Spartan Gold

“Is that her?” Remi asked, pointing.

A woman was waving to them from inside one of the entrance arches to the Procuratie Nuove, in which the Museo Archeologico was partially housed; the rest was located within the Biblioteca Nazi onale Marciana—the National Library of St. Mark’s. Sam and Remi walked over to the woman.

“Signor Fargo, Signora Fargo, I am Maria Favaretto. It’s my pleasure to meet you.”

“Please call us Sam and Remi,” Remi said, shaking her hand.

“And I’m Maria.”

“Thank you for your help. We hope we aren’t inconveniencing you.”

“Not at all. Remind me again, what period are you interested in?”

“We’re not positive, but none of the references we found are later than the eighteenth century.”

“Good. I think we’re in luck. If you’ll follow me, please.”

She led them through the arch, across a breezeway done in terra-cotta and cream tiles, and into the museum. They followed her past displays of Egyptian sarcophagi and Assyrian chariots, Etruscan statues and vases and Roman busts, Byzantine ivory carvings and Minoan earthenware jars.

Maria stopped at a wooden door and unlocked it with a key. They went down a long, dimly lit hallway. She stopped. “This is our not-for-public library. Given what you were asking about I thought the best person to help you would be Giuseppe. He doesn’t have a title per se, but he’s been here longer than anyone—almost sixty years. He knows more about Venice than anyone I know.” She hesitated, cleared her throat. “Giuseppe is eighty-two and a little . . . odd. Eccentric is the word, I think. Don’t let that worry you. Just ask your questions and he’ll find the answers.”

“Okay,” Sam said with a smile.

“The reason I asked about your time frame is that Giuseppe is what you might call a throwback. He has no interest in anything modern. If it didn’t happen in the nineteenth century or earlier, it doesn’t exist for him.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” replied Remi.

Maria opened the door and gestured for them to step through. “Just press the buzzer on the wall here when you’re done. I’ll come back for you. Good luck.” She shut the door.

The museum’s library was long and narrow, measuring two hundred feet by forty feet. The walls were not walls at all, but floor-to-ceiling bookcases. They were twenty feet tall. On each of the four walls was a rolling wooden ladder. A single, ten-foot-long worktable and a lone hard-backed chair sat in the center aisle. Halogen pendants hung from the ceiling, casting soft pools of light on the green-tiled floor.

“Is someone there?” a voice called.

“Yes,” Sam replied. “Signora Favaretto let us in.”

As their eyes adjusted they could see a figure standing atop the ladder at the far end of the library. He was perched on the top rung, finger tracing along the book spines, occasionally nudging one inward or sliding one outward. After a moment the man climbed down and started shuffling down the aisle toward them. Thirty seconds later he came to a stop before them.

“Yes?” he said simply.

Giuseppe was barely five feet tall with wispy white hair that jutted out from his head at all angles. He couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. He stared up at them with surprisingly sharp blue eyes.

“Hello. I’m Sam and this is—”

Giuseppe waved his hand dismissively. “You have a question for me?”

“Um, yes. . . . We’ve got a riddle on our hands. We’re looking for the name of a man, probably from Istria in Croatia, that might have a co

“Give me the riddle,” Giuseppe ordered.

“ ‘Man of Histria, thirteen by tradition,’ ” Sam recited.

Giuseppe said nothing, but stared at them for ten seconds as he pursed his lips from side to side.

Remi said, “We also think he might have something to do with lazarets—”

Abruptly Giuseppe turned around and shuffled away. He stopped in the aisle, then stared at each wall in turn. His index finger tapped the air before him in the ma

“He’s cataloging books in his head,” Remi whispered.

“Quiet, please,” Giuseppe barked.

After two minutes Giuseppe went to the right-hand wall and pushed the ladder to the far end. He climbed up, plucked a book off the shelf, paged through it, then put it back and climbed back down.

Five more times he repeated the process, staring at the walls, conducting the air, and mounting the ladder before climbing back down and shuffling back to them.

“The man you’re looking for is named Pietro Tradonico, the Doge of Venice from 836 to 864. Chronologically he was the eleventh Doge, but by tradition he is considered the thirteenth. Tradonico’s followers fled to the island of Poveglia after he was assassinated. They had some huts near the island’s northeastern corner.”

With that, Giuseppe turned and started shuffling away.

“One more question,” Sam called.

Giuseppe turned, said nothing.

“Is Tradonico buried there?” asked Sam.

“Some think so, some not. His followers claimed the body after his assassination, but no one knows where it was taken.”

Giuseppe turned again and doddered away.

Remi called, “Thank you.”

Giuseppe didn’t reply.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Maria asked a few minutes later when they came out. After they’d pushed the buzzer beside the door it had taken her five minutes to arrive. During that time, Giuseppe continued about his work as though they didn’t exist.

“We did,” Sam replied. “Giuseppe was everything you said he’d be. We appreciate your help.”

“It’s my pleasure. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Since you’re being so helpful . . . what’s the best way to get to Poveglia?”

Maria stopped walking and turned to them. Her face was drawn. “Why would you want to go to Poveglia?”

“Research.”

“You’re welcome to use our facilities. I’m sure Giuseppe would—”

Sam said, “Thank you, but we’d like to see it for ourselves.”

“Please reconsider.”

“Why?” Remi asked.

“How much do you know about Poveglia’s history?”

“If you’re talking about the plague pits, we read—”

“Not just those. There’s much more. Let’s have a drink. I’ll tell you the rest.”

CHAPTER 54

Explain it to me again,” Remi whispered. “Why couldn’t this wait till morning?”

“It is morning,” Sam replied, turning the wheel slightly to keep the bow on course. Though their destination showed no lights, its bell tower was nicely silhouetted against the night sky.

From above, Poveglia looked like a fan, measuring five hundred yards from its flared tip to its base, and three hundred yards at its waist where a narrow, walled canal bisected the island from west to east, save for a sandbar in the center.

“Don’t get technical on me, Fargo. As far as I’m concerned, two A.M. is the middle of the night. It isn’t morning until the sun comes up.”

After drinks with Maria they’d managed to find an open boat rental office. The owner had only one craft left, a twelve-foot open dory with an outboard motor. Though not luxurious by any means, it would suffice, Sam decided. Poveglia was only three miles from Venice, inside the sheltering arms of the lagoon, and there was little wind.

“Don’t tell me you bought into Maria’s stories,” Sam said.

“No, but they weren’t exactly cheery.”

“That’s the truth.”

In addition to having served as a dumping ground for plague victims, throughout its thousand-year history Poveglia had been home to monasteries, colonies, a fort and ammunition depot for Napoleon, and most recently in the 1920s, a psychiatric hospital.

In frightening detail Maria had explained that the doctor in charge, after hearing the patients complain about seeing the ghosts of plague victims, began to conduct crude lobotomies and gruesome experiments on the inmates, his own brand of medical exorcism.