The Alchemist's Pursuit (12 page)

“You're looking abominably smug. You captured Honeycat last night after a brilliant display of swordsmanship?”

“No, master. That's tonight's program.”

“Then you learned his name.”

“Yes, master. Zorzi Michiel.”

Nostradamus stopped the beaker short of his lips with his jaw hanging open. It was quite a satisfactory response. Finally he whispered, “Saints preserve us! Who told you that?”

Zorzi Michiel had blazed into infamy just over eight years earlier. I had no professional interest in such matters back then; I was apprenticed to a printer, typesetting six days a week and educating myself letter by letter. My greatest worry had been whether I should shave my upper lip or wait a month or so until the rest of the world could see what I could see growing on it, but I certainly heard about the Michiel trouble. Senator Gentile Michiel had been murdered as he was leaving the Basilica San Marco after late-night Mass. The cathedral of Venice is St. Peter's in Castello, which happens to keep the cardinal-patriarch about as far away from the center of the city as it is possible to be. Glorious St. Mark's is the private chapel of the doge, and Christmas Mass there is a very splendid state ceremony, attended only by the great. Murder in such a holy place and on such an occasion shocked the city to the marrow. The Basilica had to be reconsecrated and the Senate ordered a week of public penance and fasting. To make the crime even worse, it turned out that the murderer had been Gentile's youngest son, Zorzi, and the patricide fled from the Republic and its dominions just ahead of
Missier Grande
and his
sbirri
.

“Donna Alessa told me. I caught her in a weak moment,” I explained, without mentioning that my stroke of genius had been prompted by a near-dead cat. “She gave me an eyewitness description of his eponymous birthmark, a hemangioma of feline form in the genital area.”

Nostradamus drank some more willow bark, grimacing at the bitter taste.

“Young Michiel was exiled,” he said. “They put a price on his head.”

“A thousand ducats, as I recall. But I misjudged the Ten yesterday. They're not trying to protect him. They know he's back and they want to catch him and do whatever horrible things they do to patricides.” Also save the reward money, of course.

“Three brothers,” the Maestro mumbled. “Gentile had three sons, Bernardo, Domenico, Zorzi. A couple of months after the crime, Bernardo tried to hire me to track down his brother.”

“Oh!” I had not known that. “Did you?”

“Bah! You think I'm stupid, to get mixed up in a thing like that? If I'd thought I could find him, I would have gone after the reward myself. I just waited a few days and wrote back that the fugitive must have moved out of my range and I only charge when successful. Case closed. More willow bark.”

He would give himself dyspepsia or even hematemesis if he used too much of it, but I do not presume to lecture him on physic. As I went back to the alchemy bench, I said, “So we abandon the case?” Had we ever
bandoned
it?

“No. Not now. The madman must be caught before he murders any more of his former playmates.” Of course the Maestro now had a passable in-house swordsman to round up the quarry for him so he could pocket the reward, but we never mention such things.

“Why is he murdering them?” I asked.

There was a pause while Nostradamus considered his answer. “Because he is a madman? Because he thinks one of them betrayed him to the Ten? More important, why did at least two of the murdered women agree to receive such a monster?”

I should have wondered that. “Because he told them he was innocent? Had been pardoned? Was going to prove he hadn't done it?”

“Perhaps he didn't?” my master growled. “You say Alessa didn't believe he did.”

I turned and stared across the room at him in rank disbelief.

“You plan to solve an eight-year-old murder and disprove the Council of Ten's judgment?” I had seen Nostradamus attempt and often perform miracles, but this seemed beyond even him. The entire resources of the state had pursued the killer of Gentile Michiel.

“Well, let's try a pass or two at it anyway.” For the first time, he was showing some real interest in the problem Violetta had brought to him two days past. “Take a letter. Take two. Best paper.”

I gave him the potion and returned to my desk. “Ready.” “The first to Bernardo Michiel. Wait. We don't know what office he may be holding now, so you'd better make a draft.”

I reached in the drawer for a cheaper sheet. “Ready then.”

“Usual greetings.
Your most esteemed and luminous Excellency—
or whatever he is at the moment—
will remember how some years ago, during a time of great pain and tragedy, Your Excellency
—or whatever—
did me the inestimable honor of asking my humble assistance upon a certain private and sorrowful matter but that, to my eternal regret, my talents were too meager to satisfy Your Excellency's gracious needs, so I was unable to oblige Your Excellency—
period—
I am newly apprised of some information that may pertain to the same subject and hence venture to advise Your Excellency of it in complete confidence and purely as a way of making amends for my earlier failure and without any thought whatsoever of seeking compensation other than Your Excellency's favor and the satisfaction of serving so eminent a noble—
period—
The bearer of this letter,
sier
Alfeo Zeno, has my complete trust and will recount the matter to you—
period—
I remain forever
—et cetera. Butter him up more if you think it needs it.”

I hate it when he uses my title for his own ends, but that was the least of my worries by then.

“Master,” I said grimly, “you expect me to walk into this man's home and tell him his baby brother, who murdered their father to the family's eternal shame and his own damnation, is back in town with a price on his head, slaughtering prostitutes?”

“What can he do except tell you to leave?”

“Have his boatmen beat me to a pulp.”

“No he can't. This is Venice, not France. Nobles can't take justice into their own hands. That is certainly what the lawyers will tell you.”

“And all I want you to do is apply your inestimable skill and experience at judging people to decide whether or not he already knows that his brother is back. They may be hiding him in that palace of theirs.”

“In that case they'll cut my throat,” I said glumly. “Or they may accuse me of attempted blackmail, after the Council of Ten has already warned me off once. Next letter?”

“Do it in good. To
sier
Carlo Celsi . . .”

That was better. I like old Carlo.

I
went on foot because I needed the exercise. Jostling and dodging through the teeming alleyways of the city on a busy morning is a good all-over workout. Besides, if I had asked Giorgio to row me there, he would have wanted to wait for me and that might have cost him his whole morning. Sometimes Celsi has a room full of people waiting to see him, on other days he lacks company and will talk for hours. Celsi is the unofficial archivist of the city, constantly scribbling, filling tome after tome with accounts of all political and historical events, and even the major social ones. If anybody outside the inner circle of the nobility knew the truth about the Michiel scandal, it would be Celsi. He has never been one of the inner circle, for he is a blabbermouth and the First Ones prefer to act in silence, but he has ways of finding out what they have been up to. Even Violetta does not know as much about the doings of the nobility as Celsi does, so the Maestro consults him quite often. But Violetta can keep secrets and never expects any quids pro quos.

His living quarters are modest, shabby, smelling of ink, largely taken up with bookshelves. Vittore, his servant, knows me and always greets me with a cryptic smile, as if my arrival is no surprise. He offered me refreshment, which I declined, and assured me that the noble lord would be delighted to see me as soon as his present visitor departed. That might be hours yet, so I made myself comfortable and went back to puzzling over the Honeycat affair.

If Zorzi Michiel had not committed that horrible crime, then why had he fled? Had he perhaps been frolicking with one of his many courtesan friends at the time and later she had refused to give him an alibi? That might explain one courtesan death, but surely even Honeycat could not have been with three and all three given false witness? That stretched conjecture to fatuity, as the Maestro says. No, the obvious answer was that flight had been the only possible defense as soon as he realized he was under suspicion. The Ten allow no counsel, no open trial, no right to face accusers, no appeal. Prisoners may be found guilty without knowing their crimes and jailed without being told their sentences. Worse, like other states, Venice allows torture in serious criminal cases and none could be more serious than Zorzi's.

Of course the Strangler might not be Zorzi Michiel, merely someone using his name to gain access to his victims. Either way, I was still at a loss to imagine why he was killing courtesans.

After ten minutes or so, the inner door opened and out stalked a man I had met two days before, Senator Marco Avonal. Recognition was mutual. His face darkened; I smiled angelically—I practice that in a mirror. I sprang to my feet and bowed low.

“
Clarissimo!
An unexpected pleasure!” I straightened up just as the outer door banged shut behind him. Oh dear, what a shame . . .

“
Sier
Alfeo! I might have known,” chirruped old Celsi. “Come in, come in, dear boy. Sit down, sit there.”

He dragged me bodily into his sanctum, which might charitably be described as a box of four bookcases with a fireplace and two chairs. The window was partially blocked by a stand-up desk, on which lay a folio volume of blank sheets, ready to receive more news. He poured me a glass of red wine.

“You must try this ghastly French brew. So Nostradamus is dipping into the pot, is he? He's after the Strangler?”

Carlo Celsi is a year older than the Maestro, but still as spry as a mouse. He is very short—not reaching up to my shoulder—and rotund, sporting a mass of silver curls all over his lower face and out from under his hat. I have never seen him anything but pert, happy, and effusive.

“I brought his—”

“Does it say anything?” Celsi demanded, grabbing the proffered letter, “except that he wants you to pick my brains and tell me nothing in return?”

“No. That's it exactly.”

“Good.” My host dropped the letter in a wastebasket, unopened. “Sit, sit! You haven't changed your preferences since the last time you were here, have you, dear chap?”

“No,
clarissimo
.” I always have to wade this river when I call on Celsi.

“What a tragedy! Well, drink up, and tell me why Nostradamus is interested in a few dead whores.”

“Money, of course,” I said. “And why is
sier
Carlo interested in Senator Marco Avonal? Because he discovered a body and turned in the jewelry, when he could have better pocketed it himself or given the proceeds to charity? Did he have some special reason for wanting the deceased identified?”

Celsi chuckled, leaned back in his chair, and took a sip of the wine, which I had already decided must be one of the most expensive vintages I had ever tasted. “He was here because I wrote and asked him to explain that. Of course he wants to be immortalized in the annals of the Republic, so he came in person to give me the entire story and make sure I spelled his name the way he likes it. What do you think of it, dear Alfeo?”

“I think he may be telling the truth.”

The old man sighed. “So do I, unfortunately. No underlying scandal at all! Some people are appallingly inconsiderate.”

“Was he in Milan?”

“Yes—and he returned with the others. I already checked.”

“His Excellency puzzles me, though. He has a squeaky voice, belongs to a small and obscure house, lives with shameful thrift, and is barely adult by Venetian political standards, so how does he get elected to the Senate?”

Celsi sniggered affectedly as he does when he has a gem to impart. “The Contarini campaign, dear boy!”

“Which Contarini?” The Contarinis are a huge clan.

“The ambassador to Rome. The Great Council waxed very mad at him just before Christmas. It couldn't hurt him directly—only the Senate could recall him—but every time the Council had a vacancy of any sort to fill, it would nominate three other Contarinis plus a nonentity, then elect the nonentity. When it put Avonal into the Senate itself, that was the last straw. The Senate recalled Contarini in self-defense.” He chuckled. “They only sent Avonal along on the Milan junket to get a respite from his efforts to make speeches. At the end of his term he will vanish back into well-deserved obscurity.

“So what is your master after this time?” He took a sip of wine to mask his appraising look at me. “He expects me to tell you who killed three harlots and what the Council of Ten is doing about it, mm?”

I couldn't resist that lead. “No. We know all that.” My turn for a sip.

“You cherub! You do? You will swear to that? I have a reliquary somewhere with a holy toenail paring of Saint Theophilus of Bulgaria.”

I backed down a little. “We know to a high degree of probability. No, Nostradamus wonders if you would comment on the death of Gentile Michiel and his son's exile.”

Celsi stared in amazement at bookshelves behind me and let out a long breath. “So-o-o? You think he's come back?
Strangling
the girls? That doesn't sound like young Zorzi. He used to hump them to death . . . I speak figuratively and with sinful envy. What do you want to know?”