sufficient to attract the attention of the young man who was lounging beside her in the stern of the motoscafo. He turned to look at her with twinkling eyes, noticing the rapt expression on her young face.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think?'
Sancha withdrew her hand from the water and rubbed it dry. ‘It's very imposing,’ she answered, allowing her gaze to move upward over the façade of the building. ‘Does Count Malatesta really live here?'
Tony Braithwaite grinned. ‘You find it hard to believe?'
‘Don't you?’ Sancha shook her head. ‘It's so big! Too big for one man, surely.'
Tony shrugged. ‘I expect one day the Count hopes to share the place with a wife and family of his own. Until then …'
Sancha wrinkled her nose. ‘He's not married?'
‘No. Not yet.'
‘Then how old is he?'
‘I'm not sure. Late thirties—early forties perhaps.'
‘I see.’ Sancha fingered the notebook in her hand. ‘Not young, then. Why hasn't he married before?'
Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Now hold on, Sancha! These are the sort of questions you should wait and ask him. After all, that's your assignment. Mine is simply to take photographs.’ And as if to demonstrate this ability, Tony unfastened the protective shield over his camera, and standing up endeavoured to get a picture of the palazzo as the boatman brought their craft into the palazzo's landing stage.
Sancha got to her feet also as Tony examined his light meter, unable to suppress the tremor of anticipation that ran through her body. Now that they were actually here, alighting at the Palazzo Malatesta, all her earlier confidence fled away. This was her first real assignment and she only had this because Eleanor Fabrioli was ill and unable to take it herself.
She stumbled as she stepped on to the landing stage and Tony saved her from falling on the roughened stone surface and possibly laddering her tights. Her cheeks were flushed and her heart palpitated wildly, and Tony regarded her with amused tolerance.
‘For heaven's sake, Sancha, don't look so nervous! This is your big chance! Don't louse it up!'
Sancha nodded and straightened her skirt, smoothing the soft material over her hips. As she did so, she wondered whether Italian counts objected to the way modern girls wore such figure-revealing clothes. Maybe she should have put up her hair, she thought desperately. Tumbling about her shoulders in Scandinavian fair disorder, it made her look years younger than the twenty-two years she actually was. What would the Count be like? Would he be big and imposing, or small and dark and oily, like so many of the youths she had had to encounter during her six months in Venice? Not that he was any youth, of course. She hoped, too, that he would not be effeminate or effusive. Authors sometimes were; but he wasn't the first man to write an historical novel, and even if that novel had been acclaimed as a major investigation into life in thirteenth-, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy that didn't mean it was going to become a best-seller anywhere else than here. On the contrary, Sancha had found it rather difficult to read, but maybe that was because she had only been given the book at lunchtime the previous day with this assignment in mind and she had sat up half the night, almost propping open her eyelids with matchsticks, in an effort to understand it. But at two and three in the morning, the merits of Dante's Divine Comedy, written as it was at a time when he was fleeing from his political enemies, had gone over her head. In consequence this morning she wondered whether she had absorbed enough of the book to discuss it intelligently with its author.
Tony intimated to the boatman that they wanted him to wait and then put a hand to Sancha's elbow.
‘Well, honey, this is it,’ he remarked mockingly. ‘Are you ready? Are your pencils sharpened? Is your brain functioning as it should be?'
Sancha gave him a pained glance. ‘Oh, stop it, Tony,’ she exclaimed. ‘I'm nervous enough as it is, without you making a joke of it all.'
‘But there's nothing to be nervous about!’ replied her companion, as they passed under the arched entrance to a courtyard about which the walls of the palazzo stood in grim silence. Moss and weeds had invaded this courtyard where once mosaic tiling had shone with polished magnificence. A faint odour of decay was about them, and Sancha shivered.
‘How does one address a count?’ she asked suddenly, the thought invading her head with sharp insistence.
Tony shrugged. ‘Well, you can hardly address him by his full title every time you speak to him. I should imagine Count would do—or just signore, perhaps.'
Sancha looked at him. ‘You're so casual, aren't you? Doesn't it bother you that this man is the last in a long line of aristocrats?'
Tony's expression was cynical. ‘Oh, honey, don't kid yourself. This aristocrat wouldn't give us the time of day if he didn't have to! Look at this place! Does this look like the home of an aristocratic gentleman? It's falling apart!'
Sancha looked about her reluctantly. ‘Oh, not that, Tony,’ she exclaimed. ‘It needs money spent on it, I agree, but it's still very impressive.'
Tony shrugged. ‘You're a romantic, Sancha!’ he said, with some regret. ‘I just hope that romantic soul of yours isn't torn apart by the savagery of realism.'
Sancha tugged at a strand of silvery hair. ‘You sound bitter, Tony.'
Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘And why not? I was like you once, many moons ago.'
‘You're not that old!’ she protested.
‘I can give you half a dozen years,’ commented Tony lightly. ‘And a few months is enough to destroy a dream.'
Sancha sighed, unwillingly aware that the shadow of the palazzo had in some way invaded their conversation almost without them being aware of it. Maybe a little of the violent past remained in this silent courtyard and objected to the brash indifference of contemporary youth. Maybe those grim gargoyles could still exercise their powers when subjected to the coldness of indifference. She shivered again, but for different reasons, and Tony broke the spell by stepping forward and tugging at an iron bell rope.
No sound penetrated those thick grey walls, and Sancha and her companion could not be certain the bell was still working. They waited a few moments, and then Tony tugged again, but still there was no sound from within.
Sancha's fingers played with the notebook in her hands. ‘Do you think anyone is at home?’ she asked doubtfully.
Tony made an impatient sound. ‘One doesn't arrange an interview of this sort and then go out,’ he observed dryly. ‘Wait a minute! I'll try the knocker. The bell doesn't appear to be working.'
The heavy iron knocker in the shape of a leather-studded hand fell heavily against the door echoing with a hollow sound in the quiet courtyard.
‘Eerie, isn't it?’ said Sancha, needing to keep verbal contact with Tony in an effort to dispel her own sense of unease.
Tony glanced at her. ‘If you think so,’ he said. ‘Personally. I'm getting pretty impatient. Do you realise we've been here fifteen minutes already?'
Sancha hesitated, and then said: ‘Listen! Is that someone
