approaching within a few feet of him.
‘Basta! That’s far enough, Signor Canavan. I can see you well from there. You’ll find a chair near you - please sit down.’
The chair was grimy but fairly dry. Patrick brushed it gingerly before seating himself on the edge.
Alessandro Contarini had aged dramatically in the past twenty-one years. Patrick remembered him as a handsome man in his late fifties, with smooth grey hair brushed back from his forehead, exquisite clothes, and skin that was still almost without wrinkles. Now he looked like a desiccated replica of his old self: his skin was grey and mottled, his cheeks hollow, his eyes sunken and haunted. Thin white hair straggled untidily down to his neck. The exquisite clothes were stained and torn, the polished white teeth that had once smiled so patronizingly had turned yellow or disintegrated to blackened stumps.
‘I’m sorry you do not find the palazzo as you last saw it,’ he said. His voice was strained and hesitant, with a tight, wheezing note; yet beneath the surface, Patrick could detect something of the old hauteur.
Patrick said nothing. The image from the fresco had embedded itself in his mind: a group of hooded figures circling about their helpless victim, dragging him towards a stone sarcophagus in a dark tomb set about with vines.
‘It was something of a shock to see you standing there tonight,’ the old man went on. ‘Did you know that someone was here this morning asking about you? No, I can see from your face that you know nothing about it. That is very curious, is it not? How long is it now? Twenty years?’
Who came here?’ Patrick asked. ‘What did they want to know?’ He was frightened. Who the hell could have known so quickly that he was in Venice?
The count ignored his questions. ‘It must be more than twenty,’ he said. ‘And now you come to my attention twice in one day. You aren’t famous, are you, Signor Canavan? You haven’t won a lottery or killed a president? No? And yet important people come here asking questions. They wanted to know about the past, about your friendship with my daughter. And now the past turns up on my doorstep howling demands into the night, “You owe me an answer!”’
The old man paused.
‘Is that all you think I owe you? I seem to remember that, when we last met, I offered you money. That was immodest of me -I apologize. Perhaps we understand one another better now. You were a child then, little older than my son, Guido. And yet your grief was real, not a child’s grief at all. I am sorry you were hurt, sorry you were made to suffer. Please forgive me.’ He sighed, passing a long white hand over his cheeks.
‘At my age, nothing is left but forgiveness. So many things left unsaid, undone. And so much said and done that I regret. It will come to you in time, Patrick Canavan.’
‘Where is Francesca?’ Patrick asked softly.
‘Francesca is sleeping. Francesca is dead.’
Patrick shook his head.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said. He wondered why he was so calm, why his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper. ‘There’s no need to lie any longer. Just tell me where she is, that’s all I want to know.’
‘You speak as though she were alive.’
‘I’ve been to the tomb on San Michele. There’s nothing there. And I have a photograph.’
He took the crumpled picture from his pocket and passed it to the count. Contarini looked at it for a long time.
‘Where did you find this?’ he asked finally.
‘Does it matter?’
The old man shrugged.
‘Perhaps not. Well - what is it you want?’
‘An explanation.’
‘There are no explanations that would make sense to you.’
‘Suppose you let me be the judge of that.’ Patrick hesitated. He leaned forward, softening his voice. ‘Signor Contarini, I don’t think you understand. I loved your daughter once. I believe she loved me. Twenty-one years ago, she was taken from me. Someone, for reasons I cannot even guess at, pretended she was dead. I was summoned here by you and made to go through a mock funeral. I saw no reason to ask questions then. I left when you asked me to leave. But I will not leave tonight without answers.’
Contarini handed the photograph back to Patrick. His hand was shaking, and Patrick noticed tears at the corners of his eyes.
‘Signor Canavan, please believe me: Francesca loved you as much as you thought, and maybe more.’ He looked up. His face bore a look of infinite, irredeemable sadness. ‘I think...’ He faltered. ‘I think she still loves you. Or at least your memory.’
The count straightened and looked directly at Patrick.
‘Do not try to find her, Signor Canavan. She can never come back to you, never return to the world you inhabit. For you and your world, it is as though she had died. Don’t try to change it. Leave things as they are.’
Patrick took a deep breath. Contarini’s words were like a finger tearing back a scab, exposing an ancient wound. He had thought the pain of Francesca’s loss something wasted and bereft of strength, but in a moment it had returned with renewed vigour, like a blunt knife suddenly sharpened, cutting his flesh.
‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why?’
The count did not reply at once. He sat in his high-backed chair like a faded Renaissance prince whose court has deserted him.
‘Signor Canavan,’ he began, ‘there have been Contarinis almost as long as there has been a city called Venice. Eight Doges of the Republic bore our name. We owned palaces and ships, warehouses and trading houses here and throughout the Mediterranean. From the beginning we sat on the Great Council and the Senate and the Council of Ten. Now there is only myself, an old man waiting to die in a house that is already a ruin. Nothing you can do or say now can hurt me or help me.
‘But you want the truth, and the truth is precisely what I cannot give you. It is, I suppose, too shocking. Not for me, perhaps; but others would find it so. And in their rage, they would do what the many-headed crowd has always done: destroy what they do not understand.’
The old man paused again. His pale eyes scanned the dimly-lit room as though seeing it for the first time.
‘There are ghosts here,’ he said. ‘This room is full of them. Some of them I can see, others only hear. Perhaps they are not literal ghosts: I do not think they could harm us, at least not in any physical sense. But they are real all the same. Listen, Signor Canavan, let me tell you about them.
‘Centuries ago, when Venice was still a vassal of Byzantium, a group of merchants defied the Emperor’s ban on trade with Egypt and sailed to Alexandria. They filled ten ships with spices, silks, and carpets and came home rich men. One of them was my ancestor, Pietro Contarini. Two years later, he and another man returned to Alexandria; but this time they had not come for spices or cloth. They stole the mummified remains of Saint Mark and smuggled them back to Venice. The mummy was laid to rest beneath the High Altar in the Basilica - and Venice became a great pilgrimage centre.’
The count fell silent. On the canal outside, a motor-powered boat chugged slowly through the night. The sound of the engine filtered past heavy shutters into the room, rising briefly, then dying away as the boat turned a corner and vanished.
‘Pietro Contarini,’ he continued, his voice reduced almost to a whisper, ‘brought something else back to Venice along with the body of the saint. He had discovered something which, to him, was infinitely more valuable than the bones of a holy man. Pietro’s discovery was not a relic or a piece of merchandise or a box of treasure - it was the truth. A truth so devastating that he kept it to himself for the next forty years.’
Patrick fixed his eyes on the count’s pale lips as he related his tale. In the shadows of the room, he imagined others crouched and listening.
‘On his deathbed, however, Pietro told one of his sons, a man of over forty himself by then, Andrea. In those days, merchants were still trading regularly with North Africa, in spite of the objections of the Pope and the Byzantines. Andrea took a ship to
Alexandria, then made his way overland to Palestine. To Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre.’
In the room, nothing moved. Even the shadows held still. Outside, all was silent. Patrick could hear his breath
