Dave Duncan: The Alchemists pursuit

He shrugged and turned. "Come, then."

I followed him back the way he had come, and in a moment we came to magnificent doors of the great church. We paused there to stub out our torches and put them in the barrel, but then he noticed the cat.

"You can't bring that animal in here."

"This animal is evidence, Brother. It is possessed by a spirit, whether demon or not I cannot tell. And you may assign me a penance if I am deceiving you."

He stared at me for a long moment, as if assessing my sanity or lack of, but in the end he led me inside. Billows of fog swirled in with us. The great sculpted cavern was as cold and deserted as the world outside, lit by a few faint candles at the far end that seemed no brighter than fluttering stars. Its austere and awesome beauty was invisible, but the very stillness seemed holy; I could hear the silence as if it were built into the stone.

Fedele did not go to the confessionals, but to a candle stall near the door, where a single flame burned. There were two stools there, so we took one each. This time the cat refused my lap in favor of the floor, where it sat erect, staring at the friar, who ignored it.

"Never mind this nonsense about confession, my son. Tell me what troubles you." Fedele did smell like a real friar.

I drew a deep breath. "Father, I subverted an official of the Republic. I gave him money to break his oath of office. He let me see a confidential document."

Silence. Fedele's stare was as stony as the cat's.

"The trouble began long ago," I said. "But it lay dormant until last September, when the doctors advised sier Agostino Foscari that the time had come to send for a priest. You told us you were not that priest. Even so, I do not expect you to comment when I report what I believe the dying man said. He recalled the murder of your father and how that dastardly, sacrilegious act appalled the whole city and profaned the Basilica, the jeweled heart of the city, the embodiment of its dedication to San Marco.

"In their determination to find and punish the culprit, the Council of Ten broke its own rules and met in the morning, and the morning of Christmas Day at that. It then, I believe, did something that is legal but much criticized-it delegated to the Council of Three not just some of its powers but all of them in this case. Inquisitors Foscari, Gradenigo, and Pesaro were given free rein to find the perpetrator and bring him to justice as soon as possible.

"For several days they made no progress, while the Republic seethed with righteous fury and cries for vengeance. The Three must have questioned the dead man's youngest son, for he had an evil reputation for debauchery, cause to fear disinheritance by his father, and no witnesses to testify where he had been that night. But how could he have gotten into the Basilica? They would have been reluctant to charge the boy with so heinous a crime in the absence of positive evidence, for they were fair men, even if they might have treated a man of citizen class more sternly. They probably did not seriously consider the victim's widow, a noblewoman of unimpeachable character and breeding. How had she, who never went out unaccompanied, managed to obtain a mercenary soldier's dagger? No, the Three would have been hunting for some outsider, a thwarted business opponent, most likely. But they were baffled.

"Then came a breakthrough. An admitted prostitute accused Zorzi Michiel of confessing while talking in his sleep.

"The Three, armed with all of the Ten's powers, decided to take the anonymous letter seriously. They arrested Zorzi Michiel-in secret, as is customary-and they put him to the Question. They had his wrists bound behind him. They had him raised on the cord and then dropped. The pain is beyond description as the victim's shoulders are-"

"You need not elaborate," the friar snapped. "We have all seen it done in the Piazza. It is a common enough punishment."

"But the criminal usually knows how many hoists he must endure, and three or four are usual. In interrogations the witness knows only that the torment will continue until he can stand no more, and on, beyond even that. He may be repeatedly dropped. He may have weights tied to his feet. His hands and face turn an incredible red. His joints are wrenched apart, his ligaments torn. The strain-"

"Stop!"

"If you wish. As you know, Brother, the pain is so terrible that a man who does not confess on the cord cannot be hanged. Zorzi did not confess. He died. Possibly his heart stopped, or his rib cage collapsed. It can happen. It did happen."

Pause. Then the friar whispered, "How do you know this?"

"Because it explains what followed. The state inquisitors faced a new problem. They still had no culprit and now they had a dead man to explain. What could they do next? Torture the boy's mother?

"They committed perjury. They disposed of the body and announced that they had found proof of Zorzi's guilt but he had escaped. Nothing too unexpected there, not in the Venetian system of justice. Case closed. But they made no effort to find out where he might have gone-they did not even question his mother about that!"

"Is there much more of this?" Fedele asked wearily.

"I fear there is, Brother. Because Foscari, before he died, perhaps prompted by his confessor, summoned sier Bernardo and told him the story of his brother's death. Bernardo went home and wisely told no one. Like a fool, though, he wrote it all in his diary, perhaps thinking that it might clear the family name at some far future date. He told the rest of you last Sunday. The sickness you had all thought cured erupted again; the buried corpse rose from the grave.

"Unfortunately, by then Jacopo had already read the diary. And he had told your mother that Zorzi had been betrayed by a whore. Your mother was the only person on earth who knew for a fact that Zorzi Michiel had not stabbed his father. All these years she had believed him safe and sound somewhere on the mainland. She determined to be revenged on the perjurer, whoever she might be."

"Alfeo, Alfeo! You are saying that my mother, donna Alina Orio, not only killed her husband but has now set out to kill all the fallen women in Venice?"

"Not all, only those your brother was patronizing in the weeks leading up to Gentile's death-any woman who might have lain with him after that sad event and betrayed his confession. She had a list of possible culprits because Zorzi recounted all his exploits to her, and she kept a record of them. I cannot explain her motives for doing so, but perhaps you have met such a sin before."

"You have any evidence to support this ridiculous allegation?"

"We did have. We had the diary your mother kept of her youngest son's fornication. Now the Council of Ten has that record. Both names and handwriting match. Your mother's crimes were proven beyond doubt this evening, Brother. She attempted to murder another courtesan, who would have been the fifth she had slain. Fortunately she was caught in time. She is presently at home in the custody of your brothers."

Fedele bent his head and prayed.

The cat watched him.

An aged man with a cane entered the church, put a coin in the box for a candle from the rack beside us, and then headed off toward the altar. He seemed not to have noticed our little group, not even the cat.

Shivering as the cold sank through to my bones, I waited until Fedele had completed his prayer and was ready for more.

"Now it is obvious why your mother hired Nostradamus. The diary named the courtesans but not the 'amateurs'-as your brother Domenico called them, the adulterous married women that Zorzi seduced. She hoped he would identify some of them for her to hunt down.

"Last Wednesday, you were summoned to the deathbed of Giovanni Gradenigo. He did not know that the friar who arrived at his bedside had once been Timoteo Michiel, any more than you had realized that your own father's death would play a part in his confession.