“And they are all accounted for?” the Maestro asked. “No one else in the household is missing?”
“No one,” Sanudo said firmly. “I fail to see the need for all these questions, lustrissimo. We came to consult you because you have a reputation as a seer. Can you tell us where our daughter is?”
“No, Your Excellency.” The Maestro stretched his face in a close-lipped smile. “I may or may not be able to see where she will be at some point in the very near future. The questions are necessary if I am to have some idea of what I am looking for. Now, a strange thing to ask a man in your distinguished position, but have you informed the sbirri?”
“We don’t want any scandal,” the lady said firmly, with a glare to scare Medusa. Her reaction was reasonable in one who dreamed every night of becoming dogaressa.
Her husband’s expression was cryptic. “I have little faith in the local constabulary. Nor do we want to put our daughter in danger.”
That a ducal counselor would hesitate to involve the ineffective sbirri I could understand, for they are less use than wheels on a seagull, but what of the Council of Ten? The abduction of a ducal counselor’s child was an obvious threat to the security of the Republic, a crime it both could and should investigate. Sanudo must be seriously at fault in not reporting his problem immediately. True, the full Ten would not meet until late in the day, but the three chiefs are always on duty in the Doges’ Palace. They could order Missier Grande to start wheels turning-setting a watch on the ferries, and so on. Why not?
“That is good,” the Maestro said, nodding so the wattles of his neck flapped. “An official investigation would make my seeing much harder.”
“Why? How?”
“Please trust me on that, clarissimo. Clairvoyance is very hard to describe. Does your daughter have any romantic attachments?”
“Certainly not!” her mother said indignantly. “She never leaves the house except to take Communion, at Easter and Christmas. Even at Celeseo she did not walk in the grounds without madonna Morosini or I in attendance.”
I could not see the Maestro’s expression, but his tone expressed mild surprise. “She was not convent educated?”
“My husband’s duties for the Republic have involved him in much traveling for the last few years. I chose to live in our house in Celeseo, near Padua, and keep Grazia with me for company. The country is healthier for a growing child. Grazia is extremely well versed in the classics and arts. Fortunata has tutored her.”
“So when did you return from the mainland?”
“Is this relevant?” sier Zuanbattista demanded.
“Perhaps not,” the Maestro admitted, but it would be very relevant if the young lady had run off with a lover she had met on the mainland. “Suffer me that one question, madonna?”
“At the end of July.”
“No wedding plans?”
“We-”
“Nothing decided,” Sanudo said quickly. “We have had some discussions.”
“Of course,” the Maestro said with a dry chuckle, “it takes two to elope, and if you suspected she had an accomplice, you would have investigated him before coming to see me.” He waited for a confession, but none appeared. “So you want me to find and recover your missing child?”
“Can you?” they said together.
The Maestro gestured with one hand. He has very small hands. I could guess at his expression of unruffled confidence. “I have succeeded in similar cases in the past.”
And men had been exiled as a result. I was confident that he was playing with his visitors out of plain nosiness, because he had promised me he would never again meddle in elopements. I was confident by then that Grazia had eloped and her parents knew who had been holding the ladder. Nostradamus also knew that, so in a moment or two he would tire of the game and demand a fee of three hundred ducats; I would show the visitors out, and that would be that.
“Just tell us where she is and we will fetch her,” her father said.
The old man sighed. “If possible I would certainly do that, but prediction is not so predictable, paradoxical as that seems. I would do my best and my fee would be contingent on results.”
“We must have no gossip or scandal,” madonna Eva repeated.
“That objective is secondary to your daughter’s safety, surely? I mean, the paramount aim is to return her, safe and sound, to the bosom of her family?”
“Of course.” She sounded neither convinced nor convincing.
“Her date of birth, if you please, with the exact hour and minute if you know them?”
They did. I wrote it down. Grazia was fifteen, and thus in the pride of desirable maidenhood, as nubile as they get.
“Have you a recently painted portrait or miniature of her?”
The Sanudos exchanged glances. He said, “We have a family group, painted three years ago. It is too big to transport easily and she was only a child then.”
The Maestro shrugged. “Describe her, please.”
The woman said, “Grazia is vivacious, nimble. She sings and dances and is remarkably intelligent. She has a marvelous complexion and her eyes are just amazing. She looks even younger than her years, because she is so petite.”
Her father smiled ruefully, as if amused by his wife’s equivocation. “She is small and skinny-quite pretty, but her nose is too large for classical beauty. She does have wonderful eyes, I agree, and an endearing smile, but Titian would not have painted her.”
His wife pouted but did not protest this vapid praise.
The Maestro sighed. “Thank you. A frank and helpful answer. What fee are you offering?”
His Excellency’s angular, stony face seemed to petrify even further. “What is your usual charge?”
“You want me to put a price on your daughter?”
“A fee to do what?” Sier Zuanbattista’s tone had chilled considerably. “To tell us stories of how she has been spirited away to the Sultan’s harem?”
“If I produced proof, Your Excellency, even that would be an improvement on your present uncertainty. I expect no payment for my unsupported word.”
“To help us get her back, safe and unharmed!” madonna Eva said, “a thousand ducats!”
I swore under my breath. The lady had sensed the Maestro’s reluctance. The old miser would never resist such a bribe. A thousand ducats is a fortune; it is almost fifty times the legal annual wage of a married journeyman laborer.
In a notable breach of tradition, Sanudo raised both eyebrows. “I think we had better define the terms of this contract very carefully.”
His wife glared at him. “You think I would grudge it to have my child back? If you will not pay it, messer, I will sell my mother’s jewels.”
“It is acceptable,” the Maestro said. “I have charged more, but you did well to consult me so promptly.” He had never earned a fraction of that on a missing person case since I had known him. “Returned safe and in good health, one thousand ducats.”
There was a significant difference in wording there, depending on how one defined “unharmed,” but sier Zuanbattista nodded. “Failing which, for proof of her whereabouts, one hundred.”
“Very fair. Clarissimo, madonna, the sooner I get started, the sooner I should be able to tell you something.” The Maestro gripped the arm of his chair and I rose to fetch his staff.
“How soon?” the woman demanded, rising.
“An hour, maybe two. I will send sier Alfeo with news as soon as I have some.”
2
T he Maestro’s infirmity excuses him from excessive formalities. Normally I show his visitors out and am tipped a soldo or two for my pains. I rely on those tips. At the end of my seven-year apprenticeship Nostradamus will pay me my accumulated salary of seventeen ducats, but until then he provides only food, shelter, and a minuscule clothing allowance. In this case he had revealed my rank, so I had to behave like a noble, bowing low to Sanudo at the top of the stairs, waiting to exchange bows again when he reached the first landing, then going out on the balcony to bow farewell as they departed in their gondola. And no tip.