The Light in the Ruins Read Free

necropolis. That would imply it’s much, much bigger than it is. And there’s not a lot there now. The artifacts that had value—the urns and the sarcophagi and the larger vases—all went to the museum in Arezzo.”
    “Which means they’re probably in Berlin by now,” Francesca murmured, but she was staring out the window as she spoke and so Cristina did not believe that Decher had heard her.
    “Fine,” the colonel said. “Show us whatever remains. Do we drive or walk?”
    “We can walk,” Cristina told him. Then she said to her sister-in-law, “I’ll get some candles and take the gentlemen there. That way, you can stay with the children. If Father returns, I’m sure he’ll want to join us.” She glanced out toward the automobile, where the young driver was studying a map. For the first time she really looked at the private. He was German and might have been as young as she was. “Would your driver like to wait inside while we’re gone?” she asked Lorenzetti, but before he could respond, Decher said, “He’ll remain at his post.” And then the colonel pivoted smartly on his heels and started outside. Lorenzetti rolled his eyes and shrugged, a small apology of sorts, and motioned for Cristina to go first, as if they were entering a ballroom for a dance. Behind them, Cristina heard her sister-in-law snort.

    They passed the statues beside the loggia and in the garden, Venus and the chimera, and then continued out toward the fields. The air was dry and the grass felt like twine as it brushed overCristina’s toes, and she found herself gazing at the high black boots that the two officers were wearing. She had slipped into her sandals before they had left the villa, because eventually they would have to cross a thin path carved into rock to reach the tombs. The path was no more than sixty meters long—two millennia earlier, it had been far more extensive—but there were sharp points on the tufa stone and it wasn’t smart to walk there in bare feet. Still, Cristina could not imagine wearing high leather riding boots in the heat of the afternoon the way soldiers were expected to. She had a pair a bit like them, but this time of year she wore them only at the very beginning or the very end of the day, when she was placing a saddle on her beloved Arabella and going for a ride.
    Overhead they heard birds. They smelled jasmine and oleander. Neither Decher nor Lorenzetti said a word as they walked, and she stifled her own need to speak, including her interest in why they wanted to see her estate’s underground ruins. They passed the long rows of Sangiovese grape arbors and then descended a steep slope, and Cristina cut ahead of them because the brush was growing thicker and higher and they were approaching a path they would have to navigate single-file. In a moment they would reach the Y. If they turned right, they would continue through a copse of cedar and beech and reach the small Rosati family cemetery, including the modest Roman temple her grandfather had built. If they veered left, it would feel to them as if they were sinking into the earth: the path would narrow as the ground around them rose up to their hips, then shoulders, then heads. The walls would turn from sod to stone, and it would seem as if they were walking inside a crag in a cliff. The sky would be reduced to a thin swath of blue, broken in parts by the branches of the trees that grew above them along the sides of this ancient channel. The stretch reminded her of the photos she had seen of the trenches from the earlier world war, minus the wooden planks on which the soldiers stood. And at the end they would reach the Etruscan tomb.
    Finally Lorenzetti broke the silence. “Have you heard from Marco lately?”
    She turned back to the major, surprised. “I didn’t know you knew my brother.”
    “I don’t. Well, I don’t know Marco. I know Vittore.”
    “How?”
    “From Florence, of course. Sometimes we work together.”
    She considered