Lucifer's Shadow

16 Scacchi’s gold

There could be no mistake about it. Daniel had seen Laura take Scacchi quietly aside after breakfast, pass him a sheet of paper, then nod discreetly in his own direction. Shortly afterwards, the old man threw a feeble arm around him and read out a list of minor errands: some paperwork from the city council, some stamps from the post office, a repaired piece of cheap glass to be picked up from a workshop on Giudecca. Laura had engineered him out of the house quite brazenly. He would spend the entire morning hopping from vaporetto to vaporetto while she pursued some secret plan in the cellar.

“But, Scacchi,” he objected. “I am here to work. On your library.”

“Plenty of time for that. You will miss lunch, I’m afraid, so pick up a little snack somewhere. Not too much, mind. Don’t forget you have a dinner date tonight, either. Massiter is not a man to be ignored.”

With that he was shooed out of the house with Laura’s list of tasks, each set down in neat, intelligent handwriting, in his pocket. He returned, laden down with shopping bags, just after two and had hardly set them down in the hall when she was upon him. Her hair was matted with dust and cobwebs, her white uniform now almost completely soiled. She wore the widest smile he believed he had ever seen on a human being.

“You look like the Cheshire Cat,” he noted a touch sourly.

“Stop speaking riddles, Daniel,” she replied, bemused. “I have been hunting. Do you not want to see what I have found?”

“I am cross with you, Laura. You schemed to have me out of the house just so you could have all this to yourself.”

She batted him with her right hand, sending a cloud of murk across his clean shirt. “Oh, poppycock! You said yourself I got in your way. I have merely prepared the ground on which your brilliance may shine. Come! The ancients are listening to music upstairs. Let’s not disturb them until we must.”

She passed him a lantern and he followed her down the stairs into the cellar, which seemed at first glance to be in the selfsame dismal jumble he had seen the day before.

“So?” she asked with a grin. “Let us test your suitability to be a Venetian. Where would your chosen hiding place be?”

Daniel glowered at the infuriating room. There was not a single storage place set above ground level. If the cellar had been used for keeping items safe from the depredations of the lagoon, the necessary cupboards had long been removed.

“It’s impossible,” he murmured.

“What do you mean, ‘impossible’? You must begin to understand us. If a Venetian had something of value in here, he wouldn’t leave it in plain view. There’s a water gate there, Daniel. Any villain could steal in and take it.”

“Then where?”

She took the lantern from him and swept the room once more. “In the walls. In the walls! Come.”

He followed her to the rear of the room. “Here,” she said. “The front has no partition. The sides are solid too. But at the rear we go into that mess of houses behind, and anything might be possible.”

She placed a hand on the brickwork and worked her way along the damp surface. “Four hours I have done this, Daniel. Feeling for something.”

“And you found it?”

He saw the joy in her face and knew the answer. She walked to the last third of the wall, a good four feet above the floor, took his hand, and placed it on the masonry. Here the nature of the mortar between the ancient bricks changed, becoming paler and floury in texture. She dug at it with her finger. The material came away like dry sand. Without a word, Daniel went back into the centre of the room and picked up an old crowbar he had brought with him to open any stubborn crates.

“I saved this moment for you,” she said triumphantly.

Not caring about the grime and cobwebs, Daniel kissed her quickly on the cheek. “You are a magnificent woman, Laura. I hope Ca’ Scacchi can stand this.”

“Avanti, Daniel!”

She stood back and he set to the wall, carving away the mortar. After twenty minutes of hard work, when the hole was judged to be sufficiently large, they held the lantern close to the entrance and peered inside. The artificial light revealed a package wrapped in ancient brown paper, tied with string, and set quite deliberately on a stand of bricks to keep it above the water level.

He reached in and grasped the object, untied the string, removed the brown paper, and turned the light on the first page. It was written in a spidery, backward-leaning hand and said simply, Concerto Anonimo and, in Roman numerals, the year: 1733. Daniel flicked through the pages rapidly, setting up a cloud of dust.

“What is it?” Laura whispered.

“Patience,” he replied, and sat down on a dusty pile of papers to examine their discovery, his mind racing. Even from a cursory glance he realised there could be only one explanation, extraordinary as it was. “I

think we have found the composer’s score for a violin concerto. The original manuscript, before it went to the copyists.”

Laura shook her head. “But it is anonymous. Why hide it?”

“I don’t know.” Daniel scanned the music, written in the long-dead composer’s curious hand with an extended, sloping slant that seemed to suggest the notes had been dashed out in the heat of creation. At first glance the piece had perhaps a touch of Vivaldi to it. He had once sought out copies of the composer’s originals in the college library. The hand looked nothing like this.

“Come!” Laura ordered. “We must tell him!”

They rushed upstairs with their discovery and found Scacchi and Paul in the front room, dancing in each other’s arms to some light jazz on the stereo.

“Spritz?” Scacchi asked hopefully. His skin seemed more sallow than it had earlier in the day.

“Later,” Laura announced. “Daniel has found something.”

“We have found something,” he objected.

She waved at him like a mother ticking off a silly child. “No matter. Tell us, Scacchi. Is this what you want?”

The old man’s dark eyes came abruptly to life. The two men ceased dancing and came over to the table to examine the sheaf of pages Daniel had spread out there.

“I can’t read a note of music,” Scacchi said. “Is this valuable?”

Laura prodded the old yellowed page gently with her forefinger. “Of course it’s valuable! Why else would it be hidden?”

“That is female logic,” he complained. “It is anonymous. It says so. Do you recognise it, Daniel?”

“No. But it appears to be a full score for a concerto for solo violin. See! The date says 1733.”

“Vivaldi?” Paul wondered hopefully.

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s similar, but why would Vivaldi write anonymously? And this is not his hand. I know it.”

“Still,” Scacchi said hopefully, “something from that time, something fresh, would have value, surely?”

Daniel had to agree, though he could not hope to guess at a price. “It must. This seems well-done from a first glance.”

“Good!” Scacchi declared. “And you have the perfect way to start a small whisper about its discovery. Tonight, with Massiter, who may well be an ideal buyer.”

Laura looked at him severely. “You cannot ask Daniel to take something as valuable as this and wave it under the Englishman’s nose. Massiter will snatch it from him straightaway and throw the poor boy over the side of his boat as fish food.”

Scacchi scowled at her. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Laura. Of course he shouldn’t take the original. You can copy out a few pages of the solo in your own hand, Daniel, surely? Massiter asked for some composition. Tell him this is it.”

Daniel demurred. “This isn’t my work, Scacchi.”

“Just a ruse, lad, to whet the appetite. Massiter’s probably smart enough to see through it anyway.”

“Pen!” Laura shouted. “Paper!”

Paul brought them to him. Daniel stared at the white sheet and the ancient pen.

“Oh, come,” Scacchi said, urging him on. “It is such a small thing. I am not Mephisto, Daniel. Nor are you Faust.”

Daniel reached for a ruler and, in thick black ink, began to draw the five lines of the stave.