At last, meal complete, he rang a small silver bell that lay near his right hand. Assunta reappeared.
"Grazie," he said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a huge linen napkin.
Assunta curtsied a little awkwardly.
The count rose. "Once you have cleared away, you may take a few days off."
The cook glanced at him inquiringly without raising her head.
"Per favore, signora. It has been months since you visited your son in Pontremoli."
The curtsy deepened. “Mille grazie."
"Prego. Buona sera.” And the count turned lightly on his heel and left the dining room.
Once the cook had departed, the castle would be empty of servants. His men had done their work and departed. Even the groundskeepers had been given a few days' absence. Only Giuseppe, the ancient dogmaster, remained on the estate: as it happened, he could not be spared.
It was not that Fosco distrusted his retainers: they all had ancient ties to his family, some going back as far as eight hundred years, and their loyalty was without question. It was simply that he wanted to finish this business undisturbed.
He moved slowly and purposefully through the huge rooms of the castle: the alone ; the hall of portraits; the hall of armor. His stroll took him back through time: first, through the older, thirteenth-century additions, then into still older chambers, built half a millennium earlier. Here there was no electricity, no modern conveniences such as plumbing or central heating. The warren of small, windowless rooms grew dark and oppressive, and Fosco stopped to pull a torch from a wall sconce and light it. Turning to an ancient worktable nearby, he picked up something else and tucked it into his waistcoat. Then he took a side passage and continued on and down: down into a subterranean warren of tunnels cut into the living rock.
Many of the extensive basements of the Castello Fosco were taken up with the production of the estate. A great many rooms were devoted to winemaking: filled with bottling machinery and fermentation vats, or with countless small barrels of French oak. Others were given over to the aging of boar hams: deep, cool spaces from whose ceilings hung countless hams, still covered in coarse fur. Still others were used for storing olive oil or making balsamico . But here-far beneath the bulk of the castle's stronghold-there were no such large and well-ventilated spaces. Narrow vaults dug deeply into the beetling cliff face of limestone, and stairs corkscrewed down toward old wells and chambers unused for half a millennium.
It was one of these staircases that Fosco now descended. The air was chill, the walls slick with damp. The count slowed further: the hand-cut steps were slippery, and if he fell there would be nobody to hear his cries.
At last, the staircase ended in a labyrinth of narrow vaults, lined in ancient brick. Niches were cut into the walls, and each contained a skeleton: some long-deceased family member or-more likely, given the sheer number-fallen allies from wars fought a millennium ago. The air was bad here, and Fosco's torch guttered as he threaded his complex path.
As he penetrated deeper into the maze, the ancient walls grew more uneven. He passed several places where they had fallen away from the rock, leaving heaps of scattered bricks. Skeletons lay in thick profusion, as if dumped and abandoned where they lay, the bones chewed and scattered by rats.
The vault finally ended in a cul-de-sac. The darkness here was so thick, so complete, that Fosco's torch barely penetrated. He took another step forward, waved the torch in a cautious arc into the last recess ahead of him.
The guttering flame revealed the figure of Agent Pendergast, head lolled forward onto his chest. His face was scratched and bleeding in a dozen places. His normally immaculate black suit was shredded and dirty, the jacket lying in a heap at his feet. His hand-tailored English shoes were covered in thick Tuscan mud. He appeared unconscious and would have sunk to the ground before Fosco if not for the heavy chain bound tightly across his chest. This was fixed to an iron staple set into the limestone wall, and was padlocked to a second iron staple on Pendergast's far side. His wrists hung limply at his sides, secured by additional lengths of chain fixed to the rear wall of the niche.
Fosco's first sweep of the torch had been a careful one. He had learned, even now, not to underestimate his opponent. But Pendergast was clearly immobilized, helpless. Emboldened, the count brought the torch forward again.
As the light of the torch crossed his face, Pendergast stirred. His eyes fluttered open.
Instantly, Fosco stepped back. "Agent Pendergast?" he crooned. "Aloysius? Are we awake?"
Pendergast did not answer, but his eyes remained open. He moved his limbs weakly, flexed his manacled hands.
"Please forgive me, but I'm afraid the restraints are necessary. As you shall soon understand."
When there was no response, the count continued. "You no doubt feel weak, barely able to stir. And you may be experiencing a certain degree of amnesia. Phenobarbital does have that effect at times: it seemed the easiest way to return you to the castle without undue exertions. So allow me to refresh your memory. You and the good sergeant D'Agosta grew tired of my hospitality and desired to leave. I, naturally, took objection. There was a nasty struggle, I'm afraid, in which my beloved Pinketts perished. You had deposited some paperwork I was obliged to reclaim. Then came your escape attempt. Sergeant D'Agosta made good his escape, I fear. But the important thing is that you’re back, my dear Agent Pendergast: back safely again in the bosom of Castel Fosco! And I insist you remain here, as my guest. No, really-I'll hear no objection."
Fosco placed the torch carefully into an iron wall mounting. "I beg your pardon for the scant accommodation. Still, these chambers are not without their natural charm. You'll notice the white webwork that gleams from the cavern walls? It's nitre, my dear Pendergast-you of all people should appreciate the literary allusion. And thus understand what is to follow."
And to underscore this, the count slipped his hand into his waistcoat and slowly withdrew a trowel.
Staring at it, Pendergast's dull, drug-heavy eyes gleamed briefly.
"Aha!" the count cried, pleased. "It is not lost on you! Let us then proceed with all haste." And turning to one side, he swept away a heap of tumbled bones, revealing a large quantity of freshly slaked mortar.
Using the trowel, he laid a thick line of mortar along the front lip of the recess. Then he moved to one of the piles of collapsed brick and, two at a time, brought the bricks back to the niche, laying them carefully in a line atop the mortar. Within a few minutes, the first course of bricks was in place and Fosco was troweling another layer of mortar along its top.
"How wonderful these bricks are!" he said as he worked. "They are many centuries old, made from the very clay of the hillside. See how massive: none of your trifling English bricks for Fosco! I've called for a great deal of lime in the mortar-nearly two parts lime to each part sand-but then I want your final habitation to be as strong as possible. I want it to last through the ages, my dear Pendergast. I want it to last until the final trump is sounded!"
Pendergast said nothing. But his drug-clouded eyes had cleared. They watched Fosco work with an almost feline stoicism-if, Fosco reflected, stoicism was the correct word. Finishing the second course of bricks, he paused to return the gaze.
"I've been preparing this for some time," he said. "Quite some time, in fact. You see, ever since our first meeting-at the memorial service for Jeremy Grove, when we had our little disagreement over the Ghirlandaio panel-I realized you were the most formidable opponent I had ever faced."