Hill Towns (42 page)

It was a big, sprawling, honey-colored stucco building, more rustic by far than the Villa Carol, rougher, not nearly so old. I thought it might have been built in the last century, perhaps for a prosperous farmer and his family; it had that look of utilitarian sturdiness, of fruitful use. Weather had softened its walls and bleached its roof tiles, and the dark wood framing its deep-cut windows and the massive open front door had gone silver. No nobility here, I thought with satisfaction. Just generations of living in harmony with the rhythms of the seasons and the earth. Before it lay a semicircle of raked gravel, and to each side I could see hedges and fruit trees and gardens formally laid out, bisected by brick paths and studded at intervals with huge terra-cotta pots of lemon trees and roses and hibiscus. Stone benches were set about, though at this hour of high sun no one rested on them; I saw no one else about in the gardens.

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The soft, warm wind smelled wonderful: I identified roses and perhaps gardenias; light curls of lemon balm and thyme and basil and other things pungent and peppery spoke of a serious herb garden somewhere close by. I would love exploring this garden, I thought. I would love spending hours dreaming here in the sun, an old wall warm against my back.

I had thought I did not want to be sequestered outside yet another city in yet another of Ada Forrest’s villas-with-pool, but the Villa di Falconi was different. It put its arms about you when you first entered, like a stout farm mother.

I’ll bet somebody told her that Saint Catherine was born here, or something, I thought, and got out of the car and walked toward the villa. Behind it a thick tangle of trees and vegetation lay dark and cool and secret, and I could tell that the earth behind fell sharply away. Stepping-stone paths led away into the thickets and groves on either side. I went a short way down one and saw that there was, indeed, a vast gulf of space just beyond the small forest. In a clearing between the shouldering cypresses I could just see, far across a gullied red valley on a lower hill, the pale jumble of Siena spilling downhill. The top of the great taffy-colored Torre del Mangia reached into the sky, blue as the sea now with the sun of early afternoon.

I shut my eyes and held my face up to the sun, felt its sweet weight on my eyelids and cheekbones and lips, smiled enormously, and went back up the path and into the lobby.

Inside, I was momentarily blinded by the cool darkness.

Then a small flagged lobby came into focus, and beyond it a great lounge dominated by a stone fireplace, blackened and empty, that I could easily have stood erect in. I thought of winter nights, and wind, and roar 352 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

ing flames; it reminded me powerfully, for just a moment, of the Mountain. Deep, comfortably sagging sofas and leather chairs were set about it, and small tables, and little islands of rugs dotted the polished wood floor. At the other end was a bar with stools and tables and chairs and a great television set on its own table; it had the look of a suburban American rumpus room in the 1950s and was empty. A battered grand piano sat nearby. The long wall was all French doors giving upon a wide terrace with more chairs and tables.

The terrace looked into empty blue space, the tops of the trees below just bobbing over the low stone wall that bound it. One or two people sat there, chatting and drinking, but the overall impression was of cool, clean emptiness and ex-pectant waiting. I thought most of the guests would be at lunch, or having their siestas, and turned to the small windowed cubicle in the lobby. A powerfully built man with a jet-black crewcut and bluish jowls sat behind the open window, working at a computer.

“
Buon giorno
,” I said, and he lifted his head and looked at me out of eyes the color of arctic ice, a strange opaque green.

“
Si, signora
?”

“
Mi chiamo Caterina Gaillard
,” I said clearly. “
Mio marito
e’ qui
—ah, here. Signor Gaillard?”

I had practiced it over and over on the drive: “My name is Catherine Gaillard,” I would say confidently in fluid Italian.

“My husband is here, Mr. Gaillard. Where may I find him?”

But I could remember none of the Italian under the steady green gaze. I had never seen a green-eyed Italian. For some reason, it annoyed me.

“I have just come from Florence,” I said briskly. It HILL TOWNS / 353

sounded wonderful, even in English, tossed in ever so casually. I have just come from Florence. Alone.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Gaillard,” the man said in perfect English, only slightly accented, and that in something heavy and darkish, not at all Italian. “Your husband and his party are on the pool terrace. I believe they are waiting luncheon for you and the other signora. Is she…?”

He looked over my shoulder, out into the parking lot.

“She has been detained in Florence,” I said. “She will not be joining us.”

“Ah. Then perhaps I may let her room? I have many people anxious—”

“Please do,” I said, my cheeks burning with the implied rebuke. Obviously, people who could not keep their reserva-tions at the Villa di Falconi called well ahead to cancel.

“It was very sudden,” I added.

“Yes.”

The telephone shrilled, and he turned to answer it.

“Where is the pool terrace?” I said to the back of his head.

“Down the path,” he said with his back to me, gesturing toward the door. “You can’t miss it.”

I stood for a moment, waiting for him to finish, but he broke into a spate of fast guttural German—German, of course—that sounded as if it would go on for a while.

“Scratch one tip, bubba,” I said under my breath, and went back out into the garden. I looked at both paths, but neither of them gave me a clue as to what lay at their ends. I shrugged and took the one I had followed a little way earlier.

The old flagstones led through the underbrush on a fairly level plane for a little while, and then down a flight of narrow, moss-slimed stone steps with no rail 354 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

ings. After that the path was dirt and fell away steeply. The trees and undergrowth leaned closer, until the sun was nearly shut out, and the light was green and wavering, and the earth smelled of damp, secret places. I heard small scurryings, and once a sharp crashing as if something quite heavy was running away through the brush, and stopped for a moment.

What had I heard about Tuscan wildlife? Snakes, of course, and squirrels and such, but…what else? Boar, I remembered.

They eat a lot of boar in Tuscany. But surely a boar would make a great, blundering crash.

I went on a few steps, but more slowly. Surely no pool terrace lay down this path. I put my head around a great clump of rhododendron and saw a small clearing, a natural glade, where shafts of sunlight fell in clear amber layers upon bare, packed earth, and a little wind stirred. In the center of the glade stood a ramshackle shed affair that looked as if it might hold garden tools; beyond it, a great ravine, or gully, yawned. I could not see the bottom of it. It was narrow, though; it was spanned by a swinging rope bridge that looked centuries old. My heart gave a queasy lurch, and I turned away to go back the way I came. When I did, I saw the falcon.

It sat on a perch in a tall cylindrical cage made of rusted iron, at the far side of the glade. The cage reached from the floor of the glade into the bottom branches of the small tree that arched over it. The door was bound shut with a leather thong, but in any case the falcon could not have gotten free.

It was fastened to the perch by a slender leash affair of leather that encircled one yellow foot like a manacle. The falcon was the size of a large crow, feathered in sleek slate gray, barred and spotted on its cream breast. It had a black head, like a leather executioner’s hood, that curved under its white

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chin like sideburns. The yellow beak was powerful and curved, and the claws were steelike, terrible. The bird looked at me impassively with the cold yellow eyes of an executioner.

It looked totally wild there in the green gloom, even in the cage; nothing about it spoke of captivity, of being broken to the hand of man. But it was captive. It could not have spread its long wings if it had wanted to. The cage was too narrow.

For some reason my chest burned with sorrow, and my throat ached. I went nearer to the cage and put my finger lightly on one of the rusted bars. The yellow eyes followed me, but the falcon did not move.

“You’re very beautiful, aren’t you?” I said softly. “Who do you belong to? Who takes care of you?”

The falcon lifted its wings very slightly and stirred on the perch, then settled back into itself. It did not move again. I stood staring at it for a long time, thinking nothing at all, simply bathing myself in its wildness. There was a metal cup of brackish water affixed to the cage beside the perch, but I saw no sign of food. I looked back into the cold sulfur eyes and turned away. Obscure guilt and pain pierced me like an arrow.

When I reached the garden again I was almost running.

As I neared the bottom of the other path—this one flagged all the way, and raked and mowed, and guarded by stout wooden handrails—I heard the light sound of voices and laughter, and splashing, and began to run again. I felt my lips begin to tremble with laughter of my own, seeming perilously near to tears. I heard Sam’s rich tenor and Ada’s light, tinkling laugh.

I heard Joe, laughing.

I slowed my steps and smoothed my hair and bit my lips to redden them and walked around the last curve in 356 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

the path, and there they were, in wrought-iron chairs around a white-clothed table, at the far end of an oval pool.

For a moment I stood still, simply looking at them. Sam sat at the head of the table, telling a story. He was making intricate patterns in the air with his big freckled hands, and the sun dappling through the leaves laid flaming copper pennies in his wiry hair. The awful planter’s hat lay on the ground beside him. He wore a striped jersey over the bikini I had seen him in at the pool in Rome, and some trick of the light made his eyes flame and spark blue, even from a distance. I felt my mouth curve up. Hello, Sam, I said silently.

Ada sat beside him in a short red terry robe, another red towel wrapped around her narrow head. Her eyes were shielded by her big black glasses, and she was laughing. The sound was like flutes.

On the other side of her, Joe leaned forward to say something back to Sam. He too was laughing, and his blond hair fell down over his eyes. I could tell it was damp. He wore his blue oxford-cloth shirt over his bathing trunks, and his bare feet were brown. So were his long legs and his forearms, brown with a haze of gold hair over them. For some reason, his strong wrists and forearms brought the lump back into my throat.

Sam looked up as if I had called his name and saw me.

For just an instant we were both perfectly still, looking into each other’s eyes, and then he rose to his feet, singing loudly.

“There she is…Miss America!” Joe and Ada turned, too, and got to their feet. Joe grinned and started toward me.

I ran across the pool’s apron and hugged him hard, bury-ing my face in his shirt. It smelled of sun lotion and Joe, warm.

HILL TOWNS / 357

He kissed me lightly and walked me back to the table, his arm around my shoulders. Sam reached over and hugged me, and Ada gave me her light kiss, cheek and cheek again, smelling of her accustomed green, slightly bitter scent.

“We’d about given you all up,” Joe said, pulling out a chair for me on the other side of the table and settling down beside me. “Did you have a good time? Where’s Yolie?”

“Yolie had an appointment in Samarra or something,” I said, grinning around at them. “She decided to stay on in Florence.”

I watched it sink in around the table.

“Who drove you over here?” Joe said, honestly puzzled.

“Nobody,” I said, trying not to let the grin stretch my mouth like a jack-o’-lantern’s. “I brought the car on over. I don’t think she’s coming.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Sam said, “Did you, by God.”

I looked across at him. He was not exactly smiling, but his mouth was curved a little.

He watched me intently, his head slightly to one side. Then he said, “I believe you did. Way to go, Cat!”

“You did? Did you really?” Joe could not seem to take in what I had said.

“I really did,” I replied, watching the import of my trip fill his eyes and face. He smiled at me, slowly and tentatively at first, and then broadly. It was a delighted smile, but a little wary, too, almost shy. I had not seen a smile of Joe’s precisely like it since the earliest days of our courtship. It made him look absurdly young.

“Well, Cat,” he said. “Well, old kitten. God bless you.”

358 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

He leaned over and gave me another kiss. I touched the side of his face and leaned back in my chair.

Across from me, beside Sam, Ada gave me a long, measuring look. Then she turned her head to Sam. The look that passed between them was long, too, and opaque; I could not read it. Then she looked back at me and smiled her three-cornered little cat’s smile.

“Cat, dear, I think this calls for champagne,” she said, and looked around.

As if summoned by a whistle that only dogs and waiters can hear, a young man in black pants and bow tie and a starched white shirt appeared at her side. Ada said something to him in soft, rapid Italian, and he nodded and made a little bow and went away.

“Now,” Ada said. “Tell us all about it. Tell about last night, and how you happened to get stuck driving over here by yourself—oh, Yolie,
really
; Sam, you’re going to have to talk to her again. Tell how it was on the drive.”

Suddenly I was tired. Tired to the very marrow of my bones and as light-headed with triumph as if I had already had champagne, a lot of it. I found that I did not want to talk about the drive; I only wanted the moment when they knew I had done it, and I had had that. And I certainly did not want to talk about the night before. Here, in the warm sun of this sweet place, in the old silence, cupped in the hands of the sheltering hills, last night seemed tawdry beyond belief, Yolie herself tawdry, what she had told me both tawdry and simply and forever unbelievable. I knew I would not tell them about it. Joe, maybe, later and in little detail. But never Sam and Ada. Never Colin and Maria.