The Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

Moretti said he’s used them before. He said they have files going back hundreds of years, and you can trace your family back all those generations.”
    “So these two cousins can trace their ancestry back to Steffani?”
    “To his cousins, they could. That’s how they’re descended. The Mormons have copies of parish registers from all over Italy, and they sent Dottor Moretti copies of all of the documents: birth certificates, death certificates, marriage contracts.”
    Caterina thought of the two cousins; she doubted that they would be more computer savvy than Roseanna. “Who did it for them?” Caterina asked. “The online search?”
    “Not them. The Mormons did it all for them.”
    “Interesting,” Caterina said. “There was no will, was there?”
    “He didn’t have one, or no one could find one, so the Church claimed everything. Some things were sold to pay his debts, and the rest was lost until the trunks turned up.”
    Caterina sat back in her chair and studied her feet. The cousins had no interest in the contents of the trunks, save for what price they might bring. If they were the papers of what her profession would call a major minor composer, dead these three centuries, what was their value? The Stabat Mater was a masterpiece, and the few opera arias she knew were wonderful, though strangely short to the modern ear. She’d gone down to London to see Niobe a few years ago and found it a revelation. What was that heartbreaking lament, something about Dal mio petto ? With a key change toward the end that had driven her wild when she heard it and then again when a musician friend had shown her the score. But her personal excitement would hardly influence the price put on a manuscript. A page of a score by Mozart was worth a fortune, or Bach, or Handel, but who had ever heard of Steffani? And yet the cousins were willing to hire a lawyer and arbitrator and pay her salary. For two trunks they thought were full of papers?
    An English poet she had read at school had said that fortune went up and down like a “bucket in a well.” So did the fortune of composers as tastes changed and reputations were reevaluated. The roads to concert houses were littered with the bones of the reputations of composers such as Gassmann, Tosi, Keiser. Every so often, some long-dead composer would be resurrected and hailed as a newly discovered master. She had seen it happen with Hildegard von Bingen and Josquin des Prez. For a year or so no concert hall was without at least one performance of their music. And then they went back to being dead and written about in books, which is where Caterina thought they both belonged. But if what she had heard in London was any indication, Steffani did not belong there, not at all.
    “Are you listening, Caterina?” she heard Roseanna ask.
    “No, I’m sorry,” she said with an embarrassed grin. “I was thinking about something else.”
    “What?”
    “That no one much values Steffani’s music these days.” She said it with regret, thinking of the beauty of the arias and the mastery shown in the Stabat Mater. Maybe it was time for a return to the stage for the good bishop.
    “It’s not the music those two are after,” Roseanna said.
    “What is it, then?” Caterina asked, wondering what else might have lasted and come down through the centuries.
    “The treasure.”

Five
    T HE WORD ASTONISHED HER. “ T REASURE?” SHE REPEATED. “W HAT treasure?”
    “He didn’t tell you?” Roseanna asked.
    “Who?” Caterina asked. Then, “Tell me what?”
    “Dottor Moretti. He must know about it,” Roseanna said, sounding surprised. “I thought he’d have told you when you accepted the job.”
    Caterina, who had been strolling along a beach, looking idly at the shells underfoot, felt herself suddenly swept away by an unexpected wave. The water, she realized, was deeper than she had expected. She thought of the two cousins, and there came a sudden vision of sharp fins slicing through the