“Who told you I went to Russia?”
“You went without telling your husband,” the signadora went on, as though she hadn’t heard the question. “You were together for a few hours in a hotel room in the city of night. Do you remember?”
The old woman smiled. Her hand was still touching Chiara’s face. It moved to her hair.
“Shall I go on?” she asked.
“I don’t believe you can see the past.”
“Your husband was married to another woman before you,” the old woman said, as if to prove Chiara wrong. “There was a child. A fire. The child died but the wife lived. She lives still.”
Chiara drew away sharply.
“You were in love with him for a long time,” the old woman continued, “but he wouldn’t marry you because he was grieving. He sent you away once, but he came back to you in a city of water.”
“How do you know that?”
“He painted a picture of you wrapped in white bedding.”
“It was a sketch,” said Chiara.
The old woman shrugged, as if to say it made no difference. Then she nodded toward her table, where a plate of water and a vessel of olive oil stood next to a pair of burning candles.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked.
“I’d rather not.”
“Please,” said the old woman. “It will only take a moment or two. Then I’ll know for certain.”
“Know what?”
“Please,” she said again.
Chiara sat down. The old woman sat opposite.
“Dip your forefinger in the oil, my child. And then allow three drops to fall into the water.”
Chiara reluctantly did as she was told. The oil, upon striking the surface of the water, gathered into a single drop. The old woman gasped, and a tear spilled onto her powdery white cheek.
“What do you see?” asked Chiara.
The old woman held Chiara’s hand. “Your husband is waiting for you at the villa,” she said. “Go home and tell him he’s going to be a father again.”
“Boy or girl?”
The old woman smiled and said, “One of each.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The English Girl is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The version of Susanna and the Elders by Jacopo Bassano that appears in the novel does not exist. If it did, it would look a great deal like the one that hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims. There is indeed a small limestone apartment house on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem—several, in fact—but an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon does not actually reside there. The headquarters of the Israeli secret service are no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv; I have chosen to keep the headquarters of my fictitious service there in part because I have always liked the name of the street. The bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 is historical fact, though Arthur Seymour, the father of my fictitious MI5 officer Graham Seymour, did not actually witness it. There is no exhibit at the Israel Museum featuring the pillars of Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem, for no ruins from the Temple have ever been discovered.
There is in fact a restaurant called Les Palmiers on the Quai Adolphe Landry in Calvi, but, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been used as a rendezvous point for two Russian spies. The Orsati Olive Oil Company was invented by the author, as was the friendly-fire incident that led Christopher Keller, who first appeared in The English Assassin, to desert the Special Air Service and become a Corsican-based professional killer. Those familiar with the island and its rich traditions will know that I have given my fictitious signadora powers that most of her colleagues do not profess to have.