James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

‘Perhaps the most common belief was that it was somehow caused by a miasma, by corrupted air, which harks back to that grim reaper image, and many of the preventative measures put in place were intended to combat this, to try to purify the air that people were breathing. So houses were washed with scented water, timber that was known to give off a pleasant smell, like juniper, was burned in fireplaces, and people carried garlic and vinegar to ward off the contagion. But, bizarrely, other people believed that the plague was spread by vampires, and extraordinary measures were taken to try to combat this.’

‘So we’ve come full circle,’ Bronson suggested. ‘We’re back to the woman in the grave.’

‘Exactly,’ Angela agreed. ‘The death toll from the Black Death was simply enormous. For obvious reasons, no accurate figures have survived, but it’s been conservatively estimated that in some towns where the plague took hold, as much as half, sometimes even two thirds, of the population died. This meant that individual burial of bodies was simply impossible. The dead were tossed into huge communal graves — plague pits. But for anyone suspected of being a vampire, special precautions had to be taken, to avoid the vampire feeding on the other victims buried alongside it in the pit. And perhaps the commonest preventative measure was to jam a brick between the vampire’s jaws.

‘Two or three years ago, right here in Venice, a plague pit was discovered and excavated, and one of the skulls from a female skeleton was recovered intact, with the brick still jammed into her mouth. That body dated from the sixteenth century, because although the Black Death was at its height in Europe in the fourteenth century, there were recurrences of the epidemic right up to the eighteenth century, and mass graves have been found that date from this whole period.’

‘Do you think somebody believed that the woman in the grave we saw tonight on the Isola di San Michele was a vampire, and applied an ancient remedy to ensure that she would stay dead and buried? So why did they also cut off her head?’

‘That was another traditional way of killing a vampire. Because they sucked blood from their victims, removing the head from the body would prevent them from feeding.’

‘So in her case it was a kind of belt and braces — the brick in the mouth and decapitation.’

Angela nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘According to legend, most vampires were heretics, criminals or victims of suicide, and in most cases such people would be denied burial in a Christian graveyard because of religious sensibilities. The tomb that cracked open was quite an expensive burial chamber and, as far as I could see, she was the only occupant. If she had been suspected of being a vampire in life, even if she came from a wealthy and aristocratic family, she would probably have been buried in an unmarked grave on unconsecrated ground. That’s the first point.

‘The other thing that struck me was that the vertebra in her neck had crumbled when it was smashed. I’m not a forensic pathologist, obviously, but that suggests to me that the body was already at least partially skeletonized when the head was removed.’

‘So you think she was just buried in the usual way, and then several years later somebody decided that she might have been a vampire, cracked open the tomb, and did their best to ensure that she would stay there for eternity.’

‘That makes sense,’ Angela said, ‘except for three things. Did you notice anything odd about the grave?’

‘You mean apart from the decapitated body and the skull with the brick rammed into its jaw? No, not really.’

Angela sighed. ‘Almost every tomb I looked at on that island had either a crucifix inscribed on the slab covering the grave or a separate stone cross standing at one end of it. That grave had neither, and that’s unusual.’

Bronson looked puzzled, but didn’t say anything.

‘And the remains of those pottery jars we saw in the grave suggest something slightly different about the original burial,’ Angela went on. ‘I have a feeling that she probably was buried as a vampire, but by people who didn’t find that concept in any way offensive, a kind of vampire cult, if you like.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I think those jars were deliberately smashed when the grave was opened later. Pottery was never normally placed inside Christian tombs, but if it had been, in a sealed environment, it should have remained intact. The fact that those jars — there were at least two of them — were broken suggests a deliberate act. And why would a pair of sealed pottery vessels be placed in a tomb? To me, the only thing that makes sense is that they were there for the benefit of the dead woman. And if they thought she was a vampire, they would probably have contained blood, most likely human blood. I’d love to get my hands on them and analyse what’s left of the contents.’

‘Are you serious?’ Bronson asked, startled. ‘A vampire cult?’

‘They’re not unknown,’ Angela said, ‘though I’m not aware of any operating in Venice around the time our woman was buried. The inscription on the lid of her tomb was badly weathered, but I did take a few pictures of it, and I’m pretty sure the year she died was eighteen twenty-five. At least that bit of the inscription was still legible. And I’m guessing that the grave was opened again before the end of the nineteenth century, and that the ritual killing of the vampire inside it took place then.’

Bronson leaned back and stretched. The chair he was sitting in was cramped and really too small for him. ‘It seems to me that you’re deducing the existence of an entire — and pretty bizarre — secret society on the basis of a few bits of smashed pottery and one crumbled neck vertebra on a two-hundred-year-old skeleton.’

‘No, there’s something else.’ Angela reached into her handbag, and pulled out a small, heavily discoloured black object, which appeared to be bound in leather. ‘This was lying under the body,’ she said. ‘I think it was originally inside a wooden box, probably placed under the coffin, but over the centuries both the coffin and the box rotted away. I spotted what was left of the box underneath the skeleton, but when I touched it, the wood crumbled away to nothing and I saw this.’

‘So now you’re a grave robber,’ Bronson said.

‘I trained as an archaeologist,’ Angela replied, ‘and “archaeologist” is just a polite word for a tomb raider. It’s what we do. And if I hadn’t picked it up, it would have either been sealed up again in the grave or taken by some tourist who would have no idea what it was.’

‘And what is it?’

‘I think,’ Angela said, ‘it’s a kind of diary.’

The dark blue powerboat was speeding through the inky darkness of the Venetian night, heading south, past San Clemente, towards a small island situated some distance from its nearest neighbour.

This island only covered three or four acres, and was dominated by a large and impressive Venetian mansion, a five-storey edifice in grey stone that sat at its highest point. Directly below the house was a substantial stone-built jetty capable of berthing perhaps a dozen powerboats. At first sight, the jetty seemed ridiculously large, but the lagoon provided the only means of access to and from the property.

Four other vessels were already secured to the bollards that edged the jetty, but the driver of the blue powerboat had plenty of space to manoeuvre. He brought the boat alongside the landing stage, put the gearbox into reverse, and expertly stopped the vessel close enough for one of the other men to step ashore. In moments, both mooring lines were secured and the engine shut down.