Each day, Elisabetta supervised the household’s preparations for winter diligently. Luna saw her disappear to the kitchens then out to the grain stores or to where the flour was being weighed. She was equally involved in swapping out the summer linens for winter wools, which involved much cleaning before the lighter garments could be stored. She spent time each day in her kitchen garden where she tended to her vegetables and herbs, and Luna often saw her appear from a different path with a basket of fresh eggs on one arm. When they came upon each other, the lady would stop and engage in brief talk of the weather or the task at hand before letting Luna continue on her way.

‘I see you have a fine bounty of eggs this day,’ Luna commented on seeing Elisabetta’s basket.

‘My hens have been busy, which will make the cook as happy as I. For a while they stopped laying till one of the workmen found a viper inside the hen house. Poor things had been too afeared to sit, as indeed would I in the presence of such a thief!’

‘I’ve discovered skins on my walks,’ Luna offered.

‘As the weather cools, the snakes are disappearing, so you shouldn’t see any. It’s one good thing about winter. Be careful, though; they like to sleep in the warm hollows of tree trunks or burrows within the earth. If you do not bother them, they will leave you be.’

Luna nodded and continued towards the hills. The professor and his wife left her to her wanderings and though it was strange to have no one calling her to chores or waiting on her return, she soon became used to the freedom. Each day she returned to the hillside of uneven olive trees, where she found that the challenge of not falling stilled her mind. The sun still flickered through the leaves but it had lost the clarity of its hot summer brilliance. As autumn came to an end, the big blue skies shifted and lightened to dusty greys and some days she couldn’t distinguish sky from cloud. It was quiet except for her footfall. Through the trees she could see the endless rolling shape of hills and valleys, tightly packed together and extending to the distant horizon. She knew that Florence lay somewhere in one of those unseen dips of hill, and wondered if Friar Savonarola still preached; much could change unexpectedly in less than the two sennights it had been since she left the city. She set her mind to the path she walked and stopped to rest then walked some more, content to repeat what was becoming her regular excursion.