CAPITOLO XLV
1777
Ghetto Nuovo, Venezia Ermanno's eyes are candle-bright as he smooths the sketch of the silver tablet out on the family table. 'A monk, you say? A lowly friar gave you this?'
Efran slips off his new, mid-length green coat, richly embroidered in gold scrolls from collar to hem, and places it lovingly over the back of a chair that's older than he is. 'He was Benedictine. Black robes and a picture of pure innocence. Came from San Giorgio.'
His friend fingers the drawing, as though touching it will help him divine its mystery. 'It's fascinating. You think he owns this object? Or has he stolen it and wants to sell it?'
Efran shrugs his bony shoulders. 'He says it's his, but who knows? Important thing is that it may be worth something, and we may be able to get our hands on it.'
The pained face of the impaled netsvis stares up from the table. 'But do we want to get our hands on it?' queries Ermanno playfully. 'Some of these Greek and Egyptian artefacts are cursed. They come from tombs and are supposed to belong to the dead in the afterlife. Steal that kind of stuff and you end up with a whole legion of spirits on your trail.'
'The only spirits I believe in are the ones you drink. As for the afterlife, most of us don't even have a current life worth worrying about.'
Efran carries on talking but Ermanno's stopped listening. He's now engrossed in the lettering. 'I think it's Etruscan. The writing looks Etruscan.'
'Before Roman times?'
'Well done. Very much before, and maybe even eight or nine centuries before Christ. But this particular object isn't quite that old. The lettering looks somewhat later.'
Efran rubs his hands. 'Very educational. More importantly, what's it worth?'
'Philistine! It's impossible to guess without seeing it. Did the monk say it was solid silver?'
Efran struggles to remember. 'No, I don't think so. He just said silver.' He holds out his palm, 'About as big and almost as wide as my hand.'
'The Etruscans mined silver. There are no gold mines in Italy, though over the years gold became the offering of choice to the gods.'
Efran is bored. He merely wants to know the thing's value and then figure out how to persuade the monk to part with it. He stands and grandly pulls on his coat. 'I'll leave it with you. Let me know if you solve the mystery – and its price.'
Ermanno doesn't even notice his friend leave. He bends over the sketch in concentrated silence and soon surrounds himself with every book he has on ancient art and religious artefacts.
His family come and go, flowing around him like a river round a rock. They eat dinner and supper, then finally drift off to bed, amused by his preoccupation.
Gradually, book by book, he picks up the trail of the tablet.
He is certain the characters are Etruscan. He finds a suggested alphabet drawn up by scholars of earlier times, but can't make sense of any of the words they list. As his eyes grow tired, it becomes apparent that the experts contradict each other as to the base of the language. Some, such as the Dominican monk Annio da Viterbo, claim it sprang from the same source as Hebrew, others link it to Greek, while many suggest it came from Lydia in the east.
None of this helps the now bleary-eyed Ermanno.
He puts the troublesome inscription to one side and scans book after book for drawings similar to the figure that the monk has sketched. It doesn't take him long to come to the conclusion that he was right – it's an augur – a seer, priest, haruspex or netsvis.
By the time the first light of dawn pierces the dirt-streaked windows of the Buchbinder home, Ermanno's eyes are as red as raw meat. His neck aches and he's desperate to stretch out in bed and rest properly.
Wearily, he thumbs through the last of his ancient volumes.
Now he sees it.
In a dusty, broken-spined book on myths and legends, he comes upon the Tablets of Atmanta – a story of a blinded augur called Teucer and his sculptress wife Tetia.
CHAPTER 47
Present Day Hotel Rotoletti, Venice Two a.m.
The banging on Tom's bedroom door wakes him from a deep sleep.
He rolls out of bed, his heart thumping from the shock of the loud noise. 'Who is it?'
No one answers.
More banging.
Tom's alert now. On his toes. Wide awake. Life in Compton prepared him for all manner of surprises. He jerks the door open, ready to deal with whatever lies on the other side.
Valentina Morassi falls into his room.
She stumbles headlong and Tom only just manages to catch her.
She reeks of booze. White wine, by the smell of it. Her hair is a crazy mess and her make-up smudged so much she has panda eyes.
'Okay. Be careful,' he steadies her and kicks the door closed behind them.
She slurs something, then wobbles her way to the edge of his bed.
Tom guides her carefully, worried she might fall, and then realises he's wearing nothing but some black boxers Tina bought him. 'Excuse me.' He leaves her on the bed, quickly grabs his trousers off the back of a chair and steps into them. 'Are you all right?'
She forces a weak smile.
It's clear she's very much not all right. Tom scouts for a glass to pour water in and offers it to her. 'Here, drink this, it will help.'
Valentina takes a tiny sip, then just holds the glass. 'I'm sorry – sorry I woke you. I just can't be alone tonight.' She suddenly looks more flustered and embarrassed than drunk.
Tom sits alongside her and lifts the glass to her lips. 'It's fine. Come on, you need to drink it. I don't have coffee, so this is the only way I can help get you sober.'
She pushes his hand away. 'I don't want sober.' She peers up at him pitifully. 'I'm going mad, Tom. I hurt so much. I feel like I'm going to crack, just break into a million pieces.'
He takes the glass out of her grip, sets it on the floor and puts his arms round her.
She presses her face against his naked shoulder as if it's a relief just to touch someone. He holds tight and waits for her to unwind.
It starts as a tiny sigh, like the first whisper of a newborn breeze, then rises into a deep, long gale of sobbing. Valentina holds on to him so tightly and cries so hard that all her muscles ache with the strain of it.
When she's finished, he gallantly offers her his bed for the night and takes a brief walk outside to give her some privacy.
The sky is jet black. A handful of stars sparkle like diamonds spilled on black velvet cloth. The streets are eerily empty, and the deep silence makes Venice look like a film set that's been deserted. Tom spends a while thinking of Valentina's grief and the dangers that lie ahead for her as she learns to accept her loss while pursuing a career that's full of death and evil. He thinks briefly of Tina: her betrayal of him and, if he's honest, how much he misses her, and how his mind had tricked him into seeing her at Isola Mario. And he thinks of another woman, too.
Mera Teale, the billionaire's feisty PA.
Valentina is asleep by the time he creeps back in. He pulls the quilt up over her shoulder, switches off the light, grabs his cellphone and returns outside.
Mera Teale, the loudmouth with a teardrop tattoo identical to that of a Death Row inmate he'd met more than a decade ago at San Quentin.
For two months, he'd been posted there, listening to the lost souls trapped in the purgatory of an appeals process that had them hoping for a reprieve right until the second their sleeves were rolled up and a fatal fix of potassium chloride prepared for their veins.
One fiercely violent but strangely charismatic young man had a teardrop identical to Teale's.
Lars Bale.
Bale was a talented and passionate artist. Once, as a punishment after he'd broken some petty prison rule, guards had searched his cell and confiscated all his paints and equipment. Bale retaliated by using his own faeces to paint a portrait of the governor on his wall.