She should feel excited.
And yet there was something else beneath the thrill of the chase. Something else lurking below the anticipation of holding a page written hundreds of years ago, of feeling that connection between writer and reader that transcended the centuries and rendered time meaningless. And that something else twisted in her gut until the butterflies turned into a serpent that coiled and squirmed in her belly.
Difficult, Professor Rousseau had described Count Alessandro Volta, during her unexpected and rapid-fire phone call from the hospital yesterday, and when Grace had asked what she meant there’d been a distinct hesitation on the line, before other muffled voices had intruded, and she’d added a rushed, ‘I have to go. You’ll be fine.’
Sure. She’d be fine. She gulped in air as the boat ploughed resolutely through the chop and headed for the relative safety of the shore. Relative, because nothing about the rocky island and the imposing castle set upon it looked remotely welcoming. Not the rocky shore or the towering cliffs or the clouds that seemed to hover ominously above the brooding castle in an otherwise clear sky.
She frowned up at them. Lucky she was a scientist, really, and not some paranoid panic merchant who saw portents of doom in every swirling cloud or flutter of apprehension. She was here to do a job after all.
The skipper cut the engines, letting the wash carry the boat into the dock, while the other crew member secured a line, taming the motion before starting to offload cargo onto the dock, her duffel bag amongst it. She gathered her things, her leather backpack and her briefcase containing the Professor’s letter of introduction, along with her specialist tools, glancing up at the castle that sprawled so arrogantly across the clifftop. From sea level the sheer scale of the place was daunting. Up close it must be intimidating, with its high walls punctuated at intervals by perimeter towers topped with crenellated battlements, a central tower rising high above it all, almost sending out a challenge—enter if you dare.
Welcoming? Definitely not. A movement startled her and she jumped as a figure unexpectedly stepped from the shadows thrown by the rocky escarpment into the bright sunlight. Through grizzled eyes in a leathery face the man looked her over as one might consider an unwelcome stray dog found whimpering on the doorstep, before he grabbed her duffel in one dinner-plate sized hand and flung it in the back of a rusty Jeep. He made a lunge for the briefcase in her hand and she pulled her arm away. There was no way she was letting Mr Sensitive loose on her tools.
‘Thank you, but I’m good with this one.’
He grunted. ‘You are not who we were expecting,’ he said in gravelly English, his accent as thick as his ham-hock biceps, before he muttered a few words in Italian to the skipper and hauled himself into the driver’s seat.
‘No. Professor Rousseau sends her apologies. Her mother—’
‘The Count will not be pleased.’
She had no comeback to that, other than to swing herself onto the withered and cracked upholstery of the passenger seat before he could drive away without her.
The Jeep lurched into life and she clutched her briefcase tighter in her lap as the vehicle tore up the narrow road. If you could call it a road, Grace thought, as it narrowed to little more than a one-lane track, zig-zagging up the cliff-face. She made the mistake of looking out of the car as he took another impossibly tight bend, and saw stones spraying over the edge of the cliff, spilling towards the boat now shrinking below. She squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Do you think maybe you could drive a little slower?’
He shook his head gravely, muttered something under his breath.
‘Only I would like to get to look at the discovery before I die.’
‘The Count,’ he almost grunted, ignoring her attempt at humour, ‘he is expecting the Professor.’
‘Yes, you said. I tried to explain—’
‘He will not be pleased.’
Conversation was clearly not his forte. She tried to concentrate on the spectacular view across the expanse of Mediterranean to where the coastline of Italy was just visible in the distance, while trying not to think about the height of the cliff they were scaling that made such a magnificent view possible. But it was the subject of her driver’s concern who stole her concentration and reminded her that the real reason for this coiling uneasiness in her gut was not down to anticipation at working on an ancient text, or motion sickness, or even the brooding castle, but dread.
Therese Rousseau had warned her. She’d said he was difficult and the driver’s words did nothing to suggest the Professor had been unfair in her description. In fact, if anything, maybe she’d been a trifle flattering.
What exactly happened when the Count was not pleased? What was it that she had to look forward to?
At least the Jeep had managed to scale the cliff. The track was widening and now bordered in rocks she could tell had once been painted white, though now they were chipped and faded, their paint worn from exposure to the salt-laden air.
She shivered—the air was noticeably cooler at this height—and looked up in time to see the sun disappear behind the darkening clouds. And despite knowing in her brain that it meant nothing, that it was purely a meteorological phenomenon she was witnessing and not some kind of omen, even though she fought it with all she knew about the world, still she felt an unwanted and illogical sliver of fear slip down her spine.
The massive iron gates clanging shut behind them as they entered the castle grounds did nothing to assuage her unease. Now tension had her tightly wound, but she kept her breathing light as her driver crunched the gears while circling a tiered fountain featuring water nymphs and dolphins—a fountain that was as dry and neglected as the border of leggy, unkempt rosemary bushes that surrounded it.
Everywhere, it seemed, was shrouded in neglect, as if nothing had been touched for years.
And she wondered how anything as fragile as a book had survived in this place for the centuries it was reputed to have.
A miracle?
Or a curse?
This time the tremor seemed to chill her very bones. Great, she thought, doing her utmost to shake off the irrational sense of impending danger. So much for priding herself on being a logical scientist.
The Jeep jerked to a halt and the driver jumped out. ‘Come,’ he instructed, not bothering with her duffel this time, but leaving it to her to retrieve as he pushed open giant timber doors that stretched at least twelve feet high and yet still looked minuscule when compared to the mountainous castle walls that dwarfed them.
And then they were inside and the temperature dropped again. Her footsteps over the massive flagstones echoed in the vast, empty entry hall. Or maybe that was just her heartbeat racing fast and loud …
For a thickset man, her guide moved fast, his short legs carrying him surprisingly quickly up a flight of stairs that looked as if they’d come straight from Sleeping Beauty’s castle. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked from the bottom of the stairs, but he gave no answer, and she didn’t need it to know there was no hope of him taking her directly to the documents she’d come to examine.
The Count, she knew. The same Count who she’d been warned repeatedly would
