It was only when winter dusk was falling that I reached the end and passed the final sheet across the desk to the Maestro, who had been ostensibly reading Paracelsus's Archidoxa all afternoon, but had done much more frowning and beard tugging than page turning. He had followed my progress, page by page without comment. Now he scanned the ending and nodded.
"Not bad," he conceded effusively. "It will suffice."
Praise indeed! I had expected a dozen corrections at least.
"Now my report to the Council of Ten," he said. "File copy first."
He dictated a brief account of Violetta's plea that he track down her friend's killer, his discovery that there were other victims, and his efforts to prevent more killings. The name "Honeycat" had directed him to the Palazzo Michiel, and from there had come the enclosed book, believed to have been sent to him by donna Alina Orio… and so on. After this, not even an abbess rampant would keep the Ten away from Sister Lucretzia.
"Read it back," he said. Then, "It will do. Make a fine copy of both."
He was rarely so uncritical and I began to suspect that the Council of Ten was never going to see my handiwork. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. Then I wrapped up the damning book, my report, and the accompanying letter. I sealed the package with wax.
"I'd better go," I said.
"Later," he added, glancing at the windows. "After we have eaten."
"The Ten will be meeting by then." The three chiefs of the Ten, who set its agenda, are appointed for a month at a time and must not leave the palace during their term, but the entire council meets in the evenings, although not every day. After it adjourns, the three state inquisitors retire to their own chamber to conduct their own sinister business.
The Maestro dismissed my objection with a shrug. "There is still time. I have been considering my latest foreseeing, the one about hazarding in far lands and death being near at hand. You did not spurn help at your feet… You have seen no more of the mysterious cat?"
"No, master." I sat down, but I know him too well. I could tell that he was procrastinating, hoping against hope that his trap would be sprung before he was forced to turn over that damning evidence to the Council of Ten. Once that happened, a blanket of secrecy would fall over the case and we might never learn what happened.
"Are we overlooking anything in our respective predictions?" he mused.
That was a command for me to start interpreting. The implication that I was his equal as a seer was mere flattery.
"Your first quatrain predicted the fourth murder very well. The second… The first two lines-hazarding in far lands and death near at hand-suggest that Zorzi has returned to Venice or plans to. Not spurning help at your feet suggests my phantasmal cat. Explain Salvation from on high to me, master."
He pulled a face. "I can't. The other three lines work out, so keep it in mind. And your two tarot readings. Revisit those for me."
"The reading for Violetta has turned out quite well," I said with touching modesty. "I mean the queen of coins facing the problem of Death reversed could hardly be plainer. You just reversed the knight of cups by sending Jacopo home to bait your trap, which will turn out to be the solution if it works." Or sheer disaster if it didn't, but I might as well claim credit for giving him the idea.
"And the Popess reversed?"
"Violetta would say that it meant the abbess of Santa Giustina who refused to admit her."
I thought that even Nostradamus would have trouble interpreting that as a significant prophecy, but he managed it. "The warning may have restrained her from revealing too much. If the abbess had guessed that she was a prostitute, she would have reported her to the censors. And Fortitude as the helper? Your Violetta is a brave woman to participate in our little stratagem."
"My deck names that card Strength."
"Well, even if we don't count it, four out of five is still remarkable. Very few tarot workers could equal that. Now your own reading?"
Hmph! "Not so good," I admitted. "The Popess as the solution fits, because Sister Lucretzia brought us the book. The snare was the vizio, all right, but I hardly need tarot to warn me of Filiberto Vasco; and it was your quatrain and the phantasmal cat that saved me from him. Nothing else helps at all. The problem was identified as Justice. I suppose that means that Zorzi was innocent, or justice for killing the four women; it's apt but not helpful. The helper was Judgment, which tells me nothing."
The Maestro stroked his beard and frowned at me. "The subject or question was the knave of coins reversed?"
"That's a good indication of Circospetto taking bribes."
"Then why was he reversed?"
This had been bothering me also. "I don't know. He got his money and gave up virtually nothing." All we had learned for five hundred ducats was that the murder weapon was not the khanjar dagger Jacopo had said it was.
Nostradamus tugged his goatee for a moment, which meant that he was seriously thinking, not just wasting time until Honeycat dramatically burst in on us to confess.
"Suppose Sciara cheated? Suppose it was he who removed the rest of the documents, just to score off us?"
"Possible," I admitted. "Likely, even."
"Then perhaps he told you more than he intended? Outsmarted himself? The rest of the material would have taken you all night to read and might not have been of value. Because you were not distracted by that, you may have picked up something vital in what you did get to see."
"You're saying I missed something in what he did show me?"
He sighed. "I don't know. That's up to you. I could entrance you and see what I might squeeze out of your memory that you have overlooked."
"No!" I said automatically. I hate it when he puts me into a recall trance, because I cannot remember afterward what I said or what he asked, and I always suspect him of prying into my private thoughts.
"Then you do it!" he snapped. "You ought to be able to put yourself into an introspective trance by now. You must practice more."
Again he glanced at the window to see how the day was fading. There was fog moving in. "Go and find out if Mama has supper ready."
"Yes, master." He expresses interest in food about once a decade. "You are expecting visitors."
"It is possible," he agreed sourly, annoyed that I had seen through him. "Not necessarily Honeycat, but I kicked the hive very hard. Somebody ought to react."
As I reached the atelier door, our door knocker summoned me and I looked back. "Nicely timed, master."
With a smirk of satisfaction, he began levering himself upright. "Pass me my staff."
I saw him headed for the red chair before I went out to the salone. I had never approached the front door with greater apprehension. Who was out there? A bravo with drawn sword? Missier Grande come to arrest us? Jacopo repentant? One of the Michiel brothers breathing fire? The mysterious Sister Lucretzia returning?
28
I was wrong on all counts. The doge himself would have surprised me less. Beetling over me like a dormant volcano stood Matteo Surian, once Matteo the Butcher. I suppose I gaped at him. He was decked out in his Sunday best, clothes far grander than he would ever have worn in his respectable days as a tradesman, and I could tell at a glance that last week's sodden wreck was now dried out. As an effort of will, that was remarkable. His eyes were no longer bloody pits, but they held a cold, implacable ferocity I recalled from his fighting days on the bridges. At the sight of me he beamed with relief. It was a fair guess that he had never in his life entered a palace like Ca' Barbolano except by the tradesmen's entrance, and mine was the face he had come looking for.
"Sier Alfeo!"
"Matteo! You are welcome! Come in, come in! What brings you here?"