I was more interested in the decor than a chance to rest my legs. The androne was large enough to revive the Battle of Agnadello, and the page was running up a quite admirable staircase. Obviously the palazzo had been heavily updated sometime in its latest century and I approved of the result, although it was going to start looking old-fashioned fairly soon. I presumed to wander around the big hall, admiring sculptures and wall paintings. Two of those I thought might be by Guariento. Nothing was new, but it was all fine quality.
An hour later I was sitting on a bench and starting to grow bored. The door knocker knocked, callers called, the flunky flunked. The visitors who had preceded me had been led off to attend to their business and been replaced by others. Other people wandered in and out unchallenged as if they belonged there, but nobody paid any attention to me at all. At the end of a second hour I was all alone and starting to suspect that I was not welcome. I have met such studied rudeness often enough that I can usually ignore it, but in this case I had reason to wonder if the Council of Ten had been informed of my presence there and we were waiting for Missier Grande to arrive and arrest me.
Finally a different flunky emerged from the cubbyhole, a spotty boy who was probably the most junior servant they could find in the entire palazzo. To his credit, he looked uncomfortable as he confirmed that I was who I am, and then informed me that sier Bernardo had no wish to meet with me.
"Then perhaps sier Domenico will? I have a letter-"
Alas, the second brother was not in residence at the moment. Would I like to speak with a secretary?
"No," I said, displaying admirable poise. "The matter is very confidential."
He escorted me to the great door and bowed me out. I refrained from tipping him for this service. I paused for a moment in the loggia while I wrapped my cloak tight about me. The riva was almost deserted now; the wind had risen and was whipping a fine spume off the waves of the basin, but it would be at my back as I walked to the traghetto. I had noticed that there was only one man left sitting on the bench, but paid him no heed until I started to move, for by then he had risen to accost me.
"Sier Alfeo Zeno?"
I nodded.
He bowed. "A lady wishes to receive you. Will you be so kind as to accompany me?"
"The kindness is yours," I retorted. "I trust I did not keep you waiting long?"
A polite but meaningless smile flashed across his face. "Much too long, but the blame does not rest on you, messer. This way, if you please."
He led me along the riva to the corner of the palazzo, then turned into a very narrow and inconspicuous calle. He puzzled me. He was stocky, with the breadth of a porter or stonemason, yet his dress was a vision in red and gold brocade, with osprey plumes in his hat and a ruff like a waterwheel, far too expensive for any servant, even a steward or secretary. His manner was genteel but lacked the Stand Aside, Rabble! arrogance of a young nobleman and he had not given me his name, as a gentleman would. I judged him to be about my age, but his beard was bushy and tightly curled, and beards can be deceptive. He could be some years younger or older.
Once around the corner and a dozen or so paces along the calle, he entered a shallow archway and paused to unlock a small but solidly built door, clearly a private entrance. Then he ushered me through, to a cramped, shadowy stairwell, and proceeded to relock the door. We began to climb.
14
The stairs were dusty and cobwebbed, a servants' access no longer used. At the top we emerged through another inconspicuous door, which my guide carefully locked behind us, although from the outside it looked to be of no importance, perhaps a closet. We had come to the sort of luxurious private quarters to be expected in so grand a palace. The decor was modern and I was hard put not to gape around me as my guide led me around a corridor and across an antechamber to a spacious reception room, presently occupied by three women.
I judged the one to my right to be a servant by her clothes, her shriveled, weathered features, and her occupation, for she was presently mending a child's britches. The one on my left was dressed as a lady of means, small and plump, somewhat mousy, aged perhaps thirty. She held a book. I had heard her reading aloud as I crossed the anteroom.
The one on the chair between their two stools was obviously the great person I had been brought to meet, donna Alina Orio, widow of the murdered Gentile Michiel and mother of his infamous killer. She held an embroidery hoop rather too far from her nose.
"Sier Alfeo Zeno, madonna," said my companion.
Skewered by eyes as sharp as the servant's darning needle, I bowed low. She was a tall, but not heavy woman, clad in fine velvet and lace, all in black, and carefully adorned with pearls and face paint. Palace life and ample servants and wet nurses had preserved her well; only the hollow cheeks caused by lost teeth acknowledged that she must be over fifty and had borne many children.
"Why is a messenger boy claiming to be a patrician?" she demanded.
"I am a patrician, madonna; my birth is listed in the Golden Book. I carried only a letter of introduction and bring a message in my head. I am apprenticed to Maestro Nostradamus, the astrologer and philosopher. Those are learned professions, permitted to the patriciate."
"So what is that precious message?"
My immediate fate balanced on a knife edge. If she had summoned me just to see what I looked like, she could now jettison me and carry on with her day.
"It was addressed to your noble son, madonna, but he chose not to hear it."
She considered that answer and decided it would pass muster.
"Leave us," she commanded, and the women rose in a rustle of taffeta. The maid curtseyed and hurried to open the door. The lady companion nodded with no comment and a completely expressionless face, although including her in the same command as the servant had to be a deliberate discourtesy.
"Be seated, sier Alfeo."
She handed the youth her embroidery to put away and clasped her hands together on her lap. They were more timeworn than her face, and the gesture revealed inner tensions that her expression never would.
I thought I had my guide identified by then as her cavaliere servente, gentleman escort and general errand boy, who might, if he was lucky, also be her gigolo. There could be worse occupations, even if the woman was older by thirty years. I began to doubt my judgment when she did not invite him to take the other stool. Besides, donna Orio looked like the sort of grande dame who had conceived her children by prayer and never done anything so undignified as rollick naked with a man.
"Eight years ago next month, I told my oldest son to hire your precious Nostradamus to locate Zorzi for me. You are aware who Zorzi is?"
"Zorzi Michiel, your youngest son, who was sent into exile."
Her knuckles whitened. "Who fled into exile. He was condemned in absentia, the evidence that would have proved his innocence never considered. Nostradamus claimed he could not do what I ordered, but more likely he was playing safe and chose not to. Today the old fraud sends a boy with unspecified information. My son rightly decided to ignore you. Yet you waited two and a half hours and had to be sent packing like a beggar. Are you without shame, sier Alfeo?"
"There can be no shame in serving my master diligently."
She disliked my smart-aleck hint that the shame was her son's. Her mouth curled in an angry pout.
"Why does Nostradamus not deliver his own news?"
"Because he is frail and rarely leaves his residence now."
"Does your message concern Zorzi?"
That question posed a problem, but the Maestro expects me to make my own decisions and be prepared to defend them. He had said that if Bernardo was not hiding Honeycat then he did not know who else to ask. I did, now, but would she tell me anything? And if I told her anything, what would she do?