a view behind those. You can’t see the memorial garden from here, but I can point you in the right direction.’
Adam pushed open the shutters, squinting against the sunlight flooding past him into the room. He found himself in an arcaded loggia. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he made out the commanding view Patchwork hills spilled away to the west, their folds cast by the lowering sun into varying grades of shade. There was a timeless, almost mythi cal quality to the panorama – like a Poussin landscape.
‘It’s special, isn’t it?’ said Signora Docci.
‘If you like that kind of thing.’
This brought a laugh from her. Adam peered down on to the gardens at the rear of the villa, the formal arrangements of gravel walks and clipped hedges.
‘There are some umbrella pines at the edge of the lower terrace, on the left. If you walk through those and follow the path down, you’ll come to it.’
Just beyond the knot of pines the land dropped away sharply into a wooded valley.
‘Yes, I see.’
He pulled the shutters closed behind him 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’è 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 on to 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 terracotta 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 centre 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 which 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 which 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, fortress-like quality. And yet somehow this seemed in keeping with both its setting and function. It was not a pleasure palace; it was the centrepiece 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 candour of the face it chose to present to the valley. Again, he was left with a palpable sense of the mind behind the design.
In almost no time he had fallen under Villa Docci’s spell, and the idea that he might have to devote his time to the study of a small part of its garden, one component stuck way down in the valley, was already a building frustration.
The answer came to him suddenly and clearly. He would change the subject of his thesis. Who could protest? Professor Leonard? On what grounds? Their remit as students was broad to the point of being all-embracing. If Roland Gibbs had settled on a mouldering Romanesque church in Suffolk as a subject for his thesis, how did an Italian Renaissance villa-estate compare? He would have to play the Marxist historical card – that angle was increasingly popular within the faculty – not art and architecture for their own sakes, but as manifestations of the socio-economic undercurrents of the time.
His heart already going out of the matter, he opened the file Signora Docci had given him and began to read. The language was rich, formal, turn-of-the-century.
Flora Bonfadio was only twenty-five years old when she died in 1548 – the year after she and her husband Federico Docci, some two decades her senior, took possession of the new villa they had built near San Casciano. Not much was known of Flora’s history. Some had speculated that she was related to the poet and humanist Jacopo Bonfadio, but there was no hard evidence to this effect. As for the Doccis, they were a family of Florentine bankers who, like the Medicis, originated from the Mugello, a mountainous region just north of the city. Although they had never risen to the Medicis’ level of prominence – who had? – by the sixteenth century they were nonetheless established as successful financiers. They had to have been for Federico Docci to afford the luxury of carving out a country estate for himself and his young wife.
Villa Docci instantly became a port of call for artists and writers, and was renowned, apparently, for the extravagant parties thrown by its generous host. This was not an unusual development. To create a cultural watering hole in the hills was the goal of many wealthy Florentines, almost a necessary stage in their development; a chance to share some of their ill-gotten gains with the more needy while rubbing shoulders with the greatest talents of the age. High finance and high art coming together as they have always done. A simple trade in an age driven by patronage.
Adam recognized only two names on the list of those reputed to have attended Federico’s gatherings at Villa Docci. The first was Bronzino, the well-known court painter. The second was Tullia d’Aragona, the not-so-much-well-known-as-notorious courtesan and poetess. Her inclusion lent an appealing whiff of scandal to the list, hinting at dark and dangerous goings-on at Villa Docci. Whether or not this was true, Federico’s dream of a rural salon was abruptly shattered after a year with the death of his wife. There were no records as to the cause
