Page 18 of The Beloved Escapade

Then he climbed back into the saddle and rode down the avenue at a walk, spine straight, like a civilized man, while everything inside him howled.

The village inn was called The Rusty Anchor. It was low-beamed and smoke-dark and it smelled of cider and river mud, and the landlord, a round, kind, curious man named Puddy, gave Lorenzo the room over the kitchen, which was warm, and a supper of mutton stew, which was gray.

Lorenzo ate it at a corner table and built his campaign against Messrs. Harding and Pole of Lincoln’s Inn, stone by miserable stone, while he ate the flavorless English food that made him wish he was home eating real food.

He would ride for London at first light. Three days. He would go to their chambers in person, because a letter could sit in a basket for a quarter of a year, but Lorenzo di Bianchi in an outer office could not be filed.

He would be courteous. He would be patient. He winced even as he formed the word. He would try to be patient. He would offer money for their time. He had money. The partnership selling art with Sebastian Markham had seen to that.

For the first time in four generations, a di Bianchi could put gold behind the family madness. And if courtesy and patience and gold all failed, he would sit in their office every day, in the same chair, until the thorough gentlemen understood that the best way to be rid of him was to allow him entry to Grey House.

It was a plan built entirely of waiting and painful patience, which was not material he had never learned to work in.

He went up early to the warm room and lay on a bed built for a smaller nation, with the satchel beneath his pillow, and listened to the river.

One could hear it even here. Under the settling of the inn, under the last voices in the taproom below, a vast, endless, sliding sound, going down to the sea as it had gone down every night for thousands of years.

Matteo had lain within reach of this sound. Somewhere. Some night. Thinking in a language not his own, holding a secret he had sworn to keep beyond death, listening to this same water.

Had he thought of Florence? Of the light on the workshop wall at evening, of his brothers quarreling over their work? Had he lain in the dark of this country and longed for home, as Lorenzo, who could go home whenever he chose, longed for it now?

He was close. Closer than any di Bianchi had been in three centuries. Tomorrow he would begin the long, dull siege of London, and however many quarters it consumed, he would not go away.

The river went on, and he slept, badly, with his hand on the satchel.

He woke before six and dressed in yesterday’s dust, brushing it as well as he could manage, and carried his saddlebags down the narrow stair, with the opening address to the solicitors already arranging itself in his head: respectful, brief, no gestures, and stopped, three steps from the bottom.

The taproom was full.

Full, at this hour.

A dozen villagers at least, crowded onto the settles with their heads together, and Puddy behind his counter in the middle of them like a hen over a large brood, and the noise of it, the eager, delighted, scandalized hum of a little place to which something has finally happened.

Lorenzo came down the last steps. Faces turned to him and away.

“Signor Puddy.” He set the saddlebags on the counter, and dread walked up his spine with cold feet, because in his experience, news that gathered crowds was never kind. “What has happened? Has someone died?”

“Died!” Puddy looked at him with round eyes. “Bless you, no, sir. T’other thing altogether.” He leaned across the counter, and lowered his voice in the manner of a man sharing a wonder. “There’s an owner come to Grey House.”

The room went strange around the edges, and Lorenzo thought the sheer relief might make him pass out.

“I beg your pardon,” Lorenzo said carefully, wanting to be sure he had understood.

“Come up yesterday evening, in a chaise, boxes and trunks all over ’un. Sam Priddle’s boy helped carry in and got sixpence.” A murmur ran the settles, as if the sixpence had been examined by the parish and declared genuine. “Taken up residence, proper residence, servants to be hired and all. First soul to live in that great house in seven year.” Puddy shook his head at the wonder of a world that could produce such events on a Thursday. “Seven year empty, and now this. Nobody knows a thing more. Tom Wickers do say it’ll be some London gentleman. Widow Priddle do say it’ll be kin of the old captain, come home from the sea. I say we’ll know when we know.”

Lorenzo gripped the edge of the counter.

Yesterday evening. Yesterday evening, a chaise had rolled past this very window and up that avenue, and the shut door, the respectful, final, immovable door, had opened.

There was no stewardship this morning. There were no thorough gentlemen. There was an owner. An owner of flesh and blood, awakening this very moment under the roof, and an owner had a drawing room, and a drawing room could be called upon. Today. This morning. Within the hour, if God was merciful and the razor was sharp.

“Grazie Dio,” he said, aloud, with his whole heart, and the settles went quiet and looked at him. He did not care. He seized Puddy’s hand across the counter and shook it as though the man had personally arranged the entire matter, which from Puddy’s expression he was now half convinced he had. “Signor Puddy. My friend. I am not riding to London. I shall need hot water to bathe, and breakfast, whatever the kitchen has, everything the kitchen has. I have waited too long for this morning to arrive at it hungry.”

By ten o’clock, he stood once more on the steps of Grey House, scraped raw by his razor, brushed, pressed, and holding his card as if it were a relic of the True Cross.

The door opened before his knuckles reached the knocker. The same gray-whiskered man, but transformed. There was a smudge of dust on his dark sleeve. Behind him, the hall rang with life. Trunks on the marble. A maid hurrying past with an armful of linen. From somewhere deep in the house, the shriek of shutters that had not moved in seven years being made to move. The whole great building sounded like a sleeper being shaken awake, and complaining, and waking all the same.

The whiskered man read the card this time.