A Richer Dust Concealed: A gripping historical mystery thriller you won’t be able to put down!

by R P Nathan

  And although I would not do anything to risk myself and my chances of seeing you and little Frances again, still I am loath to think that I shall spend this whole war (and it could last a whole year more yet!) in a small consular outpost in Italy whilst on the battlefields of France and Belgium so many are fighting and dying.

  And Venice itself reduces me to tears of boredom. When there is little work – which is often – and little conversation to be had – which is oftener still since the consulate is small and Captain Hargreaves is a man of few interests and will not even play a game of cards with me because he does not approve – then I wander abroad in Venice. But what a difference from Rome. Though Ruskin might be besotted with this place I am not. It is drab my darling, grey and stained from the constant wet. And I care not for the canals, which alternately flood and stink and the architecture I find dull and leaden and not to my taste. Where is the music or the food or the laughter of Rome? Where are the fine buildings and hills? Above all, where is the sun? This greyness, wet and unremitting, is making me sick. And in truth, my love, this role I have here and the city and my colleagues and everything that is not your arms and sweet breasts and my daughter’s smile is slowly killing me and stealing the energy and life from me.

  “I’m getting bored of this now.”

  “Fine.” I forced my self to sit up so that I didn’t fall asleep which would have really annoyed him. “But can you just see if there’s an explanation of how he got hold of Polidoro’s journal?”

  He screwed up his face as though this was all taking a huge effort. “OK. But after that I’m fast forwarding to the code stuff.”

  7 January 1915

  My darling Anna

  At last a day of interest for me. I was walking without purpose in Dorsoduro when I happened on a street called Rio Terra Antonio Foscarini which led down to San Agnese. On this street were many bookshops, and books being one of the few things which make Venice (or any other very dull place) bearable, I selected a shop which appeared from the window display to be the oldest and hence to my mind the most interesting, and entered.

  Inside I fell into discussion with the owner, a tall and wiry man with a white stripe in his black hair that reminded me of a badger. From his skin he was probably old, perhaps seventy even, but his eyes were bright and alert. He asked me whether I was looking for any book in particular and I told him no, but that I had been in Venice four weeks and that since it had rained every day of that four weeks and seemed likely to continue raining for another four, that I would require something to occupy my mind.

  He looked at me inquisitively, his head to one side as though he were sizing me for a suit and then he asked me to tell him something about myself so that he might select something suitable for me. So I told him of my background in Classics at Cambridge. “My specialities are of course Latin and Greek but I have a love for all languages and have found particular pleasure in archaic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs. I find them a challenge.”

  At that he nodded. “You like codes and puzzles?”

  “Of course. You could say they are my business.” This was loose talk from me I know, but he seemed harmless.

  His eyes were positively dancing now. “I have just the book for you. It is a journal. The Italian is of a slightly old form but you should have no difficulty with it.”

  “And what is this book?”

  “It is by Girolamo Polidoro, one of the minor heroes of Venice past, and present at the siege of Famagusta as servant to Marco Antonio Bragadino. You are aware of the story?” I nodded. “Well, this journal was written by Polidoro during the battle for that city.”

  “That is interesting,” said I not interested in the least. “But I have read much on the history of Venice already. The present of Venice is so damp that it has allowed me to become well acquainted with its past. A noble history to be sure, but I am looking more for a work of fiction, perhaps an adventure—”

  “Yes, a noble history,” he interrupted, stressing the word “history” strangely and I thought for a moment that I had misunderstood him. “But,” he continued, and his eyes were fired with passion, “this journal is more than that. Polidoro’s is a first hand account. He was there when the city was besieged.” He leaned across the counter to me. “And he was also present when a great treasure was hid before the siege to safeguard it from the Turks. The ending of the journal, written in code, gives the whereabouts to that treasure.” He stood up straight again. “So they say.”

  By this time he had my interest. “What is this treasure?”

  “A wondrous piece in gold and gems originally from Constantinople.”

  “And did Polidoro himself recover this treasure?”

  “No. On his final return to Venice in 1588, he was questioned by the Council of Ten but he did not have the treasure with him. After that, so the story goes, he went to live with his brother in Verona and never left the Republic again.”

  “So the treasure is still in Cyprus somewhere?”

  “Perhaps. A treasure that if found would be beyond price.” He looked me up and down. “But of course if you would rather have a good adventure or a romance—”

  “No. This sounds just what I need to keep me sane in the likely event that the rain does not stop.”

  “Very good. I will fetch the book for you.” He disappeared into the interior of the shop and returned with a thin calfskin bound book. It looked old and the pages were printed in large type, yet the whole thing was no more than one hundred pages. The last six were clearly in code as the letters were all capitalised and arranged with no break.

  “I hope you enjoy it, Signor,” he said and he wrapped the book and handed it to me with a smile, his eyes again showing bright in his old face.

  “Thank you,” I said taking it and putting it into my portfolio so that it would be protected from rain. I shook his hand and turned to go.

  “Signor,” he called after me as I opened the door and paused, confronted with the curtain of relentless water outside. “Remember to return and let me know if you find the treasure.”

  I laughed and said, “Of course,” and bade him farewell. But the light had gone out of his eyes and he was already disappearing again into the interior of the shop.

  I took the book home and unwrapped the paper and held it in my hands. The leather binding seemed suitably aged and the papers inside were thick and with uncertain edges as though the paper was handmade. I had no idea by looking at it whether it was genuine or not as I am not an expert in these matters, but if it affords me some diversion then I will not care.

  I looked at the first page and began to translate. The Italian is easier than I thought, not Venetian dialect, but a recognisable Italian so I am making good progress. I will copy my translation in full into the back of my journal so that when you receive it you will be able to correct my work and calm my over-florid style; but in brief it does indeed appear to be a journal by one Girolamo Polidoro and refers explicitly to his time in Famagusta in Cyprus. I say appears to be for I must be guarded about the provenance of such a work in printed form. There is no clue on the frontispiece – not even a printer’s mark which I would have thought unusual – as to whether Polidoro himself sought to have his thoughts captured for posterity in this way or whether it was some admirer – contemporary or later – who performed the act for him. And whether this admirer has already broken the code which sits at the end and has found this great treasure (if it even exists or ever existed) is yet another question unanswered. I confess I have already looked at these encoded pages since you know I find such things irresistible, the encrypted letters carrying a mysterious beauty of their own: V E L G A S A G A I I... And I have tried a few usual tricks to see how I get on (like shifting each letter by one in the alphabet to see if words drop out) but to no avail. But I realise that I am getting ahead of myself, and that what I must first do is translate Polidoro’s words to provide me with a proper context which will no doubt allow me to break the code eventual
ly anyway. (Oh Anna: I am unbearably confident when I am drawn into something, is that not so?)

  And so to work. I shall produce a translation and you shall review it. For the first time since I have been in Venice I feel I have a purpose and that my time can profitably be spent and my mind engaged so that it does not dwell on how much I miss you. To work then, my love. To work.

  Chapter 8

  We went to McDonalds again that night and reprised our previous day’s meal. But our normal roles were reversed in that Patrick, engrossed in the code, was happy to talk and I was content to listen and think of other things.

  I’d finished the last of my fries when I finally asked him the question I’d been mulling all day. “Do you think the girls will show up tomorrow?”

  “Did Sarah say she would?”

  “Well yes but—”

  “Then she’ll show up.” His mood had been getting more and more upbeat as he shuffled his little slips of paper and pored over Shaeffer’s notebook. “Oh yeah, they’ll definitely show up. I can’t wait to see Maya again. I’m going to tell her all about Polidoro’s code and the cross and—”

  “How can you be so sure though?”

  “Well Sarah got off with you didn’t she?”

  I felt myself colouring. “Well, yes… But what about all that stuff with Julius?”

  “Who cares? Julius and Duncan’ll be in Naples by now.” He chuckled callously but then we both jumped as an alarm started ringing in the restaurant. I looked around and saw the other customers and the waiting staff were hurrying for the door. We’d finished anyway so rushed after them outside into the street. The manager shooed us back from the glass shop front.

  “What’s going on?” I asked one of the staff, a short dark Italian my kind of age.

  “Paura di una bomba,” he said. “A bomb scare.”

  “Really?” I looked around anxiously.

  “Yeah. But don’t worry.”

  Patrick and I exchanged a glance. “I mean it’s a bit worrying,” Patrick said.

  “No, no, there have been many recently in Venice. The American shops like us. A couple of little ones have gone off but no one’s been hurt. They just don’t like us being here.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Take your pick. Right wing. Left wing. Mafia.” He shrugged. “But it’s OK. Life goes on. It’s not like it was ten years ago. Bologna station. Mamma mia.”

  At that moment a group of black uniformed Carabinieri turned up. Two started talking urgently to the manager, who beckoned over the employee we’d been speaking with. The other Carabinieri started making a cordon around the McDonalds pushing us back along with the other customers and assorted passers-by who’d stopped to gawp. After a few moments of inactivity though the crowd started to disperse and we went with them, happy to be walking away.

  It had been a bit unnerving. It wasn’t like we weren’t used to bomb scares and actual bombs back home – there had been that big bomb at the Baltic Exchange only a few months before – but somehow it felt different when you were on holiday.

  We found ourselves wandering through some back streets, and though we probably could both have done with a drink, we couldn’t find a bar nearby. So in the end we just returned to the hotel room. Which felt nice and safe; though I did still allow myself a jolt of spite towards Julius who always seemed to know the right places to go, almost by instinct. I resolved that by the time the girls were with us the following day I would be an expert in these matters too. So after we crashed out I studied my guidebook looking for restaurants and bars that we would impress Sarah and Maya. And all the while Patrick continued to study Henry Shaeffer’s notebook for leads on how to break Polidoro’s code.

  Patrick switched his light off first.

  The room was hot and close again and I couldn’t sleep.

  It wasn’t the bomb scare that was keeping me awake. I’d actually relaxed pretty quickly after we got back to the room. And we certainly hadn’t heard any explosions so I just chalked it down to being one of those things.

  What was keeping me awake was Sarah.

  My heart thumped uncontrollably at the thought of meeting her again. I saw her raised eyebrow and her eyes and her smile. My blood was slamming through me. I heard her voice. Tomorrow seemed a lifetime away.

  I got up quietly and tiptoed round to Patrick’s bed and picked up Shaeffer’s notebook from beside it; then lay down again to read till I fell asleep.

  1st August 1571

  The Pasha has sent his envoys to negotiate our surrender. The whole city dares to rest a while now and at last we sit in groups and speak in gentle voices without fearing for our lives and without our ears being assaulted by the din of war. When we look at each other we smile for, though we have been defeated, we feel no dishonour and there is just a dull joy that it is over at last.

  2nd August 1571

  Food has been sent into the city by the Pasha and to eat again of wholesome meat and bread has lifted our spirits immeasurably. All through the city the talk is of the truce. For Mustafa Pasha has shown a noble character and has granted us safe passage from the island and his own ships will bear us to Crete. To this end, forty galleys today entered the harbour and the sick and the wounded have started to embark; though I am glad to say that Giuseppe considered himself well enough to stay in the city for the moment and help me with my works. Of those Greeks amongst us, the Turks have said that they will allow them to stay unmolested on the island if they so wish. It is an honourable settlement and certainly we will not share the same fate as the citizenry of Nicosia.

  The Turkish troops who entered the camp were well-behaved for the most part. When they saw our men they were astonished that we had held the city for so long with so small a company. But even more amazing was it for us when we could finally put our heads above the parapets and survey the prodigious numbers that were in the Turkish camp.

  Everywhere we looked, for over three miles from the city they stretched in a vast circuit; the area so full of troops that the turbans, which on every side showed white above the trenches, covered the ground like snow flakes.

  Chapter 9

  In retrospect it had clearly been a mistake to arrange to meet in St Mark’s but it was only when we got there that I realised quite how fundamentally flawed the plan was. Because the Piazza was, of course, completely stuffed with people. Quite why this hadn’t occurred to me the previous day when we’d walked through it I’m not sure but it took me by surprise in a way I found almost touching as we stood there and looked out and into and in between some twenty thousand people. Was it twenty thousand? More? Less? I didn’t know but at points when they would surge one way and the next like flocking birds it seemed like all the tourists in Venice were packed into St Mark’s.

  “We’ll never find them,” said Patrick with an air of finality.

  Since this is what both of us had been thinking for the previous fifteen minutes there seemed little to say in response. And indeed we had said little that morning apart from occasional talk about the journal. I assumed he was feeling the same ever-present stomach prickle of nerves as me. I was going to see Sarah again. He was going to see Maya. We didn’t speak about it. We didn’t need to. And the vague and nagging memory that in the middle of the night I had watched Patrick walk out onto the balcony again I just put down to a dream.

  “Will we?”

  To add to our difficulties it had also started to drizzle and with those first few spots of rain any meagre sight lines we might have had disappeared in a flurry of rising umbrellas, the Piazza becoming an impenetrable expanse of bobbing black picked out here and highlit there in luminous yellow and Day-Glo red and Burberry check.

  “Of course they may not even be here.”

  I winced. Which would have been worse? That Sarah was there somewhere in the midst of all those tourists; or that she’d never intended to come in the first place. “Oh where are they?” I ended up saying.

  It started to rain more heavily and from the
square a thin mist began to rise. As the rain increased so did the numbers of people huddling with us under the arches of the Procuratie Nuove at the southern end of the Piazza, until there were so many that we were being jostled and elbowed from all sides. I bore this reasonably stoically but when someone jabbed their umbrella into my thigh, that was the last straw. I spun round ready to vent my annoyances on whichever cursed tourist was responsible; but saw only Sarah standing there before me. “You two are hopeless,” she said pealing with laughter.

  A huge surge of relief and happiness washed over me. “Hi!” My carefully prepared speeches and cool openings evaporated in the delight which filled me. “Hi.” I didn’t know whether to kiss her or not but she settled that for me by leaning forward and giving me a peck on the cheek.

  “Great to see you again,” she said. “You enjoying Venice?”

  “It’s amazing,” I gushed. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Me too. Hi Cuzz. How are you?” She gave Patrick a kiss as well.

  “Where have you been?” he asked in a cross sounding voice.

  “Where have I been? I’ve been right here for the last ten minutes and poking John in the back for the last five. You’re either the politest person in the world or you have no sensation in your legs.”

  “Sorry,” I said happily. “I thought you were a tourist.”

  “I am a tourist.” She laughed and brushed a hand through her spiky blonde hair, sending a fine shower of water droplets into the air. I smiled what I hoped was my winning smile at her. She smiled back, but when she looked at Patrick it faded on her face. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing.” He coughed. “Where’s Maya?”

  Sarah’s smile returned. “She’s back in the room. She’s sick.”

  “Oh…” The breath escaped from him, his sullenness transforming to open disappointment. “Oh.”

  “She picked up a bug in a restaurant in Bologna. She should be OK by this evening though.”