The Venice Conspiracy (2 page)

A knock on his bedroom door. It creaks open. Father John O’Hara sticks his bushy red hair and freckly, sixty-year-old face through the gap. ‘I wondered if you were asleep. You want company?’

Tom smiles. ‘No sleep. Not yet.’

‘You want some food sending up? Maybe eggs and fresh coffee?’ Father John motions towards a mug that’s gone cold near his bed.

‘Not yet, thanks. I’m gonna shower, shave and try to get my act together in a minute.’

‘Good man.’ Father John smiles approvingly and shuts the door after him.

Tom glances
at his watch. It’s not even 11 a.m. and already he’s wishing the day was over. Since 6 a.m. news anchors coast to coast have been telling his story. The eyes of America are on him and he doesn’t like it. Not one bit. He’s a shy man, a guy that’s friendly and strong but dreads walking into a room full of strangers and being forced to introduce himself. He’s not the kind who wants to be interviewed on network TV. The hacks have already been pushing cheques beneath the vestry door, bidding for exclusives, trying to buy a slice of him.

Tom just makes it to the bathroom before he heaves again.

He runs the cold tap, pools water in his hands and splashes his face until eventually he feels the coldness.

He looks up into the mirror over the sink.

The face of a killer, Tom. Look at yourself. See how you’ve changed. Don’t pretend you can’t see it. You’re a murderer. Double murderer, to be precise.

How did it feel, Father Tom? Come on, be honest now.

It was exciting, wasn’t it?

Admit it.

Tom looks away. Grabs a towel and walks back to the bedroom.

On the floor near the foot of the bed is an old postcard. One that Rosanna kept pinned to her wall. One that she’d asked for when he’d prayed with her last night. She’d kissed it and given it to him as a token of thanks. ‘
Per lei
.’ For you.

He picks it up. Notices that it’s brittle with age, the edges torn and dirty. A rusty ring of white shows where a cheap drawing pin had been. Tom looks closely at it for the first time. It’s lost whatever colour it once had but it’s probably a reproduction of some famous Italian painting. Maybe a Canaletto. Through the sepia fog he can make out the shadowy outline of a church dome and long dark smudges that look like seahorses but are probably gondolas. A scene thousands of miles away, from a painting made hundreds of years ago.

Tom smiles for the first time that day.

Rosanna Romano’s home city of Venice is offering him a glimmer of hope.

666
BC

Atmanta, Northern Etruria

Foaming Adriatic waves fizzle on a
pale peach shoreline. Beyond the ragged north-eastern coast a solemn service of divination comes to a close. Worried villagers file from one of the curtes, the sacred groves nestled between plateaus of olives and vines. The experience has not been an uplifting one.

Their seer has let them down.

Teucer – a once-gifted priest – has
yet again
failed to discern any good fortune for them.

The young netsvis is distraught. Bemused as to why the gods have temporarily forsaken him. He’d fasted three days before making today’s sacrifice, worn clean clothes, stayed sober and done everything decreed by the divine books.

But still the deities offered nothing joyous.

The villagers are muttering loudly. He can hear them complaining. Suggesting he be replaced.

It’s now been two full moons – maybe longer – since the augur last brought any good news to the people of Atmanta, and Teucer knows their patience is wearing thin.

Soon they will forget that it was
his
powers of divination that helped them settle on the metal-rich north-eastern hills. It was
his
blessing of a copper plough blade that fashioned the first sods of earth and fixed the sacred boundaries of the city. They are so ungrateful. He has come to the curte straight from the death of an elder. An old slave – in the servile settlement beside the drainage pits. She’d died of infestation – demons roaring and cackling inside her ribs, chewing at her lungs, making her spit thick cuds of blood and flesh.

He thinks of her now as he stands alone in the centre of the sacred circle. He’d drawn it with his lituus, a long, finely sharpened cypress stick with a slightly crooked end. It was fashioned by Tetia, his soul mate, the woman he’s pledged to spend eternity with.

He looks around. They’ve all gone. It is time for him to go too.

But where?

Not home. Not yet.

The shame of failure is too
great to take to his wife’s bed.

He removes his conical hat, the ceremonial headpiece of the netsvis, and resolves to find somewhere to meditate.

A tranquil place where he can beseech Menrva, the goddess of wisdom, to help him through his doubts.

Teucer collects his sacred vessels and walks around the remnants of today’s offering, the remains of a fresh egg his acolytes had given him to crack and divine.

The yolk had been rancid.

Stained red with the blood of the unborn. A sign of impending death. But whose?

Teucer walks from the curte to the adjacent land. It is here that the community’s temple is being built. But it is taking forever to finish.

Unbaked bricks and wood make up its walls. The grand façade is dominated by a triangular fronton. The wide and low double sloping roof will soon be tiled in terracotta.

When it’s finished, Teucer will consecrate the altars and the gods will be pleased.

Everything will be good again.

But he’s unsure
when
that will be. All the workers have been redeployed to the local mine to dig for silver. Worship is now secondary to commerce.

He walks to the rear of the temple and the three areas dedicated to the main deities: Tinia, Uni and Menrva. Once his wife has completed the bronze statues of the holy pantheon, he will bless them in their respective chambers.

This final thought brings him peace and comfort, but not enough self-respect to go home.

Still melancholic, he meanders through the long, overgrown grass and wanders into a thick copse of limes and oaks.

He hears them long before he sees them. Young commoners from a neighbouring settlement. Running. Chasing. Shouting. Three of them, up to some kind of horseplay.

As he draws closer, he’s less sure of their innocence.

The sun is in his eyes but it seems they have a boy on the ground.

One of the youths has the boy’s head locked between his knees – like a sheep trapped for shearing. The other two have pulled up his tunic. He is naked from the waist down and is being raped by the biggest member of the group.

Teucer stays back. He’s tall and
wiry, but knows he is no match for savages like these.

Cloud flickers across the sun and fleetingly he gets a clearer view.

The slight figure is not a boy. It’s Tetia.

Now he doesn’t hesitate. The field flies beneath his feet. As he runs he pulls out the knife he uses for sacred sacrifices, the blade he uses to gut animals.

He plunges it into the back of the rapist.

The brute screams and knocks Tetia over as he falls. Teucer sweeps the blade at the face of the beast who’d been holding her, slashing him across the face.

Now there are arms around his neck. The third one is on him. Choking him. Pulling him over.

They crash to the ground. Teucer feels dizzy. He’s banged his head and everything’s going black.

But before he passes out, he feels one thing. The knife.

It is being taken from his slackening grasp.

‘Teucer!’

The seer thinks he’s dreaming.

‘Teucer! Wake up!’

He opens his eyes. They hurt. Tetia’s staring down at him but he can’t see her face properly because the sun is burning so brightly behind her.

It must all have been a dream.

But the look on her face says it isn’t.

The blood on her hands says it isn’t.

He turns on his side and slowly pulls himself upright. He looks around. Sees nothing. He gets to his feet and puts out his shaking hands to her. ‘Are you all right?’

There’s a look of terror on her face. She is staring behind him.

Teucer turns.

He can’t believe what he sees.

It
was
real. All
very
real.

The body of the rapist
is still there. Laid out in the dirt. His face and body have been cut to bits. The man whose face he cut has fled, along with his accomplice.

Teucer looks at his wife. She’s soaked in blood.

He doesn’t have to ask what happened; it’s obvious. When he passed out, she must have taken the knife and stabbed her attacker to death. Stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until she was absolutely sure he was dead.

And she didn’t stop there.

Teucer can’t speak. Can’t look at his wife.

She’s gutted him.

Tetia has driven the blade deep into the man’s body and sliced him open. Organs are spread everywhere. Heart. Kidney. Liver. She’s butchered him like a goat.

Finally, Teucer turns to her. His voice is stretched and heavy with worry. ‘Tetia? What did you do?’

Her face hardens. ‘He raped me.’ She points at the remains. ‘That pig of a man raped me!’ Tears glisten in her eyes.

He takes her by the hands and feels her tremble as she struggles to explain. ‘He’s dead and I am glad that he is. I have sliced him up so he will never reach the afterlife.’ She tilts her head towards the offal of his body, organs like those she has seen her husband rip from animals in sacrifice to the gods. ‘I have had his liver and Aita has his soul.’

Her words stun him. Aita – lord of the underworld. Stealer of souls. The name no netsvis dares speak. His feet are sticky with the blood of the man his wife has slaughtered – the man who debased and defiled him almost as much as her. A wave of sickness washes through him. He looks around at the carnage. It astonishes him. He never thought Tetia had the strength, let alone the anger. Gradually Teucer snaps out of his thoughts. ‘We must go. We must visit the magistrate and tell him what has happened. How you were attacked and defended yourself. Everything that happened.’

‘Ha!’ Tetia throws her hands out with an exasperated laugh. ‘And what of this?’ She turns in a circle to indicate the slaughter. ‘Must I be pointed at and talked about for the rest of my years? “See her! See that woman there? She was raped and went mad.”’

Teucer goes to comfort her. ‘People will understand.’

She pulls away. ‘No!’ She holds her bloody hands to her face. ‘No, Teucer! No, they won’t!’

He grabs her wrists, tries to pull her hands away but can’t. Instead, he draws
her to him and holds her tight. She’s shaking. He puts his face into her hair and kisses her softly. What he’s thinking is wrong. He knows it’s wrong. But he also knows it’s the only thing they can do.

Teucer steps a pace away, hands now on her elbows. ‘Then we go and wash in the stream. We go home and burn these clothes. And if anyone asks, we have been together at home all night.’

She looks relieved.

‘And we never say a word of this to anyone. Do you understand?’

Tetia nods. She folds herself in his arms and feels safe. But she also feels different. Different in a way she dare not describe. A way that will alter their lives for ever.

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

PRESENT DAY

Flight UA:716

Destination: Venice

Mid-Atlantic,
Tom
Shaman looks
again at the postcard Rosanna Romano gave him.

He knows now that the painter is Giovanni Canaletto and the scene is an eighteenth-century view of the Grand Canal and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. He knows it because he searched the internet all day until he found it. It was this card and this view that made him decide leaving LA was the right thing to do. Not for a short time. Not for a vacation. But for ever.

From the moment he picked the card up off the floor near his bed, he knew his days as a priest were over. The hands that held the postcard were stained by mortal sin. Murderer’s hands. They could never hold the host again. Never baptise. Never marry. Never consecrate.

Oddly, he feels both he and God are happy with this decision. Tom can’t yet figure out why, but it seems as right to quit now as it did to join the clergy when he was still at college.

The cops said the girl who’d been raped went kind of crazy. Found out she was pregnant. Wouldn’t leave her bedroom. Just sat there in the dark all day and needed her mother to sit with her. It broke Tom’s heart to hear about it. He tried several times to visit her, but she wouldn’t see him. She sent a message through the cops that she was unclean – unholy – and he must stay away.

Poor kid.

Tom still blames himself. If only he’d been more alert, stepped in earlier, been more decisive. He might have saved her. Might have spared her all this pain.

The thoughts still haunt him
as the Airbus begins its descent into Marco Polo.

Dipping through thin cloud on a crisp, clear morning he catches a tantalising glimpse of the Dolomites and shimmering Adriatic. Next comes the Ponte della Libertà, the long road and rail causeway that links the historic centre of Venice with mainland Italy. Finally, the distinctive outline of the Campanile di San Marco and the meandering outreaches of the Canal Grande. The waterway doesn’t seem to have changed much since Canaletto’s time.

Marco Polo’s runway lies parallel to the dazzling coastline and, unless you’re perched on the pilot’s knee, the view you get does nothing to reassure you that you’re not landing in the centre of the lagoon. There’s a cheer of relief and a round of applause as the plane bumps on to the blacktop and the brakes judder.

In the main terminal, everyone’s in a mad hurry to get places. And the madness reaches a climax in the baggage hall.

Tom’s luggage isn’t there.

All his belongings, crushed into one big, old suitcase, have vanished.

The nice airline people promise to try to trace it. But Tom’s heard promises like that before, usually said by people kneeling in front of him confessing their sins and then rattling out prayers like they were ordering cheeseburgers and Cokes.