“That’s Montevecchio. That belongs to us. It was a marvelous place for picnics when the children were little—battlements, towers, and a great stone staircase leading to nowhere. No one really knows when it was built, only that a noblewoman fortified it and lived there with her retinue in the twelfth century. A queen, the people round here will tell you, but it was actually an exiled Lombard countess. In the days when we used to go up there, there was still one noble room intact, almost like a throne room, with a stone dais at one end and curved capitals on either side of the door—perhaps that’s where the legend came from, about the queen. Fulco tells me it’s all ruined now—young people drive up there on Vespas at the weekends and pull it about, carve their names and heaven knows what else, and the weather does the rest. It isn’t safe, either, these days. The grass there is full of poisonous snakes—as soon as people leave the land, the snakes come back.”

“I thought of getting out to look at it, but I was worried about the time, and then the road was difficult just there. In some places—but of course you know—there are big stones, almost like rocks.”

The old people smiled at each other. “So what are they, then”—the Conte lifted up his finger in a classroom attitude—“those big stones?”

“Not—Roman road?”

“Of course it’s Roman road! An old, old road that existed before the Cassia was built. La Via Romea, that’s what it’s called, La Via Romea. This is ancient country round here, though not much digging has been done. God knows what’s underneath. Before the war we found an Etruscan tomb right here in our garden. The government sent someone to look at it—he nosed around, made off with the loot, all that. There must be other tombs, cities perhaps, who knows? Once in a while someone comes across a piece of a pot or a weapon. There was a lot of fighting over this area. Though I suppose,” he added glumly, “one could say that of any spot on earth.”

Mrs. Drew said, “It’s serene enough now.”

The Contessa shook her head. “Not for much longer. They’re building a highway—you can see it from the upstairs windows, coming closer all the time. It’ll pass by about half a mile from here. A link to the Autostrada. It’s called—” She appealed to her husband.

“La Superstrada,” he said solemnly.