‘Will they never come?’ The words seemed forced out of her and her grip on my hand had tightened.
There was nothing I could say. I just held her hand and stood there in the shadow of the doorway, knowing what hell she was going through and unable to do anything to help her. At last she said, ‘I think you are right. Something has happened.’
I looked at my watch. It was nearly half-past four. They had been gone well over a quarter of an hour. Why hadn’t Sansevino come out to the car? But I knew why. He was watching, waiting for us to make the first move. ‘I’m afraid it is going to be a cat-and-mouse game.’
She turned her head. ‘How do you mean — cat-and-mouse game?’
‘Whoever moves first must give away his position.’
The glare in the courtyard suddenly deepened as though Hell’s flames had been banked up. Shadows moved and flickered. ‘I do not think we have too much time,’ Hilda said.
I nodded. I wished I could see what the lava was doing. ‘I think we must go in search of the others,’ I said. The blood was hammering in my head and my foot and my hands felt cold. I was quite convinced now that Sansevino was watching that courtyard just as we were watching it. I gripped her hand, nerving myself for the dash to the doorway, for the groping along endless corridors and through huge, silent rooms expecting every shadow to materialise into that damnable doctor. I had that void in the very core of me that I’d had on my first solo, on my first combat flight.
And then Hilda said, ‘Listen!’
Somewhere out in the unnatural stillness of the village was a murmur of sliding stones. It was like a coal truck being tipped and it went on and on. Then suddenly everything was still again — unnaturally still. It was as though the whole village, all the living stone of it, held its breath, waiting for the thing it dreaded. ‘There it is again,’ Hilda whispered. It was like clinker falling in a huge grate. And then there was a crumbling sound. A shower of sparks flew up beyond the monastery towards the billowing column in the sky that marked Vesuvius. ‘What is it?’
I hesitated. Some instinct told me what it was and I didn’t want to tell her. But she’d have to know soon. A haze of rubble dust was rising, the particles reflecting the flickering gleam of flames below. ‘The lava is entering the village,’ I told her. She was so close to me that I felt the tremor that ran through her body. The heat was becoming intense. It hung over us like the heat from the open door of a furnace. ‘We must do something.’ Her voice was on the edge of panic.