The story was straight from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the nymph Daphne, fleeing the unwelcome advances of a love-struck Apollo, begged her father to turn her into a laurel tree, which he duly did. It was an appropriate myth for a garden setting—Art and Nature combining in the figure of Daphne. As the file pointed out, there was a relief panel depicting the same scene in the Grotto of Diana at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli. But here in the memorial garden, the myth had an added resonance, mirroring the story of Flora—a nymph who also underwent a metamorphosis following her pursuit by an amorous god.
This last observation was Antonella's. It wasn't in the file, nor had it occurred to Adam, which was mildly annoying, although this wouldn't prevent him, he suspected, from claiming it as his own for the purposes of his thesis.
Antonella explained how the water poured from the urn held by Peneus, filling the marble basin. A lowered lip at the front then allowed it to overflow into a shallow, circular pool set in the stone floor. This was carved with rippling water, and at its center was a female face in relief, staring heavenward, the gaping mouth acting as a sink hole. The hair of this disembodied visage was bedecked with flowers, identifying it as that of Flora: the goddess of flowers drawing sustenance for her creations from the life-giving spring water.
It was an exquisite arrangement, faultless both in its beauty and in its pertinence to the overarching program of the garden. The only false note was the broken-off horn of the unicorn crouched at Apollo's feet, its head bowed toward the marble basin. This was a common motif in gardens of the period. A unicorn dipping its horn into the water signified the purity of the source feeding the garden; it announced that you could happily scoop up a handful and down a draft without fear for your life. At some time since that era, though, the unicorn had lost the greater part of its horn.
Adam fingered the truncated stump. "It's a pity."
"Yes. What is a unicorn without its horn?"
"A white horse?"
Antonella smiled. "A very unhappy white horse."
They headed west from the grotto on a looping circuit, the pathway trailing off into the evergreen woods blanketing the sides of the valley. They sauntered through the shade, chatting idly as they went. Antonella lived across the valley in a farmhouse she rented from her grandmother. The old building was delightfully cool in summer but bitterly cold in winter, and she had a rule that whenever the well water froze she would decamp to her brother's apartment in Florence. She and Edoardo were the children of Signora Docci's only daughter, Caterina, a woman whom Professor Leonard had referred to as "dissolute," something Adam found hard to square with the self-possessed creature stepping out beside him.
Her parents were divorced, she explained. Her mother lived in Rome, her father in Milan, where he was given to business ventures of a distinctly dubious nature, which promised (and invariably failed to deliver) untold wealth. She said this with a note of mild amusement in her voice.
By now they had passed through the first glade, with its triad of freestanding sculptures representing the death of Hyacinth, and were nearing the small temple at the foot of the garden.
"And what do you do?" Adam asked.
"Me? Oh, I design clothes. Can't you tell?" She spread her hands in reference to her simple cotton shift dress.
"I . . . yes—"
Her smile stopped him dead. "My dresses have more color. Although they're not really mine. There is someone else's name on everything I do."
"How come?"
"I work at a fashion house in Florence. There can only be one name."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"What a serious question."
"I'm a serious chap."
"Oh really?"
"Can't you tell?" he said, spreading his hands. "All my friends are on a beach. Me, I'm here studying."
"Only because you have to, and only for two weeks. From what I hear, you will probably see a beach before the end of the summer."
This meant one thing: that the news from Professor Leonard of Adam's indolence had not stopped with Signora Docci.
"I dispute that."
"What?"
"Whatever you've heard."
"The good things too?" Her eyes sparkled with mischief. "My grandmother likes you, I think."
Maybe it was something to do with the way she bared her teeth when she smiled, but at that moment it struck him that the long diagonal scar on her forehead exactly mirrored the cranial ridge on the orangutan skull in the study.
Antonella turned away—feeling the weight of his lingering look?—and glanced down at the supine figure at their feet.
Narcissus lay sprawled along the rim of the octagonal pool, gazing admiringly at what should have been his reflection. Instead, he appeared to be searching for something he had lost, some trinket he'd mislaid in the debris of twigs and leaves that carpeted the bottom of the pool.
"I'm sorry you cannot see it when the water is here."
"Will it ever come back?"
"Who knows? But it is not the same without the water. The water gives it life. It makes it breathe."
She had removed her leather sandals a while before—they now hung lazily from the fingers of her right hand—and looking at her there in her simple cotton dress, he saw her as the child she once must have been, wandering the garden, gazing wide-eyed on the coterie of petrified gods, goddesses and nymphs playing out their troubled stories on this leafy stage.
When she made for the temple, he followed unquestioningly. It was a small structure—octagonal, like the pool—and crowned by a low cupola just visible behind the pedimented portico. The floor was of polished stone, the walls of white stucco, as was the dome. The building was dedicated to Echo, the unfortunate nymph who fell hard for Narcissus. He, too preoccupied with his own beauty, spurned her attentions, whereupon Echo, heartbroken, faded away until only her voice remained.
"I love this place."
Her words resounded off the clean, hard surfaces, the acoustic effect no doubt intentional. Simple painted wooden benches ran around the walls, and there was a lengthy Latin inscription carved into the architrave beneath the dome. According to the file it was a line from Socrates: The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.
He approached the cast-iron grille in the center of the floor. This had puzzled him on his previous visits. There was no reference to it in the file, and all his efforts to dislodge it and discover what lay beneath had failed.
"The water falls into a small well then carries on to the pool outside. The sound in here ... it is not easy to describe." She thought on it for a moment. "Sussurri."
"Whispers."
"Yes. Like whispers."
They covered the rest of the circuit in near silence, stopping briefly in the last of the glades, with its statue of Venus stooped over a dead Adonis—the final element in the itinerary, its message of grief and loss almost overwhelming after the other stories they had witnessed.
Any more would have been too much. The garden transported you just far enough. As soon as you felt the grip of its undertow, it released you.
Even without the sculptural program, the place would have exerted an unsettling pull. There was something mysterious and otherworldly about a wooded vale. Maybe it was the sense of enclosure, of containment, coupled with the presence of water, but it somehow reeked of ancient gatherings and happenings. You sensed that you weren't the first to have been drawn here, that naked savages had also stumbled upon it and thought the place bewitched.