The Alchemist's Code (16 page)

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because he was the only other person I know of to enter my bedchamber during the night.”

The deadly gaze returned to Vasco.

Vasco, regrettably, maintained his confident smirk. “I was keeping watch for intruders in the
salone
, as instructed. When the storm struck, the casement in Zeno's room began to bang. After a few serious crashes, I decided he was either dead or absent. To prevent damage to the building, I made my way in and—”

“You picked the lock,” I said.

“—obtained entrance and latched the casement. The bed had not been slept in. I did not look underneath it, nor in the wardrobe. Nor on top of it. I went out and closed the door behind me. I did not see his sword and did not take it.”

My bruised and abraded shin was hurting. The other was undamaged, but in fact I did not have a single leg to stand on. If I denied leaving Ca' Barbolano during the night, I would easily be proved a liar by the evidence of the broken glass, removable window bars, and wet clothing. Calling Violetta as a witness would merely make everything worse, because the distinction between an “honest” courtesan and a common harlot is easily blurred. The court would assume I was her bravo protector, that Danese had hurt her or failed to pay her, and I had run him through. Off with my head.

“You deny this story?”
Missier Grande
inquired.

“I cannot answer your questions,
lustrissimo
.” I did not have to, for
Missier Grande
is not an inquisitor; he carries out the orders of the Ten.

“But you will answer mine.” The patrician stepped forward. Andrea Zancani was serving a term as one of the Lords of the Night Watch, the
Signori di Notte
, and thus was Sergeant Torre's current boss. That is a starter position for the nobility, and I would have put him around the tender age of thirty. He is a resident of San Remo, so I often see him in church.

I bowed to him. “Alas,
clarissimo
, I was about to explain that this is a matter of state, in which I can answer only to the noble Council of Ten.”

Vasco did not make a sound, but was obviously enjoying himself hugely.

Zancani pouted and turned to
Missier Grande
. “You are taking this man into custody,
lustrissimo
?”

“I have no instructions regarding
sier
Alfeo,” Quazza said. “I should point out, though, that he is in fact of noble birth,
sier
Alfeo Zeno. Consequently he can only be tried by the Council of Ten itself.”

Zancani pulled a face. “He doesn't look it. But let us make sure we know where he is when Their Excellencies want him. Sergeant, arrest
sier
Alfeo.”

“Bah! That is absurd!” the Maestro said.
“Missier Grande
, you know what work I am engaged in, or at least for whom I am working. You know why your
vizio
was sent here last night—to protect Alfeo. Now you will let him be dragged off to share a lockup with drunks and thugs? Who defends him there?”

Missier Grande
looked thoughtfully at Vasco, who flinched. Yes, truly, his happiness was quite cast down. If he were sent to the local dungeon with me in order to continue guarding me, he would be in considerable danger from the other inhabitants.

“I should welcome his company,” I said, “but Sergeant Torre may resent the damage to the reputation of his establishment.”

“I shall put Zeno under house arrest,”
Missier Grande
said, “and leave—”

“Absurd!” the Maestro repeated furiously. “Enough of this nonsense.” He grabbed his staff from me and elbowed me aside. “Come and sit down,
clarissimo
, and you also, Father. Alfeo, bring a chair for
Missier Grande
, and you, Sergeant, kindly send one of your men to fetch Giorgio, my gondolier.”

The invitation to be seated obviously excluded Vasco and Torre, so I brought one more chair to the fireplace and then stationed myself behind the Maestro. Zancani, Quazza, and the priest sat opposite us, seeming wary, inscrutable, and mildly amused respectively.

“Now, Alfeo,” the Maestro said without trying to look around at me. “Why were you talking such rubbish just now?”

“Rubbish, master?” Mainly I had been trying to muddy the waters and pin Vasco down so he could not change his evidence to suit the case he wanted to make.

“You know what I mean! What did you really learn from looking at the body?”

“I may have been a little hasty in jumping to conclusions,” I admitted. “Now I realize that I see no gory footsteps on our floor here, so the watergate loggia is not drenched in a mixture of rain and blood, as it would be if Danese bled to death there. So he could not have been murdered downstairs. He died somewhere else and was brought here later. In fact, he was almost certainly dead before the
vizio
claims he arrived at Ca' Barbolano.”

“With your rapier in him?” Vasco demanded.

“That is a curious detail, isn't it?” In fact that detail was almost driving me crazy. Fortunately I do know something about ghouls, so I could blame Algol, even if I had no hope of convincing a court. “Dolfin died facedown, but he could not have been run through from behind and fallen forward, as one would expect of a man stabbed in the upper back. Does the point of that sword show damage, Filiberto?”

Vasco looked and said, “It's blunted,” with a poor grace.

“A good lunge with a rapier will go right through a skull,” I continued. “A lung would offer almost no resistance, nor would a rib, and yet the sword did not break, so Danese did not fall with it sticking out of his chest. Yet it must have protruded from his breast because that was where his ruptured aorta hemorrhaged most. The wound in his right leg also came from behind, and we must explain the separate bloodstains on the back of his neck, where the ruff has been crushed. There is no mud on his dorsal side, as there is on the ventral.”

“And your conclusion?” the Maestro asked impatiently.

My conclusion was what I had seen in the fire and had described to him at the time. “Danese was in a fight, master. The murderer wrestled his sword away from him and stabbed him with it.”

“You base that assumption on the fact that his right thumb is broken?”

I had missed that. “Of course, and his wrist shows damage also. These things may have happened when he fell, but more likely when the killer wrenched the sword out of his grip. The leg wound must have come next, when he was trying to run away. He would have fallen. Having disabled him, his assailant then callously stabbed him in the back as he was trying to rise. Danese probably still tried to get up, and the murderer put a bloody shoe on the back of his neck to hold him down while he bled to death.”

Even
Missier Grande
winced at that image. Father Farsetti covered his face with his hands. My sympathy was quite genuine. It had been a fairly quick death, but not a pleasant one, if there can ever be such a thing.

“After he died,” I said, “the rapier was pushed all the way through him, perhaps just to make him easier to move. The killer brought him here. Thanks to the
vizio
's acute observation we know now that the point did hit something hard, so we must look for a place with hard footing—brick or stone—and extensive bloodstains.”

“Thank you,” the Maestro said. “Now you are making sense.” He looked around to where our gondolier was waiting. “Ah, Giorgio. Last night, what time was it when Alfeo told you that he and I were not to be disturbed?”

Giorgio looked thunderous at having been fetched by a
sbirro
—such a thing never happened to respectable citizens—but he took a moment to think, “It must have been a little after eight o'clock, Doctor. We were putting the children to bed.”

“And what happened then?”

“
Sier
Danese Dolfin came and asked to see
sier
Alfeo.”

For a moment we were all silent, as we digested this information. Vasco scowled.

The Maestro nodded, as if he had expected something like that. “When?”

“About half past eight, roughly.”

“Go on.”

“I explained that you and he were not to be disturbed. He said the matter was urgent and he would wait.”

“How did he seem?”

“He seemed distressed, Doctor, agitated.” Giorgio himself was starting to look distressed, and also apologetic. “He did not say why he was worried, or what he wanted. But he was very jumpy. He had stayed here as—”

“As a guest, yes. So you let him wait in the
salone
unattended?”

Giorgio nodded glumly. “I was helping Mama…I heard the front door close. He had gone. I ran to the stair and saw him going down. I did watch him leave the building.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” the Maestro persisted.

Giorgio shook his head. “Mostly just his shadow,
lustrissimo
.”

There are times when one has to throw in one's cards and hope that the next deal will work better. “I apologize,
Vizio
. You were not the only one who could have stolen my sword last night.”

The Maestro was ahead of me, of course. “Where is it?” he asked.

Danese had come to reclaim his own sword, which I had forgotten to return to him with his portmanteau. Either he had snooped around Ca' Barbolano at some time during his stay here or—more likely—he had taken the risk of searching my room for it while Giorgio was bedding his brood. The top of a wardrobe is not an unlikely place to keep weapons when there are small children around. He had found mine and taken it. Had he also taken the matching dagger? Probably not, because he had been disarmed in a hand-to-hand tussle; with a dagger he could have stabbed his opponent when they closed. Men who sport swords should know how to use them, and he had not. In a real fight, as opposed to a formal duel, a rapier needs a parrying partner, either a dagger or another rapier.

A
sbirro
moved out of my way. I walked around our seated audience and headed to the medicine supply cupboard, taking my time while I worked out the least incriminating way of explaining why we had what I was about to produce. To confess that I had crossed swords with Danese on the Riva del Vin less than a week ago would not clear me of suspicion—far from it.

Danese's rapier had no fancy inscription on the guard, just his initials. I handed it to
Signore di Notte
Zancani.

“Yesterday my master instructed me to pack the clothes Dolfin had left here and deliver them to him at Ca' Sanudo. In doing so, I forgot to include his sword.”

That was entirely true, but as an explanation it was lame, practically paraplegic. How had the aforementioned sword found its way into the medicine cupboard?
NH
Zancani's eyes narrowed like air slits in a dungeon. He got as far as, “And just how did—” when we were interrupted and the case was removed from his jurisdiction.

S
ier
Ottone Gritti is a short and portly man who has seen many winters. The years have softened his features, weathered his face to a sienna red, faded his eyes to a milky blue, and frosted his close-trimmed beard; wisps of silver show under the edge of his flat bonnet. Stooped and flatfooted, he looks like an archetypical grandfather. Although he is rarely seen without a sleepy, benevolent smile, his nose is a bony hook that a raven might admire. That is a warning. He wore, of course, the black robes of the patriciate, marked in his case by the dangling sleeves of a member of the Council of Ten. A couple of
fanti
followed him in.

The sight of an inquisitor at the door would rank high in most people's list of Ten Worst Nightmares, especially if the inquisitor in question happened to be Ottone Gritti.

The three state inquisitors are not the three chiefs of the Ten. They are a permanent sub-committee of the Ten, always two of the elected members and one ducal counselor, two black robes and one red. Both positions carry a
contumacia
, meaning that a man must sit out one full term before being re-elected, but an easy way around that restriction is to alternate the two posts. I remember few times when Gritti was not one of the Three. As soon as his term in one office lapses, Gritti is elected to the other. Even that wriggle should leave him off the Council of Ten for four months in every twenty-four, but at least once I recall the Great Council enlarging the Ten with a
zonta
of fifteen and including him in it. It is as if the nobility cannot sleep well unless Gritti is keeping an eye on things for them, probably because he is reputed to be the most skilled and merciless interrogator in the Republic. The Council of Ten never reveals secrets about its methods or its members, of course, but rumors persist that Gritti is quite happy to sit on the rostrum in the torture chamber and direct the torment, a task most sane men shun. They say that he can break a stubborn witness faster than anyone else can—which is a sort of mercy, I suppose.

So far so good. Gritti is staunch in the defense of the Republic against her enemies and we all support him in that.

He has a darker side. Where Doge Pietro Moro is a profound skeptic concerning the supernatural, Gritti is a fervent believer, which is much worse. If I pulled a silver ducat out of a child's ear, the doge would not believe I had pulled a silver ducat out of a child's ear and might have me charged with fraud. Gritti would believe. He would call it black magic and me a witch. He is reputed to be more assiduous at torturing confessions out of suspected witches than even the King of Scotland is. Sometimes his colleagues manage to restrain him, but sometimes they do not, and in the present instance we had hints of demonic forces involved with an issue of national security. No one would try to hold Gritti back in that. The Maestro has repeatedly warned me that he is the most dangerous man in Venice.

The room had fallen silent.

“Well, well!” the newcomer murmured, beaming around. “I hear we have a problem here.” He acknowledged those present with nods:
“Clarissimo?”
—to Zancani—“Father? Doctor?
Missier Grande? Vizio?
Sergeant Torre, I trust your wife is on the mend now? And Alfeo Zeno, of course! Are you in trouble again, Alfeo?”

I bowed low. “It seemed so for a few moments, Your Excellency, but I believe the crisis is over.”

Vasco's face said it had barely begun. Vasco will die happy if he can just see me hauled off to the galleys, but burning at the stake would be much nicer.

Without going close, Gritti frowned at the corpse in the corner. “Nostradamus, is this misfortune connected with the matter you were asked to investigate two nights ago?”

The Maestro said, “I am certain it is,
messer
.”

That was enough. A state inquisitor outranks just about anybody. In seconds, Father Farsetti had gone, Zancani had gone, taking Sergeant Torre and his
sbirri
, and Giorgio had been sent off to attend to his duties.
Missier Grande
was dismissed with a terse, “I know you are urgently needed elsewhere,
lustrissimo
.” The two
fanti
were last to leave, ordered to guard the door.

Gritti settled himself on one of the green chairs, while Vasco and I took up positions behind out respective superiors to sneer at each other over their heads. The bizarrely contorted remains of Danese Dolfin remained under a sheet in the corner.

The inquisitor folded his hands over his round little paunch, and said, “Proceed, Doctor.” After that he almost seemed to doze, eyes half-shut, as he listened to the story. Once in a while he would nod thoughtfully, or even smile. I suspect that at the end he could have recited the entire report word for word.

The Maestro recounted the events of the last week. He left out the size of his fee for finding Grazia and did not mention pyromancy or the
Aegia Salomonis
, but he did admit he had used clairvoyance. His celebrated uncle, Michel de Nostredame, made clairvoyance as respectable as astrology. Even Gritti would have trouble declaring that to be black magic. Fortune telling with tarot, on the other hand, remains a criminal offense.

I listened with half an ear while I worked out the tide of events in the Doges' Palace after we had left. The Maestro's
VIRTÙ
bombshell would have launched a frantic hour of deciphering. At the end of it, the chiefs must have known a lot more about Algol's activities than previously, but they had not uncovered his identity. If they had, then Gritti would never have bothered to come to Ca' Barbolano; a mere murder would be beneath his notice. Contrariwise, if Algol's dispatches had turned out to be gossip and fraud, the case would have been closed presto. Therefore, by elimination, the chiefs had concluded that Algol had knowledgeable sources high in the government, perhaps even in the Council of Ten itself. Rather than reveal this new development to the spy, they had turned the case over to the Three. Overruling the chiefs' decision to withdraw Vasco, the Three had sent the
vizio
back to Ca' Barbolano. The fact that he had arrived not long after ten o'clock showed that
La Serenissima
can move fast when she wants to.

“Fascinating,” Gritti murmured at the end. He sat in silence for a while.

I realized I had stopped breathing, and started again.

“The doctor failed to mention,” Vasco said, “that his apprentice left the building clandestinely during the night.”

“He climbed out the window and jumped across the
calle
?” Gritti said. “He does that all the time. Whose lust is aroused by the danger, Zeno? Yours or the harlot's?”

“Hers, Excellency,” I said. “Just the thought of her is all I need.”

He chuckled. “I don't blame you. I'm jealous.”

Of course the Ten keep a dossier on me and Gritti knew my mistress's name. My midnight excursion was no longer relevant as long as Gritti accepted that Danese had stolen my sword.

“Fascinating,” the inquisitor repeated. “I am familiar with the Sanudo story, of course. The tale has been the talk of the
broglio
for days—the Contarini betrothed who ran off with
barnabotto
trash.”

Vasco shook his head pityingly at the other
barnabotto
trash. I ignored him.

“Zuanbattista's political career may never recover,” the inquisitor mused. “He is due to chair the Great Council tomorrow and so far he has not backed out. This murder may finish him, though. Now you say that Dolfin's death is ‘certainly' connected to the Algol espionage case. I do not see that as self-evident. Justify your allegation, Doctor.”

The Maestro put on his bewildered senility expression. “I am certain that it is correct, Your Excellency, but I am not yet in a position to back it up with evidence.”

Gritti smiled fondly, as at a stubborn child. “I do understand the difference between a proof and a working hypothesis.”

“Yet I must decline to reveal conjectures I cannot yet substantiate.”

Vasco raised two eyebrows; nobody defies the Three and gets away with it.

Gritti settled back in his chair and dropped the comedy mask in favor of the tragic. “Your work in breaking the Algol cipher was brilliant, Doctor, and the Republic will reward you handsomely for it, but now you are implying that one of the most senior men in the government is a traitor and I demand to hear your reasons. I will not rush out and arrest people on mere suspicion. Let us hear it, Nostradamus.”

A grunt from the Maestro made my heart plunge. His stubbornness approaches suicidal insanity.

“I cannot accept these conditions,” he said. “I regretfully decline to work further on this case.”

“You think you can withhold evidence vital to the security of the state?”

“I specified that it is mere opinion, not evidence.”

I could not see the Maestro's face, but his voice seemed amazingly calm. Gritti, opposite, was starting to show signs of annoyance. His already ruddy face was redder than ever.

“Alfeo, will you answer my question?”

I hope that my start of alarm concealed my simultaneous cold shiver. “I cannot, Your Excellency! I have no idea why my master believes the two crimes are connected. On the face of it, that would be a very strange coincidence.”

“No it wouldn't,” Gritti said impatiently. “Dolfin is…was, I mean—a notorious lecher. The Ten opened a file on him when he was fifteen. Yesterday, you tell me, he was restored to the delights of his new bride's bed after a week's enforced celibacy. Yet instead he leaves Ca' Sanudo and rushes back here to Ca' Barbolano to consult the Maestro in an ‘agitated' condition. Did he know of the Algol case?”

“I do not believe…” I said. “No, he couldn't possibly. The Angelis never gossip about the Maestro's affairs and even they know only that he went twice to the palace. The Marcianas downstairs jabber like starlings, but they knew nothing of importance. Danese…he saw the
vizio
here that morning and would have guessed that he had come on state business. Danese was clever.”

“Sly, you mean,” the inquisitor said with distaste. “So he went looking for his sword and found yours instead? That was enough, apparently. That was what he had come for. Any sword would do. So he ran off. Does it not make sense that he had stumbled on evidence of treason at Ca' Sanudo and that was why he wanted his sword? Do you swear that this idea has not even occurred to you, Zeno?”

My mouth was very dry, my bladder unbearably full. “I thought of it and discarded it, Your Excellency.”

“Why?”

“Because Danese was no hero. He was an inept, untrained swordsman, a playboy who wore a sword for swagger. Had he found the evidence you suggest, he would have run straight to the palace and informed the chiefs in the hope of gaining a reward. He cuckolded
sier
Zuanbattista, then betrayed his mistress so he could seduce her daughter, all in the quest for money. I remember when he was a child…If you look at the first entries in that dossier you mentioned, Excellency, I think you will find reports that his greed exceeded his scruples even then. He would have betrayed his wife's father or brother for gold, but he would never have faced them down himself.”

“It remains a valid hypothesis. Doesn't it, Doctor?”

“Not to me,” the Maestro said. “I agree with Alfeo. If Dolfin had been able to inculpate the Sanudos, father and son, then their daughter would have inherited everything and he could have cleared the table. It would have all been his.”

Gritti said. “So who killed him?”

“I suspect but cannot prove.” We were back to the beginning.

“Are you gambling that I dare not use force on you because of your age, Nostradamus?”

The Maestro cackled. “Faugh! Tie me on the strappado and I would break in pieces at the first hoist. My heart would stop.”

“Your apprentice is a strong young lad.”

Vasco raised his eyes to Heaven, silently mouthing prayers of thanks.

“Alfeo doesn't know what I think,” the Maestro said, less confidently. “His brain is not his best organ.”

“You can stop his interrogation at any time.”

“Bah! Has the Republic sunk to torturing the innocent?”

The inquisitor laughed. “Not yet! You always were a pigheaded old scoundrel, Doctor, and every year you get worse. Keep your theories, then, but I shall cancel your reward for the code breaking.”

That was different. The Maestro thumped a tiny fist on the arm of his chair. “It is blatantly obvious! I warned the chiefs last night that I expected attacks against us that the
vizio
could not repel, and by morning there was a corpse on our doorstep. Why here, at Ca' Barbolano? Surely Algol arranged that to ensnare my investigation in an irrelevant murder case?”