It was then that Carter began to wonder if she had been speaking not of the town itself, as he had assumed, but of the house where she lived. His heart thumping, he jumped to his feet and backed away from the center of the piazza until he came to the church. He climbed the steps, turned around, and gazed back over the tops of the buildings opposite him. From that vantage point he could see for the first time a row of houses on the hill just above the town. Without a second thought, he bounded back down the church steps and set off in that direction to find the road that led there. What did it matter if it took him nowhere? After all, he had no place else to go, and he had to start somewhere.

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 34

As he strode down the narrow street that led away from the piazza, Carter felt the inquiring gazes of the people he passed along the way. This was not a city like Rome or Florence, where the streets were always full of strangers from every corner of the world, where a lone traveler such as himself could easily blend in with the crowd and not feel out of place. Here he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Undaunted, Carter pressed ahead through the neighborhood, following the winding, gently rising street until it brought him to a long set of stone steps that ascended, so it appeared, to a road high above.The steps were old and worn down in the middle, the result no doubt of being trod upon for years untold. Carter did not hesitate, but instead vaulted up the first two steps and climbed the rest at a brisk clip.

When he reached the top, where the steps met the edge of the road he had hoped to find, Carter turned around and immediately understood what Elena had been talking about. Looking back over the roofs of the houses below to beyond the far side of Roccasale, he beheld a wide expanse of lovely rolling hills leading away to the distant mountains. All about the sky above it, patches of blue were breaking out amidst the mottled clouds, letting beams of radiant sunlight stream through here and there.

It was almost too perfect to be real, like an imaginary landscape that an artist might paint. Carter would have stood there and admired it for a little while longer had a passing motorist not tooted his horn at him and whizzed by no more than an inch from his elbow. Jolted out of his revery, he quickly turned away from the scenic view and began to follow the road uphill.