There was no door. Rusted iron hinges, each a couple of feet long, hung futilely from the doorframe. The interior of the first floor was a single circular room, dimly lit by the four narrow slits that pierced the walls. Since said walls were over eight feet thick, the sunlight didn’t have much of a chance. The floor was of stone, but so overlaid with dirt that the original surface was virtually invisible.

Tony made a circuit of the walls, peering at the huge stones.

“When they built in those days, they built to last.” He spoke in hushed tones, as if something might be listening. “I can’t see anything unusual here. Let’s go up.”

Narrow stairs were cut into the stones of the wall. They were treacherous to climb; each step had a deep trench in the center, worn by generations of feet.

The second floor had been the hall. The windows were a little wider than those below. Across one quadrant of the room lay the remains of a half-wall, or screen, of stone, behind a low dais. The big stone fireplace, with the family arms on its hood, was the only feature in the room, which was littered with chips of fallen stone.

“The count and his lady dined there,” Tony muttered, looking at the dais. “Their sleeping quarters were behind the screen. Rushes underfoot, and the dogs fighting over table scraps….”

“Gracious living,” I agreed. “According to the guidebook, this place was abandoned long before fifteen hundred twenty-five. It wouldn’t be a bad spot to hide something.”

Tony shook his head.

“It may have been abandoned as living quarters, but I’ll bet it was still in use as a guard tower. Anyhow, if I were the count, I’d prefer to have my valuables closer at hand, so I could keep an eye on them. Way out here—”

He stopped speaking. He was opposite one of the window slits, and a narrow shaft of sunlight lay across the section of the floor at which he was staring.

“What—” But I didn’t have to finish the question. I saw them too—footprints, clearly marked in the thick dust. The footprints of a man—a big man.

Tony knelt down. He thumped the floor with his fist, and sneezed as a cloud of dust enveloped his head.

“If anything has been hidden under these boards, I’ll eat it,” he announced, between sneezes. “Feel them. You’d expect wood so old to be rotten and crumbling, but these boards are practically petrified.”

I joined him on the floor. As my fingers touched the rock-hard surface of the wood, I felt weighted down by the sheer over-whelming age of the place.

“They wouldn’t have been this hard four hundred years ago,” I said.