The Savage Garden. Mark Mills

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ garden had only recently come from her. He wondered which of them was lying. And why?

      ‘Apparently, you have a good mind, an enquiring mind.’ She must have seen him squirm. ‘You’re not comfortable with flattery?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘He also said you were extremely lazy’

      ‘That’s more like it.’

      This brought a laugh from Signora Docci.

      He was able to put in a couple more productive hours in the library, despite the distraction.

      Why had Professor Leonard not even hinted at the true nature of his relationship with Signora Docci? Unless he had completely misunderstood her, everything pointed to some kind of love affair between the couple. Maybe love affair was overstating it. In 1901 that probably meant little more than an unchaperoned stroll through the gardens, or a charged look across a crowded room, although somehow he doubted it. Signora Docci’s few words on the subject had shown the strain of many more left unspoken. And she had almost choked herself laughing when he’d cast aspersions on Professor Leonard’s sexuality.

      He found himself speculating on what had happened to keep them apart. It was probably doomed from the start – a penniless student and a young heiress. Much would have been expected of any potential spouse of Signora Docci. He would have been well vetted, the future of the villa and the estate a prime consideration. And a young foreigner with an interest in Etruscan archaeology would hardly have offered much comfort in that department.

      These were, of course, wild imaginings, but he let his mind roam the possibilities until it was time to leave.

      Foscolo the rock-ribbed handyman insisted on being present when Adam took possession of the bicycle. He had a big square head planted on a small square body, and his iron-grey hair was clipped to a brush. There wasn’t much to say on the subject – it was an old black bicycle with a wicker basket – so Adam shook Foscolo’s knuckled hand and thanked him. This wasn’t good enough for Foscolo, who wanted confirmation that all was in working order. Adam dutifully cycled around the courtyard a few times for his audience of one and declared the brakes to be ‘eccellente’. Foscolo grunted sceptically and raised the saddle an inch or two.

      Pedalling back to San Casciano, Adam deviated from the main track, exploring. The dusty trail petered out in an olive grove. It wasn’t a totally wasted detour. He found himself presented with an impressive view of Villa Docci. From afar, the shuttered, silent rooms of the top floor seemed even more striking, more ominous.

      His thoughts turned to Signora Docci’s account of her eldest son’s death at the hands of the Germans. They also turned to Fausto’s curious, half-mumbled comment on the same subject just the evening before: ‘Cosí dicono.’

      So the story goes.

      8

      Either he was so distracted that he didn’t hear her footfalls, or she deliberately set out to creep up on him. Probably a bit of both.

      He was standing at the head of the valley, on the brow above the amphitheatre, staring up at the triumphal arch. A warm light from the lowering sun was bleeding through the trees, flushing the garden amber. Even the dense wood of dark ilex beyond the arch seemed somehow less forbidding.

      It was here, just inside the tree-line, that the spring was located – a low artificial grotto housing a trough of rusticated stone. Under normal circumstances, water would have filled the trough before overflowing into a channel that ran beneath the arch to the top of the amphitheatre, where it divided.

      He was standing astride this channel, staring up at the arch, when he heard her voice.

      ‘Hello.’

      She was off to his left, beneath the boughs of a tree. Her long black hair was tied back off her face in a pony-tail and she was wearing a sleeveless cotton dress cinched at the waist with a belt.

      ‘You haven’t moved since I first saw you,’ she said in accented English, stepping towards him.

      He thought at first it was the dappled shade playing tricks with the light, but as she drew closer he could see that her smooth, high forehead was indeed marked with scars. One was short and sat just beneath the hairline in the centre. From here, another cleaved a diagonal path all the way to her left eyebrow.

      ‘I thought maybe the garden had a new statue,’ she said.

      Adam returned her smile. ‘I’m sorry, I was thinking.’

      He held her dark, almond eyes, conscious of not allowing his gaze to stray to her forehead. Not that she would have cared, he suspected. If she’d wanted to conceal the disfigurement she could quite easily have worn her hair differently, rather than drawing it straight back off her face.

      ‘You must be Adam.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’m Antonella.’

      ‘The granddaughter, right?’

      ‘She told you about me?’

      ‘Only that you were harmless.’

      ‘Ah,’ she replied, a crooked gleam in her eye, ‘that’s because she thinks she knows me.’

      She craned her long neck, looking up at the inscription on the lintel of the arch.

      ‘What were you thinking?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s not symmetrical.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘The decorative panels at the side – look – the diagonals run the same way’

      It was hard to make out – the stone was weathered and stained with lichen – but there was no mistaking the anomaly.

      ‘I never noticed before,’ she said quietly. ‘What does it mean?’

      ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing.’ He glanced over at her. ‘It’s a bit overblown, don’t you think?’

      ‘Overblown?’

      ‘The arch. For the setting, I mean.’

      ‘I don’t know the word.’

      ‘Overblown. It means…pretentious.’

       ‘Pretenzioso? Maybe. A bit,’ she said. ‘You don’t like it?’

      ‘No, I do. It’s just –’

      He broke off, aware that he was in danger of sounding a bit, well, overblown himself.

      ‘No, tell me,’ she insisted. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

      The triumphal arch was a classical architectural form that had СКАЧАТЬ