The Alchemist's Pursuit (31 page)

“Read it back,” he said. Then, “It will do. Make a fine copy of both.”

He was rarely so uncritical and I began to suspect that the Council of Ten was never going to see my handiwork. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. Then I wrapped up the damning book, my report, and the accompanying letter. I sealed the package with wax.

“I'd better go,” I said.

“Later,” he added, glancing at the windows. “After we have eaten.”

“The Ten will be meeting by then.” The three chiefs of the Ten, who set its agenda, are appointed for a month at a time and must not leave the palace during their term, but the entire council meets in the evenings, although not every day. After it adjourns, the three state inquisitors retire to their own chamber to conduct their own sinister business.

The Maestro dismissed my objection with a shrug. “There is still time. I have been considering my latest foreseeing, the one about hazarding in far lands and death being near at hand. You did not spurn help at your feet . . . You have seen no more of the mysterious cat?”

“No, master.” I sat down, but I know him too well. I could tell that he was procrastinating, hoping against hope that his trap would be sprung before he was forced to turn over that damning evidence to the Council of Ten. Once that happened, a blanket of secrecy would fall over the case and we might never learn what happened.

“Are we overlooking anything in our respective predictions?” he mused.

That was a command for me to start interpreting. The implication that I was his equal as a seer was mere flattery.

“Your first quatrain predicted the fourth murder very well. The second . . . The first two lines—
hazarding in far lands
and
death near at hand
—suggest that Zorzi has returned to Venice or plans to.
Not spurning help at your feet
suggests my phantasmal cat. Explain
Salvation from on high
to me, master.”

He pulled a face. “I can't. The other three lines work out, so keep it in mind. And your two tarot readings. Revisit those for me.”

“The reading for Violetta has turned out quite well,” I said with touching modesty. “I mean the queen of coins facing the problem of Death reversed could hardly be plainer. You just reversed the knight of cups by sending Jacopo home to bait your trap, which will turn out to be the solution if it works.” Or sheer disaster if it didn't, but I might as well claim credit for giving him the idea.

“And the Popess reversed?”

“Violetta would say that it meant the abbess of Santa Giustina who refused to admit her.”

I thought that even Nostradamus would have trouble interpreting that as a significant prophecy, but he managed it. “The warning may have restrained her from revealing too much. If the abbess had guessed that she was a prostitute, she would have reported her to the censors. And Fortitude as the helper? Your Violetta is a brave woman to participate in our little stratagem.”

“My deck names that card Strength.”

“Well, even if we don't count it, four out of five is still remarkable. Very few tarot workers could equal that. Now your own reading?”

Hmph!
“Not so good,” I admitted. “The Popess as the solution fits, because Sister Lucretzia brought us the book. The snare was the
vizio
, all right, but I hardly need tarot to warn me of Filiberto Vasco; and it was your quatrain and the phantasmal cat that saved me from him. Nothing else helps at all. The problem was identified as Justice. I suppose that means that Zorzi was innocent, or justice for killing the four women; it's apt but not helpful. The helper was Judgment, which tells me nothing.”

The Maestro stroked his beard and frowned at me. “The subject or question was the knave of coins reversed?”

“That's a good indication of
Circospetto
taking bribes.”

“Then why was he reversed?”

This had been bothering me also. “I don't know. He got his money and gave up virtually nothing.” All we had learned for five hundred ducats was that the murder weapon was not the
khanjar
dagger Jacopo had said it was.

Nostradamus tugged his goatee for a moment, which meant that he was seriously thinking, not just wasting time until Honeycat dramatically burst in on us to confess.

“Suppose Sciara cheated? Suppose it was he who removed the rest of the documents, just to score off us?”

“Possible,” I admitted. “Likely, even.”

“Then perhaps he told you more than he intended? Outsmarted himself? The rest of the material would have taken you all night to read and might not have been of value. Because you were not distracted by that, you may have picked up something vital in what you did get to see.”

“You're saying I missed something in what he did show me?”

He sighed. “I don't know. That's up to you. I could entrance you and see what I might squeeze out of your memory that you have overlooked.”

“No!” I said automatically. I hate it when he puts me into a recall trance, because I cannot remember afterward what I said or what he asked, and I always suspect him of prying into my private thoughts.

“Then you do it!” he snapped. “You ought to be able to put yourself into an introspective trance by now. You must practice more.”

Again he glanced at the window to see how the day was fading. There was fog moving in. “Go and find out if Mama has supper ready.”

“Yes, master.” He expresses interest in food about once a decade. “You are expecting visitors.”

“It is possible,” he agreed sourly, annoyed that I had seen through him. “Not necessarily Honeycat, but I kicked the hive very hard. Somebody ought to react.”

As I reached the atelier door, our door knocker summoned me and I looked back. “Nicely timed, master.”

With a smirk of satisfaction, he began levering himself upright. “Pass me my staff.”

I saw him headed for the red chair before I went out to the
salone
. I had never approached the front door with greater apprehension. Who was out there? A bravo with drawn sword?
Missier Grande
come to arrest us? Jacopo repentant? One of the Michiel brothers breathing fire? The mysterious Sister Lucretzia returning?

I
was wrong on all counts. The doge himself would have surprised me less. Beetling over me like a dormant volcano stood Matteo Surian, once Matteo the Butcher. I suppose I gaped at him. He was decked out in his Sunday best, clothes far grander than he would ever have worn in his respectable days as a tradesman, and I could tell at a glance that last week's sodden wreck was now dried out. As an effort of will, that was remarkable. His eyes were no longer bloody pits, but they held a cold, implacable ferocity I recalled from his fighting days on the bridges. At the sight of me he beamed with relief. It was a fair guess that he had never in his life entered a palace like Ca' Barbolano except by the tradesmen's entrance, and mine was the face he had come looking for.

“
Sier
Alfeo!”

“Matteo! You are welcome! Come in, come in! What brings you here?”

With a leer of triumph he opened one of his huge fists to reveal a tightly folded piece of paper. “I found the note!”

“That's wonderful! Excellent! Come and show it to my master.” The
sbirri
had hunted for that paper, so now we were harboring even more evidence that should be delivered at once to the chiefs of the Ten.

Fortunately the
salone
was dark, for its grandeur might have scared him away. On the other hand, he was so excited and pleased with himself that he might not have noticed. He did not look around him as I ushered him into the atelier, just went striding over to the only person present. The Maestro had settled in his chair and now looked up with astonishment at the giant looming over him, offering his find.

Nostradamus accepted it and ordered him to a chair, joking that his old neck couldn't bend at that angle any more—he can put people at ease when he wants to bother. Meanwhile I was lighting more lamps.

“So where did you find this, Matteo?” the Maestro asked, carefully unfolding the paper.

The big man shifted uneasily in the green chair, which was hard put to contain his bulk. “It all her furniture, see? She brung it when she moved in. And I knowed she had a place she kept money.” He colored. “Didn't mind. I got plenty off her.” Meaning Caterina had been cheating her doorman. Most pimps would have beaten her raw for trying that.

“So you went looking for a secret hiding place?” the Maestro asked.

“Press a latch and top lifted up.”

“And you found money. How many other papers?”

“No papers . . . Stuff . . .”

“It's yours, Matteo. Caterina would have wanted you to have it. I just want to know what else she saw as precious enough to keep there.”

Relieved, Matteo mumbled about some jewels he'd never seen before, but only one paper. The Maestro read it in silence with me looking over his shoulder.

 

I went back to the desk and returned with the Orio contract. Again I watched over the Maestro's shoulder as he compared the two documents. The writing on the note exactly matched that in the contract change written in by Jacopo.

“Matteo,” Nostradamus said, “this is all the evidence the Ten will need. We know who wrote this!”

The big man's smile exposed a fearsome set of teeth—not complete, but sized to fit a horse. “They'll have his head, then? The sod who killed her?”

“The ax will fall! But this must go to the Ten right away.”

His face froze hard as granite. “Let Alfeo take it.”

“Matteo,” I said quickly, because if those two started arguing I might die of old age before either gave way, “could you recognize the killer's voice if you heard it again?”

He hesitated. “Might. He spoke hoarselike.”

“Good. Master, why don't I show that note to Alessa? Those terms of endearment do not come from the book. She can tell us whether they were expressions used by the original Honeycat.”

He grunted. “Wouldn't hurt to know, I suppose.”

“And I think Antonio might welcome another helper tonight.”

 

 

I could not expect a man of Matteo's age to leap from roof to roof, or one of his girth to balance on the ledge, so we went around by the land route. This gave me time to explain how we had set a trap for the killer. Then I had to convince our new helper that he must not rip Caterina's killer into cutlets if he did show up.

There were no girls on display in the entrance parlor yet, only two guards I did not know. They regarded me with suspicion and Matteo with alarm. Then one of them recognized him from olden days and the chilly atmosphere thawed. I demanded Antonio, who was fetched. I explained my new helper.

Antonio was not enthusiastic.

“Matteo saw the fake friar!” I protested. “He may be able to recognize the man's voice.”

Still the bouncer scowled. “We only have his word for it that there was a fake friar.”

I thought there would be sudden murder done then, but the other men intervened, supporting Matteo. I excused myself and went upstairs to see Alessa, being admitted to the
piano nobile
by Luigi and Giulio. Number 96 was certainly the best-guarded brothel in town that night.

Alessa was entertaining guests—some of her own employees, judging by the female chatter I could hear from the corridor. She peered out to inspect me, looking imperially displeased.

I produced the note but gave her no hints, asking only, “Does this look genuine?”

She read it and pulled a face. “The handwriting is nothing like.”

“No. How about the words?”

“Trash. And Zorzi would have written it in Greek hexameters.” Alessa was a great deal smarter than Caterina.

“I love you,” I said, taking the note back.

“Not tonight, thank you.” She shut the door on me.

Downstairs, I found that a compromise had been reached. Matteo would be allowed to share in the guarding, but only downstairs. There he could listen for the fake Honeycat's voice. He seemed content with that and it suited me also, because the chiefs of the Ten would want to speak with him, and now I knew where he was.

 

 

“It looks good,” I told the Maestro. “Next door, that is. It's garrisoned like a fortress, and anyway I can't believe that Honeycat, real or fake, is going to be stupid enough to try a frontal assault.”

“Neither can I,” he admitted cheerfully. “But I think he'll do something. Now we'll need a covering letter to the chiefs explaining where we got that note. And when, too.”

The writing did not take me long, but I had to unwrap the package and reseal it. Time was running out if I wanted to deliver this to the chiefs before the entire Council met, which I very much did. It would be a peace offering, a letter of surrender. The Lord alone knew what the Ten might decide to do to me if it heard I had been back to Palazzo Michiel after Fulgentio delivered his warning.