'I was just curious to see.'
'And what did you see?'
'A lot of dust and some German desks.' Maybe it was Maurizio's hectoring tone, but he found himself adding, 'I also saw where Emilio was murdered.'
Maurizio's face seemed strangely pale in the lambent light of the flares.
'Near the fireplace,' Adam went on, emboldened. 'But then you know that—you were there.'
Maurizio recovered his composure, a pursed smile stealing over his features. 'It's good that your work is finished and you are leaving.' He handed back the cigarettes and lighter. 'Thank you.' Turning on his heel, he made his way down the stone steps.
Adam was filled with a sudden flood of anger. He wanted to run after him, to seize him, shake him, scream at him: You fool! Don't you see? I was happy to let it go, I
As he fumbled a cigarette between his lips his gaze dropped to the terrace below—to the dark mass of the chapel lurking beyond the moonlight in the shadow of the sandstone bluff. And in that moment it struck him that he was wrong. Maurizio was not to blame. He was no more in control of matters than Adam was. They were simply actors playing out a drama, their roles already written for them.
HARRY SAT UP FRONT WITH ANTONELLA, SHOUTING AT HER over the music blaring from the car radio. Adam lay sprawled across the backseat, pretending to doze. He had in fact slept surprisingly well; he just wanted a private moment to work through the details of the scheme he'd hatched.
Every now and then he would sneak a peek at Antonella, her hair tied back in a ponytail, revealing her small ears. Harry was remarkably perky given that he'd waited in the olive grove for well over an hour before falling asleep at the base of a tree, waking with the sun on his face. He still clung to the belief that Signora Pedretti had come looking for him, despite Antonella's insistence that the woman was a notorious and mischievous flirt.
Antonella spurned the new road to Siena in favor of the old Via Volterrana, which twisted through the hills. It played to her recklessness behind the wheel—another good reason for Adam to have his eyes closed. They stopped briefly at San Gimignano, its ancient towers a testament to the competing vanities of its medieval merchants. Not so very different to what was going on in London right now, Adam observed. Harry told him to stop showing off.
Siena silenced them both with the rise and fall of her sinuous streets, the curving facades of her palaces, and her main square, the Campo, not a square at all, but a shell-shaped hollow at the heart of the hilled city. Siena was everything Florence wasn't—soft, curvaceous, feminine—and it was easy to see why her citizens had formed a special attachment to the Virgin. While Florence proclaimed its power, Siena exuded a quiet, contained strength. Buried in her coiling thoroughfares and her warm brickwork was a sense that she could absorb whatever was thrown at her. She might bend a bit, but she would never break.
Lunch was had in the walled garden of a large ground-floor apartment. Edoardo and Grazia were already there, as were ten or so other guests. Their host was a genial and unassuming little law professor. Adam never got a chance to speak to him. As soon as the pasta bowls had been cleared, Antonella announced that she was taking Adam off to see the 'Crete Senesi.' He had no idea what she meant, but he didn't protest. Harry said he'd stay behind, grab a lift back to Florence with Edoardo and Grazia.
'I told you I had a plan,' said Antonella as they stepped from the apartment building into the deserted street.
'Where are we really going?'
'Oh, I wasn't lying.'
The Crete Senesi turned out to be the vast sweep of undulating hills south of Siena—a ridged ocean of high, rolling pastures melting away into the far distance. Bleak and bald, it was an altogether different landscape from the one they'd traveled through that morning.
Adam saw from the map that their route took them close to Montaperti, the scene of the fierce battle so vividly described by Fausto. A detour was out of the question, though; they were on a tight schedule.
They hurtled south along dusty tracks, through straggling little villages. Fortresslike farms brooded on cypress-crowned hilltops, reminders of a time when you didn't just have to store your grain, you had to guard it against marauders. The vistas were endless and not a cloud broke the monotony of the clear blue sky.
To Adam it was a cheerless and uninviting world. Even more so in late summer, Antonella explained, when the crops were in and the patchwork slopes had been ploughed into a uniform desertscape. She rhapsodized about the area. It didn't want to be loved, she said, but that wasn't a reason not to love it. Adam only began to understand what she meant when they arrived at their first destination.
The abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore was perched precariously on a spur among crumbling sandstone canyons. For the white-robed monks it was a life lived on the edge of the abyss, literally and metaphorically. The colorful frescoes in the main cloister depicted the life of Saint Bernard. The cycle was sprinkled with pouting, firm- buttocked young men, leaving little doubt as to how the Sienese painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi had come by his nickname, Il Sodoma.
Twenty hair-raising minutes south lay Pienza, her back to the high ground, the Crete lapping at her feet. The small town's perfect Renaissance piazza was all that remained of a Sienese pope's dream to relocate the Holy See to his own part of the world. Way to the west, beyond the corrugated hills, the impressive mass of
Monte Amiata stood out in bold relief against the clear sky—a conical parody of a volcano, now dormant.
They dropped back into the Crete, making for Montalcino on the other side. They never arrived. Ten minutes out, while barreling along a hard white track, Antonella slammed on the brakes. The car slewed wildly before coming to a halt.
'I almost missed it.'
Dust swirled around the vehicle. Adam was still gripping the dashboard. 'What? You hit it? What was
