The Alchemist's Pursuit (18 page)

I rose eagerly, despite an angry reprimand from my stitches, because I hoped that the caller would be Violetta returned from her house party. As always, I left the atelier door ajar so that the Maestro could listen. I opened one flap of the big outer doors.

Many odd people come calling on the Maestro, but probably no couple I have ever found waiting out there at the top of the stairs has surprised me more. The woman was swathed from the ground up in the habit of a Benedictine nun, with only her fingers visible to show that there was a woman inside that menacing pillar of black. The man at her side, gray robed and tonsured, was the third Michiel son, the former Timoteo. I bowed to his austere, Old Testament stare.

“This is an unexpected honor, Brother.”

“Unexpected no doubt, my son, but no honor.” This was an attempt at humility, but it needed work. “Tell your master I wish to see him.”

When necessary I can obstruct and obfuscate with the best of them, giving the Maestro time to escape by the secret door, but I was confident that Nostradamus would want to see this pair. I swung the atelier door wide.

“Brother Fedele and Sister Lucretzia, master.”

Fedele shot me an angry glance, perhaps annoyed that I had been meddling enough in his family's affairs to know his sister's name, but he did not deny it. He strode in, gown swirling above bare feet, and paused to look around disapprovingly at the wall of books, the alchemy bench, the examination couch, and other curiosities. The nun followed him in and he pointed at one of the spare chairs we keep on hand for larger groups, one of two behind the door, near the great armillary sphere. She went to it without a word. Then the friar marched over to the Maestro, who smiled up at him.

“I am suffering from reminders of mortality today, Brother. Pray excuse my failure to rise, and do be seated.”

Fedele perched straight-backed on the edge of one of the green chairs. “I am sorry to hear of your infirmity, Filippo. I shall keep my visit brief.”

I crept back to the desk, turning my chair slightly so I could also keep a corner of an eye on the nun, sitting off to my right, but she was motionless as a statue. I wondered how much her eyes wandered behind her veil.

The Maestro was on his best behavior. “Your visit is welcome. May I offer you refreshment?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Won't you present me to your honored sister?”

“No. I am escorting her back to Santa Giustina and dropped in here on the way. You sent your apprentice to see my mother yesterday.”

“I sent him to see your brother Bernardo.”

“Why?” No, Fedele was not Old Testament. He was a martyr, and his emaciated, anguished features belonged on a crucifix or a triptych from some gloomy, sin-obsessed medieval monastery. He looked as if he had been fasting since midsummer on an exercise regime of three flagellations a day.

“To give him a message.”

“Why?”

The normal response would have been,
What message?
The Maestro hesitated a moment before speaking.

“Because I considered it my duty.”

“Or to extract money from my family by preying on their sorrow?”

“No.”

“But you will accept money if it is offered?”

The Maestro gingerly eased himself back in his chair and then put his fingertips together, five on five, which normally indicates the start of a lecture.

“Who wouldn't?”

That was almost a demand for a sermon, and the friar rose to the bait.

“You would be well advised to, Filippo. I look around at all this unseemly display and remember the words of our Lord about the camel failing to pass through the eye of a needle.”

“Ah, an interesting metaphor. According to the revered Bishop Theophylact of Bulgaria, there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem so narrow that in order to take a camel through, you would have to unload all its burdens and—”

“Let us talk about your burdens, my son.”

The Maestro cackled one of his irritating cackles. “Brother, I believe we are talking at cross-purposes. You have asked five questions. Now let me have a turn, and then we may understand each other better. You were sixteen or seventeen when your father was murdered, may Our Lord rest his soul. You would not have been present in the Basilica, but you were old enough to comprehend. Describe the wound that killed him.”

The green chairs face the window so that the Maestro has a better view of visitors than they do of him. So do I if I am at the desk. The priest must have found the question outrageous, but he hid his revulsion well.

“He was stabbed in the back with a dagger. The wound penetrated his tippet and his kidney. He lost consciousness almost at once and died before he could be moved out of the church.”

“The dagger belonged to your family?”

The response was quiet but intense.
“Who told you that?”

The Maestro chuckled again, evidently intending to enrage the priest even further—angry men make mistakes. “The Ten did. Not in so many words, you understand, but they must have had reasons to conclude that your brother was guilty and if the weapon had been readily available to members of the family, that would be a compelling one. Right from the start I noted that as a plausible theory and your presence here reinforces my suspicion.”

“What are you implying?” Fedele had lost color, which is more often a sign of anger than fear. Oh, what would San Francesco have said? And what was Sister Lucretzia thinking under her dreary draperies?

“I can understand,” the Maestro said calmly, “that your family is reluctant to have old sorrows reawakened; I mean having your father's murder reexamined. Even so, I find your respective reactions excessive.
Sier
Domenico, a rich and no doubt busy nobleman, contrived to have a private discussion with my apprentice.
Sier
Bernardo, on the other hand, snubbed him in a way I would not treat a beggar. Today they send you and your sister to call on me. Very curious behavior!”

“No one sent me,” the friar said grimly. “I came in charity to warn you. I admit that our mother has never accepted Zorzi's guilt. She always took his side and defended his sinful ways. But the Council of Ten judged him guilty and my brothers have suffered enough for his fearful crime. They are noblemen of Venice. If you attempt to embezzle money from her by preying on her delusions, then they will complain to the Council of Ten, which will run you out of town at the very least.”

“Alfeo, how far along are you with that draft?”

“As far as, ‘. . . permitted under the laws of Venice,' master.”

“Let the good brother read it.”

I took the paper over to our visitor. He did not comment on my penmanship, but merely read it slowly and carefully, like a lawyer. When he lowered it, he was frowning. I carried it back to my desk.

“No money in advance,” the Maestro said. “No money at all unless I produce evidence acceptable in a court of law. Those are always my terms, Brother.”

He did not explain that he was less concerned with the guilt or innocence of Zorzi Michiel than he was with finding the killer of the courtesans. To suggest that a noble family might be involved in that sordid affair would terminate the discussion instantly. We would be in jail before sunset.

Fedele shook his head sadly. “Filippo, Filippo! You are accusing the Council of Ten of convicting an innocent man. I urge you for your own safety not to let your words get back to them. Perhaps you should discuss the sin of pride with your confessor?”

“Perhaps.” Nostradamus did not sound convinced. “I have two more questions, if I may beg your patience, Brother. Suppose for a moment that Zorzi, your brother, did
not
commit that terrible crime. And yet also suppose that, despite his innocence, before fleeing into exile he wrote out a confession and slipped it into one of the ‘Lion's Mouth' drop boxes for the Council of Ten to read.”

“Absurd. Suppose the lagoon turns to wine.”

“But my question is, who—in your family, in the city, in the whole world—might Zorzi have loved enough to shield in this way?”

The priest studied him for a moment with the basilisk stare of an icon. “My brother was about as far from a saint as it is possible to be, Filippo. He lived for lechery and debauch. He loved only his own carnal pleasure.”

Nostradamus sighed. “Then my last question. Why did Giovanni Gradenigo ask for me when he was dying?”

The friar glanced momentarily across at his sister, then back at the Maestro. “I cannot tell you. I can assure you that he was very confused near the end.”

“But when you wrote, you addressed the message to Alfeo, not to me. How did you know to do that?”

Fedele smiled thinly. “Priests learn many strange things in the course of performing the Lord's work, Filippo. Do you remember Pietro Vercia?”

The Maestro nodded. “The forger?”

“A forger you exposed. The night before his execution, I heard his confession, but then I spent the rest of the night just listening to him talk. Condemned men tend to talk a lot as the noose approaches. He told me how you had never left your house, but you had sent your apprentice around asking questions, gathering the information you needed for your spells. So I knew you would send Zeno in your stead and I saved time by summoning him directly.”

“Spells? That was why you delayed sending for me until it was too late?”

Fedele rose, tall and stark. “That was why. Giovanni had made his last confession and I could not allow him to taint his soul by contact with black magic. I do urge you to repent your ways, Filippo. Eternity is a long time to burn.” He raised his hand to bless.

“Have you heard about Marina Bortholuzzi?” Nostradamus asked brightly.

“Who? No.” The hand dropped.

“Another courtesan murdered. Last night in the Campo San Zanipolo.”

“I shall pray for her,” the friar said, and muttered a quick blessing.

He headed for the door. The nun rose. I rose. But then Fedele wheeled around as if he had reached a decision. His voice seemed to resonate with the baleful reproach of fearsome Old Testament prophets. “Murderers usually have some reason for killing their victims, Filippo, even if it is only to lift their purses. Have you discovered yet
why
our father was stabbed to death?”

“Not yet, Brother,” the Maestro replied.

“Then I shall tell you before you make even more of a fool of yourself. This is not exactly a secret, just something unknown to the general public. Everyone in his family knew, and I know that the Council of Ten did. Two days before our father died, he announced that he was so disgusted by his youngest son's debauchery that he was going to disown and disinherit him. He would cut him out of his will and ask the Great Council to strike his name from the Golden Book for conduct unbecoming a nobleman. Now you know the motive for that terrible crime.”

Without another word, the priest spun around and stalked out of the atelier. His sister followed. He unlocked the outer door for himself and departed. I bowed the nun out. She paused long enough to bob me a curtsey, and then floated away like a black ghost. I locked up behind her.

“Very interesting,” the Maestro murmured as I returned. “So Zorzi had a motive and access to the weapon. Are you convinced now of his guilt?”

“No, master.” Could any man learned in the classics have been so stupid as to kill his father only two days after that dramatic denunciation and with an identifiable weapon? Someone who wanted both Gentile
and
Zorzi removed could have done so, two birds with one stone. I could imagine the pious brother disapproving of the lecherous brother's lifestyle, but San Francesco would not approve of double homicide as a way of registering protest.
Cui bono?
as the lawyers say—“Who gains?” Well, the two older brothers had split the family fortune between them, hadn't they?

“As for motive,” I said, “I told you what Celsi said: ‘He and his father fought like cat and dog all the time, with the old man always threatening to disinherit him if he didn't reform his ways.' So what was special about the last time?”

“Why did you offer the paper to the friar with your left hand, apprentice?”

The sly old devil had noticed!

“So that it was directly in front of him, master. He took it with his right hand.”

“And why did you want to know whether he was left- or right-handed?”

“Because the blade penetrated Gentile Michiel's tippet, which hangs over the left shoulder. That is why you think Zorzi did not kill him.”

Nostradamus leered at me. “No bad at all! You are learning.”

“Thank you, master.”

Gentile had been stabbed in the back on his left side, possibly a misdirected attempt to find his heart in near darkness. An assassin in a crowd will try to position his own body to shield his actions from other people, which in this case suggested a left-handed killer getting directly behind his victim. Zorzi was left-handed, and that might well have been another factor that influenced the Ten in reaching their verdict. But Gentile had been reunited with his wife. He would not have been wearing a sword in church, but a man normally offers his left arm to his lady, the origin of that custom being to leave his sword arm free. Donna Alina had said she was pushed aside by a tall man, and even if she had dropped back a little as her husband forced their way through the crowd, the killer would not have pushed her with the hand that held his knife. More likely the killer had held the dagger in his
right
hand.

“It isn't proof, you understand!” Nostradamus said. “The Basilica was packed with people, so determining exactly where everyone was would have been impossible even then, let alone eight years later. But it is suggestive of a right-handed killer.”