The Alchemist's Apprentice (27 page)

But just before the door closed, I caught a glimpse of more
fanti
standing outside. And also two slender youths I knew very well, Christoforo and Corrado Angeli, wearing matching grins as wide as the Grand Canal. My tarot had prophesied help coming from the two of staves—who else but the gondolier's twin sons?

T
he room settled. Only
Missier Grande
remained standing. The mood had changed, the dark clouds of worry rolled back to reveal the pearly sunlight of the Adriatic. It had been the foreigners all along.

“Now,” the Maestro said happily, “we can forget Domenico Chiari and the Feathers' visit to Karagounis. It is probably irrelevant, except that it may explain how the woman knew—or could gamble—that there would be a strong-tasting wine like retsina on offer. No doubt Karagounis proclaimed its excellence. I cannot prove the details of their conversation, of course. How can we ever know what a spy told a thief to tell a murderess? I expect her secretary-husband will prove to be a cooperative witness. So, if you will give me the benefit of the doubt on that point, we shall proceed to the question of how she could be sure her victim would choose the retsina, so that her plot would work.”

“And her motive,” the inquisitor said.

“Ah, yes, motive.” The Maestro rubbed his hands. “And yet there is one small puzzle that remains unsolved. For a private gathering, the book viewing was curiously infested with gate-crashers. The doge had not been invited, nor had the Feather woman and her escort. Nor had you,
sier
Pasqual.
Clarissimo
, why did you go out of your way that evening to come here, bringing your charming lady with you?”

Pasqual threw back his head and laughed, seemingly quite unworried. “But I was invited, doctor! Not by our host, I grant you. By my father.”

The ambassador favored him with a rueful glance and then addressed the inquisitor. “So it is all my fault, of course! But my son does speak the truth in this case, Marco. I know old manuscripts. I knew at a glance that the supposed Euripides had been copied out in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, almost certainly by a Greek monk. The hand is distinctive and the paper characteristic. The document was valuable in its own right, therefore, as an early copy of much earlier copies, but when had the original work been written? I asked Pasqual to come and look at it because he is a much better Classical Greek scholar than I am. I wanted to know if it read like something Euripides might truly have written.”

“Ah! And what did you decide?” the Maestro asked.

Pasqual appraised the company and then looked to his father.

The ambassador sighed. “Tell them.”

“Yes, father. I told him I was certain it was genuine. The imagery, the vocabulary, the flow of language—all cried out that this was a work of Athenian genius. And another thing! A few lines from the play have been preserved in works by other writers, as you are probably aware. Just glancing through it, I chanced upon the famous one about cowards not counting in battle—and the wording was not quite the same! A forger would certainly have been careful to include the known version, to give his fake a semblance of authority.”

“What does this have to do with the murder of Bertucci Orseolo?” barked the inquisitor.

Pasqual smiled. “Nothing, so far as I can see.”

“Nothing,” the Maestro agreed. “I was just tying up a loose end. I already knew that His Excellency the ambassador was not guilty, because he volunteered the information that he had seen the procurator pull a face after draining his wine. You,
sier
Pasqual, asked Madonna Violetta if she had noticed the same thing, and the timing of your query required that your father must have asked you the same question
before
rumors of poisoning started to circulate. That is not the action of a guilty man, nor one who suspects his son of being guilty.”

“Motive!”
roared the inquisitor. “Why did that woman put poison in Bertucci's wine?”

“Motive?” said the Maestro. “Ah yes, motive. I require another demonstration, a very brief one this time. If all the gentlemen present would kindly stand along this table, facing the door?
Missier Grande
has some witnesses he wishes to bring in to identify the real murderer. Thank you.”

Playing fair, the Maestro obeyed his own orders, struggling to his feet and leaning on the table before him. Violetta took Bianca's hand and together they moved to the far corner, out of the way. The rest of us moved like galley slaves—promptly and in unison—until we were lined up as required. All except the state inquisitor. Marco Donà moved to a chair against the wall, so he could study the faces in the lineup. His acceptance of Hyacinth's guilt had been so quick that he must have known exactly what was going to happen, but now he seemed more wary. If he did not know who was going to be denounced this time, then the Maestro must have cooked up this demonstration with
Missier Grande
after we arrived, while I was welcoming the guests. And Giorgio must have gone back to Ca' Barbolano to fetch the twins. How did they fit in?

Who was next? Whom did Inquisitor Donà suspect? In his ducal counselor's red robes, he was sitting directly opposite me. Beside me stood Ambassador Tirali in his senatorial red robes. Was it mere coincidence that we had lined up like this? Did Donà suspect
Tirali
?

The demon in the illusion had claimed that Tirali was possessed, but what demons say must never be trusted. They can turn around and speak the truth to deceive, though, and Tirali's bribe to me had come at a very convenient moment. He had known that the poisoning must have happened in this room, he had known about the attack on me, even that the
bravi
had used knives and not swords. He had known I would be coming to call on him. Had the doge really revealed all that to a man who had been present at the scene of the crime? Surely Pietro Moro would not be so indiscreet?

Charming, Violetta had called Tirali senior, but also ruthless. What motive could he possibly have to order the murder of old Bertucci Orseolo? So that he could buy the Euripides manuscript to give to the Pope for the Vatican Library?

That was utterly ridiculous.

Missier Grande
was still by the door. “If Your Excellency permits? The two persons outside have been assured that they are required only to tell the truth and will not be punished for it in any way.”

Donà said, “Let's get it over with.”

Quazza opened the door, peered out, then stood aside.

It was neither of the Angeli boys that entered, though, but a man in his twenties, wearing his church best, obviously a laborer and a scared one.

Missier Grande
closed the door behind him. “Do what I said. Take your time and don't be frightened.”

Pulping his cap in both hands, the man walked along the line of us and then turned and walked back again. It is amazing how much guilt that sort of inspection can generate. I searched my soul all the way back to puberty. I didn't bother going farther than that, because my earlier memories are less interesting.

“Well?”
Missier Grande
said. “If you recognize him, point.”

The man raised a very shaky hand and pointed. Nobody said a word, but Bianca stifled a gasp.

The first witness was dismissed. The second had more confidence, although he was only a youth, little older than the twins. Grinning cheekily and without even removing his cap, he strolled along the line. He, too, stopped in front of Enrico Orseolo.

“Him,
Missier Grande
.”

“Are you sure? You haven't looked closely at all of them.”

“No, him. I'm sure.”

The door was closed behind him. We returned to our seats, mostly in the same places, but I strolled along to the end, where I had a better view of them all.

The great minister stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. It was a bizarrely informal pose for a Venetian magistrate. “Well,
Missier Grande
? Who were those men and what am I supposed to have done?” He was admirably calm. His children, flanking him, looking considerably more frightened than he did.

Inquisitor Donà said, “Maestro Nostradamus?”

Fingertips went back against fingertips. “Yesterday morning, assassins tried to kill my apprentice. Such things happen in the Republic, but rarely in broad daylight, and it would be stretching belief to dismiss a connection between that assault and his inquiries into the procurator's death. At that time very few people knew that he had begun asking questions about it. The doge did, but it was at his suggestion that I had set Alfeo to work on the matter. Alfeo began by consulting a physician I respect, and a couple of personal friends. All of those we trust. He also called on the Feathers. Bellamy, if that is his name, drove him out at sword point.” The Maestro chuckled. “It is an interesting, but probably immaterial, question as to whether the alleged
sier
Bellamy is naturally so irascible, or if he has been acting so at every opportunity on the woman's orders in order to justify the outburst he staged in this room four nights ago.

“I was already confident that the Feathers as a team had committed the crime, but I did not know why. Without a motive, they were unassailable, so why should they have been sufficiently worried by a boy's questions to attempt a second murder? By his own admission, Alfeo had no authority and fled from Bellamy's threats. They are strangers to our city. They had met me, but a senescent bibliophilic doctor should not seem dangerous, even if they knew of the spectacular clairvoyance I demonstrate in my almanacs and horoscopes. How would they find their murderous assistants in time? They had acted extremely fast to prepare such a trap overnight.

“Many great houses employ large staffs of manual workers—boatmen, warehousemen—and sometimes employ them for wrongful purposes. It was more than likely that Alfeo's attackers came from such a source, but two of them had been killed and thus would be missed by their workmates. Although the Council of Ten has sometimes been accused of turning a blind eye to misbehavior of the nobility, this case was clearly related to the death of a senior magistrate—the doge knew that, even if no one else in the Ten did. I could be confident that inquiries would be made in both Ca' Orseolo and Ca' Tirali. The fact that both Your Excellencies were available to attend this conference is evidence that the thugs did not come from either of your workforces. I hasten to add that I would not expect either of Your Excellencies to be so foolish as to involve your own workers in a criminal affair already being investigated by the Ten.

“So the would-be assassins, despite their lack of swords, had been drawn from the ranks of
bravos
who lurk in the dark corners of our fair city. I should know where to send Alfeo to hire such vermin and I expect most of you would. But would foreigners know this? Unlikely! So they must have reported to a local, an accomplice, who took fright and arranged for my investigation to be hamstrung by the loss of my mobile assistant. Perhaps I was supposed to be frightened off by such terror tactics.

“I already knew that the Feather woman was the murderess. How had a married woman, staying with her husband in a strange city, passed word at night to—I assumed—another man? I surmised that Feather was not her husband and her local accomplice would turn out to be a lover.”

The Maestro peered around as if looking for argument, but no one spoke.

“So how did he set up the ambush? Walk into any parish in the Republic, other than your own, and start asking questions about a resident, and in moments you will find the local men around you six deep, asking counterquestions. Someone who already knew the victim by sight would have to identify him, either to the entire gang or to one member of it. One member would make my problem more difficult, for two men gossiping on a corner or in a boat are not remarkable. But the attack went off so fast that there had been no time for elaborate preliminaries. The whole gang must have been standing by, ready to pounce as soon as their prospective victim was pointed out. A lurking gang should have been noticed.

“No doubt the Ten's agents in our parish have been making inquiries, but my gondolier has a pair of sons with wearisome amounts of youthful energy. As residents, they can ask questions, so I set them to work. They met with no success in our parish, but they are resourceful and they were lucky. Some days the boys do odd-job work at a building site directly across the canal from my residence. On the morning of the attack, as you will recall, the town was in mourning. The builders were not working, but a man and a youth were on watch, with little to do. At dawn they noticed a gondola full of men loitering on the canal just beyond the bridge near our watergate. So many men with time on their hands seemed unusual enough to attract their attention.

“The boat stayed in place for about an hour, they said, and then suddenly approached the Ca' Barbolano. No doubt these predators expected their quarry to embark in my gondola as he usually does, and were prepared to give chase to some distant place where the crime could be committed. The plan went awry, because Alfeo went along the
calle
to the
campo
instead. Six of the men disembarked and ran after him—and that was very curious behavior! It is not surprising that the witnesses remembered. The boat departed, bearing its gondolier—and you, Your Excellency.”