Dave Duncan - The Alchemists pursuit

Sure enough, she wrestled her headache aside long enough to say, "She was indisposed."

"What sort of indisposed?"

"She had taken a fall."

"Nasty bruises?" I said. "The previous night I threw her to the ground in Campo San Zanipolo and fell on top of her. How did she dispose of the blood stains on her habit?"

Missier Grande was well within earshot and had stopped his whispered interrogation of Matteo. Isabetta showed no signs of being aware of him, but I noticed that she was speaking louder.

"I suspect she burned it in her fireplace, piece by piece. I noticed an odd smell in her room that afternoon."

"What was decided at Sunday's meeting, anyway?"

"Nothing!"

"You decided nothing, or you decided to do nothing?"

She pouted and for a moment I thought the spring had dried up. Then she said, "All we could agree on was that Fedele would visit Nostradamus and explain the folly of his ways."

Agreed maybe, but I suspected that Isabetta and Lucretzia had been two dissenting voices, if they had been allowed to speak at all. The point was immaterial now. I dearly wanted to find out how Bernardo had described Zorzi's death to the family, but I dare not ask that near our silent listener.

"One thing bothers me still," I said. "I didn't see the feet of the fake friar who stabbed Marina Bortholuzzi, but the one who killed Caterina Lotto had bare feet. To walk city streets without shoes requires either courage, stupidity, or years of practice."

Silence. I tried again.

"Jacopo always made sure he had an alibi, and Alina could slip down that secret staircase by herself, but how did she travel across the city? Did she dare hire a gondola? Friars carry no money and own none. It would be a long walk to San Zanipolo or Cannaregio for her, even with shoes on. I mean, when does a Venetian lady ever go for long walks?"

Isabetta eyed me like dog droppings on a doorstep, but again she couldn't resist the opportunity to tattle on the woman who had ruled her life for so many years.

"Oh, you'd be surprised. I know of one very respectable lady who used to slip out at night and prowl the city disguised as a friar. She started doing this during Carnival once, she said, but she enjoyed a wander in the moonlight so much that she began doing it quite regularly. Eventually her sons found out and tried to stop her. She went on a hunger strike until they relented. There was no danger, she said. No one would try to rape a graybeard friar and everyone knew that it would be no use trying to rob one. They gave her back her friar's robe and tried following her. They discovered that wandering was all she did: no secret liaisons, no dens of vice. So from then on they turned a blind eye."

"I am very grateful to you for that little story, madonna. Have you any thoughts on how Sister Lucretzia came to leave that incriminating book here?"

"I prefer not to speculate on that."

"Quite understandable. What puzzles me is, who could have known what the diary contained, other than the person who wrote it? A resident who had lived in the house for many years would have more time to, er, explore the owner's bedchamber, shall we say, than servants who come and go so often. Jacopo is the obvious culprit, but a woman would have had easier access to the donna's bedchamber than he would."

Isabetta nodded. "This is true, sier Alfeo."

"And poor Alina, on Sunday, resting her bruises. Had she perhaps taken a spoonful of laudanum that day to ease the pain?"

The lady came very close to smiling. "Two spoonfuls."

"And you checked to see that she was resting comfortably. And when Fedele said that he would visit Nostradamus and try to scare him into abandoning his investigation, you took Sister Lucretzia aside and suggested…?"

"Nothing at all! What will they do with her, do you think, sier Alfeo?"

"Donna Alina? The woman is deranged. A convent, I expect. It may look like a jail cell but it will be called a nun's cell. I don't think anything more than that. As for Jacopo… I think he has gone to the Ten and confessed. If so, I hope he may have saved his life." I also hoped that he was telling the inquisitors everything imaginable. They would rather send a strong young man like him to the galleys than to jail, and in that case they would not want to wreck his shoulders on the strappado.

Isabetta nodded. "That's about what I was thinking."

Then she uttered a cry that was almost a scream and I leaped to my feet.

Vizio Filiberto Vasco was standing in the doorway. He was mobile, although leaning on a sbirro's shoulder, but he was a terrifying sight, his clothing soaked in blood and his face ripped to a wasteland of blood, hair, and raw meat. His eyes seemed to have escaped damage, for they burned black and white in that horrible gory mask. They were staring at me.

Missier Grande muttered an oath and strode over to him. The sbirri reported in low voices. I heard my name several times and saw other faces glance in my direction. One of the men pulled over a chair for the victim.

Another sbirro was holding a honey-colored cat by the tail. It had been almost blown apart by a firearm at close range, so that only its backbone still held its two halves together, and both were badly burned. It was, needless to say, very dead. It stank up the room.

Missier Grande beckoned me and I went across to them.

"Is this yours?" He pointed at the dead cat.

"Emphatically not, capitano. I have seen it around this area before, though, or another like it. Last Friday a cat blocked my way at just about the place we met it tonight. It was behaving so oddly that I knew right away it was rabid, so I retreated and went by another route."

"You did not report this to the priest, or a sbirro?"

"No doubt I should have done, but it happened very late at night, and I assumed that the animal would be dead by morning." I could not resist asking Vasco, "Did it bite you?"

He raised bloody hands as if he wanted to leap up and strangle me, but a sbirro's grip on his shoulder restrained him.

"Witch!" he said. "You set your familiar on me! Witchcraft!" His lips were so torn that his speech was badly distorted.

"Not I," I told Missier Grande. "I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked up. I shouted a warning and jumped back. I regret that he did not react fast enough."

Some of his own men were nodding.

"I charge him with witchcraft!" Vasco mumbled.

I sighed. "There was no witchcraft. I was running to Number Ninety-six because I had a very urgent message to deliver-that a woman might seek to commit a murder there. As it happened, I did arrive there just in time to prevent that dreadful crime. But on my way there, your vizio stopped me and demanded a book. I assured him that I had no book with me, and if he would just accompany me to the door of Ninety-six, so I could deliver my warning, then I would gladly come back here with him and give him the book I thought he wanted. And then… What was it were we talking about after that, just before the cat attacked you?"

Vasco did not answer. His men began to grin, because that had been when Vasco threatened to strip my clothes off in public. Dark alley or not, he had no authority to make such an obscene threat to any resident of Venice, whether nobleman or lowly beggar.

Missier Grande raised his eyebrows at the silence.

I have never reminded him of the debt he owes me and I never will. I have never seen him waver in his duty because of it-except maybe then. Or perhaps he was merely acknowledging all the priceless information I had just extracted from Isabetta Scorozini for him. Whatever the reason, that night he gave me the benefit of any doubt he may have had.

He pointed at the reeking cat. "See that gets burned," he said. "We must get the vizio to a surgeon for stitching."