“I love my work. It is like…”
“Like another world, into which you may retreat.” She smiled. He was speechless. Laura placed her fingers softly on his cheek, the sort of gesture an elder sister might make to an errant sibling. “Poor Daniel. Trapped in daydreams, like all of us around here.”
He stared at the mess of rubbish on the cellar floor. “Is Scacchi in a daydream?”
“He is desperate,” she replied mournfully.
“But why?” Daniel wondered.
“Don’t ask me. I am just the servant around here.”
The irked, slightly peevish tone of her voice suddenly made her seem much younger. “I think you’re a lot more than that, Laura, and you know it.”
She swore, one of the odd, coarse Venetian curses he was coming to recognise. Then she wiped her face with the handkerchief again, gave it back to him, becoming the adult Laura once more. “The truth of it is, he’s old. They’re both very sick. Perhaps there is nothing more to it than that.”
“But surely he can get some help with the medicine if he has no money?”
“It’s not medicine. I don’t know what it is. He seems determined to make some final bargain, as if something were unfinished. I don’t know! ”
Daniel surveyed the cellar. The dusty room seemed to be laughing at them.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Laura announced. “There’s dinner to cook. Don’t waste your time. Give me those clothes. I’ll wash them.”
“No. I won’t give up. I owe it to him. Besides, I believe he’s right. There is something here. I can feel it.”
His sudden persistence amused her. “Daniel! Where’s your English logic now?”
For once he was the one with the scolding look. “I thought you disapproved of that?”
“Touché. But that does not alter the fact that this place is full of junk.”
“Of course it is.” Now that he considered the matter, it was obvious. “Scacchi told us so himself. He said all this was taken down here when the upper floors were used for warehousing. It was dumped on the floor because it was largely worthless even before it was damaged. They would surely know the tide would flood in here.”
Laura threw up her arms in exasperation. “There! You have it. Now may we go?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “If there is something of value, it would pre-date that time and, furthermore, be in a place where it was obvious the water could not reach.”
“Pah! Mysteries! Mysteries!”
He came to her, clasped her hands in his. “Think, Laura! You are the Venetian. If you wanted to keep something safe in this place, above the water level, where would you choose?”
Laura stared into his eyes, not trying to release herself from his grip. She was, he believed, thinking rapidly and logically about the point he was struggling to make.
“Well?” he demanded impatiently.
“These are bare brick walls!” she replied with a sudden smile. “How could one hide something of value in a room like this?”
There was an idea running around her head. He knew as much from the bright, amused glint in her eyes.
“Perhaps…”
“Perhaps nothing! Supper time approaches. I have food to cook. You must remove those filthy clothes for me to wash. Come!” An insistent hand pushed him towards the stairs. “Come!”
“Laura…” Her sudden haste disturbed him. “What about the treasure?”
“Fairy stories,” she barked. “Smoke and mirrors. Leave it to the servants, Daniel, and another day.”
16
Scacchi’s gold
There could be no mistake about it. Daniel had seen Laura take Scacchi quietly aside after breakfast, pass him a sheet of paper, then nod discreetly in his own direction. Shortly afterwards, the old man threw a feeble arm around him and read out a list of minor errands: some paperwork from the city council, some stamps from the post office, a repaired piece of cheap glass to be picked up from a workshop on Giudecca. Laura had engineered him out of the house quite brazenly. He would spend the entire morning hopping from vaporetto to vaporetto while she pursued some secret plan in the cellar.
“But, Scacchi,” he objected. “I am here to work. On your library.”
“Plenty of time for that. You will miss lunch, I’m afraid, so pick up a little snack somewhere. Not too much, mind. Don’t forget you have a dinner date tonight, either. Massiter is not a man to be ignored.”
With that he was shooed out of the house with Laura’s list of tasks, each set down in neat, intelligent handwriting, in his pocket. He returned, laden down with shopping bags, just after two and had hardly set them down in the hall when she was upon him. Her hair was matted with dust and cobwebs, her white uniform now almost completely soiled. She wore the widest smile he believed he had ever seen on a human being.
“You look like the Cheshire Cat,” he noted a touch sourly.
“Stop speaking riddles, Daniel,” she replied, bemused. “I have been hunting. Do you not want to see what I have found?”
“I am cross with you, Laura. You schemed to have me out of the house just so you could have all this to yourself.”
She batted him with her right hand, sending a cloud of murk across his clean shirt. “Oh, poppycock! You said yourself I got in your way. I have merely prepared the ground on which your brilliance may shine. Come! The ancients are listening to music upstairs. Let’s not disturb them until we must.”
She passed him a lantern and he followed her down the stairs into the cellar, which seemed at first glance to be in the selfsame dismal jumble he had seen the day before.
“So?” she asked with a grin. “Let us test your suitability to be a Venetian. Where would your chosen hiding place be?”
Daniel glowered at the infuriating room. There was not a single storage place set above ground level. If the cellar had been used for keeping items safe from the depredations of the lagoon, the necessary cupboards had long been removed.
“It’s impossible,” he murmured.
“What do you mean, ‘impossible’? You must begin to understand us. If a Venetian had something of value in here, he wouldn’t leave it in plain view. There’s a water gate there, Daniel. Any villain could steal in and take it.”
“Then where?”
She took the lantern from him and swept the room once more. “In the walls. In the walls! Come.”
He followed her to the rear of the room. “Here,” she said. “The front has no partition. The sides are solid too. But at the rear we go into that mess of houses behind, and anything might be possible.”
She placed a hand on the brickwork and worked her way along the damp surface. “Four hours I have done this, Daniel. Feeling for something.”
“And you found it?”
He saw the joy in her face and knew the answer. She walked to the last third of the wall, a good four feet above the floor, took his hand, and placed it on the masonry. Here the nature of the mortar between the ancient bricks changed, becoming paler and floury in texture. She dug at it with her finger. The material came away like dry sand. Without a word, Daniel went back into the centre of the room and picked up an old crowbar he had brought with him to open any stubborn crates.
“I saved this moment for you,” she said triumphantly.
Not caring about the grime and cobwebs, Daniel kissed her quickly on the cheek. “You are a magnificent woman, Laura. I hope Ca’ Scacchi can stand this.”
“Avanti, Daniel!”
She stood back and he set to the wall, carving away the mortar. After twenty minutes of hard work, when the hole was judged to be sufficiently large, they held the lantern close to the entrance and peered inside. The artificial light revealed a package wrapped in ancient brown paper, tied with string, and set quite deliberately on a stand of bricks to keep it above the water level.