by David Taylor
“We’re talking about flood defence schemes, ways of stopping Venice from sinking into the abyss,” Whitaker enthused. The Cambridge academic was working for the Venice in Peril Fund and he had alarming news. The floating city was sinking five times faster than previously thought and was also moving out into the Adriatic Sea. Most of this subsidence, he believed, was caused by plate tectonics. Apparently the Adriatic plate was subducting beneath the Apennines.
Cheryl nodded sympathetically and moved away in the hope of meeting their hostess. What she encountered instead was a group of exquisitely coiffured matrons discussing luxury apartments with a princess from the House of Hohenzollern. What this conversation clearly lacked was a British perspective.
“The views are magnificent from our East London penthouse flat,” she was soon telling them, practicing her cut-glass vowels. “You can see the old Roman road and the actual boundary between the historic counties of Middlesex and Essex. As for sunset over the Thames, I have to say…”
“Sorry to butt in, ladies, but the countess is needed elsewhere.” Freddie had taken a firm grip on her arm and was dragging her across the room to where an elegant old lady was sitting beneath a harrowing painting of the crucifixion.
“This is Cristobel,” he murmured out of the corner of his mouth.
Cristobel Carpenter was wearing a short black dress in wild silk which revealed an almost aerobically thin figure. What gave her substance were her flinty, intelligent eyes.
Freddie introduced Cheryl. “I’m pleased to meet you, Signora Carpenter,” she said demurely.
“What lovely hair you’ve got, my dear. Do take a seat and tell me how I may be of help.” She pointed to a couple of vacant chairs, opened her diamante purse and handed them calling cards.
Freddie sat down gingerly and cleared his throat. “I believe Professor Gentile has informed you of our interest in your family. We’re researching the Venetian spice trade. Am I right in thinking that the Moro family first came to prominence as traders in medieval Venice?”
“It was much earlier than that.” Her voice was light and silvery but carried an ironclad conviction. “Alboino Moro was one of the three consuls sent from Padua in 421 AD to establish a trading post on the islands of the Rialto. You might say he was one of Venice’s founding fathers.”
Freddie gasped audibly. “But that’s only ten years after the Goths sacked Rome! It’s hard to imagine much commerce going on when barbarian hordes were roaming through Italy.”
“Yet it happened, Dr Brett.”
“F-from what I’ve read, the Moro family didn’t settle in Venice until the thirteenth century.”
“Tell me, Dr Brett, how much confidence do you have in oral history?”
“It is often said that word of mouth accounts distort the truth. Stories are interpreted differently with each telling, so the argument goes, and become less reliable in the process. But when written primary sources are not readily available, oral history is absolutely indispensable in exploring and reconstructing events.”
“Well said, young man.” Cristobel clapped her tiny hands together. “According to family tradition, the Moros began trading in Venice after the First Crusade.”
Cristobel took a small silver snuff box out of her purse and drew a pinch of the powdered tobacco into her nostrils. She was like an actress handling her props in a stage play.
“Venetian merchants became the middlemen in the spice trade. The Moro family did better than most by concentrating on a single product, dried ground pepper. Peppercorns were called ‘black gold’ and, until the opening of the new trade routes in the sixteenth century, virtually all the black pepper came from India’s Malabar region. The Moros had trading posts there. It was a risky venture depending, as Shakespeare said, on the ‘wanton wind’ but it paid off. Wealth bred power and influence and some of my ancestors sat on the Grand Council. Eventually one of them, Cristoforo Moro, was elected Doge of Venice in 1462. His coat of arms is over there above the drinks table.”
She waved towards a decorative tapestry draped across the wall. “That’s a baldachin or cloth of state and it was hung behind a throne to symbolize authority.”
The bottom half of the armorial bearing consisted of diagonal black lines but Freddie wasn’t interested in the so-called Bend Sinister. What had taken his eye was the upper half of the shield where three black oval objects hung from cross branches like ceremonial medals.
Cristobel interpreted his interest. “Yes, Dr Brett, they are mulberries. In Venetian heraldry this is called canting, representing a name graphically. What you call a visual pun. Hence a castle stands for Castello, a lion for Leone, a bridge for Ponte and a mulberry tree for Moro. Some coats of arms also had a symbolic meaning. The lion conveyed courage while the mulberry tree denoted commerce.”
“So the Moro family was definitely linked with mulberries.”
“Absolutely, the name Moro means Moor or black African while the feminine rendition of the word, Mora, translates as mulberry. If you go to the chapel of San Giobbe and inspect Doge Moro’s tomb you will see that his funerary slab is decorated with a mulberry design.”
“Did these family emblems carry over into the sixteenth century?” Cheryl asked.
Cristobel’s eyes narrowed. “I think the link between Moors and mulberries was a well established one. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of it. Othello gives Desdemona a handkerchief with a berry embroidered on it, albeit a strawberry.”
Freddie nodded energetically. “There is quite a debate over whether Othello was based on the Cristoforo Moro who went to Cyprus as governor of the island. What do you think?”
The old lady inclined her head to one side without answering and, as she did so, a shaft of overhead light penetrated the layers of carefully applied make-up to reveal a sallow skin and wrinkles above the upper lip.
“Aren’t we getting off the point?” she said sharply.
“Forgive me,” he flashed his most winning smile. “It’s such an interesting subject.”
“Seeing you ask, Dr Brett,” an American drawl apparent for the first time. “I consider Othello to be an adaptation of Cinthio’s story, Un Capitano Moro, which Shakespeare must have read in Italian. Cinthio probably heard about Cristoforo Moro’s governorship of Cyprus and how his wife died in mysterious circumstances. On returning to Venice, Moro took a second wife called Demonia which is quite like Desdemona. That’s all I know.”
Cheryl raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You mention Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italian, Signora Carpenter. Several of his plays contain comic scenes inspired by the commedia dell’arte which was very popular in Venice.”
“That is so. One of the main characters, Pantalone, is a Venetian merchant.”
She could feel her mouth go dry as she asked the key question. “Didn’t a Moro play Pantalone on the stage? I think his first name was Lodovico.”
“So I’ve been told.” Cristobel gave a vinegary smile before looking down at her diamond encrusted watch. “My goodness, is that the time? Please forgive me for rushing off but I must say hello to La Scala’s musical director before they kick us out of here.”
They watched her glide through the now thinning crowd of cocktail drinkers and tap a man on his smartly tailored shoulder. He bowed and kissed her hand in greeting.
“That was pretty abrupt, don’t you think?” Freddie said.
“Yes, unless I’m imagining things, she didn’t want to talk about Lodovico Moro.”
“Ah well, there’s no point in worrying about it now. Not when there’s plenty of booze to be had.”
Two strawberry and champagne mixes left Freddie philosophical about their failure. While she was inwardly raging, he seemed almost relieved to find that his psychic bridge to the past had broken down. They had come a long way in twenty four hours, before their luck ran out. It was bound to happen, he told her.
But as they left the gallery Cheryl noticed a poster advertising a forthcoming auction in Christie’s showrooms
in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza and stopped to read it. Members of the Save Venice committee were putting personal possessions up for sale with the proceeds going to the campaign. Some of the lots were listed at the bottom of the flier.
“What’s the matter, love? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
Unable to speak, she pointed an unsteady finger at Lot 23.
Two unsigned late sixteenth-century English letters written to a ‘dear cousin’ donated by Cristobel Carpenter. Scholars think the original recipient may have been William Shakespeare as the unknown correspondent refers to his cousin’s literary interest in Jewish traders on the Rialto.
Freddie scanned the almost empty room, looking feverishly for Cristobel. “Is she still here? Where’s she gone?”
One of the event organizers told them Signora Carpenter had gone back to her flat on the Giudecca to change. She was attending an evening gala in the Teatro la Fenice opera house.
His buried insecurities came to the fore. “You don’t think she’s already given these letters away, do you? We’ve got to get to her now. There’s no time to waste.”
*
Hours later he was sitting outside a café on the Giudecca promenade drinking his third cup of double espresso, telling himself it was a good sign that Cheryl hadn’t come back yet. She had insisted on seeing Cristobel on her own, arguing that girl talk would be the most effective approach. He had kept his reservations to himself, reasoning that if he was going to live with this mercurial female he must learn to trust her.
From here he could see across the canal to the so-called Venetian mainland. The city was a wonderful absurdity: a series of interconnecting islands that floated before the eyes like proliferating water-lilies. Flooding, sinking, yet somehow surviving for almost two thousand years.
The heat from the afternoon sun reflected off the lagoon, its refractions creating a dance of light that was at once elusive and ambiguous. He was surrounded by water. Water gave and took life; water was endlessly recycled, full of ancient secrets, whispers of the dead. During the plague years it had been a floating burial ground. With no room for mass graves on dry land, corpses had been floated out to sea.
A hand caressed the back of his neck. Freddie swung round.
Cheryl was smiling down at him. “I’ve something to show you.”
“You’ve got the letters,” he said eagerly. “How did you persuade her to part with them?”
“I tried a novel approach. I told her the truth or most of it. We had deceived her. Our interest in the city’s spice trade was simply a cover story. You were an English academic with a theory about Shakespeare’s Venetian plays. What we were after was evidence that the playwright had come to Venice where he had met her ancestor Lodovico and, if the correspondence she possessed confirmed such a visit, you’d be prepared to give her ten per cent of the royalties on the book you intend to write plus an acknowledgement. She wants a written agreement notified by a lawyer but she’s already withdrawn the letters from the New York auction and given them to me on approval.”
He gave her a big hug. “I think you should be my agent.”
Cheryl pulled the letters out of her shoulder bag and untied the red ribbon holding them together. “They were in a suitcase under Cristobel’s bed,” she explained. “The letters are supposed to have come from Lodovico Moro’s house. That’s what her family told her. They’re addressed to ‘my dear cousin’ and end with the affected farewell, ‘yours to be commanded.’”
“Typical of the period,” said Freddie, snatching one of them off the café table.
“What do you make of this?” Cheryl read out the other letter. “‘Reminding you that you freely entered upon an undertaking to travel for the benefit and public good of the state, I cannot help but wonder why you tarry so long in Venice.’ Whoever wrote this was a long-winded git.”
“Oh, that comes from learning rhetoric at school. It’s the language of copiousness.”
“Listen to this though!” She waved the vellum pages in triumph. “The cousin is being ticked off for consorting with ‘the usurers of the ghetto.’ That’s the Italian word for foundry, isn’t it? The Venetian Senate must have forced Jews to live beside an ironworks.”
His eyes were focused on the letter he was holding. “I know who wrote this,” he murmured.
“How can you be sure? It’s unsigned.”
“No it’s not. Look at the parting phrase.”
“I’ve already done so – ‘yours to be commanded.’ What can you read into that?”
“Look more closely.”
The penmanship was late Elizabethan, a mixture of the secretary and italic hands and quite florid in its execution. Then it dawned on her. The capital letters!
“That’s right. He’s subscribed himself, ‘yours To Be commanded.’ Thomas Bodley usually signed his name in full but he wouldn’t do so here; not when he’d sent Bacon on a spying mission.”
“It certainly reads like the puritanical Bodley, scolding his young protege for running short of money and borrowing from a Jewish moneylender who will charge him interest on the loan!”
Freddie asked the waiter for a bottle of Valpolicella to toast their success. “We can write a pretty good article about this. There are one or two things that need checking though …”
The look in her eyes stopped him in his tracks. “Is something wrong?”
“There was another Bodley letter but it was stolen long ago by an English couple. That’s why Cristobel reacted the way she did when we mentioned Lodovico Moro.”
“And this third letter was the clincher, the one that really mattered,” he muttered. “That’s why they took it. Tell me the whole story.”
Thirty years ago when Cristobel was living on the island with her first husband, they were visited by an English student and his girlfriend who wanted to get the letter authenticated. Although she didn’t speak much English then Cristobel had the presence of mind to ask for a receipt and was given a calling card by the girl which she duly lost. However, the girl’s name came back to her years later when she was watching a movie about a prostitute with a beautiful smile.
“It must be Meg Ryan,” he guessed.
Cheryl shook her head and smiled sadly. “No, it was Julia Roberts.”
Freddie choked on his wine. He simply couldn’t believe it. The young woman who had given Cristobel her card was Julia Walker-Roberts.
28 JULY 2014
The singers were enjoying themselves. Their voices throbbed with passion as they reached the final uplifting ‘Hallelujah’ in the Bach motet.
Sitting on a pew in Warbeck chapel, Dame Julia fanned herself with the recital notes and wondered what it must have been like to live in an age of certainty when it was possible to believe in a supernatural creator.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
The choir had segued into everyone’s favourite anti-slavery hymn. Full marks to the choirmaster, she thought, for retaining Newton’s self-loathing second line rather than swapping it for the fashionable and unspeakably bland, ‘That saved and strengthened me.’
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see
The transformative power of the song brought a tear to Julia’s eye. She had blindly followed her academic ambitions, sacrificing what really mattered in life.
She had often talked about taking sabbatical leave without ever believing she would ask for it. Now she had done so and all those active verbs like ring, text, mark, lecture and write would soon be disappearing from her vocabulary to be replaced by much lazier French words. She felt lightheaded, demob happy her father would have called it.
Not even the thought of an after-dinner speech, something she normally detested, could destroy her sense of well-being. Tonight’s banquet was to welcome delegates to a symposium on ‘Spanish Golden Age Drama in Translation and Performance’ that had to be more interesting than it sounded. Julia would sing for her
unwanted supper, accept the plaudits and depart. Sebastian would be waiting for her in the Bear Inn and they would spend the night together. The very thought of what was in store sent a shiver down her spine. It was ages since she had shared her bed with anyone, shared anything of consequence. The dragon lady – yes, she knew her nickname - felt like a nervous schoolgirl about to lose her virginity.
It had all happened so quickly. A week ago they had been standing by the lock gates at Iffley. The day had been a near perfect one with only a few fluffy white clouds in an otherwise bright blue sky. Basking in the warmth, ducks and geese had gathered in search of food and Sebastian was throwing them breadcrumbs. Initially amused by their antics, she could sense his mounting unease. There was something about his manner that worried her, a vague air of anxiety.
“Is anything the matter?” she had asked.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he blurted out. “I’m selling up and moving abroad.”
His words were brutal and abrupt, as if he had no control over them. She tried to respond but her mind went numb. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’ve bought a vineyard in the Languedoc. You should see it, Julia. About three hundred hectares of land in a protected area full of wild orchids and herbs.”
Julia pulled herself together. This was no time for self-pity. “You’ve always loved France, Seb, but I never knew you wanted to be a winegrower.”
“Oh, I know nothing about viticulture. The opportunity was there and I took it. The existing winemaker is staying on to show me the ropes. You won’t have heard of the vineyard. It’s called Chateau Scholastica. There used to be a convent on the site.”
“And what wines do you make?”
“Mainly reds, Cabinet Sauvignon and Syrah, but Benjamin hopes to cultivate the Merlot and Grenache grape varieties. Of course, we’ll have to enrich the soil and get the acid blend right or there will be problems with fermentation.”