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.”