I left Dolores’s salon intending to go back to my rooms, but before I knew it, I was walking through a part of the castle Greta had not shown me. With its twisting hallways and staircases, its communicating corridors and bricked-up doors and circular rooms with multiple exits, the castle soon became a frustrating maze. After thirty minutes of wandering, I was thoroughly lost.
As I had discovered earlier in the salon, the castle wasn’t as overcast as Nonna had believed. There were flashes of sunlight from time to time, and even whole hours of illumination in the morning. But for the most part, the castle was gloomy. Pools of gray shadow collected in every corner. And by afternoon, the place was dark as night.
This wouldn’t have been a problem had the lights worked. But the electricity was a conundrum. Only a fraction of the structure had been fitted with lights and modern plumbing. The main source of heat came from kachelofen—German wood-burning stoves made of brightly glazed clay tiles. Stacks of logs could be found in every corner; the scent of burning birch and cedar and spruce lingered in the hallways. Chopping the wood, carrying and stacking it, and cleaning away the ash must have occupied Sal for hours each week.
The west side of the castle, where Dolores resided, my sleeping chamber on the south side, and the various shared spaces on the first floor—the grand hall, the salon, the wide central corridor—these rooms all had kachelofen. The rest of the castle sustained itself as it had since the thirteenth century, with fireplaces throwing heat and chamber pots poisoning the air. Parts of the castle were so cold that hoarfrost grew like moss on the stone walls and my breath crystalized to smoke. Kerosene lanterns illuminated the unwired areas of the castle, and I found them scattered in hallways and left on the landings of stairwells, positioned in the darkest corners by Greta.
Much of the castle had been uninhabited for decades, maybe longer, leaving the rooms in shambles, shut up and abandoned. The bolted shutters, the furniture covered in dust sheets, the cobwebs filling fireplaces, the bed frames without mattresses—these neglected spaces were in ruins. The scent of mildew filled the air, and I found whole swaths of ceiling had been eaten by water damage, then infiltrated by mold. When I opened the shutters of a sitting room on the second floor, hoping to let in a little fresh air, a pack of rats ran past my feet, fleeing the sunlight as if it were boiling oil. In another room—a huge ballroom filled with mirrors and cobwebs—I sat on a silk chair, only to disturb a clutter of spiders. They crawled from the crevices in droves, hundreds of legs climbing over my clothes, tangling in my hair.
Dust sheets covered furniture in some of the rooms, while other pieces had been left to the elements. So far as I could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to it. No system for preservation. Objects that seemed valuable—a pianoforte inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a Turkish rug the size of a truck—were left exposed, while an iron candelabra and an ugly bit of taxidermy had been wrapped with care. In any case, all of it would have to be assessed, cataloged by an antiques dealer, and restored. Or sold. It would be an enormous job, I realized, one that Luca, with his systematic approach to life and head for business, might enjoy.
Luca was never far from my mind those first days in the castle. Perhaps it was the fact that he had left Turin angry, or perhaps because we had been so close to repairing our relationship, but I wished he were at my side to see it all. He would have found my sleeping chamber romantic, the bidet fun, Dolores’s salon trippy. We could have stood at my window together and looked down over Nevenero, guessing which of the village houses had belonged to Nonna’s family or to my grandmother Marta. I wished I could talk to him, so that he knew how important our time together in Turin had been to me. He needed to know that the separation had been a stupid mistake and that whatever had been said and done in the past was forgiven.
I took out the phone and held it near an ice-covered window, testing for a signal, but there was nothing. I had wandered into the east wing, which was even more neglected than the other parts of the castle. It hadn’t, from the look of it, been inhabited for a very long time, perhaps because it faced the mountains, leaving it colder and darker than the other wings. A section of the roof had collapsed, showing a slice of black granite and gray sky. Cracked windowpanes seeped cold air, while the shutters, many broken and hanging from hinges, did nothing to block it. I walked for ten minutes, shivering without my coat, only to find myself back where I’d begun, leaving me disorientated and dizzy.
I had just arrived at the farthest corner of the east wing when I heard a strange sound at the end of the hallway. At first, I thought it was the wind, but when I listened more carefully, I could detect the fluctuations of a voice, then a second voice, behind a door. For a solid minute, I stood there, frozen in place, listening. There was a rise of strings and the swell of a piano’s crescendo. Someone was listening to classical music.
Creeping to the door, I pushed it open. The music grew louder, filling a small, narrow space without furniture or lights. I was about to turn and get out of there when I saw, in the center of the space, a mound of something fleshy and liquid and very dead. Stepping closer, I found the bloody carcass of a goat, an ibex to be precise, its long gray horns curled against the stone. I crouched down to get a closer look. Its body lay open. White bone jutted from wet flesh where the fur had been ripped away. It hadn’t been dead long—the blood was fresh on the stone floor, and there was no smell of decay. Its large, liquid eye stared up at me, wide and lifeless. I touched its side. It was still warm.
I was so disgusted by the goat that I had forgotten the music behind the door. But when I heard it again—the intertwining of violin and piano, an eerie duet—I knew I wasn’t alone. I stepped backward, toward the hallway, straining to see in the dim light. There was someone there, close by. Just then, I saw another door at the far side of the room. I had not entered a closet, as I had thought, but an antechamber, one that communicated with a larger room. I didn’t have time to consider the uses of such a space, or to question why a goat might have been slaughtered there, because at that very moment the hinges squeaked and the door began to creak open. Abandoning the goat, and whoever waited beyond the door, I turned and ran.
I was out of breath by the time I made it to the first floor, so unnerved, so turned around that I nearly ran into Greta in the corridor. She sidestepped me, lifted a silver tray above her head, and gave me a look of reproach. “Lunch is served in the grand hall,” she said, walking ahead.
I followed her into a long room with wood-paneled walls. I had passed by the grand hall the night before, when it was dark and the outline of the long table was barely visible at the center of the room. In daylight, I found a frayed carpet over the stone floor, and a long, capacious cabinet stacked with silver plates. An enormous fireplace, fashioned of stone and decorated with the Montebianco coat of arms, filled the room with heat.
Greta put the silver tray on the table, turned on her heel, and walked out of the room.
“Hello, there,” a man said from the far end of the table. “Fancy some lunch?”
The table might have seated fifty—it was long and narrow, stretching clear from one end of the hall to the other—but there were just two place settings. I walked the length of the room toward the man. When I reached him, I grasped the edge of the table, trying to catch my breath.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked, looking me over.
“I don’t know,” I said, taking the cloth napkin from the second place setting and wiping my brow. “I just saw something really strange.”
He was a thin, pale man in his mid-fifties, with precisely clipped hair and a trimmed mustache, wearing a baggy sweater under a tweed jacket. He leveled his eyes at me. “Was it a dead goat?”
“Oh my God, yes, that is exactly what it was!” I said, relieved that I wasn’t crazy. “Did you see it, too?”
“No, but I did witness Sal with a live goat in the castle this morning, so . . .” He stood, pulled out my chair, and nodded to indicate that I should sit.
“That isn’t unusual here?” I asked. “A dead goat in the castle?”
He gave a quick shake of the head—no, not so terribly unusual—and sat down across from me. “You must be Alberta,” he said. His face had gone pink. “I’m Basil Harwell, secretary to the Montebianco family. How was your journey?”
“Bumpy,” I said, trying to calm down.
“Ah, helicopter transport. There’s certainly no other option at this time of year, is there?” Basil shook his head again. “The snow is impenetrable from November to May. We are Old Man Winter’s prisoners until springtime. One gets used to it.”
He directed his gaze at me, and detecting my disheveled appearance, and the sweat glistening on my forehead, he asked, “Did you get lost?”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked, feeling dangerously close to breaking into tears.
“Don’t fret! It happens to everyone,” he said, taking a drink of wine. “One guest, a delightful descendant of the king of Sardinia, was missing overnight. Sal and Greta and I searched the place and found her in the second-floor ballroom, on the north side of the castle, asleep on a divan.”
I smiled despite myself. “I was in that ballroom.”
“What a mess,” he said, shaking his head. “But who could possibly take care of so many rooms? There are eighty-five in all. That is not counting the bathrooms, storage areas, or the kitchen.”
“You’ve been here a long time,” I noted. It wasn’t a question. It was obvious that Basil was as much a part of the castle as Sal and Greta.
“Ages,” he said. “Or so it seems. I am in the library every day, if you should ever need me. I keep the archival records organized. Order and invoice for supplies. And I pay Greta and Sal and Bernadette each month.”
“Greta mentioned Bernadette,” I said. “Isn’t she some kind of a doctor?”
Basil rolled his eyes. “Oh, heavens, no,” he said. “She’s the cook, and because she has a talent with herbal remedies, Greta and Sal go to her for every sniffle. I don’t rely on Bernadette for anything but dinner.”
I thought of the woman I had seen in the tower. It had not been Dolores, as I had believed. It must have been Bernadette.
“I think I may have seen Bernadette,” I said. “When I first arrived.”
“You would absolutely know if you saw Bernadette,” Basil replied. “Her appearance is, shall we say, peculiar.”
Bernadette must have been the odd-looking person I had glimpsed in the tower. There was one mystery solved.
Basil scooped some steaming polenta, mushrooms, and slices of meat onto his plate. Gesturing that I do the same, he said, “Don’t let it get cold.”
I followed his lead and filled my plate, leaving the mushrooms, which seemed unappetizing, like stewed prunes.
“Anyway,” Basil said. “I also coordinate telephone calls between Madame Dolores and her many employees outside the castle. It is like running a hotline, calling Turin and London and Paris as much as I do. That is how I was aware that you would be arriving. Francisco Zimmer rang here nearly every day with updates. Now that the count is gone, I am in charge of nearly everything. Not what I imagined my life to be when I was in my twenties, that is certain! My training was as an educator. Originally, I came to Nevenero as a tutor.”
“There were children here?” I asked, but of course I knew the answer to this already. Guillaume and Dolores were childless. There had been no children to teach in Nevenero for a very long time.
“Not exactly,” Basil replied, evading my question and instead holding up a bottle of wine. I presented my glass, happy to have a drink. “This is an Arnad-Montjovet, a strong local wine. You wouldn’t believe it, but Alpine wine can be quite good.”
“I was told the family has an impressive wine cellar.”
“Quite right,” he said. “The cave is a treasure and still contains bottles brought from Bordeaux with Eleanor, your great-great-grandmother, upon her marriage to Ambrose. Five hundred bottles were bestowed to the family as part of her dowry. I have a cellar list somewhere in the library, if you’d like to see it.”
I told him I would, and took a sip of the wine. Then I turned to my plate. The food was unfamiliar, without the charm of the meal I had shared with Luca in Turin. Flat. Simple. Without taste. I remembered, suddenly, eating something similar at Luca’s family reunion a few years back, something Nonna had made. I pushed a pile of mush with my fork.
“Polenta,” Basil explained. “Ground cornmeal. Very typical of this region. You will get used to it.”
I cut a bite of meat and tried it. It was dry and chewy. “And this?”
“Goat,” Basil said.
I almost choked. The image of the dead goat flashed in my mind. The metallic smell of blood. The rush of fear.
“Not to your liking?” Basil asked. “Yes, well, goat is also an acquired taste, I suppose.” I chewed the goat slowly, focusing on a mole above his right eyebrow, a brown circle, big as a dime. “Sal slaughtered this one earlier in the week. You’ll meet Sal soon enough. He’s a glum, unsociable man. Illiterate as a cow. But good with dogs and guns.”
“Sal and Fredericka introduced themselves last night,” I said, pointing to the wound on my cheek. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Detestable dog,” Basil said, shaking his head.
I pushed the sliced goat meat around my plate, unable to eat.
“When I first arrived,” Basil said, “I was very critical of the local fare, too. I had been living in Rome and had grown accustomed to dining well. But I have found that one comes to accept, even to appreciate, what one experiences with regularity.”
“You don’t mind it, then?” I asked. “Being so far away from everything?”
“Mind it?” he said, finishing off his glass of wine. “I choose to live this way. It makes the truth more bearable.”
“Which is?” I asked, curious to know what he meant by such a grandiose statement.
“That we are not separate from all of this,” he said, waving a hand toward the window, at the expanse of mountains beyond. “Language and education, good and bad manners, careers and friendships—such social constructs are not important up here. Here, we are a part of nature.”
Greta stepped to the table with a pot of tea, poured out two cups, and left the room, her heavy boots clomping.
“Is she always like that?” I whispered when Greta was out of earshot.
“Greta?” Basil said, lifting an eyebrow. “She’s been that way ever since Joseph disappeared.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was gone. “She took this position some four years ago, after a nasty divorce, and arrived with a child, a boy named Joseph. I think she may have accepted the position without informing the boy’s father, or the courts, if you know what I mean.”
I glanced out the window at the vast emptiness of the valley. This would be the perfect place to disappear with a kidnapped child.
“I do think such extreme measures may have been justified,” Basil added quietly. “Considering those scars on her face. But even here Greta wasn’t safe from tragedy. Two years ago, Joseph vanished. One minute, he was in the courtyard playing; the next, he was gone. We all searched high and low for the boy. He was only six years old, all blond curls and rosy cheeks. He brought such sunshine to this place. We never found him.”
“My God,” I said, feeling sorry for my critical assessment of Greta. “Did he get outside the gate and get lost?”
“My personal theory: the father. He discovered Joseph’s location and took him back to Germany.”
I felt a wave of empathy for Greta. I had never lost a six-year-old son, but I knew what it felt like to long for a child. Absence had formed a hollow space in my life, one that I still hadn’t learned to fill. When Greta returned to clear the plates, I was unable to face her. When the cuckoo clock chimed in the distance, the birds chirruping and the bell ringing twice, I put my napkin on the table and stood to go.
“Finished already?” Basil asked, pushing his chair away from the table.
“I’m supposed to meet Dolores in the portrait gallery,” I said, turning to leave.
“Ah, you will enjoy it,” Basil said. “It is an excellent collection. Quite representative of the various styles of portraiture through the centuries. Come, let me show you the way.”
Basil escorted me down the corridor, stopping at a cloakroom near the main entrance. He dug through layers of coats until he found a long, heavy mink. “Take this,” he said. “It is utterly freezing in the north wing.”
I hesitated, stroking the fur. It was feathery, soft, the color of chestnuts, the most sumptuous thing to have ever passed through my hands. “No one will miss it?”
“Frankly, there’s no one here to miss it,” he said, stepping close and helping me into the mink. “If I were you, I would wear this coat and enjoy it. I would take every bit of pleasure you can from this place. The house is full of treasures. Take the paintings to your rooms. Have Greta bring you wine from the cellar, the old bottles. Drink them! No one else will. Find pleasure in what you have inherited. It helps the time pass and renders one philosophical.”
“I’ll definitely do that,” I said, warming to Basil’s eccentric behavior. “But Zimmer is coming back at the end of the week. I’ll be gone soon.”
“That is what he told you, is it?” Basil said, pursing his lips.
“Yes,” I said, meeting his eye, searching his expression. “Did you hear something different?”
As Basil put his hand on my back and steered me in the direction of the portrait gallery, he said, “Of course, there is always the chance that Zimmer will retrieve you soon, but I wouldn’t count on it. The Montebianco family needs you far too much. They have kept me in their service for over two decades, and I can tell you: once they get their hands on you, they don’t let go.”