Blood on the Tiber by B. M. Howard

Author:B. M. Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The sedan chair Gracchus shared with Foracchiaro to the oratory proved a welcome luxury. Although he was by no means as corpulent as formerly, the fever, in addition to clawing off some of his flesh, had rendered him less possessed of the capacity for walking without frequent rests, and they arrived at the island in the Tiber revitalised.

The home of the brotherhood comprised an oratory with three rooms on the ground floor of the convent of San Bartolomeo all’Isola. The crypt beneath their quarters was admirably adapted in temperature for the purpose of storing recovered bodies and the wall of one side of the room Foracchiaro led him to was lined with a series of mismatched stone sarcophagi containing the unfortunates. Foracchiaro lifted a crude wooden cover from the first sarcophagus.

‘The ancients left us a great number of these stone baths,’ he said, ‘in which we immerse our longer-staying guests.’

Gracchus saw that the tank was indeed brimming with liquid. The stripped body was submerged in the milky soup by means of old bricks placed on the torso to hold it down. The face and skin were grey and becoming translucent.

He felt the old peculiar sense of intruding on a private contract between the deceased and the embrace of decay. His latter years as a magistrate had coincided with Robespierre’s reign of terror in Paris, when the bodies of friends and colleagues piling up from official executions had exceeded for a while even the commonplace murders and massacres that were his bread and butter. Over time he had found that he had grown inured to this exposure to the face of death, and it now never bothered him unduly. All deaths were equal to him. Except one, he remembered sadly, pushing the unbidden thought away.

The corpse of Fortunato Cassanth appeared a curiously long way along his final journey for a man who had been breathing and smiling with his friends not forty-eight hours previously. ‘Does the river here accelerate the process of decomposition?’ he asked.

‘Oh, he is not putrefying. The bath contains milk of lime to clean him up. We make it by burning marble harvested from the Campo Vaccino. It acts as a flocculant to remove the flesh from the bones. It stops the smell as well.’

Gracchus sniffed cautiously. ‘What were the nature of his injuries when you found him? Presumably, they were clearly distinguishable since he had been in the water only a brief time?’

Foracchiaro cocked his head on one side and rubbed it pensively. ‘As you can see his head had been caved in by a blow, probably from a stick or cosh. That’s the calling sign of the sbirri who are licensed to carry iron-shod staffs. The common people dispatch their acquaintances with knives, and that’s what we usually get where foul play has been involved. We don’t get many sword wounds, because they are not to be carried in the streets. A good sword wound would be a real treat for us.’

Gracchus peered more closely at Fortunato’s face.

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