Men of Intrgue A Trilogy Read online

  Calmate. That was Spanish. Helen recognized it from her childhood, when her mother had had a Costa Rican maid. It was the Latin equivalent of “take it easy,” an expression used between friends. She had earlier noticed his slight accent, discernible only with certain words. This, along with his name, confirmed her initial suspicion that he was not American.

  It was a short distance to the bedroom, but the walk seemed to go on forever. It had taken everything he had left to get to the house, and Helen almost had to carry him to the bed. She could tell that he was humiliated, frustrated by the frailty of his body, whose instant obedience he had evidently come to expect. By the time they reached their goal one side of Helen’s nightdress was drenched with his blood. When she released him he sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, then fell back on it, passing out almost immediately. Helen did what she could to arrange his limbs comfortably, hoping that she would be able to move him to change the linen. The bed already looked like a murder had taken place on it. She covered him with a light blanket from the closet and then sat on the satin draped chaise next to the bed, trying to collect herself.

  She almost couldn’t grasp what had happened. An hour before she had been studying the details of Christopher Marlowe’s death in an Elizabethan barroom brawl, and now she had a wounded outlaw ensconced on her stepmother’s Oscar de la Renta bedspread, as if the one event had influenced the other. She had to do something to care for his wound; it could become infected if not dressed, and she didn’t even know if the bullet was still in it. Helen bit her lip thoughtfully, instructing herself not to panic. She was a graduate student in sixteenth century literature, not a nurse, but surely common sense had to play some role in an event like this. Soap and disinfectant, that’s what she needed. She picked up a notepad from the end table next to the bed and began to make a list.

  Her life had not prepared her to deal with such a crisis. She was the daughter of a millionaire, but far from being the pampered princess some supposed, she was a postscript to the youth of both her parents. They had gone on to successive remarriages, behaving dutifully but not lovingly toward her. Raised by a socialite mother who had little time for her only child, Helen had been shuttled from boarding schools to expensive European summer camps, always an afterthought, always alone. She grew up seeking solace in the intellectual pursuits that became the butt of jokes and misunderstandings among her family and friends. Occupied with fashion shows, shopping expeditions, tennis and skiing, they could not fathom her interest in books and knowledge. Considered an oddity, almost an outcast, Helen was driven further into her studies, trying to find a meaning in them that seemed absent from the aimless, hedonistic lives of her relatives. She was now pretty much on her own, living on a trust fund, maintaining minimal contact with her imperious, dictatorial mother and a father far more interested in his stockbrokers than he was in her. For the child of generations of money, Helen was singularly idealistic, almost naive, having been raised apart from the financial pursuits of her family in the rarefied atmosphere of strictly run private schools. With money to support her and little interference from the father who supplied it, Helen went on with her studies, absorbed by a rich and timeless past she found much more rewarding than sterile reality. She had been immersed in her work for three weeks, isolated in her father’s vacation house, when the man on the bed had disturbed the quiet, satisfying pattern of her days with his unexpected intrusion.

  Helen suddenly threw her pencil on the floor and pressed her palms to the sides of her head. A man could be dying not five feet away from her, and she was making a list, for heaven’s sake. She got up hurriedly, realized she was still wearing the stained nightgown, stripped it off impatiently and slipped into a terry robe. She checked on Matteo, who was sweating profusely, muttering to himself. It was clear that his temperature was rising, and Helen wondered if there was alcohol in Adrienne’s medicine cabinet. She left her patient to rummage in her stepmother’s bathroom, looking for supplies. Adrienne was more into fifty dollar an ounce wrinkle cream than gauze bandages, but Helen did manage to find some peroxide and large sterile pads that would have to do until she was able to get out to a pharmacy. What she really needed was an antibiotic. Since Adrienne was something of a hypochondriac, with a coterie of doctors and no shortage of cash to command their attention, she had a separate glass cabinet stocked with little plastic vials of prescription medicines. Helen had never looked in it, but she did so now, passing over the many bottles she was unable to identify until she came to one labeled “erythrocin stearate.” She had taken that once herself for a strep throat, so she set it aside, hoping that its time of potency had not expired and that Matteo was not allergic to it. The date on the label was obscured, but there were ten tablets left, enough to help if he responded to it. Helen also found a half empty container of Percocet, with directions indicating that Adrienne had taken it for an abscessed tooth. It had to be a pretty powerful painkiller because her stepmother raised the roof if she got a hangnail. Helen put the two bottles in the pockets of her robe and rapidly replaced everything else, then went back to the vanity and assembled what she thought she would need to dress the wound.

  When she returned to Matteo’s bedside she tried to slip the sleeve off his injured arm, but he fought her hands, twisting away, seemingly slipping further into delirium. Taking an alternative tactic, Helen picked up a pair of shears and began to cut away the sodden material around the wound. But once she uncovered it she wished she hadn’t.

  It was a jagged mass of torn flesh, carbon stained and flayed raw, with the reddish streaks that indicated infection already radiating out from the bloody center. Helen stuck her tongue in the corner of her mouth, fingers busy, muttering a prayer under her breath. When she realized she was reciting the Girl Scout oath, she stopped short and began again, encouraged by the familiar words as she washed away the coagulated blood, splashed the gaping wound with antiseptic and covered it with sterile pads. She hadn’t been able to feel anything under the skin, and she could see the bullet had passed clean through the meat of his upper arm, exiting out the back. She finished by tearing ah old pillowcase into strips and tying them around the dressing to hold it in place, securing them just above Matteo’s bicep. Her handiwork, when complete, looked like a neat little package, but the patient did not seem improved.

  He was still mumbling incoherently, his skin fiery, and she didn’t know how she was going to get him to take the pills in her pocket. Finally she crushed them up in a glass of water and forced the liquid down his throat a little at a time, tilting his head back and dribbling it between his lips. It was a tedious and exhausting process for both of them. When the glass was empty she didn’t feel like struggling with him any further, but she knew that the rest of his damp shirt had to come off. She peeled it from his body by inches, noticing the foreign label inside the collar. She also noticed that his torso was beautiful, the dusky skin flowing silkily over his well developed arms and chest. A spray of dark hair spread over his breast and formed a line down his abdomen to his belt. She paused to wipe his face, heavily beaded with perspiration, studying his long, spiky lashes, the heavy shadow of beard on his upper lip and chin. His thick, wavy hair was damp and matted, and she brushed it back from his forehead, wondering whether it was black or dark brown; in its current state it was impossible to tell. When she was finished she tidied the bed and got up to wash the instruments she had used. On her way out the bedroom door the telephone rang, and Helen glanced at the clock on the dresser as she went to answer it. The night had passed and it was morning. As she picked up the receiver Helen thought that it had to be one of her parents, since they alone knew she was at the beach house.

  It was the long arm of Switzerland, otherwise known as Helen’s mother, Sophia Chamberlain Demarest Collier Nyquist. Sophia lived in Gstaad with her third husband, the chocolate baron, who commissioned his secretary to send Helen a ten pound box of bonbons every Christmas. Helen had long ago stopped reminding her stepfather that she was aller
gic to chocolate and routinely dropped the gift off at an orphanage near her apartment in Cambridge. And now Sophia, with her exquisite timing, was calling up for her semiannual clothes lecture while her daughter was harboring a gunshot victim.

  “Darling, just ringing up to remind you that the collections are coming out next week, and I’m expecting you to go with me to pick out a few things,” Sophia began in her breathless, confidence sharing voice, broaching the expected topic.

  Sophia had been born in Darien, Connecticut, but ever since she had lived in England with her second husband, she was fond of dropping Britishisms like “ringing up” into her conversation. Helen looked at the ceiling. She had never accompanied her mother to this ritual orgy of spending, but that did not deter Sophia from behaving as if it were an obligation which Helen would be rude and insensitive to ignore. Helen sighed as her mother rattled on about the trip, wondering how much her stepfather would be expected to pay for this latest indulgence. “Pick up a few things,” to her mother, meant packing off her entire current wardrobe to a secondhand house for a tax deduction and starting over from scratch, ordering originals from a range of designers.

  “Sophia, I have enough clothes, and I really have to go,” Helen interrupted when her mother paused for air. “I have to get to the library.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, sweeting, one never has enough clothes,” Sophia replied, laughing lightly and ignoring the rest of her daughter’s statement. “I’ve already bought your ticket; you can meet me in Rome at Claudia’s villa.”

  Claudia Fierremonte, a friend of Helen’s mother who had inherited a sports car fortune, shared Sophia’s attitude toward life and the continual pursuit of the perfect wardrobe. Helen would rather do battle with Medusa than be trapped in the Eternal City with the two of them.

  “I can’t make it, Sophia, I have too much work to do.” Helen glanced at Matteo as he kicked off his cover, wishing that she were churlish enough to hang up in Sophia’s ear. Helen wanted to get back to her patient, who was now cold again and shivering. She put down the phone while her mother was still talking and unfolded the quilt from the foot of the bed, drawing it up to his chin. He settled down, and Helen picked up the receiver again to hear her mother say, “And Roberto will be there.”

  As if that were an enticement. Roberto Fierremonte was Claudia’s brother, a handsome, charming playboy who, like Claudia, had never done a day’s work in his life. Sophia thought that he was love’s young dream and considered Helen’s low opinion of him to be just another of her daughter’s many aberrations.

  “I thought we had closed the subject of Roberto,” Helen said wearily, mentally tapping her foot. She had to hand it to her mother; Sophia was as relentless as a tidal wave. She never surrendered, never seemed to consider doing so. “And my research can’t wait. I’m sorry.”

  “Helen, really, your obsession with that... project... simply defies comprehension,” Sophia observed, the first note of irritation creeping into her tone. “You absolutely must do something about the way you look. When you arrived for Bobbie’s shower in that.. .jacket, I almost died. I mean, died, right there in the Sherry Netherland. Darling, I hate to say this, but you are embarrassing me.”

  Helen had thought her mother’s cousin Bobbie should be embarrassed, throwing herself a shower for her fourth wedding. “That jacket was a pea coat, Sophia. Millions of people wear them.”

  “That’s just my point, dear, you’re not millions of people. You have an image to project; you can’t go around in rags you’ve picked up in the basement of an army-navy store. I’ll bet that thing isn’t even wool.”

  “I don’t know; I didn’t interview the sheep,” Helen replied sarcastically, but the gibe was lost on her mother, who switched to her other favorite subject, Helen’s stepmother.

  “I hope you’re comfortable there in your father’s place, Helen,” Sophia said unctuously. “It was so chic and stylish when I decorated it; I can only imagine what it looks like now. That woman your father married has the Manhattan town house done in Reign of Terror, I think; I can’t understand why everything is red.”

  Matteo stirred, and Helen waited until he relaxed again before answering. “It’s Mediterranean, Sophia, and you know her name is Adrienne. Dad’s been married to her for five years.” Helen glanced around the room, desperate to get off the phone quickly without provoking a follow up call by Sophia. Suddenly inspiration struck, and she added, “Actually, maybe you’re right. I really should get out of here soon because Adrienne needs the place for a house party Debra wants to have. She told me so a few days ago.”

  Sophia’s most cherished guiding principle was to thwart her successor’s plans whenever possible. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t let Adrienne drive you out so she can throw a shindig for that fat little adolescent of hers. Take as long as you like, dear. Forget about the collections. I know you have things to do. Shall I call your father and tell him you need to stay a little longer?”

  “That’s okay,” Helen answered, grinning. “I’m sure Adrienne and I can work it out. Have a good time, Sophia. Goodbye.”

  “Ciao, darling.”

  Helen hung up gratefully, going immediately to check on Matteo. Fresh red was already staining the gauze above the wound, but the blood wasn’t running in rivulets anymore. She hoped he didn’t need a transfusion, because he wasn’t going to get one lying in Adrienne’s bedroom. She realized that there was nothing more she could do for him and that she should just let him rest, so she completed the task Sophia’s call had interrupted: cleaning up and putting everything back where it belonged. Then she stretched out on the chaise next to Matteo, propping a pillow behind her head and closing her eyes. She was exhausted and it wasn’t long before she slept.

  * * * *

  Helen awoke in late afternoon, to find that she had slept through the time to give Matteo his pills. She found him bathed in perspiration, still feverish, and drifting in and out of consciousness with a rapidity that scared her. During one of his lucid moments she told him that she was calling a doctor, but he reacted so violently that she retracted the statement in order to calm him. She changed the dressing on his wound and then gave him a dose and a half of the medicine, praying that it wasn’t too much. After drinking the liquid, Matteo fell back on the bed, his eyes closed, and Helen thought he was unconscious again. But as she moved away the fingers of his good hand encircled her wrist, squeezing it. Too weak to talk, he nevertheless communicated his gratitude, and Helen felt the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. She was glad that she had sheltered him, sure now that she had not been wrong to do so.

  After she had taken a quick shower and dressed, she made coffee and toast and took them back to the bedroom. She felt the disorientation that doing morning things in the evening brought, but forgot it when she saw that Matteo was shaking so badly that the bed rattled. He was wracked with chills. She grabbed extra blankets and piled them on top of him, crawling up on the bed to hold him when his trembling didn’t cease. She held him tightly, cradling his head against her shoulder, and after several minutes his shivering lessened. He relaxed into her arms, and Helen remained in her awkward position, loath to disturb him. When he seemed to be sleeping peacefully she let him slip back to the bed, turning his pillow so that the cool side touched his cheek. He sighed deeply, and she was happy that she was able to make him more comfortable.

  Helen went back to her tepid coffee and cold toast, wondering how old he was. It was difficult to tell from his appearance, because he had probably never looked worse in his life than he did right now. That he was young and, under normal circumstances, quite attractive in a dark, Latin way was obvious. The rest was a mystery. He had no identification on him, which was undoubtedly not an accident, and his knowledge of English could have been gained anywhere. Resignedly she finished her toast and brought the dishes back to the kitchen.

  For two more days Helen cared for Matteo while he plunged in and out of fevers, sometimes seeming to improve, then losing groun
d when his diminished strength was not equal to the struggle. At times it was clear he knew she was there, but at others all his concentration appeared to be focused on fighting off the infection that sought to conquer him. And he was a fighter. He wrestled with his illness the way Jacob wrestled with the angel, a mere mortal against a powerful force, but a fierce, stubborn mortal who would not acknowledge an enemy greater than himself. Helen, silent witness to the battle, fed him juice and medicine and stormed heaven with pleas for his recovery. Her papers gathered dust on the dining room table, and her books went unread as day merged into night while she kept her vigil by his bedside. She changed his linen and his dressings, forced soup on him when he seemed capable of drinking it and left him alone only once, to slip out to the local drugstore for supplies. Convinced that he would be dead when she got back, she ran headlong into the bedroom, relaxing only when she saw the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

  By the afternoon of the third day she thought he looked better. His color had improved and the skin around his wound felt cooler. At suppertime she ate a container of yogurt and made a cup of tea, sitting on the edge of Matteo’s bed to drink it. She couldn’t remember ever being so tired; she ached with it, and for the first time in her life understood what it meant to be “bone weary.” Letting the empty cup fall to the rug, she lay down on the other side of the bed, where she would be able to hear Matteo if he made the slightest sound. She thought she should set the alarm to give him his medicine, and that was the last thing she remembered before she awoke because someone was touching her hair.

  She sat up, startled to find him looking at her with eyes that were clear and steady.

  “You’re better,” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer, merely continued to gaze at her as if trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together.

  “Do you remember me?” she asked.