18
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 VIRTU 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.”