Deep and Silent Waters

Carmen nodded. ‘Come on, then. If we walk round the wall we won’t get in their way.’

Skirting the busy film crew, Laura followed her until the sounds faded and they were in the part of the house kept exclusively for the family.

Stopping at a door at the far end of the great hall, Carmen tapped and waited. ‘These rooms are out of bounds to everyone who isn’t on a special list.’

‘Who is on it?’

‘Sebastian, you, Valerie, Sidney, the heads of the production team. It’s essential that Sebastian has a room he can use during the day as well as at night, so that he can talk to us quietly in private. But the house is crammed with antiques and the insurance is astronomical. If anything was damaged or stolen we’d be out of a job, I should think.’

The door opened and she stopped talking, her face glowing with excitement as she smiled at the man who stood facing them. ‘Oh … I hope we didn’t interrupt you. This is Laura Erskine – she’s just arrived from London. Could she see the room you’ve given her?’ Carmen made a confused introduction. ‘Count Niccolo d’Angeli … Laura Erskine.’

‘Hallo, Nico,’ she said, holding out her hand with the same sense of pleasure she had felt the first time they met.

‘Oh, you know each other already, then,’ Carmen said, watching them with the same curiosity she showed every time Sebastian’s name came up. Film companies were always hotbeds of gossip.

Laura had forgotten how tall Nico was: she had to tilt her head a little to meet his eyes. There was something so familiar about his long face, olive skin, dark hair and eyes – seeing him again, after this long gap, made his likeness to Sebastian seem stronger, irrefutable.

He took her hand and kissed it lingeringly. ‘Ciao, welcome back, Laura, I’ve been waiting impatiently for you.’ He gave Carmen a smiling nod, ‘Grazie, Carmen,’ then drew Laura through the doorway, closing the door on the other girl, who looked distinctly glum at being excluded. She obviously fancied him – and who wouldn’t? thought Laura.

He asked, ‘Did you have a good flight? What was the weather like in London? When do you have to start work on the film?’

‘The flight was trouble-free and it was much warmer in London. I don’t start work here until tomorrow.’ She had the impression that he barely listened to her polite replies.

Eagerly he asked, ‘Then will you have time to sit for me today? I’ll have to push ahead at once, and if I could just take some photos of you to begin with? It wouldn’t take long.’

They were moving through one tapestried room after another. Laura gaped at the ornate furniture, the high, painted ceilings, the gilt on ormolu clocks glittering under the crystal blaze of chandeliers, highly polished walnut and satinwood tables and chairs, rich brocade sofas, paintings of landscapes, Venetian scenes, portraits of the family.

She recognised Niccolo in some paintings and in the fading tapestries; that face of his, which looked as if it came from another period, like the horsemen in those sixteenth-century landscapes with their frozen stares, their sense of life stilled, men going somewhere, busy with killing animals, riding home, or going off to war. He did not belong to today, he came from the past.

The snow blowing outside the windows made strange reflections on ceilings and mirrors. The rooms had the unreal beauty of a troubled dream she had had. Laura felt she was being led through a maze to a place she had known in another life.

‘This is your room,’ he said, opening a door and standing back to watch her face.

Her first impression was that she had wandered into a hall of mirrors: they hung all around the room on the rich green-silk-covered walls, with sensual, blatantly erotic paintings of naked women hung between them. The mirrors were of all sizes, gold-framed, some ornate, some a plain gilded wood; they reflected the snowy light from the high windows, and, as she and Nico walked right into the room, reflected them, too, back and forth, like an army of shadows flowing through the chamber.

A huge four-poster bed, with baroque carving on the oak columns supporting the canopy, dominated the room, the green-silk hangings around it drawn back to show the matching coverlet. The canopy had a pleated edging of dark green silk but its main fabric was delicate white lace that cast a dappled light over the coverlet.

‘That’s unusual. I’ve never seen a lace canopy over a four-poster bed.’

Nico gave her an odd look. ‘Once there was a mirror on the ceiling above the bed.’

Laura looked startled, then giggled. She studied the sumptuous bed and imagined what that mirror had once reflected – scenes like those depicted on the ceiling above, where gilt cartouches held pictures of gods and goddesses making love, a bearded Jupiter with dark, slanting eyes kneeling between the thighs of a full-breasted Juno.

‘Really? Well, I’m glad you had it taken down before I moved in. It would have made me very self-conscious.’

‘Oh, it came down years ago.’ His face had a sombre shadow across it. ‘I hope the room’s warm enough now. It was like a refrigerator a couple of days ago, but we’ve had a fire going since this morning and electric heaters, too.’

She walked over to the huge, carved white stone hearth in which a great pile of logs burned spitting resin and giving off a scent of pine. Holding out her cold hands, she sighed with pleasure as warmth invaded her for the first time since she had arrived. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Lovely to have a real fire, on a day like this. You’re very thoughtful.’

‘I wish I was a painter, to capture the firelight on your skin,’ Nico said. ‘It makes your skin almost transparent. I can see the blood moving through your veins.’ He walked over to a white, serpentine-fronted, dressing table in a corner of the room, the thin, elegant legs gilded, ending in tiny bird-like feet. He picked up a little pile of clothes that lay on it and came back to Laura. ‘Could you put these on now so that I can take a roll of film of you?’

Laura looked at the pale cream straw hat, a wreath of pink and yellow flowers around the base of the crown, the calf-length boots made of bronze leather, which had a fringe around the top, the thin gauze tunic.

‘That looks transparent!’

‘I’ve seen photos of you wearing less.’

She couldn’t deny it. ‘That was years ago, when I was a model.’