The Thief of Venice Read Online Free PDF Page A

tongue. She looked up at the glittering mosaic images above her and said softly, "It would be so easy, so easy."
    "I know." Father Urbano sighed. "So easy to pick up a stone and tell a lie, or take a couple of thorns off a bush and tell another lie."
    "Or dig up a bone," said Lucia dreamily, "and claim it was something wonderful, when it wasn't at all." She glanced at the procession moving slowly along beside them, waiting to see another wonder, the precious altarpiece called the Pala d'Oro. Then she looked straight ahead at a tall marble column. Was it the one from which the arm of Saint Mark had suddenly appeared, so long ago? "I understand Samuele Bell is a friend of yours. You know, Father, I suppose his examination of the relics might show that some are false, but it might also show"—she turned to him with a direct look—"that some are actually genuine."
    Father Urbano smiled and nodded. Lucia suspected that his mind was already made up.
    It was. He took her back across the undulating floor of the basilica and led the way into the sacristy. "I'll speak to the cardinal patriarch. He may not agree. But if he does, you understand that there will be requirements, certain restrictions."
    "Of course." Lucia thanked him and shook his hand. "If you'll send me the list of requirements, I'll write to Doctor Bell."
 
    The two British couples had "done" San Marco. They had found it a little disappointing, and Tertius Alderney, Conservative member of Parliament for the Channel Isles, was rather alarmed by the puddles in the square.
    "I thought you said we didn't have to worry about what's-its-name, high water," he said to Arthur Cluff-Luffter, bishop of Seven Oaks.
    "We don't," said the bishop. "This isn't high water. It must have rained in the night, that's all."
    "Arthur, it didn't rain," said his wife Elizabeth. "I was awake all night, and there wasn't a drop."
    "Oh, dear," said Louise Alderney, "why didn't somebody tell me to bring my wellies?"
 
    *7*
    When the list came to her office in a formal letter of permission from the cardinal patriarch, Lucia was sitting at her desk composing another letter. It was a painful letter, one she had been rehearsing in her mind for months. The time had come at last. The insults were too grievous. It wasn't just other women, although that was tiresome enough. It was her husband's pathetic posturing, his refusal to take a job unworthy of his sensitive nature, his bitter explosions of childish rage because she was so good a provider. Even so, it took three drafts before Lucia could control her anger and write something clear and sensible.
Lorenzo,
I'm leaving you. You know why. I'm taking an apartment. I've withdrawn all my savings from the bank. Enclosed is a certified check for half the entire sum.
L
    As soon as she had inserted the check and the letter in an envelope, sealed the envelope, addressed it to her husband, stamped it with a thump of her fist, and dropped it on the pile of outgoing mail, Lucia wrote the next letter with more pleasure.
    Of course she could have run downstairs and hurried around the corner and entered the library and related her good news in person, but in a controversial matter of this kind she must preserve all the dry ceremony of official business.
    Her second letter was addressed to—
    Dottor Samuele Bell
Biblioteca Marciana
San Marco 7
30124 Venezia
 
    *8*
    The place wasn't very good, but it would be all right for now. It could probably be fixed up. The kitchen needed new appliances and a coat of paint. Of course the hole in the wall of the closet would have to be repaired right away. It was amazing how flimsy these old places were. The connecting wall was disintegrating, falling apart at a touch.
    The space on the other side surely belonged to the people next door. It must be part of their house, not this one. It looked like a storage room for their castoffs—beautiful castoffs, really remarkable—but they were no business of this tenant. Perhaps