we have to start somewhere.”
“Start?” He stood up and came over to her. “Is that the plan? Put a stop to the activities of TABULA? Do away with evil? In the Land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t care less about heroics.”
Alessandro smiled. “Because strictly speaking, we represent evil, right?”
“What’s TABULA, then?”
“Maybe just a specter thought up by men like Cesare to justify what they do. A phantom image of the enemy. Just an excuse to behave even worse than the others.”
She held his gaze, felt for his hands. “Is that what you really think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“I want to know what Costanza was up to. And what became of my father. All the things that have to do with me.”
With us, said his eyes.
“With us,” she whispered.
THE VISITOR
“YOU CAN’T MOVE IN here, Signora Falchi, and that’s my final answer.”
The tutor was standing on the flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Palazzo Alcantara. Rosa herself was only just back from the coast when the woman drove her Toyota into the inner courtyard. Now her two bags were sitting on the dusty pavement in front of the steps, with Signora Falchi between them, and Rosa strongly wished that she were anywhere else.
Raffaela Falchi crossed her arms. Her glasses flashed in the sunlight, making her look even readier for a fight. “You wanted a good tutor, right?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted the best tutor available for this difficult child.”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted her for six hours a day.”
“Yes!”
“Well, now you’re getting her for twenty-four hours a day. At the same price.”
“But that’s not the point!”
“In this house, I have witnessed toothpaste tubes lying around with the tops left off. The desecration of graves. Whipped cream sprayed straight from the can into people’s mouths. The desecration of graves. Dirty shoes on parquet flooring. Oh, and did I mention the desecration of graves?”
Rosa groaned. “You’re always complaining. You’re in a bad mood all day. You get irritated with Iole, and you think I’m too young to look after her. So why do you want to come and live here?”
“First: You are too young to look after her. Second: You don’t want to be responsible for Iole; you can’t even cope with being responsible for yourself. And third: I’ve split up with my boyfriend.”
“You had a boyfriend?” Rosa had expected almost anything, but not that Raffaela Falchi might be in a relationship. Having sex.
“He’s a musician.”
“Plays the flute, maybe?”
“Singer. In a rock band.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
Rosa realized that she was standing on the stairway as if defending it with her life against the unwanted intruder. Legs apart, right in the middle of the steps. The pair of them must look ridiculous.
“Why would I want you to live with us?” Rosa asked, sighing.
“I have green thumbs. Ten of them.”
“We don’t grow plants.”
“My cousin in Caltagirone has a florist. She’ll give me a discount. And then there’s my other cousin—she runs a perfumery. She could get you—”
“Okay. All right.” Rosa could hardly understand why, but she went down the steps, picked up one of the bags, and nodded in the direction of the porch over the entrance. “But if I see—or smell—either of your cousins, you’re fired.”
For the first time, she saw Raffaela Falchi grin, and for a moment, for a fraction of a second, she thought she saw something behind the tutor’s usual reproachful expression that might even attract a rock singer.
“Did you go on tour with him?” she asked, as they hauled the baggage up the steps.
“I’ve had tinnitus ever since.”
In the entrance hall, Iole came toward them in one of her white dresses. She stopped dead when she saw her tutor there with Rosa.
“Oh,” she said, as her eyes fell on the luggage.
“You’d better put on something else,” said Signora Falchi, her tone of voice skeptical. “Whenever you wear that outfit I feel as if I’m seeing the world through white highlighter.”
Iole wrinkled her forehead. “Maybe your glasses are clouded up.”
Glancing sideways at Rosa, the tutor raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t buy her those clothes, did you?”
Rosa raised her hands defensively.
“I bought them online,” said Iole. “They have such lovely music on that website. You don’t get nice music on every site, but you do on that one. I think it makes the dresses even prettier. And if you order three, you get a free packet of sunflower seeds and a CD to help you meditate. Only no flowers came up. I planted them all—well, the seeds, I