“This fellow is tame enough, but keep your distance from the others. They’re all more than half-wild.”

They walked under the hayloft, which was so low that Niccolò had to duck his head, and then out the back of the stables and around to the rear of the house. There the granary stairs he’d mentioned ran steeply up to the top floor; a meter or so beyond them was a back door and, angled into the ground next to it, a pair of cellar doors.

“The entrance to the cantina,” Nico said, following her gaze. “The only time we use the back door is when we need something that’s stored down there. And—oh, I should have told you before. The outhouse is just over there. But don’t worry that you’ll need to go outside at night. There’s a chamber pot in our bedroom.”

She nodded, her face burning, but Nico didn’t seem to notice. Instead he led them on until they’d come around the end of the house and were facing the fields. “You can see nearly all the farm from here,” he explained. “At the top, where it’s really steep, we have the olive trees, and some fruit trees as well. Apples, peaches, apricots. On the hill below we grow hay for the animals. Then we have the big fields—over there where it’s nearly flat. We harvested the early wheat in June, then we put in the corn. That came out the week before last. Once the stalks have dried down some more we’ll bring them in, too, and then we’ll sow the winter wheat. There are grapevines as well, just over there, and beyond them is the vegetable garden.”

“And you manage all this on your own—you and your father and the others?”

“For the most part. Our uncles and cousins help when we bring in the corn and wheat, and when it’s time to pick the grapes, and we help them in turn. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a good life. It can be a good life, if you don’t mind doing without some things that others might never dream of giving up.”

“Like what? Hot running water and soft mattresses?”

“Yes. And a life that doesn’t involve rising before dawn every day of the year to milk the cows and feed the other animals and work straight through until nightfall.”

“You don’t regret having to come home when your brother died?”

“Not at all. Not ever. It was awful at first, because we just wanted him back and alive and safe with us. But I don’t imagine I’ll ever leave here again.”

“Before, when you and your father were talking about Marco, you mentioned another man.”