‘Griffoni. Claudia.’
The woman’s face changed, her smile tossing away years and giving a flash of what a beauty she must have been before the sun had its way with her. ‘Claudia,’ she said, her voice filled with delight: Marcellina discovering her lost child. Unable to restrain her emotion, she put her arms around Claudia’s shoulders, though she had to stand on her toes to do it, and said, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. You saved Giovanni’s life.’ Brunetti noted that she had unconsciously begun to address Claudia in the familiar ‘tu ’.
As the woman removed her arms, Griffoni said, ‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.’
‘But if you hadn’t spoken to him, he wouldn’t have ridden, and then he would have died,’ the woman insisted, stressing the final verb.
‘No, no, no,’ Griffoni insisted. ‘He just needed someone to tell him he was the best on the team.’ Then, with the force of truth, she added, ‘And he was.’
‘But still . . .’ the woman said, not convinced. She turned to Brunetti and explained, ‘My cousin has always suffered terrible panic attacks before competitions.’ Brunetti nodded, as if familiar with the emotional vagaries of athletes. ‘So you can imagine what the Olympics did to him. Jumping. He froze. Friends who were there told me he could barely walk.’ She glanced at Griffoni for confirmation. Griffoni nodded.
‘He couldn’t ride,’ the older woman went on, speaking to Brunetti. ‘The horse was saddled. But Giovanni was paralysed. And then she,’ she said and gave a dramatic pause to point to Griffoni, ‘took him aside and talked to him, and then he went back and got on his horse as if nothing in the world was bothering him.’
Griffoni bent down and worked at removing a small stone embedded in the heel of her left boot.
‘Gold! He won the gold medal,’ the woman said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘And it was all due to you.’ She grabbed Griffoni’s right arm with both hands and gave her a little shake of thanks, then turned to Brunetti and said, ‘It’s true. He wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t talked to him.’
‘How is he?’ Griffoni asked, completely ignoring everything the woman had said.
‘Fine. Fine. Three kids. Growing olives in Tuscany: God knows why, when . . .’ She let this go and gave herself a little shake. ‘But you’re here about that girl, aren’t you?’
‘Manuela Lando-Continui,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did you know her well?’
‘No. It was my late husband who ran the place then. I came here only twelve years ago, when we married.’
‘So your husband would have known her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, he did. He told me what happened to her.’ She held up her hands in a gesture that signified helplessness in the face of life.
‘Did he tell you anything else?’
‘No, only that she had the gift with horses.’ She looked at Griffoni, who nodded in understanding.
Griffoni asked, ‘Is there anyone working here who might have been here then?’
‘Let me think,’ the woman said, and Brunetti watched as she started counting. She got to seven, extending a finger for each, then closed them all back into her palm until everyone had been eliminated.
She looked at Brunetti. ‘No. They’re all gone.’ Her eyes drifted off to a field behind the house, where he saw a few horses grazing on the remaining grass. ‘Most of the horses are gone, too, I’m afraid.’ It sounded to Brunetti as though that were the part she regretted.
‘Are you still in contact with any of them?’
She didn’t bother to use her fingers to count the possibilities. ‘No, I’m not.’ Then, with mixed explanation and apology she added, ‘People don’t stay a long time at this sort of job.’
Brunetti saw that the driver was standing at the wooden fence, rubbing the head of one of the horses. As he watched, the driver bent down and ripped up a few tufts of grass on his side of the fence and held them out to the horse, who took them from his hand and munched on them. When she’d eaten them, the horse bumped her head against the man’s hand, and he obeyed by bending down for more grass.
‘They’re very smart,’ Griffoni said and walked towards the railing. Brunetti followed her, and the woman followed Brunetti. When the humans were all standing in a line, the horses in the field started to drift in their direction, and within five minutes the four humans were all busy pulling up grass to feed them.
Griffoni stood on the bottom rung of the fence and leaned over towards the horses, two of whom responded and nuzzled at her hands and then her neck and then her face. She embraced them, arms spread, a hand on each of their necks, and then began slowly to scratch at the place just under their ears. The three of them seemed to enter into a trance, and only when a third horse approached and nipped at the flank of one of the others did they jerk away from Griffoni and, losing interest, turn and trot away.