Dave Duncan - The Alchemists pursuit

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.

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."

I left before I did strangle him. At the same time, I sympathized. If Fulgentio and I did not decipher the quatrain in time, tomorrow would bring word of another woman murdered somewhere and we should all curse ourselves, because the answer to the riddle would then be blindingly obvious.

I went to my room to fetch my sword and Fulgentio followed me in, closing the door. He tossed his foil and mask on my bed, to lie alongside a mysterious bundle. He was grinning like a child, as if we were going off to play hide-and-go-seek for sweetmeats instead of a woman's life. Fulgentio is smart-had he seen what I was missing in the quatrain?

"Had these made up," he announced, untying the cord around the bundle. "Secret-police costumes." He held up a pair of cloaks, white on one side and black on the other. "Helps us find each other in the crowd and then sneak up on the Strangler."

"Sometimes I think you are crazy," I said, retrieving my sword from the top of the wardrobe, "and other times I know you are."

"Were I sane, friend, I would find a much more enjoyable companion for tonight." His amusement was as transmissible as always.

Masks are standard for Carnival, when servants and nobles can mingle on almost equal terms-the poor are still poor and the rich rich, of course-but masks and swords are an illegal combination, so we must keep our rapiers well hidden or risk being arrested by the sbirri. Mama tried to drag me bodily into the kitchen to eat, but night was falling and I promised her I would buy something at one of the sausage stands. She shuddered and so did I. I warned her to lock up after us.

Clad in white like ghosts, Fulgentio and I left by the back door and the staircase down to the courtyard. I let us out the gate and locked it behind us. We were on a manhunt where we knew neither our quarry nor his range. It seemed hopeless to me-grass? three saints?

Fulgentio began recounting a complicated story that was making the rounds in the palace, all about the French ambassador's mistress. He kept it going until we reached our first real decision point, where the calle reached the campo. I hesitated.

He stopped to look at me, raising his torch high. "Not San Marco again, so where?"

I had it! "Of course San Marco!" I shouted. "Let's go!" Seized by a sudden urgency, I began to run.

"There is no grass in the Piazza!" he complained, running alongside.

"But there is grass in the campo!"

"Men have been strangled for much less provocation than… Saints preserve me! Of course!"