by Dave Duncan
His oil was not quite as smooth as his father’s. First-name terms so soon in our acquaintance overstepped the bounds.
I said, “Believe me, Pasqual, what he is offering does not sound in the least like real work. Your Excellency, you shall have my answer in a few days, my thanks now, my gratitude forever…” And so on.
Violetta had urged me to come to Ca’ Tirali. Had she known what was in store for me there?
Was I being bribed to overlook a murder?
17
T he senator sent his gondolier along to ferry me home, but I found Giorgio waiting for me down at the watergate. As I dismissed the Tirali man I felt a mad impulse to tip him a few silver ducats for two minutes of his time. The Rome offer was already making my head spin like a windmill.
“No boys?” I asked as I boarded.
“They’re on some errand for the Maestro,” Giorgio said, adding gloomily, “I hope he doesn’t pay them too much.”
“I will bet you everything I own that he won’t.”
“No takers.”
So I came back to the Ca’ Barbolano as day turned to night and a shivery-cold sea fog drifted in over the city. As I reached the atelier, the twins emerged, whispering excitedly and looking dangerously pleased with themselves. They barely even noticed me. Inside I found the Maestro at the desk, crouched over a book like a black spider, as usual. Also as usual, he had not bothered to light more than a single candle. The fire had almost gone out. I poked it up and added more wood.
He looked up with a scowl. “Construe this sentence…”
“No,” I said, sagging down on my seat. “You shouldn’t read Hermes Trismegistus so late in the day. You know he always gives you an attack of choler. There was no murder.”
He looked at me blankly. “Murder?”
“Procurator Orseolo.”
“Oh, yes.” He smirked disagreeably. “I am engaged in more important matters. I have discovered the real reason the ancients distinguished between the natures of Hermes and Mercury in some of their texts.”
“I have discovered that there was no murder. I have spoken with everyone who was in the room. His granddaughter was at his side the whole time. Nobody could possibly have poisoned his wine. Two people reported seeing him pulling a face when he emptied his glass, but that doesn’t prove anything. And besides, nobody had a motive. The poison you suspect is not available in the city. None of this may be enough to stop the Ten from taking you in and interrogating you, at the very least.”
He grunted. “Those boys-”
“Corrado and Christoforo? What about them?”
“I gave them fifty soldi. Five each for them and two lira for expenses. Write it in the ledger.”
“Saints’ laundry! What did they do for you-murder someone?”
He ignored that. “You look tired.”
“I am tired!” I snapped. “It has been quite a day.” It had begun with six toughs trying to kill me, continued through a spectacular suicide, and ended with someone trying to redirect my entire life.
“Let me see that leg.”
“It’s fine.”
“Show me!”
I removed my hose and spread one leg on the desk. “I shall have a scar.”
“It won’t be the first.” He brought the candle close enough to produce an odor of singed hair. “It seems to prosper. If you don’t succumb to lockjaw or wound fever, you will be as good as new. Put the bandage back on. ‘If you encase your spirit in the flesh and abase yourself, saying, “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot ascend to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?’”
“What’s that from?”
“ Hermes Trismegistus.” Gathering up his book and the candle, he hobbled towards the fireplace.
“And what does it mean?” I demanded, contorting myself to bandage my calf in the dark without bending my knee.
“It means that the procurator was murdered and I know who did it and how.”
The old scoundrel refused to say more. I should not have made fun of his contempt for Hermes. He was allowed to insult the book; I wasn’t. He did not ask me to report on my afternoon, which was a bad sign. I went to my room to freshen up.
When I came out, I was accosted by the terrible twosome. They exchanged conspiratorial glances.
“You had a good day, I hear.”
“Our lips are sealed,” Corrado said.
“We are sworn to secrecy,” Christoforo explained.
Pause. Christoforo said, “Alfeo? How much do you need to…How much do the, er…”
“Next door…If a man wants…”
“Not old…”
They were both bright red by this time. I sighed. “That depends.”
“Depends on what?” they asked together.
“On how fussy you are. And whether you want the French pox or not. Let me talk with a friend of mine and I’ll advise you.”
They agreed to that with relief. I went in search of Giorgio and found him alone, or almost so, for he was in his bedroom, bent over double so Matteo could hold his fingers in a walking lesson. Matteo would not repeat what we discussed, because he spoke no better than he walked.
“You should have taken my bet,” I said. “The Maestro had a brainstorm.”
He looked at me in alarm. “How much?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t, because they might have retained some of the expense money as well as their wages. “They obviously think they have enough to buy serious trouble. If you like, I can arrange it so they won’t come to real harm.”
No father enjoys hearing that his authority is being flouted. Giorgio turned bright red. He began with, “I’ll whip their backsides raw,” progressed through, “I give them ample pocket money!” and finished with, “We need that money to buy their clothes!” and talk of hellfire. I countered with French pox and similar arguments. In the end his fatherly pride won out. He agreed that this was Venice, after all, and he had been not much older than them when, and some of their brothers…He sighed and told me to take care of it, as long as I swore not to tell Mama.
The Maestro was still in the red velvet chair, reading. He ignored me completely, so I knew he was planning something I was not going to like, and I had a strong hunch what it would be. I wrote a note to Alessa, asking that the two bearers be given quality treatment and promising I would be good for the balance of the fee, if any. I sealed it and took it out to them.
Corrado turned pale and Christoforo bright red.
“Now?” Corrado said. “Right now?”
“You’d rather wait until they’re busy and want you to hurry?”
Grabbing my letter, Corrado vanished down the stairs with his brother in hot pursuit. This was Venice.
They missed a magnificent supper. Mama’s Lombardy quail with baby calamari is always divine, and that night she excelled herself.
The Maestro brought Hermes with him and propped it up on the table. He paid far more attention to the book than he did to his food, grumbling angrily over every page and ignoring me. I was happy enough to savor the meal and dream of the wonderful gift I would buy for Violetta when I had sold the Euripides manuscript. Rubies, I decided.
The moment I wiped my plate with a last crust and leaned back, sighing contentedly, the Maestro slammed his book shut.
“Bring a glass of water with you.”
My fears were confirmed. “I’ll carry Hermes,” I said. He had enough trouble managing his staff.
He hurried off back to the atelier like a little black ant and went straight to the crystal ball on its stand, whipping away the cover. Then he adjusted himself on his chair, laid his staff on the floor beside him, and rubbed his hands expectantly. He enjoys a soothsaying as much as I detest it.
I laid the Hermes on the desk and the glass of water beside the crystal. “This really isn’t necessary,” I complained. “I can tell you everything you want to know without this.”
“
What color are the drapes in Attorney Imer’s office?”
“I don’t think there are any drapes. Why-”
“But you don’t know!” he said triumphantly. “Next time I ask, you will tell me exactly. You will tell me whatever I want to know. There’s too much light. Bank the fire. And lock the door so we won’t be disturbed.”
I laid fresh logs over the embers. I locked the door and extinguished all the lights except one candle. I cannot put myself into a trance deep enough to see the future in the crystal, as the Maestro can. That is clairvoyance. Soothsaying is speaking truth, and for that he puts me into the trance. It gives me perfect recall, so that I can recount conversations verbatim and describe everything I have seen. What I hate is that I remember nothing of what he asks or what I tell him. I lose an hour of my life, and for all I know he pries into all sorts of personal details that do not concern him.
“I thought you said you had solved the mystery?” I was moving as slowly as I dared.
“I have. I knew the answer last night, but I need evidence that will convince the Ten. Tomorrow you will take a letter to the Lion’s Mouth announcing that I have the solution. Come and sit down!”
I sat opposite him. He moved the candle so the crystal glowed with fire for me. I stared into the sun, burning gold in the utter dark of space.
“You have had a hard day. You are tired. You are sleepy.”
That was true, I was.
“Recite the twelve gates to alchemy, according to the learned Ripley.”
“Calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection.”
“And backwards?”
“Projection, multiplication…exaltation…”
I was gone.
18
G iorgio rowed me to the Molo before dawn. Fog lay on the city like wet cement, muffling even the halfhearted slap of ripples. As we tied up, the Marangona bell boomed out to sound the start of the working day. It sounded right overhead, but I could barely even see my own feet in the murk, let alone the bell tower. I climbed out onto the Piazzetta, accelerated by a neck-cracking heave from Bruno, behind me. He had no idea why I needed him along, but he found this fumbling around in the dark great fun. In a moment he was up beside me. Because I had left my sword in the gondola and had not asked him to bring his flatiron, he had no worries.
I did. “I hope I won’t be long,” I told Giorgio.
“I can wait,” he said. “It’s what I do best.”
“You make babies best.”
“Mama does that. It’s nothing to do with me.”
I beckoned to my giant and set off along the loggia they call the broglia. This is the part of the Piazzetta where noblemen meet and do their plotting before the Great Council meets. It is where votes are bought and sold, deals made, offices traded. It is where every young noble must wait anxiously on his first appearance until he is beckoned in to be introduced and suitably bribed to deliver his vote. I had never seriously considered ever being one of them, but if I had Senator Tirali-who by then would be former Ambassador Tirali-as my patron, then anything would be possible.
There had been a change of plan. Until the soothsaying the Maestro had intended to have me deliver a letter to the Lion’s Mouth, but in my trance I had told him of the doge’s command to report to Raffaino Sciara, so that was what I was going to do. My problem would be finding him. Circospetto, like Missier Grande, keeps no regular hours. He attends the Senate and the Council of Ten, which meet in the afternoons and evenings respectively. He had come to the Ca’ Barbolano in the middle of the night. It seemed very unlikely he would be available at dawn. Even he must sleep sometimes, so I would probably have to make an appointment to see him and return later.
My second problem was that the doge was not playing by the rules.
I did mention, did I not, that the Republic likes to keep things complicated? Since no one in government trusts anyone else, matters are arranged so that every man will have others watching him. The Council of Ten consists of seventeen men, with a state prosecutor present to advise on the law, and sometimes with another fifteen or more men added, when things look so nasty that the blame must be widely spread. The Ten’s agenda is set by the three “chiefs of the Ten,” who are elected anew each month and must remain within the Doges’ Palace during their terms. They each hold one of the three keys needed to open the Ten’s “Lion’s Mouth” drop box. It was to them that I ought to be reporting evidence of murder, and if they demanded to know why I wanted to meet with Raffaino Sciara in person, I would have to do some creative talking.
There are several ways into the palace. I had chosen to go by way of the Piazzetta and the Porta della Carta because I might have to send Bruno away and it would be easier for him to find Giorgio by retracing his steps-the Rio di Palazzo is so narrow that gondolas are not allowed to linger at the watergate. We stepped through into the great arched passage beyond, where lamplight hung like golden spheres in the fog, barely reaching the paving below. A guard slammed the butt of his pike down and demanded to know who went there. What was visible of him between his breastplate and the brim of his helmet looked thirty years older than he sounded, but I think it was just his first glimpse of Bruno that made his voice so boyishly shrill.
I introduced myself and explained that I had urgent business for Circospetto. We were ordered to wait. One man went into the guard room, two more came out to keep an eye on Bruno. A fourth was sent off to report to someone. Time passed. Graveyard cold seeped into my bones; fog spitefully saturated all my clothes. I wished someone would offer me a seat, preferably close to a fire.
The messenger returned and hurried into the guard room to report. Two men emerged and one of them told us to follow them, which was a good sign, I supposed. The other followed us. Halfway across the courtyard the signs became very bad when I saw that we were heading to the watergate beside the Wells, which was not the route by which honored visitors were taken to anywhere. Sure enough, we were led up the same, narrow stairs I had climbed when Sciara brought me in. They were a trial for Bruno, who had to stoop low to get through some of the brick arches.
Three storeys up we left the stairwell and entered the room of the chiefs of the Ten, which is very splendid, especially its ceiling paintings by Veronese and Ponchini. I was given no time to admire them, even had the light been good enough. We crossed to another door and were ushered through into the room of the inquisitors, the Three. Tintoretto painted that ceiling and the walls are richly paneled, but I doubt if many of the people who visit it are ever concerned about its art. On the dais sat a single man, seemingly doing nothing except waiting for us to arrive. He was elderly and portly, with a silver beard and a heavy, weathered face, looking as if he might have been a husky sailor in his youth, now run to seed. He wore the sumptuous scarlet robes and velvet tippet of a ducal counselor, plus an unfriendly scowl.
I walked forward. Bruno stayed close to my side, but our escort must have stopped at the door, for I could not hear their footsteps. I came to a halt and waited to be announced. I wasn’t.
I bowed. So did Bruno.
“Your Excellency, I am-”
“I know who you are,” he growled. “Do you know me?”
“I believe I have the honor of addressing the ducal counselor from San Paolo, sier Marco Dona.”
There are six ducal counselors, one from each ward of the city, each elected for an eight-month term. Their job is to restrain the doge, who can do nothing without the backing of at least four of them. Like the doge, they are automatically members of the Council of Ten. I did not know whose side Dona was on, because I did not know why sides were even necessary.
“I am also a state inquisitor.”
Which is exactly what I had been afraid of.
The inquisitors are the Three-I did warn you this was complicated. The Three are not the three chiefs of the Ten, but a subcommittee of the Ten, consisting always of two
ordinary members and one ducal counselor. The Ten may delegate any or all of their powers to the Three.
At a loss for words, I bowed again. So did Bruno, who would know only that the man in the fancy robe must be important if Alfeo was being so respectful.
“Who’s he?” Dona demanded.
“He’s a mute, harmless unless he’s attacked.”
“What’s he for?”
“Armed men tried to kill me yesterday, Excellency.”
“He can’t help you here. Send him away.”
I had arranged three signals with Giorgio: I-in trouble-go to-home, meant bad. Go to-home-come-later, was hopeful. Everything-is well-wait, was obviously inappropriate.
To Bruno I made the signs, Tell-Giorgio-go to-home. Bruno frowned and eyed the counselor. His deafness limits him, but he is far from witless and sometimes he seems to sense things by means that we more fortunate mortals cannot know. He did not want to leave me. I repeated my orders.
He signed, You-go to-Giorgio.
Stamp, point, wiggle two fingers, wave arm like an oar: No!-you-go to-Giorgio.
Point to chest, point to floor. I-stay.
Again I stamped my foot: No!
This time he nodded, to my great relief. Still obviously reluctant, he turned and headed for the door. I turned my attention back to Dona.
“State your business.”
“My master sent me with a message for the illustrious Raffaino Sciara.”
“Give me the message. If it is appropriate for him to receive it, I will see that he does.”
I was now in considerably worse trouble than I had been two days before. To defy a direct order from a state inquisitor would be insanity beyond the call of duty, and the Maestro would certainly not expect me to try.
“Your Excellency, my master, the learned Doctor Nostradamus, has evidence that Procurator Orseolo was murdered. He knows the name of the murderer. He instructed me to ask the secretary to arrange a gathering at the house of the learned Ottone Imer, at which my master will demonstrate how poison was administered to the procurator.”