It was Margherita who inadvertently sparked an idea in Sarah.
‘Le famiglie nobili italiane. You would have heard of the Medici, Farnese, maybe the Visconti?Il lignaggio. Lineage.’
Margherita continued to natter away, but Sarah wasn’t listening.Lineage.The word lingered in the cool October air. Her eyes widened and she suddenly sat upright in her chair. ‘Marghe, that’s it!’
Margherita stopped mid-sentence. ‘Scusami?’
‘His lineage. A family tree.’ Sarah stood up and began pacing alongside the table. ‘Why hadn’t I thought of that before? It’s brilliant.’
‘Whose family tree?’
‘Matthew’s! The D’Adamo family tree. I’ve been looking for – well, racking my brain, actually – these past few weeks trying to think of something for Matthew.’
‘You will make a family tree?’ Her eyebrows raised.
Sarah’s eyes darted across the floor at her feet. ‘Yes. I am going to need your help, though.’
‘Of course,’ she said, starting to shuffle her papers in search of her notepad. ‘Do you have the family documents?’
‘I have nothing. If Matthew has anything, I don’t want to ask him for it. I want this to be a surprise.’
Margherita’s mouth suddenly contorted into a sneaky smile. ‘I know where you can get what you need.’
‘Where?’
She clicked the top of her pen with a cocky air. ‘Alberto D’Adamo.Giusto, no?’
Sarah practically squealed with glee. ‘Yes! We can stop by and collect whatever he can pull together for me. I’m going to call him right now.’
‘Now?Proprio adesso?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah breathed impatiently.
‘But what about the Medici?’ She looked forlornly at her meticulously prepared lesson notes and worksheets.
Sarah, unlocking her phone, made her way to bolt from the room. ‘Pardon my language, and no disrespect, but I couldn’t give a shit about the Medici right now.Non me ne frega! C’mon, I need your help.’
A week later, under the guise of finalising an advertising order for the Sagra dell’Umbria, both Sarah and Margherita were able to escape to Florence.
They had arranged with Alberto to spend the day at Palazzo D’Adamo. Sarah had assured him that any meeting room would suffice, but no. Alberto had insisted on the two enjoying a suite for the day, and had even arranged for lunch and afternoon tea on their behalf.
He had also pulled together all the documentation they needed for Sarah to create a family tree for Matthew. Alberto availed himself to the pair for anything they might need, but otherwise he left them in the privacy of their opulent day residence.
On their way to the hotel, Sarah had stopped by a small artisan producer of traditionally hand-marbled paper. She purchased a new calligraphy pen, ink, various sizes of plain and marbled paper and decorative trim. She now at least felt prepared to be able to create something from nothing.
With folders and documents sprawled across the cloth-covered table and wearing cotton gloves, the two began. Sarah kept count of lines and generations while Margherita was her Italian eyes, translating, noting and cross-referencing.
The pair had made light work of the who’s who of the D’Adamo family as far as the early fifteenth century to Conte D’Adamo and Contessa Marchione, a married noble couple who had lived in Florence. However, they soon found it was a dead end.
Sarah gave Alberto a call and he promptly returned to their room for support.
He tutted and shook his head, assessing the paper. ‘Morta. Dead. Childbirth.’ He rummaged through some papers in a manilla folder and found a copy of an entry in the public records. ‘The 12th of May 1416,’ he read. ‘The baby died too.’ There was another entry just below, forUnnamed Daughter, and both lines had been signed by a priest.
Sarah’s heart dropped. ‘How awful for the Conte. That’s just devastating.’
‘Sadly, it was not uncommon during those times,’ Margherita added.
Alberto took a look over Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Guarda qui,’ he pointed to where the Conte’s line came to an end, ‘he had no siblings or children. No one to leave his estate to. So, he passed it onto the widow of a deceased cousin.’ He gestured with a finger how the lines of Sarah’s tree connected forming an inverted Y. ‘This is the branch that Luca’s family descends from, and this is Matteo’s line.’ He pointed to the other branch. ‘We don’t know for sure when the inheritance clause came into being, but as you see in the Conte’s case, he felt compelled to ensure his estate was safe and wouldn’t be absorbed by theRegionewhen he died. Perhaps the Conte was the catalyst for its birth?’
