Page 26 of In the Garden of Monsters

It seemed logical that a passage must originate in the cellars. Ignazio had mentioned that the floor below theterzo piano, the ground floor, was for service, so I passed it and kept going. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I opened the door into blackness. A pervasive dank smell emanated from the dark. I felt around the edge of the door for a switch, but there wasn’t any. There wasn’t a single sliver of light to lead my way. I’d have to return when I could find a lantern or flashlight. Maybe I’d even bring Jack with me. Perhaps with all the weird things I’d already experienced since arriving in Bomarzo, I shouldn’t take any chances. His brawn would protect me. And if he had to hold me tight, I wouldn’t complain.

I went back up the stairs to the service floor, intending to ask someone for a flashlight, although I didn’t know what excuse I might have for wanting one. Following the scent of something cooking, I entered the kitchen and was stunned to see that Ignazio was already looking toward the door, as though he were waiting for my arrival. Had I made any noise on my approach? The cook and his assistant turned in my direction, but they remained expressionless, as though they were looking through me instead of at me. It was the same blankness that Demetra and the servants at the dinners exhibited.

It wasn’t the bustling kitchen I would have expected from a large palazzo. Instead, it was very old and, to my surprise, harbored no modern appliances. There were several tables, a heavy sink on one side, and a fire that roared in the grate, complete with a spit and platforms where pots could be set to cook the food. How had they managed to create such wondrous meals with such simple implements?

Ignazio crossed the room when he saw me, his enigmatic smile lighting up his face. “Julia! Are you ready for breakfast? Is there anything amiss?”

I hadn’t thought I would find him there so early, nor was I prepared for the rush of butterflies that lit in my stomach when I saw him. Jack had fired up those same feelings the night before, with our kiss, but it was a small spark compared to the fire I felt when I looked at Ignazio.

“I...” My words failed me.

“Anything you need, Julia, just say.”

“I woke early and decided to explore, that’s all.” Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to just ask about the lower level. “I found my way to the cellar, but I couldn’t find the light switch.”

“There isn’t one. Would you like me to show you the lower levels? I’d be happy to give you a tour.”

I hesitated. But our host was already in motion. He crossed the kitchen, pulled two lanterns down off a shelf and lit them. Then, as he led me down the hallway toward the stairs, he launched into a story about how the current owners, the Borghese family, had looked into wiring the lower levels but decided the expense wasn’t worth it.

As we descended into the pitch-black cellar, I couldn’t help but wonder why I hadn’t said no. While I was curious about finding the passage, I wasn’t sure I was so curious I wanted to scramble around in the dark looking for it. And yet, despite my trepidation about following Ignazio into the dark, I was enthralled by the sound of his voice, by his very nearness. Perhaps Ignazio and I were two lodestones tumbling against one another. We attracted, repelled, attracted, repelled. Lillian was always teasing me about my predilection to be attracted to men who were the most dangerous for me. Surely with Ignazio that was true. There was no safety here, just a heady deluge of desire—and a sense that he could flip my world in a direction I might not want it to go.

Then we were descending the stairs and my moment to sayno, I don’t want to go down there with youwas slipping further and further away, until it was gone and we were walking through the darkness, our lanterns cutting into the black. I reasoned with myself that I wanted to see the space, to discover if there was, in fact, a hidden passageway of some sort that led down to the garden.

“This room used to be the kitchen,” Ignazio said when we reached the bottom of the stairs, which led into a massive space large enough that the lantern light couldn’t reach the walls. “When they wired thecastellofor electricity, they moved the kitchen upstairs.”

I couldn’t see enough of the room to know if there was a fireplace or any of the furnishings you might find in a kitchen, though looking at thepeperinostone floor, I could tell the basement had been carved from the rock upon which thecastellowas built. Ignazio strode from room to room with purpose, and with every step, I knew there was no way I could have come down there by myself. The never-ending darkness beyond our lamplight, the cobwebs, the sounds of mice or, more likely, rats skittering in the shadows—all that was only part of it. What shook me most was that I could sense a human presence surrounding us, centuries of history layered upon itself thick enough that it felt engraved upon the very air we walked through.

The darkness compelled me to keep close to Ignazio, closer than I wanted. But he knew this place and I did not. While I knew it ridiculous, I had a pervasive feeling that something might jump out, snatch me away, and drag me off...though perhaps I was already being dragged off by Ignazio himself.

A profound sense of relief flooded through me when we reached the opposite side of the room and entered a hallway. Seeing the two walls on either side of me was a great comfort.

“Where are the dungeons?” I asked. He had mentioned them when he first showed us around the palazzo.

“They aren’t terribly impressive,” he admitted as he opened a door to reveal a massive pantry lined with jars of food. “We use many of the cells for cold storage now.”

“Are there any secret passages in the palazzo?” I was kicking myself for not asking him that before traipsing around in the darkness with him. I realized, with growing horror, that my companions had no idea where I was. Would the cook tell them if I disappeared? I had the strong sense that he wouldn’t.

“Every old castle has secret passages, Julia,” Ignazio said. “Some are merely for the servants to move about, unseen. But the old barons had many enemies. One never knew when there might be a need to escape from infiltrators. Or perhaps just get away from other family members.”

“Where are they?”

“If I told you, they wouldn’t be a secret anymore, now, would they?” He looked at me, his eyes glinting like sparks in the lantern light. “But, worry not, none go to your bedroom.”

This did not bring me comfort. I also hated that he knew I was wondering just that.

“At the other end of the basement is a stairwell down to the road leading out of the city. Even our medieval counterparts found a reason to have an extra egress. That’s the closest this floor has to a secret passage, though I’m afraid there’s nothing mysterious about it.”

I stayed close to Ignazio. He was quite animated and gave me a detailed history of the castle as we walked. Thankfully, his voice kept me distracted from the rodents I could hear scratching somewhere in the empty blackness.

We passed more storage spaces full of old furniture, building materials, and assorted boxes. A couple of the rooms were filled top to bottom with wine racks, some of which held bottles Ignazio told me went back over a hundred years. I would hate to be the servant sent down to the darkness to retrieve one of them.

Finally, we came to the end of the hallway. Ignazio waved a hand toward what he said was the door to a small area where there were still two or three dungeon cells and the aforementioned staircase, but then he doubled back, leading me to the massive room he had said was the kitchen. But instead of going up the steps, he went to the right a few paces, then homed in on a doorless entrance to a room about eight feet wide and perhaps twice as long. He held the lantern up so I could look in. On the far side, a small arched hole had been carved into the wall. A little metal grate had been bolted over the bottom half, perhaps to prevent one from falling in. In the center of the room there was a rounded impression in the stone as though some sort of mechanism may have been there centuries ago and was now long gone. The odor of moss and mold was unpleasant.

Julia...

The whisper, which seemed to emanate from the hole itself, made me jump. The hair on my arms and neck stood on end, though Ignazio didn’t seem to register the whisper or my discomfort. He stepped into the room and thrust his lantern closer to the space in the wall.

“The well,” he said.

---