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?’
‘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.