The Venice conspiracy

CAPITOLO XLV
1777

Ghetto Nuovo, Venezia Ermanno's eyes are candle-bright as he smooths the sketch of the silver tablet out on the family table. 'A monk, you say? A lowly friar gave you this?'

Efran slips off his new, mid-length green coat, richly embroidered in gold scrolls from collar to hem, and places it lovingly over the back of a chair that's older than he is. 'He was Benedictine. Black robes and a picture of pure innocence. Came from San Giorgio.'

His friend fingers the drawing, as though touching it will help him divine its mystery. 'It's fascinating. You think he owns this object? Or has he stolen it and wants to sell it?'

Efran shrugs his bony shoulders. 'He says it's his, but who knows? Important thing is that it may be worth something, and we may be able to get our hands on it.'

The pained face of the impaled netsvis stares up from the table. 'But do we want to get our hands on it?' queries Ermanno playfully. 'Some of these Greek and Egyptian artefacts are cursed. They come from tombs and are supposed to belong to the dead in the afterlife. Steal that kind of stuff and you end up with a whole legion of spirits on your trail.'

'The only spirits I believe in are the ones you drink. As for the afterlife, most of us don't even have a current life worth worrying about.'

Efran carries on talking but Ermanno's stopped listening. He's now engrossed in the lettering. 'I think it's Etruscan. The writing looks Etruscan.'

'Before Roman times?'

'Well done. Very much before, and maybe even eight or nine centuries before Christ. But this particular object isn't quite that old. The lettering looks somewhat later.'

Efran rubs his hands. 'Very educational. More importantly, what's it worth?'

'Philistine! It's impossible to guess without seeing it. Did the monk say it was solid silver?'

Efran struggles to remember. 'No, I don't think so. He just said silver.' He holds out his palm, 'About as big and almost as wide as my hand.'

'The Etruscans mined silver. There are no gold mines in Italy, though over the years gold became the offering of choice to the gods.'

Efran is bored. He merely wants to know the thing's value and then figure out how to persuade the monk to part with it. He stands and grandly pulls on his coat. 'I'll leave it with you. Let me know if you solve the mystery – and its price.'

Ermanno doesn't even notice his friend leave. He bends over the sketch in concentrated silence and soon surrounds himself with every book he has on ancient art and religious artefacts.

His family come and go, flowing around him like a river round a rock. They eat dinner and supper, then finally drift off to bed, amused by his preoccupation.

Gradually, book by book, he picks up the trail of the tablet.

He is certain the characters are Etruscan. He finds a suggested alphabet drawn up by scholars of earlier times, but can't make sense of any of the words they list. As his eyes grow tired, it becomes apparent that the experts contradict each other as to the base of the language. Some, such as the Dominican monk Annio da Viterbo, claim it sprang from the same source as Hebrew, others link it to Greek, while many suggest it came from Lydia in the east.

None of this helps the now bleary-eyed Ermanno.

He puts the troublesome inscription to one side and scans book after book for drawings similar to the figure that the monk has sketched. It doesn't take him long to come to the conclusion that he was right – it's an augur – a seer, priest, haruspex or netsvis.

By the time the first light of dawn pierces the dirt-streaked windows of the Buchbinder home, Ermanno's eyes are as red as raw meat. His neck aches and he's desperate to stretch out in bed and rest properly.

Wearily, he thumbs through the last of his ancient volumes.

Now he sees it.

In a dusty, broken-spined book on myths and legends, he comes upon the Tablets of Atmanta – a story of a blinded augur called Teucer and his sculptress wife Tetia.