“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?