The Savage Garden (4 page)

    Adam had chosen carefully, almost mathematically, limited as he was by the short time at his disposal. There had been disappointments, acclaimed works which had left him feeling strangely indifferent. But as the taxi worked its way higher into the hills, he consoled himself with the knowledge that it had been a first foray, a swift reconnaissance. There would be plenty of other opportunities to return.

    San Casciano sat huddled on a high hill, dominating the surrounding countryside. Its commanding position had largely determined the course of its history, apparently, although the entry in Adam's guidebook made no mention of the last siege the town had been forced to endure. Even as the taxi approached, it was evident that the ancient walls girdling the town had not been constructed to withstand an assault by the kind of weaponry available to the Allies and the Germans.

    These weren't the first scars of war Adam had witnessed. Even Florence, declared an "open city" by both sides out of respect for her architectural significance, had suffered. As the Allies swept up from the south, the Germans had dug in, blowing all but one of the city's historic bridges. They may have spared the Ponte Vecchio, but this consideration came at a price. The buildings flanking the river in the vicinity of the bridge were mined, medieval towers and Renaissance palaces reduced to rubble, the field cleared for the forthcoming battle. As it was, the Allied troops had simply crossed the Arno elsewhere on makeshift Bailey bridges and swiftly liberated the town.

    Years on, the wound inflicted right in the heart of the old city remained raw and open. If efforts had been made to restore those lost streets to their former glory, it was not evident. Modern structures with smooth faces and clean sharp lines stood out along the river's southern frontage, like teenagers in a queue of pensioners. The very best you could say was that the space had been filled.

    In San Casciano that work was still going on. The town was pockmarked with the ruins of bomb-damaged buildings left to lie where they'd fallen. Impressively, Nature had reclaimed what she could in these plots. Young trees sprouted defiantly; shrubs had somehow detected enough moisture in piles of old stones to put down roots and prosper; weeds and ferns sprang from crevices in crumbling walls. The bland new concrete edifices that studded the historic center were further evidence of the severe pounding the town had taken.

    The Pensione Amorini had been spared. One part of the ancient vine clinging to its scaling stucco facade had been trained over a pergola, which shaded a terrace out front, overflow for the bar and trattoria occupying the ground floor. Signora Fanelli was expecting him—he had phoned ahead from Florence—and she summoned her teenage son from a back room to help with Adam's bags.

    
"Uffa,"
said Iacopo as he tested the weight of both suitcases. He left the heaviest—the one containing the books—for Adam to lug upstairs.

    The room was far more than he had hoped for. Large and light, it had a floor of polished deep-red tiles, a beamed ceiling and two windows giving onto a leafy garden out back. It was furnished with the bare essentials: a wrought-iron bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. As requested, there was also a desk, though no chair, which brought a sharp rebuke from Signora Fanelli.

    Iacopo skulked off in search of one, his parting glance holding Adam to blame for this public humiliation. He returned with the chair and disappeared again while Signora Fanelli was still demonstrating the idiosyncrasies of the bathroom plumbing to Adam.

    Adam declared the room to be
"perfetto."

    "
Perfetta
,"
she corrected him
.
"
Una cameraperfetta
."

    She relieved him of his passport, flashed him a smile and left. Only her perfume remained—a faint scent of roses hanging lightly in the air.

    He hefted his suitcase onto the worm-eaten chest at the end of the bed and began to unpack. She must have had the boy young— seventeen, eighteen—though you'd have said even younger judging by her looks. For some reason he'd pictured an elderly woman, small in stature and of no mean girth. Instead, he was being housed by a stringier version of Gina Lollobrigida in
Trapeze.

    It was a pleasing thought.

    Another image from the same film barged its way into his head unbidden—Burt Lancaster's overmuscled physique squeezed into a leotard—and the moment passed.

    The road to Villa Docci proved to be a dusty white track following the crest of a high spur to the north of town. It rose and fell past ocher-washed farmhouses, hay meadows giving way to olive groves and vineyards tucked behind high hedgerows ablaze with honeysuckle, mallow and blood-red poppies. His mother would have been thrilled, stopping every so often to call his attention to some plant or flower. That was her way. But all Adam was aware of was the mocking chant of the cicadas pulsing in time to the pitiless heat.

    He was about to turn back, convinced that he'd made a mistake, when he saw two weathered stone gateposts up ahead. Beyond them an avenue of ancient cypresses climbed sharply toward a large villa, the trunks of the trees powdered white with dust thrown up from the driveway. There was no sign beside the gateposts, but a quick glance at the handdrawn map Signora Docci had sent him confirmed that he had at last arrived.

    Nearing the top of the driveway, he stopped, uncertain, sensing something. He turned, glancing back down the gradient, the plunging perspective of the flanking cypresses.

    Something not right. But what? He couldn't say. And he was too hot to ponder it further.

    The cypresses gave way to a gravel turning area in front of the villa. There were some farm buildings away to his left, down the slope, beyond a stand of holm oaks, but his attention was focused on the main structure.

    How had Professor Leonard described the architecture of the villa? Pedestrian?

    Admittedly, his own knowledge on the subject was drawn almost exclusively from a battered copy of Edith Wharton's book on Italian villas, but there seemed to be nothing whatsoever run- of-the-mill about the building in front of him. Though not as large or obviously grand as some, its symmetry and proportions lent it an air of discreet nobility, majesty even.

    Set around three sides of a flagstone courtyard, it climbed three floors to a shallow, tiled roof with projecting eaves. Arcaded loggias occupied the middle and upper stories of the front facade, while the wings consisted of blind arcades with pedimented and consoled windows. There was not much more to it than that, but every detail of it worked.

    The building felt no need to proclaim its pedigree; rather, it exuded it like a well-cut suit. You were left in little doubt that the hand of some master lay behind its conception—long-dead, unrecognized, forgotten. For if one of the more illustrious architects of the period had been responsible for bringing it into being, that fact would have been preserved in the historical record. As it was, he had found almost no references to Villa Docci during his preliminary research.

    He skirted the wellhead in the middle of the courtyard and mounted the front steps. There was a stone escutcheon set in the wall above the entrance door, a rampant boar the centerpiece of the Docci coat of arms. He tugged on the iron bellpull.

    She must have been observing him from inside, waiting for him to make his approach, for the door swung open almost immediately. She was short and stout, and she was wearing a white blouse tucked into a black skirt. Her dark eyes reached for his and held them, viselike.

    "Good morning," he said in Italian.

    "Good afternoon."

    "I'm Adam Strickland."

    "You're late."

    "Yes. I'm sorry."

    She stepped aside, allowing him to enter, appraising him with a purposeful eye as if he were a horse she was thinking of betting on (and leaving him with the distinct impression that she wouldn't be reaching for her purse anytime soon).

    "Signora Docci wishes to see you."

    At either end of the long entrance hall was a stone stairway leading to the upper floors. When she made for the one on the left, Adam fell in beside her.

    "May I have a glass of water, please?"

    "Water? Yes, of course." She changed tack, heading for a corridor beside the staircase. "Wait here," she said.

    He didn't mind. It allowed him to cast an eye around the interior. Any suspicions that the quiet elegance of the villa's exterior owed itself to little more than chance vanished immediately. You sensed the same poised hand at work in the proportions of the vast drawing room that occupied the central section of the ground floor, and giving onto a balustraded terrace out back. The flanking rooms were connected by a run of doorways, perfectly aligned, which generated a telescopic sense of perspective and permitted an uninterrupted view from one end of the villa to the other.

    Adam retreated at the sound of approaching footsteps, not wishing to be caught snooping by the maid, or the housekeeper, or whatever she was.

    Signora Docci lay propped up on a bank of pillows in a four-poster bed of dark wood, reading. She inclined her head toward the door as they entered, peering over the top of her spectacles.

    "Adam," she said, smiling broadly.

    "Hello."

    
"Grazie,
Maria."

    Maria acknowledged the dismissal with a nod, pulling the door closed behind her as she left.

    Signora Docci gestured for Adam to approach the bed. "Please, it's not contagious, just old age." She laid her book aside and smiled again. "Well, maybe it
is
contagious."

    Her hair hung loose, tumbling like a silver wave around her shoulders. It seemed too long, too thick, for a woman of her advanced years. A tracery of fine lines lay like a veil across her face, but the flesh was firm, shored up by the prominent bones beneath. Her eyes were dark and wide-spaced.

    He extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you."

    They shook, her grip firm and bony.

    "Please." She indicated a high-backed chair near the bed. "I'm glad you're finally here. Maria has been fussing around for days, tidying and cleaning."

    It was hard to picture: stern, monosyllabic Maria preparing for his arrival.

    "She is a good person. She will let you see that when she's ready to."

    He was slightly unnerved that she'd read the thought in his face.

    "So, how was your trip?"

    "Good. Long."

    "Did you stop in Paris?"

    "No."

    "Milan?"

    "Just Florence. And only for a night."

    "One night in Florence," she mused. "It sounds like the title of a song."

    "Not a very good one."

    Signora Docci gave a short, sharp laugh. "No," she conceded. Adam took a letter from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. "From Professor Leonard."