THREE: PASTORALE

      'I still reckon he's been useful.' Alan sat back, watching the copper-coloured robot clearing the plates from the alfresco breakfast table with a lobster-tweezer claw. 'Okay, so he served the ham straight from the deepfreeze and he forgot to cook the eggs again, but he is saving us work. With no dishwasher we'd have had to clean these by hand.'
      'If it wasn't for him there'd still be a dishwasher,' Virgil pointed out. 'Just as well Dad gave me a fund to replace anything that got broken. I just hope it holds out.'
      'I'm-sorry,' Braman's synthesised voice apologised.
      'Well, at least you can't say he isn't polite,' Alan said. 'And he's made pretty good coffee while we've been getting over our jet lag. If he'd just remember his cooking instructions he'd be perfect.'
      'Core-memory-boards-due-for-replacement-six-months-ago,' the robot reported.
      'Never mind, Braman,' Tin-Tin said soothingly, 'you did your best. Just remember for the next time you cook breakfast: everything from the deepfreeze must go in the microcooker.'
      The robot rattled off with the plates across the villa's small terrace and into the house, and Tin-Tin looked around. Behind the comfortable breakfast niche warm orange bricks rose to a roof of red tiles, and at the foot of the terrace steps a pert yellow convertible sat on a gravel drive that ran through a garden of unpruned roses and box to exit under an arch in an ancient wall. Beyond the arch wooded hills sloped down to a green and brown chequerboard valley, over which unseen dust scattered the light to produce a hot blue air-haze. She opened her traveller's guide.
      'It doesn't say much about Monte Thesauri in here. It's a pity we're so far from the village, but I suppose the privacy's an advantage. We wouldn't want anyone discovering that we've got Thunderbird One hidden away in the barn.'
      'No, we wouldn't,' Alan agreed. 'And it's only three miles, anyway. Isn't there anything else to see around here?'
      Tin-Tin shook her head. 'It says some tourism, agriculture and viniculture, but less than formerly, whatever it means by that. There's the remains of a Roman villa along the hill to the south of us, but there doesn't seem to be much left, apart from a few stones. It says it belonged to one of the last branches of the Julian family, and it once had its own Roman baths, and the biggest and lushest gardens in the whole of Italy.'
      'Wonder how they managed that?' Virgil asked. 'This part of Tuscany doesn't get too much rain, and this area's parched, especially down in the valley.'
      'Yes,' Tin-Tin said, 'and there's not much growing in the fields, either, except vines.' She read a little more then looked up. 'That must be the vineyard-owner's villa on the hill over there. It looks very impressive. Apparently he's one of the last of some noble family as well.'
      Alan snorted. 'Seems like everything's dead or dying out in this place; even the village is falling to pieces. But isn't that the guy Penelope knows?' He frowned. 'Antoni? Antonioni?'
      'Antioni,' Virgil said. 'She said that she'd tell him we were coming, and that we should drive over and look him up some time.'
      'Well, we haven't got time today.' Alan glanced at his watch. 'Now we've settled in Tin-Tin and I were thinking of driving to San Giuliano for a preliminary look around. Pisa's pretty near there, and Tin-Tin's always wanted to see the Fallen Tower, so we can combine business with pleasure. You got any plans?'
      'Plans?' Virgil repeated, puzzled.
      Tin-Tin smiled and took Alan's hand. 'We thought we'd like, you know, the day to ourselves.'
      'Okay,' Virgil said reluctantly, 'guess I could stay here and soak up some sun.' He looked at Alan. 'But remember what Dad said. We're not just guests in someone else's country, we're Penelope's guests too, so we have to keep out of trouble. If you come back here with so much as a parking ticket the vacation's over, okay?'
      'Take it easy.' Alan got up. 'We're just going to look around, and see if we can find out any more about the locket. You put your feet up, try out some of that wine we got in the village. If we find the treasure I promise we'll bring back your share.'
      A few minutes later Virgil watched the yellow convertible bowl down the drive. A hand waved, then the car was gone, disappearing under the crumbling arch. He made his way into the kitchen, where Braman was washing up with the tap running into an overflowing sink. He cleaned up the mess, explained the intricacies of tap and plug interaction to the robot, then selected a bottle of wine and a glass and returned to the terrace. Deciding it was a little early in the day he left the wine on the table, stretched out on a lounger placed invitingly in the shade of a potted fig, and closed his eyes.

      He was woken by the soft crunch of tyres on gravel. A long American-style saloon had crept to a halt at the foot of the steps, and as he rose hastily a tall grey-haired man emerged, unfolding himself from the driving seat. The car's windows were tinted the same midnight blue as its bodywork, making it impossible to tell if there were any other occupants. The man looked up, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
      'Buon giorno,' he said. 'You are staying here? Your name is Tracy? You are the friends of the beautiful English countess, yes?'
      Virgil advanced as far as the top step. 'Buon giorno. Anything I can do for you?' he asked, cautiously noncommittal.
      The man smiled. 'Yes, give to Giuseppe your pardon. He comes uninvited to disturb your sleep, asks the foolish questions, and forgets that you do not know him, as you say, from the Adam.' He bowed. 'I am Giuseppe Antioni, of the Villa Antioni, and I come to welcome you to Monte Thesauri. You are the guests of my good friend Lady Penelope, and therefore the honoured guests of our village, also.'
      'Antioni?' Virgil said, his suspicions allayed. 'Why didn't you say so before? Penelope told us about you. Come on up, I'll fix you a drink.'
      Antioni came up the steps. 'Thank you. I have, as the English say, the big nose.' He indicated his Roman features and laughed. 'I have nothing to do, and I ask myself, the friends of my friend the beautiful Lady Penelope, what are they like? Perhaps they also have nothing to do, and perhaps my poor villa and my wine today they will be honoured with some company.'
      'Thanks,' Virgil said sincerely, 'but you've picked the wrong day. My brother and his girl have driven over to Pisa; guess they won't be back before evening.'
      Antioni spread his hands. 'Then it is settled. I also have been left all alone: my little Francesca visits her mother's family in the north, and without her my house it is very quiet. You must be my guest for the day.'
      'Well, I..'
      Antioni lifted the wine-bottle from the table. 'You have the taste, you buy the best wine in the village. But the vino Antioni he does not go to the village, he goes to Roma, to Paris, to London.' He put the bottle down and a flicker of sadness crossed his face. 'Although nowadays he goes not so much. Come, meet him for yourself.'
      Virgil grinned. 'Okay, why not? Just let me fix up a few things, be right with you.'
      Inside the house he touched the button on his telecom to call Alan, then thinking about the crowds in Pisa he changed his mind. He went into the kitchen and made sure that Braman was safely deactivated, then found a piece of paper, scrawled 'visiting Antioni villa back afternoon - V', and clamped it into the robot's outstretched claw.
      Antioni was waiting for him in the car, and he settled into the passenger seat, breathing the exhalation of real leather and the plastic tang of ionised, conditioned air. On the dash a silver horse pranced across a burr-walnut field. 'Great car,' he said appreciatively. 'Don't see too many of these around nowadays.'
      'I buy him new,' Antioni replied with pride as they purred out onto the road. 'But I buy him many years ago, too many for Alfredo at the garage. Each time I go he say signore Antioni, why you still drive this heap of trash? He has not the aerodynamics, he drink more benzina than the three-deck supertanker, and he park the same way.' He patted the wheel. 'But he is - how you say? - the aristocrat. We both belong to the past, I think: they make cars like him no more, and I have no sons. We grow old together.'
      Where the road wound down the hillside Antioni stopped the car abruptly on an overhang. 'I show you my observatory. In this place you have the eyes of the hawk, you see everything.'
      Leaving the car they leaned on the low stone wall that guarded the drop, and Virgil looked down. The road branched beneath them, one thin ribbon leading on into the hills in the direction of the Roman ruins, the wider part looping back on itself several times before coming to rest in the valley below, where the vineyards and the terracotta roofs of the village baked in the heat. Beyond the soft green of the vines the thinly-sown fields were uniformly crisped, and a roofless farmhouse welcomed the road into the valley, like an outpost of desolation. In an odd inversion of the norm the surrounding hills, from Penelope's red-tiled roof to the Villa Antioni's marble colonnade, boasted a healthy growth of olive, cypress and pine.
      Antioni traced a line across the landscape, from his villa's gardens to where the patchwork of green and brown merged into the haze on the horizon. 'From here I see what they fear to tell me. Here, does the road crumble in the village? There, does the sunflower crop fail on the farms again? To have much land is to have much worry.'
      'Gee, you mean all this is yours?' Virgil asked in amazement.
      'The lawyers tell me so. When I was a boy my father lift me to the window and he say, Son, all that you see, one day it will be yours. And I think, Giuseppe, that day you will be a big man, with servants and many cars. But now, psshhh!' He shrugged. 'Each year the rents they are due, and each year the villagers, the farmers, they come to me and they say signore Antioni, we cannot afford to pay. And I say okay, you pay me next year. What can I do? They have no work, no money. Only in the autumn, when the grapes are ready, and they come to work for me. And then I must pay them.' He laughed.
      The breeze stirred idly in the pines behind them, and on the road below a solitary tractor crawled towards the village. Nothing else moved. 'Yes,' Virgil said, 'we got the impression no-one had too much to do round here. And we noticed the village was looking kind of run down.'
      'It is as you say,' Antioni nodded sadly, 'it runs down. In my father's day the vines they stretch to the hills, and there are many farms; you look and the green it is everywhere. Then the weather it change, and now each year there is more and more the brown. I ask the scientists from Roma, will it rain this year? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. They say it is the local microclimate, the sunspots, the global warming. But for us it is the tragedy. To bring water from the rivers in the north would cost many billions of lira, and I do not have such money. So we wait for the rain, but again this year it does not come.'
      'That's too bad. Won't your government help out?'
      'They have their own problems.' Antioni waved a hand dismissively. 'I ask, and they send a man with the briefcase and the bad suit, to tell me nothing can be done. It is too late for my vineyards, it is too late for my friends in the village, but, he say, Giuseppe Antioni: you can save yourself. Your villa it would make the nice hotel, perhaps the golf club; we will give you the good price. Pah!' He made a face. 'I stay here and I do what I can, but all the time my vineyards they grow smaller, and now when the people of the village say to me, signore Antioni, we need a new roof for our church, I must say I cannot help you. The days have grown very sad.'
      Virgil shook his head. 'Guess there's not much point in saying this, but I sure wish there was something we could do to help.'
      Antioni smiled. 'But you come to stay with us, and that is good. The tourists, they will keep our village alive for a little longer, and who knows, perhaps one day we will be sent a miracle.' He turned back to the car. 'Now come, I must show you the Antioni cellars, and we will see if my latest vintage it is ready for the table. You have the grave responsibility: it shall be your decision.'

      The door of the Villa Antioni swung back to reveal a portico of marble bleached whiter-than-white by the early moon.
      'Oh, no.' Virgil groaned. 'Guess we forgot all about the time.'
      'Is my fault,' Antioni said contritely. 'The vino he is the demon, he possess my mouth. He say talk, talk: if you stop then stop only to drink some more. And he is the bad driver; now I think I cannot take you home.' He held out his car keys. 'You must drive yourself.'
      'Better not,' Virgil said hastily, 'I've had a few glasses too, and that wine of yours is pretty potent stuff. But this is serious; don't want Alan and Tin-Tin getting home and wondering why I'm not back.' He frowned at the dark tree-line encircling the villa's garden. 'Maybe if I cut north through the woods there I'd strike the hilltop road. Then I could walk it pretty fast.'
      'Walk, through the woods?' Antioni asked, shocked. 'But these are wild places; there are no paths, you will be lost. The last Italian wolf he push, as you say, up the olives many years ago, but the pedlars on the road, the farmers, still they speak of the strange noises in the night. My men return from the vineyards soon, they will drive you.'
      Virgil shook his head. 'A few woodland noises won't bother me. And as long as I can see the stars I'll know which way I'm going; it's a little trick I learned in astro-navigation class.'
      'As you wish,' Antioni replied, unconvinced. 'But remember, you must return, next week when my Francesca is here.' He lowered his voice confidentially. 'She is a good girl, but with no mother to show her the way, it is difficult. I buy the beautiful clothes, the jewels, but she will not wear them; in her heart is only her university, her books. When I say Francesca, it is time you find yourself the young man, she say padre mio, what use are such things?' He raised his hands in despair. 'What kind of talk is that? But you must meet her.'
      'Okay,' promised Virgil, who could picture Francesca only too clearly, 'but we've got a full schedule next week. Could be difficult to get away.' He started down the villa's steps, but Antioni called after him.
      'I forget, the day after tomorrow I give the dinner; my friends from the village will be here. You, your brother and his lady, you will be my guests of honour?'
      'Sure,' Virgil called back. 'And thanks. The honour'll be all ours.' He waved. 'Addio.'
      'Arrivederci,' Antioni called.
      Under the trees the shadows welled up, and Virgil hesitated, wondering if he should have waited for Antioni's men after all. Then as his eyes grew used to the darkness he saw that between the stands of pine and olive moonlight slanted down to provide a pathway, and he followed it, working his way from one silver-lit clearing to the next. He began to enjoy his walk, and started to whistle. Tall grave cypresses stood interposed between the olives and stunted pines like the columns of a roofless Roman temple; in the moonlight and with the warmth of the vino Antioni spreading from his stomach it was easy to imagine a dryad in the curves of every pine-bole, and he wondered idly what became of old gods when their worshippers had no more use for them. Did they simply fade away, dispersing with the perfumed smoke from the last sacrificial brazier, or were they still here, whispering among the cypresses on this soft and silver night, waiting for music to call them to some ancient rite? Only Music, he decided, had the power to encompass such a night, but what music would be fit for two-thousand-year-old gods he couldn't imagine.
      He stopped whistling, hearing an answering trill. There was a second's silence, then the song of a nightingale burst from a nearby pine: the notes of Pan, bubbling up from the tiny pipes of the bird's throat like a spring. He listened transfixed as the sound rose and cascaded, its individual droplets breaking and rejoining in a gradual diminuendo as their originator tree-hopped its way off into the wood, serenading the night.
      He walked on, preoccupied, the outline of a melody taking shape in his head. Humming a few trial bars he passed a square stone standing isolated in a clearing, and realised that the ruined Roman villa must be near. Beyond the stone the trees crowded in close and dark, and as he walked into the shadows he thought of the darker side of the myth, the Roman underworld with its cold river of forgetfulness and its avaricious ferryman, and the embryo tune shifted from a major to a minor key. The mild night seemed suddenly cooler and he lengthened his stride, then put one foot down and found empty space. He struggled to regain his balance but there was no solid ground, just yielding leaves and branches, and he fell, rolling in a bruising sprawl down a seemingly endless ramp of earth to strike his head on a hard object at the bottom.
      Some time later he opened his eyes onto total darkness and sat up, dizzy. His right hand and arm to the elbow were numb with cold; he touched his fingers to his face and found them soaking wet. He searched his mind for any explanation of where he was or what he was doing there, but his memory refused to co-operate, and a sharp shake of his head brought only a crippling wave of nausea. Automatically his hand went to his watch; he pressed a button and a cold grey light sprang up to illuminate the scene around him.
      At his side the edge of a body of black water lapped gently on the mud, its surface stretching off to disappear in darkness. From the other side of a narrow strip of shore a wall of stone blocks joined with perfect precision arched overhead, rising into the gloom to form the unseen ceiling of a high vaulted cavern. Behind him one of a pile of fallen blocks bore a smear of blood, and he wondered hazily whether someone had been hurt. A short distance away the rotten hulk of a wooden rowing boat was lying on the mud, and with no clear idea of what he was doing he staggered to his feet and started towards it. Something sticky was running down into his eye, and in the failing light of the telecom's emergencies-only battery the cavern was spiralling at an accelerating speed, like a fairground viewed from a carousel. He reached the boat and looked down: gaping back up at him from beneath two empty eye-sockets was a wide-open, bony jaw. An almost identical picture projected itself onto his mind and he backed off in horror, colliding with a solid, irregular shape. He turned. Towering over him a figure in a helmet that might have been made from the darkness itself raised its heavy staff in the final upswing for a strike, while at his own eye level a giant dog with three sets of slavering jaws, one for each head, crouched at its master's feet.
      Shocked, half-conscious and confused, he ran. The telecom's glow flickered out, but ahead a disc of moonlight marked the foot of the shaft that had been his entrance. With an agility that would have surprised him had he been in a fit state to note it he scrambled to the surface and knelt, breathing hard, staring back down into the hole. From the ground beneath him a shudder rose, swelling into a groan and then a howl that filled the surrounding woods: a distillation of all misery, all suffering and despair. Swaying back to his feet he set off again at an unaccustomed speed, stumbling through the undergrowth with as little care for the slap of the olive leaves in his face as for direction. At the wood's edge the trees thinned out suddenly, too quickly for any action to avoid the ditch that marked their boundary, and he fell for a second time, landing in a damp patch of weeds. He put a hand to his head, rolled over, then what light there was at the bottom of the ditch went out.

      'We're wasting our time.' Alan drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. 'Let's try the villa again; I'll bet he's back there by now, probably relaxing over a drink while we chase our tails all around these forest roads.' He frowned. 'And he can't even be bothered to answer his telecom. He's sure going to get a piece of my mind when we catch up with him.'
      'Over there, Alan!' The car's headlights made a sudden loop across the road as it swerved, then returned sharply to face front, and it slowed to a crawl as Alan detached Tin-Tin's hand from the wheel.
      'Don't do that! It only needs one of us to drive. Hey, where're you going?' He stamped on the brakes as Tin-Tin opened the door, then pulled the car round with another shout of protest as she crossed the road and started precariously down the steep bank of the ditch on the other side. The circling headlight beams picked out a muddy figure at the bottom, and he stopped the car with its undershield jutting over the brink and jumped out.
      'Alan..' The figure struggled feebly to sit up. 'The dead guy from Reno, he's down there in a boat. Guess he didn't have a coin.. the ferryman wouldn't row him over. I couldn't help him, Alan. I've only got traveller's cheques.'
      'He's drunk.' Alan scowled from the top of the bank. 'It's disgusting. He and that Antioni guy must've been soaking it up all afternoon, and now he's come reeling back and fallen in the ditch. I think we should leave him there for the night, it might teach him a lesson.'
      'Don't be silly, Alan.' At the bottom of the ditch Tin-Tin knelt down. 'And you'd better come down, I can't pull him out of here on my own.'
      As Alan slithered down the bank Virgil grabbed Tin-Tin's hand urgently. 'Promise you'll give me some money to get over the river, I don't want to stay back there.. with him. And think of me. If I know you all think of me sometimes it'll make it easier. Goodbye, Tin-Tin.' He swallowed. 'Gee, I feel sick.'
      'He could be delirious,' Tin-Tin suggested worriedly. 'He's hurt, his head's bleeding.'
      'It's a scratch,' Alan said, impressed nonetheless. 'Okay. He doesn't deserve it, but I guess we'd better go for help.'
      'But he needs a doctor, Alan. We've got to get him to the car.'
      'How?' Alan asked reasonably, looking at the steep sides of the ditch. 'Do you know how much a grown man weighs? I do. I'm not going to risk giving myself a..'
      'Of course I don't know how much he weighs.' Tin-Tin stood and drew herself up to face Alan's chin. 'And I don't care. If you don't do something, Alan Tracy, I'll never speak to you again.'
      Alan opened his mouth to protest, but the sound that followed was midway between a bray and a croak. Up on the road a pair of close-set headlamps swung around the bend, followed by the high narrow body of a tractor. In its trailer four large farm workers sat on a pile of vine-prunings, and bringing up the rear a small ancient man wobbled along on a gigantic Japanese motorcycle. With another squawk of excitement the tractor pulled over, and Alan scrambled up the bank to meet it. 'Parli inglese?' he asked hopefully as the driver jumped down. 'There's been an, er, accident. We could use some help.'
      'Help, si.' The driver nodded energetically. 'Giuseppe send.' He turned to the men on the trailer. 'Andiamo!'
      'Thanks,' Alan told him, trying unsuccessfully to help as Virgil was bundled up the bank and dumped without ceremony among the vine leaves. 'We want to go back to the Villa Creighton-Ward. And we need a doctor. Dottore.'
      'Si. Il Dottore.' The driver pointed to the motorcycle rider, who raised his visor to smile a toothless smile.
      'He's rather old,' Tin-Tin whispered, taking Alan's arm nervously. 'Do you suppose he can be a good doctor?'
      'If he's as old as he looks he must be the best there is,' Alan replied as the tractor started forward and Il Dottore hastily kicked his huge mount up into swaying equilibrium, like a mahout coaxing an elephant to its feet. 'I just hope he's discreet. You realise if this gets around we're going to be the laughing-stock of the village.' He slammed the door as they got into the car.
      'I suppose it's partly our fault,' Tin-Tin said. 'After all, if we'd got back earlier we might have found him before anything happened. If only we hadn't spent so long driving home on all those back roads, and just because you thought someone was following us.'
      'I didn't think,' Alan answered crossly, 'someone was. Just because it turns out they've rebuilt half of San Giuliano since our charts were made doesn't mean the treasure isn't still there, and we might not be the only ones looking for it. Anyway, we lost him.' He gunned the engine. 'But you're right: I'll have to let Dad know what's happened, and I suppose it'll be me who gets the blame. I thought the idea of Virgil coming out here was that we're supposed to need looking after, but it seems to me like it's shaping up to be the other way around.' He drew down his brows. 'I just hope he doesn't keep rambling on about that ferryman stuff all the way back to the villa, or that those guys don't speak English. I've never been so embarrassed in all my life.'
      The yellow car rolled off in pursuit of the disappearing motorcycle, and as the little cavalcade wound its way around the bend a small two-door saloon, driven without lights, slipped out from the darkness underneath the trees and followed it down the moon-shadowed road.

On to FOUR: WATER MUSIC.