understand why she was so grateful for a visitor.
Neil noticed a group of six or seven men standing together on one of the terraces. They appeared to be watching him, and Marisa. Neil wondered what those people would do when the farm finally went under. Perhaps they thought he was from the bank, and wondered the same thing. Even at some distance, they seemed alien, slightly wild, lost people.
A heavy mist was drifting across the hills and settling around them, a low grey cloud of moisture. It came with surprising swiftness, obscuring the sunset and the views. Marisa frowned.
"II morbo," she said.
"What?"
"This fog. It's a regular feature of the region, especially up here at these altitudes. The local people call it il morbo."
Neil shivered, feeling a sudden chill. "That means sickness, illness, the plague," he said.
"Yes, exactly." Marisa laughed. "Sometimes it blows through and is gone in an hour, but it can linger for a couple of days-and when it does, you do start to think of it as a plague."
On the terrace above, the men were losing their individual definition in the mist, becoming a cluster of dark shadow figures. The air was grey and full of floating globules of wetness.
"Let's go inside," Marisa said.
Passegiata
She led him up a flight of stairs and along a short corridor. They took a sharply angled turn, so that they appeared to be heading back the way they had just come, though by a different passage. They went through a doorway, across a raised gallery that was open above an empty room, and then into yet another corridor. Their footsteps made an echoing hollow clatter on the bare floorboards. The floor itself seemed to tilt slightly one way and then another, or to sag in the middle-it was never quite solid and level.
Marisa held his arm snugly against her as they walked, and Neil could feel the movements of her hip. The way their bodies touched, the way Marisa smiled at him-he wanted to believe she was seriously flirting with him, but he decided it wasn't serious. Not yet, anyway. Now that they were indoors, he noticed a sweet woodsy fragrance about her. Juniper? Whatever it was, he found it deliriously attractive.
"The layout is a bit crazy," she said apologetically. "At one time we had many relatives living with us here- cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws. The rooms were divided and altered many times over the years to accommodate everybody and their belongings."
"I see."
"There was a story that a couple of hundred years ago this was not a farmhouse, that it was originally a monastic retreat or home for some obscure religious order that eventually dwindled away."
"Is that right?"
"You can still see religious carvings and symbols in certain places on the old woodwork, so maybe it's true."
"I like places with a mysterious history," Neil said.
"Yes, so do I, but now it's just a big nuisance."
They turned a corner and were in a wider area, a cul-de-sac. There were two doors, one on either side of the dead-end wall. Marisa opened one of them and went into the room. Neil followed.
"I hope this will be all right," she said.
The room was large, almost square in shape, and sparsely furnished, but it looked comfortable enough. The tall narrow window was swung open and the air in the room was clear, with no trace of mustiness-that was the most important thing as far as Neil was concerned.
"Oh, this is fine," he said. "Very nice."
"There's a bathroom just outside, through the other door. Perhaps you'd like a little time now to unpack your things, to rest and wash up before dinner," she suggested.
"Yes, I would."
"I'll come back for you in, say, an hour and a quarter? I don't want you to get lost wandering around this place alone."
Neil laughed. "Again, I'm sorry to impose on you like this. I'm very grateful for your kind hospitality."
"It's no trouble at all." Marisa hesitated, or lingered,