The Etruscan Net by Michael Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page A

was one of the last of those beautifully made Sunbeam Talbot drop-head coupés, looked after with anxious care, fitted with every extra from the reversing light at the back to the special fog-lamp slung low on the front bumper.
    Broke fitted himself into the driver’s seat, backed out of the garage, and turned up the Viale. That way he could avoid going through the town altogether. There was a secondary road to Empoli, quiet and pleasant to drive on, now that the autostrada had channelled off the fast drivers. At Empoli he would head south-west, for Cecina and the coast.
    It was four o’clock, and the sun was toppling over towards the west, when he came to the turning which leads towards the Bronzini farms. A bristle of notices warned against unauthorized entry, hunting, and the picking of flowers. They mentioned also the presence of fierce dogs. Broke drove carefully up the flinty path, and parked the car in front of a group of outbuildings. There seemed to be no one about. The stillness of mid-afternoon blanketed everything. Even the chickens were asleep.
    Broke locked the steering wheel, got out, and started up the footpath. The grass was knee high and full of flowers. There were grape hyacinths and sea-blue vervain, and a sort of wild reseda, which a gardener would call mignonette, anemones of all colours, and bushes of heath and broom. Above him, larks were singing. It was not unlike one of those forgotten corners on the top of Salisbury Plain, which the military have taken over and then abandoned.
    How wise had the Etruscans been, to bury their dead in free, happy places. Not to put them in solemn churchyards, under black yew trees, or in hygienic metropolitan cemetries, marble-slabbed, like butcher’s shops; but tucked away in little rock caves, in the open hill-side, with all the small requirements for their journey, all the luggage for an after-life, stacked neatly beside them.
    But had they really believed it? Could a people who were practical enough to invent dentistry, drainage and town planning, sophisticated enough to enjoy concerts and spectator sports, meticulous enough to divide the liver of a beast into sixteen sections and attribute a different significance to each; could they really have believed in a future life in which pots and pans, and ropes would be useful? Or were they whistling in the dark?
    Broke was a rational agnostic. He had no wish for a second innings in a fourth dimension. He believed that ‘this be truth, though all the rest be lies. The rose that once is blown forever dies.’ What happened to that tiny, personal, inner consciousness that men called self was a mystery. He was inclined to hope that it, too, went out like a snuffed candle.
    When the first shot came he stood staring. When a second followed, instincts dormant for twenty-five years reasserted themselves and he went down flat on his face. At the third, he raised his head cautiously. It seemed to be aimed well above him, where a white bird was fluttering. As he watched, the bird tumbled awkwardly to the ground.
    Broke got up, brushed the grass from his knees, and ran up the path. Once over the crest he saw the marksmen, three boys, carrying light rifles. They were looking at a pigeon on the ground. It was dragging itself round in a circle, but making no attempt to fly. As Broke came up, one of them prodded the bird with his foot and said, ‘Perhaps if we set fire to its tail, it might fly once more.’
    Broke saw a cage on the ground, with two other birds in it. He said angrily, ‘What are you doing?’
    The boys swung round, and he recognized the two boys who had taken charge of the car the night before. The third, he thought, had been one of the waiters.
    The tall boy said, ‘We are practising our shooting. We are sorry if we frightened you. But this is a private property.’
    ‘What are you doing to those birds?’
    ‘We pluck their wing and tail feathers so they can fly a little, but not too far, and we shoot at them.