‘Do you realize where we are?’ he asked all at once.
‘We’re at the ground level of the ancient city,’ replied Francesca. ‘The two archways we came across earlier must be from a section of the Etruscan city walls.’
‘Well, we’ve reached the end of the line anyway,’ said Fabrizio. ‘There’s no one and nothing here.’
They fell silent for a few moments, watching their breath as it condensed into little puffs of steam. They stared up and around at the walls and ceiling.
‘Come on. Let’s turn back,’ said Fabrizio. ‘I feel like I’m suffocating down here.’
Francesca nodded and followed him up the stairs until they reached the big underground chamber where they had lowered themselves down from the air vent. They examined the wall minutely with their hands until they discovered a narrow stairway enclosed and partially hidden between two brick walls. Fabrizio started up, followed by Francesca, but the feeling of oppression he’d experienced down below only increased as they made their way to the ground floor. They ended up at a little door clad with iron studs that let them into the palazzo’s central hall, but as they raised their eyes towards the ceiling they were amazed by the vision of a spiral staircase reaching up several storeys all the way to the ceiling, free-standing in the middle of the space, without any central support.
‘My God!’ exclaimed Francesca. ‘This is incredible! I’d heard this existed but I’d never seen it. It’s absolutely perfect, a masterpiece! I believe it’s attributed to Sansovino.’
Fabrizio pierced the elliptical cavity of the daring staircase with his torchlight, all the way up to the ceiling beams. ‘Christ! It may be a masterpiece, but there’s something really disturbing about it. It reminds me of the coils of a gigantic snake or the circles of hell! If you stare at it long enough, it looks like a monstrous screw. Isn’t that strange?’
‘Do you think Angelo might be here, hidden somewhere?’ asked Francesca. ‘Maybe he’s watching us from the top of one of those ramps. Maybe he likes sliding down the banister! I’d always do that when I was little and I lived with my parents in the Annibaldi villa at Colle Val d’Elsa.’
Fabrizio stepped forward and tried calling, ‘Angelo! Angelo, are you there?’
All he got back was an echo in the huge empty chamber.
‘I’d like to go up. It’s the only way to know whether he’s here or not. Maybe he’s fallen asleep somewhere.’
‘If those footprints were his,’ Francesca reminded him.
‘Right,’ agreed Fabrizio.
He tried pressing a light switch but nothing happened. The electricity had probably been disconnected years ago. They began to climb the staircase slowly, keeping to the outside, until they got to the second floor, where, to their left, they found another hall as long as the entire mansion. It was closed on one end by a huge set of French doors that must have led to a balcony over the main door at the front of the palace, where they’d seen the stone shield.
The odour of dust filled the place and as Fabrizio trained his torch beam down the length of the vast hall he jumped at the sight of two long rows of bizarre, grotesque figures that appeared to be glaring at him from either side of the room. An astonishing collection of stuffed exotic animals loomed to the left and right: lions, leopards, gazelles, antelopes, jackals and hyenas baring their yellowed fangs in dusty sneers.
Both Francesca and Fabrizio found themselves tiptoeing among the beasts of this unexpected taxidermy gallery.
‘This guy must have been crazy!’ gasped Fabrizio. ‘Did you know this was here as well?’
‘I thought the contents had been donated to a natural science museum… Perhaps they were, at one time, but no one ever came to claim them. Maybe it would have cost too much to transport all of them. Anything can happen in a country like Italy. Anyway, there are side rooms along both walls,’ observed Francesca. ‘And here’s a candleholder. You go that way with the torch and I’ll search this way by candlelight.’
They began their inspection of the side rooms, with Fabrizio constantly calling out, ‘Angelo! Angelo! Are you in here?’ But the rooms were filled only with more specimens of the grotesque collection of creatures. One featured night birds on their perches: long-eared owls and little owls, tawny owls, scops owls and screech owls. There were daylight birds of prey in another, ravens and crows in another, and yet another filled with fish, sharks and octopuses, all covered with a shiny wax and impaled on stands. They looked like suffering souls. He opened the last door and cried out, slamming it closed. The door banged so loudly that Francesca turned in alarm and ran over to join Fabrizio, who was pale and shaking.
‘What’s in there?’ she asked.
Fabrizio shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. These things are just so weird.’
Francesca took him by the arm. ‘We’ve seen dozens already. What’s so special about that room that has you trembling like a leaf? Let me see.’
She strode towards the door and opened it decisively, lifting her candle to see inside. She closed it instantly and leaned hard against it, drawing a sharp breath. ‘Oh, Good Lord!’ she exclaimed.
‘I told you this felt like the circles of hell! But I never thought I’d meet up with him here.’
‘Oh, God, you’re right,’ gasped Francesca. ‘It’s horrible!’ She was still trying to catch her breath. ‘Do you feel up to taking a second look?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ asked Fabrizio.
He slowly pulled the door open and shone the beam of light inside. At the centre of the room stood an animal which appeared to be identical to the beast he’d seen ripping out Pietro Montanari’s throat two nights before. He turned to Francesca.
‘It’s pretty shocking, isn’t it?’ he offered, trying to keep his gut reaction under control.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ agreed Francesca. ‘It looks just like the animal we saw. My God, it’s a monster. What kind of breed… Fabrizio, what does this mean?’
‘I have no idea. Don’t ask me. I only know I really want my life back – as soon as possible!’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Nothing… No, a lot of things. I don’t want to leave you on your own here… and…’
‘And?’
‘I want to know how this ends up.’
Francesca nodded and circled all the way around the stuffed animal. It was a kind of dog, with a dense, bristly coat. Its huge jaws were gaping in a show of enormous fangs. Its long, thick tail was also covered with shaggy hair. The stuffed creature was completely covered with dust, giving its black coat a greyish cast.
‘Do you think this means the one we saw comes from here as well?’ wondered Francesca.
‘Who can say?’
‘I’d always heard that Count Ghirardini had a real reputation for being eccentric. He was famous for his game hunts in Africa and other exotic places. I don’t know much more than that, other than that he was quite private and reputed to be very strange.’
‘I’d say there’s little doubt about that. Anyway, this is Reggiani’s dream: seeing that animal pumped full of lead and filled with straw in some museum.’
Francesca leaned closer to illuminate the creature with her candle, but all of a sudden, part of the fur caught on fire. She cried out and Fabrizio tore off his jacket and hit the animal’s side hard to put out the flames.
‘Careful with that thing! This whole place might have burned down!’ he said.
Francesca held out her hand for the torch and shone it at the scorched coat to see how bad the damage was. She looked astonished at what she was seeing. ‘Will you look at that…’
‘Look at what?’ asked Fabrizio.
‘It’s fake.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Look for yourself’ She tapped her knuckles against the animal’s side. ‘It’s wood. It’s not an animal at all. It’s an extremely realistic sculpture. As if Ghirardini, or whoever it was, had wanted to reproduce something that he’d seen but couldn’t have in his collection. If we had the time to search through here, I’ll bet we’d find sketches, drawings, notes. I’m sure of it.’
‘So Ghirardini saw it too,’ he said, raising his eyes to Francesca’s. ‘The animal has to be somehow connected to this place.’
‘Do you want to scare me to death? Come on. Let’s get out now. The little boy’s not here, Fabrizio.’
