The Night Falling Read Online Free Page B

has dropped far behind – he keeps straightening up, pressing his fingers into his spine and wincing. The overseer has a long leather whip, coiled at his hip. His hand strays to it, time and again, as though he’d love to use it. Ettore’s stomach clenches even tighter after the snack of rocket leaves; his head starts to feel light, strange, as it often does towards day’s end. His body keeps working, regardless; shoulders swinging the weight of the scythe, back muscles tensing to stop its momentum, twisting him from the waist, hands gripped tight. He can feel every tendon as it rubs over bone, but his thoughts drift away from him, away from the heat and the toil and the suffocating wind.
    He has heard about a hole in the ground at a town called Castellana, twenty-five kilometres from Gioia, towards the sea. This hole in the ground is wide and nothing that goes into it ever comes out, except bats – streaming millions of bats, like smoke. Sometimes it belches up shreds of a chilly white mist, which are said to be the ghosts of people who have gone too near and fallen in. It is the mouth of hell, the locals say; it plummets right down into the core of the earth, into a blackness so heavy it would crush you. Ettore thinks about this hole as his body keeps going, and his back burns like there’s a knife stuck in it, and his guts cramp from the leaves he ate. He thinks about jumping into it and falling through white mist and then cool, clammy darkness; he thinks about curling up in the ancient black depths, in the world’s stony heart where no man belongs, and waiting there. Not waiting for anything, just waiting; where it is cold and still and silent.
    He’s suddenly aware that his name has been spoken. Ettore blinks and sees Pino off to one side, his face wide with concern. He realises that his scythe is still, that he has straightened up and let it come to rest on his boot. He can’t seem to make his hands tighten on the shaft. Behind Pino, he sees two guards exchange a word and a nod, sees them kick their sluggish horses to life and set out towards him. He can’t seem to make his thoughts come back from that hole in the ground and his sudden yearning for it. With all the will he can find, he grips the scythe and lifts it, turning his body to the right, angling the tip of the blade to catch the right number of wheat stalks. But he is too far from the edge of the crop, and the weight of it throws him off balance. His body uncoils, the way it must. It has moved this way thousands of times, on thousands of days; he can no more stop it than he can stop his heart beating. But he will fall if he doesn’t correct his stance, and though falling would be better than the alternative, he has no choice in this either. His body drives itself, is its own master; it keeps its own counsel, as he has trained it to do. Ettore teeters, and lurches forwards. His left leg lands in the path of the scythe as it swings, and he can do nothing to stop what will happen, though he sees it clearly enough. The metal bites easily, cleanly. He feels it hit the bone and lodge there. Pino shouts, and so does the man behind him. A bright spray of blood splatters the wheat stalks, looking too glossy and red to be real, and then Ettore falls.

Chapter Five
    Clare
    Gioia del Colle is quiet. Low sunlight pools in the street corners, reflecting from smooth stone slabs and streaked walls. Though they pass along avenues of elegant villas, four storeys high, with painted render and symmetrical shuttered windows, the road is crusted with manure – the fresh and fly-struck scattered over the old and dry. There are women out walking with huge urns or baskets on their heads and shoulders, but they do not speak. The only car is the one they’re riding in; it creeps along slowly behind a dray cart loaded with barrels. Clare sees almost no men, and when she points this out to Boyd, he shrugs.
    ‘They’re all out working on the harvest, darling,’ he