The Ancestor Read online

  He gave a quick shake of the head—no, not so terribly unusual—and sat down across from me. “You must be Alberta,” he said. His face had gone pink. “I’m Basil Harwell, secretary to the Montebianco family. How was your journey?”

  “Bumpy,” I said, trying to calm down.

  “Ah, helicopter transport. There’s certainly no other option at this time of year, is there?” Basil shook his head again. “The snow is impenetrable from November to May. We are Old Man Winter’s prisoners until springtime. One gets used to it.”

  He directed his gaze at me, and detecting my disheveled appearance, and the sweat glistening on my forehead, he asked, “Did you get lost?”

  “Is it that obvious?” I asked, feeling dangerously close to breaking into tears.

  “Don’t fret! It happens to everyone,” he said, taking a drink of wine. “One guest, a delightful descendant of the king of Sardinia, was missing overnight. Sal and Greta and I searched the place and found her in the second-floor ballroom, on the north side of the castle, asleep on a divan.”

  I smiled despite myself. “I was in that ballroom.”

  “What a mess,” he said, shaking his head. “But who could possibly take care of so many rooms? There are eighty-five in all. That is not counting the bathrooms, storage areas, or the kitchen.”

  “You’ve been here a long time,” I noted. It wasn’t a question. It was obvious that Basil was as much a part of the castle as Sal and Greta.

  “Ages,” he said. “Or so it seems. I am in the library every day, if you should ever need me. I keep the archival records organized. Order and invoice for supplies. And I pay Greta and Sal and Bernadette each month.”

  “Greta mentioned Bernadette,” I said. “Isn’t she some kind of a doctor?”

  Basil rolled his eyes. “Oh, heavens, no,” he said. “She’s the cook, and because she has a talent with herbal remedies, Greta and Sal go to her for every sniffle. I don’t rely on Bernadette for anything but dinner.”

  I thought of the woman I had seen in the tower. It had not been Dolores, as I had believed. It must have been Bernadette.

  “I think I may have seen Bernadette,” I said. “When I first arrived.”

  “You would absolutely know if you saw Bernadette,” Basil replied. “Her appearance is, shall we say, peculiar.”

  Bernadette must have been the odd-looking person I had glimpsed in the tower. There was one mystery solved.

  Basil scooped some steaming polenta, mushrooms, and slices of meat onto his plate. Gesturing that I do the same, he said, “Don’t let it get cold.”

  I followed his lead and filled my plate, leaving the mushrooms, which seemed unappetizing, like stewed prunes.

  “Anyway,” Basil said. “I also coordinate telephone calls between Madame Dolores and her many employees outside the castle. It is like running a hotline, calling Turin and London and Paris as much as I do. That is how I was aware that you would be arriving. Francisco Zimmer rang here nearly every day with updates. Now that the count is gone, I am in charge of nearly everything. Not what I imagined my life to be when I was in my twenties, that is certain! My training was as an educator. Originally, I came to Nevenero as a tutor.”

  “There were children here?” I asked, but of course I knew the answer to this already. Guillaume and Dolores were childless. There had been no children to teach in Nevenero for a very long time.

  “Not exactly,” Basil replied, evading my question and instead holding up a bottle of wine. I presented my glass, happy to have a drink. “This is an Arnad-Montjovet, a strong local wine. You wouldn’t believe it, but Alpine wine can be quite good.”

  “I was told the family has an impressive wine cellar.”

  “Quite right,” he said. “The cave is a treasure and still contains bottles brought from Bordeaux with Eleanor, your great-great-grandmother, upon her marriage to Ambrose. Five hundred bottles were bestowed to the family as part of her dowry. I have a cellar list somewhere in the library, if you’d like to see it.”

  I told him I would, and took a sip of the wine. Then I turned to my plate. The food was unfamiliar, without the charm of the meal I had shared with Luca in Turin. Flat. Simple. Without taste. I remembered, suddenly, eating something similar at Luca’s family reunion a few years back, something Nonna had made. I pushed a pile of mush with my fork.

  “Polenta,” Basil explained. “Ground cornmeal. Very typical of this region. You will get used to it.”

  I cut a bite of meat and tried it. It was dry and chewy. “And this?”

  “Goat,” Basil said.

  I almost choked. The image of the dead goat flashed in my mind. The metallic smell of blood. The rush of fear.

  “Not to your liking?” Basil asked. “Yes, well, goat is also an acquired taste, I suppose.” I chewed the goat slowly, focusing on a mole above his right eyebrow, a brown circle, big as a dime. “Sal slaughtered this one earlier in the week. You’ll meet Sal soon enough. He’s a glum, unsociable man. Illiterate as a cow. But good with dogs and guns.”

  “Sal and Fredericka introduced themselves last night,” I said, pointing to the wound on my cheek. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Detestable dog,” Basil said, shaking his head.

  I pushed the sliced goat meat around my plate, unable to eat.

  “When I first arrived,” Basil said, “I was very critical of the local fare, too. I had been living in Rome and had grown accustomed to dining well. But I have found that one comes to accept, even to appreciate, what one experiences with regularity.”

  “You don’t mind it, then?” I asked. “Being so far away from everything?”

  “Mind it?” he said, finishing off his glass of wine. “I choose to live this way. It makes the truth more bearable.”

  “Which is?” I asked, curious to know what he meant by such a grandiose statement.

  “That we are not separate from all of this,” he said, waving a hand toward the window, at the expanse of mountains beyond. “Language and education, good and bad manners, careers and friendships—such social constructs are not important up here. Here, we are a part of nature.”

  Greta stepped to the table with a pot of tea, poured out two cups, and left the room, her heavy boots clomping.

  “Is she always like that?” I whispered when Greta was out of earshot.

  “Greta?” Basil said, lifting an eyebrow. “She’s been that way ever since Joseph disappeared.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was gone. “She took this position some four years ago, after a nasty divorce, and arrived with a child, a boy named Joseph. I think she may have accepted the position without informing the boy’s father, or the courts, if you know what I mean.”

  I glanced out the window at the vast emptiness of the valley. This would be the perfect place to disappear with a kidnapped child.

  “I do think such extreme measures may have been justified,” Basil added quietly. “Considering those scars on her face. But even here Greta wasn’t safe from tragedy. Two years ago, Joseph vanished. One minute, he was in the courtyard playing; the next, he was gone. We all searched high and low for the boy. He was only six years old, all blond curls and rosy cheeks. He brought such sunshine to this place. We never found him.”

  “My God,” I said, feeling sorry for my critical assessment of Greta. “Did he get outside the gate and get lost?”

  “My personal theory: the father. He discovered Joseph’s location and took him back to Germany.”

  I felt a wave of empathy for Greta. I had never lost a six-year-old son, but I knew what it felt like to long for a child. Absence had formed a hollow space in my life, one that I still hadn’t learned to fill. When Greta returned to clear the plates, I was unable to face her. When the cuckoo clock chimed in the distance, the birds chirruping and the bell ringing twice, I put my napkin on the table and stood to go.

  “Finished already?” Basil asked, pushing his chair away from the table.

  “I’m supposed to meet Dolores in the port
rait gallery,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Ah, you will enjoy it,” Basil said. “It is an excellent collection. Quite representative of the various styles of portraiture through the centuries. Come, let me show you the way.”

  Basil escorted me down the corridor, stopping at a cloakroom near the main entrance. He dug through layers of coats until he found a long, heavy mink. “Take this,” he said. “It is utterly freezing in the north wing.”

  I hesitated, stroking the fur. It was feathery, soft, the color of chestnuts, the most sumptuous thing to have ever passed through my hands. “No one will miss it?”

  “Frankly, there’s no one here to miss it,” he said, stepping close and helping me into the mink. “If I were you, I would wear this coat and enjoy it. I would take every bit of pleasure you can from this place. The house is full of treasures. Take the paintings to your rooms. Have Greta bring you wine from the cellar, the old bottles. Drink them! No one else will. Find pleasure in what you have inherited. It helps the time pass and renders one philosophical.”

  “I’ll definitely do that,” I said, warming to Basil’s eccentric behavior. “But Zimmer is coming back at the end of the week. I’ll be gone soon.”

  “That is what he told you, is it?” Basil said, pursing his lips.

  “Yes,” I said, meeting his eye, searching his expression. “Did you hear something different?”

  As Basil put his hand on my back and steered me in the direction of the portrait gallery, he said, “Of course, there is always the chance that Zimmer will retrieve you soon, but I wouldn’t count on it. The Montebianco family needs you far too much. They have kept me in their service for over two decades, and I can tell you: once they get their hands on you, they don’t let go.”

  Twelve

  Basil’s warning accompanied me on my hike to the portrait gallery, his words making me doubt Zimmer for the first time. Until then, I had trusted what the estate had told me, not only about Zimmer’s return, but about everything from the DNA test to the state of the Montebianco finances to Dolores’s illness. The thought crossed my mind that I should have been a bit more wary before climbing into a helicopter and flying to God knows where without an escape route. And yet, I told myself, nothing had happened to make me doubt Zimmer’s honesty. Basil was most likely exaggerating, and Zimmer would be back in six days.

  All thought of Zimmer disappeared as I passed through the enormous double doors of the Montebianco portrait gallery. Basil had been right: it was an incredible collection. From the ceiling lush with trompe l’oeil clouds to the panels of oil paintings on the walls, it seemed to glisten and refract with light. I walked through the long, narrow room, the gleaming parquet floor reflecting the gilded frames of oil paintings, dozens upon dozens of family portraits, all hanging side by side.

  I found Dolores asleep in her wheelchair at the center of the hall, her wool blanket slipping down to her ankles. I pulled it up around her waist and tucked it in, taking a good look at my great-aunt. Time and illness had ravaged Dolores, leaving her thin and frail. Her weakness was even more exaggerated when compared to the vibrant portraits. These men—because only men stared down from the frames—were exemplars of fortitude, perfect specimens of strength. The wealth and breeding of each Montebianco count—the hunting trophies, the battle scars, the beautiful wives, the palaces—had given him the bold confidence of an emperor. In fact, one of my ancestors—Heinrich XII, Count of Montebianco—had been painted standing on a chariot before a Roman aqueduct, as if he had conquered the world.

  And yet, despite their grandeur, something had gone terribly wrong. All their wealth and power had been unable to sustain their dynasty. Whatever had caused their diminishment—whether it was bad luck or, as Nonna had said, some taint in their blood—time had brought them the same fate as the rest of humanity: obsolescence, death, and obscurity. I wondered what they would have thought, to see the world now, centuries after their deaths. How they would have balked at the idea that a young woman from another part of the world, without the culture or noble bearing of the Montebianco family, was all that remained. Their power and fecundity had dwindled, and now there was nothing left but me.

  Dolores awoke suddenly, blinking as she tried to recognize me. “Push,” she said at last, pointing a bony finger forward, her voice hoarse, little more than a croak.

  I wheeled Dolores past the glossy, dark-hued oil portraits, the sleeves of the mink coat draping over the metal handles. The silence of the gallery was pristine, so clear that the squeaking rubber of the wheels on the floor carried through the space, resounding like a chime in a church. Small brass plates were affixed to each frame, presenting the name of each Montebianco. I strained to read them as we passed, feeling an eerie sense of recognition. Large blue eyes, flat noses, heavy brows that made them look grumpy even when they smiled—there was such continuity in their traits that they seemed like one man, dressed in different uniforms perhaps, sitting before different scenes, but all variations of an ancient original. I had never known any of them, and probably wouldn’t have liked them much if I had. And yet I carried them inside me. I found, in the shape of a chin or the mold of a cheek, a reflection of myself. Their genetic predispositions were my genetic predispositions. This, I realized, was the definition of family in the twenty-first century.

  “There,” Dolores said, as we rolled by a portrait. “Your grandfather Giovanni next to his brother, my Guillaume.”

  The picture showed Giovanni as a young man. He was pale and stocky, with blue eyes and white-blond hair. A defiant smile gave me a shock of recognition. I remembered his face as an old man, how he had smiled in the same manner, as if daring the world to show him something new and unexpected. I remembered how my parents had always noted the cleft in my chin had come from him. I touched it then, feeling the proof of my unoriginality.

  In the portrait, Giovanni wore a military jacket and stood near a horse, a gun in hand. Although the portrait must have been painted just before he left Nevenero, I had a hard time imagining this man, who appeared so similar to the other Montebiancos, leaving the castle and traveling to New York City with the villagers of Nevenero. How had he related to people who were so very different? He must have had trouble finding his place among them. The military uniform, the horse, and the look of steely confidence in his expression—he had changed so much by the time I knew him.

  “He looks just like the rest of them,” I said at last.

  “Well, he should. Giovanni was raised to carry the family forward. Lessons in comportment, elocution, French and German, etiquette, horses—his formation was extensive, his father made certain of that. The same went for Guillaume.” Dolores twisted the rings on her fingers. “After Giovanni left, the family title went to Guillaume. Being a younger son was a problem, of course. But not as big a problem as having no heir at all.”

  I shifted my gaze to a nearly identical portrait of my grandfather’s brother, Guillaume. “Did something happen between Giovanni and Guillaume?”

  “If you consider abandoning one’s family something, then yes, something happened between them. Something irreparable.”

  “He must have had a good reason to leave,” I ventured.

  “Good reason?” Dolores gripped the arms of her wheelchair. “He was weak. Weak and afraid. That was his reason.”

  My grandfather stared from his portrait, his eyes trained on Dolores, and for a moment I imagined him stepping down and joining our conversation to defend himself. He would tell me the real story, rather than Dolores’s bitter version.

  Dolores tapped my arm and pointed ahead. I pushed her forward.

  “You may have noticed that there are no portraits of women in this gallery,” Dolores said. “You would think there were no Montebianco daughters, no wives, no matriarchs. Of course, this was not the case. The portraits of the women of the family are all hung in the salons, bedrooms, and sitting rooms—the domestic areas of the castle. There is just one exception. There, along the corridor.”
>
  I pushed Dolores past innumerable sets of glistening eyes, to the far end of the room, where a curtain separated a chamber from the rest of the gallery. Pausing, I looked back over my shoulder, as if the great chorus of my ancestors might bolster me, then swept the curtain aside, revealing a small, enclosed space filled with candles, like a chapel. Two chairs sat at the center, positioned before an enormous oil painting framed in gold.

  “You asked why Giovanni left,” she said. “This is your answer. She is why he left.”

  I glanced at the copper tag: Vittoria Isabelle Alberta Eleanor Montebianco, 1931.

  “Go on,” Dolores said. “Take a good look.”

  I sat down and gazed up at a canvas almost entirely devoid of color. Vita wore a black silk dress, its fabric arranged around her in layer after folded layer, opening like a black rose around her hips. A hundred tiny onyx buttons climbed from waist to bosom, glossy as the backs of beetles, terminating at a high collar at her neck. Her hair and ears were covered by a black veil. Her skin was pale, almost deathly white, and the background was little more than a wash of gray.

  I stared at the portrait, transfixed. Tall and wide-shouldered, she was as strong and commanding as any of the men in the gallery. This strange mixture of elegance and dominance found expression in a cool, supercilious gaze. There was something about the figure that held me captive. I couldn’t look away, even for a second. It was not the light glinting from the jewels in her white hair or the piercing, unearthly blue of her eyes that made my heart beat. It was the expression frozen upon her face, an expression of absolute power.

  “She was beautiful,” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, she was not beautiful,” Dolores said. “This painting looks nothing, nothing, like her. Nothing at all! Vita has always had a pale, frightening complexion and an overbearing appearance. She was just as awful when she was young as she was as an old lady. Despite various attempts to help her—experimental therapies and so on—she never did become presentable. This portrait is a work of fiction. The family hired an artist to create a flattering version. The eyes, the enormous Montebianco blues, those are Vita’s. The rest is propaganda.”