The Alchemist's Apprentice

3

I hurried along the loggia, down the giants’ staircase to the courtyard, and out through the Porta della Carta, the main gate. The rain had stopped, but a chill wind still blustered across the Piazza San Marco. Clerks were hurrying to work, beggars were already on their stations, and hawkers with baskets on their heads called their wares. It was too early yet in both the day and the year for the gawking foreigners who usually abound. Normally I would have enjoyed walking home, along winding alleys and over innumerable bridges, savoring the beat of the city’s great heart, but that day the situation was critical-had the Maestro truly fled the city? That seemed beyond all belief. The Ten would take it as a confession of guilt. I would be off to the torturers in no time and sier Alvise would hurl everything the Maestro owned out into the canal, cleansing his palace of the taint of murder.

I headed across the Piazzetta toward the Molo. Public gondolas are expensive. I cannot afford them and the Maestro won’t, as he already owns one of his own and employs a man to row it. That day the expense seemed well justified.

Besides, I was a ducat richer. The Maestro provides my room and board-very sumptuously, I admit-but he is sparing, even miserly, when it comes to a clothing allowance. Almost all my spending money comes from the tips his clients and patients give me for performing my arduous duties-opening and closing doors, for instance, and bowing them out. That is the reason I do not flaunt my “NH.” Some people are embarrassed to tip the nobly-born a soldo or two, or else consider my rank an excuse not to. You’d think they would reward me more, not less.

Yesterday’s events now made perfect sense. Bells ring in Venice all the time, but the Maestro, already worried, must have recognized the tolling for Procurator Orseolo and known that his peril was now much greater. He had sent me off to chase wild geese while he consulted the crystal. A very fine prophecy, too- Death the murder causing death the death penalty to break cover but go after the wrong suspect. Venice as La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic, is feminine. The Serene One, in masculine, would be His Serenity the doge, who had moved to send warning and remained unmoved by my protests. The wise Maestro had departed, leaving the mute Bruno behind. Very succinct!

There were dozens of gondolas tied up at the Molo. I picked out a man with arms like a Barbary ape and began haggling, accepting his second offer on condition he sing to me the whole way.

A few strokes of his oar swung us out into the choppy and iron-gray Basin of San Marco, a February desert. At other seasons it teams with great ships swaying at anchor, best seen all sparkly in misty morning light. Here the convoys gather for voyages to distant lands-Seville, Egypt, Constantinople, or far-off England and Flanders-hundreds of galleys, all identical, all state-built and state-owned, rowed by freemen mostly, not criminals, and every one captained by a Venetian nobleman. Here they return with exotic spices, sulfur, wine, olive oil, raisins, currants, timber, and dozens of other cargoes. As a child I dreamed of being the captain of such a ship and sailing to such places. Some days I still do.

Regrettably that morning there were almost no ships, my gondolier had the throat of a Barbary ape, and I was distracted by my worries about the Ten. I was not convinced that the doge could hold them back as he said he could, and I could see no possibility of persuading my master to flee the city. Nor could I imagine myself ever deserting him and running away. A man has to cherish his self-respect. I was caught in the jaws of a dilemma.

The quatrain had been magnificently fulfilled, so far as I could see, every line, but it gave no guidance on what was going to happen next.

When I paid off my gondolier at the Ca’ Barbolano, I found the great doors open, and the Marciana family army busily loading a boat. I slipped by with a few cheerful greetings on the wing. Jacopo and Angelo Marciana are brothers of the citizen class, and partners of NH Alvise Barbolano in a type of arrangement that is quite common in the Republic: sier Alvise provides space in his palace for them and the business, plus certain hereditary trading rights that the nobility reserved to itself centuries ago. The commoners do the work and provide the capital. The Marcianas also supply the muscle power of a dozen sons between them. The profits are divided.

I ran up the stairs and was again lucky, in that I did not run into old Alvise himself, for he lies in wait for me whenever he wants a medical consultation with the Maestro, or celestial advice on his business dealings, or something to poison the rats, or just something. I must always be on my best behavior for our landlord.

The only person I did meet before I reached our door was Bruno, coming down with the usual love-the-whole-world smile all over his face. I have rarely seen anything as welcome as that smile. If the Maestro had mysteriously disappeared, Bruno would be out of his mind with worry.

From the dust on his shoulder, I could tell that he was in the process of ferrying firewood, of which several bales had been lying down at the quay. I have seen him run all the way upstairs with a load I can barely move. As I mentioned earlier, if Bruno were twins, they would still be too big. Sighting me, he grinned even wider and cracked his usual Alfeo joke, which is to pick me up and kiss me on the forehead. Resistance is futile. I have very rarely seen Bruno anything but happy, but when vexed he ranks with the primeval forces of nature. The Maestro invented a sign language for him and a written equivalent, so he can converse with us and even write us simple notes. In consequence, he absolutely worships the Maestro and is delighted to carry him wherever he wants to go.

When he set me down, he flashed the signs for Happy-you-here.

I signed Happy-come back. With a further exchange of grins we parted, me up and he down, but I was saddened to think that that was all Bruno could ever know of my midnight adventure.

Arriving at the apartment, I found Giorgio mopping the floor with the help of two of his sons. Giorgio is our gondolier, but he has many other talents, including an extraordinary fecundity. I have lost count of his children and would not be surprised to learn that he has, also. Some are out in the world making grandchildren already, yet new ones continue to appear regularly. He nodded a welcome to me, his silence somehow conveying relief that I was safe.

As for his assistants-Corrado and Christoforo Angeli are twins, although not identical, and at that time were engaged in a furious race to see who could produce a real mustache first. Never have so many sneers been directed at so little. Having to help with household chores ranks lower than being flayed alive, of course.

Corrado produced a lecherous leer. He said, “You had a good night, Alfeo?” and ducked so expertly that his father’s hand whistled uselessly through the space his ear had just left.

“Very memorable,” I said. “Would you tell the Maestro I’m back, please?

“And run!” his father said.

I poked my head in the kitchen. Noemi, a younger member of the Angeli brood, looked up from kneading dough and beamed at the sight of me. The current youngest, Matteo, lay under the table sucking on a bone. Their mother cried out a prayer of thanks and came for me with a bloody hatchet she had been using to chop veal. I returned her hug and bent to endure her kiss. Mama is as wide as Bruno but only half as high. She was due to produce another little Angeli very shortly.

“You are safe! Luigi said the night watch came. We found your sword on your bed. We were so worried!”

“No need to be. But I must shave and wash.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

Of course not, and food is Mama’s cure for anything and everything. I said, “What do you have ready?”

Instantly Mama rattled off a dozen choices while Noemi filled a jug with hot water from the kettle on the range. Mama is very efficient; it is she who keeps the Nostradamus household gliding along as smoothly as a gondola. She has been known to produce dinner, twins, and supper in the same afternoon. Settling for a small cup of soup, I headed off to my room to make myself respectable.

I had barely removed my shirt before I heard a familiar thumping and the Maestro hobbled in, wielding his staff. He avoids all unnecessary movement, so I was touched that he had made the effort to come and inquire after my well-being.

“Who was ransacking my atelier?” His voice tends to become shrill under stress. Acerbic, brilliant, cantankerous, duplicitous, and encyclopedic, Filippo Nostradamus has a great reputation and a large head, but the Good Lord skimped on the rest of him. Short and scrawny sums him up, and he wears a foolish goatee, which he dyes. His knees and ankles give him much pain, so he would do better leaning on two canes, but prefers an oaken staff taller than he is, inlaid with cabalistic signs in silver and topped by a large crystal. It impresses some people.

I sighed. “No one ransacked anything. Raffaino Sciara read the letter on the desk and took a quick look at the book shelves. Would you care to prescribe a soothing unguent for the lash marks on my back and the burns under my toenails?”

“Why did you let him in here?”

“Because he threatened to arrest me if I didn’t.”

“And then arrested you anyway? Bah! He was bluffing.”

“Four swordsmen are no bluff.”

“Arresting people is Missier Grande ’s job. What did Sciara want?”

“He wanted to tell you something. It can wait.” I turned my back and opened my shaving kit. The oaken staff thumped a few times on the terrazzo, then the door boomed shut.

I made a fast toilet, washing away as much of the prison frowstiness as I could while considering what I was going to wear. Between yesterday’s rain and today’s jail, I was running out of fresh clothes. I decided to poultice my wounded self-esteem by trying out my newest outfit.

Venice is the most beautiful city in the world, a fairyland of islands and canals set in an opalescent lagoon; it boasts a hundred great palaces and as many glorious churches, all of them treasure chests of incomparable art. Curious, is it not, that the people dress mainly in black? Lawyers, doctors, and widows wear black, as do the hordes of priests, nuns, monks, and friars. A nobleman wears a black robe, black bonnets, and a strip of black cloth, a tippet, draped over his left shoulder. Admittedly nobles holding high office bloom in reds and purples and everyone dresses up for Carnival. The only real exception to the prevailing drabness, though, are young men.

I cannot afford to dress in the silks and satins of the true aristocrats, but I emerged from my room resplendent in red knee britches, white stockings, a linen shirt with a modest ruff, puffed sleeves, and lace cuffs, a waist-length doublet striped in blue and white, ornamented with acorn-shaped buttons, topped off with a shoulder cape trimmed with squirrel fur and a bonnet like a gigantic blue puffball. On my way back to the kitchen I had to go by the mop-wielding slave gang, and I noted the gleam in Corrado’s eye as I approached. The moment I passed, he predictably muttered something admiring about buns, and then yelped as the back of my hand cracked against his ear. Christoforo squealed with laughter.

Even Giorgio grinned. “Let that teach you not to sass swordsmen,” he said. They are all impressed that a mere apprentice like me can take fencing lessons, but the Maestro pays for them because he is physically very vulnerable and works a dangerous trade. I have known him advise wives to stay away from their husbands for their own protection, for example, and that is an excellent way to make enemies.

Predictably, Mama had provided a bathtub-sized bowl of pidocchi soup and a cannonball of mozzarella cheese, my favorite. When I let myself into the atelier, the Maestro was seated at his desk, peering into a book. Three more were stacked within reach, and I recognized them all as herbals. He scowled as I laid down my tray. He has so little interest in food that I keep track of his meals to make sure he eats at all.

“I can take it to the dining room if it bothers you,” I said, “but on reconsideration, I think my news is urgent.”

He pouted. “Sit, then.” He pouted even more as he studied my appearance. “A gift from your friend?”

“Certainly not!” I pirouetted, to increase his enjoyment. “Most of last year’s income and half of this year’s. An apprentice who fails to flout the sumptuary laws reflects badly on his master.” I sat down and tied a napkin around my neck to protect my freshly starched ruff.

The big double desk works well for us. We can pass documents back and forth readily. He is left-handed, I am right-, so we can both have light from the windows on our work. Noting that the medicinals I had bought the previous day had been removed, I started in on my delicious pidocchi, made from the sea louse, which is not as bad as it sounds, being a type of shellfish. Soup is easier to eat while talking than most things are-except when it is scalding hot, and Mama does make her dishes hot.

“So what was this message?” the Maestro demanded.

“I paid the gondolier five soldi.”

His eyes glinted. “That’s your privilege if you’re too lazy to walk.”

“True. But then I can’t be here for another twenty minutes.”

I spooned soup, smacking my lips to decorate the silence. I’m never quite sure when his crabbiness is genuine and when he’s just staging a fit of pique for our mutual amusement.

This time he conceded the point. “Enter it in the ledger, then.”

“Oh, thank you, master! Most generous of you. As you foresaw, we had an important visitor about an hour after midnight. I congratulate you on the quatrain. Admirable personification, antanaclasis, and metonymy.” I gulped and winced my way through my soup and the events of the night while the Maestro never took his eyes off me. He kept his book open and his finger on the place.

“It was a charade, of course,” I concluded. “The doge is the only permanent member of the Ten and Sciara has been Circospetto for years, so they must know how to work together. They want to give you a chance to escape before they are forced to open a formal inquiry. Sciara was mad that you were not here for him to bully. That’s all.”

“If you believe that, you’re even more naive than you look.” My master smiled, meaning he bunched up his cheeks and stretched his lips sideways without showing his teeth.

With saintly patience, I said, “If you had been home last night, Sciara would have given you the message and left, taking his guards with him. You weren’t, so he made the point more forcibly by scaring me half to death. But the doge is insistent-you must flee!”

I could guess what was coming from the jutting angle of the goatee.

“No! I’m too old to start over somewhere else. There is my wealth-” He waved a hand at the bookshelves. “Will you carry them for me? And where will I find a new clientele, a new palace to live in, new printers for my almanacs?”

I sympathized. I did not want to run away either, to be a homeless vagrant. But the risk was appalling.

“Can you prove that Procurator Orseolo died of apoplexy or hemorrhage or anything other than poison?”

The Maestro removed his finger and slammed the book shut. “Of course not. As soon as I examined him I knew he had been poisoned.”

I burned my tongue and spluttered. “Did you say so?”

“You think I am an idiot?”

“Not until now. It wasn’t your doing, I hope?”

“No, it was not.” The fact that he answered the question at all showed that he was worried. He could see his predicament; it was the solution he rejected.

I cut myself a hunk of bread and a wad of mozzarella. Needing some chewing time, I said, “If you didn’t poison him, who did?”

“I don’t know.” He seemed to shrink slightly, unaccustomed to admitting ignorance. “Ottone Imer is an attorney of citizen class and a bibliophile with more taste than money. Alexius Karagounis is a book dealer from Athens. He had some rare volumes to offer-looted from some Macedonian monastery, no doubt. Imer invited a few of the city’s most prominent collectors to view them at his house.”

In this case prominent meant wealthy. The Greek would face tax or licensing problems if he tried to sell the books openly in the Republic. Imer had acted as official host in return for a commission, and the learned Doctor Nostradamus had been hired as a consultant to testify to the works’ authenticity. He was a prominent collector too, but he could not compete with the truly rich. This all made sense.

“Did he have anything worthwhile?”

“Three or four minor pieces.” My master sighed piteously. “An almost complete Book Ten of the Aeneid written in an uncial hand that cannot possibly be later than Eighth Century. Incredible condition, but unmistakably genuine. Possibly the oldest copy known. Then there was something that might be one of the lost plays of Euripides.”

I gulped down my cud to ask, “Worth killing for?”

Another sigh. “If genuine it would fetch thousands of ducats.”

“I would kill for that.”

Nostradamus ignored my repartee. “I arrived early,” he continued, “so I could view the books. I met Imer and Karagounis, and they showed me the manuscripts, all laid out on one long table. I inspected them and agreed that they all appeared to be quite genuine. I remained in my chair-and the Greek stayed with me as if he thought I might grab his treasures and run away with them! I resented his supervision at the time, but now I welcome it, for I cannot be accused of tampering with the wine. I was never near the wine! When the guests arrived, most were shown into the salotto. The prospective buyers came into the dining room to inspect the books with their glasses already in their hands. Eventually our host realized that I had not been offered refreshment and ordered the footman to bring me the wine of my choice.”

“Then the books were auctioned?”

“Nothing so crass! Discreet negotiations were to be held later in the evening. When everyone had expressed admiration, we joined the ladies and other gentlemen in the salotto so the servants could lay out a supper in the dining room. Eventually we all went back there, but we had not even started on the antipasto when the procurator was stricken and we all went home.” Again he sighed and his eyes grew quite misty. “The Greek still owns his books. But he is a foreigner. They will suspect him first.” He was conveniently forgetting that he was foreign-born himself, although he had been granted full citizenship as a bribe to move to the city, many years ago. The Republic is notorious for luring all the best doctors in Italy to come and live in Venice.

I said, “The Greek is not an alchemist, and you are. Sudden death always provokes rumors of poison and most people cannot distinguish between poisoning and witchcraft. That was why you were so crabby yesterday. Also why you sent me out to buy half the poisons in the pharmacopeia-nux vomica, hellebore…You are planning to test each one to find out which creates the same symptoms? Shall I ask Giorgio to bring in his children?”

“Fool! I do not know why I put up with you. I knew at once.” The Maestro leaned on his elbows and put his fingertips together, a sure sign that I was about to be lectured. His hands are as delicate as a woman’s. “The patient was an elderly male of choleric temperament. He limped slightly on his right leg and had old trauma scars on his right hand, with some loss of mobility. These were likely related to his reputation as a former war hero. I detected minor flashes of irascibility and hints of dysphasia, which I posited as the onset of dementia senilis. They would not yet be obvious to the layman. His family probably just regarded him as testy. He began to show signs of distress at the supper table-profuse sweating and salivation. I was not at all surprised when he excused himself and got up from his chair.”

“Nausea? Urination? The company would forgive an elderly man’s need to visit the closet, surely?”

“But he stumbled as he turned. A footman caught him and of course I went to assist. I detected an extremely rapid and irregular heartbeat; also some vomiturition. The patient displayed confusion, not recognizing me although we had spoken only minutes earlier. He asked me several times why I was blue.” The Maestro’s little cat smile meant that it was time for me to interpret.

“Oleander poisoning?”

He nodded grudgingly. “A not unreasonable hypothesis. Many physicians would make the same mistake. But oleander induces retinal toxicity only in chronic cases.”

So the blue illusion must be significant, but it was a new symptom to me. I thumped my brain to spill out whatever it knew about diuretics and expectorants. Nothing relevant appeared, but Gerolamo the herbalist had mentioned a laxative that might be appropriate. I made a guess.

“Virgin’s glove?”

The Maestro’s nod of approval was intended to mask annoyance. His hands withdrew into his lap. “Very good! Continue.”

“Also known as fairy thimbles or witches’ gloves or foxglove. In his celebrated De Historia Stirpium Commentarii, the learned Leonard Fuchs named it digitalis.” Which was how it was labeled in the Maestro’s collection-so why had he sent me to buy more, and under another name? “As I recall the medical uses of foxglove, the fresh leaves, when bruised, are efficacious in the treatment of wounds and the juice is used to relieve scrofula. Internally it can be taken as a laxative, but is unpredictable and dangerously toxic. What treatment did you advocate?”

He pouted. “I suggested that his own physician be summoned at once, as he would be more familiar with the procurator’s regimen.”

The first treatment for suspected poisoning is to induce vomiting, but the patient had been retching spontaneously without ejecting any matter. A rapid pulse would suggest that the patient should be bled, but he was elderly and might have unknown ailments. Even sips of water might have been dangerous. The Maestro had diagnosed murder and seen his own danger; any advice he had given would have been suspect. I could not blame him for taking the path of caution in this instance.

“Can you estimate when the patient ingested the poison?”

He shrugged. “He had obviously not eaten recently.”

“You imply that he must have been poisoned after he arrived?”

“An obvious hypothesis. And whatever the toxin, it must be extremely potent to be concealed in a glass of wine. The learned Paracelsus wrote that anything is poisonous in sufficient dosage.”

Worse and worse. “So there is no hope of laying the blame on tainted food in his own household?”

“No, and he had certainly not been munching on a salad of oleander. The dried and powdered leaf of digitalis can be prescribed for internal use, as a laxative, and it is rumored to soothe a raging heart. Possibly he took an accidental overdose, in which case we need not fear a murder charge. The man’s doctor must be interrogated.”

I said, “He’s probably a Jew, in which case he has likely been arrested already. If I were one of the state inquisitors, I should now be putting Imer’s servants to the question, especially the footmen who served the wine.”

“But you are not!”

“Then why don’t you offer one of the servants an enormous bribe to run away and take the suspicion with him?”

He shook his head, still angry. “No, we can ignore the servants, so-”

“Why?”

The Maestro matched up his fingertips again for another lecture. “Why should an attorney’s footman want to murder a procurator? Only if bribed to do so by someone of high rank, and if he is fool enough to be still in the city, then the Ten can catch him and torture the truth out of him. The doge would not be warning me away if he expected that to happen. But even the Three will not question the gentry rigorously without good reason to do so, certainly not torture them. The courtesans may not fare quite as well as the nobility, but even they-”

“Courtesans?”

He pouted. “There were several there. Your friend was one of them. Is she capable of poisoning a man, one who insulted her, say?”

“Certainly. I’ll ask her if she remembers doing so.” Violetta is a neighbor and the most prized courtesan in the city. The lady and I are friends, but I do not employ her services. One night with Violetta costs more than I earn in a year.

The Maestro pulled a sour smile. “Then you now have two reasons to help me find the murderer. If I had the birthday and time of birth of everyone who was present, their horoscopes…but the law will require palpable evidence, either eyewitnesses or a confession.”

“Denizens of the infernal regions must know.”

“Don’t be absurd!” He glared at me. “Beg my life from a fiend? Don’t you hear anything I teach you? I can’t do that.”

He was hinting that I could. For me to try to save him would be altruistic and therefore less dangerous. Not safe, just less dangerous. Summoning is best done after dark, when demons are more active and there are fewer people around to catch you at it. I would decide then whether to take the risk.

I thought of another problem. “How much foxglove would be needed? And what does it taste like?” I rose to reach for the De Historia Stirpium Commentarii that lay on his side of the desk. “Would wine disguise its taste?”

“Sit down. You think I have not consulted the herbals? Most poisons are vile-tasting, as you know, because they are tainted by the Evil One. Foxglove is so bitter that livestock will not graze it, whereas they do die from eating oleander. The taste and dosage would depend on how the essence was extracted. Steeping in water may be enough, or spirituous extraction followed by reduction. I shall conduct some experiments.”

“If you have any sense at all,” I said, “you will throw your entire supply in the canal and destroy the label on the bottle. Yesterday you sent me out to buy every nasty thing in the pharmacopeia. Was that a wise action?”

He bunched his cheeks. “I wanted to discover if digitalis is presently available in the city. Since only the murderer and I knew the poison used, I preferred not to advertise its name.”

“Even if Gerolamo and the rest do not stock it, surely foxglove can be grown in any little garden plot. It likes sandy soil, as I recall.”

As a feat of memory that remark was pure show-off, and his wizened little eyes tightened to show that he knew it. “But that would still be evidence of premeditation.”

And oleander was common enough. “So anyone could acquire the plant. But who,” I asked innocently, “could possibly have the arcane knowledge to extract and concentrate the venom? Or is this where we began this conversation?”

The Maestro scowled, because Italians are notorious as the poison experts of Europe, the Venetian Council of Ten has the same reputation within Italy itself, and the Council of Ten has been known to consult Maestro Nostradamus on such matters. And that, I realized, might well be what it was up to in the present instance, except that it was putting the demand for assistance in the form of a personal warning from the doge. That would explain why Sciara had felt justified in dragging me off to jail.

I opened my inkwell. “You will, of course, now write to the Lion’s Mouth to report your suspicions that Procurator Orseolo died of an overdose of medicinal digitalis. You will have to sign it.”

The bocca di leone is any of several drop boxes available in the palace to accept accusations of treason or other major crimes. Anonymous tips are supposedly ignored, but no one believes that.

The Maestro grimaced. “No. I despise men who work in silence and darkness. Very few people could have committed the crime. It must be possible to work out which one did. Then we can report to the Ten.”

There is no use arguing with him when he sticks out his goatee like that. “We have two days.” The doge had given me three, but I was allowing one for travel. I opened a drawer and selected a quill and a sheet of our best rag paper. “The attorney, Imer, is the man to start with. He must be quaking in his dancing pumps.”

Maestro Nostradamus said, “Faugh! You still don’t know how bad this is. Take a cheaper sheet.”

I changed the paper.

“There were about thirty guests in all,” he said, “but not all are suspect. Only the procurator was affected, so the poison was not in the bottle. It must have been put in his glass. It acts quickly but not instantaneously-I know that but the Ten do not. So the only persons who matter are those who came in to look at the manuscripts.”

He leaned back wearing an expression of extreme smugness like a suit of plate mail. I plodded through his logic and decided it would have to do for now. I could not possibly question thirty people in two or three days.

“Clear crystal glasses, or colored?”

“Murano ruby glass. You could not tell what anyone else was drinking, and if the poison made the wine cloudy, that would not show either.”

“And what sort of wine?”

“We were offered a choice of three: refosco, malmsey, or retsina. I had the refosco. It was a good jar.”

He fancies himself as a connoisseur of wines. I plan to study them when I am rich.

“Refosco is red, malmsey a sweet white. The other one is Greek, yes?”

He made a steeple of his fingers again for a sermon. “Yes. Retsina is most vile, flavored with resin. Served in honor of the Greek merchant, I suppose. It is pungent enough to hide the taste of lye or vitriol, but few Venetians would touch it. Malmsey is so sickly it might suffice. Refosco would not. Let us review the suspects. I proclaim my innocence, and in any case I was seated behind the table. I could not have put poison in anyone’s glass without standing up and stretching across, which would have been a very conspicuous action. Write my name in the first row.

“The Greek was in the room all the time. Our host came and went. As organizers of the affair, they must be suspect. Imer and Karagounis in the second row.”

He closed his eyes to think. “I was early, as I told you. Imer and his wife greeted the guests as they arrived and saw that they were given wine. Most went to the salotto, only the book collectors came into the dining room. The first buyer to enter was Senator Tirali. He wished me well and at once walked the length of the table, on the far side from me, inspecting the goods. I felt like a shopkeeper!”

“I believe you, master.” I knew of another Tirali, the senator’s son. Neither was a patient of the Maestro’s.

“Close behind him came Procurator Orseolo, leaning on a cane. He and Tirali greeted each other coolly. They were old rivals as collectors.”

“Put Tirali in the second row?”

“I suppose so, but I doubt if their rivalry ran to murder. Orseolo had a woman attending him. I didn’t hear her name and she stayed close to him. Next came a foreign couple, who did not introduce themselves to me. They spoke in French with barbarous accents, questioning me about the books. They knew nothing about books. All they were interested in was price.”

I added them to the second row: two foreigners.

“Two footmen poured the wine. We should include them in the second row, if the Three have not gotten to them first.” The Maestro opened his eyes. “Then sier Pasqual Tirali, Giovanni’s son. With your friend.”

I wrote Violetta’s name in the first row and started a third for Pasqual Tirali, vowing to send him to the torturers for prolonged interrogation. I get twinges of jealousy sometimes, when I think of her evenings.

“They were the last to arrive. There was one other before them, Pietro Moro. First row.”

I stood my quill in the inkwell, laid my forearms flat on the desk and glared belligerently across at my master. “You are hallucinating!” The nightmare had just turned into sheer terror, as nightmares do.

He shook his head smugly. “I warned you that you were being naive.”

“Master, before a doge is crowned he has to swear an oath known as the promissione. It is no trivial matter. He swears to shun each and every mistake and crime of all his predecessors in the last thousand years. The promissione is read to him every two months during his reign to remind him. He can barely blow his nose without his counselors’ consent. He must not leave the ducal palace without their permission. He must not meet with foreigners! He…I cannot imagine all the promises the doge would have broken if he went to that supper party!”

“He wasn’t wearing his ducal robes and corno. I expect that’s another. But Moro is a fanatical collector of books.”

“Then why did the sellers not offer him a private viewing in the palace?”

The Maestro scowled horribly. “I do not know the answer to that. But I don’t suppose for a moment that Moro is the first doge to slip out for an evening incognito, playing Haroun al-Raschid.”

“And somebody tried to assassinate him? Is that what you mean? The poison went to the wrong man?”

The Maestro pursed his lips. “I wondered how long it would take you.”

Even more aghast now, I said, “The Serene One moves and is unmoved ? The procurator got the wrong glass and the poison meant for the doge? Is that what it means?”

“Possibly. A hypothesis to keep in mind. Even if not, do you see why I cannot write to the Lion’s Mouth? The Council of Ten must not have cause to investigate the procurator’s death, not officially. A suspicious death involving illicit acts by the doge may bring on a constitutional crisis, just when relations between the Republic and the Turks may be boiling up to another war. What you got this morning was not a warning, it was a cry for help!”

I stared down at my list, although I was seeing nothing. I did not want to see old Nasone either murdered or deposed, but all doges have political enemies. “Did everyone see him there?”

“Probably not,” the Maestro conceded. “He came in, looked at the books quite briefly, and spoke with Orseolo. Then an argument broke out with the foreigners. I think he left then. He was not at the supper table later.”

“What sort of argument?”

“The foreigners had not been invited. Imer told them to leave. Probably the doge had not been invited either. Faugh! Moro has always been impulsive. He champs under all the restraints of his office, the eternal committee meetings. Read me the list.”

Present and not suspected:

Dr. Nostradamus; Procurator Orseolo; madonna Violetta; Nasone

Possible suspects:

Attorney Imer; Karagounis; Senator Tirali; two foreigners; a woman; two footmen;

Pasqual Tirali

“You assume too much. Move your friend to the list of suspects.”

I protested, “Did you see her tipping poison into the victim’s wine glass?”

“Bah! Of course I didn’t. I didn’t see anyone doing that. I very much doubt if anyone did. It would be too obvious.”

That had already occurred to me. “You said Orseolo had a crippled hand and used a cane. He must have laid his glass down when he wanted to handle one of the books? The others would too, perhaps, but he must have done so more often?”

My master nodded. I could see that he had been hoping to point that out himself.

“So,” I said, “the murderer unobtrusively poisoned his own drink and then switched it for the victim’s. Did you see that happen?”

“No,” he admitted sourly, “but I was constantly being distracted by stupid questions. It is likely that somebody did. Tell Angeli you need him shortly.”

I went over to the door and stuck my head out to tell one of Giorgio’s brood to warn him. When I returned, the Maestro was staring fixedly at the window and tugging his beard. I know better than to interrupt him when he is thinking on that scale. I took up my knife to sharpen my pen.

Eventually he sighed and looked at me as if wondering where I had been. “A letter.”

I took a sheet of rag from the drawer and dipped the quill.

“About ten lines,” he said, so I would know how to place it on the sheet.

“Italic, roman, or gothic?”

“Italic, of course. ‘To the exalted chiefs of the noble Council of Ten. Usual bootlicking…It is with deep sorrow that I most humbly bring to Your Excellencies’ attention certain evidence pertaining to the despicable murder of…’”