Domenico boarded first and handed me aboard, insisting I sit on the lefthand side of the felze, the place of honor, although that did not mean much in this case, because it is easier to direct the boat from that side when there are two boatmen, and I was the one who would name our stopping place. As we glided away from the watersteps, I murmured some platitude about kindness.
"Nonsense," Domenico said dryly. "I just wanted to have a word with you. Jacopo is not a very proficient thespian, is he?"
Set a trap and then expose it yourself? Domenico surprised me. There was something slithery about him, though.
"He is still young enough to learn from a good teacher," I said. "How may I assist you, clarissimo?"
He showed his lower teeth when he smiled, which is rare in a young man. "Tell me what you were up to with my mother, of course. Or rather what she wants from you. She is sometimes not very practical. My brother is worried… Let me start at the beginning. Our father's terrible death was a shattering experience for all of us, of course, but especially for Alina, for she was with him when it happened. The whole city cried out in horror when it heard the news, but she was there! Then, just days later, Zorzi's flight made it all doubly, triply worse. He had always been her favorite. She has never admitted that he was guilty."
"Was he?" I murmured.
"Who knows?" Domenico said, surprising me again. "Zorzi was taller than I am and she always insisted that the man who elbowed her aside was not tall. That was all she recalled of the killer-that he was no more than average height. But the Ten had to find a culprit quickly and Zorzi ran away. Run from hounds and they will chase you." Again that curious smile invited confidence.
"Is he still alive?"
"Of course not!"
That made three surprises and I was starting to feel out-gunned. The family financier had let slip that he knew what parish I lived in, and therefore had most likely seen the letter I brought, but he was coming across as smarter than Bernardo, the family politician, or even the family flunky, who was sharp enough in spite of his lack of theatrical expertise. Perhaps Domenico's soft voice excluded him from politics, for it takes powerful lungs to be heard the whole length of the Great Council's chamber.
"The Ten put a price on his head," he said. "A thousand ducats? A fortune! Were I a gambling man, I should bet that it was less than a month before some bravo turned up at the palace with my brother's head pickled in wine or brine to claim the reward. The Ten never tell."
His face radiated sincerity as he said all this. The man was a master, and I was glad not to be buying real estate from him.
"Then the letters your mother receives are all fakes?"
He could not have known beforehand that I had been told about the letters, yet he never hesitated.
"Of course. She was still in shock from the murder when her son was convicted of patricide; we all feared she would go out of her mind and harm herself. Eventually my wife, Isabetta, and I concocted a letter to console her. We decided to risk this deception, knowing that if Alina saw through it, it would be taken as betrayal and make matters even worse. Zorzi and I had always had similar handwriting and my forgery turned out to be good enough. That letter saved my mother's sanity, sier Alfeo! Perhaps it was a reprehensible conspiracy, but I have no regrets. Ever since then we have supplied a new episode of the drama every few months. We led our phantom brother through several adventures. At present he is a senior aide to the Duke of Savoy, and anxiously awaiting the birth of his second child. Is this a sin?"
Who was I to be his spiritual advisor? "That may depend on whether your brother is alive, clarissimo. Have any genuine letters turned up?"
Domenico studied me for a moment, as if adjusting his evaluation of a property. The roof is collapsing, but the stables are adequate…
"None that I know of. Would you really expect the Council of Ten to allow such a letter to arrive? The Ten watch every piece of mail entering the Republic. Their agents would backtrack it to its source. My brother Zorzi is long dead, sier Alfeo, may the Lord have mercy on his soul."
"Amen," I said. We were making fast time along the Grand Canal and would be at San Remo in a few moments. It was time to counterattack. "And now you and sier Bernardo are worried that donna Alina will fall into the hands of a charlatan clairvoyant, who will milk her of thousands of ducats by preying on her obsession to prove her son's innocence?"
He smiled, snakily. "You put it in starker terms than I would."
"Maestro Nostradamus is not a grifter," I said, even more cold-bloodedly, "but is aware of the dangers of being considered one. If he undertakes to prove your brother's innocence, clarissimo, then he will expect payment only after he has done so. If your brother was in fact guilty, then you will owe him nothing. Suppose he was innocent-then who did kill your father?"
Silence. The oars creaked in the oarlocks. Passing gondoliers yodeled their strange calls. We turned into Rio San Remo. My companion stared at our bow post, or perhaps the forward boatman's legs, saying nothing.
"Messer?" I queried eventually.
Domenico shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea, sier Alfeo. Nobody I know or can think of. My first thought when I heard the news was that Zorzi had committed that terrible, dreadful crime. I kept my opinion to myself, of course, but I never doubted that he was guilty, neither then nor later."
I said, "The next watergate on the right, boatman. I do thank you for the ride, clarissimo."
"It has been a great pleasure, sier Alfeo."
We smiled like fighters ending the first round of a long contest.
16
Dusk was falling, Carnival would soon resume in earnest. In Ca' Barbolano I ran up the forty-eight steps and let myself in. I found Fulgentio already there, coaching the twins in fencing under their mother's disapproving eye.
"Be with you in a moment," I shouted, and slipped into the atelier to report. The Maestro was at the desk, working on a horoscope that he would normally have me do, which was enough annoyance to justify his disagreeable scowl. He needed more light, but the fact that he had been moving around at all was encouraging.
"Progress!" I said as I hurried to the mantelpiece to fetch a couple of lamps. "The formidable donna Alina has been receiving letters from Zorzi for years, except that they're fakes done by Domenico. Bernardo may be in on the hoax, but I'm not sure of that. Timoteo is Friar Fedele, which confirms a tie between the Gradenigo mystery and Ca' Michiel."
I laid the lamps on the desk, backed off a couple of paces, and lit them both with the Word.
"There's another son, illegitimate, aged about nineteen or twenty, goes by the name of Jacopo Fauro and acts as stableboy to the lioness. Alina-the-terrible Orio wants to hire you to prove that Zorzi did not murder his father."
"So your afternoon was not completely wasted." Nostradamus had listened with one finger marking his place in the ephemeris and his pen poised in his other hand. Now he dipped the quill in the inkwell and went back to work. "Go and eat or do something useful."
"Will you take the lady's contract?"
"Of course," he muttered, scribbling a calculation on a sheet already almost entirely covered with hieroglyphics. "Unless you catch the Strangler tonight."
There are times I want to strangle him. "And where do I go to do that?"
He looked up furiously. "Damnatio! I told you! I told you he would kill again after the Sabbath and I told you where! Are you all idiots? You and that Trau boy and Giorgio-you're the natives. I'm foreign born. You eat my salt and pocket my gold. You work it out. Go and get him, preferably alive, but kill him if you must."