Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 22

St Mark’s Square, Venice, Italy.
 May 22, 11.45pm.

      Piazza San Marco was dark as they approached by boat, the lagoon dancing with lights from the watery city, the smell of salty ocean on the light breeze. Morgan had been to Venice for the Biennale with Elian late one summer. Her memories of the place were colored with golden light reflecting on the water in the city of lovers. The air had been filled with music as string quartets played on the streets and the mood was champagne fizz and dancing. But the only strains of music she heard now were a lament for those lost days. She pushed those heavy thoughts away as the motorboat pulled alongside St Mark’s Square wharf.
    Gondolas bobbed in the water, gold trim glinting in the dark as water slapped against their sides in the quiet night. By day, the well worn paths from St Mark’s to L’Accademia were packed, but now only a few people walked along the banks of the lagoon. Morgan and Jake hopped off the boat and headed across the square.
    Morgan looked up at the imposing pink and grey granite columns that had stood guard over the square since the twelfth century. One column was topped by St Mark’s winged lion gazing out to sea, symbol of the gospel writer himself. St Theodor, the first protector of Venice, perched on the other, with an ancient dragon-crocodile beneath his feet. The original pagan saint had been displaced by St Mark in the ninth century. Morgan smiled thinking that a gospel writer would always trump a lesser known saint. Between these two pillars in ancient times, criminals had been executed before baying crowds. She had read that, even now, Venetians will not walk between the pillars in case the bad luck followed them.
    Legend told that the original Venetians were noblemen who fled from ancient Troy, and Morgan could see how the grandeur of days past was still aflame in the memory of this proud people. The twin columns cast shadows onto the square, reflections in the water that flowed out of the drain holes. Morgan knew that the lagoon city flooded more than sixty times a year now, this being one of those nights. She and Jake sloshed in rubber boots towards the Basilica, barely lit in the shadowed square. It was nearly midnight and they didn’t have long to achieve their goal.
     A whistle came from the shadow of the Doge’s Palace and another man joined them. Jake and he exchanged a rough handshake, then he turned to Morgan.
     “Welcome to Venice, I’m Mario.”
     “Mario’s on our team based here,” Jake said. “We have rooms in the secret chambers of the Doge’s Palace.”
     “Why’s ARKANE working here?” Morgan asked, curious to know despite the cold.
     “This.” Mario pointed down at the floodwaters that chilled their feet through the boots. “There are many who believe Venice won’t last another generation. A larger than usual flood, a tidal wave, any freak weather event and this floating city will be washed into the sea. We have a project that is cataloging, studying, and in some cases removing, the religious art works from sites here. ARKANE is working under the auspices of religious study and research, but in the case of removal, we’re putting expert forgeries in their place. The great paintings of Titian and Tintoretto as well as the Canova statues are all under threat. The two meter flood of 1966 devastated the city, so we need to protect what is here for when the waters come again. And they will come; it’s just a matter of time. Our hope is to save the treasures of Venice while the locals continue to deny the change is coming. There is history here too vital to lose because stubborn people resist the might of nature.”
     He noticed Morgan shiver. “But it’s cold out here. Let’s get inside.”
     They waded through the ankle-deep water to the Basilica. Even in the muted light from the street lamps it was a riot of multicolored marble. Morgan knew that each pillar supporting the church was a different kind of stone, sourced from around the world to demonstrate the glory of the Venetian republic, La Serenissima. She looked up at the stunning mosaics. One of the panels showed St Mark’s body as it was rescued from Egypt under siege in the ninth century. It had been smuggled to Venice under a pile of pork so the Muslims wouldn’t search the cargo. She remembered that St Mark had supposedly washed up in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon after a storm and an angel had told him that his body would rest here eventually. Hundreds of years later, it came to pass.
    Now, with the help of Martin’s ARKANE database they had found that Pius had engaged repairs to the Basilica of St Mark’s while he was Patriarch there in 1901. He could have hidden the stone then before relocating to the Vatican. Morgan dared hope that they would find it here, her desperation increasing with the imminent threat to her family. The skeptic in her doubted that the stones had any powers are all, but the weight of history and legend was beginning to press on her. If any of the stones had power, then St Peter’s must surely be the most important. The Apostle anointed by Christ to become the rock of the church, the denier who became a champion of the gospel, who died in Nero’s bloody vengeance for the great fire of Rome, crucified upside down, unworthy of the same death as his Savior.