The Alchemist's Pursuit (16 page)

“No offense taken,” I said. I quite liked Jacopo. His bitterness was understandable. Nobility is passed on by the father and he had as much Michiel blood as the others, but he had grown up in
their
palace, destined to be
their
servant.

“Although perhaps your guardian angel is watching over you,” he added, as we stepped out to the loggia and the
riva
beyond. His voice had changed and a slight sneer lurked under his beard. A man in the black robes and tippet of a noble was just about to embark in a gondola whose boatmen wore the family colors. He was clearly waiting for us, and Jacopo led me over to him between the passing porters and pedestrians. “
Sier
Alfeo—
sier
Domenico.”

I exchanged bows with Brother Number Two. It was fairly easy to deduce that either his brother or his wife had informed him of the Nostradamus snake in the household grass. Donna Alina had taken care to proclaim the news of my presence, for some reason I did not yet know.

Jacopo played out the charade. “
Sier
Alfeo is just leaving and would no doubt appreciate a ride home, if it does not take you too far out of your way.”

Domenico was in his thirties, a slighter, lighter Michiel, forged more in the tall, slender form of his mother than cast in the imposing mold of the Bernardo and Jacopo. He had a hook nose, a quiet voice, and a cryptic, sphingine smile.

“Of course. San Remo? It would be my pleasure.”

“My honor and my debt,” I said.

Rose water was not the only scent floating around the Palazzo Michiel. The place reeked also of conspiracy. I assumed that I would now be interrogated on what donna Alina had wanted and instructed on how she had misinformed me.

Domenico boarded first and handed me aboard, insisting I sit on the lefthand side of the
felze
, the place of honor, although that did not mean much in this case, because it is easier to direct the boat from that side when there are two boatmen, and I was the one who would name our stopping place. As we glided away from the watersteps, I murmured some platitude about kindness.

“Nonsense,” Domenico said dryly. “I just wanted to have a word with you. Jacopo is not a very proficient thespian, is he?”

Set a trap and then expose it yourself? Domenico surprised me. There was something slithery about him, though.

“He is still young enough to learn from a good teacher,” I said. “How may I assist you,
clarissimo
?”

He showed his lower teeth when he smiled, which is rare in a young man. “Tell me what you were up to with my mother, of course. Or rather what she wants from you. She is sometimes not very practical. My brother is worried . . . Let me start at the beginning. Our father's terrible death was a shattering experience for all of us, of course, but especially for Alina, for she was with him when it happened. The whole city cried out in horror when it heard the news, but she was there! Then, just days later, Zorzi's flight made it all doubly, triply worse. He had always been her favorite. She has never admitted that he was guilty.”

“Was he?” I murmured.

“Who knows?” Domenico said, surprising me again. “Zorzi was taller than I am and she always insisted that the man who elbowed her aside was not tall. That was all she recalled of the killer—that he was no more than average height. But the Ten had to find a culprit quickly and Zorzi ran away. Run from hounds and they will chase you.” Again that curious smile invited confidence.

“Is he still alive?”

“Of course not!”

That made three surprises and I was starting to feel out-gunned. The family financier had let slip that he knew what parish I lived in, and therefore had most likely seen the letter I brought, but he was coming across as smarter than Bernardo, the family politician, or even the family flunky, who was sharp enough in spite of his lack of theatrical expertise. Perhaps Domenico's soft voice excluded him from politics, for it takes powerful lungs to be heard the whole length of the Great Council's chamber.

“The Ten put a price on his head,” he said. “A thousand ducats? A fortune! Were I a gambling man, I should bet that it was less than a month before some bravo turned up at the palace with my brother's head pickled in wine or brine to claim the reward. The Ten never tell.”

His face radiated sincerity as he said all this. The man was a master, and I was glad not to be buying real estate from him.

“Then the letters your mother receives are all fakes?”

He could not have known beforehand that I had been told about the letters, yet he never hesitated.

“Of course. She was still in shock from the murder when her son was convicted of patricide; we all feared she would go out of her mind and harm herself. Eventually my wife, Isabetta, and I concocted a letter to console her. We decided to risk this deception, knowing that if Alina saw through it, it would be taken as betrayal and make matters even worse. Zorzi and I had always had similar handwriting and my forgery turned out to be good enough. That letter saved my mother's sanity,
sier
Alfeo! Perhaps it was a reprehensible conspiracy, but I have no regrets. Ever since then we have supplied a new episode of the drama every few months. We led our phantom brother through several adventures. At present he is a senior aide to the Duke of Savoy, and anxiously awaiting the birth of his second child. Is this a sin?”

Who was I to be his spiritual advisor? “That may depend on whether your brother is alive,
clarissimo
. Have any genuine letters turned up?”

Domenico studied me for a moment, as if adjusting his evaluation of a property. The roof is collapsing, but the stables are adequate . . .

“None that I know of. Would you really expect the Council of Ten to allow such a letter to arrive? The Ten watch every piece of mail entering the Republic. Their agents would backtrack it to its source. My brother Zorzi is long dead,
sier
Alfeo, may the Lord have mercy on his soul.”

“Amen,” I said. We were making fast time along the Grand Canal and would be at San Remo in a few moments. It was time to counterattack. “And now you and
sier
Bernardo are worried that donna Alina will fall into the hands of a charlatan clairvoyant, who will milk her of thousands of ducats by preying on her obsession to prove her son's innocence?”

He smiled, snakily. “You put it in starker terms than I would.”

“Maestro Nostradamus is not a grifter,” I said, even more cold-bloodedly, “but is aware of the dangers of being considered one. If he undertakes to prove your brother's innocence,
clarissimo
, then he will expect payment only after he has done so. If your brother was in fact guilty, then you will owe him nothing. Suppose he was innocent—then who did kill your father?”

Silence. The oars creaked in the oarlocks. Passing gondoliers yodeled their strange calls. We turned into Rio San Remo. My companion stared at our bow post, or perhaps the forward boatman's legs, saying nothing.

“Messer?”
I queried eventually.

Domenico shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea,
sier
Alfeo. Nobody I know or can think of. My first thought when I heard the news was that Zorzi had committed that terrible, dreadful crime. I kept my opinion to myself, of course, but I never doubted that he was guilty, neither then nor later.”

I said, “The next watergate on the right, boatman. I do thank you for the ride,
clarissimo
.”

“It has been a great pleasure,
sier
Alfeo.”

We smiled like fighters ending the first round of a long contest.

D
usk was falling, Carnival would soon resume in earnest. In Ca' Barbolano I ran up the forty-eight steps and let myself in. I found Fulgentio already there, coaching the twins in fencing under their mother's disapproving eye.

“Be with you in a moment,” I shouted, and slipped into the atelier to report. The Maestro was at the desk, working on a horoscope that he would normally have me do, which was enough annoyance to justify his disagreeable scowl. He needed more light, but the fact that he had been moving around at all was encouraging.

“Progress!” I said as I hurried to the mantelpiece to fetch a couple of lamps. “The formidable donna Alina has been receiving letters from Zorzi for years, except that they're fakes done by Domenico. Bernardo may be in on the hoax, but I'm not sure of that. Timoteo is Friar Fedele, which confirms a tie between the Gradenigo mystery and Ca' Michiel.”

I laid the lamps on the desk, backed off a couple of paces, and lit them both with the Word.

“There's another son, illegitimate, aged about nineteen or twenty, goes by the name of Jacopo Fauro and acts as stableboy to the lioness. Alina-the-terrible Orio wants to hire you to prove that Zorzi did not murder his father.”

“So your afternoon was not completely wasted.” Nostradamus had listened with one finger marking his place in the ephemeris and his pen poised in his other hand. Now he dipped the quill in the inkwell and went back to work. “Go and eat or do something useful.”

“Will you take the lady's contract?”

“Of course,” he muttered, scribbling a calculation on a sheet already almost entirely covered with hieroglyphics. “Unless you catch the Strangler tonight.”

There are times I want to strangle him. “And where do I go to do that?”

He looked up furiously. “
Damnātio!
I told you! I told you he would kill again after the Sabbath and I told you where! Are you all idiots? You and that Trau boy and Giorgio—you're the natives. I'm foreign born. You eat my salt and pocket my gold. You work it out. Go and get him, preferably alive, but kill him if you must.”

I left before I did strangle him. At the same time, I sympathized. If Fulgentio and I did not decipher the quatrain in time, tomorrow would bring word of another woman murdered somewhere and we should all curse ourselves, because the answer to the riddle would then be blindingly obvious.

I went to my room to fetch my sword and Fulgentio followed me in, closing the door. He tossed his foil and mask on my bed, to lie alongside a mysterious bundle. He was grinning like a child, as if we were going off to play hide-and-go-seek for sweetmeats instead of a woman's life. Fulgentio is smart—had he seen what I was missing in the quatrain?

“Had these made up,” he announced, untying the cord around the bundle. “Secret-police costumes.” He held up a pair of cloaks, white on one side and black on the other. “Helps us find each other in the crowd and then sneak up on the Strangler.”

“Sometimes I think you are crazy,” I said, retrieving my sword from the top of the wardrobe, “and other times I know you are.”

“Were I sane, friend, I would find a much more enjoyable companion for tonight.” His amusement was as transmissible as always.

Masks are standard for Carnival, when servants and nobles can mingle on almost equal terms—the poor are still poor and the rich rich, of course—but masks and swords are an illegal combination, so we must keep our rapiers well hidden or risk being arrested by the
sbirri
. Mama tried to drag me bodily into the kitchen to eat, but night was falling and I promised her I would buy something at one of the sausage stands. She shuddered and so did I. I warned her to lock up after us.

Clad in white like ghosts, Fulgentio and I left by the back door and the staircase down to the courtyard. I let us out the gate and locked it behind us. We were on a manhunt where we knew neither our quarry nor his range. It seemed hopeless to me—grass? three saints?

Fulgentio began recounting a complicated story that was making the rounds in the palace, all about the French ambassador's mistress. He kept it going until we reached our first real decision point, where the
calle
reached the
campo
. I hesitated.

He stopped to look at me, raising his torch high. “Not San Marco again, so where?”

I had it!
“Of course San Marco!” I shouted. “Let's go!” Seized by a sudden urgency, I began to run.

“There is no grass in the Piazza!” he complained, running alongside.

“But there is grass in the
campo
!”

“Men have been strangled for much less provocation than . . . Saints preserve me! Of course!”

We came to the great bridge of the Rialto, which was packed with revelers, most of them heading in the same direction we were. A few wore grotesque costumes, but most were merely cloaked and masked. The night was full of torchlight, laughter, and singing, so it was hard to remember that we were on a trail of death. When we reached the far side, the mob split right or straight ahead, rivers of flame bound for the Piazza of San Marco.

We veered to the left and started to run again.

Campo San Zanipolo has the grass we sought, for it is one of the last large
campi
still unpaved. Also, it has the man of blood we sought. We had been concentrating too hard on Honeycat, Erasmo da Narni, and forgetting that there was another famous condottiere in Venetian history, Bartolomeo Colleoni, a greater warrior. My fencing instructor claims him as an ancestor. In his will, Colleoni left money for a statue of him to be set up on the
Piazza
San Marco, in front of the Basilica, but no statues have ever been allowed there. The Senate took the money but cheated and put the statue in front of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, calling that the Campo San Marco, but in fact it is the Campo Zanipolo, outside the Dominicans' church next door. The Republic did not skimp on the statue itself, though, a magnificent Verrocchio equestrian figure high on a plinth, and it is watched over by three saints, because San Zanipolo is actually two, John and Paul, smeared together in
Veneziano
. Grass, three saints, and a man of blood. Carnival was in full tilt when we arrived. Bonfires, music, dancing, drinking, horrible sausages, almost everyone masked, dancing, laughing. There were acrobats and jugglers and men on stilts. The
campo
was packed and somewhere in all that throng, the Strangler might be stalking his next victim.