Prelude To Enchantment

CHAPTER ONE

THE Palazzo Malatesta stood in all its crumbling magnificence overlooking the narrow waterway which was its main link with the rest of the city. Beyond this quiet backwater flowed the busy reaches of the Grand Canal where private and public craft alike provided an ever-changing parade of colour, and where every few yards some splendid remnant of Venice's turbulent history could be seen.

The palazzo itself retained a certain majesty that no amount of decay could entirely destroy. A patina of years had filmed its stone walls and cast a glazing of green across its gilded loggia and on the proudly raised head of the bronze griffin which guarded its entrance. Curled poles supported a stone landing stage in front of the palazzo beside which a motor launch gleamed incongruously.

To Sancha Forrest, leaning on the side of the craft in which she was travelling trailing a lazy hand in the cool water, the whole building exuded an air of timelessness that was in itself slightly unnerving. How could anyone live in such a place, following the day-to-day pursuits of twentieth-century Italy, when their surroundings so obviously belonged to the age when chivalry and violence so often walked hand in hand? In this quiet quarter of the city it was incredibly easy to visualise what the palazzo must have been like then when some noble family had filled its walls with life and vitality and put to full use its halls and apartments.

Sancha sighed and the faint sound that escaped her was sufficient to attract the attention of the young man who was lounging beside her in the stern of the motoscafo. He turned to look at her with twinkling eyes, noticing the rapt expression on her young face.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think?'

Sancha withdrew her hand from the water and rubbed it dry. ‘It's very imposing,’ she answered, allowing her gaze to move upward over the façade of the building. ‘Does Count Malatesta really live here?'

Tony Braithwaite grinned. ‘You find it hard to believe?'

‘Don't you?’ Sancha shook her head. ‘It's so big! Too big for one man, surely.'

Tony shrugged. ‘I expect one day the Count hopes to share the place with a wife and family of his own. Until then …'

Sancha wrinkled her nose. ‘He's not married?'

‘No. Not yet.'

‘Then how old is he?'

‘I'm not sure. Late thirties—early forties perhaps.'

‘I see.’ Sancha fingered the notebook in her hand. ‘Not young, then. Why hasn't he married before?'

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Now hold on, Sancha! These are the sort of questions you should wait and ask him. After all, that's your assignment. Mine is simply to take photographs.’ And as if to demonstrate this ability, Tony unfastened the protective shield over his camera, and standing up endeavoured to get a picture of the palazzo as the boatman brought their craft into the palazzo's landing stage.

Sancha got to her feet also as Tony examined his light meter, unable to suppress the tremor of anticipation that ran through her body. Now that they were actually here, alighting at the Palazzo Malatesta, all her earlier confidence fled away. This was her first real assignment and she only had this because Eleanor Fabrioli was ill and unable to take it herself.

She stumbled as she stepped on to the landing stage and Tony saved her from falling on the roughened stone surface and possibly laddering her tights. Her cheeks were flushed and her heart palpitated wildly, and Tony regarded her with amused tolerance.

‘For heaven's sake, Sancha, don't look so nervous! This is your big chance! Don't louse it up!'

Sancha nodded and straightened her skirt, smoothing the soft material over her hips. As she did so, she wondered whether Italian counts objected to the way modern girls wore such figure-revealing clothes. Maybe she should have put up her hair, she thought desperately. Tumbling about her shoulders in Scandinavian fair disorder, it made her look years younger than the twenty-two years she actually was. What would the Count be like? Would he be big and imposing, or small and dark and oily, like so many of the youths she had had to encounter during her six months in Venice? Not that he was any youth, of course. She hoped, too, that he would not be effeminate or effusive. Authors sometimes were; but he wasn't the first man to write an historical novel, and even if that novel had been acclaimed as a major investigation into life in thirteenth-, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy that didn't mean it was going to become a best-seller anywhere else than here. On the contrary, Sancha had found it rather difficult to read, but maybe that was because she had only been given the book at lunchtime the previous day with this assignment in mind and she had sat up half the night, almost propping open her eyelids with matchsticks, in an effort to understand it. But at two and three in the morning, the merits of Dante's Divine Comedy, written as it was at a time when he was fleeing from his political enemies, had gone over her head. In consequence this morning she wondered whether she had absorbed enough of the book to discuss it intelligently with its author.

Tony intimated to the boatman that they wanted him to wait and then put a hand to Sancha's elbow.

‘Well, honey, this is it,’ he remarked mockingly. ‘Are you ready? Are your pencils sharpened? Is your brain functioning as it should be?'

Sancha gave him a pained glance. ‘Oh, stop it, Tony,’ she exclaimed. ‘I'm nervous enough as it is, without you making a joke of it all.'

‘But there's nothing to be nervous about!’ replied her companion, as they passed under the arched entrance to a courtyard about which the walls of the palazzo stood in grim silence. Moss and weeds had invaded this courtyard where once mosaic tiling had shone with polished magnificence. A faint odour of decay was about them, and Sancha shivered.

‘How does one address a count?’ she asked suddenly, the thought invading her head with sharp insistence.

Tony shrugged. ‘Well, you can hardly address him by his full title every time you speak to him. I should imagine Count would do—or just signore, perhaps.'

Sancha looked at him. ‘You're so casual, aren't you? Doesn't it bother you that this man is the last in a long line of aristocrats?'

Tony's expression was cynical. ‘Oh, honey, don't kid yourself. This aristocrat wouldn't give us the time of day if he didn't have to! Look at this place! Does this look like the home of an aristocratic gentleman? It's falling apart!'

Sancha looked about her reluctantly. ‘Oh, not that, Tony,’ she exclaimed. ‘It needs money spent on it, I agree, but it's still very impressive.'

Tony shrugged. ‘You're a romantic, Sancha!’ he said, with some regret. ‘I just hope that romantic soul of yours isn't torn apart by the savagery of realism.'

Sancha tugged at a strand of silvery hair. ‘You sound bitter, Tony.'

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘And why not? I was like you once, many moons ago.'

‘You're not that old!’ she protested.

‘I can give you half a dozen years,’ commented Tony lightly. ‘And a few months is enough to destroy a dream.'

Sancha sighed, unwillingly aware that the shadow of the palazzo had in some way invaded their conversation almost without them being aware of it. Maybe a little of the violent past remained in this silent courtyard and objected to the brash indifference of contemporary youth. Maybe those grim gargoyles could still exercise their powers when subjected to the coldness of indifference. She shivered again, but for different reasons, and Tony broke the spell by stepping forward and tugging at an iron bell rope.

No sound penetrated those thick grey walls, and Sancha and her companion could not be certain the bell was still working. They waited a few moments, and then Tony tugged again, but still there was no sound from within.

Sancha's fingers played with the notebook in her hands. ‘Do you think anyone is at home?’ she asked doubtfully.

Tony made an impatient sound. ‘One doesn't arrange an interview of this sort and then go out,’ he observed dryly. ‘Wait a minute! I'll try the knocker. The bell doesn't appear to be working.'

The heavy iron knocker in the shape of a leather-studded hand fell heavily against the door echoing with a hollow sound in the quiet courtyard.

‘Eerie, isn't it?’ said Sancha, needing to keep verbal contact with Tony in an effort to dispel her own sense of unease.

Tony glanced at her. ‘If you think so,’ he said. ‘Personally. I'm getting pretty impatient. Do you realise we've been here fifteen minutes already?'

Sancha hesitated, and then said: ‘Listen! Is that someone coming?'

They both stood in silence for a moment and then they heard the distinct sound of a bolt being drawn back inside the heavy door and a moment later the door swung inwards. It didn't creak, and yet Sancha had the certain impression that she and Tony were like flies stepping into the spider's parlour. She thrust these thoughts aside impatiently. She was becoming fanciful, allowing the building to influence her almost without volition.

Behind the door a man was waiting, a man of middle years with a completely bald head and beetling black brows. Surely this could not be the Count, Sancha thought incredulously.

However, Tony had no such doubts. ‘We're from Parita magazine. The Count is expecting us,’ he said, handing the man the small square card signifying their identity.

The man, who was quite tall and whose chest muscles bulged beneath the polo-necked shirt he was wearing, glanced casually at the card before stepping aside and saying: ‘Please to come in, signore, signorina.'

Tony urged Sancha forward and with reluctance she preceded him into the palazzo. A gloomy dank atmosphere engulfed them and for a moment she wanted nothing so much as to escape from this assignment, but then she realised that she was behaving foolishly and as Tony pressed reassuring fingers against her arm she calmed down.

They were standing on a stone floor in what appeared to be a kind of entrance hall, a huge monolithic apartment which chilled them to the bone after the heat of an early summer day outside. It was an enormous room devoid of any kind of decoration apart from sculpted arches and columns now left to moulder and decay. No one could live in such a room, Sancha decided, and as though to confirm this decision the man, servant or otherwise, closed the door and led the way across to a flight of shallow marble steps leading up to a long gallery which appeared to run from front to back of the building.

The steps beneath their feet had been worn smooth with the passage of years and were slightly slippery so that Sancha was glad to use the handrail even though Tony was just behind her. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she was looking about her with genuine interest, trying mentally to compose the first few lines of her article. The interview with the Count would come later, but first she must describe the palazzo to her readers, many of whom had never even been to Italy, let alone seen such a place as this.

The gallery had a tessellated floor, its walls hung with portraits. Sancha supposed these grim-faced men and women must be ancestors of the present Count, but as their guide showed no efforts to instruct them she did not like to ask. However, she made another mental note and decided to ask the Count when the opportunity arose.

The man at last halted before double panelled doors and with a certain panache swept them open and advanced into the room. Tony and Sancha hesitated in the doorway, both unwilling to intrude. However, beyond the doors was merely a small ante-room and their companion had gone through this room into the apartment beyond.

Tony raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Sancha. ‘Some ceremony,’ he remarked sardonically, and Sancha hid a smile.

‘Do you think he's a servant?’ she asked, indicating in the direction of the inner apartments.

Tony nodded. ‘Yes. That's Paolo! I had heard of him, actually,’ he replied, in an undertone. ‘He's sort of valet-cum-manservant-cum-bodyguard all rolled into one.'

‘I see.’ Sancha was impressed. ‘Does the Count have no other servants?'

Tony looked cynical again. ‘I don't believe so. The exchequer won't run to it, I hear.'

‘I should be most interested to hear from what source you gather your information, signore.'

The soft and yet menacing tones disconcerted both of them, coming as they did from immediately behind them. Neither had heard the approach of the man who was now standing regarding them with narrowed blue eyes which were startling in such a tanned complexion.

The man was not particularly tall, being a little above average height, nor was he stockily built. And yet he had the kind of arrogant presence which diminished the size of those around him. His shoulders were broad and his hips narrow, and in a black silk shirt open at the throat to reveal the brown column of his neck and close-fitting black trousers he was essentially masculine. Thick black hair brushed his collar, touched here and there with traces of grey, and dark sideburns darkened high cheekbones which gave his face a patrician cast. He was certainly one of the most attractive men Sancha had ever seen and in spite of her nervousness she was fascinated by the penetrating quality of his eyes.

Now Tony tried desperately to regain his composure. ‘I—I beg your pardon, signore. I thought we were alone.'

‘Did you?'

The man moved past them into the ante-room and Sancha glanced swiftly at Tony who made a baffled movement with his shoulders.

‘Paolo! Avanti!'

The man spoke again and a few moments later the manservant came through the doors from the inner apartments.

‘Si, signore?’ he responded politely.

The man turned back to Sancha and Tony. ‘We will speak inglese, Paolo. For our guest's sake, si?’ There was a trace of humour about his lips. ‘Allow me to introduce myself, signore, signorina: I am the Conte Cesare Alberto Venturo di Malatesta!'

For a moment there was complete silence in the room and Sancha, glancing again at Tony, saw that his cheeks had turned a