She wasn't sure what to believe. Unlikely as it sounded, it might just be true.
Her cold grew worse over the next few days. Piero's care never failed her. From some store room he managed to produce a bed. It was old, shabby and needed propping up in one corner, but it was more comfortable than her sofa, and she fell onto it blissfully.
But he refused to let her thank him.
'It comes easily to me,' he assured her. 'I used to be a top physician at Milan's largest hospital.'
'As well as being a great chef?' she teased him.
He gave her a reproachful look. 'That was the other night.'
'I'm sorry. I should have thought.'!
She knew that Vincenzo sometimes came to visit, but she always lay still, feigning sleep. She did not want to talk to him. He threatened secrets that she must keep.
But he too had painful secrets. He'd hinted as much.
Every second afternoon Piero would go out, returning three hours later. He never told her where he went, and she guessed that these occasions were connected with the events that had brought him to this limbo.
One afternoon he entered wearing his usual cheerful look, which became even brighter when he saw her.
'Did you find what you were looking for?' she ventured.
'Not today. She wasn't there, but she will be one day.'
'She?'
'Elena, my daughter. Ah, coffee! Splendid!'
She respected his desire to change the subject, but later, when the darkness had fallen, she asked gently,
'Where is Elena now?'
He was silent for so long she was afraid he was offended, but then he said, 'It's hard to explain. We sort of- mislaid each other. But she's worked abroad a great deal, and I've always been there to meet her when she returned. Always the same place, at San Zaccaria-that's the landing stage where the boats come in near St Mark's. If I'm not there she'll want to know why, so I mustn't let her down. I just have to be patient, you see.'
'Yes,' she said sadly. 'I see.'
She wrapped the blanket around her and settled down, hoping that soon her mind would start working properly again, and she would know what to do next.
Then she wondered if that would ever happen, for when she closed her eyes the old pictures began to play back, and there was only grief, misery, despair, followed by rage and bitterness, so that soon she was hammering on the door again, screaming for a release that would never come.
Sometimes she would surface from her fever to find Vincenzo there, then go back to sleep, curiously contented. This was becoming her new reality, and when she awoke once to find Vincenzo gone she knew an odd sense of disturbance. But then she saw Piero, and relaxed again.
He came over and felt her forehead, pursing his lips to show that he wasn't pleased with what he found.
'I got you something,' he said, dissolving a powder in hot water. 'It'll make you feel better.'
'Thanks, Piero,' she said hoarsely. 'Or do I mean Harlequin?'
'What's that?'
'Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot, Pierrette,' she said vaguely. 'They're all characters from the Commedia dell'Arte. Pierrot's a clown, isn't he?'
His eyes were very bright. 'It's as good a name as any. Like Julia.'
'Yes,' she agreed.
The cold remedy drink made her feel better and she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes. Her throat and her forehead were still hot, but she was determined to get up, if only for a while.
It was mid-afternoon and since the light was good she went out of the little room into the great reception hall and began to look about her.
The pictures might be gone but the frescoes painted directly onto the walls were still here. She studied them, until she came to one that stopped her in her tracks as though it had spoken to her.
It was at the top of the stairs, and showed a woman with long fair hair flying wildly around her face like a mad halo. Her eyes were large and distraught as though with some ghastly vision. She had been to hell, and now she would never really escape.
'That's Annina,' said Piero, who had followed her.
'It's Annina if we want to be fanciful,' said Vincenzo's voice.
He had come in silently and watched them for a mo- ment before speaking.
'What do you mean, 'fanciful'?' she asked.
He came up the stairs, closer to her. She watched him with hostile eyes, angry with herself for being glad to see him.
'We don't know if that's what she really looked like,' he explained. 'This was done a couple of centuries later, by an artist who played up the drama for all it was worth.
'See, there are prison bars in one corner, and there's a child over here. And this man, with the demonic face, is Annina's husband. Count Francesco, his direct descendant, didn't like having the family scandal revived. He even wanted the artist to paint over it.':
Scandalised, Julia spoke without thinking. 'Paint over a Correggio?'
She could have cut her tongue out the next moment. Vincenzo's raised eyebrows showed that he fully appreciated what she'd revealed.
'Well done,' he said. 'It is Correggio. And of course he refused to cover it. Then people began to admire it, and Francesco, who was as big a philistine as Correggio said he was, realised that it must be good after all. So it's stayed here, and people take their view of the story from this very melodramatic picture. Naturally, the ghost looks just like her. Ask Piero.'
His smile showed that he knew exactly the trick the old man was playing to scare off intruders.
'I'm sure I don't know what she looks like,' Piero said loftily. 'I've never seen her.'
'But she's been heard often,' Vincenzo observed. He clapped Piero on the shoulder. 'I've left a few things for you. I may see you later.' He pointed a commanding finger at Julia. 'You-into the warm, right now.'
She returned to the little room with relief. Her brief expedition had lowered her strength, and when she had eaten something she curled up again and was soon asleep.
It was after midnight when Vincenzo reappeared. When he was settled he became sunk in thought. 'How many people,' he asked at last, 'could identify a Correggio at once?'
'Not many,' Piero conceded.
'That's what I thought.' He glanced at the sleeping Julia. 'Has she told you anything about herself?'
'No, but why should she? Our kind respect each other's privacy. You know that.'
'Yes, but there's something about her that worries me. It could be risky to leave her too much alone.'
'But suppose she wants to be left alone?'
'I think she does,' Vincenzo mused, remembering the desperation with which she had cried, 'I don't need anyone's help.'
Nobody said it like that unless their need for help was terrible.
All his life he'd had an instinctive affinity with need creatures. When his father had bought him a puppy he'd chosen the runt of the litter, the one who had held back timidly. His father had been displeased, but the boy, stubborn beneath his quiet manner, had said, 'This one,' and refused to budge.
After that there had been his sister, his twin, discounted by their parents as a mere girl, and therefore loved by him the more. They had been close all their lives until she had cruelly repaid his devotion by dying, and leaving him bereft.
He had loved a woman, refusing to see her grasping nature, until she'd callously abandoned him.
Now he would have said that his days of opening his heart to people were over. No man could afford to be like that, and he'd developed armour in self-defence.
He made an exception for Piero, whom he'd known in better days. There was something about the old man's gentle madness, his humour in the face of misfortune, that called to him despite his resolutions.
As for the awkward, half-hostile woman he'd found sleeping here, he couldn't imagine why he'd allowed her to stay. Perhaps because she wanted nothing from him, and seemed consumed by a bitterness that matched his own.
