by Gary McAvoy
Chapter 2
The entrance to the Marciana Library Palace—heavy wooden doors flanked by two larger-than-life Greek marble statues—opened into the opulent vestibule, where a two-flight staircase took visitors to the upper loggias.
Looking up as they walked the marble halls, Hana fixated on the ceiling, which featured twenty-one roundels, circular oil paintings by seven notable Renaissance artists commissioned in 1556. They looked as fresh today as at the time they were painted, Hana mused, overwhelmed by their unusual spherical beauty. Reaching one of the reading rooms, sunlight streamed in from the high glass ceiling, bathing the three-story room in a diffused natural light. Surrounding the reading tables on all sides were a series of Doric arches with a handsome frieze on one wall featuring rosy-faced cherubs and garlands of fruit and flowers.
A slim, well-dressed man with long black hair who looked to be in his fifties was walking toward them, a welcoming smile on his face. Dominic smiled in response as the man approached.
“Padre Michael, welcome back to the Marciana!” he beamed as he extended his hand.
“Paulo! What a great pleasure to see you again. This is my friend and colleague, Hana Sinclair. Hana, this is Paulo Manetti, curator of the Bessarion Library here.”
The three exchanged handshakes and pleasantries. Then Manetti turned, gesturing for them to follow him.
“We’ll be using my private office to view the Iliad. Better to keep tourists from flocking around us. I already have it set up.”
He led them through the upper loggia and down a corridor leading to various offices, entering a corner room that overlooked the piazzetta and the lagoon.
“Not only do you have a stunning library here, Signor Manetti,” Hana remarked, “but you probably have the best office in the building!”
Manetti grinned shyly. “Please, call me Paulo, Miss Sinclair. And yes, I am very fortunate to have such a wondrous place to work. What you see around you is my life. Like our friend Michael here, my love for antiquities of the Old World has no bounds.”
Dominic nodded his head in agreement, then turned to his companion. “Hana, if you’d like to better explore the library while Paulo and I are working, please feel free. We should only be a half hour or so. Take it all in, it truly is a marvelous old building filled with treasures you won’t find anywhere else.”
“I’ll do that, thanks. Just come find me when you’re ready.” Hana turned and left the office, making her way back to the reading rooms and their glorious artworks and statuary.
A large table in the center of Manetti’s office held several reference books, various implements for examining documents—a digital microscope, magnifying glass, blacklight, leather sand bag weights—and several large parchment manuscripts which had been laid out on it. One in particular was the chief item of interest: the only copy of of the commentary on Homer's Odyssey written entirely by the hand of the author.
Putting on a pair of white gloves, Dominic handled the manuscript guardedly, gazing at the beautiful script by the hand of Eustathius of Thessalonica, the Byzantine scholar and rhetorician of the twelfth century.
“This is our finest treasure, Michael, and one of the oldest in the library,” Manetti said. “It will be one of the principal features of our exhibition. But now, look at this.”
With a gentle flourish, Manetti reached across the table and pulled over two comparable manuscripts.
“These are Venetus A and Venetus B, the oldest texts of Homer's Iliad, with centuries of Greek scholia written in the margins.”
As Dominic recalled, since the first century ancient commentators, known as scholiasts, would insert grammatical or explanatory notations, even critical commentary, in the margins of the manuscripts of early authors. Over time, centuries in fact, successive copyists or those who owned a particular manuscript altered the scholia, and sometimes the practice expanded so much that there was no longer room for scholia in the margins, so it became necessary to produce them as separate works. No copy machines, just dedicated scribes working with Egyptian reed pens and feather quills to patiently reproduce one-of-a-kind originals.
“These are truly extraordinary, Paulo,” Dominic declared, his hands shaking slightly as he held the ancient parchments. “I can certainly see why you’d want to share these in your exhibition. I can confidently say the Vatican will cooperate in any way we can. I’ll make arrangements for the original translation of Homer’s Iliad to be couriered to you when I return to Rome. I assume you’ll have appropriate security arrangements in place?”
“Of course, Michael, apart from our own security detail, the federal Carabinieri has offered to provide full protection for us. We are simply the custodians of these masterpieces, but they are part of Italy’s proud heritage and the government takes that responsibility quite seriously.
“And thank you for your generous contribution, Michael,” he continued. “Your Iliad will be in excellent hands, I can assure you.”
“When we spoke last week,” Dominic said, “you mentioned another piece you wanted to discuss?”
Manetti turned somber. “Yes, there is something else I need to show you, and I’d like to get your opinion on it. This came to us recently from a local donor who wishes to remain publicly anonymous, and while its value is undeniable and a welcomed donation to our collection, I am not quite sure what to make of its meaning.”
The curator rummaged about the other manuscripts on the table, his gloved hands repositioning each document carefully, until he found what appeared to be an autograph musical manuscript, with staff lines and bars of musical notations, placed inside a small Mylar protective sleeve. While it was in relatively good condition, given its apparent antiquity, its corners had been chipped and there were many creases across the paper, as if someone had folded it many times at some point. Its size was quite small, a half sheet of standard paper at most.
“Well, this looks interesting, though I must admit I know little about musical manuscripts. Who is it by?” Dominic asked.
As Dominic peered closely at the manuscript, Hana returned from her brief tour of the library, and walked up to stand silently next to the two men. She glanced at the object of their attention while Manetti continued.
“This, my friend, was penned by the hand of Venice’s own maestro di violino Antonio Vivaldi. He gave it the title ‘Scherzo Tiaseno in Sol,’ and it appears to be a scherzo in the truest, most literal meaning of that word—a joke! It is a fair enough piece of music, but nowhere near the level one would expect from a Baroque master like Vivaldi. If it is a joke, then the question is, why? And for whom? There must be more than meets the ear.
“This is marked as page two, so there may still exist a page one somewhere. The donor was rather circumspect on the matter, but as Vivaldi was her sixth great-grand-uncle, the provenance is well established.” Manetti looked up at Dominic questioningly and shrugged his shoulders.
As Hana read the notes, she weighed in. “You’re right, Paulo. This isn’t anything close to what Vivaldi was known to have composed. And scherzos are normally in three, like a waltz, but this has the bar lines in the wrong place. There must be some other meaning to it.”
“You read music?!” Dominic asked her, somewhat taken aback.
“Of course, I studied music for years at St. Stevens School, and I play both the piano and cello,” she replied, a shy smile playing across her face.
“Will wonders never cease with you?” Dominic asked, grinning mischievously.
“Oh, please,” she said modestly. “We all have our secret talents. And I can hardly travel around with a cello.”
Turning to the curator, she asked, “Paulo, may I have a closer look at this?”
“Of course, signorina,” he said encouragingly.
Hana accepted the Mylar sleeve from Dominic and took a seat by one of the windows. Reading the music, she hummed the notes, emitting a series of high, low, and mid-range sounds which produced no tune whatsoever.
“Okay, thi
s is really strange. There is nothing here that might even imply that an artist with Vivaldi’s genius was creating anything good, much less great. But why would he do that? From what I know, he wrote beautiful music feverishly, wasting not a precious second on something like this. But there must be a reason.”
“I completely agree, signorina,” Manetti said, nodding his head. “But what are we to do with this? We must have some kind of explanation for such an artifact if we are to display it.”
Hana had a thought. “Paulo, can you make a copy of this for me? I have an old friend, Dr. Livia Gallo, my former music teacher at St. Stevens, who is an expert in Vivaldi and other Baroque masters. Maybe she has some idea of what this might represent?”
Manetti was delighted. “Yes! I would be happy to provide you with a copy if it helps to better understand this. You must assure me that you will not share it with anyone else except your colleague, yes? Until we understand it better, I wouldn’t want speculations to be awkward for our donor.”
“Yes, of course, only Dr. Gallo will see it. For that matter, it’s small enough that I can just take a photo of it with my iPhone. Would that be acceptable?”
“Better yet,” Manetti replied. “That way there are no loose copies to get lost. Oh, and please do not use flash.”
Hana returned the manuscript to the table, removed her phone from her bag, then took a full frame shot of the piece under natural light.
“Paulo,” Dominic asked, “might we get an introduction to your donor, this Vivaldi descendant? Hana and I may be able to get more relevant information from her that can assist Dr. Gallo. Where does she live?”
“Here in Venice, in one of the great palazzos on the Grand Canal. I don’t think the contessa would mind at all, actually. She’s quite the conversationalist.”
“A contessa?!” Hana asked, surprised.
“Oh yes, she comes from a very old noble line herself and married well, besides. Contessa Donatella Vivaldi Durazzo. She must be in her eighties now, a delightful woman, very generous in her philanthropy. She is one of the jewels of Venice, a wonderful patron of the arts, adored by everyone. She lives in Palazzo Grimaldi in the Dorsoduro, not far from the Guggenheim Museum. I would be pleased to make an introduction.”
“Excellent! We’ll be here all week, Paulo, and it would be a treat to see one of the famed palazzos on the Grand Canal,” Dominic said excitedly. “Not to mention meeting Italian nobility.” Manetti smiled assuringly at his old friend.
“We’re staying at the Ca’ Sagredo, Paulo,” Hana said. “You can reach us there, but here’s my mobile number if you need us at any time.” She wrote down her number on a slip of paper and handed it to Manetti.
“Grazie, signorina. I will make the call this evening and let you know when she is available.”
“Where to now?” Hana asked Dominic as they left the building, having said their goodbyes to Manetti.
“I thought we’d have a bite of lunch at Quadri then saunter over to St. Mark’s Basilica and say hello to a friend of mine from my seminary days. We’ve come all this way, and I’d hate to miss seeing him.”
“Lead the way,” Hana said breezily, placing her wide-brimmed straw hat back on her head. “I’m ready for some fresh seafood, aren’t you?”
“You bet. Just watch out for pigeons, though, as I’ve tossed the newspapers.”
Chapter 3
Among the many fine palazzos lining the Grand Canal is an understated three-story ochre palace, somewhat more slender than its neighbors but nonetheless impressive. Its more observable features include a grand entrance off the gondola traghetto, with a black scalloped awning over the brick staircase leading up from the water’s edge; several full-width balconies with ornamental balustrades at each end; heavily draped arched picture windows overlooking the canal—and a cadre of armed security guards posted around the grounds of Palazzo Feudatario.
As a glossy mahogany water taxi approached the dock, two beefy men appeared from the palazzo’s entrance to greet the sole visitor on board, a priest called to administer last rites to the dying master of the house—a man known to all of Venice as Don Lucio Gambarini, the capintesta, or head-in-chief of the Veneto Camorra.
A stout man in his sixties, Don Gambarini had suffered a paralyzing stroke some weeks prior, and as his health had further declined, his death was not unexpected. In the meantime the capintriti, heads of the twelve districts under Don Gambarini’s leadership, had assembled in the grand house, set to squabbling as to who would take over as leader of the clan when the great capintesta met his end.
But that was hardly on Gambarini’s mind when Father Carlo Rinaldo entered the formal master bedroom to hear the Don’s confession and administer extreme unction, the final anointing with last rites before death. Rinaldo had never met Gambarini before, though he was aware of the Don’s reputation, one deserving of a robust confession if he were truly repentant.
The large, well-appointed bedroom had many people standing around, vying for the boss’s attention should he wish to suddenly name one of them as his successor. But Gambarini would have none of it yet, demanding the bedroom be cleared except for the priest, who would hear his confession privately.
As everyone ambled out of the room, giving each other dark glances, the door was closed as Rinaldo placed a violet stole around his neck, then reached into his black leather bag and withdrew a small bottle of holy water, a crucifix, and his Bible.
“Don Gambarini, my name is Father Rinaldo, from St. Mark’s. Do you wish to make a confession?”
“Where is my regular priest, Father Viani?”
“I’m afraid he is on sabbatical, signore, and will not return for some time. He entrusted his duties to me in his absence.”
Gambarini looked wide-eyed at the priest for a long while, trembling, gauging his predicament. Rinaldo found terror in the man’s eyes. Not an uncommon occurrence for one so close to death, but there was something more. Some heavy burden the man was struggling with. All the priest could do was wait for his penitent to make the first move.
“Father, I do wish to make a confession,” Gambarini began, “but it is not one you are going to like.”
“I make no judgments at all, signore. I am but the Lord’s servant in this matter. He alone passes judgment. But that depends on how you wish to leave this life, carrying with you the dark burden of your transgressions, or absolved of sin in His light.” Rinaldo gestured upward as he said this.
Gambarini paused, glanced around the room, then looked deep into the priest’s eyes. “Before we begin, Father, I must ask of you an important favor, for my sins are so great, my penance must include some action on your part—but only after I am dead.
“What I am about to tell you involves a serious crime against the Vatican itself, an offense which has been ongoing for centuries, and still takes place to this very day. I fear I will not have God’s full absolution unless this matter is revealed once and for all. And you must be the one to tell it to others, so that it will stop. Is that agreeable?”
Such an unusual request completely mystified Rinaldo. Never had he been asked to play a part in a confessor’s penance. And to do so he would have to break the sacred seal of the confessional; he was uncertain if having permission to do so by the penitent absolved him of that restraint. He would have to speak with someone about that later.
He walked across the room and picked up a chair. Placing it next to Gambarini’s bed, he took a seat. He paused a moment to consider the situation.
“Let me hear your confession, my son. If it is within my power, I will do my part as you ask.”
Chapter 4
Once the private chapel of the Doge of Venice—whose 15th-century palace sits next to the spectacular church—Saint Mark’s Basilica is the main focal point of Piazza San Marco, a 9th-century ecclesiastical Byzantine wonder.
Entering the basilica, one’s gaze is naturally drawn upward, to the domed cupolas featuring thousands of golden mosaic tiles artfully depictin
g early saints and other religious figures. Not one bit of space had been untouched by the talented hands of many famed artisans of the day, even underfoot, with its inlaid marble floor. Byzantine archways abound, with murals portraying biblical scenes and divine imagery, nearly all leafed in gold, hence its ancient nickname Chiesa d’oro, Church of Gold.
As she and Dominic entered the atrium, overwhelmed by the splendor of it all, Hana marveled at what each panel might have represented in the mind of its creator, since there seemed to be no common theme throughout apart from the universal adoration of religious iconography, some 8,000 square meters of it in the basilica proper alone.
While tourists meandered through the church, Dominic led Hana through the crowd and directly toward the back of the basilica, to a door marked Privato off the east sacristy, leading to a suite of administrative offices. The receptionist there greeted him warmly as he announced his business as visiting his old friend Father Carlo Rinaldo.
“He is on the telephone now, Padre, but I will inform him you are waiting,” the receptionist said. She wrote something on a piece of notepaper, then stood and walked back to one of the offices, disappearing through its door. A moment later, she returned.
“Don Rinaldo will be with you in a moment,” she said, using the Italian colloquial term for Father.
A few minutes later, a good-looking priest in his early thirties came out of the same office, approaching Dominic with a wide smile.
“Michael Dominic, as I live and breathe! What brings you to Venice?!”
“Carlo!” Dominic exclaimed with joy.
As the two men embraced, Hana watched with amusement. Another devilishly gorgeous priest?! she thought. What’s wrong with this picture?!
“Carlo, I want you to meet my good friend, Hana Sinclair. Hana, this is Carlo, my best friend from seminary at Fordham.”