Eleonora and Lavinia had, naturally, been childhood friends. It was otherwise with the man whom Marianne had known as the agent, Matteo Damiani, the unnerving worshipper of statues who had tried to kill her once, one dreadful night when she had discovered his secret. Eleonora had been ten when Matteo was born but, maturing young like all southern girls, she had known immediately that the perilous Sant'Anna blood ran in the veins of the new-born baby brought to the villa one winter's night in the folds of her mother's cloak.
'He was the son of your husband's grandfather, Prince Sebastiano, and a poor girl from Bagni di Lucca called Fiorella who no sooner brought the child into the world than she drowned herself in the Serchio. Fiorella was pretty but slightly simple, yet she had seemed happy enough and no one could think what had made her do it – unless it was not entirely her own doing…'
'You mean – someone pushed her?'
Mrs Crawfurd made a vague gesture. 'Who can say? Don Sebastiano was a terrible man – and I imagine you must have heard something of his wife, the notorious Lucinda, the Venetian, the witch whose malignant shade still hangs over the house…'
The quiet voice had changed suddenly and become filled with such horror and revulsion that for a moment Marianne seemed to see the credulous and superstitious peasant girl she had once been. But she herself could not repress a shudder as she recalled the temple and the sensuous figure which reigned over the ruins. Instinctively dropping her voice, she asked with an eager curiosity not unmixed with fear: 'You know her – Lucinda?'
Mrs Crawfurd nodded and closed her eyes briefly, as if the better to remember.
'In fact, she is the only other Princess Sant'Anna I have known. As for forgetting her – I think if I were to live out many lives I could still not wipe her from my memory. You can have no idea what she was like. I myself have never seen such beauty as hers – so strange and yet so perfect – so demoniacally perfect! God knows you are beautiful, my dear, but next to her you would have ceased to exist. When she was there, one saw only her. Venus herself would have looked like a peasant girl beside such splendour.'
'Did you like her?' Marianne breathed, too eaten up with the desire to know to feel the slightest pique at the slighting way in which Eleonora had spoken of her own appearance. The answer came like a cannon shot:
'I hated her! God, how I hated her! And even after so many years I think I hate her still. It was because of her that when I was fifteen I fled from my parents' home with a Neapolitan dancer who, with his company, was performing at the villa. But when I was a little girl, I used to hide behind the bushes in the park to watch her pass by, dressed always in dazzling white, always covered in pearls or diamonds and always followed by her slave, Hassan, carrying her scarf, her parasol or the bag with the bread she used to feed the white peacocks in the park…'
'She had a slave?'
'Yes, a gigantic Guinean Don Sebastiano had brought back from Accra on the Slave Coast. Lucinda made him her bodyguard, her dog and, I learned afterwards, her executioner.'
At this point, Mrs Crawford's voice seemed to flicker, like a lamp in need of oil. She felt in the reticule of black silk which hung always by her chair and, taking a pastille from a silver comfit box, sat sucking it with eyes half-closed while Marianne held her breath for fear of disturbing her contemplation. In a moment or two, the older woman resumed more strongly:
'In those days, I did think that I loved her. She dazzled me. But afterwards—'
'What was she like?' The question had been hovering on Marianne's lips for several minutes. 'I have only seen her statue—'
'Ah, that famous statue! Does it still exist? Well, it was certainly very like her as to face and form, but the colours, the subtle shades of life, it gave no idea of those… If I told you that Lucinda had red hair, I should be giving you a wrong idea. Her hair was like a flame, like liquid gold, her great eyes were black velvet and glowing coals and her skin ivory and rose petals. Her mouth was like an open wound filled with pearls. No, there was never anyone like her. Nor was there anyone so cruel and depraved. Anything, human or animal, that crossed her was in danger. I have seen her slaughter the finest mare in the stables in cold blood, merely because she fell from her saddle, I have seen her order Hassan to beat an ironing maid until she bled, merely for scorching one of her laces. My mother never went near her without fingering her beads in her apron pocket. Even her husband, Prince Sebastiano, was forced to fly from her to find rest and peace of mind, and he was thirty years older than she and had loved her and still loved her passionately. That was why he used to spend three parts of the year on his travels, far away from Lucca.'
'And yet,' Marianne said, 'there was one child, at least?'
'Yes, and she was prepared for that because she accepted that there must be an heir. But when she found herself with child, her temper grew so ungovernable that her husband went away again, leaving her sole mistress of the estates. And for seven months no one set eyes on her.'
'No one? But – why?'
'Because she could not bear to let anyone see her in less than her usual beauty. All those months she spent shut up in her own apartments, never going out, never letting anyone in except my mother, Anna Franchi, and Maria, Lavinia's mother, who were her waiting women. And she scarcely spoke even to them. I can still remember hearing my mother tell my father, in a whisper, that when darkness came Donna Lucinda ordered all the candles to be lit and made sure all the doors and windows were fast shut, and no one knew what was the reason for this nocturnal illumination, which lasted until the candles guttered out.
'One night, my curiosity got the better of me. I was ten years old and as quick and agile as a cat. I got out of my bedroom window when my parents were asleep and ran in my bare feet all the way to the house. The climbing plants on the walls made it easy for me to climb up to Donna Lucinda's balcony. My heart was thumping in my chest, for I was convinced that if I were caught my father and mother would never see me again alive. But I wanted to find out – and I did.'
'What was she doing?'
'Nothing. I peeped through a crack in the curtains and I saw her. She had the candlesticks placed in a circle on the floor and she was standing in the centre, facing the statue you have seen and stark naked also. The two figures must have been reflected over and over again to infinity in the mirrors, the white and the flesh pink, and Lucinda stood there for hours, comparing herself with her own marble image, searching for the slightest alterations and deformities brought about by her condition, with her hair all tumbled and the tears streaming down her cheeks… Believe me, there was something so hauntingly dreadful in the sight that I never went there again. Besides, when it came to the final weeks there was no more light of any kind. By her orders the mirrors were all veiled and the princess's rooms remained in darkness, day and night.'
Marianne, wide-eyed, had listened breathlessly to her hostess's strange tale.
'She must have been mad, surely?' she said at last.
'Mad, yes, about herself, without a doubt. But apart from that, apart from her insensate worship of her own beauty, she behaved more or less normally. The birth of her son, Ugolino, was the occasion for endless celebration. The servants and the local peasants were almost swimming in gold and wine. Donna Lucinda was quite obviously radiant – as much on account of recovering her old beauty as of having gained an heir! For a little while, we all thought that a new era of happiness had begun for the house. But then – three months later, Prince Sebastiano set out again for some distant land and met his death there. The building of the little temple was begun almost immediately after he went away. It was a little more than a year after Matteo Damiani had been brought to the villa.'