Italy is a nice place again, you will come back here and live with me. I promise you that, my darling. I promise.…”In spite of her strength the principessa had choked on the last words as she held Serena close to her, this last bit of her own flesh, this last link she had to her firstborn. She would have no one now when Serena went away. But there was no choice. It was too dangerous for the child to stay. Three times in the last two months the soldiers in the Piazza San Marco had accosted Serena. Even in plain, ugly clothes, the child was too beautiful, too tall, too womanly, even at fourteen. The last one had followed her home from school and grabbed her roughly by the arms and kissed her, pressed against a wall, his body crushed against hers. One of the servants had seen them there, Serena panting and frightened, wide eyed with terror yet silent, afraid that this time they would take her, or her grandmother, away. She had been terrified of the soldiers' faces and their laughter and their eyes. And the older woman knew each day that there was danger for Serena, that letting her out of the house at all was dangerous for the child. There was no way to control the soldiers, no way to protect Serena from the madness that seemed to run wild. Any day a nightmare could befall them, and before it happened Alicia di San Tibaldo knew that she had to save the child. It had taken several weeks to find the solution, but when the bishop quietly suggested it to her, she knew that she had no choice. Quietly, that night, after dinner, she had told Serena about the plan. The child had cried at first, and begged her, pleaded not to send her away, and surely not so far away as that. She could go to the farm in Umbria, she could hide there, she could cut off her hair, wear ugly dresses, she could work in the fields … she could do anything, but please, Norma … please.… Her heart-wrenching sobs were to no avail. To let her stay in Italy was to destroy her, was to risk her daily, to walk a constant tightrope, knowing that she could be killed, or hurt or raped. The only thing left for her grandmother to do for her was to send her away, until the end of the war. And they both knew, as they stood inside the Swiss border, that it could be for a very long time.
“You will be back soon, Serena. And I will be here, my darling. No matter what.” She prayed that she wasn't lying as rivers of tears flowed from the young girl's eyes, and the slender shoulders shook in her hands.
“Me lo prometti?” Do you promise me? She could barely choke out the words.
The old woman nodded silently and kissed Serena one last time, and then, nodding to the two women and the nuns, she stepped gracefully backward and the nuns put their arms around Serena and began to lead her away. She would walk for several miles that night to their convent. The next day they would take her with a group of other children to their sister house by bus some hundred miles away. From there she would be passed on to another group and eventually taken out of Switzerland. Their goal was London, and from there, the States. It would be a long and difficult journey, and there was always the danger of a bombing in London, or at sea. The route that Alicia had chosen for her grandchild was one of possible danger and an even greater chance for safety and survival. To stay in Italy would have meant certain disaster, in one way or another, and she would have died before she would have let them touch Serena. She owed Graziella and Umberto that much, after what Sergio had done. She had no one now, except Serena … a tiny speck of dark brown, her pale gold hair shoved into a dark knitted hat … as they reached the last knoll and then turned, with a last wave from Serena, and then they disappeared.
For Serena it had been a long and terrifying journey, complete with five days and nights in air-raid shelters in London, and at last they had fled to the countryside, and left on a freighter out of Dover. The crossing