James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

She put the book to one side and turned back to her translation, but the text didn’t seem to provide any further details of where the source document might be hidden. Angela looked at the detailed map that was included in the chapter on Poveglia, jotted down a few notes, principally dates and events, and then sat back.

She didn’t think it would have been buried in the ground somewhere, not least because of the plague pits that were the dominant feature of the island’s soil, so that left one of the ruined buildings on Poveglia. The document couldn’t possibly be hidden in the lunatic asylum — part of which had apparently also been used as a retirement home for senior citizens, a thought which made Angela shudder again — because the building hadn’t been erected until 1922. Several of the other structures were also comparatively recent, certainly built after Carmelita’s death.

The oldest structure on the island was the bell tower, the only surviving remnant of the twelfth-century church of San Vitale, which had been abandoned and then destroyed hundreds of years earlier. The translation Angela had completed was quite specific. It stated that after the source document had been prepared it had then been secreted beside the guardian in the new place where the legions of the dead reign supreme . Apart from the reference to the ‘guardian’, which still bothered her because she didn’t fully understand it, the meaning was perfectly clear. The document had originally been hidden somewhere else but, after Carmelita had seen it, for some reason it had then been concealed in a different hiding place.

If her reading of the Latin was correct, and assuming the document still existed, that meant there was only one place it could possibly have been hidden on Poveglia: it had to be somewhere in the bell tower.

Marietta lay on her back on the thin and uncomfortable mattress, eyes wide open and staring at the cracked and discoloured plaster on the ceiling above her. The food tray sat untouched on the floor beside the bed.

When the guard had casually, callously, confirmed her worst fears, when she had finally realized that there really was no hope, it had driven all other thoughts from her mind. The idea of eating or drinking didn’t even occur to her. Her mind was filled with vivid images of the horrendous events of the previous evening — of Benedetta strapped on the stone table, struggling futilely against her bonds, her screams reduced to muffled grunts and moans as she was violently raped and her blood drained from the wound on her neck.

Now, Marietta knew what fate awaited her, knew that sometime — sometime soon — the guards would appear in the cellar and instruct her to wash her body. Would she resist? And, if so, how? There were no weapons she could use against her captors, no arguments or persuasion that would do anything to alter the events she knew would take place in the next few hours.

The choice was stark. Marietta was a fighter. But she was also a realist. If she refused to obey orders she knew the guards would simply rape her or beat her into submission, or just strip her naked and then hose her down. Her best, and in fact her only, choice was to do it the easy way: do her best to detach her mind from the awful reality of what was going to happen to her and hope it would all be over quickly.

She thought again of her family, of her father and mother, and of the mental anguish she knew they would be feeling after her disappearance. When they’d read reports in the newspapers, or seen television programmes about the other girls who had vanished from the streets of Venice, her mother had always said that the worst part was the uncertainty. For a mother, not knowing if her daughter was alive or dead was a burden not many could bear. At least if a body was found, the grieving process could start: the news would be devastating, in the proper sense of that word, but the family would be able to make their farewells, and then try their best to move on.

But when a person vanished, leaving no trace behind, every waking moment would be a torture. That could be the day where two grim-faced police officers would knock at the door to bring the final, dreadful news. Or — and this was the hope that Marietta was sure every mother would cling to — perhaps that would be the day when her daughter would at last walk back through the door.

Marietta closed her eyes again, but still the tears came, coursing down her cheeks, because she knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that her own mother would never, ever, find out what had happened to her. And she felt her heart breaking as she realized this.

She took a deep breath and tried to get herself back under control. She knew she was going to die, but she was determined to do her best to die with dignity, not to scream, not to shout. And, above all, not to cry. She rubbed angrily at her cheeks with her free hand. She would show them.

She was a Venetian, after all, descended — so she’d been told — from important, perhaps even noble, blood. No matter what they did to her, she would cling to what shreds of dignity she could during her ordeal.

Angela was so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn’t see or hear the drawing-room door swing open. She was just suddenly aware of a pungent and acrid smell, and of Marco jumping to his feet.

She turned round in her chair to look behind her and saw a figure clad in an all-enveloping black cloak, the hood covering his face, moving silently across the wooden floor towards her. She started to rise, but immediately Marco shouted out to her, ‘Sit down and face the wall.’

The smell grew stronger as the figure approached, and Angela was seized by an overwhelming feeling of horror and dread, made worse by the uncanny silence with which the man moved. Even though she couldn’t see him, because she was obeying Marco’s commands to the letter and staring fixedly at the wall behind the desk, she knew that the man had stopped directly behind her.

Marco strode across towards her as well, and stood beside her.

‘We may have it, Master,’ he said, pointing down at Angela’s translations of the Latin text.

‘Where?’ The voice was little more than a whisper, a sibilant hiss.

‘Poveglia,’ Marco said.

There was a short silence as the new arrival apparently digested this information, and then Angela heard his quiet voice again. ‘Get the boat ready,’ he said, ‘and bring her as well.’

Bronson pushed the throttle all the way forward to the stop, and the bow of the speedboat lifted in response to the increased revolutions of the outboard engine’s propeller.

Ahead of him, the blue powerboat had also increased speed, and was now clearly heading directly towards the square inlet on the northern side of Venice that was known as the Sacca della Misericordia. There were two canals that opened off the inlet, and any number of smaller canals that connected with those two. Bronson knew that once they got into the canal system, he would have his work cut out trying to keep track of them, so he kept up his speed, heedless of the increasing number of boats manoeuvring in the water around him.

The blue powerboat swung left into the Sacca della Misericordia, weaving around vaporettos and gondolas and launches and various other types of craft, the driver pushing the boat much too quickly in the congested waters.

Behind him, Bronson was starting to close the gap, simply because he wasn’t yet in the thick of the water traffic. But as he, too, entered the inlet, he was forced to reduce speed considerably. A vaporetto was heading straight for him, probably aiming for the Fondamente Nuove vaporetto stop down to the south-east, and Bronson was forced to turn the boat hard to the right to avoid a collision. He straightened up and steered around the passenger craft, the driver shaking his fist angrily at Bronson and mouthing expletives as he, too, took evasive action. Bronson ignored him, his attention still fixed on his quarry as he instinctively manoeuvred the boat around all the other vessels in the congested area.