A Richer Dust Concealed: A gripping historical mystery thriller you won’t be able to put down!

by R P Nathan

  A Richer Dust Concealed

  R P Nathan

  Copyright © 2021 R P Nathan

  The right of R P Nathan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published in 2021 by Cassiopeia Publishing

  Cover art and typesetting by Cabochon Design

  This book is a work of fiction. Many of the historical characters are real but the detail of their actions is imagined. Other characters and events are entirely imaginary and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This might seem at odds with the book’s Foreword in which the narrator claims everything written here is true. Well, as always in life, you’re going to have to decide whom to believe.

  For

  Paola and Beppe,

  Alessandro, Anna and Camilla

  And of course for

  Hilary

  without whom

  I would never have met them

  in the first place

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Part One

  Prologue

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Part Three

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Afterword

  Let me know what you thought of this book

  Acknowledgements

  Books By This Author

  If I should die, think only this of me:

  That there’s some corner of a foreign field

  That is for ever England. There shall be

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

  A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

  A body of England’s, breathing English air,

  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

  The Soldier, Rupert Brooke, 1915

  Foreword

  July 2020, London

  John

  The first thing to say is that this book is all true.

  Just because it’s taken me a few years to get it out there doesn’t mean I made any of it up.

  In fact soon after the events it covers had occurred I did try to warn a few people. But the “authorities” weren’t the slightest bit interested in our story. You’ve got to remember it was 2002 and they had more important things to worry about post 9/11 than a group of Venetian terrorists.

  (Although even back then I wasn’t sure “terrorists” was the right word for Them.)

  But the main point I’m trying to get across is that I’m not lying about any of this stuff. Which was certainly not the impression given by the frowning and puzzled faces at the Police station, and the Home Office, and the Italian Consulate, when I went there to tell them about it. About what had happened and what I thought might happen next. They neither believed me nor felt the need to do anything about any of it.

  And to be fair nothing did happen next. And though I scanned the Italian press, looking for stray news items about the main protagonists, I neither saw their names pop up nor heard of any atrocities which might be linked to Them.

  (Not that atrocities ever seemed to be Her kind of style.)

  So anyway, that’s where I was: nobody believed me; and nothing happened.

  But I was determined not to let all this fade. It had already been my life for several years after all. So I decided to write it down. Well my bits anyway and then to pull together everyone else’s versions of events – from the ones who were still alive – and to combine them with the older pieces of the story, the ones that had got us into all this in the first place. I figured that way at least I’d have it documented should anyone become interested in it some day.

  Or if something untoward was to befall one of us…

  Anyway, I’d not really written anything before so it took me a while to get the book together.

  But it didn’t take eighteen years.

  In truth it probably only took about two. But soon after I was done – despite the lack of any hint of surveillance or reprisal – I suddenly got cold feet about doing anything with it. I became convinced that if I published these memoirs that They would come after me – after us – and I really didn’t want that.

  Unlike in 2002, I now had something to lose, a life I wasn’t willing to give up.

  By the time that feeling of danger was past, however, and I tried to get a publisher interested, it was already too late. The literary world was far more interested in fictional adventures like the Da Vinci Code than a true story like mine.

  By then things had moved on for me in any case. We had a family; work was hectic; and time passed the way it does. I gave up trying to get the book I’d written – or perhaps assembled would be more accurate – published and it lay in the attic: a couple of print copies and a digital version on an old laptop.

  Like so many people, though, this year – the pandemic year – has brought everything to a crashing halt. We’ve both been furloughed and the twins – teenagers now – have been off from school for what already seems like an eternity. The novelty of us all being together wore off pretty quickly and the long days we spend together drag by.

  The weather at least has been good.

  And it was on one of those baking days when I was meant to be using some of the enforced downtime to clear out the attic that I found this book again. One of the hard copies. A sheaf of 400 A4 pages still encircled by the string I’d so proudly tied it with all those years ago; ready to send – and re-send – to publishers until I lost interest at the lack of theirs.

  I abandoned my clear-out and stumbled downstairs and out into the garden. Pulled a deckchair into the shade of the lilac tree and began to leaf through the pages.

  And as I started reading it reminded me not just of those events but of that time.

  Of being just out of university; and then of being in my early thirties. By comparison to now those days seemed so care free. It reminded me of then: the places, the warmth, the light. I sat in our small garden and read the pages and even though there was danger and heartbreak contained within that story, there was laughter and camaraderie too. I longed to be back there, to be away from the
claustrophobia of Lockdown London, and back into the heat and sounds and vivid colours of Rome and Venice and Cyprus; and back to the London of my past.

  It struck me as I was reading it that everything that had happened – even our own contribution – was now long ago. And maybe that was fitting. The past is where we live. It’s what makes us. It’s less another country, more an archipelago, each island a fragment of time entire unto itself; yet detached. There’s no continuum in memory and seldom agreement or objectivity. Soon today will be yesterday in any case; and my own story will gather dust like the other, older, books which are so central to it.

  And that’s as it should be.

  So anyway, over the last month I’ve been re-reading these pages, whiling away the endless languor of furlough while the rest of the family have been otherwise occupied. I’ve corrected a few typos but otherwise left the book unchanged. I want to present what it felt to be 21 and 31 so there’s no point trying to rewrite anything of it now, when I’m nearly 50.

  Ugh.

  Even writing that makes me depressed. But there we go.

  Anyway I’ve done a light edit and now the book is finally out there.

  This book.

  And it feels like a relief to be telling the story at last. Even more than a memoir it’s a warning first and foremost; in case They ever re-surface. Though as I’ve said there’s been nothing in the news about Them recently; or ever really. It was like They’d just disappeared.

  As though none of it had ever happened.

  Except it did happen.

  Like I said at the start: it’s all true.

  Every single word of it.

  Part One

  A Foreign Field

  Prologue

  14 September 1570, Cyprus – Girolamo Polidoro

  My master Count Bugon told me that we should be needing two horses that very evening and that I was to squire him and should ensure his armour was polished and his flintlock pistols were in readiness and that I myself should be prepared with mail tunic and sword. I thought at first that the Turk must be already hard upon us but he told me we had a special duty to perform for all Venice that night and would be riding with the Captain General himself.

  At close to midnight and after eating a small morsel, my master and I saddled up and we rode together into the main square. There were eleven others there horsed, their faces shown by torchlight: five noblemen – which were Captain General Marc’Antonio Bragadino; Lorenzo Tiepolo, who was Captain of the City of Baffo; Astorre Baglione, General of the Militia; Count Sigismondo da Casoldo, and Captain Bernadino da Gubio – their five squires, one of whom was my great friend Giuseppe, and another man, Alvise, who was the head servant of Captain Bragadino’s household. This last was bearing a flat wooden box in front of him, rested on the pommel of his saddle.

  On our arrival the company was complete and with the Captain General’s squire, whose name was Zani, taking the lead, we thirteen rode through the streets of Famagusta and left the city by the Limisso gate. The moon had risen, so though we had extinguished our torches as precaution, there was glimmer enough to be able to see. We rode slowly and with care but there was no sign of the Turks who had been raiding ever closer to the city walls in recent weeks.

  We rode some three hours by my reckoning with but one brief stop, until at last a halt was called on the edge of some trees. We dismounted and were told to leave our horses there in the care of the Captain General’s squire, and that we were to continue on foot. However, before we moved off, Captain Bragadino instructed his servant Alvise to blindfold us other servants and squires so that we would not see the path we were about to walk.

  We were greatly surprised at this. Alvise explained to us, however, that we were to act as witnesses to a deed of great importance and that it was desirous that the exact location of this should be revealed to as few as possible.

  Blindfolded then, we walked down a gentle incline, each of us five servants guided by his master. After about twenty minutes we came out into some open place where the ground was stone paved and around us was the sound of many buzzing bees. We were given cool water to drink and were halted there for some time whilst a discussion was had amongst the captains and then once consensus was reached we set off again walking on a long path through forest. The fragrance of resin was strong about us, and tree roots underfoot tripped us, slowing our blind progress. Almost an hour we walked until from the sounds we heard and the smell of salt we knew we approached the sea. We descended a short scree slope and almost immediately came out onto a beach of fine sand. The sun was just rising, for we could feel the warmth and light of it come through the cloth we wore over our eyes, and this was welcome indeed after the hard night’s ride and the walk through the dark.

  Captain Bragadino shouted an order and our blindfolds were removed. We had been stood so that we looked along the shoreline, the sea and sun on our left, the beach to our right, but we were told as our blindfolds were removed not to turn our heads on pain of death.

  Standing directly before us on the sand was Marc’Antonio Bragadino himself. At his feet was the box that Alvise had brought with him, and in the Captain General’s hands was a sackcloth covered bundle taken from it. It was bulky, some four feet long by two feet wide, and from the way he held it, it had weight also. He stood with the sun shining on him, gilding the side of his noble face. Then, raising the bundle high, he cried out,

  “Behold the Most Holy Cross of Saint Peter and Saint Paul! Of all the treasures taken from Constantinople this is the greatest.”

  He let slip the rags from the bundle and suddenly was revealed a cross of gold encrusted as though with the stars of heaven. I had never before in my life seen anything of such beauty. It gleamed with the fresh sun like fire itself. The face of the cross was lustrous yellow gold unadorned with any engraving, but set into it were gems from all the earth it seemed: white diamonds, blood rubies, green emeralds and purple amethysts. At the base was a single enamelled panel pricked again with smaller gems and emanating light and colour. But it was to the centre of the cross that my eye was drawn. For at its heart where the arms met was a stone of the clearest, most vivid blue, a blue which was at once the beauty of the sky yet the majesty of the sea, a blue of splendour but which held the gaze in a tender embrace. I saw with clarity and I looked with love at the blue eye on my heart. And, without being in control of my actions, I found myself walking forward to the cross, my hand outstretching. There was a sudden barked warning and Alvise stepped before me, scowling, his sword half drawn from its sheath. I shook my head from its mesmeris and looked away.

  Captain Bragadino laughed loud, a high ringing laugh, and said in a voice as though intoxicated with heady wine, “I see what your servant desires, Bugon. Do not be angry with him. And you,” he addressed me, “do not be ashamed neither. For this is the most beautiful of treasures and the most precious, for behind the panel in the base are the holiest of relics: a thorn from Christ’s crown, a splinter from the True Cross, and a lock each of the hair of the Apostles Peter and Paul. And at the heart of the cross is a stone they call Tranquillity. It was brought by traders from the ends of the East to be set in the cross. It is a single perfect sapphire set at the heart of a work of man wrought to honour God. It is in its whole a work of perfection and is symbol of the full glory of Venice.”

  He was addressing us all again now and I felt confident to look up once more. I found the sapphire drawing my eye and I stared deep into it. For me it was as though my whole life previous had dissolved and existed only within the gaze of the stone. And whilst I looked into it I was at peace.

  “This cross used to sit on the altar of Santa Sophia in Nicosia but it was removed to Famagusta to ensure its safety. It is the most precious treasure in the whole maritime empire and some would say it is more precious even than the Pala d’Oro in Venice because of the relics it contains. Whatever happens in the war with the Turk on our island of Cyprus we cannot allow this treasure to fall into their hands; t
o let it become but another bauble of the Sultan. But the sea lanes are no longer safe, and so we must hide the cross here. We will bury it in the sand. You five knights before me, along with my servant Alvise, will know the place. You five servants will be witness to this act.”

  My lord Francesco Bugon stepped forward. “But why hide it sire?” he said, his eyes as transfixed by the beauty of the cross as we all were. “We will win the fight with the Turk. Help is near at hand. When the siege comes Famagusta will not fall.”

  “No doubt, Bugon. But in that event we have nothing to fear. We shall return in one week or one month or one year: whenever it is that the siege is lifted and the Turk defeated on land and sea. Then shall we recover this precious and holy relic. But if for some reason God wills that the Turks are victorious and we suffer the same fate as at Nicosia...” He paused to give us time to think upon that which had been anyway uppermost in all our minds since we had heard of the fall of that great city. “Then this will have been a wise precaution. And one day hence, any of us who should survive shall return and recover this for the greater glory of Venice and of God.”

  “And if none of us survives?” asked Count Sigismondo.

  “Then better the cross is lost forever than be ceded to the Turk.”

  There was a murmur of agreement. “And now shall the cross be buried. Alvise see to this and you knights will note the place. But first please bind again the eyes of your servants.” He addressed us five. “You have seen this and will bear witness if necessary to whichever authority of Venice commands.”

  My master stood behind me and took the band to blindfold me. I stared for one moment more at the centre of the cross before the strip of cloth covered my eyes and I was left in darkness. But the image of that jewel was burned into my mind and into my soul and I resolved that one day, though it might take me my whole life, I would look into its blue heart again.