Dave Duncan - The Alchemists pursuit

I must have looked surprised, because Domenico laughed.

"It was the crime of the century, sier Alfeo! A patrician murdered in the Basilica itself! It shook the entire Republic. The Ten were under enormous pressure to find the killer, so look at it from their point of view. Zorzi had motive, because his father was threatening to disinherit him-which he did every Tuesday and Friday, but this time he had sounded more serious. Zorzi had no alibi. He claimed he was defending the name of a noble lady, but who would believe a public outrage like him? No, it was simplest for the Ten just to drop him a hint that Missier Grande was coming to get him and Zorzi would solve their problem all by himself. He ran away so he must be guilty. Simple."

And I thought I was a cynic! "Was he guilty?"

"I think he was," Domenico said sadly. "Somebody killed our father, and he seemed then, and still seems, the most logical culprit. If so, he deserved the headsman's ax. If he wasn't guilty of murder he deserved banishment anyhow, and that's what he got."

"You told me on Saturday that you thought some bounty hunter had turned in his head by now."

He sighed. "I still think so." He paused for a while, pensive, staring down at a potted plant beside the wall. "It's hard for me to think of Zorzi doing anything so horrible, but even then I couldn't think of anyone else who would do so and I haven't since. I certainly think you're wasting your time trying to find evidence that the Ten couldn't find eight years ago."

"My master owns my time, and he's the one who's wasting it." The noon bell began to sound, notes floating out across the city signaling time to down tools and eat the midday meal. Domenico straightened up and took his elbows off the parapet, tall and hook-nosed like his Orio mother, not broad and beefy like the Michiel strain. His move implied impatience. My time was up.

"If Zorzi has come back," I asked, "who is sheltering him?" He rolled his eyes, mockery in his smile. "Oh that would have to be me, wouldn't it? I scuttle back and forth to the mainland all the time, and up the Brenta River. I own property on the mainland, which I have probably riddled with secret chambers just for this purpose." Again the curious smirk. "I know, you're only doing your job and I shouldn't sneer. I have no idea. Why should he come back and risk his neck? Why should he be going around murdering fallen women? Why should anyone in his right mind help him in that game-because he must have help, his face is too well-known. That's what you're really after, isn't it? Zorzi is only a blind. You really suspect that someone related to him has taken to strangling his old playmates."

I felt a little nettled that he could see through me so easily, although it was obvious enough. "If that were true, who would be the most likely killer this time?"

"Jacopo," Domenico said firmly, reaching for the door handle. "He's not up to Zorzi's standards as a satyr, but he sows enough wild oats to feed the Cossack cavalry. Can't think why he'd be murdering the lovelies, though."

He ushered me back into the library. The artisans had gone but Jacopo was still poring over the drawings. He looked up cheerfully.

"I sent the men for their dinner, Dom. Your chapel's too small."

His brother frowned and went around the table to look.

"Make it twice as big," Jacopo said. He cupped a hand on the paper. "This big."

"That would cost eight times as much."

"You can't do style on a shoestring, man!" Jacopo pirouetted, whirling his cape. He was showing off for my benefit, trying to persuade me that in private he was on equal terms with his brothers. "Look-it's the buttons that make this outfit. My tailor used ugly little glass balls. I made him take it back and put these amethysts on. It cost ten times as much, but look at the result."

Domenico stared down at the drawing and then shrugged. "Twice as big it shall be, then. A cathedral of a chapel." He smiled across at me. "He has an incredible eye. He's right every time." So now he was all brotherly love, not mentioning that seconds ago he'd offered up the family by-blow to me as a sacrificial lamb.

I understood that I was not to dine with the family when I was led to the kitchens. There I got to share a bench at the table reserved for senior servants: Bernardo and Domenico's respective valets, two popier gondoliers who row at the rear, and Jacopo himself. I could guess from the others' reactions-or lack of reaction, rather-that Jacopo always ate there. As an apprentice I would not have minded, but Domenico had given me my title, so this put-down was a calculated insult to me, and perhaps to his mother for imposing me on the family.

The lesser servants, sitting at the other table, were all women except for two junior de mezo boatmen, who would row at the bow, a young page or footman, and a Moorish slave. Such distinctions matter as much at that social level as they do in kings' palaces. I recognized the maidservant, Agnesina, who had been mending clothes in donna Alina's company on Saturday, but apparently signora Isabetta ate with the gentry.

The brighter side of this snub was that I had intended to question the servants anyway and now I had a chance to do so in a relaxed atmosphere. It did not take me long to learn that none of them had been employed there for more than a couple of years. That was not truly surprising, because the rich are constantly complaining about the difficulty of holding onto servants, but it was a setback to investigating the murder of Gentile Michiel. As for the courtesan inquiry, I never had any intention of asking the staff who in the house might be creeping out at night to strangle or stab four women. There would be an uproar, a mass flight, and the news would be all over the city in an hour.

I settled down to making the best of my lesson in humility and the reminder of how the other half eats. My pride suffered less than my stomach.

Sier Bernardo had returned from his duties in time for dinner and condescended to receive me afterward in his office, which was a small but lavish room containing an oversized desk and very few books. He sat behind the desk. I was left on my feet and so was Jacopo, who stood just behind me so I couldn't watch him. His inclusion this time was a surprise.

"My duties for the Republic are weighty and consume much of my time," the inspector of meats declared in his sonorous orator's voice. "The matter you are investigating was settled, so far as I am concerned-so far as anyone in Venice except my dear mother is concerned-many years ago, and its resurrection now can serve no purpose. Moreover, I have an important visitor due in a few minutes. What is it that you want to know?"

"Where you were on the night your father was murdered."

He scowled at me under bushy black brows. "I was here, in my residence, at home, and in bed. I had been suffering for several days from a recurrent excess of phlegm and green bile, a cause more of discomfort than danger, I admit, but disabling in spite of its lack of morbidity. The physicians had bled me, so I was in no state to go anywhere at all."

As an alibi that was not perfect, but good enough for now. The inquisitors would surely have questioned all the servants who might have discovered his absence during the crucial period. I could not, for they had since scattered to the four winds.

"Do you believe that your brother was guilty of patricide?"

"Without a shadow of a doubt."

"Why?"

"Because the Council of Ten so decreed, and I am a loyal servant of the Republic. To call into question the solemn conclusion of the most senior tribunal of our government verges upon perfidy and sedition. Furthermore, young man, if you believe for a moment that the honored magistrates presently comprising that august tribunal would ever contemplate reversing the deliberated conclusions reached by their sublime predecessors, then you have been led into deep folly, and your duty as a scion of one of the ancient and most noble houses of our patriciate is to educate that foreign-born charlatan you work for in our laws and customs rather than let him confound your thinking."