English Rose for the Sicilian Doc. Annie Claydon
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MATTEO DROVE ALONG the dusty, snaking road. He’d told himself that however interested he was in seeing the site, he wouldn’t go, but all the same he’d asked his grandfather to recount the old stories about the area when he’d visited him at the weekend. And once he’d transcribed them into English, it seemed only right that he should give them to Rose.
He sent her a text and she replied almost immediately. If he’d like to come to the site on Friday evening, she’d show him around.
He could see signs of activity up ahead of him, people taking advantage of the cool of the evening to work. Matteo turned off the road and parked his car next to the others that were lined up along the perimeter of the site.
She walked towards him as he got out of his car. Fair hair tied up in a messy ponytail at the back of her head, her arms bare, a thin white top with blue embroidery over a faded pair of denim shorts. Like the rest of the people working here, her feet were protected from the rocky terrain by battered work boots.
‘Hello. You made it, then.’
There had never been any real question about that. And now she was standing beside him he realised that he would have driven over to the other side of the island just for this one glimpse of her. Matteo wondered briefly whether her choice to wear blue was for his benefit, and decided that he had no right to hope that it was.
‘Yes, I made it.’
They stood for a moment smiling at each other and then Rose turned suddenly. ‘Come and see what we’ve been doing.’
She led the way over to a group of prefabricated buildings. Inside, long trestles held boxes of material, waiting to be sorted and cleaned.
‘I brought some notes from my grandfather.’ He felt suddenly unsure of himself. ‘I’m not sure they’ll be any use to you. They’re just old stories and some of them are pretty far-fetched.’
‘That’s just the kind of thing we’re interested in. Old stories are often embellished as they’re handed down but they usually contain a kernel of truth.’
‘I’m not sure about these...’ Matteo reached into his pocket, producing the written sheets and handing them over to her, and Rose scanned them.
‘Bandits...’ She nodded. ‘We’ve heard that one. But we haven’t heard this... A sorceress?’
‘Yeah. I doubt that one’s got any basis of truth in it.’ Matteo shifted uncomfortably. The stories meant a lot to his grandfather, but he liked to think that his feet were more firmly planted in the modern world.
‘You never know. It’s good to keep an open mind. May I put these into our site archive?’ She put the paper down on the worktop and walked over to a cabinet, consulting the labels on the plastic boxes stacked inside.
‘Of course. If they’re of any interest.’
She turned, grinning. ‘Everything’s of interest. We just have to find out how it all fits together. About what date would the bandits be?’
Matteo chuckled. ‘A long time ago, and they’re all long gone. My grandfather’s nearly eighty, and it was when his father was a boy.’
‘So...’ She turned. ‘Somewhere around nineteen ten. Twenty...?’
‘About that.’
‘Will you write that down, please, on the paper?’ She turned back to the boxes, running her finger along the rows, and found the one she wanted, pulling it out.
Matteo did as she asked, wondering what this was all about. Then she opened the box. ‘We reckon that this probably dates from around that time.’
In a plastic bag lay a bullet. Matteo stared at it open-mouthed. ‘You’re kidding...’
She grinned. ‘No, we found it in one of the test pits. We often find things which are more modern when we dig down to get to the older strata. You’d be surprised how many old plastic bags get turned up.’
Matteo picked up the bullet, looking at it carefully, the sudden thrill of discovery throbbing through his veins. ‘It could be from a hunting rifle...’
‘Could be. We’ve sent photos off to a forensic ballistics expert, and we should know a bit more soon. I’d have thought it would be more likely to be buckshot if it was for hunting, though. There were no human or animal remains there, so maybe target practice?’
‘You’re hoping target practice.’ The idea of anything else made Matteo shiver.
‘Yes, hoping.’ She smiled, leaning towards him, obviously catching his mood. ‘Careful. We’ll have you hooked if you don’t watch out.’
‘You might have warned me sooner. I’m already hooked.’ In more ways than one, when he thought about it.
‘Ah. Well, since the damage is already done, it can’t do any harm to show you a bit more.’ Rose gave him a bright smile, her obvious enthusiasm for her work bubbling deliciously. Putting the bullet away and picking up the sheets of paper, she led him away from the finds to a large computer screen in the corner of the room.
‘I thought this might be of interest to you. Where your skills and mine meet.’
The thought of her off-duty skills meeting his, and testing them to their limit, sent a cool shiver down his spine. Matteo reminded himself that he needed to get a grip. That clearly wasn’t what she was talking about.
She opened directories, finding the file she wanted, and an image came up on the screen. ‘This is the geophysical survey.’
Matteo sat down next to her, leaning forward to study it carefully. ‘This is ground-penetrating radar?’
‘Yes, that’s right. We’re using a combination of GPR and electromagnetic survey techniques.’ She leaned back in her seat. ‘This is a pretty easy one. What do you reckon?’
‘I’d say...well, that line looks like an external wall of some sort, and those are internal walls?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Most people don’t see it straight away.’
‘And this is...what, two doorways?’ Matteo indicated the breaks in the pattern.
‘Maybe. I’m inclined to think a doorway and a window. We’ll see when we excavate.’ She pulled up the directory and opened another file. ‘We interpret the survey data and map out the site using computer aided design software. These green lines here...’ Her hand flew to her mouth.
Matteo grinned at her. ‘It’s okay. You can mention green in my presence. I can take it.’
She laughed, changed the settings on the image, and it reformed on the screen, different hatching styles replacing the difficult-to-read colour coding.
‘That’s better. So these single lines are...?’
‘It’s what we’ve gleaned so far from the surveys. The cross-hatching is what we’ve extrapolated from that.’
‘Guessed, you mean?’ he teased.
She gave him a look of mock horror. ‘It’s in keeping with what we know about this type of building. Call it an educated guess.’
‘Right. And this is the atrium?’ When he leaned in, he caught her scent. She smelled gorgeous, like the scent of silk against skin.
‘Yes, that’s right. It has a mosaic floor and usually an indoor pool right at the centre, below the open part of the roof.’
‘Is that another guess?’
‘No! We’ve dug a few test pits there, and there is evidence of a mosaic floor. We’re hoping that it’s in good condition and the bits we’ve seen aren’t just fragments. Would you like to come and see?’
When they walked out into the evening sunshine, Rose tipped her head up slightly, as if welcoming the cool caress