The Alchemist's Code (27 page)

“If there is no rational explanation for an event, Your Excellencies, there must be an irrational one. In his fear and murderous rage, Guarini lifted the corpse ashore, and left it lying face up in our loggia.
So perish all the enemies of Francesco Guarini!
”

“Ingenious as always,” the doge conceded. “But you have made grave accusations against a noble member of the
Signoria
. This is a serious offence.”

The rest of the faces around the table were as grim as his, but what had they expected? They had known from the beginning that the source of Algol's information must stand close to
La Serenissima
's heart. Were they about to kill the messenger?

The Maestro spread his hands disarmingly. “Six years ago, sire, when I was not as halt as I have become since, I attended Nicolò Morosini in his last illness. I had never seen such a case, nor have I since. His entire hand was rotting. It had begun with an insignificant paper cut, he said, but those were almost his dying words. The poison spreading up his arm killed him before sunset.”

I held my breath, wondering if he would now dare mention the jinx, the cause of all the Sanudos' miseries. The skeptics would not accept that argument and it would remind his audience of the strange events of the previous day's inexplicable self-combustion. He did, but only obliquely.

“Disasters come in groups, it seems, sire. Since then, ill luck has continued to dog Nicolò's family. Of course I know his widow, madonna Fortunata,
sier
Zuanbattista's sister-in-law, although I have not met her since her husband's death. Last week she was mentioned as a resident of Ca' Sanudo, but later Alfeo spoke of her as if she were a very elderly woman and madonna Eva's aunt, not Grazia's. Alfeo is a sharp lad, who rarely makes such mistakes. He does tend to waste time staring at paintings, but when he described a portrait of her and her husband, I remembered it, and noted that he had recognized
sier
Nicolò's likeness but not hers, although she had been present in the room.”

The doge was showing dangerous signs of impatience, and the Maestro abandoned his dissertation on the workings of curses.

“It has been a very hot summer, sire.
Sier
Zuanbattista was newly reunited with the family he had not seen in three years, including his son, and both of them were newly elected to very high office. What would be more natural than that they would sit out on their balcony on those sweltering evenings, overlooking their garden—”

“Gesù bambino!”
Zuanbattista covered his face with his hands.

After a moment the Maestro completed his sentence, “—talking? Talking directly above the windows of the room assigned to Danese Dolfin, the lute-playing, poetry-reading, hair-brushing, light-fingered
cavaliere servente
?”

“Enough!” Zuanbattista rose from his chair. “It is true, sire! My son and I did sit and talk on that balcony in the evenings, after the ladies had retired. I see now that we were criminally careless not to realize that we could be overheard. We—Venetians! Natives of a city where hardly a door fits its frame.
Now
, will you let me resign?”

“No,” said the doge. “Sit down. We sympathize with your troubles, but there must be no gossip about dissension within the
Signoria
or rumors of espionage. Carry on, Doctor.”

The Maestro scowled and put his fingertips together again. “Let us consider for a moment, sire, the situation of this wretch, Danese Dolfin. Since boyhood he has lived by charm, good looks, and a total lack of morals. In the last three years in a palace at Celeseo, he acquired a taste for the good life—note that when he was evicted from Ca' Sanudo, he promptly weaseled his way into Ca' Barbolano. But now his mistress's husband had returned, he was billeted in a much smaller house, where he might easily become a nuisance underfoot, and—worst of all!—the useful body was aging. He was no longer a beautiful boy. Knowing his hon-eyed days were numbered, he began building a reserve by stealing his employer's jewelry, which is surely a sign of desperation.

“And then, a miracle! Gold rains down outside his window. Danese grabs a pen and takes notes. He gathers secrets, although in his haste and lack of education he makes mistakes. He gets some of his information wrong, as eavesdroppers will do. Then what? Run to the nearest embassy and open negotiations?”

The Maestro chuckled and answered his own question.

“Ah no! I surmise that such a course smelled too risky for
sier
Danese. He is still a
nobile homo
and he has returned to the city; the Ten's eyes will be on him again. No, Dolfin enlists the help of a friend, a gondolier because gondoliers go everywhere and are part of the scenery of Venice, rarely noticed. And, because a fish schools with its own, Dolfin knows just the sort of ruffian he needs—Francesco Guarini. It would have been Guarini who took the notes to the embassy and met with a flunky, the one I have called
X.
But lowly
X
knew a chance when he saw it, and he was loyal to whichever monarch he serves. He suspected, quite rightly, that someone in the embassy was not, so he instructed Guarini in how to encipher his reports before delivering them. He taught him, too, the rudiments of espionage, such as keeping meetings to a minimum. He paid him and promised more if the information proved reliable and kept coming.

“I do not know if Guarini then taught ciphering to Dolfin; I suspect not. Dolfin had little privacy in that intimate family home, and the villains would feel safer if he just kept his plaintext notes in a safe place and handed them over to his weekly contact. Guarini enciphered them later, I think…but you can establish that.” The Maestro pulled a face. It is never pleasant to think that you have sent a man to his doom, however well deserved that doom may be.

“To the sage!” The doge raised his glass in a toast and the entire
Signoria
copied him. After they had all drunk he said, “
Lustrissimo dottore
, your explanation is impressive. Your apprentice confirms that Guarini was the man who attacked him on the Riva del Vin?”

The Maestro nodded. “He does, and so does my gondolier.”

“Well, then, are our two inquisitors satisfied? Have you questions to ask him?”

Gritti now looked less grandfatherly and more avuncular—the wicked uncle who stole the throne. “No and yes, sire. Not satisfied, several questions. I agree Doctor Nostradamus has made an excellent case against Francesco Guarini, and Guarini must be closely questioned. But, Doctor, you have still not told us how you identified which of our ten thousand gondoliers was the one you sought. Perhaps you will elucidate your procedures for us?”

No, no! Don't!

The Maestro filled his glass and took a drink of wine.

He wiped his lips and leaned back.

“My apprentice had mentioned that Dolfin had several sisters. My first thought was that one of them might have married a gondolier, so that Dolfin, when he discovered his gold mine in the sky, took his proposal to a brother-in-law. I sent a boy, actually two boys, to ask Father Equiano in San Barnaba for the names and occupations of the Dolfin girls' husbands. Unfortunately not all brilliant hunches work out, and that one did not.”

At that point I might have dived out the atelier door and made a break for freedom down the stairs, except that the old mountebank treated himself to another sip of wine. I know him well enough to know when he is letting the suspense build.

“My next idea worked better,” he continued. “Ten thousand gondoliers are a small city all to themselves, but they are a very close fraternity, or perhaps two fraternities—the public-hire men despise those who work for wages. No matter, my own gondolier had seen the fight and watched Guarini clambering out of the water, so yesterday I asked him if he knew the man. He did not, but he said the story had been the joke of the week among the city's boatmen, because Guarini was not popular with those who did. I sent Giorgio out to ask some questions. He soon learned that the man we wanted belonged to the
traghetto
of the Ponte della Paglia, and then it was easy to learn his name and address.”

Only fools tell outright lies,
the Maestro says.
The wise use truth selectively.
An icy droplet ran down my ribs. I hoped the Maestro had primed Giorgio well in what to say when he was questioned.

The nobles of the
Signoria
were frowning, puzzled by the sudden tension.

“You swear by your immortal soul that this is the truth?” Gritti said, fondling the words like a silken cord.

“Certainly I do! I am not in the—”

“It is not what
Vizio
Vasco reports,”

The Maestro sighed. “What does
Vizio
Vasco report, Your Excellency?”

“Perhaps we should hear it from his own lips,” Gritti smiled. “If Their Excellencies permit?”

“I can't see how it matters if he led us to the right man,” the doge said impatiently. “But let's get it over with.”

The inquisitor rose and went to the door. He spoke for a few moments with persons outside, then moved aside to let the
vizio
enter. Vasco was still pale and probably felt very shaky, but a healthy man will recover quickly from loss of blood if he is going to recover at all. Gritti led him to the table and pulled out a chair for him. He blinked uncertainly, sat down unsteadily and peered around the company. Excess of wine was affecting him more than shortage of blood now.

“Filiberto Vasco,” the inquisitor said as he returned to his own seat, “do you swear to tell the truth?”

“I do, Your Excellency.”

“Then tell us how Doctor Nostradamus learned the name of the man who murdered Danese Dolfin.”

This was my cue to dive out the window and swim away along the canal.

I didn't.

“Yesh, Your Shereenit'tee…” Vasco's speech was slurred by the wine and tangled up by the packing in his grossly distended nose, but what he was trying to say was, “Yes. Your Serenity, Your Excellencies, last night I was present in this room. There's a spyhole in that wall and I could watch what Doctor Nostradamus and Alfeo Zeno were doing; and hear them, too.”

“And what were they doing?” Gritti was literally rubbing his hands, not a gesture one often sees outside the theater.

The
vizio
smiled as well as he could with his face the way it was. He would have managed better had I been there for him to smile
at
. “They were performing a Satanic rite, worshiping a human head. They were summoning the soul of Danese Dolfin back from death to tell them the name of his murderer.”

Several patricians gasped. Others crossed themselves. The doge and a couple of others rolled their eyes.

“Tell us more,” the inquisitor said.

“They had the thing on a table, Excellency. They were burning incense around it and they had laid out offerings to it. They put a lock of Dolfin's hair on it—on the head. Nostradamus read a long speech in a foreign tongue to the skull and then Zeno questioned it in
Veneziano
and it spoke to him. It was Dolfin! He had a very memorable voice. I knew it at once. Zeno asked him, er, it who killed him and he…it…the voice named Guarini and where he lived.” Vasco smiled bravely. I would be toasted and he could dance around the pyre.

The inquisitor was just as happy. His old eyes held a youthful sparkle. “Did they give this talking head a name?”

“They called it Baphomet, Your Excellency.”

The doge muttered something I was glad not to be able to hear, but he did not interrupt. The wily old man had learned half a century ago to judge the tone of a meeting, and the tide was running hard against Nostradamus now.

“Well, Doctor?” Gritti demanded triumphantly.

Nostradamus seemed to have shrunk. He shook his head sadly. “I confess,” he said.

More gasps.

“I confess that both Alfeo and I had become very tired of having Filiberto Vasco underfoot all the time, prying and spying. He was only doing his job, I know, but…Well, I admit that I let my apprentice talk me into a most undignified prank. Yes, there is a spyhole in that wall, through to my atelier, and Vasco had found it. We set up a masquerade,
messere
! It was most unprofessional.”

“What sort of masquerade?” Gritti demanded angrily.

Sometimes my master throws things at me without any warning whatsoever. One of these days he will outsmart himself by over-smarting me, but that morning I was able to rise to the occasion.

He turned to face me, spread his arms and cried, “Danese Dolfin! I summon you!”

I dropped my voice to the lowest register I could manage and moaned back through the spyhole in my best attempt at Danese Dolfin's sepulchral bass.
“Who are you that calls to me in the darkness?”