Page 13 of Change of Heart
‘Yes, signora, and this is my son, Pietro. Pietro, pour the lady some coffee. See if you can find a clean cup. Would you like to sit down, signora?’
Alice was getting a bit fed up with being called ‘signora’ so she thought she’d better spell things out to the two of them. ‘My name’s Alice and there’s no need to call me signora. I’m just an employee, the same as you two.’ She sat down on an old three-legged stool slightly apprehensively but, apart from creaking, it seemed sturdy enough and the immediate relief to her aching knee almost made her sigh with pleasure. ‘I only started work here yesterday and I’m just taking a look around the castle and the grounds, trying to get an idea of what’s where and meeting everybody who works here. I wonder if you could tell me what you two do exactly.’
To her surprise, Alfonso said almost exactly what Ines had said about the two of them. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. We look after the chickens and we grow vegetables for the kitchen. We clear the snow in winter, do a bit of painting and decorating, but every time I suggest something more adventurous, the baron shoots it down.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘He doesn’t like change.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And since his wife died a couple of years ago, it’s been hard even to get to see him. He’s just not interested.’
This assessment of Baron Lodovico came as no surprise to Alice from what she had already seen and heard, and she began to take a liking to Alfonso. She appreciated his apparent honesty and decided to run some of her ideas across him to see what he and his son thought of them. She waited until Pietro had brought her a steaming cup of coffee – the cup itself not exactly sparkling clean, but she hoped the boiling hot liquid would kill off anything too sinister – before embarking on her plans for the future. As she talked to the two men, she was encouraged to see genuine enthusiasm on both faces. This came as a relief. She had come to look for them half-expecting to find a couple of lazy shirkers, but this didn’t appear to be the case. It sounded as if it wasn’t that they hadn’t wanted to work, but that the baron hadn’t allowed them to work. She mentioned growing crops and rearing livestock without specifying at this stage what she had in mind and she was heartened by Alfonso’s response.
‘Excellent idea. Simonetta told us months ago that she wanted to open the castle to the public, but we really didn’t believe for a moment that the baron would go through with it, did we, Pietro?’
The giant nodded but said nothing. He still appeared to be trying to get his head around the fact that there was now a castle manager, and that she was a woman. Clearly he was a man of very few words but he looked friendly enough, which was just as well, considering his size. It didn’t seem to matter; his father appeared more than happy to make up for his son’s silence.
‘This is music to my ears, Sig— Alees. If you don’t mind me asking, your accent isn’t from around here. Can I ask where you’re from?’
‘I’m English, but I spent a number of years living up north in the Dolomites.’
‘Ah, so that’s it. From your accent I thought you might be from Venice. Anyway, you’re absolutely right, the estate’s crying out to be farmed. We have hundreds of hectares of woodland here just dying to be worked, and the price of timber has gone up so much in recent months. There’s a sawmill a bit further down the valley and I’m sure you could do a deal with them very easily. Otherwise, if you want my opinion, it’s cows that we need. My cousin up the valley makes parmesan cheese – his dairy produces DOP parmesan – and I know he’d be only too pleased to buy milk from us. The air up here’s clean; the pasture’s rich and lush. It’s crying out for cows.’
‘DOP? Sorry, I’m not familiar with that.’
‘Protected Denomination of Origin. It means he makesauthenticparmesan, Parmigiano Reggiano. It’s only in a very specific area that you can get a DOP and it’s a guarantee of quality.’
This sounded promising. Alice gave him a smile. ‘Cows sound like a great idea. Now all I’ve got to do is to convince the baron. Wish me luck.’
As she drank her cloudy coffee, trying not to think too hard about what might be lurking below the surface, she chatted with them and she learned that Alfonso had been working here for over thirty years and Pietro for seven. She cautiously brought up the subject of the Montorso family and the ongoing feud, and she saw Alfonso shake his head in disbelief.
‘It’s been going on for centuries, but as far as most of us in the town are concerned, the responsibility for it still continuing today lies with the mayor. What’s in the past should stay in the past, but Cesare’s a nasty piece of work and he won’t let it go. The only reason he got elected mayor was because nobody else wanted to stand against him. One man tried, and all the glass in his greenhouse was mysteriously smashed a week later. No, Cesare Montorso’s a bad lot.’
‘You’re saying he actually resorted to violence?’ Alice was horrified.
‘It was never proved but, for my money, Cesare was behind it, even if he didn’t actually do it himself. My big brother, Daniele, went to school with him and he says the man was a bully even then.’ He looked across towards Alice. ‘He’s even fallen out with his own family. One of his sons went off and left home as soon as he could and then his wife left him a few years ago. Like I say, he’s a bad lot.’
Alice sat back and digested what she had just heard. It didn’t sound as though there was going to be much chance of reconciliation between the two families if the leader of the opposing family was such a brute. Still, she told herself, that was the situation and she knew she had to accept it and work around it – if she could. She asked Alfonso to tell her exactly where Varaldo territory started and finished and he gave her a detailed outline. After drinking the last of her coffee and doing her best to ignore the couple of amorphous dark lumps at the bottom – dead flies maybe? – she left them and carried on with her walking tour of the estate. Following Alfonso’s instructions, she set off along a track that snaked upwards through the trees, climbing steadily for almost half an hour until she emerged onto a rocky promontory from where he had told her she would be able to survey the full extent of the baron’s lands.
She sat down on a windblown boulder and took a breather. If her knee had been protesting before, it was positively screaming now, but she didn’t mind. It had got her up here and she was mildly surprised. Maybe the mountain air was helping in some way.
She sat there and reflected on her first couple of days here at the castle. The sheer scale of the work ahead had been worrying her ever since the job offer, but she now felt a growing optimism that she would be up to the task and that the results would be spectacular. On a personal level, the hesitation she had experienced at the thought of returning to Italy and the unpleasant memories this might stir up inside her was gradually being replaced by a confidence that had been lacking in her for years now. Above all, the spectre of Maurizio returning to haunt her psyche had retreated. Whether this had anything to do with the unexpected feelings aroused in her by her mystery man remained to be seen.
She was perspiring freely after the climb, but the view from up here was definitely worth the effort. She was now looking down onto the whole valley from where it started high up in the hills to the right of her to where it joined the main valley ten kilometres below in the opposite direction. The castle on its little rise was laid out before her like a model, and she could even see a tiny figure in the courtyard – presumably Ines or her daughter – hanging out the washing on a line. Beyond the castle was the town and on the opposite side of the valley was the Montorso family farm. She swivelled her head around and looked up at the hillside that continued to climb behind her. The forest ended abruptly a little way further up and the terrain became open grassland.
She would need a detailed map of the area but Alfonso had told her that all of this side of the valley, right up to the ridge high above her, belonged to the family and extended in both directions almost as far as the eye could see. From her vantage point she did a rough calculation and worked out that approximately half of Varaldo land was heavily wooded – mainly, but not exclusively, with conifers – and the other half was lush green pasture. Certainly, there was plenty of room for a good-sized herd of cows and even alpacas as well. Her eye was drawn to a smaller property near the road a kilometre or so down the valley. In the fields around this she could clearly see horses and she resolved to take a trip down there at the weekend to see if there was any chance of a ride. Growing up, she had had her own pony and since the accident she had returned to riding as a great way to get out in the fresh air. She felt sure that the best way to survey the terrain around here would be on horseback.
That afternoon she sat down with Simonetta in one of the many rooms in the castle – this one a magnificent library with probably thousands of books on floor-to-ceiling shelves all around the walls. It occurred to her as she sat down and looked around that there might be valuable first editions among these, so she added ‘book expert’ alongside ‘antiques expert’ to her To Do List. She took Simonetta through her initial list of recommendations and between them they drew up a document for presentation to the rest of the family, hopefully for their approval. Apart from a number of practical bureaucratic matters relating to the conversion of the castle into a tourist attraction, they also listed forestry and agriculture, specifically cows and, after a bit of discussion, they added alpacas to the list.
Alice also suggested a riding stable, but Simonetta shook her head. ‘There’s already a stable just outside of town and it’s run by a good friend of mine, so I wouldn’t want to intrude on her business.’
Alice explained that she had been riding since she was three and it turned out that Simonetta, too, was passionate about horses. Pulling out her phone, she glanced across at Alice. ‘Have you any plans for this evening? Fancy a ride?’ Alice nodded eagerly and Simonetta dialled a number. ‘I’ll call Emilia now; she owns the stables. It’s light until quite late, so we could have a couple of hours and I’ll be able to show you more of the estate. Five o’clock okay with you?’
‘That sounds perfect.’
Chapter 10
Alice went home to change at half-past four, thanking the instinct that had made her pack her riding clothes. Simonetta picked her up in the Land Rover and they made the short journey down to the stables. Emilia was a friendly but no-nonsense sort of woman, probably in her fifties, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Daphne who ran the stable at the manor back in Devon. Ten minutes later Alice was on a handsome bay called Horace – well, Orazio really – and she and Simonetta were on their way. To Alice’s surprise, Simonetta headed up the far side of the valley opposite the castle. As they walked their horses up a stony track, she explained why she had brought Alice over here.
‘From this side of the valley we get a really good view of all our land and you can point out to me where you think the best areas would be for crops and for livestock.’
At the far end of a field to the right of them, Alice briefly caught sight of a figure on foot. Although he was only visible for a matter of seconds and too far away for her to make out facial features, what was clear was that he was a tall man with fair hair and broad shoulders. At his side was a black dog – and from here it looked very much like a Labrador. As they disappeared from sight behind a thick clump of trees, Alice found herself questioning whether she really had seen the two of them, or whether this had been some weird trick of her imagination. She was giving herself a silent talking-to when Simonetta turned towards her, and the expression on her face was one of embarrassment, guilt even.
‘Alice, would you mind if I met you up at the top? I’ve just seen a friend of mine and I’d like to pop across for a quick chat.’
