The Curse of Dr. Cagliari

The Curse Of

Dr. Cagliari

ANNA LORD

Book Ten

Watson & The Countess Series

Copyright © 2016 by Anna Lord

Melbourne, Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information

storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are

used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Table of Contents

1 Il Furioso

2 Palazzo Pagano

3 Vendetta

4 Jettatore

5 Isola di Cadaveri

6 San Lazzaro

7 Bad Angel

8 Angel Lust

9 City of Masks

10 High Tide

11 The Rosary

12 Ferro

13 Angel’s Trumpet

14 Paradise Found

15 Paradise Lost

16 Devil’s Breath

17 Isola

18 Carnevale

19 Mardi Gras

20 La Lupa

21 Mascherade

22 Shriven

1

Il Furioso

Watery light dissolved into a tinted backwash of nocturnal shadows as the fresco on the bedroom ceiling began to darken. Evangelical apparitions lost their exalted edge. Images faded into luminous obscurity, less angelic, less saintly; no longer throbbing with incandescent ardour.

Said to be painted by Tintoretto in the furious days when he was still ‘tintore the little dyer’, the fresco was marked for artistic immortality - a renaissance masterwork of agonized art reborn as ecstatic vision. The cult of all things spiritual expressed in an idiom that married godliness with humanity.

Pagan myths were called legends. Christian myths were called biblical. The fresco was a lusty marriage between the two. Saint Rocco, patron saint of plagues, watched over the lovers. Vigorous, vainglorious, invincible. He was depicted in the act of striding forth, bristling with muscular vitality and all-conquering zeal. The lesser figures seemed to float in a colourless configuration of diaphanous robes and paradisal poses, hazily compressed into the circle to give it depth.

The fresco began to spin in giddy eddies to the overtures of the orchestra in the piazzetta. Cherubs began to sway and writhe. She closed her eyes to stop the dizzying sensation. But there was no stopping the pain that would come next. Just as there was no stopping him. He knelt over her with pagan grace, a lecherous gleam evident in the dark flashing eyes, and she could see in the candlelight that he had the body of a god endowed with supernatural strength.

The stab was visceral and dramatic…

Afterwards, the fresco began to rise and fall, rise and fall. The ceiling weighed her down, compressing her breasts, squeezing the breath from her body. She prayed for the pain to stop.

The orchestra changed its tune and slowly, slowly, two bodies began to move in iambic unison, creating a sinuous counterpoint, like serendipitous notes of music: high and low, sweet and strong. There were moments of tenderness underscored by lip-trilling sighs, then breathless passages of hushed virtuosity, broken every now and then by flourishes of passionate intensity, boisterous and savage.

Another quick stab…

And suddenly she was floating on a celestial sea, floating like the halcyon fisher-bird who laid her eggs on a nest on the water. This was her nest and she was floating too. The breath returned to her body. The cold air caressed her cheek. Moonlight had moved to another window on the other side of the palazzo. The bedroom was plunged into deeper darkness. The musicians had packed up and gone home. There was just the constant lapping of the lulling water where the gondolas gently bobbed against their moorings.

This was Venice after all…

The Veneto had started life as a mosaic of mud islands formed by salt-water tides and fresh-water streams that washed down the Lombardy plain and emptied into a lagoon. The largest of the streams had carved out a broad canal that moved in a reverse S shape around the largest deposit of mud where the earliest inhabitants had driven piles into the silt to make their homes, like nests on stilts, floating on the water. It was a strange place even then…

The visions were becoming more frequent.

In 828 the Venetian fleet returned from Alexandria with the relics of Saint Mark. A ‘pious theft’ the people called it.

A trio of crones was being dragged into the piazza. They were bound hand and foot to three separate pyres. The rabid crowd stepped back to escape the heat from the roaring flames, cursing the crones who dared to curse the bones of Saint Mark, the new patron saint of the city of sighs, replacing the ancient pagus of the lidi, the protector of the lagoon, the god who had held sway since the time fisher-folk first cast their nets into the water.

The trio of crones heaped terrible curses on the nameless man who ferried the bones of Saint Mark across the sea. Their cries continued until the unholy fires melted the flesh from their lipless faces.

Acrid fumes stung her eyes; she wanted to run but the vengeful crowd hemmed her in, muttering prayers and crossing themselves: Amen…Amen…Amen. A pair of unforgiving hands pushed her in the back. She was on her knees, weeping, but she didn’t know why. A stranger took pity, reached down, grabbed hold of her arm and hoisted her up. She looked into his eyes…and that’s when she realized that he was that man. And that he was holding onto her.

She tried to break free, to flee, but he was not for running. He was not an aye-man; not a yes-man; not afraid.

Together, they were trapped in the unholy triangle of the three-fold power of a trinity of curses…

Faustina’s heart was palpitating madly. White light was leaking through the gaps in the curtains and the shutters. Her eyes flitted across the marriage bed to the place where her husband of one night slept soundly…and that’s when she screamed.

2

Palazzo Pagano

Nothing in Venice is understated, declared Countess Volodymyrovna, as they drifted down the Grand Canal in a sleek black gondola, especially the palazzos. They never take themselves seriously. That’s what I love about them. They stand as an antidote to politics, pretention and permanence. One day they will sink into the lagoon like a wedding cake left out in the rain and the Venetians with simply shrug and sigh: O tempora! O mores! She gestured dramatically with a suede-gloved hand before slipping it back into her fur muff to avoid frostbite. "Here we are! Palazzo Pagano! Your bedroom will be on the third floor, mon ami. See the window on the right with the little Juliet balcony."

Marvelling at the capricious concoctions of Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance ornamentation as they rounded the bends, Dr Watson concluded that the original architects must have consulted their classical imaginations and, unable to decide what to leave out, left it all in. The result was, as the Countess aptly described, a city of wedding cakes - a melange of marzipan and spun sugar liberally filigreed with frosted icing.

No chance of the wedding cakes melting today despite the rain. The air was frigid. They had boarded the Orient Express in Paris on a day the Scots would call scoor and had arrived in Venice on another scoor day, a week ahead of the religious festival known as Mardi Gras, which in the year 1900 fell on the twenty-seventh day of February.

Terribly handy having a travelling companion who had inherited from her late step-aunt a string of palatial residences – fifteen at last count - scattered across the globe. He had always wanted to experience the madness of Mardi Gras.

No murder…no mystery to solve. Nothing to do but eat, drink and sightsee at his leisure. Saint Mark’s. The Doges Palace. The Campanile. This sojourn would be the precursor to the Grand Tour – Rome, Florence, Sienna…He pictured himself as a dashing Lord Byron.

He might even dash off a short story for The Strand Magazine, something with a touch of romance, or pen a romantic canto for The Ladies’ Home Journal in time for spring. He might even buy a velvet burgundy cloak or a crimson silk cravat to go with his mask. He fancied something manly and mysterious.

The Countess would probably try to talk him into wearing one of those plague doctor masks with the monstrous bird-like beak but he would stand firm. Medico della peste masks made him shudder. Ugly, hideous, malevolent things – it’s a wonder plague victims didn’t die of fright when the plague doctor turned up wearing one of those.

Perhaps that was their true purpose. They couldn’t have inspired much confidence in the medical profession. Plague doctors were more like harbingers of death. Their grotesque curved beaks were stuffed with lavender and mint to mask the stench of putrid bodies and rotting corpses. The beaks were pierced with two small air-holes for drawing breath. Round eye-holes had glass lenses over them to minimize exposure to contaminated air. They must have been a frightening sight.

Plague doctors went about in floor-length oilskin robes and oilskin hats with wide brims for protection against noxious disease. They carried a long thin cane to avoid touching patients directly. Not very reassuring. Not for him the medico della peste mask.

He was feeling invigorated despite the miserable mizzle. La Serenissima offered fresh opportunities. That was the wonder of travel. A man could indulge his desires, his fantasies, do the things he would never dream of doing back home. In a city where no one knew him, a man did not run the risk of eternal embarrassment. There was no chance of making a fool of oneself…of being unmasked.

Palazzo Pagano came with its own gondola and its own gondolier, a man by the name of Cosimo, a lithe and handsome native of Venice whose muscularity testified to his occupation. The gondola came with its own velvet lined cabinet called a felze, with black velvet curtains for keeping out the rain and prying eyes. Cosimo ferried them from the train station via the wide curves of the main waterway to the place where the Rio del Malpaga met the Grand Canal about midway along the reverse S.

Moorish in design, the palazzo was made of bricks that had not been slathered with white or pink marzipan and lavishly adorned with frosting. It was a tall slim building, three stories high, with a traditional cavana - like a garage for gondolas - and a loggia that overhung the water. A triptych of arches beckoned the gondolier into the cavana where they could disembark in the dry. Within minutes, two more gondolas arrived with the Countess’s loyal Ukrainian servants, Fedir and Xenia, and a mountain of luggage.

Waiting to greet them was the maggiordomo, a man known as Il Duca, not because he was a blueblood who needed to work for a living but because he was the principal servant of the domus who wielded absolute power in the household. He wore a shiny black suit and a flouncy black cravat, and resembled a temperamental Italian opera singer – short, rotund and barrel-chested - but when he spoke it was obvious his monotone lacked operatic resonance and it was easier to picture him as a passionate and petulant Italian composer instead. As for looks, he was more like Rossini or Donizetti than Verdi and nothing like Puccini.

Bongiorno! Bongiorno! Welcome, Contessa Volodymyrovna! Welcome, Dottore Watson!

Dr Watson noticed that the maggiordomo pronounced his name with an Italian twist. He quite liked it. When in Rome…and all that!

The loggia led into a small dark entry hall with a mosaic floor featuring a tesserae of dolphins at play. Adjacent to this was a cloakroom. And then it was straight into the portega, a double-height, central hall than ran the full length of every palazzo. Portegas were once open to the elements but most were now glassed in.

This one featured Moorish windows at either end that invited vast amounts of light despite the grey day, supplemented not by one but six Murano chandeliers that must have taken twenty candles apiece. It was the size of a ballroom and extravagantly furnished with velvet wing chairs, damask divans and all manner of pietra dura cabinets decorated with semi-precious and precious stones that vied for attention with the frescoed ceiling executed by Tiepolo.

A colossal cipollino marble staircase was wide enough for several giants to pass unmolested. Small ogee windows fitted with leaded panes gave onto tiny courtyards of irregular size and shape. They served as light wells for houses that had to be jammed tightly together in a city where space was scarce and land non-existent.

The bedrooms were lavish, full of baroque furniture, rich fabrics, old tapestries and more pietra dura cabinets. Gilded mirrors and cut-glass chandeliers scattered wintry light like shards of frosted glass from an ice palace in the North Pole, and only the blazing fires in the huge chimneypieces reminded one that this was the Adriatic and not the Arctic Sea.

Rain continued to fall gently and steadily. They enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the library on the first floor where a small round table had been set in front of a bay window overlooking the Grand Canal. Lunch consisted of marinated sardines, polenta and tiramisu, washed down with a fizzy prosecco.

They were about to have coffee when Il Duca announced they had a visitor. The Countess checked the gilt-edged calling card on the silver salver and handed it to her companion.

Dr Watson read the name and frowned - a joke of some sort, and not a very good one at that. I thought you said no one knew we were coming to Venice?

She went on the defensive. I didn’t tell anyone. It must be a friend of yours.

An exaggerated roll of eyes said it all. I don’t have friends who go about with fancy calling cards stencilled with gold lettering and I don’t know anyone who calls himself: The Moor.

There’s only way to find out. She looked at Il Duca. Show our visitor into the portega. If he is still here in fifteen minutes serve coffee and crostoli. If he is no longer here, bring the coffee and crostoli to the library.

By the time they descended the cipollino staircase their visitor was waiting for them. As the name suggested he was as black as the ace of spades – tall, dark and dangerous - built like Atlas with powerful shoulders, a nigrescent scalp devoid of hair, and black eyes that gleamed like obsidian gems. Everything about him exuded mythological grandeur. And in keeping with the myth of eternality, his age could have been put at anything between forty and sixty. Adopting a militaristic step, he advanced toward them with a confidence born of fearlessness and gave an exaggerated bow. His voice had a deep and throaty volcanic resonance, a Vesuvian rumble that one imagined could turn into a violent roar when necessary. He was clothed in a wealth of fantastic finery, topped off with a black velvet cloak, and in his black-gloved hand was an ebony cane with a gold tip, a touch dramatic but there was nothing theatrical or foppish about Black Atlas. Introductions confirmed his name really was The Moor.

By the time coffee and crostoli arrived they had made themselves comfortable and were listening to his story.

Directly across from the Palazzo Pagano sits the Palazzo Malaga, he began somewhat weightily, casting a lustrous black eye over his listeners. It is the home of one of the oldest and most respected families in Venice. In it resides the Marchesa di Malaga.

Dr Watson looked earnestly at the Countess as he helped himself to a crostoli since no one else seemed inclined to sample the traditional dolci. A friend of your step-aunt?

The last time the Countess visited Venice she was about eleven years old and the name was not one she was familiar with. Possibly.

The Moor glanced from one to the other during this casual exchange, attempting to discern the level of intimacy at play. The Marchesa di Malaga charged me to speak to you at once. All week she watched your house being made ready for habitation. This morning she saw when you arrived with your servants. She remembers fondly the step-child of Countess Zoya Volodymyrovna. His enigmatic smile was a masterpiece of masculine sympatico. A formal invitation will be forthcoming but she wished to waste no time in extending an invitation for you to join her on the night of Mardi Gras. She will be holding a grand masked ball in her palazzo across the water and she hopes that you will be able to attend.

The Countess looked encouragingly at her counterpart. He was nodding happily.

Tell her we will be delighted to accept the invitation.

The Moor appeared to sigh inwardly with satisfaction. You will not be disappointed. The Marchesa di Malaga holds the most splendid ball in all of Venice. Another manly sympatico smile and on he went. And now to the second matter that has brought me here today. The Marchesa di Malaga entreated me to speak to you without delay on a matter of grave seriousness, in effect to ask a great favour.

Favour? said the Countess warily, wondering if this was the real reason Black Atlas had been sent across the water.

Dr Watson was thinking the same thing. He cast a cynical scowl the Moor’s way and sat forward on the divan, preparing in advance a polite but firm rebuttal.

Your reputations have preceded you, flattered their visitor, and the Marchesa di Malaga would like to hire your services.

Services? echoed Dr Watson with exasperation. You mean detective services?

Yes, that is what I mean.

We are not for hire, intervened the Countess with peremptory bluntness. We do not accept money and, besides, we are on vacation. Please inform the Marchesa di Malaga that we are naturally flattered she has heard of us but we work only on cases that involve someone we know personally or that touch us personally.

The Moor took the hint and thanked them respectfully for their time, repeated that a formal invitation would be delivered forthwith and courteously bid them arrivederci.

Dr Watson waited until Il Duca showed The Moor out.

Impertinent Devil! he said harshly. I wonder if the party invitation was a sweetener to get us to agree to take on a case for the Marchesa di Malaga.

We can hardly blame him for the imperious effrontery. It was the Marchesa who sent him to speak to us. He was simply doing her bidding.

Despite sounding calm, the Countess was still bristling fiercely as she paced to the far end of the portega to watch through a diaphanous veil of silver rain their nameless visitor steer his own gondola across the Grand Canal to the stupendous Palazzo Malaga, a magnificent example of Venetian Gothic architecture that would have admirably suited a Doge of Venice, the Emperor of Constantinople, or that ambitious French upstart who made the Veneto his own, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Il Duca returned to see if they had any special requests pertaining to dinner or if they would deign to leave it up to him. They left it to him.

What can you tell us about our visitor? asked the Countess with a bothered brow, feminine curiosity getting the better of her, not only regarding the mysterious Moor, but the ‘grave’ case they had dismissed out of hand.

He lives in the Palazzo Malaga, said Il Duca sparingly.

What is his role there?

The Marchesa di Malaga has many roles for him. He plays many parts, including maggiordomo.

Plays? Parts? The art of sprezzatura lay in the ability to openly deceive, to deceive openly, to give the impression of being able to succeed without effort, to successfully deceive and thus succeed through deceit. It was a useful art to cultivate. Was The Moor the lover of the Marchesa? Does he always go by the nickname of The Moor?

Si, always. That is how everyone in the Veneto knows him. It is not good to cross The Moor. Men step aside for him when they see him coming.

And women?

They vie to catch his eye.

Indeed. And what can you tell me about the Marchesa di Malaga?

She is very rich and powerful.

Married?

No, never.

Young or old?

She is ageless.

Beautiful?

Si, beautiful.

The Moor of Venice was a famous war general called Othello.

Rain continued to dilute the darkness throughout the night and the lulling rhythm of water falling on water soothed troubled souls making sleep easy and dreams pleasant. Water spouts gurgled and topped up the giant underground cisterns. Raindrops tapped gently on the leaded glass and plopped onto the stone courtyards where they washed away the dust of ages. The Grand Canal looked like a silver ribbon that unfurled around iced wedding cakes frosted a luminous shade of mauve illumined by a nostalgic golden moon.

Venice was a romantic postcard recalling a gilded age.

By morning the rain had cleared and Cosimo ferried them out to the place where all tourists are drawn as if by a magnet – Piazza San Marco. Here, they took in the most famous splendours of the city of sighs and refreshed themselves at everyone’s favourite watering hole, Caffe Florian, following in the footsteps of Goethe, Casanova and Lord Byron.

Upon returning to the Palazzo Pagano, they found on the hall table a formal invitation to attend the masked ball of the Marchesa di Malaga on the night of Mardi Gras, as promised by The Moor. It was addressed to Contessa Varvara Volodymyrovna and Dottore John Watson.

They also found a less formal invitation to take ‘tiffin’ in the style-anglais at the Palazzo Malaga at four o’clock.

Dr Watson frowned as he checked his pocket watch. "It’s already three o’clock. You’ll have to go without me. I want to read this gazetta. He indicated the Italian newspaper tucked under his arm that he had picked up at the Caffe Florian. And I would like to start on a short story. I haven’t penned anything in ages and I feel inspired to write something set in Venice. If it’s worthy of being published I might send it to The Strand Magazine."

His voice was a tonal combination of determination and whimsy. She nodded understandingly and hurried upstairs to change into a tea gown. She had just the thing in silk crepe and satin with a chenille fringe and a touch of lace at the throat which she had recently picked up from her favourite seamstress, Madame Coquelicot, in the Rue de Veuve in Paris. An intaglio and pearl choker with a matching intaglio diadem would complete the ensemble.

A sharp voice caught her on the stairs as she swished toward the cavana. You know the purpose of this afternoon tea, don’t you?

Yes, she replied prosaically; she also knew it was the reason her counterpart had deftly declined. The Marchesa di Malaga intends to press for that favour.

Have you changed your mind already?

No, I am merely curious…ciao.

In the beginning there were twelve lagoon townships:

Grado, Jesolo, Bibione, Heraclea, Caorle, Murano, Torcello, Rialto, Poveglia, Malamocco, Chioggia and Sottomarina.

Immaculate ostentation only succeeded when the person displaying it possessed supreme confidence. The Marchesa possessed enough of the latter to display the former not only in her palatial residence but in her personal presentation. Wealth and beauty were on confident display wherever the eye strayed.

As for age, not even eloquent Cicero could have disputed that the confidence of age was unlike the confidence of youth. Every year added another layer of elegance, grace and mystery. Beautiful, yes; ageless, no…but some women get better with age, and to quibble about the passing of years is pointless. Latin blood flowed through veins that exuded sultry sensuality with every beat of the heart. La donna e mobile – she was poetry in motion. Not the poetry of Spencer’s Faerie Queen or Marvel’s Coy Mistress, but the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Not as dark-skinned as The Moor, who was clearly of North African descent, but darkish enough to hint at Carthaginian-Moorish-Spanish forebears.

The Moor