The Alchemist's Pursuit

5

I marched Battista out of the yard and took him back with me to Ca' Barbolano, where I presented him to Mama with orders to feed him until he popped. Then I sent Corrado and Christoforo off to tell Fulgentio that I had a potential servant for him to interview. The twins love running errands to Ca' Trau, because they are often tipped two or even three soldi apiece there.

The Maestro had not yet emerged from his room and I needed my hunch confirmed before I stuck my neck too far out, so I slipped into my room and locked the door behind me. Three of the iron bars on the central window are loose enough to lift out and the calle between Ca' Barbolano and Number 96 is so narrow that I can jump it easily going there and almost as easily coming back. This saves me a lot of stairs at the trifling risk of a very messy death.

In moments I was climbing over the railing around the altana on 96's roof. I unlocked the trap and clambered down the steep stairway.

What had been a late night for me had been an early one for Violetta and I hoped I would find her awake. She wasn't, but Milana was, cleaning the kitchen. Milana is the most consistently cheerful person I know, although she has a twisted back and is so tiny that she must often get jostled and bullied when she goes to the market. Being devoted to Violetta and totally in her confidence, she knew all about yesterday's events. Her expression when she saw me that morning told me right away that my guess had been correct. If anyone knew of a second murdered courtesan, it would be people in the trade.

"Caterina Someone?" I demanded.

Milana nodded. "Caterina Lotto. She was murdered on Sunday in her room in San Samuele. The sbirri arrested her doorman, Matteo Surian."

Doorman is a polite way of saying bravo and pimp, but I knew the name. "Matteo the Butcher?"

Again Milana nodded.

"Saints! I wonder they didn't start a riot." Matteo had been my childhood hero. I'll get to him later.

"I think they very nearly did," Milana said with a fleeting grin. "He was released before nightfall. It was very sad about signora Lucia. I did not know signora Caterina, but I think my mistress will be unhappy when she hears this news."

"I am appalled. The Maestro will be, too. How did Caterina die, do they say?"

"She was strangled with a cord."

Memories of Lucia's crushed windpipe made me shiver. "Tell Violetta that I shall come back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, any more gossip you can collect, the better." I turned to go.

"Sier Alfeo?"

I turned back and said "?" with my eyebrows.

"There was a third," Milana said sadly, "about a week ago-Ruosa da Corone, in San Girolamo."

"How?"

"The same way."

Three courtesans, all strangled. Who could doubt that this was the work of one person?

"I'll be back as soon as I can," I said. "Bolt the door behind me."

I found Nostradamus in his favorite chair in the atelier with no cane or staff in sight, meaning that Bruno had carried him there. In front of him stood Battista-telling him to sit would have made him uncomfortable-answering a barrage of questions. I went quietly to the desk to listen.

The Maestro was trying to track down the news about Caterina Lotto, whom I had thought to be the second victim, but had apparently been the third. Who had told Giovanni Gradenigo the news? Who had thought an old dying nobleman would be interested in the death of a courtesan? The picture that Battista was painting was a dramatic one, a pageant of Gradenigo's life trooping past his deathbed to bid him farewell. There had been scores of family members, of course, including noblemen in their floor-length black gowns, with matching bonnets and the cloth strip known as a tippet draped over the left shoulder. There had been senators, wearing the same but in red. There had been sobbing grandchildren and great-grandchildren, servants, tenants, friends from all levels of Venetian society, and many tradesmen from the scuola.

The dying man had spoken with every single one of them, Battista reported, refusing to allow anyone to be turned away, interrupting the parade only when overcome by nausea or the need to bring up more blood. It was impossible to say who had told him of the courtesan's murder, just as it was impossible to know why the information had upset him so much and made him call for Nostradamus.

"Had he been one of her customers?"

"Oh no, lustrissimo!" Battista looked more horrified by that slur on his master's honor than he had when discussing his death. "I was with him for almost twenty years, lustrissimo, and never did I hear any hint of anything that… He was an upright Christian, very loving and faithful to his wife. No, no."

"What did he say about this Caterina, then? Anything special about her, anything odd, peculiar about her?"

"Just that she had been so beautiful that the great Titian had painted her."

Titian died twenty years ago. A courtesan can fall a long way in twenty years. She would not have been so beautiful at the end.

"Did he speak of her as if he had actually seen her beauty for himself?"

Battista thought for a moment and then nodded uncertainly.

Baffled, the Maestro tugged his beard. "His wife predeceased him?"

Nod. "Almost a year ago, poor lady. My master never quite recovered from the loss."

Nostradamus has an incredible instinct for finding the germane in a jungle of irrelevance. "Then, if sier Giovanni was such an upright, moral man, what was the connection…? What was his attitude to courtesans in general?"

Battista squirmed. "I don't understand…"

"Did he despise them? Rant against their wickedness? Call them names, like 'she-devils' or 'vessels of evil'?"

"Oh, no, lustrissimo! He was a gentle, patient man. I never heard him speak of any sinner like that."

Silence. The dead man was starting to sound like a candidate for sainthood.

"Then did he ever try to help them, then? Courtesans, I mean, fallen women? Battista, I am trying to discover why your master's dying wish was to ask me something or tell me something, and you are the only one who can help me find out what it was that troubled him. I cannot honor his wish if you won't help me. Why should your master, facing the eternal, have worried about the death of a woman of the streets?"

The mousy little man seemed to cower even more. "I cannot recall… Well, maybe. I heard him say to one of his visitors, something about the terrible trouble they can cause. I think he meant the sort of women you mean, lustrissimo."

"Ah! That could be helpful. Do you remember who he said that to?"

Battista tried. He closed his eyes and stood for a moment, moving his lips as if praying, clenching and unclenching his fists. "It was one of the nobles, an older man. Yes, he wore the long sleeves of the Council of Ten. Don't know his name, there were so many… They were talking about the old days, when the master was on the Council, too."

I raised my eyebrows at that.

Nostradamus said, "He was in politics? I did not know that."

Not just in politics but very successfully so if he had risen as high as the Ten.

Now Battista was nodding vigorously, happy to have pleased, anxious to help. "There was talk once of him being elected a procurator of San Marco!"

That is the second-highest honor to which a nobleman can be elected, for the procurators are elected for life, like the doge, and there are only ever nine of them. Their duties are nominal, although they hold permanent seats on the Senate and can be elected to other posts also. The doge is almost always chosen from among the procurators, so they are potentially doges in waiting.

"When was that?" the Maestro asked.

"About seven or eight years ago. But then the master gave up politics. He started going to church more and spending his time on good deeds and his work for the scuola."

"A sudden conversion?" Nostradamus said wryly. "Like the blessed San Polo on the road to Damascus?"

Battista hesitated, then nodded. "It was a big surprise to us all, refusing election."

"Servants and family?"

The man nodded. Of course a patrician's household would follow his political career with interest. Battista must have dreamed of being valet to the doge, living in the palace. Very subtly, the Maestro probed, trying to find out without blurting out a direct question, if there could have been a connection between a dead courtesan and Gradenigo's sudden abandonment of politics, most likely a scandal. Battista sensed the way he was being led, though, and went back to denying that his master could ever have been involved with any courtesan.

Eventually the Maestro thanked him and told me to give him a lira for his trouble, which was an astonishing outburst of generosity. I hoped it meant that he was going to take up Violetta's challenge and track down this monstrous slayer of courtesans.

That morning had more surprises than the lagoon has fish. When I led Battista out to the salone, I found Fulgentio Trau out there, admiring Michelangelo's David. It is only a copy in chalk of the original in Florence, but it is actual size and always makes me wonder how big Goliath was.

I need not describe Fulgentio. As well as being the same age, we are the same size and build. You can tell us apart because he has the clothes and I have the looks. We attend the same fencing class and he is almost as good as I am-good enough to have earned him a post as one of the ducal equerries, whose duties include guarding the doge. Fulgentio is a citizen-by-birth, so his name is written in the Silver Book, not in the Golden, like mine. The main difference between us, though, is that he is rich beyond measure, having three older brothers who are bankers. Under Venetian law, brothers inheriting property from their father automatically hold it as a fraterna, a financial and legal partnership, so Fulgentio has an equal share in the family wealth although he has no interest in banking as a profession. His brothers could negotiate a separation but seem content not to. Possibly he has agreed never to marry, so that any children he may sire cannot dilute the family fortune; one can't ask even the closest of friends such questions. Some people suspect that his part of the bargain is to bring home secrets he has overheard in the palace, but I could never believe that he would stoop to spying. Fulgentio, in short, is very rich and perfectly happy.

We bowed to each other in a parody of courtly etiquette.

"Pardon the rags," he remarked, indicating his ducal livery. "But then I couldn't wear anything really good when grubbing around in such a slum."

"Oh, I know," I retorted. "I keep applying for a transfer to the galleys."

He chuckled. "I just dropped in on my way to the palace. Is this the man you mentioned?"

"This is Battista, who is in need of a position because his employer of many years has just died."

While Battista was bowing, I gave Fulgentio a private thumbs-up sign to show that I approved of my candidate, which I did even more after listening to his interview with the Maestro. Then I excused myself and left them to talk while I went back into the atelier.

Nostradamus was scowling ferociously, of course, because he had failed to solve the mystery of the deathbed summons and almost certainly never would.

"The man was delirious."

"Yes, master."

"And the deaths of two courtesans in less than a month is pure coincidence, so don't-"

"Three, master."

"What?"

"There was a third, a Ruosa da Corone. Lucia was last seen on January fourteenth. Caterina was murdered last Sunday and Ruosa about a week ago. Only the Caterina date is firm."

"Sit down." He waved at the two green chairs on the other side of the fireplace. "And talk."

I am rarely honored with one of those chairs, but this time I could provide no more information to justify my favored status.

"It's hopeless!" he growled. "The Council of Ten may not care about a strumpet here or there, but it will certainly not ignore a massacre like this. The Ten have their sbirri and Lord knows how many informers throughout the city. They will dig out all the information. You seriously expect me to solve a jungle bloodbath like that while sitting here in my atelier?"

"No, master."

"No what?"

"No, I do not expect you to. I only brought the man back with me because Fulgentio is looking for a valet and Battista impressed me. I realize you cannot perform miracles, and clairvoyance only works forward, not back. And whatever Gradenigo wanted to tell you is gone forever."

He scowled even harder at me, as if he suspected me of taunting him into taking the case. Which I probably was, although I was mostly worried about Violetta's safety.

"The monster may very well strike again!"

"Yes, master."

He waved a hand.

"Write, then!"

Surprised, I rose and headed for my side of the big double desk.

"And none of that fancy fandangle calligraphy of yours. Just honest, legible italic. Good linen parchment."

I selected paper and a quill and opened my inkwell. I said, "Ready," because he had his back to me.

"A contract between me and that harlot of yours. One hundred ducats nonrefundable for expenses…"

I grunted to show that he was going too fast. He almost never asks for money in advance, only on results. That way he cannot be charged with fraud.

"… the balance of 1,370 ducats payable upon the apprehension and conviction of a man responsible for the murder or attempted murder of at least one courtesan in Venice within one month before or after this day's date."

I spattered blots all over the text and swore like a galley slave. "You are contracting to catch a murderer who hasn't even killed his victim yet?"

Despite the pain in his hips, he had managed to lever himself around to smirk at me. "Why not? Clairvoyance works forward, doesn't it? All I have to do is foresee the next victim, and all you have to do is be standing behind the closet door."