Powerscourt had now reached the forbidding gates of the Arsenal, half-way along the city seafront. A quartet of melancholy lions stood on guard outside, a fifth perched arrogantly up a gate. They stole those lions too, the Venetians, Powerscourt remembered, just like they stole the ones on top of the Basilica of St Mark’s in the Piazza San Marco, just like they stole the body of their patron saint St Mark from some tomb in Alexandria. Pirates, all of them, the inside of St Mark’s a pirate’s cave full of booty plundered from Constantinople and the trade routes of the Venetian ships. They were built in here, those ships, thought Powerscourt, as he turned left and walked along the side of the great red walls that guarded the Arsenal’s secrets. They could turn out a warship a day at the height of their power, he recalled, a mass production line running from keel to a full set of sails inside these walls in twenty-four hours.
Up here were the poorer quarters of the city, where the Venetians lived in hovels rather than palazzos, the streets paved with rubbish and hungry cats forever on the prowl. Lady Gresham had mentioned something about that too. Powerscourt’s memory clicked into action as he crossed a small canal by a delicate wrought-iron bridge. ‘He loved walking round some of the poorer quarters, you know, Lord Powerscourt, rotting palazzos falling into the street, washing hanging out above the windows.’ There’s plenty of washing round here, thought Powerscourt, as a sheet escaped from its moorings and fell on to the narrow street a couple of feet behind him.
Bells were tolling right across the city, distant bells, nearby bells, sad bells, old bells, new bells, all calling the Venetians to Sunday Mass. Mass, Powerscourt thought. Did Mass have something to do with it? Before he could pursue the idea, he realized that he was lost. The baffling topography of Venice had struck again. You could never keep your sense of direction in the place, he remembered, where you thought the waterfront must be turning into some landlocked campo of the interior, St Mark’s itself appearing when you thought you had finally reached the railway station. Mass. The Venetians were turning out for morning service. Some of them were carrying flowers. Old ladies were carrying flowers, grandmothers bent nearly double with the weight of them. Where did the flowers come from, Powerscourt wondered? Perhaps they stole them too, like they stole the lions, early morning pirate flotillas despatched on missions of theft to the mainland.
Then he knew. The old ladies were taking the flowers to the cemetery, not to Mass. Perhaps they’d been to Mass already, an early morning special for the bereaved. If he followed the old ladies he would come out at the landing stage where the boats sailed for Venice’s Island of The Dead, San Michele in Isola, a cemetery ringed with water, its entire surface covered with graves and tombs and ornate Italian statuary. Just the kind of place Queen Victoria would like to visit for her holidays, Powerscourt thought, surrounded on all sides by the dead.
He followed patiently behind a convoy of Venetian grandmothers, twisting their way slowly through a maze of passages and dark streets towards the waterfront at Fondamente Nuove.
‘We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.’ Powerscourt remembered the high clear voice of his parson in his little church at Rokesley. ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts . . . Spare thou them, oh God, which confess their faults.’ You had to confess your sins before you could partake of the sacrament.
They had reached the waterfront. A couple of boats stood ready to take the bereaved on their short journey to San Michele.
Confession. Lord Edward Gresham’s confession. That was it. If you hadn’t confessed your sins you were not meant to share in the body and blood of Christ. If you were responsible for the body and blood of Prince Eddy then you had quite a lot of confessing to do. Maybe he’s looking for somewhere to say his confession. Maybe the journey to Rome ends in the confessional box.
The old ladies set out, flowers still clutched tightly to their bosoms, the boat rocking gently from side to side. Behind them a dark funeral boat, manned by a crew dressed entirely in black, was making an even slower journey to the melancholy island. Business was going to be brisk on San Michele this morning.
He could hear singing now, a hymn drifting out from the rococo masterpiece of the Gesuiti. Jesuits, Powerscourt thought. Maybe Lord Gresham needs Jesuits for his confession, learning and casuistry combining to offer him some form of absolution.
He was lost again. Damn, he thought, looking at his watch. I am meant to be having lunch at Florian’s in half an hour. Damn! Where is Florian’s? Where has it gone? Where is St Mark’s Square?
He plunged resolutely over a bridge. Then he stopped halfway across and looked around. There were campaniles soaring above the streets, but he couldn’t tell which was which. He heard a voice behind him.
‘You’re not lost by any chance, are you? Most people look like that round here when they’re lost.’
We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, thought Powerscourt. A priest, clad in black, with a very smart biretta on his head, had come to rescue the straying.
‘I’m afraid I am. I need to be at Florian’s in half an hour,’ Powerscourt confessed.
‘At Florian’s in St Mark’s Square? I am going that way myself. Perhaps we could walk together.’
The priest was indeed English, he told Powerscourt, attached to Farm Street, the Jesuit church in London’s Mayfair. Perhaps Powerscourt knew it? He did. Money, the priest said sadly, so much money there. He left Powerscourt to compute the sins that might be commensurate with that much wealth.
They discovered a common interest in pictures. The priest, whose name was Father Gilbey, was a devotee of Giovanni Bellinis. Had Powerscourt been to Murano to see the Bellinis there? Most tourists missed them.
Powerscourt promised he would make a pilgrimage there before he left Venice. They parted by the pigeons in the piazza, musicians already working their way through the drinking song from Traviata.
‘I hope you find what you are looking for, Lord Powerscourt. I think you are looking for something. May God bless you.’
Powerscourt fled into Florian’s with a terrible thought. Lord Edward Gresham had taken instruction before he joined the Roman Catholic Church. He wouldn’t have taken it in the Midlands, Powerscourt felt sure. Had he taken it in Farm Street with Father Gilbey, in his biretta?
Had Gresham come to Italy with his very own father confessor in tow? And were the two of them now packing their bags for Lady Lucy’s railway station and a further journey towards Rome while the Grand Inquisitor waited in the Hotel Danieli or ate plates of seafood in Florian’s?
They didn’t find Gresham that day.
They didn’t find him the next.
Powerscourt roamed round the city, haunting the churches, patrolling the museums, walking endlessly along the seafront, up to the Rialto Bridge and back to the Piazza San Marco. He wrote to Lady Lucy. They knew him now, the waiters in Flo-rian’s and the pigeons in the square, the waiters shaking their heads sadly when he entered, the pigeons flying in formation for him to the sound of an aria from ‘Aida’. Powerscourt thought about ordering some sheet music from London to widen the repertoire. Johnny Fitzgerald could get it here in a couple of days. He wrote again to Lady Lucy.
Mr Pannone, the manager of the Danieli, was worried. He could sense a growing anxiety in Powerscourt, a tenseness. He too, reflected Pannone, was catching the American disease, the not being able to sit still, as Powerscourt paced up and down the dark red corridors of the hotel, unable to sleep.
Signor Lippi, the top waiter at Florian’s, came for a conference in Pannone’s office, looking out from the first floor towards San Giorgio Maggiore across the lagoon. Signor Lippi was tall and thin, a glittering collection of silver rings on his fingers.
‘I do not understand it, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Pannone, gazing sadly out at his city. ‘Every day we look for him. Every day we can tell you where you have been. Before you have even come back. We know. So where is this Lord Gresham?’
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�Perhaps, as the Lord thinks, he has gone.’ Signor Lippi was clutching a new set of his menus to his bosom.
He is risen, thought Powerscourt. On the third day he shall rise again and judge the quick and the dead.
‘I do not think he has gone. I do not know why. And you, Lord Powerscourt, once you thought he had gone. Now you are not so sure. It is so?’
‘It is so,’ said Powerscourt sadly.
A waiter appeared and handed a collection of papers to Pannone.
‘See, Lord Powerscourt. See, we have fresh reports. Every few hours we get these. Each time we check them out. Always we check them out. And they are nothing. Nothing.’ Pannone turned over his pages, looking for hope. ‘He is in Burano, it says here, walking by the sea. He is in the church of Santa Maria Formosa. He is at the Accademia, looking at the pictures. He is having lunch on the Lido. He is everywhere. And he is nowhere.
‘Here is another one. He is on the island of San Giorgio, walking with a priest by the little lighthouses. This but an hour ago.’
‘A priest, did you say?’ Powerscourt was leaning forward intently.
‘Yes, a priest. But what of it? Venice, like Italy, is full of priests.’
Powerscourt told them about his meeting with Father Gilbey two days before and his cryptic words of farewell.
‘You think he come here with the Lord Gresham? The father confessor?’ Mr Pannone had left his seat and gone to his window, staring out at Palladio’s church of San Giorgio Maggiore.
‘I think it is possible. But look, gentlemen, look.’ Powerscourt spoke slowly, slowing down the thoughts racing through his mind. ‘Is it possible that you could stay in Venice and not stay at a hotel? Of course, you could stay in somebody’s house or palazzo, but I don’t think Gresham had any close friends in Venice.
‘Suppose you were a priest. Could you not stay in a seminary, or in a monastery? And could you not, in exceptional circumstances, have a guest with you? So that you eat your meals in the monastery or wherever it is. Such a visitor would not visit the cafes or the hotels or the restaurants. He misses out on the waiters altogether. Your splendid intelligence system doesn’t work. There wouldn’t be any news at all.’
There was a brief silence. The three of them were now at the window, staring at the buildings on the island.
‘There is a monastery on San Giorgio,’ said Signor Lippi softly, ‘a famous one. The buildings, the refectory and the library are also by Palladio. But they don’t let people in to see them, not even Americans.’
Signor Pannone sounded more cheerful as he thought of places the Americans couldn’t visit. ‘All of this is true,’ he said, ‘it is true. So we must find out who is on the island. And who, perhaps, is their guest. How do we do that, Signor Lippi?’
The two men spoke rapidly in Italian, their gestures more pronounced. From time to time Powerscourt wondered if they were going to come to blows, so fierce did the exchanges seem.
‘Bene. Bene. Now then, Lord Powerscourt, this is what we propose.’ It’s like a waiter offering you the menu in France, Powerscourt thought. ‘It may not be perfect, but we think it will work. Yes?’ He glanced briefly at Signor Lippi, who nodded vigorously. ‘We have just got the time. Now it is a quarter after seven, not too late to pay a call on the monastery before they start praying for the night or whatever they do.
‘Our catering manager here at the Danieli,’ he waved an expansive arm around the room and what was visible of Venice outside, as if that too was part of his hotel, ‘he does a lot of business with the monks at San Giorgio. Not with the monks, pardon me, but with the housekeeper of these monks. She has worked there a long time. She know everything. She know everybody. She talk a great deal. Maybe because the monks are silent much of the day and do not talk to her. God knows, women need to talk.’ He shook his head, weighed down perhaps by the speech and speeches of his own women. Powerscourt thought he must have daughters as well as a wife. ‘I will talk to this man now. We send him to the island. He talks, perhaps he listens to this housekeeper woman. Then he comes back and tells us.
‘And I have not told you the best part of the plan, Lord Powerscourt. We have to wait here till he come back, you and I. Sometimes she talk for hours, this housekeeper. I do not think we will like the waiting, you and I. So we send them with Venice’s finest gondolier, the fastest man in the city. Signor Lippi here! Every year he wins the races for the gondolas. Every Sunday he practises up in Cannaregio. These races are like your Henley. You have rowing races at Henley, it is so?’
Powerscourt assured him that they did.
‘Well, he is our man. Maybe he is not used to the rowing the gondola in his frock coat but he is happy to help. Come, we must go. There is not any time to lose.’
The two Italians rushed from the room.
‘Don’t forget the picture!’ Powerscourt shouted after them. ‘The picture of Lord Gresham!’
‘My God, my God, we nearly forget the picture. We must not be in too big of the hurry, I think.’
Powerscourt stared out of the window. Beneath him the night porters of the Danieli were on duty, great cloaks tightly fastened against the cold. To his right the lion of St Mark sat happily on top of its great pillar, still waiting to warn of invaders from the sea. To the right of San Giorgio, on the island of Giudecca, he could see lights on Palladio’s other great church, the Redentore, built like Santa Maria Salute as a thanksgiving for salvation from the plague. Gondolas bobbed up and down on the waterfront. His pigeons still bustled about St Mark’s Square, a lone orchestral group serenading the night air with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Perhaps the sheet music had arrived earlier than expected.
There was a sudden burst of activity by the gondolas. Signor Lippi, in white shirt-sleeves now, his rings glistening from the lights on the waterfront, was preparing to leave with a small tubby figure in the back of the boat.
Powerscourt watched them go, the gondola moving swiftly across the waters of the lagoon, growing smaller and smaller as it reached the San Giorgio steps. Powerscourt thought he saw the tubby figure disappear through a door to the right of the jetty. But he wasn’t sure.
Still he watched. Was this the end of his journey? A journey that began months before in Rosebery’s tiny castle at Barnbougle with tales of unknown criminals blackmailing the Prince of Wales. He thought of the people he had met along the way, the impossible courtiers, the efficient Major Dawnay, Mr Simkins the naval historian up the steps in his archive, Lord George Scott, former captain of HMS Bacchante, spilling crumbs on his beard. He thought of the unhappiness, Princess Alexandra grieving for another son, Robinson, the red-faced man who told him to get out, his son buried in the Dorchester churchyard, Lady Blanche Gresham the proud old woman, alone with her ancestors in the great expanse of Thorpe Hall. He thought of Lord Johnny Fitzgerald, up his tree by the homosexual club in Chiswick. He thought of Lady Lucy.
He watched on. Nothing stirred by the steps. He thought he could see Signor Lippi waving his arms to keep warm. The waters were still. He thought of Lady Lucy, worried by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, happy and passionate as she told the story of The Fighting Temeraire in the National Gallery, radiant in her Anna Karenina coat at the bottom of St James’s Square.
Still he watched, his eyes never leaving those shadowy steps by the facade of the church on its island. Maybe I shall bring Lady Lucy here to Venice one day, he thought. Maybe we could come for our honeymoon. We could stay here in the Danieli with Mr Pannone.
‘What are you thinking of, Lord Powerscourt? Over there by the window?’ Pannone had slipped quietly back into the room.
‘I was thinking of getting married, Signor Pannone. But I have not yet asked the young lady. Perhaps I am too soon.’
‘How charming, Lord Powerscourt. That would be a good change for you. This business with the Lord Gresham, it has been very difficult?’
Powerscourt watched on. What was he doing, deciding to marry Lady Lucy at a time like this? It wasn’t the first t
ime he had thought of it either. Was that a gondola, leaving San Giorgio, turning round to return to the hotel? No, it was only a shadow on the water.
Twenty minutes gone now. He checked his watch again.
‘It has been difficult, Mr Pannone, yes. I shall be glad when it is over.’
Pannone was silent, as if he knew Powerscourt didn’t want to talk. He produced a pair of binoculars and rejected them, saying you could see as well without.
A dark cloud passed over the young moon. The church was barely visible now, only the white tops of its lighthouses clear to the watchers by the window. How long could that woman talk for? Had the true nature of the mission been discovered? Was Pannone’s man even now being interrogated by some of the monks? Had be been locked up in some dark cell beneath the waterline to await more skilled interrogation by the Jesuits in the morning?
Powerscourt thought he saw something move by the steps. He rubbed his eyes, and rubbed at the Danieli’s windowpane, straining for a better view. It was nothing.
‘Look! Look!’ said Mr Pannone. ‘I think they are coming now.’
The gondola was coming back by a different route. It swung over towards the Customs House Point, zigzagging its way towards the shore.
‘This will be the quickest way home, Lord Powerscourt. With the currents.’
He could see them now, Lippi rowing powerfully, white shirt gleaming in the night, the small tubby man not moving in the back.
‘How much longer? How much longer?’ Powerscourt was losing patience.
‘Only a few minutes. This last passage is very quick. Wait here and I will bring you the news. My catering manager he does not speak English.’
Pannone departed to the waterfront. There was a hasty conference by the shore before the three of them vanished inside the hotel.
Powerscourt looked out again at the enigmatic facade of San Giorgio, no movement at all visible from the window. Down below a large party of Americans were heading off to a restaurant, celebrating their last night in the city.
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