Tuscan Rose Read Online Free PDF

like a cloud, whereas her mattress at the convent had been filled with dried maize leaves that crackled whenever she moved.
    Her life at the convent had been governed by bells: for prayer, for work, for meals and every other activity of the day. The quiet here was unnerving. Rosa hummed the Allemande to reassure herself but the sense of being cut adrift returned to her. She tried to conjure the image of herself as a panther again but she felt more like a scared kitten. She stopped, listening. Someone was walking in the room above her. They dragged something across the floor. The footsteps faded and silence returned.
    Rosa quickly dressed. She’d had nothing to eat since breakfast the previous day and her mouth was dry. She opened the door tothe cellar. There was a shaft of light from a high window that allowed her to find her way. She was about to climb the staircase back to the entrance hall when she noticed another set of stairs next to a pantry service lift. There had been a similar device at the convent to transport dishes from the kitchen to the refectory. Rosa assumed the stairs led to the villa’s kitchen. Her instinct was right and at the top of them she found a door leading to a storeroom stocked with olives, dried tomatoes, artichokes in oil, eggs, almonds, chestnuts and pine nuts. There were bunches of rosemary and strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling and sacks of wheat, rice and saffron stacked on the floor. The door at the far end was open, revealing a kitchen with a double fireplace and terracotta tiles. Rosa was surprised to find that the kitchen was much larger than the one at the convent where Suor Maddalena had worked with her assistants. It was modern too, with a hot water tank and two large ceramic sinks. Light poured in from the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the massive table in the middle of the room. On the walls hung saucepans of every size and description. Near the door were shelves stacked with mortars and pestles, bowls and ceramic cooking pots. Rosa wondered how many people lived at the villa to justify such a large space; surely not more than the nuns and pupils at the convent?
    ‘Good morning,’ she called, hoping whoever she had heard earlier was still close by.
    No-one answered.
    There was a loaf of bread on a cutting board on the table along with a block of goat’s cheese. Rosa’s hunger overcame her timidity and she tore off a piece of the bread. The crust had a sweet flavour and, although she was famished, she chewed it slowly, letting the taste linger in her mouth. When she bit the creamy white interior, the flavour changed to a pleasant sourness on the back of her tongue. She found herself in the fields where the wheat used for the bread had grown. Her eyes drank in the crop’s golden heads shimmering in the breeze and ripe for harvest. Rosa looked at the bread on the table. She had sensed the origin of things all her life,but this vision of the wheat field was more vivid. She had actually felt the sun on her back and smelt the grassy scent of the crop.
    Growing in boldness, Rosa took another piece of bread along with a slice of goat’s cheese. The cheese’s velvety texture and the tangy flavour were a contrast to the bread and she relished the sensation in her mouth. Although the bread and cheese were satisfying, she explored the storeroom, grabbing a handful of almonds and losing herself in their sweet milkiness. If the Scarfiotti family had employed her, they should feed her too, she thought, reaching up for another handful of nuts. A shrill scream sounded from the garden, causing her to drop the nuts. They scattered over the floor. She rushed to the kitchen door but could see no-one in the kitchen garden. The scream came again. It sounded as though a woman was being murdered. Rosa ran along the path in the direction of the cry.
    The grounds beyond the vegetable plot and terrace garden were wild and verdant. Box hedges held back a forest of scrub oak, pine and maple.