English Rose for the Sicilian Doc

‘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 of the breeze on her face. ‘It’s beautiful up here. I’m very lucky...’

‘You like Sicily?’ Suddenly that mattered more than it should.

‘I haven’t actually seen a great deal of it yet. I’ve been pretty involved up here, and the rest of my time is William’s. But what I have seen is wonderful.’

Such a bright, sparkling spirit, contained in such strictly drawn boundaries. Matteo felt himself wanting to break those boundaries down, and wondered if Rose ever felt constrained by them.

‘You do this kind of thing back in England?’

‘These days, I usually teach during term time and dig during the summer holidays. William’s grown up messing around in the mud.’ She grinned. ‘But this was such an opportunity I couldn’t say no to it, and I’ve taken a six-month sabbatical.’

‘But you don’t do forensics any more?’

‘No, never.’ She quirked her mouth down a little. ‘I got involved with that when I was at university—one of the professors did work for the police. Finding remains, modelling faces, that kind of thing. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time and I went on to work on a number of cases with him and then some alone’

‘It’s important work.’ It seemed as if the spark, which invigorated her and made everything she touched seem special, had suddenly gone.

‘I felt that getting justice for people mattered. I still do, but it was very hard emotionally. I couldn’t stop myself getting over-involved.’

‘I can understand...’ Matteo bit the words back. He knew all about being involved with his work, and could understand a wish for justice. But he wasn’t sure he understood these particular pressures, or how Rose must have felt.

* * *

Did he? Did he really understand? When she looked into his face, she saw only humanity, the gentle eyes of a healer. To understand some of the things she’d seen, someone would need to have a streak of evil in their heart.

‘No, you don’t understand. And, trust me, that’s a good thing, there are some things that decent people shouldn’t be able to make sense of.’

‘Can you explain it to me, then?’

‘No. I really don’t think I can.’ Suddenly the air seemed cold, and Rose shivered, wanting to cover up her bare arms.

Why should Matteo be any different from her ex-husband? It was better not to say anything, so that she didn’t have to hear him dismiss her feelings.

Rose shot him a smile and he took the hint. ‘What was it you were going to show me?’

She almost wished he hadn’t given up so easily. As she showed him the newly excavated test pits and the areas of mosaic that they’d uncovered, he seemed to have left everything else behind, concentrating only on what was before his eyes.

But Rose couldn’t forget. Alec had been a lot like Matteo, easygoing and charming, and that was what had drawn her to him. He hadn’t wanted to know about the hard parts of life, or even its necessary practicalities, and Rose had dealt with them willingly, not wanting to spoil his almost shining aloofness from such things.

They’d set up home together, working on scraping the walls and rebuilding the ramshackle kitchen and bathroom in the house in Tufnell Park. And they’d been happy.

It had been Rose who couldn’t cope. When her work had become stressful, Alec hadn’t wanted her to spoil their evenings by talking about it. She’d stayed quiet, turning in on herself, and in the end they’d hardly communicated at all. Her pregnancy, so unexpected but so much wanted, had left her even more tired and that had been the last straw for Alec. He’d wanted the carefree life they’d had, and when Rose had destroyed it all he’d left without looking back.

Matteo was squatting down next to one of the pits, talking in Italian to the archaeology student who was digging there. He was obviously asking about the soil strata at the side of the pit because the student ran his finger along a darker layer that indicated a fire maybe three hundred years ago.

He’d been kind, and he seemed willing to be a friend. Her life was on course now, and anything else would be madness. She’d messed up once, and now that she had William to consider, she couldn’t afford to do it again.

Matteo got to his feet and walked over to stand beside her. ‘You’re doing some fascinating work here.’

‘I’ve saved the most interesting thing for last.’

His eyes hooded lazily in an almost explicit invitation. ‘I’m already captivated. What more can you do?’

Rose gulped, turned her back on him in case she was tempted to improvise an answer, and started to lead him away from the main excavations, along a dusty pathway. ‘This is another find we made by mistake. No one knew it was there...’

She was shaking, blushing furiously and playing the tour guide so she could banish unwanted thoughts. Rose saw a figure up ahead of them and quickened her pace to catch up, reckoning that there was a certain degree of security in numbers.

‘David...’ The middle-aged man turned as she called his name. ‘I’d like you to meet Dr Matteo Di Salvo...’

‘Dr Di Salvo.’ The two men shook hands. ‘What’s your speciality?’

Matteo grinned. ‘Medicine. Rose has been kind enough to show me around this evening.’

David laughed over his own mistake and the two men began to chat, moving quickly from the necessary preliminaries of the weather and the spectacular view up here to Matteo’s questions about the site. He was interested in everything. Rose breathed a sigh of relief, reminding herself that she was just a very small part of everything that Matteo’s quick mind seemed to thrive on.

They climbed a little, over rough, stony ground, and then reached the mouth of a cave. David handed Matteo a hard hat from a box, and chalked the number three, along with the time, on the blackboard that hung outside.

‘Our little safety precaution.’ David smiled at Matteo. ‘Just in case anyone meets with an accident.’

She saw Matteo’s eyebrow quirk downwards, but he said nothing. ‘We also let the main office know when we’re coming down here.’ Under the intensity of Matteo’s gaze, the blackboard seemed a very amateurish and uncertain precaution.

‘Oh...yes, of course.’ David smiled. ‘Must remember to do that next time. I dare say that someone will be down to rescue you two if we don’t emerge in one piece, and I’ll just tag along.’

‘David...’ Rose shot him an exasperated look and he laughed, turning to Matteo.

‘She’s right, of course.’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t want to be caught ignoring the lady’s advice.’

Even in the chill of the cave, hot flushes spread over her skin. She wished he’d stop this. But then it seemed to come quite naturally to Matteo, and perhaps it didn’t really mean anything. She switched on her torch, swinging the beam down towards the area marked out by reflective tape, which designated where it was safe to walk, then up towards the roof of the cave.

‘You can see here that there are deposits from fires having been lit inside here.’ Matteo looked obligingly upwards, and nodded. ‘In the scheme of things they’re probably quite recent, maybe about the same time-frame as the bullet. But if we go further back...’

She led the way towards what looked like the back of the cave, ducking into a small passageway. Matteo followed her, gasping as he walked out into the high, stone cavern that lay beyond it.

‘You think this was used? In ancient times?’ He walked into the space, the beam of his torch reaching out into the darkness. It found quartz deposits to the right, and further on the small underground stream that bubbled its way into a deep pool in the corner of the cave.

‘We’ve found both Greek and Roman pottery in here,’ David replied. ‘And there’s some evidence that it may have been used right back into the Iron Age. It would be a very fine refuge in times of trouble and we think that people may have been coming here for centuries.’

‘These marks.’ Matteo turned to run his fingers lightly over the walls of the stone entranceway. ‘What are these?’

‘That’s one of the really interesting parts. We think they’re made with stone implements, not metal ones. It looks as if someone widened out the opening to the cave a very long time ago, probably so that it could be used. There are more caves beyond this one.’

‘Fascinating.’ Matteo really did seem fascinated. ‘May I have a look around?’

‘Yes, of course. Keep to the area inside the tape, that’s the area that has already been processed.’ Rose shone her torch onto the route that led to the next cave, marked out on each side by reflective tape. ‘If you happen to see any Roman-style jewellery scattered around, give me a shout.’

‘You wish.’ David chuckled, switching on one of the large lights standing on tripods around the areas where the archaeologists were currently working. ‘I’m going to do some more on that boring old pottery. You go look for buried treasure.’

She let Matteo look around then led him through a succession of smaller caves, showing him where they’d made finds as she went. Away from the lights, his features were sharper, even more striking. And Rose couldn’t help staring at him every chance she got. His tall frame, his relaxed gait. Matteo was like a work of art standing still, but it was the way he moved that made her head swim.

Her head really was swimming and her legs felt suddenly unsteady. Maybe there was something wrong with the air in here. Rose heard her torch clatter at her feet before she’d even realised that she’d dropped it and it went out suddenly. In the moments before the beam of Matteo’s torch swung round towards her she saw a faint glimmer of light in the far corner of the cave.

‘What’s that?’ She was blinded by his torch, shining straight at her. ‘Turn the light out, I can see daylight.’

‘Forget about that...’

‘No... Turn your light out.’ No one had been working in this cave and they’d thought it was the last in the series. But there was something beyond it.

Matteo strode towards her, his fingers closing around her arm. ‘Don’t be alarmed.’ His voice was low and steady. ‘It’s a minor earthquake.’

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