Explain it to me again,” Remi whispered. “Why couldn’t this wait till morning?”
“It is morning,” Sam replied, turning the wheel slightly to keep the bow on course. Though their destination showed no lights, its bell tower was nicely silhouetted against the night sky.
From above, Poveglia looked like a fan, measuring five hundred yards from its flared tip to its base, and three hundred yards at its waist where a narrow, walled canal bisected the island from west to east, save for a sandbar in the center.
“Don’t get technical on me, Fargo. As far as I’m concerned, two A.M. is the middle of the night. It isn’t morning until the sun comes up.”
After drinks with Maria they’d managed to find an open boat rental office. The owner had only one craft left, a twelve-foot open dory with an outboard motor. Though not luxurious by any means, it would suffice, Sam decided. Poveglia was only three miles from Venice, inside the sheltering arms of the lagoon, and there was little wind.
“Don’t tell me you bought into Maria’s stories,” Sam said.
“No, but they weren’t exactly cheery.”
“That’s the truth.”
In addition to having served as a dumping ground for plague victims, throughout its thousand-year history Poveglia had been home to monasteries, colonies, a fort and ammunition depot for Napoleon, and most recently in the 1920s, a psychiatric hospital.
In frightening detail Maria had explained that the doctor in charge, after hearing the patients complain about seeing the ghosts of plague victims, began to conduct crude lobotomies and gruesome experiments on the inmates, his own brand of medical exorcism.
Legend had it that the doctor eventually began seeing the same ghosts his patients had reported and went insane. One night he climbed up the bell tower and jumped to his death. The remaining patients returned the doctor’s body to the bell tower and sealed the exits, entombing him forever. Shortly thereafter the hospital and the island were abandoned, but to this day Venetians reported hearing Poveglia’s bell ringing or seeing ghostly lights moving in the windows of the hospital wing.
Poveglia was, Maria told them, the most haunted place in Italy.
“No, I don’t buy the part about the ghosts,” Remi said, “but what went on in that hospital is well documented. Besides, the island’s closed to tourism. We’re breaking and entering.”
“That’s never stopped us before.”
“Just trying to be the voice of reason.”
“Well, I have to admit it’s very creepy, but we’re so close to solving this riddle I want to get it done.”
“Me, too. But promise me something: One gong from that bell tower and we’re gone.”
“If that happens you’ll have to race me to the boat.”
A few minutes later the mouth of the canal came into view. A few hundred yards down the shoreline they could see the dark outline of the hospital wing and bell tower rising over the treetops.
“See any phantom lights?” Sam asked.
“Keep joking, funny man.”
He maneuvered the dory through the chop created by the lapping waves and they slipped into the canal. Sheltered from the seaward side, the canal saw little circulation; the surface was brackish and dotted with lily pads and in some places the water was only a few feet deep. To their right a brick wall draped in vines slipped past; to their left, trees and scrub brush. Above they heard the rasp of wings and looked up to see bats wheeling and diving after insects.
“Just great,” Remi muttered. “It had to be bats.”
Sam chuckled. Remi had no fear of spiders or snakes or bugs, but she loathed bats, calling them “rats with wings and tiny human hands.”
Ten minutes later they reached the sandbar. Sam revved the engine, driving the bow onto the soil, then Remi got out and dragged the dory a few feet higher. Sam joined her and staked down the bow line. They clicked on their flashlights.
“Which way?” she asked.
He pointed to their left. “North end of the island.”
They walked across the sandbar, then up the opposite bank to a dense hedge of scrub. They found a thin spot, pushed their way through, and emerged in a football-sized field surrounded by low trees.
Remi whispered, “Is this . . . ?”
“It might be.” None of the maps of Poveglia had agreed upon the exact locations of the plague pits. “Either way, it’s odd that nothing’s growing here.”