Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

Violetta looked from me to the Maestro and back again. “So who did kill Procurator Orseolo?”

We both shrugged.

“It is no longer our concern,” I said. “The Ten do not know about the demons. They may suspect that our information was unholy, but the Maestro’s skills are often useful to them, so they prefer not to ask, and they do keep the Inquisition away. Vasco recognized Karagounis’s name, so he was already under suspicion. The Ten will accept that he tried to poison the doge and failed to…”

My master was smirking again. “But the doge was not there, was he?”

“Not officially,” I admitted. “But a man who was there later jumped out a window before the vizio could ask him questions. Won’t the Ten accept the Greek’s guilt?”

He stuck out his goatee stubbornly. “I won’t! I have my reputation to consider. The real culprit committed a murder in my presence, and I want to see him die between the columns! Besides, you haven’t told me why Karagounis killed himself.”

Puzzled, I said, “To avoid being tortured?”

“Why should that bother a demon? Surely the fiend that possessed Karagounis could have prevented him from giving away any secrets? It would have enjoyed his agonies.”

Violetta frowned. “It sacrificed the pawn for some later advantage?”

The Maestro drew back his lips in his implied smile, but I could see he had wanted to reveal this himself. “You are a much better chess player than Alfeo, madonna. Whatever the Greek was up to, and Alfeo may be right on that, I don’t believe that he poisoned the procurator.”

“You know who did?” Aspasia demanded.

Again he smiled. “I have known for some time, but I want to find out what more evil remains to be uncovered and I must have evidence to convince the council of Ten.”

I held back an angry comment. Either he was just strutting to impress Violetta or he had let me invoke a fiend when he already knew the murderer’s name.

Aspasia glanced at me and then said, “Maestro, I understand why you won’t tell me who poisoned the procurator, but why won’t you tell Alfeo?”

He shook his head so hard that his wattles flapped. “Alfeo’s face gives him away every time. Look at him now-he’s angry and can’t hide it. He would speak quite differently to the murderer than he does to the innocent witnesses. Alfeo, you must visit with Bianca Orseolo. If anyone saw the murder committed, she did. And we still don’t know why Pasqual Tirali went to the book display, do we? That was quite a detour if he was taking his companion to the Lido.”

Violetta did not rise to the bait.

I said, “I need dinner first. Can’t you see just by looking at me how hungry I am?”

G iorgio did not approve of a courtesan dressing as a nun; he rowed us in angry silence. I did not approve either, although I pulled down the blinds of the felze to enjoy the guilty fun of cuddling her. I could kiss her freely, because nuns do not wear face paint to smudge, but my talk was not romantic.

“If you are discovered, you will be whipped!” I told her. The thought of her flawless body being ripped and bruised by the lash made me feel ill.

“Nonsense!” she said. “It is Carnival! I brought a mask I can put on if I need to. And why are you wearing a sword? You can’t fight on an injured leg.”

“I can if I must.” My calf had stopped bleeding at last-fortunately so, because I was going to run out of clothes soon. Bruno was sleeping off his laudanum, but I was resolved to go nowhere without my sword until we had all the fiends and murderers accounted for. “You would wear a Carnival mask in a house of mourning?”

She laughed and kissed my cheek. “Or I can claim to be a spy for the Ten.”

I shivered. “Don’t joke about it.”

“I’m not one,” she said, “although I suspect many courtesans are. Would it put you off your game if you thought I was taking notes for Circospetto?”

Of course it would, but the idea that Raffaino Sciara might spend his days perusing hundreds of pornographic score sheets made me laugh out loud. I said, “It would inspire me to even more heroic efforts.” It was time to change the subject, and also the entertainment or I would become too distracted to think about business. “A question, love-Yesterday I asked you about the book viewing and you told me the foreigners’ names. You even knew their address.”

Suddenly I was in grave danger.

“You dare ask him and I’ll tear your eyes out.” Medea bared her teeth at me. She meant it, too.

“Pasqual?”

“I told you that in confidence, and only because you already knew who escorted me that night. I never discuss my patrons!”

“I won’t mention it, I promise!”

She mellowed slightly, into a still-angry Aspasia. “He is no friend of theirs, so far as I know-and I would know. He told me about them afterwards. He said they’ve been turning up at auctions and making fools of themselves.”

“I didn’t know Pasqual collected old books.”

“He doesn’t. He collects antiquities-King Cheops’s mummy or busts of Julius Caesar. Have you ever noticed how many famous Romans had no noses?”

I laughed and changed the subject by asking about Bianca Orseolo. One of the rewards of being a procurator of San Marco is being housed at state expense in the Procuratie, the long building along the north side of the Piazza. Although it is less than a hundred years old, it is already being called the Old Procuratie because they are building a Procuratie Nuovo on the south side. We were almost there.

Aspasia said, “She’s about sixteen, and a complete innocent, reared in a convent. Her mother was called to the Lord last year and since then she has lived with her grandfather as a companion and, I suppose, hostess, although I doubt if the old man entertained at all. Her father lives at the Ca’ Orseolo and her brother is off on the mainland. She must be terribly lonely. Likely her duties were just to keep an eye on the old man, because he was unsteady on his feet. And in his head. I got the impression that he had become very difficult, but she seems to mourn him deeply.”

“Too deeply?”

Hesitation…“I don’t know her well enough to say.”

“How old is her brother?”

“Benedetto? Early twenties. Neither he nor his father was at the Imer party, so neither could be the murderer, right?”

“I’d think so. You said Bianca had a motive.”

“I did not say she committed the crime, though.” Aspasia made a moue of disapproval. “The old man wanted…was insisting that she return to the convent and take her vows. Bianca’s a lively child, or would be if she got the chance. She did not want to. Now her father is head of the family, and he may be more understanding.”

“I would certainly consider murder if anyone tried to force me into a monastery,” I said. “I would negotiate on a nunnery. She had two aunts who were nuns, according to Alessa.”

I should have known better. It was like asking the Pope about Martin Luther. Or vice versa.

“It’s disgusting!” Aspasia said. “Do you know that at least half the noblewomen of this city are banished into convents and never marry? A family’s accursed honor forbids a girl to marry down the social ladder, and very few families rank higher than Bianca’s. That same stupid honor would require that she bring her husband a gigantic dowry, tens of thousands of ducats!”

“The law forbids huge dowries.”

“But who obeys the law? No family can easily part with that sort of money. So the girl is cloistered and the family wealth stays with the sons.”

And sons brought in dowries. I bear a noble name. Someday a wealthy citizen may offer me a thousand or so ducats to marry one of his daughters and sire patrician grandsons for him, a gaggle of little Zenos.