warehouses of the old German merchant colony. The side and front of the building glistened with colour. Two great frescoes covered them, the work of master artists. He remembered their names. Giorgione and Titian, both commissioned after fire destroyed the original edifice in 1505.
And there, he knew, quite as though a part of his brain that had been sleeping until then had come fully awake and whispered the awful truth into his ears, there lay the real horror, the true madness. There should not have been frescoes. Giorgione’s was long fallen into ruin, a mere fragment left in the Accademia gallery, his only documented work. Titian’s was no more than a haze of faded colours on the Fondaco wall, a reminder of past glories, nothing more. The Fondaco itself was a post office now, drab, artless, without vibration.
He thought back to each of the places they had passed. The Fondaco dei Turchi should not have been in such a state of disrepair: it had been rebuilt in the last century and later turned into a museum. There should have been a forest of television aerials on the roof of the Palazzo Vendramin. The gilding and the coloured paints had long ago flaked away from the golden palace of the Contarinis.
And now the madness settled in him like a snake, coiling and uncoiling through his body. He had seen no motoscqfi, no vaporetti, not a single motorized craft anywhere on the canal. Gondolas had not carried felze since the last century. There had been no imbarcaderi crowded with passengers waiting to board the water buses. No police boats, no vigili urbani, no ambulances, no electric lights.
He looked up. They were about to go under the bridge. High above, looking down at him from the bridge, dark figures huddled against the parapet. They wore black capes and tricorn hats, and on their faces low white masks, beaked, like birds of prey: the bauta, the carnival costume of the eighteenth century.
The gondola slid without a sound beneath the low arch. The lights were blotted out. All became darkness.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Are you all right?’
Patrick sat up in bed, shaking. Someone had turned on a light. Makonnen. He heard his voice again.
‘Are you all right, Mr Canavan?’
He was sweating. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the Canal in darkness, the white masked faces peering over the bridge.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I’m okay. Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.’
They were sharing a room in a small pensione on the Rio della Verona. On the day before, they had flown to Rome from Glasgow and taken the first train to Venice.
‘What time is it?’ Patrick asked.
‘It’s after four o’clock. You were shouting in your sleep. In Italian. You were shouting in Italian.’
What was I saying?’
Makonnen hesitated.
‘I ... don’t know exactly. I couldn’t make out all the words. Once you cried out “Chi e lei? Dove mi sta portando - Who are you? Where are you taking me?”
Those had been the words he had tried to shout to the gondolier. He had not forgotten. He had forgotten nothing. The gondola, the dark fagades, the bridge lit up by fireworks: his memory of them was real, and as clear as that of the hallucination he had experienced in Dublin. But this had been a dream, surely nothing more.
‘What are you frightened of, Mr Canavan? What is it?’
Patrick felt the sweat growing cold on his skin.
The night was chilly. He could feel the all-pervading damp of Venice rising from the small canal outside.
‘You know what frightens me,’ he said.
‘No,’ replied the priest. ‘I do not mean that. That frightens me too. That is natural. You are right to be frightened. But there is something else. Something else is frightening you.’
Patrick did not reply at once. He had not told Makonnen about Francesca’s photograph or his discovery that the object in front of which she was standing had been her own tomb. There had been no time to think properly about it. Nor had he spoken of the hallucination he had had in Dublin.
‘Tell me, Father,’ he began, ‘do you believe in ghosts?’
Makonnen looked at him uneasily.
‘Ghosts? I’ve never really thought ... You must know that the Church does not encourage tampering with the supernatural.’ He paused. ‘Do you think you have seen a ghost? Is that what you are frightened of? A ghost?’ There was no mockery in the priest’s voice, no hint of a rebuke. Men could be frightened of the dead, that was natural. In Ethiopia, in many parts of Africa, the dead were not so separate from the living.
Patrick shivered.
‘Listen, Father. I’m not sure I believe in a God, much less in spirits. But...’
Carefully, he explained to Makonnen what he had found. He took Francesca’s photograph from his pocket and showed it. The inscription on the stone was clear, there was no mistaking it. Only Francesca’s identity remained in doubt. For Makonnen, but not for Patrick. When he finished, the priest did not speak at first. They lay silently in their cold beds, listening to the water lapping the edges of the canal.
‘Is that why we have come to Venice?’ Makonnen asked finally. ‘To find this woman? You think she is still alive, that something very cruel has been done to you. Is that it?’
‘I came here to find Migliau. To discover what he knows about Passover.’
‘But you want to find the truth. You want to find this woman, if she is still alive. If she is not, after all, a ghost. That is so, isn’t it?’
Patrick nodded. It was true. Until this moment, he had not admitted it to himself. That was why he had chosen Venice over Rome as a place in which to start their investigation. But he did not speak of the hallucination or the clarity of his dream. Were they connected in some way? He might have to see a doctor. Perhaps the stress of the past few weeks, combined with the pressures that had led him to leave the Company...
‘Turn out the light, Father. Let’s get some sleep. We have to start early in the morning.’
He woke at seven, unrefreshed. Makonnen was already up, whispering prayers in a corner, underneath a small bronze crucifix. He was dressed in clothes Patrick had bought for him in Belfast, on the day after their escape from Glendalough. A heavy, rust-coloured sweater, brown tweed trousers and dark tan brogues. He still seemed uneasy in his new clothes, as though he wore his priesthood like a carapace between his flesh and the alien, layman’s garb he was forced to wear. At first, indeed, he had been reluctant to exchange his clerical dress for new garments, but Patrick had persuaded him that it was essential for his safety. Somewhere, hidden eyes would be watching for a black priest. Makonnen could not change his blackness, but he could at least avoid drawing attention to his vocation.
From Glendalough they had headed straight for Dublin. There had been no immediate pursuit: clearly, Van Doren’s messy end had disabled the helicopter and thrown his surviving agents into confusion. Patrick had driven like a madman down twisting roads, with Makonnen beside him, very still, very subdued, staring into the cone of light ahead as though transfixed by something ungodly torn out of the surrounding blackness.
In Dublin, they stopped long enough to draw money from a cash machine and to hire a fresh car from Boland’s on Pearse Street. They left the Mercedes near Trinity College: with any luck, it would be days before anyone realized it had been abandoned. By seven o’clock they were heading north on the Swords road. An hour later they were nearing the border.
Instinct made Patrick cautious. The Irish border is simplicity to cross - and simplicity to watch. He knew an unapproved road that turned east after Dundalk. It ran high along the cliffs overlooking Dundalk Bay, then down towards Newry, skirting Carlingford Lough. He knew it would be impossible to travel that way at night. The road turned and twisted, and in parts only feet separated it from the cliffs edge: without lights it would have been suicide. But lights would have drawn the attention of British border patrols watching for illegal traffic.
They spent the night in a guest house in Dundalk and left early the following morning. Patrick waited until the main road was clear of traffic before turning right. The road was little more than a country lane with a tarred surface. It rose through a series of bends before opening out over the sea. There were mountains beyond it. And the river coming down to meet it, dressed in silk. A red sea, and a green sea, and a blue sea, catching fire, and the mountains heavy and full of mist.
Soon after that they crossed the border, though there was no marker to say that they had done so. No one challenged them. And before long they were back on the main road, heading into Newry.
