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The sound of quiet footsteps jars him back to himself, and he notices that his eyes are wet and itching. He scrubs his face with one hand and then goes still, and hopes to go unnoticed by whatever corporal or servant is passing. But the footsteps turn into the garden, and silhouetted against the light from the masseria he sees Chiara Kingsley. She seems to stare right at him but doesn’t see him there, deep in shadow beneath the trees. She stops walking, drops her chin to her chest and wraps her arms around her middle, curling in on herself as if she’s in pain. He expects to hear her sob, but she makes no sound at all. He can’t even hear her breathing. She seems like a person who’s trying not to be there; or is trying not to be at all. Pale skin and pale hair, with her lightness and her quietness, and her feet bare. To Ettore she looks like thistledown, like something as ephemeral and impermanent as that. Something that the wind will blow right through, even as it carries her along with it. Something that might vanish without trace. If Paola has iron inside her then this English woman has air, or some other intangible stuff. She’s not quite real. She’s not like anyone he has seen before.

She stays in that odd huddled posture for some time then drops her arms to her sides and looks up at the sky. She seems in no hurry to leave, and Ettore can’t stay still any longer. He reaches for his crutch and stands slowly, and hears her quick, indrawn breath.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Ettore,’ he says. He makes his way over to stand in front of her, so they are both half-lit and half-shadowed. He opens his mouth to say something else, but nothing comes. Chiara watches him, and her expectation makes him want to walk away.

‘You did not dine today,’ she says eventually, in Italian.

‘I did. Just not at my uncle’s table.’

‘You prefer to be alone?’ she says, and he doesn’t answer because though this is not quite right, it’s an easy explanation. ‘Are you well?’ He shrugs, and then nods. He gestures towards the crutch. ‘You don’t like to be here,’ she adds, and it’s not a question. Ettore shakes his head, on his guard. His aunt is easy to offend, his uncle even more so.

‘I do not like to be kept.’

‘Neither do I,’ she says softly. He frowns, and doesn’t understand her because what is she, what is the wife of a wealthy man, if not kept? ‘You are an uncle yourself,’ she says. ‘I met your sister when she came here with you. I saw that she had a baby.’

‘His name is Iacopo.’

‘Do you have children?’ she asks. He shakes his head. ‘Neither have I.’

‘Filippo?’

‘He is my…’ She can’t find the word in Italian. ‘My husband’s son. The son of his first wife.’ She starts to smile but it doesn’t quite take shape. In the dark her eyes are huge and dazed, like she can’t quite see. ‘I hate this place,’ she says then. ‘Is that the right word?’ Then she says something in English that he can’t quite catch, something bitter and angry.

‘You are free,’ says Ettore, puzzled. ‘You can go.’

‘No. I’m not. I can’t.’ She takes a long breath in. ‘Mr Cardetta says the peasants do not speak Italian, only the language of this place. How is it you can understand me?’

‘Italian was spoken at school. I have an ear for languages.’

‘You went to school?’ She sounds surprised, and then looks apologetic.

‘A few years, only.’

‘And you were able to learn some English from Marcie, over the winter.’

‘I must go. I am a guard now.’ He can’t keep his lip from curling as he says this, disgusted at himself. ‘You should not be outside the walls after dark. It isn’t safe.’ Her eyes go huge again, her arms wrap back around her, shielding her.

‘I wanted to run… to fly away,’ she says.

‘Escape.’ Ettore gives her the right word, and she nods. That naked look is back – that clarity, that lack of guard. It bothers him, somehow; it snags at him. Thistledown, he thinks. ‘Go back inside. You should not be out here.’ He leaves her there, not waiting to see if she does as he says.

Carlo, the fresh-faced guard he saw on the roof before, grins when Ettore comes to relieve him at the trullo by the iron gates. He stands up with a yawn, hands the rifle over and stretches his arms above his head.

‘Vallarta had a raid again, three nights ago,’ he says, as he passes Ettore on the threshold. ‘Three steers taken, and one of the barns torched. Don’t fall asleep. The bell is there.’ He indicates a large brass handbell in a niche in the wall. ‘Make a racket if you see or hear anything, and we’ll all come running.’ He walks off towards his bed with a jaunty step. Ettore runs his hands along the rifle; the smooth patina on the wood of the butt; the cold, dead, metal barrel. He has wanted to get his hands on a gun for a long time; holding it gives him a sudden wild pang, a feeling of power and reckless violence. In the trenches he felt better with his rifle in his hands; safer and stronger, even though he knew it meant almost nothing, and would likely make no difference. It was a feeling that came from the heart, not the head. He stares out into the darkness beyond the gates, then turns to look at the farm, glowing here and there with lamplight. He doesn’t know what it is that he wants to do.

There’s no light in the trullo, though a lantern sits primed and ready with a book of matches beside it. To light the guard would make him a target, and spoil his night vision; the darkness is where a nightwatchman belongs. Ettore sits down on the stone ledge by the doorway and rests the rifle across his thighs. It presses cold through the fabric of his trousers, though everything else is warm – the stone, the ground, the air. His heart feels cold along with it because he has crossed the divide. To anyone looking on, he has turned his coat. He doesn’t know what he will do if raiders come, and he prays that they won’t. There are flickers of lightning far off along the eastern horizon. He sits, and he listens to the quiet rustle of geckos hunting, and thoughts of Chiara Kingsley come to him unbidden – the pale weightlessness of her.

He catches himself wondering what her white skin would feel like under his hands, and whether if he held her she would just dissolve, and drift away. She might taste of nothing; might be as flavourless as water. She might be as insubstantial as a breath of air, but then he thinks of the first touch of cooler air that comes in the autumn, drifting down from the north, and how it always wakes him, tingling over his skin like soft sparks of electricity. She’s transparent, like water, and he thinks of the first swallow of water after long hours of work, when there’s dust in his throat and his eyes and his nose. He would devour her too, just like her stooping husband, if he knew she would make him feel that way. Air and water; thistledown. I want to fly away, she said, wrapping her arms around herself. And she ought to. Puglia is a land of earth and fire, he thinks. A thing of air and water will not long survive.

Chapter Nine – Clare

The first and only time Clare went to New York was late in the spring of 1914, as the creeping threat of war spread across Europe like an illness. In America the rich were still building, still dancing, still inventing cocktails and laughing the way Marcie laughs now, with excitement and abandon. Clare had been married to Boyd for three years, and she was happy; serene with her own brand of quiet joy. Then Boyd came home from work one day frowning and unsettled; there was a potential new project in New York and the senior partner wanted him to submit designs for it. Clare immediately encouraged him to go, and to take her too, before she remembered that Emma was from New York – that he’d met her there, married her there, lost her there. When Boyd’s pained expression reminded her, she stumbled into shocked silence. But after pausing for thought, she hid her embarrassment by pushing on, albeit nervously. She told him it might be a good thing for him to make peace with the city; to lay its ghosts to rest; to see old friends of his and Emma’s. At this his head snapped up.