‘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.
Pannone came back into the room. He was carrying an open bottle and a couple of glasses.
‘I think we must have a drink, Lord Powerscourt, after our long watch. To settle the stomach, we say. We were right. But we were also wrong. There is a priest staying in the monastery. And he does have a guest with him. And the priest is English. There the good news ends.’
Pannone poured out two glasses of Chianti and carried them to the window.
‘There is no Father Gilbey. There is no Lord Gresham. The priest comes from Leeds, in Yorkshire, I think. Father Richards. He is very old, this Father Richards The guest is his brother, Leopold Richards.
‘Leopold Richards has some terrible disease. He has come to Venice to die. The priest has come to administer the last rites. And then to bury him.’
21
Mist. Mist was everywhere in an invisible Venice at six o’clock in the morning. Powerscourt slipped out of a side door of his hotel to wonder at it and found he could hardly move.
The Lion of St Mark on its huge pillar, the gondolas, the gleaming domes of the Basilica of St Mark, had all vanished. Only the water was still there. You could hear it lapping monotonously against the quays. Venice has disappeared, thought Powerscourt. It’s not surprising really. The whole place was too fantastic to be real in the first place. Venice, its astounding beauty, the delicate tracery on the Doges’ Palace proclaiming its uniqueness down the centuries, Venice was only an illusion, a stage set. Now God has closed the production down and removed the scenery, plenty of angels waiting to take it into the wings.
Day had turned into night, a night of mist, a white night. Italian oaths could be heard near and far as the early morning traffic stumbled through the gloom. Far off, out to sea, distant sirens sounded notes of alarm and danger.
He reached out a hand and touched a reassuring pillar in the colonnade of the Doges’ Palace. Maybe it was lifting now. A dark black shape seemed to bob rhythmically up and down fifteen feet in front of him, a gondola, hovering into sight. The pigeons, huddling in the corners of the buildings, wings folded, began trying experimental flights over St Mark’s Square. As he turned on to the seafront, or what he thought was the seafront, the Bridge of Sighs loomed up, its sinister shape lording it over the waters of the invisible canal below.
Powerscourt wished his brain would clear, like the fog. He felt drained, emotionally exhausted by the events of the previous two days. Should he simply turn round and go home? How long could he wait here for a man who might never come? Should he be in the Piazza Signoria in Florence, or starting a long vigil in the colonnades of St Peter’s in Rome?
The Danieli cat, sleek and prosperous, was beginning a leisurely patrol along the boats by the quays. God seemed to have changed his mind. The Venetian stage set was being restored to life, angels flying extra missions, blocks of marble and stone being put back in their positions.
But Powerscourt simply couldn’t decide what to do. He was lost.
Salvation came at lunchtime. He had spent the morning drinking desultory cups of coffee in Florian’s, brushing up his Latin on the inscriptions of the dead Doges in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo. There had been so many battles, he thought, hundreds and hundreds of miles from home, sea battles against the Turks, the Cypriots, the Greeks, the Turks again, admirals returning in triumph to Venice to be interred in black marble in this Venetian necropolis, their proud and haughty epitaphs giving them a kind of eternal life on the walls.
He wrote again to Lady Lucy. He said he hoped they could come to Venice together one day. He told her his abiding impression of the watery city, that it was a monument to the passing of a once great naval power. Maybe London will look like this when the Royal Navy’s days are over, he wrote, gazing out at the pigeons in St Mark’s Square, palazzos falling into the water, decay wrapped round the great monuments like a rotting glove.
‘Lord Powerscourt! Lord Powerscourt!’ Pannone found him in the entrance to his hotel. ‘Quick! Quick! You must come to my office at once! I have news!’
The little man was beaming broadly, ushering Powerscourt into the room where they had waited for Signor Lippi’s gondola the night before.
‘I have seen him! The Gresham! He come! At last! At last!’
‘Where did you see him, Mr Pannone? You saw him in person? In the flesh?’
‘I tell you. This is the happy day. It is good, so? Now then, let me gather my thoughts.’ He collected another sheaf of papers on his desk. ‘This morning we get more reports. Oh, yes, the reports do not stop. They do not stop until I, Antonio Pannone, give the word. And we have this one, from half-past ten.’
He waved a piece of paper from his collection at Powerscourt who saw that it was covered by a spidery Italian handwriting, with a lot of exclamation marks. Maybe they write like they talk, he said to himself, emphasis and gestures flying all over the place.
‘This report, he say that Gresham is in the city, staying at the Hotel Pellegrini near the railway station. Not a very good hotel, the Pellegrini, he should have come here to the Danieli. Much better, much more convenient.’ He shook his head sadly at the ingratitude of lost clients. ‘But this waiter at the Pellegrini, he is very clever, I think. He takes a look at the visitors’ book. There it is. Lord Edward Gresham, of Warwickshire, staying for three nights.
‘Lord Powerscourt, I have to tell you. I was excited, so excited. Maybe the young man unpacks, I think. Maybe he rests from his journey. So I go on a journey of my own! To the Pellegrini! And there he is! Just coming out of the front door, in a tweed suit and a big coat!’
A further batch of messages arrived, a young waiter backing deferentially from the doorway.
‘Ah ha! Ah ha! See how well the system works, Lord Powerscourt. Now he is in the bookshop, buying guides to Venice and a book of religion! Now he is in Florian’s! With Signor Lippi himself!’
Powerscourt smiled at the memory of Venice’s fastest gondolier from the night before. How did they get the messages from one place to another, he wondered? Were junior waiters, as fleet on land as Signor Lippi by sea, sent hurrying across the city? Perhaps they used the pigeons. The birds might welcome a change from listening to all those bloody arias in St Mark’s Square. Better not to ask.
‘And he is just ordering lunch! Pasta, a bifsteak, some of Florian’s excellent saute potatoes. I can tell you this in confidence, Lord Powerscourt. The Florian saute potatoes are better than ours. Impossible, but it is so. Come, what have we here? It is a message from Signor Lippi himself! I can keep him here for one or two hours if you wish. Please advise.
‘I think you need to think about what you want to do, my lord. On my way back from the Pellegrini I think to myself, we have got this business the wrong way round. We were not too late, as we thought, for the coming of the Lord Gresham. We were too early! Maybe he is the serious traveller. Maybe he comes here by Verona with the lovers and Vicenza with all that Palladio town hall. Maybe he goes to see the Giottos in the Cappella degli Scrovegni at Padua. Maybe.’