by Mark Mills
She reached out and gingerly took his hand.
Fausto slid a book across the table—the book on Renaissance sculpture that Adam had lost in the pine park in Viareggio.
Adam fingered the tome, processing the information. "That was you?"
Fausto nodded.
"You followed me there?"
Fausto nodded.
Adam's eyes remained locked on Fausto's.
"I'm sorry, Adam. Really."
"Really?"
"Really." "Okay."
"Good," said Fausto with a beaming smile. "That's very good."
Their bags were collected from a small hotel near Purley station. They had taken rooms there, not knowing how things would go. This displayed "an admirable lack of presumption" according to Adam's father, who had started to thaw a little. Fausto was assigned Harry's room, Antonella the guest bedroom at the far end of the corridor.
Adam took them off to the Stag and Hounds for a drink before dinner. Fausto had never seen darts played before and muscled in on a game, shamelessly filching cigarettes from his new and slightly bewildered friends.
It was the first time Adam had been alone with Antonella since her arrival, and it felt good.
"Hello," he said.
She smiled and stroked his thigh beneath the table. "How are you feeling?"
"Numb. Relieved."
"Thanks for the present."
"The present?"
"The rock in my kitchen."
"Sorry, I didn't have time to wrap it."
She laughed.
He glanced over at Fausto. "Was Signora Fanelli involved?"
"Signora Fanelli?"
"I followed Fausto after he left your place. He went straight to see her at the pensione."
"So?"
"Well . . . they're close. I saw them kiss."
"I think that is a new thing, after you arrived. Nonna says they used to be very close, but there was some problem. She is very happy about it."
"I'm sure she is."
"Why are you smiling?"
"Nothing."
Given what he now knew about Signora Docci's modus operandi, it wasn't so surprising that she'd even found time for a bit of matchmaking along the way. There were any number of pensioni in San Casciano she could have placed Adam in.
It was warm enough to have dinner on the terrace. His mother excelled herself in the kitchen; his father cracked open a couple of bottles of vintage claret he'd been saving for Adam's graduation. They raised a toast to Harry, and when they speculated about some of the scrapes he must surely have got himself into by now, it was good to hear the sound of his father's laughter again.
Inevitably, some hours later, Adam found himself tiptoeing down the corridor toward the guest bedroom. Antonella was waiting for him, already naked beneath the sheets. The need for silence only heightened the intensity of their lovemaking. When it was over and they were lying tangled in each other, he cried, overwhelmed. Antonella licked away his tears and held him.
Later, out of the darkness beside him, she said, "My grandmother thinks she knows who Flora's lover was."
"Huh?" he grunted, from a delicious half-sleep.
She repeated herself.
Now he was awake. "Who?"
"She wouldn't tell me. She will only tell you, in person—-faccia a faccia."
"Does she ever stop?"
"Stop?"
"Playing games."
He tried to summon up anger at this latest piece of manipulation, but it was a struggle. Signora Docci might think that responsibility for her behavior stopped with her; he wasn't so sure. He had reassessed many things over the past week, but he hadn't quite been able to shake the conviction that someone else had been controlling matters all along.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his parents both in their dressing gowns in the kitchen. His father was seated at the table with Fausto; his mother was frying bacon at the stove.
Adam shuffled up to her in his pajamas and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Morning."
"Is Antonella awake?"
"I don't know. I didn't look in on her."
She slipped him a knowing look. "Well, why don't you take her up a cup of tea anyway?"
"Good idea."
He filled the kettle, glancing over at the table as he did so. Fausto was explaining something to his father in rapid-fire Italian while shifting pots of jam, cutlery and other objects around in some kind of demonstration.
His mother leaned close to him and whispered, "We think it's the Battle of Hastings."
IT HAD RAINED IN HIS ABSENCE, ENOUGH TO SWELL THE grapes on the vines and raise hopes of an acceptable harvest. There was even a faint tinge of green to the scorched pasture below the grotto, although this was about the only noticeable change in the memorial garden.
Adam opened the book Signora Docci had given him. It was his for the keeping, a gift: a leather-bound edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, old and rather precious, he suspected. She had made him promise not to read the dedication on the flyleaf before reaching the garden.
It was short and very touching, and tucked into the same page was a small piece of paper on which she had written:
He found the line in the text and smiled. She intended to make him work for the answer.
It hadn't come to him by the time he reached the glade of Hyacinth. Standing before the statue of Apollo, he opened the book again at the relevant passage. It dealt with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the lone survivors of the great flood, whose raft grounded itself on Mount Parnassus. The line itself read:
Parnassus is its name, whose twin-peaked rise
Mounts thro' clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
He looked up at Apollo perched atop Parnassus, his mountain home—only it wasn't Mount Parnassus, because it rose to a lone and very pointed peak. It was unlike Federico Docci to deviate from Ovid without a reason; his attention to detail was too meticulous.
He worked his way through the other options—Mount Olympus, Mount Helicon—but again he turned up a blank. That's when he realized he was coming at it all wrong.
He wasn't looking at Apollo; he was looking at Flora's lover in the guise of Apollo. Which meant that he wasn't looking at Mount Parnassus; he was looking at, well, just a mountain, one that climbed to a high, sharp peak.
A tall mountain.
"Montalto," he said quietly.
It was a direct translation.
Fulvio Montalto, the young architect of Villa Docci. No wonder he had disappeared from the historical record. Federico Docci had made sure of that.
The circle was complete. And so was Flora. This final revelation, this last piece of the puzzle, somehow rounded her off, made her whole. Because it allowed her love to live again. Stopping to gaze up at her as he left the garden, he saw it burning in her eyes, just as Fulvio's love for her still smoldered in the effortless beauty of the villa he had designed for her.
No doubt there was more of their story yet to be uncovered, maybe even a record of Fulvio's death buried away in some dusty archive. But her job was done. She had handed him the baton. It was up to him what he did with it now.
Threading his way back up the overgrown path to the villa, he cast his thoughts back to that sunstruck May day in Cambridge— where it had all begun—and asked himself whether he would have done anything differently, knowing what he now did.
It was not a question easily answered.
He barely recognized himself in the carefree young man cycling along the towpath beside the river, bucking over the ruts, the bottle of wine dancing around in the bike basket.
Try as he might, he couldn't penetrate the workings of that stranger's mind, let alone say with any certainty how he would have dealt with the news that murder lay in wait for him, just around the corner.
READERS GUIDE
The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills
Did you find the map at the beginning of the novel helpful? If so, would you have preferred a map of I
taly as well? Or, perhaps, sketches of the statues and the mythological scenarios the book describes?
Do you think Harry's character exists only for comic relief, or does he offer some insight and depth to the storyline of a novel? Discuss how other minor characters—such as Maria the maid or Adam's innkeeper in the city—serve as foils for the main characters.
What mystery story devices—from foreshadowing to red herrings—does Mills employ, and in what instances, to sustain suspense?
Adam and Antonella first take a tour of the garden in Chapter 8. Mills describes the temple that they encounter: "The building was dedicated to Echo, the unfortunate nymph who fell hard forNarcissus. He, too preoccupied with his own beauty, spurned her attentions, whereupon Echo, heartbroken, faded away until only her voice remained." This scenario seems to metaphorically describe Adam and Antonella's relationship at the end of the novel: Adam too preoccupied with solving the mystery, and she heartbroken and speechless with only a letter in hand. In what ways does the author utilize this paralleling with his other characters and mythological creatures? Do you think it's necessary to come to The Savage Garden with a thorough knowledge of Roman mythology and having read classic texts such as Dante's The Divine Comedy and Machiavelli's Il Principe? Why or why not?
Discuss what elements of The Savage Garden carry echoes of William Shakespeare's writing and the themes, language and characters of his plays. Does the novel read almost like a play script, with its extensive use of dialogue?
An undercurrent of licentious sexual behavior runs throughout the novel. Discuss how the biblical garden as metaphor permeates the book.
History, specifically the history of World War II and other major battles, has a strong presence throughout the novel. Discuss how including these conflicts affects the novel as a whole. What was the state of the country, culture and people of Italy in 1958, still only recently removed from the destructive end of World War II? Could the author have set The Savage Garden in another time period without losing the effect and world he creates? Writing from a distance of nearly fifty years, how does Mills establish a sense of verisimilitude that his characters are operating and interacting in a specific historical era?
Toward the end of Francesca's letter to Adam she writes, "I meant what I said to you just before we sat down to dinner at the party. I asked you then to remember my words. Do you? I hope so, because they are as true as any I have ever spoken." What exactly were Francesca's words?
The author touches upon the theme of closure numerous times throughout the novel—from a three-hundred-year-old murder to the death of Emilio to Adam's father's infidelity. How important is closure within the frame of the book's world? Were you satisfied with the novel's ending? Why or why not?
Discuss Professor Leonard's possible various motivations for sending Adam to Italy, besides those he openly states. Do you feel the professor knows he's sending Adam into what amounts to a viper's nest? Does the professor see Adam as a surrogate son?
Do you feel there is a deeper meaning behind the revelation that Emilio is Professor Leonard's son? Or do you think perhaps the author has included this as simply another issue for the characters to overcome?
About the Author
Mark Mills is a screenwriter whose first novel, Amagansett, was published in a dozen countries and received the British Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Memorial Dagger Award. A graduate of Cambridge, he lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.
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