by Dave Duncan
Gritti was listening with flattering attention. “So?”
“A hired bravo seems most likely, clarissimo, and there are many such ruffians to be had. So the question becomes, who hired him? Just about anyone in the Sanudo family had a motive. Sier Zuanbattista and his wife have been made laughingstocks, politically and socially. Sier Girolamo to a lesser extent, but there are rumors that his interest in Dolfin was less than honorable. Any of them may have wished to rescue Grazia from a potentially disastrous marriage. And she may have realized her mistake, although I see no practical means for a lady of her age and station to go out and hire a killer. As you said yourself, Your Excellency, Dolfin was a lecher, so even the servants might have had motives.” I waited for comment, and when there was none continued, “I would like to know where Girolamo was at the time of the murder.”
“Ask him.”
Puzzled, I said, “Your Excellency?”
“Ask him. I mean it!” The inquisitor smiled with secret amusement. “He will tell you the truth. Your list of motives leaves out the one that interests me most. If either Zuanbattista or his son is Algol, then Danese may have stumbled on the secret and been killed to keep him from revealing it.”
Gritti was playing games with me. He was very sure that neither Sanudo was the spy, and by then I had worked out why. It made sense and it complicated things. If the Sanudos were not traitors it was much harder to see them as murderers.
“It would have to have been done very quickly,” I said, “because Danese was no hero, as I told you. Sier Zuanbattista grabbed him, sier Girolamo disarmed him and stabbed him? There should be traces of blood somewhere in their house. Why did he come for his sword? Why did he steal mine? Was the agitation that Giorgio reported just impatience because he was keeping a gondola waiting?”
I persisted, because murder was a safer topic than pyromancy. “I have read only one page of the Algol documents and that dealt with naval matters. I know another began by naming the Council of Ten, but I don’t know what came after. Perhaps it went on to report nothing more earthshattering than last month’s edict on men’s clothing. Yet I must assume from your own interest in these events, Excellency, that the dispatches contained significant leaks of state intelligence.”
The grandfather mask slipped slightly. “Assume anything you like, but be careful whom you tell it to.”
“I do not make so terrible an allegation against such honored noblemen,” I protested. “Indeed it is obvious that they are not guilty. No one would dream of suspecting them were it not that sier Zuanbattista is a ducal counselor and sier Girolamo a minister of navy. I don’t suppose that combination occurs in any other family in the Republic at the moment.”
Gritti sighed, but continued to watch me closely. “It doesn’t. Why do you say that they are obviously not guilty?”
“Because you clearly do not believe they are or you would have used the murder as a pretext to arrest them and search their house. I wonder if perhaps the information in Algol’s dispatches, although basically correct and damaging, also contained some errors that neither Sanudo would have made?”
The old villain could not be trapped so easily. “The inquisitor asks the questions, Alfeo.”
I squirmed. “Yes, clarissimo.”
“ Vizio, are you quite certain that Nostradamus did not decipher more than one page and the opening words of two more?”
“Quite certain, Your Excellency.”
The deceptively benevolent gaze came back to me again. “Are you by any chance one of those tricksters who can memorize pages of text at a glance, Alfeo? Is Nostradamus?”
“He is much better at it than I am,” I said. “But memorizing a page of text is easy compared to memorizing a page of random letters. Neither of us could have done that, not even one page. I know, because I tried.”
Our boat turned into the Rio di San Barnaba and the old church loomed up on our left, with the campo beyond. The rain made it less busy than it would normally be and the gossip crowd around the wellhead smaller.
I said, “The campo watersteps please, Giorgio. Madonna Corner used to live over there, Excellency-the brown house, top floor.”
The old man had already drawn the curtain. “It would have to be the top floor, of course. The vizio and I are too conspicuous. We shall remain under cover while you find out where she is now.”
21
H ad I needed to visit the group gathered around the wellhead, I might have been detained there all day, but I had the good fortune to cross the path of old Widow Calbo, who remembered me very well. She had never tolerated idle chatter and still did not, so I soon returned to the gondola to report that madonna Agnese Corner still lived where she had when I had left San Barnaba and she took in lodgers. I offered a hand to help Gritti disembark.
“You fetch a priest,” he told Vasco. “But very slowly. Zeno, come with me.”
No stranger in patrician robes and elongated Council of Ten sleeves could cross the campo without attracting attention, but the sight was not rare enough to attract a crowd. The vizio heading for the church drew more stares, distracting attention from Gritti and his apprentice companion.
I knew those stairs. A dozen years ago I had run errands up and down them and scores like them all over San Barnaba. I knew every worn and cracked step, every broken pane in the windows, every tilted landing. Long-forgotten smells still lingered; the cough on the second floor had not killed its owner yet. I could almost feel the handles of the ancient water buckets I had carried biting my hands. Gritti trod a slower pace than my young self had used, and he halted a few steps from the top, although he did not seem breathless.
“You go ahead, Zeno. I hate the sight of women’s tears.”
But not the sound of men’s screams? I went on alone. From there he would be able to hear what was said.
There were four doors. I knocked on the one I remembered as hers. I could hear water dripping from a leaky roof and the air was still unpleasantly warm, despite the rain. This attic would have been an oven for the last six months.
After a while I began to feel hopeful that the lady was not at home and I could escape the terrible duty. I knocked again, louder. A door creaked behind me and I knew I was being watched, but that is normal and even commendable.
“Who’s there?” asked a voice I recalled at once, a deep voice for a woman.
“Alfeo Zeno, madonna. Remember me?”
A bolt rattled and she opened the door. I remembered her as a tall and grand lady, flaunting the fine clothes she wore when her husband held office on the mainland, although in retrospect I suppose they had been remarkable only by the standards of the barnabotti. She was shorter than me now and the fine garments had no doubt long vanished into the pawnshops of the Ghetto Nuovo. She had the light at her back as she inspected me, but I could see the sagging flesh of her face and the hump of age only too well.
“Yes, I remember you. It won’t be good news brought you, I vow.”
“No, madonna. It is not.” My conscience rebelled at the prospect of letting Gritti continue standing there, eavesdropping on her sorrow. “May I come in?” Let him reveal himself if he wanted to hear.
“No,” she said. “I have work to do. Tell me and begone. What has he done now?”
I opened my mouth to ask Who? and the contempt in her eye stopped me. “He…was in a fight, madonna. Danese was.”
“He’s dead you mean?”
I nodded. “God rest his soul, ma’am.” I crossed myself; she did not.
Indeed she shrugged and I thought she was going to try to close the door in my face. Clearly she was not going to weep, certainly not where I could see her and perhaps not at all. She was a daughter of one of the great families, but of an impoverished branch. Life had long since wrung all the weeping out of Agnese Corner that it was ever going to get.
“How?”
“We don’t know. He was stabbed with a rapier,” I said. “It must have been very quick,” I lied. “He…You do know that he
was married?”
Finally I won a reaction from her-she laughed. “To a wealthy widow three times his age?”
“No, madonna. Wealthy, yes, but young. Grazia Sanudo, daughter of sier Zuanbattista and madonna Eva Morosini. You did not know this?”
She shook her head as if trying to rid her mouth of a bad taste. “I have not heard from my son since the day I found out where he was getting his money and how he earned it, and that was before he was shaving. I don’t know if any of his sisters stayed in touch because I forbade them ever to mention him in my presence. So don’t expect me to pay for his funeral. Nor mourn him, either.”
She could not have known that Gritti was listening. She must have known that neighbors were; she wanted them to hear. Her words roused ten years’ sorrows like ghosts in the dusty hallway.
“His wife’s family will attend to the rites. Danese did tell them that he had told you of his marriage.”
She laughed again.
“He did not come to see you last night?”
“He did not knock at my door and I would not have opened it if he had.”
I was sweating. I had never had a worse conversation with anyone and the knowledge that a state inquisitor was lurking just around the corner was not making me feel better. “Madonna, do you know anyone who might have had reason to want your son dead?”
“Any husband, father, or brother in Venice. Any woman or mother. I’ve heard good things of you, Alfeo. Thank you for coming.”
I removed my foot before she discovered it was there and the door closed.
The one behind me closed also. Bolts were shot simultaneously.
I went down three steps and found Gritti blocking my way.
“She already knew?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just don’t know.”
“It’s possible?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s possible. Please let’s go before the priest comes.” I was in no state to face Father Equiano’s reproaches.
22
G iorgio rowed us to the end of Rio di San Barnaba and turned north along that finest of all the great streets of Europe, the Grand Canal, a parade of splendid palaces on either hand. The huge waterway was only slightly less busy on a Saturday morning than most days, quite busy enough. North and east we went, under the crowded arch of the Rialto, swinging around to the northwest, skirting the bustling vegetable and fish markets on our left and Cannaregio on our right, until we turned into the narrower ways of the Rio di Noale.
As we glided in toward the watersteps on the Rio di Maddalena, I noted the Sanudo house gondola moored there among some others, including a government boat, but I saw no signs of the fanti. Women on the fondamenta stopped their chatter to watch Gritti disembark, although the vizio ’s red cloak probably impressed them more, for his visit could not be social.
Vasco thumped the brass anchor knocker. The door was opened instantly by the young valet, Pignate. His face was fish-belly pale, so he had been told of the murder, probably also been warned that the visitor he was waiting for was an inquisitor. He bowed us in.
That was the fourth time I had seen the great book collection in the androne, and each time it had progressed farther along the road from packing cases to shelved library, yet I had never seen anyone working on it, as if the books rearranged themselves at night when people could not see. I concluded that ordinary porters could not sort books properly, so the work was being done by clerks from the family publishing business, brought in at odd hours. No one would ever find time to read such a collection, but libraries like that are not intended to be read, only envied. I fervently hoped that my duties would not require me to go through it volume by volume, looking for spiders.
We mounted the staircase to the piano nobile, where Giro awaited us. Having shed his official robes, he was again no more than a private gentleman wearing oddly drab garments. He made no offers of welcome or pretense that our visit was social.
“My parents are with Grazia,” he said conducting us to the salotto . “This is a very painful time for us.”
“Of course it is,” Gritti said, “and your ordeal shall be as brief as I can manage. I will talk first with the servants, if you please.”
Today the balcony doors were closed against the rain and the garden looked glum and dank. The inquisitor chose a chair that put his back to the light, such as it was, and I picked one nearby, from which I could study the Michelli wedding portrait. Andrea Michelli is also known as Andrea Vicentino, the Andrea from Vicenza. That must be what the Maestro’s hint had meant, for I had told him of the unusual wedding portrait. Why had a dead man intruded on my pyromancy? I had seen his wife struck down also. My mind shied away from the implications.
Vasco chose a chair where he could watch me, but did not get a chance to sit on it.
“Vizio,” Gritti said, “take a look around the neighborhood and the garden down there. Look for traces of bloodstains.”
Vasco departed. Giro returned, remaining just inside the door.
“The servants have all been told of the tragedy?” Gritti asked.
“Certainly. Come in, girls.”
Three young woman shuffled in, lined up, and then stared in horror at the demon inquisitor. To be accurate, they stared at his feet, avoiding his eyes. Giro presented them: ladies’ maid Noelia Grappeggia, cook Marina Alfieri, and housemaid Mimi Zorzin, all uniformed in aprons and head cloths as if interrupted in cleaning chores.
I had watched Ottone Gritti in action before, so I was not surprised at the ease with which his benevolent smiles and cooing voice won them over. They did want Danese’s murderer caught, didn’t they? They would like to help, wouldn’t they? All three nodded like drinking chickens. Two of them he eliminated very quickly, because neither Marina nor Mimi lived in. They had left for home at sunset, so they could contribute no information about Danese’s movements. Noelia slept on the mezzanine level, but yesterday she had been given time off because her mother was sick. Her father had come for her at sunset and brought her back before curfew. Pignate had let her in and she had gone straight to bed. None of the three had any idea who might have killed poor sier Danese. There had been no quarrels or threats. Gritti did not ask them if they had liked Danese, because “yes” would make them seem flighty and “no” suspect.
First the oil and then the vinegar. “Tell me about the blood!”
They jumped at his sharp command, but none of them fainted or burst into tears. There had been no massive bloodstains that they knew of.
The angels were dismissed and flew away.
I had not expected much help from them, but I found them a puzzling trio. The cook was much younger than most cooks, who are typically mature widows. The cleaning maid was dainty, although she must have to move heavy furniture as part of her job. Noelia I knew already to be a beauty, which is not too uncommon for a ladies’ maid-nobody wants to be primped by an ogre-but the other two were beauties also. Not a missing tooth or smallpox scar among them. Dress them well and they would attract men like sharks to blood. Combining that observation with the strapping gondolier, Fabricio, and the cherubic valet-page, Pignate, I felt I had established a pattern, although I could not see what significance it might have to murder or espionage. I wondered if the Sanudos paid extra to hire and keep especially decorative staff, and that was only a step away from wondering why. Were they assigned special duties?
“The menservants, if you please,” the inquisitor said.
Now things should become more interesting. If anyone in Ca’ Sanudo had wrestled Danese for possession of my rapier and won, it must have been either young Pignate or the gondolier, who could probably have done it with one hand. Moreover, only he could have delivered the corpse to the watergate at Ca’ Barbolano. Rowing a gondola-with a single oar, standing upright on a narrow boat-is no job for an amateur. It takes long practice and many involuntary cold baths to acquire that skill. Fabricio was odds-on suspect for the accomplice paid to dispose of the body.
Giro had been conferring at the door. I detected Pignate’s voice and he followed Giro in.
“Our valet, Pignate Calabro, clarissimo.”
The boy was even more nervous than before. He tucked his hands behind him so we wouldn’t see them shake, but he managed to hold his head up and meet the inquisitor’s eye, although his chin quavered. If the torturers were going to be involved, they would start with the servants.
Gritti chuckled. “I am not going to eat you, Pignate! I just want to find out when sier Danese went out last night, and why. How long have you been in service here?”
Just two months, was the answer, since the Sanudos returned from Celeseo and moved in. He was seventeen. Yes, he could read and write. Told to describe his actions the previous evening, he answered clearly and without hesitation. He had polished shoes, starched ruffs, sorted laundry. He had taken charge of the door while Fabricio was ferrying the master and mistress to their engagement, and later when the gondolier went to fetch them home. He had let Danese out and locked up behind him. There had been no visitors, and no notes handed in for Danese or anyone else. He was eager to help, and when Gritti doubled back or fired unexpected questions, he did not hesitate or contradict himself. In only one respect was his testimony lacking-he had no idea of time as measured by a clock. His life was run by waking and sleeping, by meals and the city bells, but he could not measure a day into twenty-four hours. After all, why should he?
