'I'll make sure he never wants to try it again,' she muttered furiously. Without stopping to think, she slipped on a dress at random, pushed her feet into a pair of light sandals and quickly tied the strings, then went to her portmanteau and fetched one of the pistols which Napoleon had given her and which she had brought with her from Paris. One swift check to make sure of the priming and she slid it into her belt and lighted a candle. Thus armed, she marched determinedly to the still-open panel and began to descend.
The draught made the candle flame waver but did not extinguish it. Carefully, without making the smallest sound, she descended the worn steps, protecting the candle flame with her free hand. The stairway was quite short, no more than a single storey. It came out at the back of the house, the exit masked by thick, leafy bushes. Peering through the branches, Marianne was suddenly aware of the calm waters of the grotto stretching before her, rosy in the dawn. She also saw Matteo just disappearing into the cavern, the entrance to which lay within the central colonnade. She determined to follow him. Quickly blowing out the candle, she set it down under the bushes ready to pick up on her return.
Her anger was touched now with the excitement of the chase, and a certain feeling of triumph. She did not know what the steward was about, but she knew that he would be caught there in a trap and could not escape her now. She was familiar with the grotto for she had explored it with her godfather. It was a pleasant place in hot weather. The lake continued inside the grotto, making a kind of room with a pool in the centre. The rock walls of the cavern had been hung with silk and carpets and cushions set out around the pool in oriental profusion.
Marianne sprang lightly in pursuit of the steward. She ran along the colonnade, pausing for a moment at the entrance to the cave to flatten herself against the rocky wall and draw her pistol from her belt. Slowly, with infinite caution, she crept forward and turned the corner. Then she gave a gasp of astonishment. Not only was there no one in the cave, but one of the silken panels that covered the walls had been lifted up to reveal the entrance to a tunnel which seemed to pass right through the hill, for there was a glimpse of daylight at the end.
Not hesitating for an instant, only tightening her grip a little on the weapon in her hand, Marianne stepped into the tunnel. It was quite wide and the floor was covered with a fine sand, pleasant to walk on and absolutely silent underfoot. Little by little, some of her anger had faded, giving way to excitement, the kind of excitement she had felt out with the hounds at Selton, but here she was dealing with something more dangerous than any fox and the nearness of danger filled her with exaltation. There was also the thought that she had, in so short a time, begun to penetrate some of the secrets of the Sant'Annas. But when she reached the end of the passage, she stood, pressed close to the rock in the shadow of the opening, staring at the spectacle which met her eyes.
The tunnel opened into a narrow clearing, no more than a steep cleft in the rocks, closed in at the top on both sides by a tangled mass of trees and undergrowth. Down below, leaning at crazy angles in niches cut in the rock walls, was a weird population of statuary, clothed in brambles and rampant bines, their limbs frozen in attitudes of frantic gesticulation which gave a tragic emphasis to the burnt-out ruins of a building that occupied the centre of the dell.
Nothing was left but a confused heap made up of stumps of charred and broken columns, tumbled stones and shattered carvings, all overgrown with matted brambles and bitter-smelling ground ivy. The fire which had destroyed it must have been uncommonly fierce, for rubble and rock walls alike showed the long, blackened streaks caused by the flames. Yet, standing among the ruins, as though preserved by a miracle, was a single, gleaming statue of pure white marble. Marianne caught her breath in wonder at the scene.
A few steps had been roughly hacked out of the pile of ruins and on the top step, kneeling with both arms clasped about the knees of the statue, was Matteo Damiani.
The statue itself was the strangest and most beautiful that Marianne had ever seen. It was the life-sized figure of a naked woman, shaped with such sheer, sensual perfection as to be almost demoniacal in its beauty. The woman was standing with her arms spread backwards, away from her body; her head was flung back, as if drawn by the weight of her unbound hair and she seemed, with her closed eyes and parted lips, as if on the point of giving herself to some unseen lover. The sculptor had rendered every detail of the female form with an uncanny accuracy and the skill with which he had delineated the features, the narrowed eyes and voluptuously swollen lips, an ecstasy of pleasure so agonizing that it was almost pain, was close to genius. Disturbed by that breathing image of desire, Marianne thought that the artist must have loved his model with a torturing intensity.
The sun was rising and one golden beam slipped over the cliff and lighted on the statue. At once the cold marble glowed and came to life. The polished grain of the unfeeling stone took on a golden sheen, softer than any human skin, and for a moment it seemed to Marianne that the statue was truly living. Matteo had risen to his feet and was standing on the pedestal, clasping the marble woman in his arms. He was kissing the lips that offered themselves in a frenzy of passion, as if he were trying to infuse his own warmth into them, and murmuring an incoherent stream of words, words in which insults and endearments were strangely mixed, a curious litany of love and rage and the crudest expressions of lust. At the same time his hands roved feverishly over the marble body which seemed, in the warm light of morning, to be quivering in response to his caresses.
There was something so unnerving about this love scene with a statue that Marianne stepped back with an instinctive revulsion into the tunnel, forgetting that she had come there to confront the man and cow him. The pistol hung uselessly from her shaking hand and she restored it to her belt. The man was mad, there could be no other explanation of his insane behaviour, and Marianne was suddenly afraid. She was alone with a madman in a secret place which might well be unknown to most of the inhabitants of the villa. Even the weapon she carried seemed a puny defence. Matteo's strength was certainly prodigious. If he once realized her presence, he could overpower her before she had a chance to defend herself. Or else she would be compelled to shoot, and she did not wish to kill him. She had suffered enough, and suffered even now, from having involuntarily caused the death of Ivy St Albans.
She could hear the man making delirious promises to return that night to his insensate mistress.
'The moon will be full, my she-devil, and you shall see that I have not forgotten.'
Marianne's heart leaped. He was coming away, he would find her. Without waiting for more, she fled back along the tunnel and out through the cavern and the grotto with the speed of a hunted hare. She darted in amongst the bushes but turned, before plunging into the staircase passage, to take one last look through the leaves. She was only just in time. Matteo was coming out of the grotto and once again Marianne asked herself if she had not been dreaming. The man who a moment before she had surprised in a state of total erotic frenzy was now strolling quietly along the path that lay between the colonnade and the water, his hands clasped behind his back and his coarse features seemingly lifted to enjoy the light breeze that ruffled his grey hair. He might have been anyone taking an early morning walk in the cool, dew-fresh gardens before starting the day's work.