by Chad Brecher
Ellie looked around the room. There were multiple large windows along the walls of the chamber covered with thin white tapestries that allowed the sun to stream. Created out of dark wood, the walls were adorned with many prominent canvases of complex, busy paintings. The colors of the paintings were a mix of blacks, oranges, and reds and portrayed elaborate episodes of Venetian history such as a maritime battle with thousands of fighters. A balcony to the left was roped off. Several ladders were erected around the perimeter of the chamber, no doubt part of the restoration project. The ceiling was covered in its entirety by a complex arrangement of paintings enclosed by ornate, gilded frames.
“Below the ceiling is a frieze consisting of portraits of the first sixty-six doges, from Obelerio Antenoreo to Francesco Venier painted by Jacopo Tintoretto and his son, Domenico.”
Ellie could see the ducal portraits running along the perimeter of the wall beneath the ceiling. There were two portraits per canvas with the neighboring doges facing each other. The canvases were separated by gold frames. The portraits ran along three of the walls. The wall closest to them did not have any portraits. Instead, Tintoretto’s massive painting of Paradise was displayed.
Alex found a small blurb on the corner of a page and read excitedly, “It says here that ‘the portrait of Doge Marin Falier who was executed for a conspiracy against the state was covered by a black curtain with the inscription: HIC EST LOCUS MARINI FALETHRI DECAPITATI PRO CRIMINIBUS (THIS IS THE PLACE OF MARIN FALIER, BEHEADED FOR HIS CRIMES).”
“The black doge!” Ellie exclaimed. “You were right!”
Alex smiled back at her. He scanned the portraits. “But where?”
Ellie pointed. “There, I think!” Alex squinted. In the far left corner of the room, the penultimate ducal portrait was absent. Instead, the portrait was painted over with a curtain-like swatch of black. Alex fought the urge to climb over the barrier and get a better look at the painting. A worker moving a ladder eyed him suspiciously.
“It still doesn’t answer what Bernardo meant by ‘The key is behind the black doge,’ Ellie offered.
“What if Dr. Gozzi hid something behind the portrait. He probably had free access to the palace. There’s a ladder right next to it!”
They both grew quiet, trying to comprehend the significance of their discovery.
“Assuming you are right and there is something hidden behind the portrait, what are we going to do about it? Go to the police? We can’t just waltz up to it, pull the ladder over, and take it down,” Ellie noted.
“When does the museum close?” Alex asked, glancing at his watch.
“Pretty soon.”
“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to sleep over at a museum,” Alex muttered. Ellie eyed him skeptically.
“What are you saying, Alex? Get caught doing that as a kid, they send you back to your parents for a spanking. Get caught doing that as an adult, it’s an entirely different matter.”
Alex looked at the canvas where Falier’s image should have been and back at Ellie.
“Well, I guess we better find a good place to hide and not get caught.”
20
The wooden floor felt cool against her skin as Ellie shifted her body. Her knees pushed against the small of Alex’s back. Alex responded with a grunt and inched forward slightly under the raised wooden platform that served as a prisoner’s bed. He clenched the penlight between his teeth and tried to direct the light onto the pages of the guide book in an attempt to memorize the maps of the palace.
“How much longer do we have to stay like this,” Ellie whispered with a tinge of annoyance. The footsteps of the museum staff had not been heard for over an hour. Alex pulled the penlight out of his mouth.
“Not much longer,” Alex replied and rotated the penlight until it went off.
“Did you have to choose a prison?” she complained.
“It seemed like the best place to hide. Nobody has found us, have they?”
Ellie glanced at her surroundings from under the bed. The light that had streamed through the iron bars of the window had long since disappeared, replaced by the muted, silvery moonlight. A single small light fixture fastened to the stone wall above the opened cell door provided a limited, yellow glow, partly illuminating the stone ceiling. Ellie could see graffiti from earlier imprisoned souls carved into the stone walls.
They had crossed over from the Doge’s Palace to the Prigioni Nuove, the New Prisons, shortly before the museum closed. It had gained its name to distinguish it from the old prison cells that were a part of the palace grounds. They had taken the narrow Ponte dei Sospiri, the so-called “Bridge of Sighs,” the notorious bridge through which prisoners would peer through a small window at Venice and sigh that it would be the last time they would lay eyes upon the city. The Prigioni Nuove had not had a prisoner since the 1930s and had been converted into a museum where visitors could get a taste of the oppressive nature of confinement during the time in which it functioned.
Alex looked at his watch and pulled himself up from under the wooden bed and extended his hand to Ellie. Ellie stretched in pain.
“We need to be quiet,” Alex urged as he led them from the prison back to the Ponte dei Sospiri. The bridge was eerie in the dark but they managed to reach the Sala dei Censori. A small light provided a modicum of illumination as they navigated under the austere portraits of magistrates painted by Tintoretto. They crept through the Sala dell’Avogaria, Sala dello Scrigno, and Sala della Milizia da Mar, stopping periodically to listen intently for any sounds of security. They heard nothing and scampered up to the first floor. They quietly retraced their earlier path, crossing into the Liagó until they stood once again in front of the scarlet rope barrier blocking entrance into the Sale del Maggiore. There were four small lights in each corner that provided enough light to see the corners of the rooms, but not much more. Moonlight shined through the veneer, white drapes causing the small stones composing the floor to sparkle brilliantly. Two fire-extinguishers were positioned against the wall in glass cases emanating a red, neon glow.
“It’s beautiful…and creepy at the same time,” Ellie whispered and climbed over the barrier, followed silently by Alex. They walked to the distant corner and stared up. Alex directed the light from his penlight towards the portrait but the beam barely reached it.
“We need to move that ladder over here,” Alex whispered to Ellie. She nodded silently, circled a tall ladder that was fully opened resting some distance from the portrait, and gripped two of the legs. Alex grabbed the opposite two and they carefully moved it to a position beneath Falier’s blackened portrait. Alex planted his foot on the bottom rung and began to climb as Ellie steadied the ladder. The ladder squeaked, sending an uncomfortable echo reverberating through the vacuous chamber. Ellie looked nervously backward, expecting to see a security guard rushing in. The room once again was plunged into silence.
Alex reached the top of the ladder, glanced down at Ellie, and smiled. In front of him was the portrait as it was described in the book. A black curtain was painted across it with the proclamation of damnation memoriae. Alex directed the pen light at the edges of the portrait. There was an elaborate gold frame that ran around both the covered portrait of Marin Falier and a neighboring doge who shared the same canvas. His fingertips found the edge of the frame and he leaned his body precariously to the right in an attempt to see behind the frame. Alex suddenly lost his balance and fell forward. He reached out wildly to right himself. His hold on the frame prevented him from toppling off the ladder. As his legs quivered in response to the moment of panic, he could feel the frame loosen from the wall and release. He looked down and could see Ellie staring at him with concern as she tried to steady the ladder with her torso.
Reaching up he lifted the frame off its support and clutched it tightly to his chest. The frame was remarkably heavy and he teetered at the top of the ladder. Alex slowly descended rung by rung with the portrait resting between his chest and the ladder
. He sighed with relief as his feet finally made contact with the floor. Ellie helped steady the frame against the ladder.
“You did it,” Ellie whispered and tenderly squeezed Alex’s shoulder.
The key is behind the black doge.
Alex wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt and kneeled by the portraits. “Let’s turn it around.”
They cautiously rotated the portraits, careful not to scrape the golden frame against the floor. Ellie let out a gasp. There was a metal cylinder and leather bag taped to the back of the portrait. Alex teased the cylinder and bag from the portrait and placed them on the floor in front of them. He shined the beam of the flashlight on them but could not find any indication of their contents from the outside.
A noise from beyond the room made them both freeze. They could hear faint footsteps and voices.
“Someone’s here! What do we do?” Ellie cried.
“We have to hide,” Alex responded, his eyes darting around the room. He passed the cylinder and leather bag to Ellie and grabbed her hand. Ellie resisted.
“We need to put the painting back up.”
“There’s no time,” Alex responded and pulled her towards the way they had entered the room.
“What about that room?” Ellie asked, pointing to a door near them.
“There’s no way out through that room. It’s a dead end. We need to go back the way we came.”
They ran across the room and reached the roped barrier. Stepping over it, they peered down the Liagó. They could see flashlights bouncing around in the distance and hear footsteps walking up the stairs.
“Which way?” Ellie wondered aloud, her eyes wide with fright.
“This way.” Alex pulled Ellie forward across the Liagó and into an adjacent room. They found themselves in a small chamber opposite the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. As they frantically searched for a place to hide, the voices grew louder. Finding a small desk at the far end of the room beneath a large window, they dropped to their knees and crawled across the room. As menacing shadows stretched across the doorway to the room, they pushed themselves behind the desk at the last moment.
21
The voices were at first hard to discern but grew clearer as the men approached.
“The Sala del Maggiore Consiglia is this way. Do you want me to send some carabinieri to pick up this Eleanor Griffin and Alexander Stone?”
Ellie looked at Alex with alarm at the sound of their names. The voice was familiar.
“No need to, Inspector. I’ve already sent one of my men to track them down. I suspect we will have this whole affair wrapped up very soon. First, let’s deal with the Gozzi matter. Where is this painting?”
Alex brought his lips close to Ellie’s and whispered. “I think these guys are the people who killed Dr. Gozzi. We need to get out of here. That Inspector seems to be in on it. It’s only a matter of time before they realize we’re here.”
“What should we do?”
“Come on,” Alex responded and raised Ellie to her feet. They maneuvered in the darkness along a bench running the length of the wall, careful not to step into the center of the room. As they neared the doorway into the Liagó, they crouched along the wall and looked out. They could see a small group of men dressed in black pass into the Sala del Consiglia. Ellie gasped at the sight of the barrel of a pistol held by one of the men. “They have guns,” she whispered.
Alex nodded gravely and slowly nudged his head beyond the doorframe and peered down the hallway. The Liagó was empty.
Seizing the opportunity, they silently crept into the hallway and quickly made for the closest stairway. Behind them, they could hear a commotion emanating from the grand chamber and the static of a walkie-talkie. They found the painting! Alex thought.
They sprinted up the staircase, realizing too late that the acoustics were unfavorable. The clack-clack of their shoes echoed down to the first floor. They maneuvered into a small room next to the staircase. Alex twirled around in hopes of finding his bearing. Ellie clutched the cylinder and leather bag to her chest. It was unnervingly quiet.
“We need to make it back to the Golden Staircase,” Alex whispered and directed them into a larger, ornate adjoining room. “This should be the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci where the Council of Ten met. The staircase shouldn’t be too much further.” As they left the room and maneuvered down a narrow corridor, the sound of static ahead caused them to freeze. They could make out a beam of light moving in the darkness within a large room ahead of them.
“We can’t get out that way. We need to go back the way we came,” Alex urged and gripped Ellie’s hand tightly. They passed through the chamber for the Council of Ten and back into the smaller room adjacent to the staircase that lead up to the second floor. Alex looked around the room. We’re trapped, he thought with terror.
“I think this is the Sala della Bussola,” Alex whispered. “I read about it in the book. If I’m right, there is a secret passage in this room.” Alex made for a large wooden compass with a statue of Justice in the northwest corner of the room. As Ellie watched Alex disappear behind the wooden compass, she felt a pressure against the side of her head.
“Don’t even think of running.” The voice was tinged with annoyance.
Ellie turned her head slightly, gaining a glimpse of the silver tubing of the silencer attached to the gun.
Fredrick brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “I caught one of them…a girl. She looks like she’s got the stuff. I’m going to bring her down.”
The man turned Ellie around and leveled the gun at her face. Fredrick stared at her with a sour expression, his eyes a dark black, like the cap pulled tight over his head.
“Where’s your friend?” he barked at her.
Ellie nervously locked her lips and hoped that Alex had managed to find an exit to safety. She only wished he had taken the items they found behind the painting and her bag with the wooden box. Now these men will get what they are looking for, she thought with dismay.
“Not going to talk? We’ll make you talk soon enough,” Fredrick growled menacingly. He pushed her forward toward the stairs down to the Liagó. The shove knocked her off balance, sending the cylinder from her hand. It rolled across the floor and into the corner. She needed to escape! But how?
“Pick it up,” Fredrick ordered behind her.
As she slowly made her way to the corner of the room, her eyes darted around in hopes of finding a way out of her predicament.
22
Alex maneuvered through the hidden passageway. He found the narrow staircase leading to the Piombi, the notorious prison cells within the Doge’s Palace from where Casanova had made his famous escape. What was he going to do?
Just moments earlier he had found the secret passage behind the compass in the Sala della Bussola. He had thought Ellie was just behind him but suddenly found himself alone within the passage. He returned to find Ellie at gunpoint and ducked back behind the compass. His skin began to tingle as he frantically tried to think of how he could rescue her. He was the reason they were here this night. It was his idea to stay in the palace. He was the one that put her in danger.
Alex wound his way through the corridors in search of a weapon. He entered the Sala dei Tre Capi, the hidden antechamber in which prisoners were kept before being brought in front of the dreaded Council of Ten. He passed through the Sala degli Inquisitori and into a series of interconnected rooms that composed the armory for the palace. In front of him was a seemingly infinite assortment of weapons from maces and crossbows to swords and muskets. There was even a slender cannon perched on two wagon wheels in the center of one of the rooms.
I’m an academic, not a soldier, he thought as he desperately ran through the armory, searching for something he could use. If he didn’t get back to the Sala della Bussola before they left, he feared all would be lost. It may already be too late.
He stopped at a halberd that was fastened to the wall and pulled it off with a grunt. The weapon co
nsisted of a long wooden pole that was topped with a frightening axe and enormous spike. Gripping the pole, he ran back through the secret corridor.
23
Ellie dropped to the floor, clutching the leather bag and her satchel close to her body. She reluctantly collected the cylinder off the ground and slowly rose from the floor.
Ellie was suddenly yanked back to her feet by Fredrick. The man roughly pushed her forward with his knuckles towards the nearby staircase.
“Hurry up. I don’t get paid by the…” Fredrick’s voice trailed off, suddenly distracted by motion behind them. Ellie could feel the pressure of the gun against the small of her back disappear as her captor turned around with surprise.
The crack was earsplitting. A wooden pole whizzed through the air and struck the man across the side of his head. The man grunted and was sent tumbling to the floor with a thump. The gun flew out of his hand and skidded harmlessly across the room.
Ellie turned to see Alex awkwardly holding the halberd. He stared down at the unconscious man bleeding from a large gash across his head with a mix of surprise and pride.
“That was pretty crazy. None of us saw that coming, especially him. Now what? How do we get out of here?” Ellie asked. They could hear a voice on the walkie-talkie ask if everything was all right and state that they were coming up. The sound of people running reverberated from downstairs.
Seized by a wave of adrenaline, Alex and Ellie ran hand and hand through the palace rooms. “We need to get back to the Golden Staircase,” Alex urged as they entered the Atrio Quadrato, a small chamber next to the doge’s apartment. As they turned the corner, they could see the familiar staircase in front of them. They took the stairs two steps at a time and reached the loggia level. Footsteps echoed closely behind them.