The Alchemist's Pursuit

33

So our guests departed. Giorgio took Matteo Surian back to San Samuele, and the Michiels left in their own boats.

I had not realized how hungry I was. Fussing and scolding, Mama Angeli had removed our uneaten Bisato Anguilla Sull'ara and produced piping hot Canestrelli alla Griglia. The Maestro, in an astonishingly good mood, raided his hoard of favorite wines for a bottle from a vineyard I had never heard of. Although impatient to return to 96 and comfort Violetta, I sat down without complaint and set to work.

"A most interesting case," he remarked between scallops.

I thought we had been very lucky to avoid disaster. "You may have trouble collecting a fee from Violetta. Her contract specified that you would catch a man."

He puckered his cheeks in satisfaction. "Jacopo was just as guilty, and the Caterina note condemns him as an accomplice."

I conceded the point with a nod. "But you have no hope of seeing any lucre from the Michiels."

He took a sip of wine and smacked his lips. "They will not want to face a lawsuit."

The gall of the man! Bill the brothers for proving that their mother had murdered their father?

"You gave the Ten your sacred oath that you had no interest in Zorzi's death."

He scowled. "So I did. A letter of sympathy, then, and hope that they feel like acknowledging my assistance with a suitable honorarium."

"Yes, master." I was more interested in eating than talking. The sooner I could leave the better.

"Of course the case is not quite closed. You still have to tie up a few loose ends."

"Me?"

"Yes, you." Nostradamus waved a fork vaguely. "Every adept develops his own particular style to some extent, his personal talents. I am detecting hints-as I should be by this time-that you are finding your own skills, your particular strengths. For example, after you almost caught Honeycat in the Campo San Zanipolo, you were quite insistent that the root of the mystery lay in Palazzo Michiel. That suggests a burgeoning intuition."

I swallowed. "Um… Maybe. Matteo had told me that the fake friar didn't smell like a friar, and the one I tackled certainly didn't. When I grabbed donna Alina tonight, I… I was reminded that she uses rose water. I think the whole palazzo has a scent of rose water, and that smell was what I was detecting-without realizing, of course."

My master banged his fist on the table. "You don't need to explain everything, you know!"

"Sorry."

"Remember that in future! But your tarot, now. What did Circospetto let slip so that the knave of coins was reversed? Certainly Sciara alerted us to the fact that Jacopo had been lying about the dagger, but we would have discovered that soon enough without him. By the way, who first misled us about the khanjar dagger?"

"Jacopo."

"No, he just encouraged your misapprehension. Think about it. What was the cat that sought you out so often, and what were its motives? Does it relate to XX of the major arcana?"

I probably blinked like an owl. Trump XX is Judgment, of course, the card my tarot reading had used to represent my helper. The cat had helped me several times and died for its pains, but that was the only resemblance I could see to the trump.

"What had a cat to do with angels blowing trumpets and the dead crawling out of their coffins?" I demanded.

The Maestro did not answer. "Are you starting to channel spirit help?"

"Not that I am aware of, master."

He smiled. "I'm sure you will, once you have meditated on these matters enough and attained the necessary trance state. Clearly the final answers are up to you this time."

I swallowed my last scallop and emptied my glass in barbaric indifference to the vintage. I pushed my chair back. "Then, if you will excuse me, master, I will start my meditation at once." I left at a run, before he could forbid me, but I thought I heard him chuckle as I went out the door.

After locked myself securely in my room, I headed for the central window. Number 96 would be back to normal now, so I need not fear feckless sword-wielding guards. Violetta had canceled her engagements, meaning I could have her all to myself for the whole night, perhaps several nights. And she should be especially grateful. The warrior's reward! Bliss! I opened the casement.

"Arghrraw…?"

The cat was sitting on the window ledge, licking a paw.

Everyone knows that cats have nine lives. I reluctantly set aside my lustful ambitions. It was pay-off time.

"The cathouse is on the other side of the calle," I said. "All right, Felix. I am grateful for all your help. What do you want from me?" Other than my immortal soul, perhaps.

The cat leapt silently down and stalked across to the door, where it turned its golden stare on me again. "Arghrraw…"

"You want to lead me somewhere?"

"Arghrraw…"

I retrieved my cloak from the wardrobe.

A dense winter fog had come in with the tide, so thick now that a golden halo glowed around my sputtering torch. Again I let myself out through the courtyard gate. Well muffled in my cloak, I followed the cat around the bends of the calle until we came to the T where we had first met, and where it had rescued me from Vasco that evening. Without hesitation it turned right, toward the campo, tail stiffly upright.

We met no one. With sounds muffled by the bone-freezing fog, the city seemed deserted. Canals lay flat as smoked mirrors, without a ripple. We headed generally westward, along deserted calli and across the empty Campo San Polo. I soon knew that we were heading to either the Palazzo Gradenigo or Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The latter was the one. In the middle of the Campo dei Frari, my guide jumped up on the gossip bench at the wellhead and turned to look at me.

"Too early?" I sat there also and opened the edge of my cloak invitingly. With fastidious paws the cat climbed up on my lap and lay down. Its fur was cold to the touch, which made me shiver, so I refrained from trying to stroke it. I made a covering for it, leaving its head free. It purred.

"Is there anything I should know?" I asked softly.

It curled up tighter and went to sleep. Count that a negative.

Perhaps I had been brought there to meditate in the dank and salty night. I needed no trance, though. The Maestro had identified the questions for me and the bones of the tragedy were visible now, like a rocky headland emerging from the fog. The last pieces came into view-the Judgment trump, and all those assorted pieces of paper I had seen in the last few days. Without meaning to, I had collected handwriting samples for just about everyone in the Michiel family.

Although it felt much longer, I probably sat there no more than fifteen minutes before I saw another torch approaching. The bearer was darkly anonymous, with his cowl raised. He had bare feet.

I rose, cradling the cat in one arm, raising my torch with the other.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

He stopped where he was, some paces back. "Who's that?"

"Alfeo Zeno."

"You have a good priest in San Remo. Take your burdens to him."

"These burdens concern you also, Brother Fedele."

"Good reason why I should not hear your confession."

"All the more reason why you should, as you were the cause of some of my troubles."

The friar sniffed. "You are insolent. Include that in your next confession."

"You may assign me a penance for it if you wish. I assure you that I have sought you out on a matter of grave urgency. I also bring sad news of your mother."

He shrugged and turned. "Come, then."

I followed him back the way he had come, and in a moment we came to magnificent doors of the great church. We paused there to stub out our torches and put them in the barrel, but then he noticed the cat.

"You can't bring that animal in here."

"This animal is evidence, Brother. It is possessed by a spirit, whether demon or not I cannot tell. And you may assign me a penance if I am deceiving you."

He stared at me for a long moment, as if assessing my sanity or lack of, but in the end he led me inside. Billows of fog swirled in with us. The great sculpted cavern was as cold and deserted as the world outside, lit by a few faint candles at the far end that seemed no brighter than fluttering stars. Its austere and awesome beauty was invisible, but the very stillness seemed holy; I could hear the silence as if it were built into the stone.

Fedele did not go to the confessionals, but to a candle stall near the door, where a single flame burned. There were two stools there, so we took one each. This time the cat refused my lap in favor of the floor, where it sat erect, staring at the friar, who ignored it.

"Never mind this nonsense about confession, my son. Tell me what troubles you." Fedele did smell like a real friar.

I drew a deep breath. "Father, I subverted an official of the Republic. I gave him money to break his oath of office. He let me see a confidential document."

Silence. Fedele's stare was as stony as the cat's.

"The trouble began long ago," I said. "But it lay dormant until last September, when the doctors advised sier Agostino Foscari that the time had come to send for a priest. You told us you were not that priest. Even so, I do not expect you to comment when I report what I believe the dying man said. He recalled the murder of your father and how that dastardly, sacrilegious act appalled the whole city and profaned the Basilica, the jeweled heart of the city, the embodiment of its dedication to San Marco.

"In their determination to find and punish the culprit, the Council of Ten broke its own rules and met in the morning, and the morning of Christmas Day at that. It then, I believe, did something that is legal but much criticized-it delegated to the Council of Three not just some of its powers but all of them in this case. Inquisitors Foscari, Gradenigo, and Pesaro were given free rein to find the perpetrator and bring him to justice as soon as possible.

"For several days they made no progress, while the Republic seethed with righteous fury and cries for vengeance. The Three must have questioned the dead man's youngest son, for he had an evil reputation for debauchery, cause to fear disinheritance by his father, and no witnesses to testify where he had been that night. But how could he have gotten into the Basilica? They would have been reluctant to charge the boy with so heinous a crime in the absence of positive evidence, for they were fair men, even if they might have treated a man of citizen class more sternly. They probably did not seriously consider the victim's widow, a noblewoman of unimpeachable character and breeding. How had she, who never went out unaccompanied, managed to obtain a mercenary soldier's dagger? No, the Three would have been hunting for some outsider, a thwarted business opponent, most likely. But they were baffled.

"Then came a breakthrough. An admitted prostitute accused Zorzi Michiel of confessing while talking in his sleep.

"The Three, armed with all of the Ten's powers, decided to take the anonymous letter seriously. They arrested Zorzi Michiel-in secret, as is customary-and they put him to the Question. They had his wrists bound behind him. They had him raised on the cord and then dropped. The pain is beyond description as the victim's shoulders are-"

"You need not elaborate," the friar snapped. "We have all seen it done in the Piazza. It is a common enough punishment."

"But the criminal usually knows how many hoists he must endure, and three or four are usual. In interrogations the witness knows only that the torment will continue until he can stand no more, and on, beyond even that. He may be repeatedly dropped. He may have weights tied to his feet. His hands and face turn an incredible red. His joints are wrenched apart, his ligaments torn. The strain-"

"Stop!"

"If you wish. As you know, Brother, the pain is so terrible that a man who does not confess on the cord cannot be hanged. Zorzi did not confess. He died. Possibly his heart stopped, or his rib cage collapsed. It can happen. It did happen."

Pause. Then the friar whispered, "How do you know this?"

"Because it explains what followed. The state inquisitors faced a new problem. They still had no culprit and now they had a dead man to explain. What could they do next? Torture the boy's mother?

"They committed perjury. They disposed of the body and announced that they had found proof of Zorzi's guilt but he had escaped. Nothing too unexpected there, not in the Venetian system of justice. Case closed. But they made no effort to find out where he might have gone-they did not even question his mother about that!"

"Is there much more of this?" Fedele asked wearily.

"I fear there is, Brother. Because Foscari, before he died, perhaps prompted by his confessor, summoned sier Bernardo and told him the story of his brother's death. Bernardo went home and wisely told no one. Like a fool, though, he wrote it all in his diary, perhaps thinking that it might clear the family name at some far future date. He told the rest of you last Sunday. The sickness you had all thought cured erupted again; the buried corpse rose from the grave.

"Unfortunately, by then Jacopo had already read the diary. And he had told your mother that Zorzi had been betrayed by a whore. Your mother was the only person on earth who knew for a fact that Zorzi Michiel had not stabbed his father. All these years she had believed him safe and sound somewhere on the mainland. She determined to be revenged on the perjurer, whoever she might be."

"Alfeo, Alfeo! You are saying that my mother, donna Alina Orio, not only killed her husband but has now set out to kill all the fallen women in Venice?"

"Not all, only those your brother was patronizing in the weeks leading up to Gentile's death-any woman who might have lain with him after that sad event and betrayed his confession. She had a list of possible culprits because Zorzi recounted all his exploits to her, and she kept a record of them. I cannot explain her motives for doing so, but perhaps you have met such a sin before."

"You have any evidence to support this ridiculous allegation?"

"We did have. We had the diary your mother kept of her youngest son's fornication. Now the Council of Ten has that record. Both names and handwriting match. Your mother's crimes were proven beyond doubt this evening, Brother. She attempted to murder another courtesan, who would have been the fifth she had slain. Fortunately she was caught in time. She is presently at home in the custody of your brothers."

Fedele bent his head and prayed.

The cat watched him.

An aged man with a cane entered the church, put a coin in the box for a candle from the rack beside us, and then headed off toward the altar. He seemed not to have noticed our little group, not even the cat.

Shivering as the cold sank through to my bones, I waited until Fedele had completed his prayer and was ready for more.

"Now it is obvious why your mother hired Nostradamus. The diary named the courtesans but not the 'amateurs'-as your brother Domenico called them, the adulterous married women that Zorzi seduced. She hoped he would identify some of them for her to hunt down.

"Last Wednesday, you were summoned to the deathbed of Giovanni Gradenigo. He did not know that the friar who arrived at his bedside had once been Timoteo Michiel, any more than you had realized that your own father's death would play a part in his confession.

"Of course Gradenigo told you much the same story as Foscari had told his confessor, except that he went further, because one of Zorzi's women at that time was not a courtesan but a highborn lover, an adulteress by the name of Tonina. That is a rare name, and in this case it referred to donna Tonina Bembo Gradenigo, wife of Marino Gradenigo, Giovanni's son. After the Council of Ten proclaimed Zorzi Michiel's guilt and flight, she went to her father-in-law and admitted that Zorzi had been with her when Gentile was stabbed. Zorzi was innocent, she said, and must be pardoned and recalled. But Zorzi was beyond recall, alas.

"Gradenigo concluded that he had tortured an innocent man to death and blackened a noble family's name. Racked by guilt, he swore his daughter-in-law to secrecy. He abandoned politics and devoted the rest of his life to good works."

Pause. Then Fedele said harshly, "This is unbelievable!"

"There is an alternative," I admitted, "but it is even worse. Zorzi had truthfully said he could not produce an alibi without betraying a lady. Perhaps he was just posturing and believed that he could always tattle if he had to-until he learned, too late, that his lover was the daughter-in-law of one of the state inquisitors, one of the men interrogating him. Had he not known that? Did they break him on the cord so that he blurted out Tonina's name, but Gradenigo and his partners refused to accept the alibi and just kept on torturing him?"

After a moment Fedele mumbled, "Gradenigo was an honorable man."

That was the only answer I would ever get. It seemed that Zorzi had withstood the torment and taken his secret to the grave. Despite his debauchery, he had been no weakling.

"But you have no proof of any of this flummery," the friar said harshly.

"No, Brother? When Gradenigo was dying you blocked his dying wish to speak with Nostradamus. When you came calling on Sunday and the Maestro speculated that the murder weapon had been available in Palazzo Michiel, you encouraged him to think so. You did not actually tell a lie, although you knew very well that his guess was wrong. You did not want the case reopened, although by then you knew that Zorzi had been unjustly condemned. You were hiding something."

"I did not wish my family to suffer more," the friar muttered.

He was still twisting the truth.

"That too, no doubt," I said. "But now I have seen the anonymous letter, and last Thursday you wrote a note to me, if you remember." Of course one could not hang a man on a mere handwriting resemblance and I had compared them in memory only, but Fedele did not know this.

He sighed. "Many laws still define a cleric as a person who can read and write, Alfeo. Not a day passes but some illiterate person asks me to write a letter for him."

"Brother, you are still doing it! Do you honestly expect me to believe that you wrote out a virtual death warrant for your own brother without insisting that the true author's name be included?"

Fedele was silent, staring blindly along the great nave toward the faint candles on the main altar beyond the choir and screen.

"You composed that note!" I insisted. "Why, why? What motive could you possibly have had to bring a false accusation against your own brother in full knowledge of the horrors that might result?"

How could a man of God have lived with that guilt all these years? And for the last week he had lived with the awful knowledge of how Zorzi had died, and the certainty that he had sent his brother to the most terrible of deaths.

"Motive?" He lowered his gaze to the cat, but I did not think he was seeing the cat. He was seeing the past. "Motive…? The human soul is a noisome pit, Alfeo. Priests know that better than anyone. I have had to listen to confessions even worse than my own. In that note I lied about who I was and what evidence I had, but I honestly believed Zorzi to be guilty. He was a fiend from hell!

"I took my vows at fifteen. I thought I could resist the temptations of the flesh. Zorzi was two years younger than I, and even then he laughed at me and said I would regret my decision. He was right, so right! I was wrong. The fires burned up far hotter than I had dreamed they would.

"Zorzi mocked me for it. At sixteen he was promiscuous. At nineteen he was a rake, a compulsive fornicator, and proud of it. He would brag of his sins to me, tell me he was taking my share also. Our father was a moral, upright man. Yes, he strayed sometimes, but we all do that. He supported the church and gave alms generously. He had tried to bring up his children to be good Christians and he succeeded with all but one of them. I adored my father!"

His mother adored Zorzi.

Timoteo swore an oath of chastity; Zorzi was a lecher.

Timoteo swore a vow of poverty; Zorzi wallowed in his mother's wealth.

Fedele swore absolute obedience; Zorzi did anything he wanted.

"Why did you denounce him?" I demanded.

"Because he killed our father!"

"He told you that?"

The priest raised his pain-racked eyes to mine. "Yes. No. Not quite. He swore he had a very good alibi, because he had been in bed with two harlots at the time, one for him and one for me. He was laughing at me! Yes, he did tell me he was guilty, but not in words. With smiles, gestures, hints… I knew and he knew I knew. I thought the end justified the means and so I brought him to justice. He fled into exile, we thought, and that seemed an absurdly lenient sentence, far less than he deserved. I did not know about Tonina Gradenigo!

"For eight years I felt no guilt. Then, not a week ago, I learned that I had been wrong! wrong! wrong! I betrayed my brother and I betrayed my mother, who had needed my help for so long. I had blamed her, not my father, for everything." He shook his head and started to gather himself, as if to rise and stalk away, back into his lonely, private hell.

"Zorzi died proclaiming his innocence and protecting his mistress, you think?" I said.

"Isn't that what you have been telling me?"

"No. He may have been protecting your mother. Can you not see the pattern, Brother?"

Fedele slumped back on the stool and stared at me. "Pattern?"

"Alina has been murdering women with Jacopo's help. Jacopo did the dirty work beforehand, the legwork. He found the victims and made all the preparations, even writing the notes that would lure the fallen women to their deaths. But when the time came, he would always arrange a good alibi, and she wielded the knife or the silken cord. That was how she had worked with Zorzi, Brother. She was repeating the pattern. Who do you think gave her the dagger eight years ago? Who put her up to it? Who suggested she save her poor baby from his daddy's wrath?"

"Zorzi was guilty all along?" The friar's eyes widened in sudden hope.

"Oh, yes. They were both guilty. Your mother you can see tomorrow…" It was my turn to stare at the cat, which had barely moved a whisker through all this long conversation. "But Zorzi? Could you forgive him now, Brother? If your brother were truly repentant and trying to make amends and came to ask for your blessing, could you give it?"

Fedele shouted at me, raising echoes in the huge church. "If God gave you wings, would you fly, Alfeo? Do not ask such sacrilegious questions, such blasphemy! What happens now? You have called me Cain and I have not denied the charge. You will denounce me?"

"I could not. The only evidence that could be produced in court is the note and I ought never have been shown the note. In any case I would not, and neither would my master. In effect, although you lied, what you said was true. Zorzi was an accomplice in your father's death, as guilty as your mother and with far less excuse. But I would never denounce you, because of the cat."

Friar looked down at cat as if he had forgotten it. The cat stared back.

"Oh yes, the cat. Your familiar, I suppose?"

"No, Brother. Please understand that my master's first objective always was to prevent any more murders. He is an avaricious man, but a good Christian in spite of it. I happily do his bidding. Throughout this case, that cat has been helping me. I first saw it last Friday, when it blocked my way. I thought it must be rabid, so I went by another road, and that turned out to be a very fortunate decision. On Saturday I tried to stop your mother from killing Marina Bortholuzzi and was chased by a mob that thought I was the killer. The cat showed me a refuge. On Sunday it saved me from arrest. Tonight it intervened to save a woman's life. This is no ordinary cat, Brother."

Fedele crossed himself. "It is possessed by a demon!"

"A strangely cooperative, right-thinking demon. A honey-colored cat?"

It was, of course, the last of the tarot predictions. The card showing the helper had been Trump XX, Judgment, the dead rising from their graves. I said, "Do you believe in ghosts, Brother?"

The staring match continued.

"Well? Do you, Brother?"

Fedele whispered, "I suppose… Yes."

The cat shot into his lap. He almost fell off the stool, hands raised so as not to touch the animal. He must be even less of a cat person than I had been.

The cat cuddled itself in tidily, curled its tail around, and began to purr, staring up at the friar's anguished face.

I rose. "You can try an exorcism if you want, Brother, but perhaps you should just offer your blessing. He died unconfessed, remember. By the look of him, I think he is ready to give you his forgiveness and accept yours. Then he can be on his way."

At the door I looked back. The friar was embracing the cat and it seemed to be licking his tears.