Page 24 of Change of Heart
Simonetta bent down to pet Frank. ‘The only objections might come from Baffo, our old cat, but he can always go and sleep on top of a cupboard.’ She glanced up at Alice. ‘Are you a dog person or a cat person, Alice?’
‘I’m an all kinds of animals person – apart from snakes and a few creepy-crawlies.’ She looked across at Luca. ‘Frank doesn’t sound very Italian, as names go.’
‘I called him Frank after my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright; the greatest architect of the twentieth century… well, in my humble opinion anyway.’
‘He’s a big dog but he’s not very old, is he?’
‘Frank’s not two yet, still a bit of a hooligan.’
Pleased to hear his name mentioned, the dog wandered around among the three of them, prodding them with his nose and wagging his tail lazily while Simonetta returned her attention to Luca.
‘It’s a bit early for the rest of the family, so why doesn’t Alice show you around the cellars, the ground floor and the towers? I imagine by the time you’ve seen those, the others will be up and about, and I can introduce you to them. I’m really pleased that you agreed to come and do this for us. You have an excellent reputation and I know you’ll do a great job.’ She was still sounding very formal and Alice hoped that she would manage to break the news of her relationship with Tommaso to her father before too long.
After Simonetta had returned to the house, Alice looked across at Luca. ‘Where would you like to start? Are you happy if I come around with you or would you prefer to be on your own?’
‘I’m very happy to have you with me.’ He sounded as if he meant it and Alice was furious with herself when she felt her cheeks flushing. The man was here to do a job and that was that – at least for now. She did her best to adopt a business-like tone.
‘Shall we start at the bottom and work upwards? There are extensive cellars and stores and what were maybe dungeons beneath the main structure, so I’ll take you there first if that’s okay with you. Have you got a torch? It’s pitch dark down there and there’s no electricity. I’ll just run and get mine.’
She went back to her office to get her torch and when she returned she found that he had retrieved a little backpack, a torch and a clipboard from the car. They went in through the entrance hall and down the steps to the cellars, the Labrador trotting happily between the two of them. They spent over half an hour down there, hunting around with torches, and in the course of his explorations Luca discovered something that Alice had completely missed on her previous visits. It turned out that there were in fact yet more rooms beneath these cellars, accessed through a half-concealed trapdoor in the floor. He heaved the hefty wooden door open and she made her way gingerly down a narrow spiral stone staircase after him into the bowels of the earth, and was pleased to find that her knee managed it without complaint. From the festoons of low-hanging cobwebs it was clear that nobody had been down here for ages. It was pitch black, musty and, if she was honest, really quite scary. She was glad she wasn’t on her own.
They emerged into another, narrower corridor, flanked by low doorways on both sides. From the iron bars on the doors and the rusting chains hanging from the walls, the series of dank cells down here had clearly had a far more sinister purpose than just acting as storerooms. Alice shivered as they walked about, not just because it was freezing down there. Certainly, if these cells were to be opened to the public, there would probably have to be some sort of age restriction to avoid scaring little children half to death.
When they reached the end of the tunnel they came across a wide round opening in the floor. This was clearly a well and Luca’s powerful torch revealed what looked like crystal-clear water only about a metre beneath their feet and, from the way the light penetrated downwards, the well was certainly deep. Alice was just leaning over, peering down into the water, when there was a sudden movement right in front of her. She jumped back and bumped into Luca, almost dropping her torch into the water. She felt a strong arm encircle her shoulders to steady her and his voice at her ear.
‘Looks like we’re not the only inhabitants of this part of the castle.’ He trained the beam of the torch on the spot where she had seen movement and revealed a large brown toad sitting there, studying them impassively. ‘In all probability this little guy is descended from generations of toads going back centuries. He’s probably got more claim to the property than the Varaldo family.’
Luca released his grip on her and she glanced up at him. Fortunately, in the shadows down here there was no way he would be able to see the colour that had leapt to her cheeks. ‘Thanks for catching me. I’ve never been a fan of frogs and toads. I just hope there aren’t any of his long slithery relatives down here.’
‘No, I’m sure there aren’t any snakes down here.’ He was probably trying to sound reassuring, but she felt sure she could detect doubt in his voice and she shivered again.
Doing her best to dismiss thoughts of snakes lurking in the shadows, she assumed what she hoped would sound like a confident tone. ‘If you’ve finished down here now, shall we head back up to the surface?’
‘Of course. Anyway, finding a well is a real bonus. Even here in the hills, water’s expensive and we need to take advantage of any natural resources we find. We should be able to set up a pumping system so as to use water from here, if not for drinking, then for the new toilets and so on. Every little helps.’
Even the dog seemed keen to get back up the steps again and Alice was hard on his heels. Luca was behind her with his torch and she realised as she climbed that this meant that his face was level with her bottom. The feel of his arm around her had been more than pleasant and now knowing that his eyes were probably on her was exciting. Like it or lump it, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she found this man very appealing. Of course, she knew next to nothing about his private life and she had no idea how he might feel towards her. For all she knew, he might be married with half a dozen kids. Not for the first time, she reminded herself that theirs was simply a business relationship. If he really was as good at his job as she hoped, the last thing she wanted was to make things weird between them and maybe even run the risk of losing him from the project. In consequence, she told herself firmly to concentrate on the job and nothing more.
Easier said than done.
She was relieved when they emerged blinking into the daylight. The morning sun was shining brightly through the slit windows of the entrance hall, giving the dog ever-changing zebra stripes as he padded around sniffing these new surroundings. As for his master, if he’d been thinking about her the way she’d been thinking about him, there was no sign of it. He appeared to be solely focused on the job and she wondered for a moment whether he had already realised she was disabled and had lost interest as a result. It was a distasteful thought, but it was what she had been fearing for four long years now. She had always hoped she would meet that special someone sooner or later, but she had been under no illusions as to how that special someone would almost certainly react to her disability.
Apparently oblivious to her dark thoughts, Luca scribbled on his clipboard before coming up with a bit of interesting news.
‘From what I could see down there on the lower level, we might even have a much earlier date for the castle than we thought. The official construction date is the late twelve hundreds, early thirteen hundreds, but I’m not so sure now. Did you notice that all the arches down there were round Roman arches, and generally speaking, that style of construction dates back to before the Crusades, so pre-twelfth century. I’ll have to look into it more closely and maybe get one of my friends – he’s a professor of archaeology – to come along and give his opinion, but it looks to me as though the lower levels could date back as far as the turn of the first millennium.’
Alice was impressed. ‘That would make this castle a thousand years old. That’s amazing, wait till we tell the baron. He’s heavily into the history of the family and the castle, so I’m sure he’ll be excited to hear that.’
‘Thinking about it, I imagine we’ll probably find that the lower levels belonged to an earlier structure which was replaced when this castle was built, but even so, it makes this one of the oldest surviving castles in Italy.’ He gave her a little smile. ‘That should be quite a good selling point, shouldn’t it?’
She smiled back at him. ‘Any more discoveries like that will be gratefully received.’
They walked out into the fresh air and began a tour of the ground floor of the castle. There were a number of huge double doors leading from the courtyard into what had no doubt once been stables, stores and pretty basic accommodation for the garrison back in the days when this was a functioning defensive fortress. The outside walls had few, if any, openings and the widest of these were arrow slits that even Baffo the cat would have struggled to squeeze through. The walls themselves were over three metres thick and it was easy to see why this place had allegedly never been taken by an attacking force. There were piles of junk everywhere, and Alice was idly wondering if there might be a scrap yard who would be prepared to take all the metal items away, when Luca and his dog suddenly disappeared into the middle of a particularly dense pile of rubbish. There were the sounds of something heavy being moved and then, seconds later, she heard his voice.
‘Alice, I think you might like to see this.’
She could just make out his hand beckoning from behind a particularly unattractive large heap of detritus, so she tentatively started to squeeze between a vicious-looking piece of rusty agricultural machinery whose purpose she could only guess at and a torn old mattress, its horsehair stuffing spilling out onto the ground. As she was doing so, she couldn’t help thinking to herself that if she were a snake looking for a nice warm lair, then in there would be just the ticket. Something moved close to her feet and she jumped as a warm body rubbed against her calf. A glance downwards provided reassurance.
‘Frank, you frightened the life out of me! Please get out of from under my feet.’
