They crouched behind the shop counter while Sabbatai waited upstairs. The lagoon was calm, still, like the night before. The black waters had ebbed away, dragged by the northern currents.
In the dark, Edgardo was unconsciously smiling. The thought that he might have to face dangers, fights, and use force couldn’t keep from his face the ecstatic expression and the new sensation he could have described as courage. Kallis’s return made him feel reborn.
They’d met for a few minutes, after None. He’d slipped into the palazzo like a thief. He couldn’t resist the desire to hug her. Kallis’s presence had unexpectedly reawakened a wave of sensations and emotions he thought had been dulled forever. A frenzy was burning in his chest. He needed to see her, caress her, kiss her, hold her body tight against his. He hadn’t felt anything akin to this since they’d parted.
A confused rumbling came from the internal courtyard, then a sinister scraping at the door that led to the back of the shop.
The skipping steps of the apothecary on the stairs were interrupted by the hissing voice of Abella, who’d practically lifted him up by the neck. “Remember . . . don’t try and be clever.”
Sabbatai disengaged himself and rushed to open the door. The fat man and the man from Bergamo were waiting for him, looking tired.
“So, where have you hidden her?” The man from Bergamo stank of curdled milk.
“In there,” Sabbatai replied, pointing at the well.
“In the cistern?” the fat man exclaimed irritably.
“And where was I supposed to put her, on the shelf in the shop?”
“Damn rotten, stinking luck,” the man from Bergamo swore, and went to lift the iron plank that covered the well. “Will you go down?” he said to the fat man.
“What? So I get stuck in there?” his partner replied.
They looked at each other in silence, expecting heaven to nominate someone.
“Come on, hurry,” Sabbatai said.
Still swearing, the man from Bergamo went down into the well. When he heard him reach the bottom, the fat man leaned over. “So, what can you see?”
“Nothing, it’s pitch black.”
“Is the girl there?”
“Of course she is.”
“Does she stink?”
“No, she doesn’t stink.”
“Is she rotting?”
“No, she’s nice and dry, dry as a salted sardine.”
“Then tie her and I’ll pull her up.”
A moment later, the body was tied to a rope, and the fat man began to pull. “She’s as light as a chaffinch,” he said to Sabbatai, looking pleased.
The apothecary helped him lift her. While the man from Bergamo was climbing out, they wrapped her in a torn sail.
Abella and Edgardo had followed the entire procedure hidden behind the window of the back of the shop.
“And this concludes our business,” Sabbatai said. “I don’t want to hear anything more about this girl.”
“Go on, you know you’d have liked to have a little go with her, she’s still in good condition,” said the fat man, who started laughing.
They placed the body at the bottom of the boat and, with a quick maneuver, pushed away from the shore.
Abella and Edgardo rushed to their own scaula to go after them.
The cog of the two crooks was advancing in a dull, almost surreal silence, as though the lagoon wished to pay the virgin of Metamauco a final homage.
After going down the Rivus Altus, past the bay of San Marco, they went along the Riva degli Schiavoni, toward the Lido.
Sitting on the boat floor, Abella wondered where the two villains were taking the mummified body, and why. Once again, she’d let herself be involved by the visionary scribe. She studied him while he rowed, absorbed in his thoughts, and unexpectedly had to admit that she had begun to feel something she couldn’t quite describe: a rush? A way of feeling that was in tune with his? Affection?
In the distance, in the east, they saw the line of battlements erected in defence of San Nicolò and the watchtower. The calm, flat waters of the lagoon gave way to the lapping of waves caused by the open sea currents.
The cog turned north, in the direction of the island with forests brimming with vegetable gardens and vines that was dedicated to the holy martyrs Saint Erme and Saint Erasmus, known as Litus Mercedis because of a legend according to which, during the construction of the church, a large quantity of gold was supposed to have been discovered.
They followed the coastline and docked on an isolated shore near the Amurianum harbor.
The two villains unloaded the body and went down a path in the midst of a bed of reeds. The Magister and the scribe kept a safe distance.
After just a few steps, they reached a tall, round building in poor condition, and easily identified it as an abandoned water mill.
Hiding in the rushes, soon afterwards they saw the two men leave the mill empty-handed and return to their boat.
Abella gave a sign, and they set off.
They didn’t know what to expect: there could be dangerous people in there, and they could be risking their lives.
They walked around the building, trying to pick up the slightest sound from inside. The creaking of their footsteps was a sign that the mill was built on the border of a saltpan.
The acidic, metallic smell that rose from the basins burned their lips and throats. A breath of wind rose, bending the reeds.
Built, like so many others in the lagoon, next to canals in order to use the tides, the water mill had been used to mangle salt and grain, but it looked long-disused; the large wooden wheel was covered in algae. Because of the rising waters during the past few years, many saltworks had been abandoned.
They went to the door. It was ajar. They pushed it open.
In the pitch dark, they were greeted by a singular stench: a warm, repugnant mixture of aromas and rotten meat.
They groped their way forward. They made out the dark shadow of a huge millstone standing vertically over another one, and the long wooden arm that connected them to the outside mechanisms.
Abella took a few steps forward and collided with a stone plank. “Light a candle, quick!” she said.
Edgardo took a tallow from his jacket and, with the help of his flint, managed to bring a faint light to the place.
Right in front of Abella, on the stone slab, lay the body of the virgin of the beads: totally naked, covered in that powder that gave her an icy, supernatural glow, still looking healthy and unexplainably beautiful after all those days.
“It’s the natron that keeps her intact,” Abella whispered.
Edgardo raised the flame to have a more comprehensive look at the place and was astounded.
In the room of the mill, various, ancient stone sarcophagi were laid out in an orderly fashion, some with their lids removed, other sealed with marble slabs.
They approached. The stench of rot and aromatic herbs made the air unbreathable.
They leaned over the first sarcophagus. A horrifying sight that even Abella, in her experience as a physician, had never come across. A body that had been quartered, with no hands or eyes, sewn back together as well as could have been, covered in natron, its skin and flesh dried up in places, dripping a thick, sticky, green liquid that gave off an unbearable smell.
“Judging by his state, he must have been sentenced to death,” Abella remarked.
They went to the sarcophagus next to it. Inside were the remains of a somebody who must have been a nobleman. His skull was smashed but the body, wrapped in pale linen bands, maintained a certain dignity, and gave off a scent of cedar and myrrh. It looked like an ancient Egyptian mummy.
In the other sarcophagi, they found other corpses, some in a state of putrefaction, others part-mummified, others perfectly preserved. A graveyard of mummies of all kinds and ages.
Next to the stone slab on which the young girl lay, Abella recognized a few surgical tools and various terracotta receptacles, some of which surprised her. “It’s the workshop of an embalmer,” she said.
“An embalmer in Venice?”
“Evidently, as those two villains told us, there’s a blossoming trade in corpses in Venice, which someone transforms into mummies . . . But for what purpose?” She looked around. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
Edgardo leaned against the millstone, lost in thought. He suddenly noticed a heap of rags thrown in a corner. Something was shining among the fabrics. He started rummaging. They were poor jackets, torn breeches, tunics, perhaps clothes that had belonged to the victims.
Among them a quality garment stood out, fine wool embroidered with gold thread, which had certainly belonged to a member of the nobility. Edgardo picked it up. “Look.”
Abella approached.
“It’s a refined dress, very expensive.” Edgardo turned it around, studying it. “I’ve seen this dress before . . . of course . . . this dress belonged to Costanza.”
“Costanza?”
“Yes, I have no doubt. She often wore it on feast days.”
The flash that lit up Edgardo’s face didn’t have time to turn into an exclamation of victory before they heard footsteps outside.
Fingers tight on the wick, and darkness came back to reign over the abandoned mill. Abella and Edgardo quickly climbed up a ladder that led to a gallery. They crouched behind sacks of salt that had been long forgotten there.
The door opened and the sound of panting took possession of the surrounding space. After some bustling, the light of a lamp revealed the features of the man who’d just entered. He had the dark skin of a resident of the African coast, and was wearing Arab clothes. His skull was shiny and his body strong and muscular. He moved with phlegmatic slowness amid the tools, as though getting ready for a procedure. In the end, he approached the body of the virgin, and placed the lamp on the stone slab.
With a light, expert touch, he felt the consistency of the flesh and tissue. Then he remained in contemplation, as though prey to a dream, listening to the creaking sounds caused by a sudden northerly wind.
With unexpected energy, he set to work.
From his tools, he picked a thin rod, curved, which ended in a hook. With infinite delicacy, he inserted it into the nasal cavity. He pushed it in and twisted it with skill until he managed to extract a gray, flabby, gelatinous substance. He repeated the procedure over and over. His movements were precise, always the same, his eyes inspired, as though he were celebrating a ritual.
When he thought nothing more was coming from digging, he turned the body on its side.
He picked up an enema syringe from his tools. It had a long, twisted tube. He immersed it into one of the receptacles next to him, and sucked up some liquid. A fresh scent of cedar spread through the air, so much so that, for a moment, it was like being transported to the shores of the Nile.
When the syringe was full, he carefully looked for the girl’s anus, inserted the tube, and emptied the entire liquid into it.
He repeated the operation until, feeling the belly and stomach, he felt no more tension in them. He then took a curved needle, threaded it with silk, and, with the grace of a woman, went about carefully sewing up the anus that had just been filled with the liquid.
Edgardo squeezed Abella’s arm: it was the same treatment Costanza had received.
Therefore, it hadn’t been violence against nature, but an embalming procedure. All the elements concurred: the stitches in the orifice, the small cuts in the nasal cavity, the swollen belly. If to this you added finding the dress, there was no more doubt. The embalmer was Costanza’s murderer.
Not allowing his heart to consult reason, gripped by an unstoppable impetus, Edgardo lunged down the ladder and fell on the back of the man, who, overwhelmed, rolled on the ground.
The struggle turned immediately fierce. The Saracen, although caught by surprise, managed to grip the scribe’s lean body, and tried to crush it.
Strangled screams, dull blows, wheezing.
Abella rushed down from the gallery and threw all her weight on the embalmer in order to immobilize him, but the Egyptian’s strength was beyond her expectations. Edgardo had been too impulsive.
The bodies rolled, knocking against the sarcophagi.
The wind had started to whistle, shaking the reed roof.
The Magister tried to block one of the Saracen’s arms in order to free Edgardo, but the maniac was stronger than a bear. She received a fist in her face that left her on the ground, unconscious.
The grip loosened and the scribe managed to disengage himself, trying to grab a stick that was leaning against the wall. In vain. The Egyptian came up behind him like an avalanche, and crushed him against the base of the millstone.
The violence of the wind had raised the waters of the lagoon and the tide was rapidly rising.
There was a sudden crash, and the mill wheel began to turn, activating the vertical grindstone that turned around its axis.
Edgardo’s body was lying on the stone base. Panting, blocked by the man’s weight he saw the granite mass inexorably approaching . . . In a few seconds, he’d be crushed. He smelled salt in his nostrils, and his final thought went to Kallis. Theirs was an adverse destiny. He prayed to God and asked forgiveness for all his sins. He closed his eyes.
A sudden tear, as though he’d been lifted in the air by a vortex. A blow, a wheeze, a thud. Before him, still dazed, Abella was holding a stick.
The Egyptian’s body was lying on the millstone. The wheel was advancing, implacable.
They almost didn’t realize it in time. Edgardo leaped to his feet.
A sinister creak of mangled bones, a mix of dull and flabby sounds. A bloody mush. The man’s head had been crushed like a melon that was too ripe. The grinder slowly pursued its course.
Abella and Edgardo took a step back, disturbed by the horrifying spectacle.
Almost automatically, the scribe’s hands made the sign of the cross in the air.
Drowned by the wind, the matins bells drifted across from Torcellus.
“He shouldn’t have died. He was our only proof,” Abella murmured.
“The night is about to give way to a new day. We haven’t much time left.”
Edgardo picked up Costanza’s dress and gave the embalmer’s body one final look. “We must reach the Doge’s Palace before dawn.”