The Alchemist's Pursuit

12

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?"

"Everything, fair exchange."

"Nostradamus going soft in his old age? If he's willing to tell all, he can't know much. Well, let's see. Start with Gentile. Had a few uncles but no brothers, sisters, or cousins. A carefully husbanded tribe, the San Marco Michiels-they have always believed in keeping the family fortune intact. Gentile was publicly devout, straitlaced, sanctimonious. An obnoxious tyrannical prude, in fact."

"The sort who won't let his wife look out any window that overlooks a street?"

"Exactly. Gentile married Alina Orio-eccentric sort of woman. She lost five brothers to the plague, them and their families, extremely careless of her. That wiped out a whole branch of the Orio clan, so she ended up with all the property, very odd. Four sons and a daughter survived infancy."

"I heard three sons."

"Don't interrupt me when I'm gossiping. I might miss out a juicy bit. Bernardo was going to be the politician. Of course he wasn't even thirty then, but he'd already made a major speech in the Great Council, opposing a change in the salt tax that his father had supported in the Senate. Got a response from the doge himself, tremendous honor that, for a nipper! The patricide put the whole family in the lazaretto, of course, but Bernardo wouldn't give up; he kept on attending Great Council meetings. So they tried electing him to trivial offices and he accepted and worked hard at them. He's started making speeches again, and it looks as if they're about ready to forgive him. He's been nominated for several meaningful jobs lately, and come near to winning a couple of times. He won't want the old scandal dug up."

"What is he now?"

Celsi closed his eyes for a moment to think, then twinkled them at me. "Inspector of meats!" This was one minor politician he was recalling, out of hundreds, a fine feat of memory.

"Then, Domenico's the businessman. Doesn't attend the wind factory unless there's some critical vote coming up. He's a genius at buying up estates on the mainland, tidying them up, and selling them at a spanking profit. Dull, like all men who make money. Only those who make art or history are interesting, Alfeo dear. Dom's not the sort to hide a murderer-no profit in that. Has a couple of children by a long-term mistress.

"Next was Timoteo. He inherited his father's acid piety, but he seems to have meant it. He renounced his share and entered the cloister."

"He's a monk?" I spoke a little too eagerly.

Carlo Celsi has extremely sensitive antenna. He eyed me suspiciously.

"A friar. And a priest also, as I recall. Why?"

"Just wondered. The other brothers form a fraterna?" I asked, being as innocent as possible. I had caught a faint whiff of motive…

This time the old gossip missed my eagerness. "So far as I know. They have to go to law to disenfranchise, you know."

I nodded. "And the daughter?"

"Oh, they packed her off into a cloister years ago. That costs money too, but it's cheaper than providing a dowry. Did you hear the size of dowry old-"

I headed off his digression. "Which leaves only the infamous Zorzi."

"Correct."

"Obviously the last, since the rest had been named in alphabetical order. Or the sons had. What was the daughter's name?"

"Don't remember. Your brilliance is exceeded only by your personal charm. Zorzi! Oh, Zorzi was a hellion!" Celsi said admiringly. "If he hadn't been a nobleman's son he'd have been swept up by the Ten and banished for licentious living. Apollo he was, to look at, and he never seemed to be short of money. He and his father fought like cat and dog all the time, with the old man always threatening to disinherit him if he didn't reform his ways. That was why he came under suspicion, I think."

"Remind me about the murder."

"You were a teenager. Don't tell me you didn't lap up all the gory details!"

"Yes, but you always know more than anyone else."

Celsi snorted but looked pleased. "Christmas, a stormy night, and the Basilica atrium is black as tar at the best of times. Families reuniting as the women arrived from their section and the men from the nave, lamps being waved about… complete confusion. A lot of people even wondered if Gentile Michiel had been the wrong victim; he just didn't seem important enough for such a shocking crime. Right man or wrong, someone stuck a knife in his kidney. No one saw who it was. He was dead by the time they brought in a surgeon to try stitching him up, the killer long gone."

He shrugged. "A couple of days later Zorzi saw which way the wind was blowing and raised his sails in the nick of time. The Ten condemned him and put a price on his head. They did it with all the trimmings-placards posted at the Porta della Carta, the public crier marching around with his scarlet coat and his trumpeters. Now you're going to tell me Zorzi's come back and is slaughtering courtesans?"

"How much of a price?"

Celsi's curly silver beard twisted around a smile. "Trust Nostradamus! Old miser. A thousand ducats, no matter where he's caught. That's on top of the usual five hundred for handing in the head of an exile who sneaks back incognito. Has he come back? Truly?"

It was my turn to sing now, but I squeezed in one more question. "If the Mass was a formal state gathering, how did a kid like Zorzi ever get admitted? He couldn't have been a member of the Great Council at nineteen."

Celsi shrugged. "He could have, but he wasn't. I don't remember anybody asking how he got in. It would have been easy enough. It was dark, a melee. Gentile would be wearing his red senatorial robes, so his black ones would be stored in a chest at home somewhere, I expect." He scratched his beard. "I'm sure the Ten had good reason to declare the boy guilty. Probably witnesses recognized him. You really think he was innocent?"

"I don't. And if the Maestro does, he hasn't told me about it."

"What leads you to think he's come back?"

As I told him, I realized how weak our case still was. "Three demimonde have been killed in the last three weeks, all in the same way, all old enough to have been in the trade eight years ago. No signs of other violence, meaning rape, and no robbery, so the motive's a mystery. All of them seem to have been expecting an old friend, and at least one of those had claimed to be Honeycat, which was Zorzi's love name. He had a birthmark to justify it, in a confidential location."

"Pah! I wouldn't waste spittle on that evidence."

"And the Council of Ten has warned us to stop prying into the murders."

Celsi sniffed disapprovingly. "Better. That is odd, I grant you. I know how often the Three take credit that really belongs to Nostradamus-and to you, too, dear boy, of course. Why try to block you on this one, mm?"

"They want to take Zorzi Michiel themselves?"

"Perhaps. But three dead courtesans are a serious matter. The state needs the taxes those women pay; the Ten can't want the trade shut down. It's a pity…"

He eyed one of his bookshelves, then heaved his portly frame upright and went to fetch a leather-bound ledger. He spread it on his lap, with the edge tucked under his paunch, and started thumbing through it. "My version of the Golden Book," he muttered. "I call it the Brass Book. You must be in here somewhere, everyone is. Yes, thought so. It's a pity the Devil finally took old Agostino Foscari. He would often drop a hint or two if I asked him nicely." He frowned at me. "Why're you looking like that?"

Because I had thought of something, and since I had not yet had time to report my idea to Nostradamus, I did not want or need to share it with Celsi. "Procurator Agostino Foscari? He died last fall, didn't he? Why him?"

Of course I couldn't deceive an expert. My host beamed like an antique cherub. "You still owe me a few secrets, dear boy. Out with it."

"You're saying that Foscari was one of the Three back then, back when Gentile Michiel was murdered?"

The Three are the state inquisitors. The Ten-who are actually seventeen, comprising ten elected members plus the doge and his six ducal counselors-do not have time to investigate criminal cases personally. They delegate that duty to the Three, a subcommittee of two elected members and one ducal counselor, known as the blacks and the red respectively from the color of their robes. The lips of the Council of Ten are notoriously sealed tighter than the Vatican's cash drawer, but Celsi was hinting that a case as old as the Michiel scandal was about due to spring a few leaks.

The old man smirked approvingly. "Yes, he was. Foscari was the red."

"And the blacks?"

"Just where is your nimble little mind running now, sonny?"

"Tell me the other two inquisitors who investigated Gentile's murder, and I'll give you a lovely, juicy morsel to make your day. I promise."

He pouted. "Or I shall claim a forfeit! The other two were Tommaso Pesaro, and Giovanni Gradenigo. He's gone too, now. Foscari in September, Gradenigo last Thursday, and you'll never get anything out of Pesaro. He won't tell the recording angel his middle initial. Now what's the big secret?"

"Nostradamus foresees another murder. We expect it this evening and we have a good idea of where it will happen." Or would have, when I had more time to think about it.

So I didn't have to discover what Celsi meant by a forfeit and we parted on good terms, with him rubbing his hands in glee at not being just on top of the news but actually ahead of it. I had put my master's reputation on the line, but it was worth it.

The one other question I had wanted to ask and hadn't was whether the young Timoteo Michiel, when he took his friar's vows, had taken the name of Fedele.