Read Online The Etruscan Net by Michael Gilbert - Free Book Online

understand them either, but they were beginning to look unhappy. Broke wondered whether he ought to interfere. The pappagalli were not usually dangerous. Their weapons were mostly verbal. More like geese than parrots really. They made a lot of noise but retreated if you shook a stick at them. But they could turn nasty and there had been one or two incidents lately.
    As he was hesitating, the flock took flight. One moment they were there. The next, with a popping of exhausts, they were gone. A black saloon car came cruising slowly down the street. In front, a Carabiniere Sergeant sat beside the uniformed driver. He leaned from the car and said to the girls in tolerable English, ‘That turning on your left, ladies, will take you straight back to the Lungarno.’
    The girls awarded him an embarrassed smile and scuttled away.
    The Sergeant cast an eye over Broke, hesitated, then signalled to the driver, and the car slid away.
    ‘Campaign to keep Florence safe for tourists,’ thought Broke.
    He found the house without difficulty, and Signora Zecchi, who was waiting for his knock, let him in. The street door led into the kitchen. Tina was sitting sewing in the corner. As he came in she gave him the urchin grin which made her look several years younger even than she was. There was no sign of Milo.
    ‘He is over in his workshop, behind the yard,’ said Annunziata. ‘He would like to speak to you there, I think. But before you go, might I be permitted to say one word.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘My Milo is not well. He is not well in his mind. Nor is he well in his body. He desires very much to speak to you, but he may find it difficult to do so. I would ask you to be patient with him.’
    ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Broke awkwardly.
    ‘No one can do more. Agostina will show you the way.’
    Milo’s workshop occupied the ground floor of the two-storey erection which blocked in the rear of the courtyard behind the house. The windows of the floor above were curtained.
    ‘Dindo lives there,’ said Tina. ‘He is out just now, which is a good thing. He is for ever spying and prying into things which do not concern him. When my father dies, he hopes to steal his business.’
    She pushed open the door, stood aside for Broke to go in, and shut it behind him. Milo was crouched over a bench under the strong overhead light at the far end of the room, his hands and arms visible, the rest of him in shadow.
    He put the object he was working on carefully down on the bench-top, and climbed to his feet. Broke was shocked at the apparent change in his face. It might have been some trick of the light, but in a few hours he seemed to grow years older. The cheeks had shrunk, leaving black cavities under the eyes, and the nose had a pinched and quill-like look which Broke didn’t like at all. Only the brown eyes were still bright and shrewd.
    ‘That’s a fine bull,’ said Broke. ‘Did it come from the old pirate’s tomb, at Volterra?’
    ‘It came in sixteen pieces,’ said Milo. ‘It was a fine animal. It will be again when I have done with it. Two pieces only are missing. The tail, and one of the horns.’
    The restoration had been most skilfully done. The hairline joins were hardly visible. The master of the herd was pawing the ground in Etruscan arrogance. Broke wondered what the unknown artist who had fashioned the animal would have said if he could have seen it coming back to life under the gnarled fingers of Milo Zecchi nearly three thousand years after its creation.
    ‘You will take wine?’ said Milo. Without waiting for a reply he filled the two glasses which stood ready on the bench, and pushed one across to his guest.
    ‘Good health,’ said Broke.
    Milo said, ‘Good health is indeed a blessing. You appreciate it only when it has gone. I fear that I am not long for this world, Signor Broke.’
    Broke found no easy reply to this, and took a sip of wine to cover his embarrassment. It was good wine. It must have been brought