The Borgia Portrait by David Hewson

Author:David Hewson [David Hewson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

All the Saints

Fabrizio Ricci was right, though it took us some time to realise. We wasted half an hour wandering round inside the Gesuati trying to find something that might tell us this was the place Lucia Scacchi meant. Lizzie was enthralled by the rococo Giambattista Tiepolo works, standing for a good five minutes to admire three female saints, one holding the baby Jesus in front of a haughty-looking Madonna. But as to dogs and lilies … no luck.

A couple of gelati from Nico’s by the vaporetto stop were in order to fend off the scorching day. Perhaps it was the pistachio and the cassata, but only after that, almost in unison, did we realise we’d been chasing the wrong quarry.

The line in the story was clear: where water once ran.

That surely referred to something outside, since water couldn’t run through a church. Except when we finally found the spot, we realised that wasn’t quite right. The proof was there in that broad street leading from the waterfront back to the Accademia. In the side wall of the Gesuati stood the vault of an arch that must once have been a bridge over a channel running beneath the building, now filled in and bricked over. There at the top of the remaining portion was what we sought: a stone shield, a rather comical dog grinning at the top, paws over the edge, beneath lilies and a crown. A sign the Dominicans owned this part of Dorsoduro.

Lizzie beamed and punched my arm, and I said ouch. We were, of course, regarded with polite if blank expressions when we asked around about the mysterious Madame Corneille.

‘This is hopeless,’ she moaned as we stood in the searing midday sun.

‘Nothing, in my experience, is ever hopeless.’ I took out the map and filled in the fourth dot, drawing a line from San Zaccaria to the Gesuati, the longest we had, across the Grand Canal. ‘We do have more of the circle.’

‘It’s rather misshapen.’

‘It would be hard for your mother to describe a perfect one. Perhaps she was in a hurry.’

‘Makes sense. Next up … black marble and old bones.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like suggesting this, but it could be Ca’ Scacchi. There’s black marble on the giant chessboard out back. We’ve seen the bones for ourselves. Down there in that awful place we found her.’

Like most newcomers to the city, her understanding of Venetian geography was limited. I knew that couldn’t be right. I drew an imaginary line on the map from where we stood directly back to Ca’ Scacchi on the other side of Dorsoduro, close to Salute.

‘That wouldn’t be a circle, misshapen or otherwise. And what about the eight-point star?’

She folded her arms, then tossed back her head, an attempt I thought to show me the rotten actor she once was. I applauded.

‘Fine then, genius,’ she said, mock sharply. ‘What do you suggest?’

It seemed obvious that the next dot on the map would lie to the west, along the remaining length of Dorsoduro.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.