IT CAME AS A RELIEF that bombardments did not follow on a strictly daily basis. The report was that bad weather sometimes held up the migrants in their passage round the Western Alps, so there were peaceful mornings when scouts posted by the syndicates along the migrant routes telephoned in with the depressing news that no flights had been sighted making for Rome. When the weather lifted and the passage cleared it was natural that a more than average number of birds was to be expected, and the shooting continued almost without pause throughout the day. Following these intervals of glut Di Stefano’s, the smart restaurant at the end of the village, put out a placard announcing that ucellini were on the menu. Four of these per portion were served grilled on skewers and patrons were provided with pretty porcelain receptacles painted with pasque-flowers into which osseous remnants could be surreptitiously spat. It was an expensive course; nevertheless, the rumour spread through the village that the ucellini were not buntings, skylarks or pipits that had fallen to the guns but in reality were no more than sparrows netted in the Pontine marshes.
The house was separated from the castle by a small but dense shrubbery. In this, inexplicably, scorpions congregated among the leaves in quantities I have never seen before or since. It was an attraction in consequence for weary and famished birds, in particular warblers, who seemed by some extraordinary instinct to detect the presence while in flight of the succulent morsels awaiting them below. Inevitably the birds caught the eye of the marksmen and a few days on in the season a close-quartered early morning fusillade awoke me once again. From the window overlooking the street I saw that two men had placed themselves behind the garden wall from which they fired into the bushes. Soon after, they moved off and another arrived in a car from which he alighted carrying a most elaborate and costly looking gun which he set up on a tripod. He adjusted the sights, took aim and fired just at the moment when the Count, followed by Hannibal, came through the castle gate. With that he dismantled the gun, climbed back into the car and drove off. The Count had stopped to watch these proceedings before joining me, while Hannibal limped away for his morning visit to a stone projecting from the base of the wall bearing an obliterated Etruscan inscription. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked.
‘I wish these people wouldn’t shoot into the garden,’ I said. ‘I have children to think about.’
‘All the same, it’s better to grin and bear it,’ he said. ‘If you complain you’re likely to make enemies, which is something to avoid. I’m off to my garden to collect some rather special parsley. Why don’t you lock your family away in a safe place for an hour or two and come along?’