The Savage Garden Read Online Free PDF Page B

as he reentered the room.
        "Why put it down there? In the valley, I mean."
        "Water. There's a spring. Or there was. It's dry now, like everything. We need rain, we need lots of rain. The grapes and olives are suffering." She reached for a slender file on the bedside table. "Here. My father put it together. It's not much, but it's everything we know about the garden."
        Adam was to come and go at his leisure, she went on. He was more than welcome to work out of the study if he wanted to, and of course the library was at his disposal. In fact, he was to have free run of the villa, everything except the top floor, which, for reasons she didn't explain, was off-limits. Maria would prepare him something for lunch if he wanted it.
        "We don't stand on ceremony around here. If you need something, you just have to ask."
        "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for everything."
        
"Non c'e di che,"
replied Signora Docci with a mock-formal tilt of the head. "Come back and see me when you've walked round the garden."
        Adam was leaving the room when she added, "Oh, and if you see a young woman down there, it is probably my granddaughter." A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. "Don't worry, she's quite harmless."

        He passed through the drawing room and out onto the flagstone terrace at the back. From here a flight of stone steps, bowed with centuries of wear, led down to a formal parterre—an expanse of gravel laid out with low, clipped box hedges arranged in geometric patterns. Lemon trees in giant terra-cotta pots were dotted around. He had read enough to know that the climbing roses and wisteria trellised to the retaining wall were a later addition in the "English style," which had swept the country the previous century, consigning so many ancient gardens to the rubbish heap of history. Parterres had been ripped up to make way for bowling-green lawns, which soon burned to a crisp under the fierce Italian sun. Borders had been dug to house herbaceous plants suited to far gentler climes, and all manner of vines and creepers had been let loose, scaling walls and scrabbling up trees like unruly children. In many cases, the prevailing winds of fashion had wrought wholesale destruction, but it seemed that here at Villa Docci the original Renaissance terraces had survived almost entirely unscathed.
        This was confirmed when he descended to the lowest level. A circular fountain held center stage, set about with tall screens of tight- clipped yew, dividing the terrace into "rooms." The formal gardens stopped here at a high retaining wall that plunged twenty feet to an olive-clad slope occupying the sunny lap of the hill. There were stone benches set at intervals along the balustrade, embracing the view. At the north end of the terrace was a small chapel pressed tight against a low sandstone cliff, its entrance flanked by two towering cypresses, like dark obelisks. At the other end lay the grove of umbrella pines that Signora Docci had drawn his attention to from the loggia.
        He settled himself down in the resin-scented shade of the pines and lit a cigarette. He looked up at the villa standing proud and grave on its knoll, like some captain on his poop deck. All of the upper windows were shuttered, suggesting that the top floor was not only out of bounds but also out of use. He smiled at the thought of a deranged relative, some mad Mrs. Rochester, closeted away up there.
        Viewed from this angle, there was an air of austerity about the building, a robust, fortresslike quality. And yet somehow this seemed in keeping with both its setting and function. It was not a pleasure palace; it was the centerpiece of a working estate. The farm buildings, just visible from where he was sitting, were arranged around a yard below the villa. There was no shame in the association, and the villa declared as much with the artless candor of the face it chose to present to the