I'm hugely indebted to my awesome Beta AstridContraMundum. Without her help and support, you wouldn't be reading this fic. I also wish to express my gratitude to Extremely Romantic who graciously sent me some edits.

Not Britpicked or comprehensively Italianpicked; every remaining error is mine.

All the standard disclaimers apply: Endeavour doesn't belong to me, and I'm just borrowing the characters for a while. Some dialogues are Russell Lewis' and Julian Mitchell's (Masonic Mysteries).

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7)

The place of meeting given by Violetta was at the back of the graveyard, a short stroll away from the older hemicycle, away from the St. Michael Church and the adjoining, imbricated cloisters. Situated on the far end of the island, this enclosure disclosed less ornate tombs: in that 'sector,' common people shared their last sleep buried in mostly unadorned soil, their tombs' slates bare of any extravagant covering, their last places of rest devoid of the funerary chapels claimed by much richer or aristocratic families. Some feet away, one of those, all rotund roof and ochre walls, stood squarely in the corner of the nearby recinto, the wall delimitating another district of the huge cemetery.

Nestled in the high brick wall, the edifice turned its back almost disdainfully on the less prestigious rows of tombs. It figured prominently on Morse's horizon as he strode with long, hasty steps towards Campo 'N.'

He took his position on the edge of the alley, under one of the huge cypress trees, at the approximate marking designated on the map slipped under the door of his hotel room. He was surveying methodically his surroundings, searching for any hint of movement, when he suddenly flinched.

Could it be—? He took a step closer to the headstone.

But his eyes had not deceived him: it sported 'Ludovicus Talenti MDCCCLX MCMXXVII' in letters fast fading under the attack of the saline air.

Morse barely had the time to recover from his surprise when he heard the crunch of a familiar footstep on the gravel behind him. His startled turn was as belligerent as it was wary, even if he knew that he had already lost his advantage.

These psychological games held no novelty for him: Gull came to mind, of course, but he had not been the first of those who had tried to take advantage of him along the years. Cyril Morse had been the first of a long series.

But this man, Ludo—this friendly acquaintance that Morse had convinced himself he really knew from his College years; this man he so wanted to befriend because they had opera and art as common ground, such a welcome change from the conversations at the nick—had made a fool of him from the very start.

'Ludo, like the game? ' and the laughing reply, 'It's short for Ludovico. But, yes, exactly that' resounded with additional, brutal clarity in his mind, making him cringe. With the benefice of hindsight, it was acutely mocking.

And, as in any other of his mind games, Ludo—Ludovicus—Talenti, the man who seemed to have no name, ostensibly had the upper hand.

Morse's unconscious lingering stare on the faded engraved letters didn't go unnoticed. A contented smile flashed on Ludo's lips, and it took all of Morse's will to master his face in an impassive mask.

'Well, well. What a pleasant surprise,' Ludo smirked, then his sneer widened with jolliness as if he were still welcoming his copper friend with open arms in his Oxford residence. 'How was it to be Morse? Was she to betray me with a kiss?'

Morse didn't answer, his face acquiring a frozen look that didn't stop Talenti's outpouring of false joviality. Without waiting for the answers to his rhetorical questions, he began walking, leaving the foliage of the cypresses behind, and turned right, following the path. On his left, the high wall of the recinto shrouded his silhouette in additional shadows. Recinto V, if Morse's memory served him well.

Warily, Morse followed him, his right hand still clutching the gun buried deep in the pocket of his coat.

When they were about to pass the three-arched gate leading into the neighbouring graveyard, Talenti suddenly checked his progress, turning sideways to look at Morse. 'Twenty-four hours, wasn't that your squalid little bargain?' His voice exuded nonchalant irony, malice peering through. 'Her price for selling me out.'

Suddenly, Morse found his voice. 'What have you done to her?'

'Oh, please. Such drama.' Talenti raised his left hand languidly, designating vaguely the opening, then engulfed it deftly into his coat pocket. 'Fear not, she'll be along. We wouldn't want her to miss the end.'

'This is the end. I'm here to take you in.'

The assertion sounded steadier than he truly felt, Morse briefly noted with inner satisfaction.

If only he had not gone on a desperate, private endeavour, throwing himself to the wolves. He had taken precautions enough, he felt, but still he had ignored the question of whether or not the Polizia would back him up when it was truly over. So it was with commendable cheek that he answered Talenti's scathing 'Aren't you forgetting something? We are beyond your jurisdiction,' with a snappy 'you can tell that to the Italian police while I'm organising your extradition.'

Nonetheless, he had been putting the cart before the horse; Morse knew it well. Extradition meant an official request from the Embassy, followed by an order to an Italian magistrate, then an Italian arrest warrant. Still, his only hope of catching the Talentis was Violetta's routine of her New Year's Eve Opera evening at La Fenice, and time had been of the essence.

Ludo's ebullient laugh burst forth, disrupting Morse's thoughts, and grating on his nerves. Nerves further stretched by Talenti denying any criminal designs, claiming a 'spotless conscience,' and shoving the blame onto his 'glamorous assistant.'

Another lazy shrug, and then he added theatrically, 'We all have our entrances and our exits, Morse. Our parts to play.'

He even had the gall to misquote Shakespeare, Morse sneered internally.

'—Even you,' went on Ludo, with barely hidden contempt.

The rigid mask affixed on Morse's face was beginning to burn from the inside, as if acid were corroding his features under this frail protection, shrivelling his flesh into a parody of face. He could not help recoiling, then ask what was his part, even as he knew he was playing into Ludo's hands.

Eyelids lowered over his scorn, Ludo said, 'You were my useful idiot. My pet policeman.'

'Right, enough, enough!'

Vehemence tore Morse's mask away and he almost felt it dropping at his feet, baring his fury for Talenti to see. Control, he had to keep control.

Without seeming to acknowledge the copper's reaction, Talenti advanced a little, checking his progress when he was exactly in front of the archway. He looked over his shoulder. 'Do you want to see her alive again, or don't you?'

Taking Morse's answer for granted, he climbed the few steps leading to the neighbouring graveyard. His profile stood out on the backdrop of the white faraway chapel set in the centre of the recinto, while he boasted garrulously, 'I gave them a chance. All of them. If the glazier had maintained his pulley... If Aspen had taken better care of his ladder…'

As he explained how he had given a 50-50 chance for life to Mrs. Bright, Morse's brain almost shut out the invasive words, while another part of him kept close tabs of the sentences. His concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of a bell.

Ludo's head angled towards the sound. 'Oh, they're closing the cemetery.' A few seconds went by as the sound of the chimes were carried over by the faint, icy breeze. 'And there we are, right on cue,' he announced.

Morse followed the movement of Ludo's gaze and suddenly beheld her.

An involuntary 'Violetta?' passed faintly through his lips.

She wasn't even following the paths, but made her sinuous way across the graves, in a curiously assured walk. In the incoming dusk, her white dress seeming even paler in contrast to her dark coat, she looked like the heroine of some half-forgotten Gothic tale—some epigone of The Mysteries of Udolfo, or better yet, a designed victim in Bram Stoker's novel.

'Had she needed to take a shortcut through the burial ground to keep the assigned hour, or was it another derisive, theatrical touch?' Morse wondered, but his annoyance soon gave way as, for a second, he stood transfixed, watching the smooth pleats of her dress sliding over her thigs and the rhythmical flapping of her fur coat over her leather boots. Violetta slowly climbed up the steps and stopped in front of them, her eyes hooded by heavy lids whose blue tinge could be construed as much to tiredness as to skilful makeup.

'You really don't have a clue, do you?' Talenti's voice shattered the spell, his airy voice lowering as for a confidence. 'She's a fraud, Morse. Every word she's ever told you was a lie.'

Morse cast a quick look at Violetta. Her face betrayed nothing— a closed mouth and unfocused eyes set in a beautiful face gone bland. His gaze went back to Talenti, who was advertising his goods like a fair barker.

'—When I found her, she was 15, living barefoot on the backstreets of Naples. I've given her the world.' He shrugged with studied regret. 'You don't even know her real name.'

Then, in a gesture so swift that Morse almost didn't see it coming, Ludo grabbed Violetta by the throat and brought his other hand, now adorned with a gun, over her temple.

The wax doll suddenly came to life, her mouth shaping a contorted 'O.' Frantically, her hands rose to her throat, trying to dislodge her husband's. In vain.

There was no trace of levity in Talenti's voice now. 'Put the gun down, Morse. On the floor.'

The service gun was icy in Morse's hand; the blood coursing through his finger on the trigger, the only pulsating part of his body. He had gone so cold he didn't feel his body anymore.

Violetta's face distorted further, her features almost running together, blending her beauty into a mass of quivering flesh as the gun pressed against her bare throat. Then, with a tiny gasp, she ceased to struggle and froze, her heavy breathing syncopated and loud, splicing the silence into shattered seconds.

'Put it down,' Ludo reiterated in a dulcet tone.

'You won't do it.'

A bet. A hope. Nonetheless, the gun in Morse's hand kept his aim unwaveringly.

'Once, perhaps, you would have been right.' Ludo inhaled sharply, then bared his teeth, snarling, 'You were meant to be my creature, not hers.' The non-smile turned even more feral. 'And then you went and spoiled it all, didn't you, my darling?'

The hand holding the gun drove it harder against her flesh and she cried out, a pitiful outcry.

So, not so much 'his useful idiot,' was he? The thought came and went, too fast for Morse to feel any satisfaction.

'Put—the gun—down.' Above Violetta's pasty face, Talenti's eyes were pool of sharp-flinted obsidian, his teeth catching what remained of the light.

'Please...' Violetta breathed.

She was never to know it, but it was her assumption that Morse had cast her off so utterly that her life had become meaningless which undid him.

'All right.'

Morse's hand flipped the gun, its muzzle upturned towards the mock Gothic arch. Slowly he raised his other hand, keeping them both away from his body. His lips thinned and stretched, but the muscular twitch stopped before his teeth showed, in an unconscious mirroring of Talenti's expression.

'All right.'

He extended one hand half-imploringly, as he lowered the gun to knee level with the other, before flexing his knees and depositing it on the floor. Arms still positioned as unthreateningly as he could, he slowly straightened again, palms up.

'Just let her go.' At the last moment, he swallowed the 'please' hovering on his lips.

With a shove propelling her forward, Talenti released his wife.

Violetta stumbled on the uneven floor, and Morse had to refrain a conditioned reflex to help her find her balance. However, she nimbly crouched at his feet, fetching, and carrying his gun back to Ludo; her eager gaze seeking her husband's approval, her hand pressed ardently on the lapel of his fawn coat. But he took no notice of her, his own gun still strained at Morse's chest.

Rooted in the same place, Morse tightened his lips in a bitter line, his widening eyes burning in his effort not to see what they were staring at. His rigid shoulders ached from the strain of keeping his flexed arms as motionless and as unthreatening as possible.

'Come on, if we're going to get the last boat,' Violetta said beseechingly; but Ludo paid no heed. 'I should have done for you in England, but she convinced me that a dead policeman wasn't in our best interests,' he said with clenched teeth, his eyes boring into Morse's.

'You said we were going to let him go. It was just a warning,' Violetta insisted. 'That was the promise. That was the plan.'

Ludo nodded then, and slowly backed away from Morse. Without a word, he turned and went down the four steps, back into the alley. Still framed between the Gothic style pillars, Violetta watched him go with a dolorous smile reminiscent of a Giotto pietà, then she turned eyes scintillating with unshed tears towards Morse. He gestured with his chin, pointing towards Talenti, his eyes asking the question he couldn't utter aloud.

But the answer he got came from another party.

'Plans change,' uttered Ludo's voice. He had climbed back the steps, silent as a cat. Morse had been so focused on Violetta's face that he never saw him move.

He never clearly saw him squeeze the trigger either.

The sound of gunshot was followed in quick succession by a shriek of fear and loss in a female voice, and another one, masculine this time—his own, Morse absently noted—, calling out a woman's name.

For one infinite second, Violetta's body spun around, lurching, her arms akimbo, her broken dancing choregraphed by a cruel instructor, then she collapsed in a graceless heap, the sound of her fall muffled by the fur coat spread out on the pavement.

There was another gunshot.

Following the direction of the sound, Morse glimpsed the hand firing that gun—Thursday's. The DCI was standing behind Talenti, among the graves in Campo 'N,' half-shielded by a cypress. Such was the familiarity of his silhouette that Morse wasn't even remotely surprised.

Successive shots exploded in Morse's ears, preceded and followed by hurried footsteps. Snatches of sounds drew farther away, and fleetingly Morse realised that, not once, he had really cared about his own safety. Something like a heavy velvet curtain had dropped and cut him off from these theatricals.

Still inhabiting that weird unreality, he fell on his knees by Violetta's side, his unsteady hand hovering over her face, brushing her hair away from her temples. Her eyes were already looking at him from far away.

'I'm sorry,' she gasped painfully. 'I'm so sorry...' The corners of her mouth spasmed.

He shushed her then. With a conscious effort born from pity, he folded himself closer to her, supporting her head in the crook of his arm.

'I've done terrible things,' Violetta rasped, and in her voice ricocheted echoes of undecipherable horrors.

'It doesn't matter,' Morse managed to lie. 'Nothing matters.'

No, nothing. Nothing but the next few minutes.

'It was true—us—always,' she added with another effort that tore at her throat and at his heart alike, and shattered at long last the hard-won indifference Morse believed was his unbreakable armour.

He didn't know what to answer that wouldn't be a denial, a too tardy question, or a well-meant lie, so nothing went through the barrier of his teeth. Her breathing grew even more laboured and Morse bent closer, shielding her from the forbidding darkness.

'Ti amo,' she murmured so feebly that he had to strain his ears to hear the syllables.

He had not even the time to ponder if her ultimate deathbed confession was another way to extort his forgiveness—a forgiveness that he had denied her from the start. A forgiveness that it wasn't in his power to bestow.

Her head fell back, and, abruptly, the fragrant weight was a burden, her pliant body took a sudden stiffness—one he knew came more from his perception than from the reality of the human shape lying in his arms.

Without entirely letting her go, Morse opened his coat and she-who-would-always-be-Violetta nestled for the last time on the whiteness of his shirt, her waning warmth barely supplied by Morse's own. Shutting his eyes, he closed his arms around her, his cheek pressed against her hair, feeling the lithe form he embraced so many times yield to his bidding without any giggles or amorous demands.

Gone were her evasions. Forever silenced was her fear. Only a shell remained.

And he never even knew her name.

Damnatio memorie at its most effective.

'Animula vagula, blandula,' he couldn't help whispering under his breath, his voice quavering as he singsonged the verses, attentive to their inner rhythm, 'Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nuduia, Nec ut soles, dabis jocos.'

It was cold now, bitterly cold, but Morse didn't move except to tighten his hold on Violetta. Her head lolled about on his chest, and unbidden, wisps of her hair caught on the rougher fabric of his coat, letting go a last whiff of her perfume.

Only then, slowly, carefully, as if a too hasty gesture could disturb her slumber, did Morse lower her on the hard stone-paved floor and brush a feathery hand over her eyes, shutting away riddles and last pleas behind their sightless depths.

As he shifted mechanically on his toe, preparing to raise from his crouch, he became aware of another sentinel. He looked further up above his shoulder, his eyes meeting a stoic motionless shape. Thursday was standing in the shadows, his trilby pushed over his eyes providing additional shade, his eyes undecipherable.

Not that Morse ever tried to. He knew full well what he'd find.

Inflexibility as obdurate as the man who stiffly stood in the corridor of the nick, saying 'If you had your mind on the job and not this flighty piece, you might not be in such a mess.'

Judgment as severe as Don Alfonso's eyes in La Sposa del Demonio, ossia la Cura dell'Amore—Violetta's last operatic outing; Violetta's first lie, maybe.

Those same eyes shocked him fully back to consciousness of his surroundings, and Morse rose slowly, his stiffened limbs aching as much from the cold as from despair, his rigid neck heavy for bearing the weight of his faults.

'Sir?' Morse's voice said. It was strangely metallic and toneless, all his mellifluous tones obviously spent in that last bout of quoting.

'Alright, are you?'

'He missed me, if that's what you're asking.'

Morse's hands, as from their own volition, raised and buttoned up his coat, barely stopping when they encountered a new warm stain crimsoning the cotton of his shirt beneath his opened jacket. Then they busied themselves pulling up his collar closer to his neck.

When he was done, Thursday proffered his hand, and Morse reached out automatically. His own gun felt heavy in his palm, and he peered at it with puzzled eyes.

'Talenti dropped it,' Thursday curtly stated. 'Before he fell into the water. Didn't come up again.'

'At least, the Old Man's record won't be tainted from shooting a man abroad,' Morse though with no small amount of relief.

He nodded, looked at his service gun pensively, then as if taking a sudden decision, he opened the barrel, took out the bullets and offered them to Thursday. 'You might as well take them.'

His gaze travelled lower, resting on the motionless form, her white dress a grotesquely pale flame eating at the pavement's shadows. A tremor shook him, and the bullets came dangerously close to falling on the stairs.

His lips tightening, Thursday put them away into his coat pocket, then, out of the other one, took out a handkerchief that he placed on Violetta's face. Rigor mortis had not yet settled in and gone, but the face looking up at them was already eerie in its pathetic fixity. With a jerk, Morse turned his back on her, his shoulders rigid.

'The gate is locked up, I presume.'

'Probably.' Thursday's voice was as gruffly nonsensical as his former bagman's. 'Cemetery closed—' he looked at his watch, and went on with some surprise, '—half an hour ago.'

'Talenti?'

'Won't be buying insurance anymore.'

At that lapidary statement, Morse's shoulders relaxed briefly.

'What now?'

'That's up to the Police—local police. And an ambulance job.' Thursday walked a few steps away, sat down on the stairs, then out of habit, took out pipe and tobacco pouch out of his pocket. He cast a puzzled look at the result of his fumbling and put the tobacco back. 'Might speed up the process if you go to the monastery. Someone's probably still at the portineria.'

Morse threw him a suspicious look, met with a mild, disinterested one. Thursday resumed looking at his pipe, and, after an uncertain pause, Morse slowly walked out in the suggested direction.

He didn't have to turn his head to see Thursday's shoulders relax against the cold pillars that supported the archway.

If the Old Man couldn't stand his presence anymore, he couldn't well blame him. He couldn't stand himself either.

All he now wished was to get it all over with, and do away with this pathetic excuse of a man called Endeavour Morse. Getting sloshed had never felt more appealing.

Apart from the sound of his feet, the silence was deafening. There might not be anyone else on the island other than the weight of centuries, a ghost or two, a body lying on the pavement, and two British coppers sadly out of their jurisdiction.

Morse hoped it weren't so.

Not by fear of ghosts—immaterial and unproven presences were nothing to him, and nothing at all, really—but they couldn't well leave the place littered with corpses. Even if 'littered' was much too exaggerated a cliché. His own private tragedy was nothing like an Elizabethan play, and in this pitiful opera-like finale only two of the protagonists had ended up pleading Charon for free passage.

However, with the night falling, it was beginning to feel even colder, and he didn't relish spending the night in the open when the wind had picked up additional strength, piercing his coat with multitudinous icy darts and squeezing his neck with frosty fingers. Fleetingly, he wondered where he had misplaced the scarf Monica once gave him, before shrugging away the extraneous thought.

Morse walked briskly, until the vaguely oriental shape of the Church tower loomed on the nearest horizon. He had only to follow the path leading to the three-sides cloister before entering the neighbouring one, more secluded and peaceful, adjoining the church.

He had not long to wait before he encountered another human being.

A wiry man, muffled inside a bulky coat, gestured impatiently at him from the opposite arcade, probably thinking him a late, distracted mourner. The hand waiving at Morse from between the Romanesque pillars prompted a quick, mirroring answer, and Morse, stepping quickly over the low wall, crossed the quadrangle. He reached into his jacket pocket. In so doing, he opened his coat and remembered too late, seeing the older man's startled recoil, that his shirt was soiled with Violetta's blood.

'Sono un poliziotto britannico,' Morse said. 'C'è stato—' He hesitated, searching for the right words, then decided to blurt out the real state of affairs. Police couldn't come fast enough, anyway. 'Qui c'è stato un omicidio. (There has been a murder here.)'

He waived his warrant card in the face of the flabbergasted middle-aged man, who retreated one step further, but kept craning his neck to see it better. That sight didn't seem to soften his apprehension, as his squinting eyes fought with a parse, slanted light, distributed through the enclosure.

'Inglese?' he queried in a worried voice.

'Sì.' Morse swallowed and added helpfully, 'Il corpo è vicino alla porta del quinto recinto. (The body is close to the door of the fifth recinto.)'

If it were even possible, the man's face grew more alarmed. His retreating gained speed, and Morse had to flung at him urgently in Italian, 'There's another English policeman with it. Tell the Police to come quickly!'

The man reached the end of the open gallery. Before he disappeared through a door, Morse added urgently, 'Don't forget the ambulance!' wondering what form it would take in this city built on water.

No doubt they were used to have bodies brought to them, in this Island of the Dead, not carried away to the mainland.

Minutes went by, made only slower by uncertainty. The graceful enclosure cut off the wind, a welcome respite from that unrelenting, slow undermining of strength. Morse wondered how Thursday fared. No doubt, he had found shelter under the doorway, in one of the side recesses. Another offence the older man would have no reason to feel grateful for.

Morse began to walk nervously back and forth to keep his blood from freezing, doggedly tightening his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

Under his feet, prestigious dead, their names now long forgotten, slumbered on. The names engraved on the slabs affixed on the floor were now quite undecipherable, he was finding out, when the sound of footsteps made him raise his head from his half-focused attempts to read the Latin names.

A Franciscan brother was hastening towards him, hailing him in surprising good English. A few wrinkles in the corner of his eyes highlighted their strangely luminous green that even the shadows could not entirely mute, and the deep marking around his mouth could only have been etched by deep sorrow or frequent laughter. But now, only solemnity was spread over his features as he stopped in front of Morse.

'Good evening, Brother,' Morse replied. He might not have kept his surprise out of his voice, as the man replied. 'Once, I was a Cambridge man, but now I'm Fratello Anselmo.'

Morse declined his identity, reiterating the facts and keeping his tale short. A criminal, wanted in England, had shot his accomplice before fleeing. He had fallen into the Laguna.

'Ha!' commented the monk. 'I infer he fell near recinto VII? The currents are—You might not recover him.'

A shiver he couldn't master shook Morse's frame. The brother cast a wise glance at him. 'Are you sure you don't want to step into the portineria for a while?'

'No, thank you. I must…' A wave of the hand encompassed it all: duty, pain, guilt, building distress.

Somehow, Brother Anselmo seemed to sense it all. He nodded. 'Then, if you care for it, we'll bring you both some hot coffee, before the Police come. It may take a while before they do.' He flashed a small smile tinged with forbearance. 'Yesterday was New Year's Day, you know.'

'Grazie mille,' Morse said, remembering his frozen body as something infinitely distant and unreal, and thinking about the Old Man stoically standing vigil by Violetta's side.

'And I'll be there when they arrive,' Brother Anselmo stated quietly. 'Matteo was a little—how could we say—flustered by it all.' Again, the slight deprecating smile made a fleeting appearance.

'I understand,' Morse said, hard put not to cross his arms over the too-telling stain, even thought it was safely hidden from sigh by jacket and coat.

They exchanged a few words after that, and then the conversation was at an end, both men going their separate ways.

Slowly, Morse retraced his steps—passing under the same arches, treading over the same memorial tablets, and, in the same empty alleys, passing by the same crosses casting faint shadows created by an indifferent moon.

Even if those featured prominently in his paintings, Caspar David Friedrich wouldn't have approved of the setting. The gloomy scene was too squarely laid out—a testimony of the rational command coming from Napoleon when he had decreed all Venetians would from now on buried in the island, for sanitary reasons.

Indeed, the plan was too squared, like a weird Roman town, built around Cardo Maximus and Decumanus. What a contrast with the twisting streets of the City of the Living on the opposite shore! Not the backdrop Morse had imagined for his last meeting with the Talentis.

When he reached Campo 'N,' he couldn't help wondering if his errant steps trod the very same earth and rarefied grass that Violetta's feet had brushed, not so long ago. Angrily, he shook his head to dispel the memory, but her last entrance couldn't be erased so easily.

Thursday was at the same place, frozen in the same position, it would seem, his unlit pipe still nestled in his unmoving hands.

'They're coming,' announced Morse. 'The concierge is calling the Police, and the brothers will send us some coffee.' It was on the tip of his tongue; he wavered, but finally didn't mention the offer of shelter in the portineria, feeling that Thursday might take his consideration for a veiled insult.

Thursday mumbled an assent, and stiffly got up from his remote seating. He drew level with Morse, who stood a few feet apart, eyes strained on anything but the broken thing lying sheltered under the arches.

"What were you thinking?' he roared in a low voice.

Glad to find an outlet for his pent-up feelings, Morse grabbed at the sentence, hurling it back with relish. 'What was I thinking?'

Without pausing to dissect the parroting of his question, the DCI went on: 'Going off on your own, without any official warrant or—' The hand holding the pipe swept up in an almost perfect arc. His tone went from disgusted surprise to reproof. 'Arresting them on your own? Away from your turf? Taking off with your service gun? Completely off your rocker, are you?'

The last reproof was countered with a sentence flung out with a snarl; however, it didn't stop the flood of the Old Man's recriminations.

'What were you thinking?' he insisted. This time, the question sprang forth with a strength born of fury and disbelief.

Morse said stiffly, 'I had to. Who would have—'

He was fated not to find the space for explanation before his former Governor got it off his chest, as Thursday bellowed, with additional heat, 'Couldn't leave us time to build up the case?'

'What case? There was no case, remember?'

Morse's hand went to the nape of his neck and tussled his hair vigorously. He turned to face Thursday in a smooth movement, keeping his gaze up so it wouldn't fall inadvertently on his latest guilt. 'Weren't you adamant there was no investigation to make?'

Thursday's lips stretched in an ugly line, the lines around his eyes creasing deeper. 'There was, obviously. You gathered interesting evidence, at least. And Strange—'

'So Strange is to be believed when I—'

'—Strange,' repeated Thursday stubbornly, 'gave us all the details that you didn't see fit to explain in your letter. Mr. Bright, whom I called as soon as I got your file, took all the necessary steps. Things were rolling when I left by the boat train.' He heaved a deep sigh. 'So, for the last time, what were you thinking?'

Morse made an aborted gesture, suddenly deflating. He seemed to shrink within himself. Without his anger, he felt suddenly bereft and cold. 'I had no choice. Talenti used me for a fool. Or so he thought.'

'Not the only one.'

'What?' Whatever Morse expected, it wasn't this. 'What do you mean?'

'Talenti had a few—'

'—dupes?'

'—coppers in his sleeve, using them to get to the main cases at the nicks.'

'Leicester, Uttoxeter, Dover, Oxford?'

'No. Not Uttoxeter. Not yet. But Talenti tried to.'

They relapsed into uneasy silence, carefully avoiding to glare at each other. Thursday put his hands in his pocket, and stared at his feet.

Morse's eyes fell on a cypress, the portion of a wall, a cross—all shaped like cardboard cuttings by the moon glacial lighting. Anything but the DCI or his shadow. Now that Thursday's irritated voice wasn't pressing upon him, he could reflect on that irritating question.

Had he been so naive as to believe that he might force Talenti—at gun point of all things!—to confess, then meekly follow him to the nearest Police station?

Morse had to admit he did not. Nor was he so green that he overlooked that the process of extradition was a time-consuming, difficult pursuit; a bloody administrative monster fed with paperwork and evidence galore.

In his heart of hearts, he knew that the impulse that had made him travel hastily through half the Continent was to prove—to himself, to Thursday; to Talenti, most of all—that he wasn't the fool some took him for, that his intellect was still effective, that the 'little bit of finesse' he had so boasted about was still his to master.

He had wanted to assuage himself and to redeem himself.

It was pride, pure and simple.

And it was also his downfall.

He had no great expectations to get out of it alive, as he had hinted in his letter. Now he could at last admit it. No official backup, no real support from the Italian Police force, no writ that allowed him to make an arrest on foreign soil. How could he hope to succeed, armed only with logic, rightful outrage, and naked truth?

Fatum only knew how he had managed to get his gun through Customs! The retort—'events so strange that even a novelist would be hard put to write them!'—that he had snapped back to Thursday a few minutes ago didn't even begin to describe them.

Bruised pride. That's what it was.

And guilt.

Guilt that, by his involuntary endorsing of Ludo's shenanigans, he had been made an accessory before the facts, besides being sent to slaughter like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft by his alleged friend.

Both men relapsed into silence, not even trusting their eyes to keep mute. They kept them carefully focused on innocuous objects, relieved to direct them on their cups of coffee and the insulated bottle brought by a small, wiry man.

Not Matteo, Morse saw, but a younger man who kept casting glances at Violetta's legs—especially at the knee left uncovered by her fall—, when he gave them the promised hot beverage, with the compliments of Fratello Anselmo. When he left, Morse hastily reached out and drew the pleated silk carefully over Violetta's calves, as Thursday took pains to look the other way.

Time stretched once more, stilted seconds following seconds seemingly stuck in a flow of encompassing awfulness.

Morse leaned on the wall and kept his eyes shut against the night, willing seconds to flow faster. He lost the counts of them, merely concentrating on the heaving of his chest, on the blood pumping through his veins, thumping in his ears, willing the heat of the coffee passing through his throat to imbue his congealed arteries.

How far away was the liberation of flowing through minutes steered by music, closing one's eyes while being swept away by arias ruthlessly organised under a chef's baton! There was nothing pleasurable, clear-cut or even logical here; merely uncertainty, blunder, and grisly death. Time going to waste.

Slivers of sounds penetrated the fog in his mind, and he pushed against the wall to right himself, getting painfully away from the icy prop keeping him on his feet. Whether from wilful self-punishment or a belated feeling of propriety, he had once more disdained to sit on the steps next to Thursday and chosen instead to stand solitary on the pathway, his face turned in the direction of the nearest shore, showing his back to the corpse.

Regular crunching sounds caught his attention again, resonating doubly in the encompassing silence. Sand and pebbles under several pairs of feet.

Morse turned slowly towards Campo 'N,' his gesture mirrored by Thursday who had risen from his uncomfortable seat. With a pang, Morse noticed that the latter's movements were stiffer, and it was only when his mind dwelt on his Governor's clumsiness that his own slight limp entered his conscience, as he took an instinctive step forward. Suddenly, the icy damp became all the more unnerving.

'They're coming,' Thursday said unnecessarily.

'Yes.'

When he walked in the direction of the swelling sounds, now startlingly closer, a tiny shock of pain shook Morse to full consciousness again; so it wasn't the coffee provided by the Franciscan brothers or the stinging agony of his debacle that fuelled him with energy sufficient to conceal how thoroughly he felt defeated. Eyes strained, he spotted the Italian Policemen between the tombs—their uniforms unfamiliar except for the occasional chance meeting in the streets of Venice; the Italian language reduced to surges of sounds, both familiar sounding and utterly baffling in their lilts and sharp silences.

The earth suddenly seemed to surge under his feet, and he had to close his fingers upon his other hand to find a precarious balance and keep from falling.

Morse didn't make another gesture until he had to introduce himself and answer the curt questions asked by a harassed officer not much older than him. Afterwards, he stood motionless and apart from the group performing the gestures he had seen done a thousand times before in his native country, watching Thursday speak in low tones with the officer in charge.

Minutes flowed by; faster, faster, this time. Additional darkness slowly surrounded the graves, threatening to pull Morse under—darkness punctured by luminous shafts from the torches. From this encroaching night, surged a voice—coming from the officer who had requested his identity—saying in a somewhat tentative English, 'Vice Questore (Chief Superintendent) Colavita give regard to you, and asks if you meet him tonight.'

'I will,' replied Thursday, with no outward surprise.

Morse looked at him sharply, brow furrowing, but he kept his own council. He took some additional steps away, away from the bustle of activity surrounding Viol—the woman who had called herself Violetta.

Finally, a folding stretcher bearing a form shrouded in white was taken along the path. Morse turned his back on that, too.

He blinked hard, once, twice, and came out of a fever of forgetfulness, having sleepwalked all the way back to the entrance of the cloister—finding himself under the Gothic door topped with a statue of Archangel Saint Michael trampling on a pitifully tiny dragon while holding scales in one hand and a spear in the other one.

As he was about to follow Thursday on the quay and step into the Police speedboat, Morse could not help glancing back at the immaculate sculpture adorning the tympanum. Shrouded in shadow, the scales and spear cast in black iron were now invisible, leaving the winged champion woefully bereft of weapon and unable to met out judgment—a sad, solitary figure mocking the hopes lingering in the human mutely considering it.

The irony wasn't lost on an unappreciative audience.

Justice. Retribution. Empty words, the kind one bandied about to inflate one's importance.

'The dead deserve justice,' Morse had once told the Talentis. But he hadn't been able to bring even that to the dead mouths that cried out for justice. Or to find uneasy peace by bringing retribution to those who deserved it.

Shoulders bowing under the stone archangel's glare, Morse jumped onboard. The boat rocked under his weight, then swiftly settled along the usual ebb and flow of the choppy waves. Meekly, Morse sat down next to Thursday, straining to keep away from his bulk by squeezing against the side.

Ahead was the time for reckoning.

His.

Notes

I needed some sort of closure at the end of 'Zenana,' so I wrote this fic, as we may go forward to 1971 with many questions still pending… I loved the ending of the episode and the parallels between opera and real-life drama, but I wished to stretch my writing by imagining how it might have gone if the events unfolded in the real-life San Michele Cemetery. Hence the rewriting of the last scenes.

When I rewrote the ending of Zenana, I used the topography of the actual place, so it's somehow different from what we saw in the episode.

For historical reasons –most of the remaining cemetery of San Michele was built in the 1800s—I changed the dates on Ludovicus Talenti's epitaph, even though it is supposed to document Lodovico Talenti's grave: he was vicar of the San Giovanni Crisostomo Church in Venice.

Morse quotes a Latin poem. Roman emperor Hadrian's supposedly uttered these verses on his deathbed. Translations are available online.

According to The Venice Insider blog, the Franciscan brothers left the monastery in 2008. I made use of this info in the story.

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