ACT IV
* * *
NOISE AND TUMULT WITHIN.
Such welcome and unwelcome things at once ’Tis hard to reconcile.
Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III
i
THE house seemed a quieter place with Edwina gone.
Not that she’d been in the main house that much to begin with, but I missed her at mealtimes. Her quick mind and quicker tongue had, more than once, thrown Daniela Forlani off balance and caused the younger woman to withdraw into a self-defensive silence. I’d enjoyed that. But without Edwina there, Daniela soon reclaimed her former place as centre of attention.
Poppy didn’t like her, I could tell. A few times I’d caught the girl giving Daniela the same look she often gave Nicholas, open contempt mixed with something more private, as though she were wishing they’d just disappear.
I couldn’t really blame her in Daniela’s case—I frequently found myself wishing the very same thing. Not only because of the way she behaved around Alex, in the same manipulative, doe-eyed way my mother acted with her men. And not because of Alex’s predictable response, though I admit that might have been a tiny part of it—for every smile he showed her, my dislike of her increased, for all I told myself it wasn’t any of my concern. But what I really took objection to was how Daniela spoke to Poppy.
In fact, the Saturday after Edwina’s leaving I nearly forgot my resolve to keep my mouth shut when Daniela at dinner retorted to something that Poppy had said about spirits and séances, “Only fools believe such things.”
I wanted to reply, but Den took up the fight instead. Deliberately misunderstanding her target, he answered her calmly. “Oh, I don’t know. Alex’s grandmother didn’t strike me as being much of a fool.”
And I had the satisfaction of seeing Daniela’s poise waver, of watching her own words come back to trap her as she quickly looked at Alex. “Well, of course I did not mean—”
“I know what you meant,” was Alex’s rather dismissive reply, and unsmiling he turned to resume his discussion with Rupert. They were talking about books. “But of course if it’s plays that you want, I don’t know that we have any, other than my grandfather’s, that is. If there are any others, they’d most likely be in the Veranda della Diana, the room I now use as my office. My grandfather wrote there, and the bookcases haven’t really been touched since his day. You’re welcome to have a look through them, if you like, though I’m afraid most of the books won’t be much use to you unless you know German or Latin.”
“Latin, yes,” Rupert said. “German, no.”
I joined the conversation out of curiosity. “Did the German books come from the Casetta Fiorita, then?” I asked, remembering what Edwina had told me about Galeazzo clearing out the Austrian’s belongings from the house in Venice.
Alex sent me a look down the length of the table, impressed. “Yes, but how did you know about that?”
“Your grandmother told me. When I was down at the villa I happened to see a cup . . . a chalice, your grandmother called it . . . in the cabinet, and I mentioned that it looked like one I’d seen in the basilica in Venice, so she told me the story.”
Rupert was looking a question. “What story is that?”
Edwina, I thought, knew it better, but I did my best to tell Rupert what she’d said about Galeazzo D’Ascanio and the Casetta Fiorita—how the house had once belonged to the descendants of a knight of the Fourth Crusade, and how it had come down at last through marriage to the Austrian who’d lost it, temporarily at least, in World War I, and how the poet Galeazzo had, on hearing he would have to leave the house that he’d been renting, helped himself to all the treasures he could find.
Rupert’s interest increased. “Are there many things here that came out of Constantinople?”
“There is a small collection,” Alex said. “Some silver, the chalice, a few bowls, a sword. Those are down at the villa. And then there are the tapestries in the Stanza d’Arazzo, those came from Venice also, and they’re Byzantine. And these heads”—he motioned to the marble heads of a man and a woman set behind him in the wall niches—“my father always called them Jason and Medea, though I don’t know if that’s really who they were.”
I’d always assumed, myself, that they were meant to be Galeazzo and Celia the First, though I hadn’t been able to see the resemblance, and now I knew why. They weren’t portrait pieces commissioned by the poet, but rather trophy heads broken from statues as part of the plunder of the Fourth Crusade. I looked at them more closely, the brave but faithless Jason and his bitter wife Medea . . . still appropriate for this house, though they made a better fit with Galeazzo and his wife, Francesca. She would, I imagined, have been bitter, too.
Daniela had developed a suspicious look, as though she expected us all to run down to the villa and invade her private space. “These things you speak of at the Villa delle Tempeste, they are in boxes mostly, not for viewing.”
Alex admitted that many things had been packed away for safety while the restoration work was going on. “But I could show you a few of the items sometime, if you like. They’re quite lovely.”
Den raised an eyebrow. “And valuable, I guess.”
“Yes, we have them separately insured.”
Nicholas, predictably, showed interest at the mention of money. “You’re never giving those things to the Trust, as well? They’d be worth a bloody fortune. I should think you’d want to hang on to them, for an investment.”
Alex shrugged. “I have other investments. And besides, things so beautiful shouldn’t be hidden away, they are meant to be shared.”
Daniela smiled. “Yes, you are right, caro. This is a wonderful thing that you do, and this Constantinople collection, it will be well cared for in the years to come, admired by many visitors.” And then, as the maid came in to clear our plates, she changed the subject. “You have had news, Alessandro, of that girl who ran away? Pietro said so.”
I wasn’t sure, initially, why Pietro would have any special knowledge of the matter, until I remembered that he had supposedly been going around with the first maid, and that it had possibly been an argument between the two of them that had made her run off to begin with.
Alex was nodding. “Yes, her family had a letter from her yesterday, to say she had found work in Milan. It’s been a great relief to them. Her mother called to let me know.”
Madeleine looked relieved, too. “Well, that’s good news, then. I confess I’ve been worrying myself, about the girl—so many things can happen, these days.” Her gaze brushed her daughter, protectively; passed on to Den, who agreed.
“My mother,” he said, “would have killed me herself if I’d pulled a stunt like that, just not showing up for work one day and taking off.”
“I wonder why she left?” mused Rupert.
Alex answered. “That I don’t know. It’s difficult to tell what goes on in the minds of young women.”
Den grinned. “It’s not just the young ones. Women of any age are a mystery,” he said, with a quick wink at Madeleine that made me wonder if something might not be developing there. I would certainly have been far more approving of Den as a partner for Madeleine than I was of Nicholas, who never had given a good explanation to my mind of what he’d been doing Monday night when Poppy and I had knocked at his door. He’d claimed to have been sleeping, but I doubted that anyone slept quite that soundly. And then there was the matter of his lighter being left down at the Villa delle Tempeste on Sunday.
He had it back in hand, now, and was using it to light a cigarette while we waited for coffee. “So that just leaves you one, now, unaccounted for,” he said to Alex. “I don’t suppose Giancarlo’s in Milan, as well?”
Ignoring the innuendo, Alex shrugged. “I really don’t know. He’ll turn up when he’s ready, he always does.”
Daniela shook her head, uncomprehending. “I do not know why you are permitting such behaviour from a servant. When he returns you should tell him to pack his bags, go.
But you will not, I know. You have too forgiving a heart.”
“This is Giancarlo’s home as much as mine,” said Alex quietly, explaining to the rest of us, “his father worked for my father.”
I wondered whether it was loyalty that made him keep Giancarlo on, or simply a desire to maintain some kind of connection to his own past. With both his parents gone, and Edwina living so far away, perhaps he needed someone like Giancarlo, who remembered.
The maid returned with the coffee, but Alex declined. “You’ll excuse me, I have an appointment. But please,” he said, speaking to Rupert, “do feel free to have a look at the books, as I said, in the Veranda della Diana.”
“Never mind, it can wait till you have the time. I wouldn’t feel right, poking round your office with you not there.”
“Nonsense.” Standing, he said rather casually, “Celia can show you the way, she should know it by now.”
And with a nod to all of us he took his leave, and left me sitting, coffee cup half-raised, to face the roomful of enquiring eyes that turned in my direction.
He crumpled the paper with both hands and tossed it the length of the sunlit veranda. It was hopeless, he told himself, hopeless.
He should have died young. A talent like his was intended to flare up in youth and burn brightly . . . by old age it sputtered and choked on its ashes. He’d known this—he’d seen it himself, in his writing. But the fires of his youth had been so brilliant that most people were still dazzled, still prepared to call him genius, and for years now it had been enough to simply hint from time to time that he was hard at work on some great masterpiece.
Francesca, he suspected, knew the truth. That was why she’d suggested he write a new play, for his Celia; why she kept going on and on about it now, and always with a smile, as though she knew she had tied him a Gordian knot and was finding his struggle amusing.
And yet, he thought, why should Celia not have a play? He had written plays for several of the others, for Francesca . . . and Celia was above them all, as like to them as wine would be to water. Had he met her in his younger days her beauty might have moved his pen to write a work so perfect it would live for an eternity.
Pausing, his pen inked and poised on the paper, he lifted his gaze to the bookcases, searching the spines of the leather-bound volumes. A work that would live an eternity . . . Surely his Celia deserved nothing less.
After all, he thought, smiling, the best way to deal with a Gordian knot was to cut it.
ii
“SO,” said Rupert, looking around at the comfortable masculine warmth of the Veranda della Diana, “you’ve been here a few times, then, have you?”
I sighed. “It wasn’t like it sounded. I came to send Bryan an e-mail, I told you.”
“Yes, I know that’s what you told the others, and a very good story it was, too . . .”
“Oh, Roo.”
He relented with a smile. “I’m only teasing. Mind you, I like Alex,” he said, crossing to switch on a floor lamp beside the long glass-fronted bookcases. “And the fact that he likes you just proves to me he’s got good taste.”
“He doesn’t like me,” I corrected him. “Not that way.”
“My dear, I have eyes. There’s a definite interest.”
I glanced up, a little too quickly. “There can’t be. I mean . . . he’s already in a relationship.”
“Ah,” said Rupert.
“And anyway,” I said, ignoring his quietly knowing expression, “Alex is too old for me. He’s thirty-two, Den said.”
Rupert pointed out that a ten-year gap meant different things at different times. “There’s nearly ten years between me and Bryan, and trust me, when you get to our age, no one really notices.” He paused in thought a moment, backing up a mental pace. “When were you talking to Den about Alex?”
“A few days ago, I don’t remember. And we weren’t talking about Alex, not specifically . . . we were only talking.” Then, because Rupert was starting to get that fatherly-protective look again, I said, “I think Den fancies Madeleine.”
“It’s possible,” said Rupert. “Dennis fancies a lot of women.” His tone shut the door on that topic, and turning, he carefully opened the glass door of the nearest bookcase. “Now then, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Moving up beside him, I joined in his perusal of the rows of books, inhaling the pleasantly musty smells of old paper and leather. The books in this case nearly all had identical bindings, and as Alex had warned, nearly all of the titles were German. I assumed Rupert was still looking for the elusive play he thought existed somewhere here at Il Piacere, the play Galeazzo had supposedly plagiarized into Il Prezzo.
“That’s right,” he said, when I sought to confirm this. “Although I have a hunch it won’t be here—that what I’m really after is a book much larger than these ones, and very much older.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“The tale you told at dinner. I didn’t know, you see, that the Casetta Fiorita had been built by a Crusader.”
“Well, Edwina said it might have been the son of a Crusader . . .”
“Either way. If the Crusader, whoever he was, managed to carry chalices and tapestries and silver out of Constantinople, then he might have brought home something else . . . something that would really have appealed to Galeazzo.”
Frowning, I followed along with his train of thought. “Books, you mean?”
“It’s possible. Remember I told you that the library at Constantinople was one of the finest in the world, before it burned in 1204. It held the complete works of Euripides, Sophocles . . .”
“Oh, Roo.” I smiled a little at the far-fetchedness of the theory. “You don’t honestly think that Galeazzo stole a play from Euripides?”
Entirely serious, he said, “I’d be inclined to think Sophocles, actually. There are some intriguing points of similarity—the cadence of the dialogue; the single hero, or in this case heroine, who marches blindly on to self-destruction, in spite of other people’s warnings—these are very Sophoclean. And Sophocles, of course, was the first to introduce the third actor, to complicate things. Before him, there’d only been two.” Shutting the door of the first bookcase, he moved on to the next.
“So you’re saying there might be an unknown play by Sophocles floating around undiscovered?”
“Well, think about it. He wrote over a hundred plays in his lifetime, my dear, and we only have seven today. And we know from the fragments, the bits that survived on scraps of papyrus, or as scattered quotes in other people’s letters—‘I saw this marvellous new play last night, and in it the characters said such-and-such,’ that sort of thing—we know from these that Sophocles wrote a play called Shepherds, about Protesilaus and the landing of the Greeks at Troy. You remember Protesilaus?”
To prove I’d been paying attention when he’d told me the myth in Venice, I parroted back, “Protesilaus, the chap who sacrificed himself at Troy so the Greeks would win the war, like the oracle promised.”
“Precisely.”
“But our play’s not about Troy.”
“The Greeks,” Rupert said, “liked their trilogies. It’s possible that Sophocles followed his Shepherds with the story of how Protesilaus’s wife, Laodamia, had him called back from the underworld.”
“Ah.”
“It’s a rather remote possibility, I admit . . .”
“Very remote, I should say.” I thought it highly unlikely that a book so ancient and important would go undiscovered so long, but when I said as much to Rupert he merely shrugged.
“It has been known to happen. Lost manuscripts do surface from time to time, and unknown Rembrandts turn up in people’s lofts.”
“But even so . . .”
“I’m only looking. There’s no harm in doing that, is there?”
“No.”
“Well, then.” Reaching out he drew a volume from the shelves and smiled. “It looks like Galeazzo had an interest in the spirit world, as well.” Ho
lding the book up, he turned the cover so I could read the title: Ghosts and Hauntings: A Study of Spirits.
“May I see that?” Taking the book, I leafed through the front pages and read down the table of contents. “It looks kind of interesting, actually.”
“Not the best bedtime reading for you, though. You’ll have nightmares.”
Head bent, I ignored him. “I wonder if Alex would mind if I borrowed it?”
“If the way he was watching you at dinner is anything to go by, I don’t think he’d mind if you borrowed the whole library.”
I looked up, frowning faintly. He was only teasing me, I knew, and yet . . . “He wasn’t really, was he? Watching me, I mean. Because I haven’t done anything to encourage him.”
“Perhaps you should.”
I stared at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “You’re giving me advice?”
“Oh, no, only commenting. You do what you like. Just remember it’s not every day that one finds oneself being pursued by a wealthy and handsome young man.”
“Yes, well, this wealthy and handsome young man has a girlfriend.”
“I see,” Rupert said, understanding. “And you’re not your mother, is that it?”
“Exactly. It’s like Bryan says—”
“Oh, Lord. Bryan.” Rupert cut me off in midstream, looking at his watch. “I was supposed to ring him at ten o’clock. Damn. Is there a phone in here, I wonder?”
“On the desk.” I pointed, then looked hopefully on as he dialled the number. “Can I talk to him, too?”
Rupert smiled at me indulgently. “I thought you liked your e-mail.”
“Well, it’s not the same as talking.”
I had missed the sound of Bryan’s voice. It came across the crackling line like soothing music. “Angel, what are you still doing up? You ought to be in bed.”