Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

"Her husband's not here."

It took a moment for Adam to realize he was talking about Signora Pedretti. "I know, she said over dinner."

"But a bunch of his friends are." Harry lit a cigarette and glared about him.

"Harry, are you seriously trying to seduce a married woman?"

"I think so. Yes. Why? You think it's a bad idea?" He hesitated. "Shit, it's a bad idea, isn't it?" "Is it enough to know she would—under different circumstances, I mean?"

"Maybe."

"So ask her."

"Ask her?"

"Yes. Then you'll know. And then her husband's friends won't have to kill you."

There was a simple logic to the suggestion that Adam suspected would appeal to Harry. It did. Harry tripped off in search of Signora Pedretti, greeting Antonella's mother as he went. Caterina approached Adam with the controlled steps of someone who knows they've strayed beyond their limit.

"Where's Riccardo?" he asked.

"Talking to my mother." She gave a sardonic smile. "I think she approves."

"He's great."

"So is Antonella." She nodded toward the dance floor. "I saw you dancing with her. You like her, don't you?"

Something in her voice brought out a defensive streak in him.

"Is that so hard to understand?"

"Of course not, I am her mother."

"Yes, I like her."

"Men do. That is never a problem for her."

Intentionally or otherwise, her words placed him somewhere in a long line of foolhardy suitors, and he was happy that the barman asked him for his order at that moment.

"One of those, please," he said, pointing to Caterina's cocktail glass.

It was unpronounceable. And almost undrinkable.

"Did she tell you what happened to her face?"

The directness of the question threw him momentarily.

"Your mother did."

"I was driving."

"I know."

"And Antonella was the one asking me to go faster. Did my mother tell you that?"

"No."

"No, of course she didn't. No one remembers that."

He looked at her and saw a drunk and guilt-ridden mother still groping for excuses many years on.

"You don't believe me? It's true. She was . . . selvaggia. Not like Edoardo. Una piccola selvaggia."

A little savage.

He could feel his hackles rising now. Looking to dilute her responsibility was one thing; harboring a hateful grudge against the daughter she'd disfigured seemed downright unreasonable.

"Were you drunk when it happened?" he asked, biting back a more aggressive riposte.

"Is that what you heard?"

"No."

The tension went out of her frame. After a moment, she said in a lowered voice, "Yes, I was drunk. Emilio was dead . . . just two months before." She glanced away. "I loved my brother."

Yet another junction in the cat's cradle of cause and effect: Emilio's murder and the scars on Antonella's face.

Adam turned to the dance floor, where Antonella was spinning in the arms of some new admirer. "Look at her," he said. "Look at the way she is. She doesn't mind. Why should you?"

Caterina seemed on the point of mouthing a response, but she walked away without speaking.

A moment later, Harry came striding up to him.

"Great idea, Paddler."

"What?"

"She said yes."

"Who?"

"Who do you think? I asked her and she said yes she would, if circumstances were different."

"Good, so now you know."

"No," said Harry, "now I have to go and wait for her in the olive grove." He slapped Adam on the back. "Great bloody tactic."

"Harry . . ."

Harry didn't turn; he just waggled his fingers in the air as he slipped away through the crowd.

"Oh shit," muttered Adam.

He twisted back to the barman and asked for a bottle of mineral water.

Not long after, the numbers started to thin out. The champagne caught up with Grazia, who lost the ability to stand, let alone dance, at which point Edoardo and Adam bundled her into the car. Antonella drove. She said she'd be back to pick up Adam and Harry at eleven o'clock, which was less than eight hours off. Adam made a futile search for Harry. Then he headed for his bed.

Maurizio must have been watching him, tracking his movements, biding his time. He intercepted Adam at the head of the steps leading to the parterre.

"Do you have a cigarette?" he asked, his voice a gentle drawl.

Adam reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes and lighter.

Maurizio's hand shot out. "I thought so," he said, indicating the label sewn near the pocket. "It's my brother's suit."

"Is it?"

Maurizio took hold of Adam's shirt cuff, exposing the cuff link. "And these are his too." The voice was calm, the eyes coldly attentive, but his fingers trembled with a barely suppressed rage.

"I didn't know."

"No?" Maurizio took a cigarette from Adam's pack and lit one. "And when you stole the key from my mother's room, did you know what you were doing then?" He smiled thinly, relishing Adam's discomfort. "Maria told me. She thought I should know."

"I've apologized to your mother."

"And what were you looking for up there?"

"I was just curious to see."

"And what did you see?"

"A lot of dust and some German desks." Maybe it was Maurizio's hectoring tone, but he found himself adding, "I also saw where Emilio was murdered."

Maurizio's face seemed strangely pale in the lambent light of the flares.

"Near the fireplace," Adam went on, emboldened. "But then you know that—you were there."

Maurizio recovered his composure, a pursed smile stealing over his features. "It's good that your work is finished and you are leaving." He handed back the cigarettes and lighter. "Thank you." Turning on his heel, he made his way down the stone steps.

Adam was filled with a sudden flood of anger. He wanted to run after him, to seize him, shake him, scream at him: You fool! Don't you see? I was happy to let it go, I wanted to let it go, to walk away. But now I can't. All you had to do was say nothing till I was gone.

As he fumbled a cigarette between his lips his gaze dropped to the terrace below—to the dark mass of the chapel lurking beyond the moonlight in the shadow of the sandstone bluff. And in that moment it struck him that he was wrong. Maurizio was not to blame. He was no more in control of matters than Adam was. They were simply actors playing out a drama, their roles already written for them.

HARRY SAT UP FRONT WITH ANTONELLA, SHOUTING AT HER over the music blaring from the car radio. Adam lay sprawled across the backseat, pretending to doze. He had in fact slept surprisingly well; he just wanted a private moment to work through the details of the scheme he'd hatched.

Every now and then he would sneak a peek at Antonella, her hair tied back in a ponytail, revealing her small ears. Harry was remarkably perky given that he'd waited in the olive grove for well over an hour before falling asleep at the base of a tree, waking with the sun on his face. He still clung to the belief that Signora Pedretti had come looking for him, despite Antonella's insistence that the woman was a notorious and mischievous flirt.

Antonella spurned the new road to Siena in favor of the old Via Volterrana, which twisted through the hills. It played to her recklessness behind the wheel—another good reason for Adam to have his eyes closed. They stopped briefly at San Gimignano, its ancient towers a testament to the competing vanities of its medieval merchants. Not so very different to what was going on in London right now, Adam observed. Harry told him to stop showing off.

Siena silenced them both with the rise and fall of her sinuous streets, the curving facades of her palaces, and her main square, the Campo, not a square at all, but a shell-shaped hollow at the heart of the hilled city. Siena was everything Florence wasn't—soft, curvaceous, feminine—and it was easy to see why her citizens had formed a special attachment to the Virgin. While Florence proclaimed its power, Siena exuded a quiet, contained strength. Buried in her coiling thoroughfares and her warm brickwork was a sense that she could absorb whatever was thrown at her. She might bend a bit, but she would never break.