by Rene Fomby
Sam considered that carefully. “Why in the world would Lega Nord want to sabotage factories in the north? Their whole point is that it’s their workers in the north who’ve been subsidizing the south all this time.”
Alberto nodded. “And the attacks have been made to look like the work of southern saboteurs. But we have reason to think otherwise.”
“You’re saying Lega Nord is trying to stir things up among their supporters, trying to drive a wedge between them and the southern half of the country?”
“Exactly. And the attacks have been accelerating at an alarming rate. I have to tell you, the feeling on the street is that Italy may be facing a revolution very soon. The tinderbox is in place. All it would likely take is a single spark, and we could all be at war.”
“But that’s crazy!” Sam said, looking around the room for signs that any of her managers might disagree with Alberto’s assessment. And seeing not a single objection.
“Not so crazy, Ms. Tulley,” Alberto explained. “Lega Nord is already the most popular party in northern Italy. They’ve come to power by fanning the flames of nationalism that has always been present in northern Italy, and is now rising almost unchecked across all of southern Europe.”
“So what do we do about it, Alberto?” Sam asked, her brow furrowed with concern. “How can the handful of us in this room possible affect any of that? We’re just a bank, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t know that we can,” he answered. “But it puts even more pressure on our finding some way to close the tractor deal. And fast. If the political climate here gets any worse, I doubt we could sell the plants for even a tenth of what they’re worth.” All around the room heads were nodding, agreeing with his assessments.
“Okay, then I guess I have my marching orders.” Sam rubbed the cast on her right arm tenderly, wondering how things could ever manage to get any worse. “But in the meantime, I have a lecture waiting for me at the museum, and I’m supposed to introduce the speaker, so I’d better get going. I’ll try and make some phone calls first thing tomorrow morning. And—” She glanced quickly around the room, making eye contact with each of her managers in turn, trying to instill in them one last lingering vestige of hope. “If any of you have any ideas about who might be willing to step up and fund the sale, you all have my personal cell number. At this point, I’m wide open to anything. Anything at all.”
With that, she signaled to her personal assistant and stood up to leave, wondering that she could manage to rise at all, given the weight that was pressing down upon her shoulders as she left the room.
91
Venice
To Sam’s pleasant surprise, the conference room was nearly packed, with academicians and artists blending freely with the wealthiest heads of European society. As the lights blinked, signaling the start of the presentation, Sam stayed in the wings as everyone took their seats. Even though her foundation had underwritten Professor Hall’s trip to Venice, as well as the cost of the wine and other refreshments at the reception following the talk, Sam had no intention of being the centerpiece of the show. That honor was reserved for the professor, and his amazing work at Stabiae.
Sam had first met Dr. Timothy Hall at another reception, given by Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where the professor taught class when he wasn’t overseeing the restoration at Stabiae or flying around the world trying to stir up interest in his remarkable project. As head of pediatric surgery at a nearby research hospital, Sam’s husband Luke was deeply involved in philanthropy and community affairs, and he had accordingly dragged her along to listen to a lecture by Dr. Hall on what he and his students had literally uncovered at Stabiae, just less than three miles southwest of the far more famous ruins at Pompeii. That evening had forged a strong friendship between the erudite professor and the young Tulley family, a friendship that had managed to survive her husband’s untimely death. And when Sam suggested she might host him for a fundraiser for the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, he jumped at the chance.
With everyone finally settled into their seats and the lights lowered, an unimposing, bespectacled man clad in a light brown suit with a cream-colored shirt and matching tie strode up on stage. Behind him was a map of the Bay of Naples coastline, dominated on the upper right by a large volcanic cone. Identified in large white letters along the coast were the ancient Roman cities of Haerculaneum, Oplontis, Pompeii, and, lastly, the Villas of Ancient Stabiae, the focus of his talk.
The room went silent as Dr. Hall adjusted the microphone attached to his tie, then turned to them with a broad smile.
“First off, let me see a show of hands of anyone who’s ever been to Pompeii.”
Almost immediately, fully half of the room raised their hands.
“Good, good. Okay, next, let’s see your hands in the air, anyone who’s been to the Roman city of Herculaneum.”
Only a dozen or so hands went up.
“About what I expected,” Dr. Hall noted with a smile, raising his own hand. “All right, finally, how many of you have ever visited Stabiae, the focus of this lecture?”
Only one hand stayed up.
“Just as I suspected. And that one person would be Susan, my student,” he said, pointing her out as the audience laughed politely. “Okay, that’s got to change.”
He turned to face the map, which was now overlaid with pictures from the excavation. “Stabiae is the largest concentration of well-preserved seaside, enormous villas in the entire Mediterranean world. It is located just about four kilometers from Pompeii, and was buried by the same eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 that covered Pompeii and Herculaneum. Stabiae was originally explored by the Bourbon Excavations of 1749-1782, using tunnels bored under the volcanic material. After that the site was abandoned, and eventually ‘lost,’ other than some vignettes from frescoes that were removed at the time from the walls underground and placed in museums and various palaces in the area. We in archaeology now have a name for that practice. It’s called stealing.”
The room rolled with warm laughter as Dr. Hall continued his presentation. He pulled a book off the podium, and turning to a marked page, began to read.
“My uncle was stationed at Misenum, in active command of the fleet. On 24 August, in the early afternoon, my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had been out in the sun, had taken a cold bath, and lunched while lying down, and was then working at his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to a place which would give him the best view of the phenomenon. It was not clear at that distance from which mountain the cloud was rising; its general appearance can best be expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsupported as the pressure subsided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and gradually dispersed. In places it looked white, elsewhere blotched and dirty, according to the amount of soil and ashes it carried with it.”
Hall put the book back on the podium. “Those were the words of Pliny the Younger, from a letter he sent to a Roman friend named Tacitus several years after the eruption, the only real record we have of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The uncle he mentions, Pliny the Elder, was among other things an admiral of the Roman fleet, and he attempted to use his ships to rescue the thousands of people who had flocked to the shore, hoping to survive. But the flaming rocks and ash were endangering those ships, and his pilot urged him to steer clear of the shore. ‘Fortune favors the brave,’ he answered, and directed the pilot to head toward Stabiae. But the winds were against them, pushing them onshore, and none of the ships that were already onshore could find a way to tack back to safety. So it was there, sitting on a sail on the shoreline of Stabiae, that Pliny the Elder, statesman of Rome, met his match. Along with thousands of others, including much of the political and merchant class of Rome.”
Hall conti
nued to relate the long-buried history of Stabiae, which had been reburied in the late eighteenth century, only to be rediscovered in the 1950’s by a passionate local high school principal, aided by a school janitor and an out-of-work car mechanic.
“You must understand, in the first centuries BCE and CE, some of the most important events of the Roman Republic took place, not in Rome, but here, in the enormous luxury villas of Stabiae, along the Bay of Baiae on the northern side of Naples. And for archaeologists, this site represents perhaps the only opportunity in the entire world where we can recover and reimagine the powerful communities of Roman villas in their full context. We’re not talking villas in the modern sense, here—some of these villas are in excess of 22,000 square meters. These are the homes of the richest, most powerful people in the Roman world. And that’s what justifies this project.”
Hall presented slide after slide, showing the development of the site from the beginnings of the modern excavation in 2008 to the current day, and explaining how even well over a decade of work had barely touched Stabiae’s potential. Finally, he got to the real purpose of his talk, an appeal for contributions. He especially highlighted the opportunity for wealthy donors to “adopt” a fresco, paying for the restoration and preservation of a fresco in exchange for having a small placard placed alongside it, recognizing the contribution for all eternity. Or at least for a very long time.
Finally, the talk came to an end and the lights in the auditorium came back up, illuminating a long and boisterous standing ovation. Sam moved quickly to the front of the room to join her friend and guide him toward the small private reception planned for the event. “By the way, Tim, the Ricciardelli family museum is located just next door,” she told him. “The curator has promised me a private tour later today, and if your schedule’s not too tight, I would love to have you join us.”
“Certainly, Sam. It would be an honor. I’m staying overnight at the hotel, with a flight in the morning to take me back to the dig, so I have plenty of time. Oh, and by the way, thanks for all this,” he noted with a nod as an aide stepped forward to lead him off by the elbow toward a cluster of potential donors.
※
The tour of Ca’ Ricciardelli was almost as breathtaking as Dr. Hall’s presentation. Room after room of the Ricciardelli family’s first ancestral home was filled with works of art and priceless relics from Venice’s earliest days. In her head, Sam couldn’t help but wonder what the total value of all of these artifacts added up to, and the possibility that she might be able to sell the museum’s contents to keep the bank above water, at least for a little while longer. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And fortune favors the brave. She leaned in toward the curator conspiratorially, hoping to find a diplomatic way to broach the subject.
“Did I hear you right, that all of this is the sole property of the Ricciardelli trust?” she asked.
“Well, yes, other than a few pieces we have on loan from other museums. And we have several other pieces of our own out on loan, as well,” the curator explained, pressing one hand lightly to her blouse.
“Wow. And pretty much every one of these pieces is a priceless work of art? This museum must be worth a fortune,” Sam said, peering around the room with Timothy Hall close at her side, obviously quite impressed with the collection in his own right.
The museum’s curator stopped walking for a moment, considering the idea. “Hmm. Well, when we say something is priceless, that is not exactly true. Everything has a price, of course, as long as you can find someone with the money and the proclivity to acquire it. But the problem is, even during the best of economic times, that list of potential buyers is extremely short, and the pieces in this museum, well, we’d be lucky to sell even one or two pieces a year at anything near what they’re worth.”
“I see,” Sam said, hoping to hide the disappointment in her voice. She glanced down at the program she had been given, highlighting the most important pieces in each room. One thing had nagged her from the start of the tour, the name of the museum. “What does the name Ca’ Ricciardelli mean? I get the Ricciardelli part, of course, but what does the Ca’ part mean?”
The curator smiled at her, welcome to have moved beyond the embarrassing issue of money. “Generally speaking, Ca’ is an abbreviation for ‘Casa,’ the Italian word for house, or cottage. But, of course, this is much more than a simple house. In Venice, the term has come to mean something else. A palace. So Ca’ Ricciardelli simply means, the Ricciardelli Palace. The home of a wealthy and very powerful family.”
“I see,” Sam said, remembering how her little Maddie used to love dressing her dog up like Prince Charming and playing at being royalty. Now, it seems Maddie had been a princess of Venice all along. And at least for a little while longer.
All too soon, regretfully, the tour came to an end, and Sam, Dr. Hall and the curator ended up in a small courtyard, facing a private boatyard that emptied out onto a canal. “Here we are,” the curator announced, pointing out a well-equipped powerboat that was idling, waiting to take them back to their hotel. “This was the original entrance to the palace. The street-level entrance you came in at was for suppliers and the hired help. Anyone of any importance would have come by boat, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam said absently. She glanced around the courtyard. On either side of them were two bronze statues of Christ, one as a shepherd tending a lamb, and the other a rather typical crucifixion pose. Both seemed rather poorly done to her untrained eye, but she supposed, like everything else in the museum, they had been executed by some famous sculptor from way back in Italian history.
“I see you noticed the courtyard statues,” the curator pointed out. “Quite atrocious, really. But they were installed at the same time the palace was finished, around 1305. Sir Ricciardelli himself personally oversaw the construction of his palace, and was very particular about all of the smallest details. As a result, despite the fact that these statues and a great many of the other questionable flourishes in and about the building lack any real artistic merit, we are prohibited from doing anything about them.”
“Were they sculpted by anyone famous?” Dr. Hall asked.
“No, actually, they are quite poorly done, especially that one,” she said, pointing off to the right. “The inscription says it’s called ‘Pastor est et Agnus,’ the Shepherd and the Lamb. No idea where it came from, but it looks like it was put in place before it was completely finished. Rushed to meet the deadline for finishing the palace.”
Suddenly it hit her. Sam glanced down at her program, and all of the pieces finally fell into place. Ca’ Ricciardelli. The Last Librarian. Sir Richard of Lys.
92
Venice
Sam didn’t have a strong enough internet connection in the hotel to place a Skype call to Houston, so she had to fall back on calling Harry on her new cell phone. The call went to voicemail, and she was just about to leave a message when her phone beeped. Harry was returning her call.
“Sorry about that, chief,” Harry said, obviously in a good mood. “I was in court earlier today, and turned the ringer off, and then forgot to turn it back on. Then I heard something buzzing, and it took me a moment to figure out it was my phone. What’s up? I’ve been trying to Skype you for over a week, with no luck, and your phone appears to have been turned off, too. I got hold of Claudia, but she wouldn’t tell me anything other than you weren’t available. You on the road again?”
Sam thought about telling him all about the explosion, but decided it was best putting that off until another time. No sense getting him unnecessarily concerned. Besides, she had something much, much more important to relate to him.
“Yeah, I’m in Venice. I had to swing by the bank for a meeting on how we’re going to save the old gal, then I had a presentation scheduled at a Ricciardelli museum in town, put on by an old professor friend from Georgetown.”
“Georgetown? As in the university? How do you know someone from way out on the
east coast?”
“No, silly,” she answered, laughing at how he so often managed to miss the forest for the trees. “Georgetown as in Southwestern University. You know, just north of Austin.”
“Oh. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. So what was it about?”
“I’ll tell you later, Harry. But right now I have even bigger news. Probably the biggest news ever!”
“I hope this means you’ve saved the Ricciardelli empire, and can finally drag your sorry butt back home to Texas, along with that darling daughter of yours.”
“It kinds sorta does, I guess, but not the way you might think. You remember I told you I was going to Acre in Israel to visit an old Knights Templar fortress?”
“Yeah. They had found a secret passage that you thought might lead to some old treasure. Is that it? Did you find it?”
“No, that kind of—blew up in our faces, you might say. But that lead to a long discussion with this British historian heading up the project, who told me about a secret code bricked into the ceiling of a chapel in northern Scotland.”
Quickly, she told Harry about how the Rosslyn ceiling had been carefully examined by cryptographers, and how one group even thought the ceiling was simply a musical notation for some Middle Ages tune.
“But when the cryptographers got their hands on the so-called musical score, then ran it through a bunch of supercomputers, they got back a nonsensical response, so they figured either the ceiling wasn’t really a dictionary code, after all, or else they had the wrong reference document to translate it.”
“So is that it, Sam? Did you find the long-lost reference document?”
“Even better, Harry!” Sam could barely contain herself. “As it turns out, the phrase the computers spit out wasn’t so nonsensical, after all. You just needed to put it into context. And at the family museum, it all suddenly just came together. The phrase the computers spit out. The three letters C-A-R, plus the Latin word ‘past,’ and maybe another letter or two.”
