence was to be tolerated, even enjoyed, for the great man would have it no other way. But with him dead, I was dead.
Then I remembered. There was a man who tended the stables of an estate in Zonza. Me had been kind to me during those times we visited and I rode his employer's mounts. He had smiled often and guided me as to my proper deportment in the saddle, for he saw that I was not born to the hunt.
Indeed, I admitted it and we had laughed together. And each time I had seen the look in his eyes. I was used to glances of desire, but his eyes held more than that. There was gentleness and understanding, perhaps even respect-not for what I was, but for what I did not pretend to be.
I looked at the early sun and knew that Zonza was on my left, probably beyond the mountains. I set out for those stables and that man.
He became my husband and although I bore the child of Guillaume de Matarese, he accepted her as his own, giving us both love and protection through the days of his life. Those years and our lives during those years are no concern of yours, they do not pertain to the padrone. It is enough to say that no harm came to us. For years we lived far north in Vescovato, away from the danger of the hill people, never daring to mention their secret. The dead could not be brought back, you see, and the killer and his killer son-the man and the shepherd boy-had fled Corsica.
I have told you the truth, all of it. If you stifl have doubts, I cannot put them to rest.
Again she had finished.
Taleniekov got up and walked slowly to the stove and the pot of tea. "Per nostro circolo," he said, looking at Scofield. "Seventy years have passed and still they would kill for their grave." "Perdona?" The old woman did not understand English, so the KGB man repeated his statement in Italian. Sophia nodded. "Ibe secret goes from father to son. These are the two generations that have been bom since the land was theirs. It is not so long. They are stiff afraid." "There aren't any laws that could take it from them," said Bray. "I doubt there ever were. Men might have been sent to prison for withholding information about the massacre, but in those days, who would prosecute?
They buried the dead, that was their conspiracy." "There was a greater conspiracy. They did not permit the blessed sacraments." "That's another court. I don't know anything about it." Scofield glanced at the Russian, then brought his eyes back to the blind eyes in front of him. "Why did you come back?" "I was able to. And I was old when we found this valley." "That's not an answer." "The people of the hills believe a lie. They think the padrone spared me, sent me away before the guns began. To oth&s I am a source of fear and hatred. It is whispered that I was spared by God to be