They’d found his bruised body at the bottom of a well.

15.

Isabella’s body had arrived in Rome in a casket too plain for words, the sight of which, rolling down the cargo conveyor at Fiumicino Airport, was captured on a cell phone camera by a baggage handler, then republished in Corriere della Sera.

The image stirred a call for something more fitting, a public ceremony and a procession through the streets. People gathered in piazzas throughout the city, as Italians did at the passing of beloved figures—movie stars and popes. The same had happened after the death of Pietra Trista, the sad-eyed little dog who’d had his own show on Italian TV.

In this context, the death of an American writer on a horse trail in Tuscany didn’t attract much attention.

The crowds grew, and I mingled with them. It was impossible to do much else. People gathered not just in the piazzas but also in the streets and at locations from her films. They carried their little devices. They peered over one another’s shoulders, watching news clips and films, bleary-eyed and sentimental, laughing, carrying on.

Oh Isabella!

Oh regina bella!

Non seppellirla senza noi, Paolo!

La vediamo un più tempo!

Suspicions persisted as to what had happened in New York. These suspicions grew uglier and more ornate, encouraged by a rumor that Paolo had refused a public procession. Then an army of young men and women appeared on motor scooters, circulars bundled on racks behind them. Soon these handbills littered the streets.

They announced a public memorial.

Day after tomorrow.

At the end, Isabella would be interred in Verano Cemetery.

The great cemetery at the heart of Rome.

The posters carried only the barest information. People extrapolated. She would be on public display in a glass case . . . The ailing pope himself would be in attendance . . . Francis Ford Coppola, the famous director, would crawl on his knees behind the coffin . . . When the procession reached the gates of the Verano, an American fighter jet would appear, and tens of thousands of roses would fall from the sky . . . wild roses, of the type Isabella had grown in her garden . . .

The crowd grew enormously.

It surged and I surged with them, pushing to the front, hands outstretched, reaching toward her coffin as she passed.

16.