“Hi, Johnny,” she said. “Finn tells me you’ve been roped into the garden excavation. Are you an archaeologist?”

Johnny laughed. He was almost as tall as Finn and almost as good-looking though in a completely different way. Johnny was wiry and spare, where Finn was broad, and so dark that his eyes and hair were both almost black. He was also instantly recognizable from recent press reports and photographs of the marriage of Lizzie Kingdom, a former celebrity TV presenter and singer, which had been splashed across the papers and magazines. Lizzie, Lucy seemed to remember, had married Johnny’s older brother and Johnny had been the best man.

“I’m only a student,” Johnny said, “here to do the hard labor. I’m in my second year at uni and I was looking for a placement during the year so when this came up in the autumn, I jumped at the chance.”

“Johnny even blew out the opportunity to be in Umbria digging up Etruscan ruins this summer,” Finn said, “so he could see the project through here.”

“Umbria’s overrated,” Johnny said, grinning. “This promises to be much more exciting now that we’ve done so much of the preparation. Imagine what we might find—pleasure grounds, spiral mounds, viewing platforms, even a maze, perhaps...”

“Steady on,” Finn said, grinning. “You’re building a lot on a few footings and some bits and pieces of rubble.”

“Don’t play it down,” Lucy said. “You seemed keen enough when you showed Cleo and me all those sketches of what it might have looked like.” She saw the quizzical look Finn gave her and hurried on, feeling slightly self-conscious. “It is odd though, isn’t it, that the garden doesn’t show up on the old painting of the village? The one from the early eighteenth century.”

“You’ve been to the heritage center, then.” Finn glanced over at Persis, who wasn’t showing any inclination to come and join them. She’d waved at Lucy when she’d first arrived but then gone back to swinging slowly backward and forward with her eyes closed. She looked like a cat lapping up the sunshine, Lucy thought.

“I have,” she said. “Persis’s brother, Gabriel, doesn’t seem convinced about the garden. He told me there wasn’t any documentary evidence to support it.”

“That’s rubbish,” Johnny said. “Charlie found plenty of references—it’s just a matter of decoding them and piecing it all together.”

He glanced at Finn as though he was uncertain whether he should have mentioned Charlie or not, and Lucy wondered how Finn felt always hearing that silence after his brother’s name, the weight and space of emptiness because Charlie was dead and no one knew quite what to say to him.

“The painting isn’t exactly an accurate representation of the village,” Finn said, ignoring any awkwardness, “and perhaps the garden wasn’t here for very long, which might explain why it doesn’t show up on any maps and was quickly forgotten. But yeah, Gabriel isn’t our greatest fan, that’s for sure.”

“I think he’s more interested in the pre-Tudor history of the village, isn’t he,” Lucy said. “The Knights Hospitaller?”