The Queen's Cipher (60 page)

Burrowing under the bedcovers, still giddy with desire, Cheryl couldn’t quite believe her luck. Two days ago she had been utterly miserable, cleaning the nicotine stained walls in her mother’s disgusting flat, when the phone rang and Simon told her about Freddie’s latest accident. She hadn’t stopped to think before catching a flight to Venice. It was the best decision she had ever made. During last night’s ecstatic interplay he had asked her to move in with him. They would start flat hunting on their return to Oxford.

Through the open bedroom window, she could hear footsteps on the quayside and clanging and shouting as a barge was unloaded. The city was awake and alive with fresh possibilities. In the distance a church clock struck the hour. She counted to eleven. She had slept in.

Clambering out of bed Cheryl skipped across the parquet floor and into the bathroom for a quick shower. A few minutes later, feeling clean and composed in a white linen dress with plenty of foundation cream to cover her love bites, she stood in the hotel lobby looking for her partner.

He was sitting outside on the restaurant pontoon gazing across the water at a domed marble temple glistening in the sun. She tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s that church called?”

“That’s Il Redentore, the votive church Palladio designed after the plague,” he told her.

“They’ve stopped serving breakfast but I’ll get you something.” He beckoned to a waiter and spoke to him in Italian. This was a new Freddie, erect of bearing and assertive. It was amazing what good sex could do.

While they waited for the coffee and croissants to arrive, he picked a creased copy of a magazine off the table and waved it at her. “While you were getting some sleep, I’ve been busy.”

“Like I ever doubted it,” she found herself blushing.

“The hotel gave me this. It’s called
News on the Rialto
and it mentions a Ca’ Foscari University professor who is writing a book on the Venetian aristocracy. I gave him a call and Enrico Gentile turned out to be a Shakespeare buff who’d read an article I once wrote on Portia’s Belmont. Anyway, we got on like a house on fire and when I asked him about the spice trade he went into absolute overdrive. In the sixteenth century Venetian merchants were importing shed loads of pepper and other spices like cumin into Europe – thousands of tons of it – and the Moros were one of the wealthiest families with several villas scattered around the archipelago.”

“Did you ask him whether they had a place on the Giudecca?”

“I did and he said yes.”

“There can’t be any Moros left on the island. Surely that would be too much to expect.”

The grin on Freddie’s face broadened. “That’s the best part,” he said. “In searching for direct descendants of the old aristocracy Gentile came across a Moro. Her married name is Cristobel Carpenter. Her husband was a cattle baron in Wyoming before he died of a heart attack. The widow lady has come home and, at lunchtime today, she’s hosting a cocktail party for the Save Venice Fund in the Gallerie dell’Accademia. Gentile has wangled us an invite so we can meet the redoubtable Cristobel. He says she’s a cool customer.”

Cheryl could scarcely believe it. The past and present were coming together. Then she thought of the chic, sophisticated rich women who would be attending Cristobel’s cocktail party and looked at her dress, bought for forty quid in an end of season sale on Oxford High Street.

“But I haven’t got anything to wear,” she moaned.

This feminine reaction took him by surprise. “Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “You look fine.”

But she couldn’t help worrying. Her lopsided education had not prepared her for a roomful of snobbish art experts who knew their Titians from their Tiepolos.

“Who’s going to be there anyway?” she asked truculently as the waiter poured her coffee.

Freddie gave her his doe-eyed look. “Enrico thinks they will be mainly rich Americans and Venetian high society. Apparently they are getting on better these days. The local nobility used to despise their American benefactors, accusing them of only being interested in the social side of fund-raising. But these charges are wearing a little thin now that hundreds of works of art have been restored. Then there’s the expelled royalty to think of.”

Cheryl found this oddly reassuring. She was firmly convinced that exiled crowned heads, grand duchesses and the like, were simply a troupe of performers swanning around Europe for the benefit of Hello magazine and, if called upon, that she could hold her own with them.

“Right,” she said, “when do we have to leave?”

“Five minutes ago,” he replied. “We’re already late.”

The Accademia Galleries were within easy walking distance of the hotel but Dorsoduro’s cobbled streets were hard going in high heels. “Venetian women never wear stilettos or any other kind of elevated heel,” said Freddie unsympathetically as they gave their names to a gallery attendant.

As soon as she entered the Sala dell’Albergo Cheryl felt conspicuous in her cheap off-the-peg dress. The room was full of immaculately clad lounge lizards adopting attitudes of studied perfection. Bored looking young heirs and heiresses rubbed shoulders with tanned silver-haired artistic entrepreneurs and old American money clad in vintage silk dresses and beautifully cut suits. From what she could gather, they were celebrating the repair of the gallery’s fifteenth-century wooden roof and the restoration of Titian’s epic canvas
Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple
.

A waitress offered them a choice of cocktails. Freddie opted for a Lavender and Peach Bellini while she chose the Pomegranate Manhattan, a bourbon infused drink that tasted like cat’s piss.

Mingling with her fellow guests she caught snatches of gossip. A balding American in a bright blue Tom Ford suit was advising his group that “without Cristobel the whole thing would have fallen apart long ago.” “Just like Venice,” tittered an elderly woman in an expensive diamond necklace.

Someone was whispering in Cheryl’s ear. “Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.”

She swung round to find a beautiful young man curling his lip in a supercilious grin.

“Lord Byron,” she said, identifying the poet, “but you’re no Don Juan.”

“No, but I could be if you only said the word.”

“I have two words for you. Get lost!”

Having declared herself a no-go area Cheryl wandered off in search of Freddie who was in earnest conversation with the British ambassador to Rome and an aesthetic looking individual whom he introduced as Mark Whitaker, a research fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.

“We’re talking about flood defence schemes, ways of stopping Venice from sinking into the abyss,” Whitaker enthused. The Cambridge academic was working for the Venice in Peril Fund and he had alarming news. The floating city was sinking five times faster than previously thought and was also moving out into the Adriatic Sea. Most of this subsidence, he believed, was caused by plate tectonics. Apparently the Adriatic plate was subducting beneath the Apennines.

Cheryl nodded sympathetically and moved away in the hope of meeting their hostess. What she encountered instead was a group of exquisitely coiffured matrons discussing luxury apartments with a princess from the House of Hohenzollern. What this conversation clearly lacked was a British perspective.

“The views are magnificent from our East London penthouse flat,” she was soon telling them, practicing her cut-glass vowels. “You can see the old Roman road and the actual boundary between the historic counties of Middlesex and Essex. As for sunset over the Thames, I have to say…”

“Sorry to butt in, ladies, but the countess is needed elsewhere.” Freddie had taken a firm grip on her arm and was dragging her across the room to where an elegant old lady was sitting beneath a harrowing painting of the crucifixion.

“This is Cristobel,” he murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

Cristobel Carpenter was wearing a short black dress in wild silk which revealed an almost aerobically thin figure. What gave her substance were her flinty, intelligent eyes.

Freddie introduced Cheryl. “I’m pleased to meet you, Signora Carpenter,” she said demurely.

“What lovely hair you’ve got, my dear. Do take a seat and tell me how I may be of help.” She pointed to a couple of vacant chairs, opened her diamante purse and handed them calling cards.

Freddie sat down gingerly and cleared his throat. “I believe Professor Gentile has informed you of our interest in your family. We’re researching the Venetian spice trade. Am I right in thinking that the Moro family first came to prominence as traders in medieval Venice?”

“It was much earlier than that.” Her voice was light and silvery but carried an ironclad conviction. “Alboino Moro was one of the three consuls sent from Padua in 421 AD to establish a trading post on the islands of the Rialto. You might say he was one of Venice’s founding fathers.”

Freddie gasped audibly. “But that’s only ten years after the Goths sacked Rome! It’s hard to imagine much commerce going on when barbarian hordes were roaming through Italy.”

“Yet it happened, Dr Brett.”

“F-from what I’ve read, the Moro family didn’t settle in Venice until the thirteenth century.”

“Tell me, Dr Brett, how much confidence do you have in oral history?”

“It is often said that word of mouth accounts distort the truth. Stories are interpreted differently with each telling, so the argument goes, and become less reliable in the process. But when written primary sources are not readily available, oral history is absolutely indispensable in exploring and reconstructing events.”

“Well said, young man.” Cristobel clapped her tiny hands together. “According to family tradition, the Moros began trading in Venice after the First Crusade.”

Cristobel took a small silver snuff box out of her purse and drew a pinch of the powdered tobacco into her nostrils. She was like an actress handling her props in a stage play.

“Venetian merchants became the middlemen in the spice trade. The Moro family did better than most by concentrating on a single product, dried ground pepper. Peppercorns were called ‘black gold’ and, until the opening of the new trade routes in the sixteenth century, virtually all the black pepper came from India’s Malabar region. The Moros had trading posts there. It was a risky venture depending, as Shakespeare said, on the ‘wanton wind’ but it paid off. Wealth bred power and influence and some of my ancestors sat on the Grand Council. Eventually one of them, Cristoforo Moro, was elected Doge of Venice in 1462. His coat of arms is over there above the drinks table.”

She waved towards a decorative tapestry draped across the wall. “That’s a baldachin or cloth of state and it was hung behind a throne to symbolize authority.”

The bottom half of the armorial bearing consisted of diagonal black lines but Freddie wasn’t interested in the so-called Bend Sinister. What had taken his eye was the upper half of the shield where three black oval objects hung from cross branches like ceremonial medals.

Cristobel interpreted his interest. “Yes, Dr Brett, they are mulberries. In Venetian heraldry this is called canting, representing a name graphically. What you call a visual pun. Hence a castle stands for Castello, a lion for Leone, a bridge for Ponte and a mulberry tree for Moro. Some coats of arms also had a symbolic meaning. The lion conveyed courage while the mulberry tree denoted commerce.”

“So the Moro family was definitely linked with mulberries.”

“Absolutely, the name Moro means Moor or black African while the feminine rendition of the word, Mora, translates as mulberry. If you go to the chapel of San Giobbe and inspect Doge Moro’s tomb you will see that his funerary slab is decorated with a mulberry design.”

“Did these family emblems carry over into the sixteenth century?” Cheryl asked.

Cristobel’s eyes narrowed. “I think the link between Moors and mulberries was a well established one. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of it. Othello gives Desdemona a handkerchief with a berry embroidered on it, albeit a strawberry.”

Freddie nodded energetically. “There is quite a debate over whether Othello was based on the Cristoforo Moro who went to Cyprus as governor of the island. What do you think?”

The old lady inclined her head to one side without answering and, as she did so, a shaft of overhead light penetrated the layers of carefully applied make-up to reveal a sallow skin and wrinkles above the upper lip.

“Aren’t we getting off the point?” she said sharply.

“Forgive me,” he flashed his most winning smile. “It’s such an interesting subject.”

“Seeing you ask, Dr Brett,” an American drawl apparent for the first time. “I consider Othello to be an adaptation of Cinthio’s story,
Un Capitano Moro
, which Shakespeare must have read in Italian. Cinthio probably heard about Cristoforo Moro’s governorship of Cyprus and how his wife died in mysterious circumstances. On returning to Venice, Moro took a second wife called Demonia which is quite like Desdemona. That’s all I know.”

Cheryl raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You mention Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italian, Signora Carpenter. Several of his plays contain comic scenes inspired by the
commedia dell’arte
which was very popular in Venice.”

“That is so. One of the main characters, Pantalone, is a Venetian merchant.”

She could feel her mouth go dry as she asked the key question. “Didn’t a Moro play Pantalone on the stage? I think his first name was Lodovico.”

“So I’ve been told.” Cristobel gave a vinegary smile before looking down at her diamond encrusted watch. “My goodness, is that the time? Please forgive me for rushing off but I must say hello to La Scala’s musical director before they kick us out of here.”

They watched her glide through the now thinning crowd of cocktail drinkers and tap a man on his smartly tailored shoulder. He bowed and kissed her hand in greeting.

“That was pretty abrupt, don’t you think?” Freddie said.

“Yes, unless I’m imagining things, she didn’t want to talk about Lodovico Moro.”

“Ah well, there’s no point in worrying about it now. Not when there’s plenty of booze to be had.”