T hey decided they would spend a couple of weeks in Incantellaria. That would give Alba time to say goodbye to her family. Then they would return to England. To Viv, the houseboat, Beechfield Park, her father and stepmother, and a new life together.
“We will come back, won’t we?” she said, thinking of Cosima. “I’ll miss them all so much.”
“You can come back every summer if you like.”
“What I am going to tell that little girl?”
“That it’s not goodbye.”
“She’s already been deserted once by her mother. Now she’ll be left again by me. I can’t bear to hurt her.”
“Darling, you’re not her mother.”
Alba shook her head. “I’m the nearest thing to a mother she’s got. It’ll be unbearable.”
Fitz kissed her and stroked her hair. “We’ll have children of our own, perhaps.”
“I can’t imagine that.” Can’t imagine loving another child as much as Cosima, she thought bleakly.
“Trust me.”
She sighed in resignation. “It’s just that I’ve grown so attached to her.”
“The world is getting smaller every day. It’s not so far, you know.” But Alba knew that Fitz couldn’t possibly understand her love for Cosima. It was the closest she had ever come to being a mother. Parting would break her heart.
Alba took Fitz back to Immacolata’s house for dinner. To him it was a pretty building, typically Italian, cozy, vibrant, echoing with the laughter of a big family. Immacolata blessed him and smiled. To Fitz there was nothing unusual about her smile; he could not have known that once it was as rare as a rainbow. Beata and Falco welcomed him warmly in broken English, and Toto made jokes about the differences between Fitz’s normal urban surroundings and the provincial quiet of Incantellaria. Toto’s English was surprisingly good. Fitz immediately liked him. He had much the same easy manner as himself and a dry wit that he understood. When Cosima skipped into the room, he could see why Alba had grown to love her. She ran up and threw her thin arms around Alba’s waist, her curls bouncing around her face like corkscrews.
When they sat down to dinner Alba announced their engagement. Toto made a toast; they all raised their glasses and admired the ring with enthusiasm. Yet beneath the excitement there lay an undertone of apprehension, for they all realized, except Cosima, that Alba would now be leaving them.
Alba was quick to sense their disquiet but nervous of speaking of her departure in front of the child. She watched Cosima eating her prosciutto with gusto, chattering about what she had learned at school, the games she had played, and the anticipation of going shopping again with Alba now that the weather had grown colder and her summer dresses were all too thin. Alba caught Beata’s eye. The older woman smiled sympathetically. Alba was unable to communicate what lay at the forefront of her thoughts. On one hand, the prospect of marriage to Fitz made her extremely happy; on the other, leaving Incantellaria and Cosima eclipsed her happiness like a gray cloud floating in front of the sun. She sat in the shade while everyone around her sat in the light.
After dinner Cosima went to bed, leaving the adults sitting chatting in the moonlight on the terrace beneath the vine. “So, when are you going to be leaving us?” Immacolata asked. Her voice had a hard edge. Alba understood why she felt resentful. They had only just found each other again.
“I don’t know, nonna. Soon.”
“She’ll come back to visit,” Fitz said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
Immacolata raised her chin defiantly. “That’s what Tommy said twenty-six years ago when he took her away. He did not bring her back. Not once.”
“But I make my own decisions now. It won’t be easy for me to leave you all. I can do it if I know that I will return again soon.”
Falco placed his large rough hand on his mother’s small one. “Mamma,” he said and his voice was a plea. “She has her own life to lead. Let’s be grateful for the part of her life that we have shared.”
The old woman snorted. “What are you going to say to the child?” she said. “You will break her heart.”
“And mine,” Alba added.
“She’ll be fine,” said Toto, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match behind him. “She has all of us.”
“It’s part of growing up,” said Falco gravely. “Things don’t always remain the same; neither do people.”
“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” said Alba. “It’s not goodbye.”
“Why can’t Fitz stay here with us?” Immacolata asked, settling her eyes on Fitz in a silent challenge. Fitz didn’t need to speak Italian to understand what she was suggesting.
He looked embarrassed. “Because my business is in London.” Immacolata didn’t much like Fitz. He lacked passion.
“You have made your choice,” she said to Alba, getting up. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“I’m going to take Fitz to that old ruined castle tomorrow,” said Alba, keen to change the subject.
Immacolata turned, her face as white as a corpse. “Palazzo Montelimone?” she croaked, leaning on the back of her chair.
“There’s nothing to see,” Falco protested. He looked shiftily at his mother. Alba’s curiosity was ignited.
“I’ve been meaning to go since I arrived. It is a ruin, isn’t it?” She tried to work out what silent communication passed between her grandmother and uncle.
“It’s dangerous. The walls are crumbling. You mustn’t go,” Immacolata insisted.
“Take him to Naples instead.”
Alba backed down. Anything to make her grandmother happy. It was the least she could do, considering she was leaving. “Okay. We’ll go to Naples,” she said in English.
“Naples it is then.” Fitz didn’t care where they went so long as they left the house.
The following morning Alba borrowed Toto’s small Fiat and set off in the direction of Naples. She was disappointed. She had looked forward to exploring the ruin. It had sat temptingly on the hill attracting her gaze for months. She shouldn’t have told them she planned to go there. She should have just gone.
“You’re very quiet,” said Fitz, watching her grim face staring at the road ahead.
“I don’t want to go back to Naples,” she told him. “I’ve seen enough of it.”
“We can have lunch in a nice restaurant and wander around. It won’t be so bad.”
“No,” she said suddenly, the shadow passing off her features like a cloud. “I’m turning around. There’s something there, I just know it. Why else wouldn’t they want me to go? They’re still hiding something, I can feel it. And whatever it is, it’s up there in that palazzo.”
The tires screeched on the hot road as Alba braked and steered the car back down the coast. They were both injected with enthusiasm and purpose, united on a mission, partners in crime.
After a while they turned off the road that wove down the coast and set on up the hill in the direction of the palazzo. The lane began to grow steep and narrow. After a while it forked off to the right. The forest had almost covered it with shrubs and thorns and leaves, and the cypress trees that lined it cast their shade upon it so that they now drove in near darkness. When they arrived at the black iron gates, tall and imposing though peeling with neglect, she saw that they were locked with a padlock, and the lock itself was brown with rust. They climbed out of the car and looked through the bars first at the overgrown gardens, then at the house.
An entire wall had collapsed and lay in ruins. Even the fallen stones were being gradually swallowed by ivy and other weeds. It was a compelling sight and one which drew them in. They had come this far; they weren’t about to turn around now. Alba looked about her and saw that if they didn’t mind suffering the odd scratch, they could squeeze through the shrubbery and climb over the wall. Fitz went first, the thorns tearing at his jeans. Then he turned to help Alba, whose short, flimsy sundress was inappropriate for such an expedition. When she jumped down on the other side she felt a surge of triumph. She brushed off her dress and licked her hand where the skin had been ripped.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m just a little nervous as to what we’re going to find.”
“Perhaps we’ll find nothing at all.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I want to find something. I don’t want to go back to England with so many questions unanswered.”
“Okay, Sherlock, let’s go.”
As they walked up the drive toward the house, she was struck by the cold. It was as if the palazzo were situated at the top of a high mountain with its very own climate. It had been a humid day and she had grown hot walking up the hill. But here, in the grounds of the house, there was an icy edge to the wind and she rubbed her arms to keep warm. The sun was high in the sky but still the house was set in shadow: gray, austere, and deserted. There was little feeling of life, not even from the gardens, where she could sense the movement of the bindweed as it crept silently over the grounds like evil snakes, winding its way in possession around the foliage it had already choked to death.
One of the towers had toppled with the wall and lay across the garden like a fallen sentinel. The rooms exposed to the air were filled with leaves, and ivy climbed the floors and spread across the walls. Anything of any value had no doubt been looted. They scaled the rubble to enter the building and looked about in wonder. The paint could be seen through the leaves and moss, pale blue, like the sky at dawn. The moldings where the wall joined the ceiling were elaborate, the carving chipped in places like a row of old teeth. Alba scraped her foot over the floor to remove layers of dirt and forest, and found the marble still intact. A large oak door was still on its hinges. “Let’s go in there,” she suggested. Fitz strode over the rubble and found that the handle turned with ease. To their delight they walked through into the main body of the house where the forest had not yet trespassed.
It was quite dark and eerily silent. Alba was afraid to speak in case the sound woke demons lurking in the shadows. After a while, each room resembled the last: empty, bare, and forlorn. Just when they were on the point of turning back, Fitz opened a pair of double doors, the height of the room, into a salon that had an altogether different feel. Where the others had felt cold and damp, like a corpse, this one vibrated with the warmth of the living. It was smaller than the rest, square in shape, with a fireplace where the remains of the last fire still lay in the grate. It appeared to have been used, and recently. A large leather armchair, nibbled by mice, stood in front of it. There was nothing else in the room, just the distinct feeling that they weren’t alone.
Fitz looked about suspiciously. “Someone lives here,” he said. Alba put her finger to her lips.
“Shhhh,” she hissed. “He might not like us trespassing!”
“I thought they said no one lived here.”
“So did I!”
Alba strained her ears for a sound, but none came, just the heavy thud of her own heartbeat. She looked over to French doors into the garden and pulled one open. It scraped along the floor. Fitz followed her outside. It was apparent that a terrace had once stood there, though the balustrade had collapsed, leaving only a small part of it. Alba scraped her foot on the ground to expose a floor of small red tiles. Then something black in the undergrowth caught her eye. She strode over to the ruined balustrade and burrowed beneath with her hand, finding something hard and metal.
“What have you got there?” Fitz whispered.
“Looks like a telescope.” She brushed it clean, then endeavored to look through it.
“See anything interesting?”
“Just black,” she replied, tossing it back into the undergrowth.
Suddenly they felt the presence of someone behind them. They turned with a start to see a scrap of a man stepping out through the French doors.
Alba spoke. “I hope we’re not intruding. We went for a walk and got lost,” she explained, smiling charmingly.
When the man raised his bloodshot eyes to Alba he gasped as if something had knocked the wind out of him. He stood and stared at her without so much as a blink.
“Madonna!” he exclaimed, his voice as soft as ribbon. Then he smiled, revealing a large gap where his front teeth had been. “I knew I walked among the dead!” He extended his hand. Alba reluctantly took it. It was clammy. “I’m Nero Bonomi. Who are you?”
“We’re from England,” she replied. “My friend doesn’t speak Italian.”
“But you, my dear, speak it like a native,” he said in English. “With your short hair you look like a rather beautiful boy. You look like someone else too, from a long time ago. You gave me a fright, actually.” He ran his bony fingers through his blond hair. “I was once a beautiful boy. What would Ovidio say if he could see me now?”
“Do you live here?” she asked. “In this ruin?”
“It was a ruin when Ovidio lived here too. Or should I say Marchese Ovidio di Montelimone. He was very grand. When he died, he left it to me. Not that it was worth having. Only the memories, which are of no value to anyone else, I suppose.”
Alba noticed that the skin on his face was thick and reddened. He looked as if he were sunburnt, but on closer inspection it was clear that he was slowly drinking himself to death. A miasma of alcohol surrounded him. She could smell it. She noticed too that he wore his linen trousers very high on the waist, belted tightly, and that they were too short, revealing white socks on thin ankles. He wasn’t old, but he had the fragility of an elderly man.
“What was this marchese like?” Fitz asked. Nero sat down on the balustrade and flopped one leg over the other. He didn’t seem to mind that they were trespassing, wandering through his house. He seemed happy for the company. He rested his chin on his hand with a sigh. “He was a great aesthete. He loved beautiful things.”
“Are you related?” Alba knew instinctively that he wasn’t.
“No. I loved him. He loved boys, you see. I had no culture, yet he loved me. I was a simple urchin from Naples. He found me on the street and educated me. But look what I have done to my inheritance. I am good for nothing now.” He fumbled around in his pocket for a cigarette. “If you were a boy, I could easily lose my heart to you.” He laughed, but Alba didn’t think it amusing. He flicked the lighter and inhaled. “Nothing was simple with Ovidio. He was a man of contradictions. Rich, yet he lived in a house that was decaying all about him. He loved men and yet he gave the largest slice of his heart to a woman. He went crazy for her. I nearly lost him because of her.” Alba looked at Fitz and Fitz looked at Alba. Neither spoke. But they knew. Nero continued. “She was more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.”
“She was my mother,” said Alba. Nero stared at her through the wafting smoke that rose up in front of his eyes. “Valentina was my mother.”
Suddenly Nero’s shoulders slumped and tears welled in his eyes. He bit his lip and his hands began to shake. “Of course. That is why you are here. That is why I half-recognize you.”
“Was Valentina the marchese’s lover?” Fitz asked.
He nodded. His head looked far too big for his emaciated body. “She was an amazing woman. Even I admired her. It was impossible not to. She had a bewitching way about her. An allure, quite magical. I was a boy from the streets and yet I met my match with her. Forgive me.”
“Come on,” said Fitz trying to comfort him. “What’s there to forgive?”
Nero stood up. “I let this place go. A few years ago there was a fire in one wing. It was my fault, I was drinking with friends…I’ve let it crumble about me. There’s no money left. I haven’t done any of the things he asked me to do. But come. There is one thing that I have kept just the way he left it.”
They followed him along a snake path that wound its way down the hill beneath an avenue of cypress trees. At the end, overlooking the sea, stood a small house made out of gray stone. Unlike the palazzo, this had not been destroyed by the forest. Only a few intrepid branches of ivy scaled the walls and wound their way around the pillars. It was a perfect little folly, like something out of a fairy tale, where goblins might have lived. Fitz and Alba’s curiosity mounted. They stepped in behind Nero, peering around him in astonishment for, unlike the palazzo, this secret hideaway hadn’t been disturbed; it was frozen in time.
There was only one room. It was a harmoniously proportioned square with a domed ceiling, exquisitely painted in a fresco of a cloudy blue sky filled with naked cherubs. The walls below were a warm terra-cotta, the floor covered with rugs, worn by the constant tread of feet, but not threadbare. A large four-poster bed dominated the room. The silks that draped it had discolored to a pale green, but the quilt, made in the same fabric, retained its original rich color. An elaborately embroidered velvet coverlet lay upon it, fraying at the edges. There was a chaise longue, an upholstered chair, a walnut-inlaid writing table where a glass ink bottle and pen were poised on the leather blotter, with paper and envelopes bearing the name Marchese Ovidio di Montelimone. Velvet curtains hung from poles; the shutters were closed; a bookshelf carried the weight of rows of leather-bound books.
On closer inspection Alba saw that all the books were either of history or erotica. She ran her fingers over the bindings, wiping away the dust to reveal shiny titles embossed in gold.
“Ovidio loved sex,” said Nero, draping himself over the chaise longue. “This was his sanctuary. The place he came to get away from the decaying palazzo and the echoes of its glorious past that he had allowed to slip through his fingers.” He gazed up at the ceiling and took a drag of his cigarette, now so short it was in danger of burning his yellowed fingers. “Ah, the hours of pleasure I enjoyed in this charming little grotto.” He sighed theatrically and let his eyes fall lazily on Alba, who was now looking at the paintings. They were all mythological scenes of naked young men or boys. They were beautifully framed, forming a collage on the walls. An alcove in the wall housed a statue on a black and gilt pedestal. It was a marble replica of Donatello’s David. “Isn’t that exquisite? He’s like a panther, isn’t he? It was the languor of his pose that delighted Ovidio. He had it made especially for this grotto. He would run his hands over it. He liked to touch. He was a sensualist. As I said, he loved beautiful things.”
“Like my mother,” said Alba, imagining her mother sitting at the delicate little dressing table, brushing her hair in front of the Queen Anne mirror. There were rows of bottles and perfume flasks here too, silver brushes and a pot of face powder. Had those belonged to her mother too?
“Like Valentina,” repeated Nero and his eyes filled once again with tears.
Alba wandered around the room, past a marble fireplace that still vibrated with the heat it had provided for the marchese and his lovers, past a tallboy of drawers, all empty. Then she flopped onto the bed. She felt uneasy. She didn’t want to look at Nero; she knew instinctively that he was about to divulge something terrible. She turned and caught her breath. Her eyes alighted on a picture of a beautiful young woman lying naked on grass. Her breasts were young and full, her hips round and soft, her pubic hair a shock of dark against the whiteness of her thighs. Alba recoiled. The long dark hair, laughing eyes, and mysterious smile that played about her lips were unmistakable. Indeed, inscribed at the bottom were the words Valentina, reclining nude, Thomas Arbuckle, 1945.
“Oh my God!”
“What is it?” Fitz hurried over.
“It’s Valentina.”
“What?”
“The last portrait my father drew of my mother. The one he searched for after her death but never found. She gave it to the marchese.”
Now Alba realized why her father had been so desperate to find it. It was the most intimate of them all. A picture that should have been for their eyes only. Yet she had given it away. Alba took it down off the wall and brushed the dust off the frame. Fitz sat on the bed beside her. Neither noticed that Nero’s shoulders had begun to shake. “How dare he!” she exclaimed in fury. “How dare she!” She remembered her father’s gray, tormented face when she had given him the first portrait. How little she had understood him. “It breaks my heart to think of Daddy searching for this, while all along it was here with this pig. Wherever he is, I spit on his grave.”
Nero turned, his face an open wound. “Now you know why this house is cursed. Why it’s in ruins. Why it will turn to dust. Why Ovidio was murdered.” His voice was a desperate howl, an animal in pain.
Fitz and Alba stared at him in amazement. “The marchese was murdered too?” said Fitz.
“My Ovidio was murdered.” He sank to the floor and curled up into a ball.
“Why was he murdered?” Alba asked in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“Because he killed Valentina,” he wailed. “Because he killed her.”