and the moon from the grand hall and the snow-topped mountains from the library turret. I checked the sky from my bedroom every evening, opening the window wide and searching the crepuscular light for a helicopter on the horizon. Each morning, I prayed that Greta would arrive with news that I would be returning to Turin that afternoon.
One evening, as I was reading family records in the library, I wandered to the window. It was early, perhaps four o’clock, the sky darkening as the sun set. There was no helicopter on the horizon but, as I turned back to my reading, I saw a smudge of dark smoke drift across the sky. At first I thought it was a distortion created by the ice on the glass, or a low dark cloud, but when I opened the window to get a clear view, I knew for certain: there was smoke rising from the village below.
I ran downstairs, thinking of how I could get to Nevenero. Sal had said it was too far to walk, but that was ridiculous: it was ten minutes away, maximum, even walking against the wind. If I could only get there, I would find whoever had lit that fire. With their help, I would be out of the Alps that very night.
I grabbed the mink from the cloakroom and ran out to the courtyard. It had snowed all afternoon, and while Sal had plowed the courtyard, pushing the snow up into piles along the perimeter, the flagstones were icy. I slipped, steadied myself, and, while regaining my balance, saw it: the enormous iron gate blocking my way. I walked to it and gave it a hard push. It didn’t budge.
While Greta and Basil (and Bernadette, I supposed, although I had still not met the cook) had rooms in the castle, Sal lived in a modern apartment in the mews. As I ventured through the open door, I saw that the ground floor was unfinished, unheated, and overflowing with equipment. To one side, a snowcat sat high on its wheels and belts like a miniature tank. Sal used the snowcat to groom the snow beyond the moat, including the east lawn, packing the surface to the texture of a ski run. The other side of the mews was cluttered with tools, boxes of trash bags, stacks of slate shingles, and plastic bins filled with dog food. There was a metal pen in one corner where the dogs slept—Fredericka and three other Bergamasco shepherds. A wooden staircase led up to Sal’s apartment, and just behind this staircase hung a corkboard filled with hundreds of hooks.
The dogs went crazy the second I stepped into the mews. They jumped up, scratching and clawing at their cage, barking and growling, desperate to get at me. I froze at the sight of them, and I wanted to turn and run, but I saw that the keys—the ring with the big, old-fashioned gate key—were there, not far away, hanging on the corkboard.
Suddenly, the door opened upstairs. I pulled back. Above a burst of Italian opera, Sal shouted for the dogs to shut up and then, without so much as looking in my direction, he slammed the door closed. Giving Fredericka a smile of triumph, I walked behind the staircase and grabbed the keys. But as I opened the gate, and pushed back the heavy door, my heart fell: the smoke was gone, blown away by the wind.
I was positive that I had seen smoke, but the only way to be sure was to go to the highest point of the grounds, where I could see the village clearly. Pushing the gate closed, I took the footpath around the exterior of the castle, relieved to find that Sal had shoveled. It was hard enough to fight the wind without wading through snow in my running shoes.
Nevertheless, my feet were soaked by the time I reached the east lawn. A full moon had risen into the clear, dark sky so that the snow glistened and the hedges fattened with shadow. I climbed past the pond, past the white mulberry trees, to the mausoleum, where I stood high above the village of Nevenero.
The village was tucked into a ravine below the castle, and I would have missed it entirely without the light of the moon. There were clots of houses, twenty, perhaps more. Between the castle and the village lay a smooth sweep of snow. The roads were buried. The houses were dark. There was nothing