The Alchemist's Pursuit

16

Dusk was falling, Carnival would soon resume in earnest. In Ca' Barbolano I ran up the forty-eight steps and let myself in. I found Fulgentio already there, coaching the twins in fencing under their mother's disapproving eye.

"Be with you in a moment," I shouted, and slipped into the atelier to report. The Maestro was at the desk, working on a horoscope that he would normally have me do, which was enough annoyance to justify his disagreeable scowl. He needed more light, but the fact that he had been moving around at all was encouraging.

"Progress!" I said as I hurried to the mantelpiece to fetch a couple of lamps. "The formidable donna Alina has been receiving letters from Zorzi for years, except that they're fakes done by Domenico. Bernardo may be in on the hoax, but I'm not sure of that. Timoteo is Friar Fedele, which confirms a tie between the Gradenigo mystery and Ca' Michiel."

I laid the lamps on the desk, backed off a couple of paces, and lit them both with the Word.

"There's another son, illegitimate, aged about nineteen or twenty, goes by the name of Jacopo Fauro and acts as stableboy to the lioness. Alina-the-terrible Orio wants to hire you to prove that Zorzi did not murder his father."

"So your afternoon was not completely wasted." Nostradamus had listened with one finger marking his place in the ephemeris and his pen poised in his other hand. Now he dipped the quill in the inkwell and went back to work. "Go and eat or do something useful."

"Will you take the lady's contract?"

"Of course," he muttered, scribbling a calculation on a sheet already almost entirely covered with hieroglyphics. "Unless you catch the Strangler tonight."

There are times I want to strangle him. "And where do I go to do that?"

He looked up furiously. "Damnatio! I told you! I told you he would kill again after the Sabbath and I told you where! Are you all idiots? You and that Trau boy and Giorgio-you're the natives. I'm foreign born. You eat my salt and pocket my gold. You work it out. Go and get him, preferably alive, but kill him if you must."

I left before I did strangle him. At the same time, I sympathized. If Fulgentio and I did not decipher the quatrain in time, tomorrow would bring word of another woman murdered somewhere and we should all curse ourselves, because the answer to the riddle would then be blindingly obvious.

I went to my room to fetch my sword and Fulgentio followed me in, closing the door. He tossed his foil and mask on my bed, to lie alongside a mysterious bundle. He was grinning like a child, as if we were going off to play hide-and-go-seek for sweetmeats instead of a woman's life. Fulgentio is smart-had he seen what I was missing in the quatrain?

"Had these made up," he announced, untying the cord around the bundle. "Secret-police costumes." He held up a pair of cloaks, white on one side and black on the other. "Helps us find each other in the crowd and then sneak up on the Strangler."

"Sometimes I think you are crazy," I said, retrieving my sword from the top of the wardrobe, "and other times I know you are."

"Were I sane, friend, I would find a much more enjoyable companion for tonight." His amusement was as transmissible as always.

Masks are standard for Carnival, when servants and nobles can mingle on almost equal terms-the poor are still poor and the rich rich, of course-but masks and swords are an illegal combination, so we must keep our rapiers well hidden or risk being arrested by the sbirri. Mama tried to drag me bodily into the kitchen to eat, but night was falling and I promised her I would buy something at one of the sausage stands. She shuddered and so did I. I warned her to lock up after us.

Clad in white like ghosts, Fulgentio and I left by the back door and the staircase down to the courtyard. I let us out the gate and locked it behind us. We were on a manhunt where we knew neither our quarry nor his range. It seemed hopeless to me-grass? three saints?

Fulgentio began recounting a complicated story that was making the rounds in the palace, all about the French ambassador's mistress. He kept it going until we reached our first real decision point, where the calle reached the campo. I hesitated.

He stopped to look at me, raising his torch high. "Not San Marco again, so where?"

I had it! "Of course San Marco!" I shouted. "Let's go!" Seized by a sudden urgency, I began to run.

"There is no grass in the Piazza!" he complained, running alongside.

"But there is grass in the campo!"

"Men have been strangled for much less provocation than… Saints preserve me! Of course!"

We came to the great bridge of the Rialto, which was packed with revelers, most of them heading in the same direction we were. A few wore grotesque costumes, but most were merely cloaked and masked. The night was full of torchlight, laughter, and singing, so it was hard to remember that we were on a trail of death. When we reached the far side, the mob split right or straight ahead, rivers of flame bound for the Piazza of San Marco.

We veered to the left and started to run again.

Campo San Zanipolo has the grass we sought, for it is one of the last large campi still unpaved. Also, it has the man of blood we sought. We had been concentrating too hard on Honeycat, Erasmo da Narni, and forgetting that there was another famous condottiere in Venetian history, Bartolomeo Colleoni, a greater warrior. My fencing instructor claims him as an ancestor. In his will, Colleoni left money for a statue of him to be set up on the Piazza San Marco, in front of the Basilica, but no statues have ever been allowed there. The Senate took the money but cheated and put the statue in front of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, calling that the Campo San Marco, but in fact it is the Campo Zanipolo, outside the Dominicans' church next door. The Republic did not skimp on the statue itself, though, a magnificent Verrocchio equestrian figure high on a plinth, and it is watched over by three saints, because San Zanipolo is actually two, John and Paul, smeared together in Veneziano. Grass, three saints, and a man of blood. Carnival was in full tilt when we arrived. Bonfires, music, dancing, drinking, horrible sausages, almost everyone masked, dancing, laughing. There were acrobats and jugglers and men on stilts. The campo was packed and somewhere in all that throng, the Strangler might be stalking his next victim.

"We'll never find him!" Fulgentio moaned. "Should we split up?"

I ran through the prophecy again in my mind. "Not yet. The man of blood sees blood, remember? The statue faces west."

We pushed our way through the throng, resisting anonymous hands trying to pull us into the dancing. Most of the action was around a raging bonfire to the east of the column. The smaller, quieter crowd on the west side was taking advantage of the relative privacy of the shadow to engage in kissing and other tender pastimes.

"In there!" I told my accomplice. "That's perfect for Honeycat. Nobody's paying any attention to anyone else."

"Provided he can recognize his victim. You watch this side. I'll go around the other."

"Look out for friars," I said as he hurried away.

That was easier said than done in the shadows, for many people wore hoods or head cloths, and almost everyone was masked. Prostitutes flaunted bare breasts; there were many of those, making me feel like a voyeur as I squirmed through between the couples. Fulgentio had wondered how the Strangler expected to recognize his prey. Were we wrong in our guess that he preyed only on women old enough to have known Zorzi Michiel? If any harlot would suffice, he would have no lack of choice here. And who said he had to dress as a friar?

A woman screamed. The sound came from in front of me, but there were about a dozen people between me and its source.

"No!" I yelled, and hurled myself forward. Had I been as big as Bruno I might have accomplished something conclusive, but I could make no speed as I clawed and ricocheted through the mob, most of whom were now heading in the opposite direction. I saw a friar's hood, but as I went to tackle him, I realized that he held a knife, so I tried to dodge at the last minute. We toppled into others and went down in a heap. My actions had been monumentally idiotic and I paid for my folly with a searing pain in my ribs.

But then the onlookers bellowed and responded, most taking flight with cries of shrill alarm, while the rest-mainly young men whose foreplay had been interrupted-sought redress. I was kicked, cursed, then kicked again. I was hauled up by the collar. I was bleeding, which probably saved me from worse injuries. Rage turned to shouts of alarm.

"Stop him! Catch him! Stop him!" I realized that I had been bellowing this for what felt like quite a while. "Is anyone else hurt?"

Yes there was, because another group had gathered around someone who was not standing. Women screamed in horror. My companions went to see and I fled.

I was armed, soaked in blood, and-so the sbirri would claim-had created a disturbance to let my accomplice slit a purse or a throat. The least I could expect from them would be some ham-fisted barber sewing me up, a couple of nights in jail, and interrogation by the chiefs of the Ten on Monday. The fire in my ribs grew worse as I ran, but I must have taken a slash, not a stab, or I would be drowning in my own blood already. Superficial wounds can bleed more than punctures.

I crossed the bridge over the Rio dei Mendicanti and was faced with a dozen or so raucous, largely drunk, merrymakers filling the street from side to side. Many of them carried torches, and when I dodged through between them, they saw red all down my left side. Oh, how I cursed Fulgentio and his white cloaks! Fortunately nobody reacted fast enough to grab me, so I got safely past them, but then the shouting started and rapidly became a hue and cry.

Drunk or sober, they were fresh. I was winded and already feeling the loss of blood. I wasn't going to win a race and their shouts would alert any other group ahead of me. I needed a place to hide. The best Samaritans Venice possessed would not rescue a blood-soaked fugitive from the night without asking a lot of questions first.

"Arghrraw…"

A cat standing on its hind legs, scratching at a door? Sooner done than said. Some reactions are instantaneous, no matter how many words are needed to describe them later. Cats rarely condescend to be taught tricks, but will sometimes teach themselves, and this one must have learned that such antics would sooner or later persuade some friendly passerby to let it in. Probably the whole parish knew it and was proud of its cleverness. If that was the situation, the door was not kept locked. I was more than happy to let the cat in, follow it inside, and slam the door behind me.

I found a bolt and slid it. Then I slid myself-to the floor. For a while I just sat there, leaning back against the planks and gasping. The cat had vanished into the darkness. Judging by the smell, the cat often did not go outside.

Evidently my pursuers had not been close enough to see how or where I managed my disappearing act, for no one hammered on the door. As soon as I had caught my breath, I stripped off my cloak, doublet, and shirt, all of them blood soaked. I wrapped the shirt tightly around myself to bandage the gash slanting across three ribs, and then dressed again, hoping I was putting the cloak dark side out. Maybe Fulgentio's invention did have some uses, but dark red would be more appropriate than black.

I stood up with care and the world did not spin or tilt at odd angles. There would be blood on the floor in the morning, but at least my exsanguinous corpse would not be there also. I whispered, "Thanks, cat," to the darkness. Rabid or otherwise, cats could be surprisingly useful. I opened the door and stepped out into the night with my head high, being as unfurtive as possible.