The Alchemist's Pursuit

20

Nostradamus can always surprise me. Next morning he hobbled into the atelier on his canes, obviously still in pain, and by the time he had settled into his chair, I was there with his willow bark potion. I should properly have slunk quietly away and given him an hour to sheath his fangs, but I was anxious to head off to Palazzo Michiel. Besides, I wanted to get the ordeal over with.

"Good morning, master."

He grunted, which was better than snarling.

"Concerning my visit to Circospetto…" I broke the news about the five hundred ducats and the forty-nine already gone. Since the wages due to me for the entire seven years of my apprenticeship will only be seventeen ducats, I expected to be torn into little pieces and fed to the fish of the canal.

He grunted again. "Good. You made the correct decision."

Rejecting the temptation to sink to the floor in a dramatic swoon, I said, "Thank you, master."

"Had he asked for only the two hundred you mentioned, I would have forbidden you to go back there. We have done Sciara down so often that he might have forgone that much just for the spite of seeing me exiled and you sent to the galleys. But I doubt if even he will pass up five hundred."

"Um…" I said, baffled by this backward thinking. "Yes, master."

Of course Nostradamus would collect from Violetta, but that would mean that his final reward for catching Honeycat would shrink by the same amount. This could be ominous. Had he given up hope of earning his fee?

"And I need counseling on a matter of cats, master."

He looked up at me with an expression that would flake paint off a Tintoretto. "Cats?"

I explained about cats: cats that force me to detour and so lead me to find Alessa in a weak moment, cats that direct me to a refuge when the mob is after me, and cats that delay me so that vizio Filiberto Vasco doesn't catch me red-handed trying to bribe Circospetto. One cat, or three? Not a cat in the normal sense at all, of course, so what? As I spoke he frowned and tugged at his goatee. Afterward he stared across at the wall of books for a while, scanning it as if he were mentally scanning through their contents, book by book. Perhaps he was.

"You been summoning without telling me?"

"No, master."

"Curious," he murmured. "I had not thought of… Well, I advise you to be very careful. I have exposed you to much strange lore in a very short time. It may not have seemed short to you, but when you compress the wisdom of centuries into just a few years, it can take on a life of its own. I may have been reckless. You may have opened channels to unexpected realms. Three times but never four?"

I scrabbled hastily in the back rooms of my memory. "In the Iliad, Patroclus tried three times to scale the walls of Troy and fell back, but when he tried again, Apollo struck him down. Diomedes, too. He attacked the god three times, and each time Apollo brushed him aside, but on his fourth attempt the god roared at him to warn him off. And Achilles-"

Violetta would have been proud of my classical scholarship. Even the Maestro grudgingly nodded approval.

"Yes, yes, Homer knew it, but it is older than that. I was thinking of the Hebrew tradition, to forgive a sinner three times but never four. Three times this apparition has helped you, you think. Now it has gained your confidence so that next time it may entrap you."

"Or it may be truly benevolent?"

"It may be," he said sourly, "but be careful! If there is a fourth time-Heaven forbid!-the stakes will be very high. Let me see that wound of yours."

I suspected when Giorgio delivered me to the Riva degli Schiavoni that I would be too early for donna Alina Orio, so on reaching Palazzo Michiel, I asked for Jacopo. Admitted, I sat on the same bench as I had two days before and studied the same pictures. The solution to Gentile Michiel's death hid somewhere in this building certainly, and I was more convinced than ever that the courtesans' deaths were related also; I just did not know why I thought that.

I was not alone in that belief, obviously, else why did so many people want the Maestro to investigate an eight-year-old murder that the Council of Ten had declared solved? Donna Alina Orio Michiel did. Violetta did, if indirectly. It seemed highly likely that Giovanni Gradenigo had, just before he died. And the Council of Ten did not.

No long wait this time-Jacopo appeared in short order, trotting down the great staircase and striding forward to meet me with a smile of greeting. He was even more magnificently garbed than before, his britches and doublet a concerto of cream and purple brocade, and he had somehow contrived to have his silken hose and his ruff both in the same shade of cream, instead of white. Moreover the ruff was huge, with innumerable points around the edge like a sunburst, but that helped to disguise the top-heavy effect of his overlarge chest and shoulders. His bonnet matched his waist-length cape of silver and blue, and the buttons on his doublet were chunks of amethyst. He was an eye-popping vision of excess and I was tormented by jealousy.

If I could trust anyone in the Michiel household, it should be Jacopo. He could have been no more than eleven or twelve when his father died and he was also in the clear for the courtesan murders, because if I tried to tackle him the way I had tackled the fake friar at San Zanipolo, I would bounce right off.

We bowed and greeted.

He made no move to lead me anywhere. "You bring a contract? The old witch will be delighted. She has been on pins and needles since you left, worried that Nostradamus will turn her down."

"The price may startle her."

"Bah!" he said in exactly the tone the Maestro uses. "She has more money than she can count, nothing to spend it on, and not much time left to try. You'll have to be patient, though. The daily reconstruction is still underway. Skilled craftsmen are at work. Is there anything I can tell you or any way I can entertain you until she considers herself presentable?"

I had very few questions to ask Jacopo, but I might as well put them now. I doubted that his half-brothers would let me within hailing distance of themselves or their staff until the matriarch had blessed my quest, perhaps not even then.

"What do you know about the knife that was used to kill your father?"

He eyed me warily. "How much do you know about it already?"

"I heard that it was a family possession."

He grinned, which seemed an odd reaction. "True. It had been a prized family treasure for centuries and then became an infamous one. Come along and I'll show you."

He went upstairs at a fast trot, which I had to match, but fortunately there were only a few servants around to frown at such impropriety. We crossed the wide salone to a glass case standing against the opposite wall. Amid a collection of ancient books, Roman lamps, Greek jars, some antique coins, and a few Turkish curiosities, there was only one weapon, a dagger. It had an S curve to it, with an animal head for a pommel. The grip was made of bone and the scabbard of silver. The blade was not visible, but would be very little longer than my hand, while the hilt would fit comfortably in a man's fist.

"It's called a khanjar," my guide said cheerfully. "Syrian. Made of damascene steel. It was collected in 1204 at the sack of Constantinople by one of their"-his smile faltered-"my ancestors. Unfortunately he collected it between his ribs. Fortunately his son was there also and was able to salvage the dagger, if not save the situation."

"He saved the family honor, though. He must have killed the killer or he couldn't have brought back the sheath."

Jacopo nodded. "Never thought of that."

Or perhaps the dagger had been routinely looted from a corpse and its story had been embellished over four centuries. I could not but admire the deadly little horror-an assassin's dream, small enough to be easily concealed and quite long enough to kill a man. "This cabinet is kept locked?"

"It is now. It wasn't back then, when our father was stabbed. I used to play with the khanjar when I was small and it was still just as sharp as it must have been in Constantinople. In fact…" Jacopo hesitated. "I was the one who noticed that it was missing after the murder and opened my big mouth in front of witnesses. Apparently the sbirri had not thought to ask anyone if we could identify the weapon."

"And how did the scabbard find its way back this time?"

He stared at me blankly. "I don't know. I suppose it was left behind in the Basilica. The killer wouldn't want to be caught wearing it, now would he? Not with blood on it."

I wondered who had been crass enough to put the dagger back on display, but I wasn't crass enough to ask.

Jacopo started to stroll. "Let's go and see if the painters and decorators have completed today's masterpiece."

I went with him. "If Zorzi has come back to Venice, he must have found somewhere safe to hide. Who would help him? Who would give him shelter?"

"One of his harlots, I suppose. You'll be an old man before you finish questioning all of those maenads."

"He had quite a reputation, but I was thinking of family. Bernardo?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Good riddance, in his view. Why start the tongues wagging all over again? Why queer the Council of Ten? I know the Ten now are not the same men as eight years ago, but they're all part of the inner circle. You go nowhere in politics in Venice if the First Ones don't like you."

"Domenico?"

"Never!" he said, even more firmly. "He has the means, I agree. He comes and goes a lot, to and from the mainland. He has a lot of contacts there. Even the Ten may not be able to keep track of Domenico, not completely. And Dom sometimes took Zorzi's side in the quarrels, but that was years ago, when Gentile was alive. He's the last one to want him back now."

It's always helpful to have a witness who likes to gossip.

"Money?" I said.

"Definitely money," Jacopo agreed. "If Zorzi came back and was pardoned, he would own one third of the fraterna."

Which was a reminder that the two Michiel brothers had benefitted not only from their father's death but because their brother had been disqualified from sharing in the windfall. Jacopo, being illegitimate, would not be a partner.

"Their mother? Could she be hiding Zorzi?"

Jacopo frowned. "She couldn't help directly. She almost never goes out of the house-Communion at Christmas and Easter, that's about all. That's the way proper ladies live, in her view. She might provide money. She would do that. You think that's why she's hiring Nostradamus-because Zorzi wants to have his name cleared so he can come back?"

"Or has come back."

We reached the end of the salone and climbed a few steps to a corridor. The Michiel palace was a warren, assembled from more than one building, and in total it was considerably larger than Ca' Barbolano. My guide continued at the same ambling pace.

"Zorzi's not in this house, if that's what you're thinking," he said. "I'd know if anyone knew. I'm part family and part servant. There's nowhere and nobody could hide him from me." He sounded proud of that, but I'd marked him as a busybody within moments of first meeting him.

"And don't be surprised," he added, "if the lady has company. Bernardo is spitting musket balls about this Nostradamus idea of hers. He'll want to nip you in the bud."

Interesting! Suspicion stirred. "What bothers him most about it?" I asked. "Just renewed scandal? Or the fee?" Or was it that he feared whatever truth Nostradamus might uncover?

For a moment I thought that I was not going to receive an answer, then my companion said quietly, "The Council of Ten."

"They've been asking questions?" I knew from Sciara that the file had been receiving attention lately, but this confirmation of the Ten's renewed interest made the floor quake under my feet.

"They've asked Bernardo questions-unofficially so far. A fante dropped in not long after you left on Saturday. We had a family conference about it yesterday. They even let me sit in."

"Is that unusual?"

"The rule is that I'm not family when I want to be and vice versa."

"It's worrisome news. Do you know what sort of questions?"

Again there was a pause before he spoke. "He didn't ask about you, clarissimo. I know because Domenico asked Bernardo that. The Ten just wanted to know if we'd heard rumors that Zorzi had slipped back into the city, when we last heard from him, and so on."

"Did you all get your stories straight, then?"

Jacopo laughed. "We had a screaming, rip-roaring row, the best fight we've had since Gentile died and Zorzi left. Accusations of greed, duplicity, and senile dementia volleyed back and forth. Bernardo roared, Domenico sneered, Lucretzia sobbed, Fedele preached hellfire and Christian charity, sometimes in the same breath. Even Isabetta said a few sharp words. I just sat there like a cherub and enjoyed it all thoroughly. At the end, when they had all realized that they were going nowhere, I said that, as my conscience was quite clear and I had no guilty secrets to hide, I intended to answer all your questions fully and honestly. Then they all had to agree that they would do the same."

We had reached a door I knew. Jacopo halted.

"Do you suppose that one of them is a murderer and will lie to you?" he asked.

"That's for my master to decide," I said, although I knew that Jacopo himself had been lying to me like an Ottoman camel trader.

He reached for the handle. "Brace yourself for Venus In Splendor."