The Alchemist's Code

32

O ut in the salone, I detected mouth-watering odors from the kitchen. Noemi was hovering there anxiously. Noemi is so delicate she could almost hover literally, and I can never meet her eye without smiling.

“Ready?”

She nodded vigorously.

“I shall tell the Maestro,” I said. “It seems our feast is ready, Your Excellency.”

Gritti walked on without comment, ignoring the statuary and paintings. Back at the atelier we found Vasco sitting on a chair-not one of the best-and sipping a glass of wine. Loss of blood always imparts a strong thirst and the redness of wine makes it the best fluid to help the body replace the loss. He was huddled under a blanket, which at least hid his bandaged arm and blood-ruined garments. His pallor was less marked than before, but with a grotesquely swollen nose trailing wisps of packing and two rapidly developing black eyes, he looked as if he had fallen headfirst off a bell tower. I don’t say he had earned all that. I don’t say he hadn’t, either.

Beside him stood Missier Grande, who was a surprise but not much of one, for he would have heard from the fante about his deputy’s injury. The look he gave me conveyed little appreciation of the work I had done to bring the man back alive.

The Maestro was wiping his hands on a damp cloth. He scowled approvingly at me. “If you must waste so much money on clothes, they deserve to be worn in good company. I was just telling Missier Grande that his vizio owes his life to you yet again, Alfeo.”

“Again?” murmured the inquisitor. “You mean again after yesterday?”

“No.” The Maestro’s smirk told me that he had been dragging bait, although Gritti might not realize that. “I was thinking of the time when the gondola overturned and Alfeo had to tow the vizio to shore.”

“Our prima colazione is ready, master,” I said hopefully.

“Your Excellency,” Missier Grande said, “I should see the vizio home.”

“Not just yet.” Gritti walked over to one the green chairs and turned it so he could include Vasco in his field of view. “First I want answers to a couple of questions.”

“As you please,” the Maestro said with unusual amiability.

He hobbled to his red chair, leaning on furniture because he had left his staff there. I went to my side of the desk and sat. Missier Grande remained standing. The two fanti were out in the androne, watching through the open door and within easy hail.

“Doctor Nostradamus,” Gritti said, staring intently at him, “yesterday you did not know who Algol was. Do not interrupt me! If you had known you would have said so, and you didn’t. You merely said you would tell me today, and this morning you sent your boy all the way to the Giudecca to accost a man who had not previously been mentioned in this case. To the best of my recollection, the name of Francesco Guarini has never been brought before the Ten. I grant you that his reaction to Zeno’s summons was suspicious and his violence against the vizio will send him to the galleys, but where is your evidence that he has anything to do with either the Algol matter or the death of Danese Dolfin? Explain.”

The Maestro leaned back, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and put his fingertips together, five and five. That almost always means that he is about to start lecturing, but for once it did not.

“The revered and mighty Council of Ten does not reveal all its methods, Your Excellency. I have my own professional secrets and need them to earn my living. I assure you that you have your man and a couple of witnesses are available. With a little encouragement, Guarini will confess to everything.”

Inquisitors do not take kindly to defiance. Indeed, they take very cruelly to it, and Gritti’s smile clotted my blood like butter. “But it is you I am presently encouraging. You will tell me how you learned his name. I will know who told you, and when. I am prepared to go to great lengths to get the truth.”

There was the ultimatum. We were back to the question of how much torture a frail octogenarian could stand, and who else might be questioned in his stead. Gritti meant what he was saying. He was clearly prepared to accept as a working hypothesis that Guarini was Algol and would solve both the espionage case and the murder for him. Now he was investigating the problem of black magic. He had the scent of witchcraft in his nostrils and a true fanatic sees witchcraft as much worse than espionage.

“I am not prepared to tell you at this time,” the Maestro said calmly, making as if to rise. “After we have eaten I may say more on the topic, but I believe it is irrelevant.”

“It is relevant if I say it is!” The inquisitor’s rubicund face darkened a few shades.

“But I know the details and you do not.” If the Maestro was deliberately trying to get both himself and me arrested, he was certainly proceeding in the correct manner.

“Filippo Nostradamus, I am aware of your international reputation as a doctor. I am also aware of your reputation as a philosopher who dabbles in the dark arts, and I fear that this time you have dabbled much deeper than any Christian should, or can without selling his soul to the Enemy. I am aware that you have served La Serenissima well in the past, but I will not and cannot tolerate Satanism. How did you learn that Algol was Francesco Guarini?”

“Black magic,” said Filiberto Vasco.

Heads turned. Now who was the life of the party?

“You have our attention, Vizio,” the inquisitor said.

Judging by his gleeful expression, Vasco was rising above his pain. “When Zeno knocked on Guarini’s door, Guarini called out to ask who he was.” His voice was muffled and slurred by all the wine that he had consumed, but he was not too drunk to know what he was saying, and he was looking at me, not Gritti, gloating over worse tales he had yet to tell. “Zeno wouldn’t tell him. First he asked for Guarini by name. Then he asked for ‘Mirphak.’ And finally he said that the dead man sent him!”

“Mirphak?” Gritti looked to me.

I hope my smile was debonair and not grotesque. “A shot in the dark, Your Excellency. Algol is the second brightest star in the constellation of Perseus. Mirphak is the brightest. If one was a code name, then the other might be. I was hoping it might provoke a guilty reaction.”

Undeceived, the inquisitor shook his head contemptuously and looked back to Vasco, who probably tried to smile, because he winced with sudden pain.

“But when Zeno said, ‘Danese Dolfin sent me,’ Guarini threw the door open and attacked him.”

“That one worked,” I explained brightly.

And that one worked for Gritti, too. It would have been a believable ruse for me to try, and it had produced a convincing indication of guilt. He shrugged.

“It was true,” Vasco protested. “Dolfin did send him! That was how they learned the name. Last night, Nostradamus and Zeno raised the ghost of Danese Dolfin and made it tell them who murdered him.”

“Head injuries,” the Maestro muttered sadly. “Difficult prognosis. Prolonged rest is indicated.”

“No, he’s just drunk,” I said. “He never can hold his liquor. After all that lost blood, he’s sprung his timbers.”

“Over there?” Vasco pointed. “There’s a spyhole beside the mirror. I watched from the dining room. I saw it all! I heard the ghost speak in Dolfin’s voice!”

Missier Grande strode over to inspect. “That is correct,” he announced. “There is a spyhole and the cover is currently open.”

I felt as if I had been clubbed between the eyes. How had he done that? Someone might have opened it that morning, but I was certain I had seen it closed last night before we began our seance. Had Vasco himself used occult means to open the shutter so he could spy on us?

“Necromancy?” Gritti declaimed. “In all my years I have never heard a more terrible accusation. “ Missier Grande, take Nostradamus and Zeno to the palace and lock them in separate cells. They are to be charged with practicing Satanism.”

“I’m ravenous,” I said. “Providing first aid to critically wounded comrades is very hunger-making work and I need my breakfast. Mama Angeli has prepared a marvelous prima colazione in your honor, Excellency. Can’t we eat first?”

The inquisitor stood up. “No,” he said. “I will not sup at the table of a man I believe to be an agent of the Fiend.”

“This is ridiculous!” roared the Maestro. “That boy is confused by concussion and also quite obviously drunk, and yet you accept his wild allegations as reliable testimony? Am I an idiot that I would perform forbidden rites where he could overlook me, when I knew he was in the house? Do you think we don’t know the spyhole is there? If you think I am so senile that I would forget about it, do you believe Alfeo would? Your Excellency, you are running a travesty of an investigation!”

Ignoring the tirade, Gritti had beckoned in the two fanti, but I reached the Maestro first and helped him up. I handed him his staff and gave him my arm to lean on. If he was going to be humiliated by being carried off like baggage to jail, then the least I could do was help him postpone the indignity as long as possible. Besides, I did not have my sword with me, so I couldn’t put the time to better use by sending Vasco to hell with a warning I was coming.

I had always overestimated that dog’s human qualities.

We shuffled out into the salone. The Angelis were emerging from the kitchen, just about all of them, and Bruno was with them. Bruno was going to be a problem. Already he was sensing the tension and frowning. The fanti would have to carry the Maestro downstairs and the moment they laid hands on him, Bruno was going to charge along the hall like my father’s galley at Lepanto.

“Can you manage the stairs?” Missier Grande asked Vasco, eyeing the group of us. The Maestro must be carried, I must be watched, he had only two able-bodied men to assist him, and he must realize that Vasco would be in danger if he stayed around Ca’ Barbolano unprotected.

“Do let me assist,” I said. “I’ll give him a helping foot.”

Someone rapped the front door knocker.