by Chad Brecher
“Where is the Garden of Eden on this map?” Clay inquired.
“That is a great question. Unlike many other maps, Earthly Paradise is drawn outside the inhabited earth.” Maryanne pointed to an illustration in the bottom right corner of the map, beyond the circle containing the inhabited earth. “The map contains a long discussion of different views on the existence of the Garden of Eden that includes folks like Augustine, Peter Lombard, Albert the Great, and Bede. The final view presented is that the Garden of Eden does indeed exist somewhere in the East, but that it was inaccessible to man.”
Alex stood up and approached the image projected onto the wall. He leaned in to see the blurry image of Eden. There was a circle with a perimeter of Byzantine castle walls. In the center was a green area containing Adam, Eve, a man Alex presumed was God, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A single angel appeared to guard the entrance into Eden with a sword. From the circle sprung four rivers that drained into a mountainous and desolate surrounding area.
“It seems like a lot of effort to duck the question of where the Garden of Eden is located,” Alex added. He stared at the image before him in silence. “Dr. Hunter, could you show me that slide of Bianco’s map again.”
“Surely.”
Maryanne switched slides and projected Bianco’s earlier map onto the wall.
Clay frowned and looked at Alex with curiosity. Alex had a finger outstretched and appeared to be counting.
“What is it, man?” Clay whispered to Alex.
Alex shrugged him off and continued to count.
“Dr. Hunter, what are those lines?”
“Sorry?”
“The lines crisscrossing the map.” Alex left his seat and traced out a series of lines emanating like spokes on a wheel from Jerusalem to the periphery of the map.
“Oh those. They are navigational lines. Remember, all these maps preceded the discovery of longitude and latitude. That didn’t come around until the era of scientific cartography in the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century. Before that, many ships were lost at sea without the certainty of longitude and latitude. What you see here are essentially rhumb lines or loxodromes — courses of constant bearing. They are based on the winds. Many medieval maps employed the use of wind roses or compass roses to delineate space. These lines on Bianco’s map simply create an eight-pointed compass rose.”
“Eight points,” Alex echoed.
Maryanne withdrew the slide from the projector and returned the slide of the Fra. Mauro map. She pointed to a series of eight-pointed stars positioned primarily along the periphery of the map, like asterisks.
“These are good examples of compass or wind roses. Eight points for each of the winds: tramontana, Greco, levante, sirocco, ostro, libeccio, ponente, and maestro.”
“Of course,” Alex smiled broadly.
Clay looked at him and laughed before jovially smacking Jonas in the shoulder. “He’s done it again! Clay turned back to Alex with a suddenly serious look. “You have done it, haven’t you?”
“I’m not certain, but I have a hunch.”
“A hunch is good. What is it then?” Clay urged.
Alex turned to Maryanne.
“You said that this cartographer was likely the man that completed what is known as the Fra. Mauro map? The one Ramusio said was derived from a map of the East from Marco Polo.”
“Yes. If you believe Ramusio.” Maryanne answered with a look of uncertainty bordering on apprehension.
“You also said that this cartographer had familial ties to the Camaldolese since its inception?”
“Yes.”
“And what was this cartographer’s name again?”
“Andrean Bianco.”
“Bianco. I don’t believe that Marco Polo was referring to the color of a habit when he referred to giving the map to a ‘white monk.’ I think Polo was telling us a name — a family name. Bianco is White in Italian! What if Polo’s map was in the possession of the Bianco family all along and the Fra. Mauro’s map is the final product of this knowledge?”
“I would say that was incredible!” Clay exclaimed.
“As would I,” chimed in Maryanne.
Alex looked around the room and caught Ellie’s eyes. They were beaming with pride and excitement.
“And even better, I think I might have figured out how to decipher the map. Where is this map now?”
Maryanne looked at the image of the Fra. Mauro map upon the wall one more time before flipping off the projector. The fan continued to whirl. “It’s housed at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice.”
“Venice,” Alex repeated as if in a stupor.
“You have to be kidding. It was right in front of us all along,” Ellie muttered.
64
Ellie apprehensively glanced over her shoulder and could see the Byzantine façade of the Doge’s Palace lit by moonlight across the piazetta. Although it had been the scene of a heart-pounding pursuit little over a week ago, the building now seemed dreamlike against the wisp-like, plum-colored clouds that stretched out across the sky — stripped of its menacing air. She fought a wave of fatigue that crept up on her unexpectedly and threatened to submerge her thoughts in a morass of tiredness. Ellie brought her hand to her mouth and painfully yawned into her fist. Behind her she could hear Jonas speaking to Alex in the dark. She inched along the northern side of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, keeping to the shadows as the water of the Venetian lagoon lapped at the stone supports.
Back in Venice, she thought incredulously. Back to where Bernardo was murdered. She was thankful that the police barriers and crime-scene tape had been removed. It was difficult enough to be back in the city that claimed such an important person in her life. A visual reminder of the murder would be all the more painful — the wound was too fresh. She imagined that the bureaucrats of Venice must have lobbied hard to have the crime swept under the rug. The suggestion that the City of Romance was unsafe could have a stunting effect on the summer tourist season.
“Here we go,” Jonas announced under his breath as he stopped in front of an inconspicuous metal door. The weathered portal was thin and tall. Unmarked and without a handle, the door was barely noticeable unless someone was intentionally seeking it out. Jonas leaned against the metallic surface and pushed it open with a slight creak. He smiled as the door swung back, revealing a darkened stairwell. He whispered proudly, “The crazy thing is that it didn’t even take a big bribe to get the maintenance guy to leave the door open for us. I told him that I was from the tabloids, looking to photograph the scene of Gozzi’s final gasp.”
Ellie’s fingers tightened into a fist. Alex reached out in the darkness and restrained her hand.
“What about security,” Clay asked as he glanced back along the waterfront, studying the long shadow cast by a passing boat.
“Two words: Italian security. It’s an oxymoron. The truth of the matter is that anyone could probably walk off the street or the piazza and stroll away with a museum piece. I would be more worried about the guy who buffs the floor (who incidentally is having a drink at his favorite bar and will be there for the next couple of hours). Trust me. We will have the library to ourselves.” Jonas gave a smug smile and ushered them through the door with a theatrical bow.
The darkened stairwell was dank, lit only by the moonlight streaming through a tiny window perched high above. Ellie squeezed through the doorway and allowed the door to snap shut behind them.
They stood in the stairwell for a moment and tried to gain their bearings.
“Where to?” Ellie asked.
“Don’t look at me,” Jonas responded. He pointed to Alex. “Ask the professor.”
Alex flipped on a flashlight and shined it down on the most recent volume of Acquisitions and Exhibits at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. He turned the pages as if it were an old-fashioned flipbook and stopped at a schematic of the floorplan of the library. Small numbers were positioned within the rooms. Alex found the legend and loca
ted the number corresponding to Fra Mauro’s map. He gripped the corner of the page, bent it down, and closed the book.
“OK, I know where the map is,” Alex whispered.
Jonas pulled out a second flashlight and tapped the end against the palm of his hand. “I would like to make a suggestion if I might. Let’s try to keep the flashlights off if possible. I’ve cleared out the library for us but I don’t want some tourist alerting the carabinieri to strange lights bouncing around through the library late at night. It might call attention to us and we want to be as invisible as possible.”
“Agreed,” Alex answered and turned off the flashlight. “We need to make our way through the main portion of the library towards the Museo Correr that is connected to this building. Follow me.”
Alex led them up a short flight of stairs and paused at a door at the end of a landing. He slowly pushed open the door and poked his head out. He could see the darkened interior of the library. Alex waited and listened for any sound of movement from the room. Satisfied that they were alone, he trudged into the adjacent room, followed by Clay, Ellie, and Jonas.
The room was elegantly decorated with gilded walls and ceilings and an intricately checkered white-and-black marble floor. Alex moved deliberately across the room and stopped beside a large globe perched atop a wooden frame and housed within a glass display case. The globe was illuminated and the four huddled by it as Alex reopened the book with the schematic and identified where they were. He wordlessly traced his finger along a path through connecting rooms until his finger reached the asterisk against which he tapped his finger several times. His colleagues knowingly nodded and Alex slipped the book into his satchel.
Alex quickly exited the cavernous room and took the first right. The library was eerily still as he wove through room after room, breezing by glass cabinets with artifacts and artwork. After several minutes of searching marked by the occasional misstep, reconsultation with the schematic of the library, and the need to double-back, the group finally arrived at a stairwell at the far end of the library near a connection to the Museo Correr. Alex stopped and looked down at the book with confusion.
“What is it?” Clay whispered with concern.
“It should be somewhere here, at least according to this schematic,” Alex responded, glancing up and down the stairwell.
“It’s a weird place to place a map of such importance,” Jonas muttered and proceeded to lean against the wall. “How old is that book you have…” He nearly lost his footing as his body partially disappeared behind a set of red velvet drapes hanging loosely across the wall. Clay reached out and steadied Jonas.
Ellie grabbed a portion of the drape and took a peak behind it before letting it flop back. She placed the palm of her hand against Jonas’s chest and not so gently directed him back and away from the drapes. She reached out and took hold of each free end of the drapes and with a sweeping motion pulled them aside.
“It looks like Jonas can be useful after all,” Ellie announced and took a step back to admire their find.
Beneath a long metal rod from which the velvet drapes were suspended was the Fra. Mauro map. The map was set in a partially gilded, wooden square frame. In each of the four corners of the map were circles. In the top left corner were thirteen concentric circles surrounding the earth, which was positioned like the pupil of an eye. The circular layers represented the elements of water, air, fire, the planetary spheres, the heaven of the fixed stars, the crystalline heaven, and the empyrean. In the top right corner was a second set of concentric circles that explained the influence of the moon on the oceanic tides. In the bottom right corner was a circle divided by three horizontal lines depicting the climatic zones of the earth. Finally, in the bottom left corner was the illustration of the Garden of Eden that they had previously seen in Dr. Hunter’s office. The Garden of Eden was enclosed within a circle of fire and guarded by a cherub. Within the square frame was a second round frame that surrounded the map of the inhabitable world. The round frame looked like a perfect ring of golden snakeskin.
“We’ve found it,” Clay announced with a smile. “The Fra. Mauro Map.”
65
Solomon loaded a magazine into his pistol and looked at the old man with interest.
“It’s good to finally meet the ‘Man Behind the Curtain’ after all this time. I was beginning to think that you were just a voice at the other end of the phone.” Solomon smiled sarcastically. He leaned against the stone column and studied the empty Piazza San Marco.
The man shifted his body in the shadows and responded with a subdued smile. “I assure you, Mr. Haasbroek, that I am very much flesh and blood, to a fault.”
The cell phone in Solomon’s shirt pocket vibrated and he looked away from the old man. He retrieved it and brought it to his ear. His eyes remained trained on the courtyard ahead.
“Howzit.” Solomon listened for a moment and hung up. “O.K. It’s time to go.”
Solomon glanced back at the man as he slipped the phone back into his pocket and slid the gun into its holster. “It appears that we are moments away from delivering to you what you ordered. What these guys have must be pretty precious for you to be paying what you are.”
“I assure you, Mr. Haasbroek, it is priceless.” The man slipped out of the shadows so that his face was partially illuminated by the lights around the Piazza.
“Well, priceless or not, we’re about to reach the endgame.” Solomon spat on the ground and ushered the man to follow him.
As Solomon turned to go, he could hear the man say, “That’s where you are wrong. This is just the beginning. Now the true search starts.”
66
Clay and Jonas trained the beams of their flashlights up at the map, revealing its intricate details. They could see a jigsaw arrangement of land masses crisscrossed by rivers and dotted with elaborate depictions of palaces and cities. White caravels sailed across majestic, blue seas and tiny notations were crammed across the canvas like the ranting of a madman.
“It’s beautiful,” Ellie sighed.
Alex removed a book from his satchel that Maryanne had given him before they had departed from London. The book was an analysis of the Fra Mauro map and had a detailed reproduction of the map with a dissection of the notations and locations illustrated on the map. He placed the book on the floor and folded the binding back. Alex rummaged through his satchel and removed the wooden box and two metallic roses.
Clay glanced up at the map again and then back down at the cross-legged Alex. He watched as Alex held up the slender key and slid it into the hidden keyhole in the wooden box to open it. The two diamonds sparkled wondrously as they reflected and refracted the light of the flashlights.
“Well, I for one am dying to hear your thoughts at this moment, Alex,” Clay urged.
Alex removed each of the two diamonds from the box and handed them to Ellie. She delicately cupped the precious gems in her hands and observed Alex studying the two metallic roses.
“It didn’t make sense to me until Dr. Hunter explained the significance of the eight lines crisscrossing Andrea Bianco’s map. They were rhumb lines, loxodromes, navigational markers placed on a map by cartographers to help direct travelers during medieval times. Then I thought of what Marco Polo wrote at the end of his fourth book:
The mapmakers will remember the path when the world is finally filled in. It is as constant and elemental as the winds that guide the sails and blow across the plains eastward…always eastward.
“It is as constant and elemental as the winds. Polo was giving us a clue to solving the puzzle.”
Alex held aloft the two metallic roses. “I think these two artifacts are compass roses or wind roses.”
Ellie knelt down by his side, her eyes opened wide.
“Constants…yes, like the Tower of the Winds.”
“What’s that?” Clay queried.
“The Tower of the Winds is an octagonal marble tower in Athens that was built before the time of Christ. It was ded
icated to the eight wind deities — the constants.”
Alex nodded his head in agreement and rose to his feet. He turned to Clay and explained. “Since ancient times, wind has been viewed as a constant, a way in which man could help order the world around him. If necessary, it could be used to denote directionality for travel. The directions of the winds could be arranged to correspond to the cardinal directions — north, south, east, and west. Sometimes maps would employ the bare minimum of direction, four winds, and consequently four points — like the points of a compass. Most, however, would use eight winds. These winds had names.”
Alex traced on his palm with the tip of his index finger to illustrate his point. “Tramontana — north, Greco — northeast, levante — east, sirocco — southeast, ostro — south, libeccio — southwest, ponente — west, and maestro — northwest. The symbol of the eight winds was the ‘wind rose’ because it resembled the petals of a rose. Over time the wind directions and cardinal directions became synonymous and many just called it a ‘compass rose.’ Sometimes maps would have wind roses with more than eight winds. There were on occasion sixteen winds as is seen with a wind compass formed around an obelisk in St. Peter’s Square. Other maps would even have thirty-two-point compass roses. Sailors who could recite all thirty-two directions of such a compass rose were said to be able to ‘box the compass.’ At the time of Marco Polo, a map would either have a four or eight-point compass rose.”
“If those things are wind roses then what do we do with them and why are there two identical wind roses?” Ellie asked Alex as she helped him to rise to his feet.
“Firstly, they are not identical.” Alex turned the metal roses over, revealing the flat back side of the artifacts. “There is writing on the back of each. This first one says in Latin: “the First footsteps.” The second one says: “the center of the world.” As for what do they do…Ellie could you please hand to me those two diamonds?”