by Dave Duncan
“The Depositions of Brother Raymbaud,” he said. “I expect the Vatican has a copy but I doubt that anyone else does. How would you date it?” He handed it to me so I could examine the penmanship.
“It’s French,” I said, “written in a littera psalterialis hand. Late thirteenth century?”
“Close. It is dated 1308, but it was probably written by an elderly scribe, so your judgment is sustainable. Brother Raymbaud did not write it himself. He was testifying.”
I glanced back to make certain I had closed the door. “Was he a witness or a defendant? I mean, was he Brother Raymbaud of Caron?”
The Maestro smirked. “Of course that Raymbaud. Preceptor of commanderies of the Knights Templar in Outremer. The last such preceptor, naturally. Outremer was the French name for the Holy Land.”
“I know that,” I said grimly. This was heading into territory so dark that it would make my use of the Word seem like a minor misdemeanor. In 1307 King Philip the Fair of France broke up the order of the Knights Templar and tortured the senior officers into confessing to every terrible crime the tormentors could think to suggest. “Was Raymbaud one of those burned at the stake?”
“Apparently not.” The Maestro frowned at having to admit ignorance. “His fate is a mystery. There has been speculation that he bought his way out by revealing certain secrets that even Grand Master Jacques de Molay did not know.”
“Such as the true nature of Baphomet, perhaps?”
Nostradamus pouted sourly. “That is a very astute guess! Sometimes you surprise me, Alfeo.”
“Sometimes you scare me to death, master.”
“Well, there are some obscure points,” he admitted. “Take the book and prepare the schema. We must be ready to start at midnight.”
And I had still thought that the day could not get any worse.
29
Nothing serious happened until after curfew. I went back to the atelier with the book and wasted the rest of the afternoon beating my brains to a pulp trying to make sense of three-hundred-year-old French. When I needed a break, I cleaned my rapier and filed the point sharp again, repairing the minor damage done when Danese was felled. If Vasco tried to arrest me, I would need it.
At sunset I also brought the Head down from the attic, well hidden in its leather bag from the vizio’s prying gaze. A box of human bones in the medical cupboard is permissible property for a physician, if only barely, but the Head dwells apart, among the Maestro’s collection of curiosities. The Head’s original owner died several thousand years ago, probably of chronic dental caries, and was undoubtedly a high-ranking native of Egypt, worthy of careful mummification. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, and he still sports wisps of white hair. He is quite light, because his brain was removed during the embalming process, but he does not seem to care about that now. The Maestro insisted that the Head would play the role of Baphomet very well, so I stood him on the slate table in place of the usual crystal globe.
Amid all the charges of heresy, blasphemy, and perversion hurled at the Knights Templar were some peculiar accusations that they had worshipped a detached head named Baphomet. No one had ever properly explained why they should have done so, and it is generally assumed that Baphomet was just a wild tale made up by some poor wretch to stop the pain after he had confessed to everything else he could think of. The tale has proved remarkably enduring, though. The name is said to be a corruption of Mohammed.
“Far from it,” the Maestro said that evening as he and I settled down to attempt some major black magic. “Didn’t you read the book?”
The spyhole was covered, the door locked, and Vasco outside. The shutters were closed and the Angelis engrossed in their long duty of bedding down children. Yet I still felt a nervous need to keep looking over my shoulder.
“I tried, but Old French is beyond me, and there’s other script in there that I’ve never seen before.”
The Maestro was huddled in his favorite chair with the Raymbaud manuscript in his lap, dimly lit by a lamp on the mantel. In his black robe, he was almost invisible. He was enjoying himself hugely. He had been evasive when I asked if he had ever tried this procedure before, but he obviously felt that he had a good excuse to try it now.
“Ah, well according to Raymbaud, the technique was very ancient, long predating Islam. The invocation is in Sahidic Coptic, the language of the Pharaohs, and he claimed that the ritual was devised by the embalmers to ask the dead’s permission to prepare their corpses. That sounds unlikely, but a technique for interrogating the recently dead would have been very useful to the Templars when they were defending the Holy Land from desert marauders. If a patrol gets massacred and you can invoke their spirits soon enough, you can ask them who did it, or ask the dead brigands who sent them.”
I shuddered. “Necromancy!”
He blinked with childish innocence. “Not if you define necromancy as the ancients did. The learned Strabo, for instance, relates necromancy to divination and the Chaldeans—”
“Tell me tomorrow, while we’re waiting for the torturers to finish their dinner break.” I was still fidgeting, unable to sit. “What else do we need?”
He peered at the manuscript again. “There are only six appurtenances named but there must be seven. What’s missing?”
The list of ingredients was about the only thing I had managed to decipher. “Salt.”
“Ah, of course! Go and bring some.”
I went out and locked the door behind me, for the Head was in full view. Vasco was still draped like a discarded cloak on the couch. He knew we were up to something but were not about to let him find out what, and he just scowled when I told him we would be some time and he should curl up and catch some sleep. I purloined a nugget of salt from the kitchen and returned to the atelier. The Maestro had moved to one of the green chairs, which I had earlier arranged a safe distance back from the table, facing our elderly accomplice, the Head.
“Put it between the iron and the wood,” he said. “Now read off the appurtenances.”
I named the seven objects I had arranged around the Head: “Iron, salt, wood, amber, cinnabar, copper, and gold.” All of those have been appreciated as having magical virtue since the most ancient times, of course.
“Now light the incense.”
Seven sticks of incense stood in holders around the Head and the ring of appurtenances. I pointed at each in turn and it began to smoke.
He said, “Now I shall…Ah, the hair!”
“Hair?”
“Hair. You must relate the Baphomet to the spirit you wish to invoke, or you might call the wrong one. Fortunately in this case we have a lock of Dolfin’s hair. I put it in the small implements drawer for safekeeping.”
An attending physician stealing a lock of a cadaver’s hair seemed perilously close to desecration of a body to me, but we were well outside moral law already, so I said nothing as I obediently fetched. Just the sight of that blond tress lying there, tied with a ribbon, appalled me. I said a silent prayer of apology to Danese as I followed the Maestro’s directions and draped it over the Head.
“Now!” he said. “Hand me the bell. Sit. Not so close. Now, I shall read the invocation. When the seventh stick has gone out, you will have a few seconds to ask your questions.”
“Me?”
“He knew you better. You should be allowed three and only three questions, but have a couple of extras ready just in case. Find out the murderer’s name and where he lives. Do not pry into matters that do not concern you in this life.”
“No.” I expected to discover those for myself fairly soon.
“Ready?”
“Ready, master.”
He began reciting the Coptic, taking it slowly but rarely stumbling. Repeatedly he mentioned Baphomet, although the way he said it made it sound more like a command than a proper name. After a few lines he rang the handbell once and the first incense stick I had lit stopped smoking. I shivered. A few more lines and he rang twice. The second stick…
“Who summons me back to this world of sin?”
I swallowed hard on a throat as dry as salt. “I, Alfeo Zeno, do.”
“Alfeo Zeno, why do you dare disturb the passage of my soul?”
“To avenge your murder.”
“Avenge? Or revenge? Would you have me sin even in death?”
How typical of Danese to argue from beyond the grave, even if he wasn’t buried yet. I wiped my damp brow and put the first question. “Danese Dolfin, who killed you?”
The Head moaned as if in pain. “Leave me, leave me!”
“Answer, I command you! Who killed you?”
He sighed and whispered, “Mirphak.”
“What is his real name?”
“Francesco Guarini.”
I heard the Maestro sigh happily. His third bowstring had found the target.
I asked my third question. “Where does Francesco Guarini live?” For a long moment I thought I would receive no reply but then Danese’s voice came again, very faint, as if from a great distance.
“Above the magazzen in San Giorgio in Alga.”
Got him! With both a name and an address, even the Signori di Notte could catch him, let alone the Ten.
“And by what words is he commanded?”
Silence.
“Again I order you to answer! What words command Francesco Guarini?”
This time I heard a sound no louder than a passing mosquito. I said, “What?” several times and tried a few more questions, but nothing more happened. I whispered, “Requiescat in pacem.” The séance was over.
The bell jangled as the Maestro laid it on the floor beside his chair.
“Very satisfactory!” he said. “Before dawn, you will go to San Giorgio in Alga and arrest Francesco Guarini. Bring him back here and I will serve him to Ottone Gritti for his prima colazione.”
“I have no authority to arrest anyone.” Especially not on that testimony.
“But you have the word to command him. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Mirphak?” I said. “Mirphak and Algol? Should I bring in Sirius, Polaris, and Vega also?”
“Keep a look out for all sorts of trouble. You will have the vizio with you!” The Maestro chuckled as he heaved himself to his feet. “Be very careful. He is dangerous.”
“Which is? Or do you mean both?”
“Guarini is. Vasco isn’t, not now.”
30
As the eastern sky began to brighten on a chilly Sunday morning, Giorgio was rowing me south across the wide Canale della Giudecca, which is the main shipping channel separating the city from the long string of islands called the Giudecca. Giudecca is known for great palaces and playgrounds of the very rich, so I am not as familiar with it as I should like to be. Cool or not, the morning was spectacular. Light danced on the ripples like fireflies and ever-hopeful seagulls floated by overhead, eyeing us for signs of imminent garbage ejection. The city seemed to stand on its protecting lagoon and the first rays of sunrise were giving the tops of the Alps a good-morning kiss
Beside me in the felze sat the vizio, huddled in his cloak, grumpy and sleep deprived. I was in no better shape, for we had had an epic row over sleeping arrangements. He had refused to let me sleep in my own room, because he knew about the other way out of it. I had refused to let him lock me in the spare bedroom. In the end we had both slept on couches in the salone with the lamps lit. Then I had wakened him at an iniquitous hour, saying I was going sightseeing in San Giorgio in Alga, did he want to come?
For once I was glad of his company, since I did not share the Maestro’s cheerful confidence that I could persuade a murderer to accompany me back to Ca’ Barbolano for a cozy breakfast with a state inquisitor. Just having Filiberto Vasco with me would give me many times the impact I would have by myself, although I could not see him providing any practical assistance unless I told him why I wanted this unknown Francesco Guarini, and that I was most certainly not about to do.
St. George in Seaweed is in the far west of the Giudecca, and is one of the smallest parishes in the city, so I had been surprised to learn that it even had a magazzen. A magazzen is an all-night wine shop, which, unlike a tavern, sells no food, although clients can usually send out to a nearby pork butcher for a snack. None of us admitted to knowing where San Giorgio’s magazzen was located, but I did not expect it to be hard to find, and it wasn’t. Giorgio let us off at the watersteps, we walked along a short calle to the campo, and there it was, with its signboard over the door and a light inside still just barely visible in the brightening day. I could not imagine the rich patronizing such a slum, but where there are rich there are servants and artisans and tradesfolk to live off the crumbs they drop.
“Only two stories,” Vasco remarked as we headed to it. “That simplifies your search.”
I needed a moment to steady my voice. “What do you mean?”
He smiled with a saintly innocence worthy of San Francesco himself. “You don’t expect the locals to help you, do you? I just meant that a two-story building is easier to search than a taller one would be.”
“It is kind of you to share your professional expertise so willingly.”
I told myself that Vasco was merely prying, trying to discover how much information I had. He could not have spied on our séance, because I had closed the spyhole; the atelier door is absolutely soundproof. No, he was merely putting things together. The only possible explanation for my early morning dash across the Canale was to catch the spy that Nostradamus had promised to deliver.
San Giorgio in Alga’s magazzen was just as smelly and seedy as all its brethren, but smaller than most. Into one small room it crammed four stools, two benches, a couple of tiny tables, three unsavory-looking male customers—one of them asleep on a bench—and one cat, asleep under the other bench. Another man, probably either the owner or a relative of his, sat beyond an open window at the back, ready to vend vile vintages. A door in the corner connected the customer area with his den.
Eyes turned when I walked in. They widened when Vasco followed me, and then all except the proprietor’s quickly looked away. One of the customers kicked the sleeper to waken him.
I kept moving until I reached the window. “Francesco Guarini?”
The man was middle-aged, overweight, and unhealthy looking; the amelanotic nodule beside his right eye told me that he had only a few months to live. The tiny room behind him was packed with barrels, crates, buckets, gondola cushions, two oars, fishing rods, some rope, an ax, tattered baskets, broken crocks, and much else. He flinched, glanced at Vasco momentarily, and then jerked a thumb upward. An open staircase angled up the wall of his kennel from just beyond the door on my right.
“Up there? Which way at the top?”
“Only one door at the top, boy.”
“Is there another way out?”
“No.”
The vizio might not be actively helping me, but his mere presence had been enough to produce cooperation. Had I been alone, I would have been consigned to the Devil in vivid language and meaningful gestures.
“Coming?” I asked my assistant.
“No.” Vasco leaned against the wall beside the hatch, where he could keep an eye on the clientele. “I prefer to watch your antics from a safe distance, clarissimo. You there, sit down!” The customer who had risen duly sat down. It was amazing what a red cloak and a silver badge could do. “Padrone, I’ll try a glass of your best red.” Vasco ostentatiously did not reach for his money pouch.
I opened the door, left it open, started to climb. It was narrow, with no handrail; the treads creaked. I turned a corner at the back of the shop and mounted more steps until I was facing another door. I rapped on it with the hilt
of my dagger. Noting that it opened outward and the top tread was barely larger than any of the others, I hammered again, then backed down two steps. There was a chink of daylight under the door, and in a moment it was darkened by a shadow.
“This is appalling wine,” Vasco complained from below. “Did you remember to wash your feet?”
“Who’s there?” growled a man’s voice behind the door.
I steadied my rapier with my left hand, ready to draw. “I want Francesco Guarini.”
“Guarini’s not here. Come back tonight.”
“Let me speak to Mirphak, then.”
“Don’t know him. Go away.”
So much for words of command.
“Come out, Guarini. I know you’re in there. Danese Dolfin sent me.”
“Who?” But this time the door opened a chink. With barely a pause, it flew wide and a chair came hurtling into my face. I went over backward and somersaulted down to the corner, unfolding against the wall with a crash that almost broke my neck. The man rushed down after me and tried to kick me in the face as he went past, but by then my dander was up. I caught his foot with both hands and twisted. He toppled over the chair and it was his turn to fall, pitching face-first down the lower flight and out through the door into the magazzen. I went hot behind him, practically in free fall.
Vasco, to his credit, jumped forward to block Guarini as he scrambled to his feet; Guarini head-butted him. I slammed into both of them and we all went down. Guarini was considerably heftier than me, but I was on top and I got an arm around his neck. He was done for then, because I grabbed my wrist to form a choke hold, which I tightened until he went limp.
“Padrone!” I bellowed. “Bring me some of that rope you have back there.” I looked up at the three customers, all of whom were on their feet, looking down. I have rarely been grateful for the presence of Filiberto Vasco in this world, but that was one of those precious moments. I was an outsider intruding and had he not been there to represent La Serenissima, I would have been the bottom layer of a five-man imbroglio, possibly ten-man by this time. Favoring discretion over valor, the San Giorgio militia turned away and strode out.
