by Dave Duncan
“The horse part is smaller than the god, so it should be lighter on that side. Can you push it forward until the horse overlaps the edge of the pedestal? Shout if it starts to overbalance and I’ll help you push it back.”
“Crazy!” Grazia shouted, having retreated to a safe place by the door. “You have gone crazy! That statue is worth thousands of ducats.” Her outrage was convincing. If there was any evidence of witchcraft inside it, she ought to have been quaking with terror and much shriller.
“We won’t damage it,” I said. “Go ahead, Vizio.”
He shrugged and decided to humor me, since he might get me in trouble with little risk to himself. I stepped well clear and watched carefully as he began to push. At first he was reluctant to apply his full strength in case he toppled the statue to the floor, but he soon found that there was little chance of that. Still nothing happened and his face grew red with effort, but then the figure nudged forward, a finger-width at a time. The horse’s flailing front feet moved clear of the base and then its belly began to move over the edge also.
“Wait!” I said and went close enough to prod the point of my rapier underneath. “Yes, it is hollow, see?”
“It doesn’t feel it,” he muttered.
“Keep trying and one day you’ll grow up big and strong.” I stepped back again.
The overlap grew until I began to worry about balance. As Grazia had said, that figure might be worth more money than I would earn in a lifetime, and dropping it on the terrazzo would not improve either of them. I was just about to tell Vasco to stop when something showed underneath the base, a dusty gray something. It wriggled free, dropped on the floor, and then came straight for me, fast as an arrow. No human reflexes could have impaled it with a rapier, but I flailed sideways at it, which was an easier stroke, and swatted it six feet away.
“Look out!” Sacrificing any pretense of dignity, I scrambled up on a dainty little marble table. “Don’t let it bite you.”
Grazia screamed and jumped up on a chair. Faster than a striking snake, Vasco took a flying leap onto the bed. He drew his sword.
“What is it?” Grazia shrieked.
That was a very pertinent question. When I looked straight at it, I saw a primitive book, eighty or ninety pages of ancient, tattered paper sewn between soft kidskin covers, lying facedown as if some reader had just set it there for a moment, open at his place. If I looked at it out of the corner of my eye-a technique the Maestro taught me-it was much more like a huge gray spider, watching me, waiting for me to leave my perch. It certainly moved like a spider. They run so fast that the eye cannot see how their legs move, and the jinx was even faster. It must move its pages like legs.
“It is one of Zeno’s stupid tricks!” Vasco said, realizing how undignified he looked standing on the bed. He jumped down.
The jinx ran at him. Fortunately he had not sheathed his sword and he struck at it as I had, flipping it away. He was back on the bed by the time it hit the floor. A loose page fluttering free.
This time the jinx was not content to lie in wait. It darted over to the bed and tried to climb a golden pillar to get at him. He swiped at it again, only this time he missed, as if it was learning to avoid rapier strokes. The jinx rushed to try another pillar. He floundered and staggered across the soft down bedding to defend that corner.
“What is this thing?” he yelled.
“It’s the jinx,” I said. “Ancient, vintage evil, a curse that has grown and matured for centuries. Madonna, no!” I was just in time, for Grazia had filled her lungs and opened her mouth to scream. “If you summon help, the jinx will attack them.”
“Why don’t you exorcize it?” Vasco yelled. “You’re the one who summoned it.” I wish I had a good painting of him as he looked then; I would hang it in some conspicuous place.
“No, I just found it for you. Why don’t you apply the law? Arrest it.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” The vizio bounded off the bed and headed for the door as if all the demons of Hell were after him, instead of one tattered manuscript. Alas, Venetian doors dislike being bullied and that one chose that moment to stick. He swung around at bay, with the jinx already almost at his feet.
I jumped down also. It dodged Vasco’s sword stroke, but did not follow up its attack on him; instead it reversed course and came again for me, as if I were its preferred prey.
I extended my left arm and used the Word. Normally my pyrokinetic skills need a few seconds to obtain results, but that paper was centuries old and the horror exploded in a ball of fire. Smoke billowed upward. Grazia screamed. And so did the jinx, or at least I heard an impossibly shrill noise in my head, a sound that a tortured bat might emit in its death throes. I sheathed my sword. The floor was terrazzo, with no rugs or exposed wood to burn.
Vasco yelled, “Look out!”
The sheet of paper his sword had detached was fluttering across the floor in my direction, blown by a wind that disturbed nothing else in the room. I ignited it also and it vanished in a flash of sparks and ash.
The emergency was over. The jinx was gone, the house was not going to burn down, and all that remained were clouds of bitter-smelling smoke. Coughing and choking, Vasco and I threw open the casements. Grazia had her hands over her face, but I could see that she was pale as milk and gasping for breath. I lifted her down.
Vasco tried the door again and this time it opened sweetly, on its best behavior. We heard screaming coming from the piano nobile.
26
A unt Fortunata was having hysterics in her bedroom. The family had just run to see what was wrong when Grazia came tearing in and threw herself into her mother’s arms. There was much shouting and alarm as the stench of smoke wafted up from the mezzanine floor. The two fanti ran down to see. Vasco and I, following Grazia up, were accosted in the salone by Inquisitor Gritti demanding an explanation.
“Witchcraft!” Vasco said. “Zeno conjured some sort of paper animal out of a statue and it attacked us. Then he used more witchcraft to set it on fire.” The vizio had suffered a severe fright and showed it, but he also wore a savage grin of triumph. This time he truly had me, he thought; this time I would not escape.
I was inclined to agree with him. So was Gritti, for I had never seen a man so resemble a cat that can feel a mouse’s tail under its paw.
“Your Excellency, I located the jinx,” I said. “My dowsing rod found it for me. It was hiding in madonna Grazia’s room, although she did not know it was there. It did attack us, as Filiberto says. He took refuge on the bed, I climbed on a table, and the lady on a chair. Fortunately it burst into flames and-”
“Zeno burned it!” Vasco cried. “He pointed his hand at it like this and made gestures and spoke in a strange language and it went on fire instantly. And then a loose page attacked him and he did it again!”
“A loose piece of paper attacked him?” Gritti licked his lips.
“The vizio is a little upset,” I suggested. “His recollection of events is confused. I was, in fact, saying a prayer, and Our Lady took pity on us and saved us from the demon. Of course paper that old can be so dry that when it is exposed to the air…”
Then the Sanudos came flocking out of Aunt Fortunata’s room, demanding to know what was going on, and the six-way conversation became more than a little confused.
An hour or so later, the situation had been somewhat clarified. The jinx had been accepted as a reality and its destruction as good fortune. From that point of view, I was being hailed as a hero. Vasco insisted that I had used witchcraft to locate it and destroy it, and possibly to create it in the first place, although even Gritti seemed unwilling to accept that suggestion-he was reserving judgment on the rest. He had lots of time. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Aunt Fortunata looked and sounded several years younger and every few minutes would mumble how much better she was feeling.
Grazia was very quiet, staying close to her mother. I wanted to believe that her nose was less conspicuous than it had been, but
perhaps that was just charitable thinking. Vasco and I had both testified that she had been as frightened of the jinx as either of us, had not known where it was hiding, and it had not been her familiar. She refused to discuss what had happened, neither confirming nor denying that I had used witchcraft.
Giro had disappeared into his room and shut the door on the world. Sier Zuanbattista had retreated behind the traditional gravitas of the Venetian aristocracy, watching everything and saying nothing. He certainly was not going to thank me for my actions until they had been cleared of the taint of sorcery, and he was too much a gentleman to denounce them when they had so obviously worked to his benefit.
About then we had all descended to Grazia’s room to reenact the encounter with the jinx, inspect the scorch mark on the floor where it had died, and peer into the base of the Neptune statue. I spotted Danese’s portmanteau again and decided that it might make a welcome diversion. I carried it over to the bed and prepared to tip out its contents.
“Stand back, Zeno!” Gritti barked. “I distrust those nimble hands of yours. Marco, Amedeo, search that bag and see if there is anything in there that should not be.”
A few minutes later we were all standing around the bed admiring sixty gold sequins and a gold and amber bracelet. In fact we were admiring two bracelets-the brass-and-glass one that Grazia had fetched from her jewel box, and the genuine one that had emerged from Danese’s underwear.
Grazia wept on her mother’s bosom again. Madonna Eva’s face was rock hard, but her emotions were no doubt disheveled by this exposure of the viper she had nourished so long. Even Vasco admitted that I had had no opportunity to plant the evidence, at least not that day.
“No Ca’ Barbolano silverware,” I admitted. “My suspicions were unfounded.”
“I shall have every valuable in the house appraised,” Zuanbattista declared, and even his studied impassivity could not completely conceal his fury. “I am very grateful to you for drawing this treachery to our attention, sier Alfeo.”
I bowed. “I am saddened to have increased your sorrows. Meanwhile, Your Excellency, I beg leave to return to my master, who may have need of me.”
Pause.
Then Gritti nodded. “I shall come calling tomorrow, as arranged, and when we have completed that business, we can pursue the question of just how you located the jinx and managed to set it on fire.” He smiled. “In the meantime, the vizio will keep you safe from harm.”
27
G iorgio was sitting in the government boat, trading gossip with Gritti’s boatmen-waiting for me is a large part of his job. He knows me so well that one look at my face was enough to inform him that I was not my usual cheerful and witty self. He said, “Home?” and accepted my nod as sufficient reply.
Feeling understandably malicious, I spread myself on the felze cushions, forcing Vasco to sit on the thwart outside. Unfortunately the rain had stopped. Finding my contempt amusing, he beamed around benevolently at the scenery as Giorgio sped us along the Rio di Maddalena and Rio di S. Marcuola. When we emerged onto the Grand Canal, he honored me with the most sanctimonious smile I had ever seen.
“Alfeo, Alfeo! You cannot say you were not warned. I have told you many times not to meddle in matters that imperil your immortal soul. See where it has gotten you now? Do you not feel repentance?”
“I feel homicidal. It has gotten me to thinking that I would rather be beheaded than burned at the stake. I’m a better swordsman than you are. Giorgio won’t notice a quick murder-will you Giorgio?”
Normally Giorgio pretends not to overhear what is said on his boat, but this time he answered. “Not if it is done in a good cause, clarissimo.”
“Couldn’t be better,” I replied, but my threat failed to worry the vizio, who merely smirked more broadly than ever.
I truly thought that a day that began with my finding a corpse on the doorstep and continued through my being charged with homicide, menaced by a demon, and then accused of witchcraft could not possibly get any worse. I was wrong. Back at the Ca’ Barbolano, I jumped ashore and trotted up the stairs without waiting for Vasco, who would be certain to stick to me tighter than my ears from now on. I heard his boots tapping close behind me as I reached the piano nobile. To my dismay, one flap of the great double doors stood open and on a stool outside it sat Renzo Marciana. His relief at seeing me suggested that he had been ready to expire from boredom. The Marcianas jump to our landlord’s bidding also, just as high as the Maestro and I do.
“ Sier Alvise wants to see you,” he explained. With an uneasy glance at my keeper, he rose and went in to announce my return.
“No doubt the noble lord dislikes corpses cluttering up his watergate,” Vasco opined at my shoulder. “So untidy!”
I suspected the crusty antediluvian patrician liked the recent living intruders even less than the dead ones and in a few moments Barbolano came dithering out to confirm my suspicions. I know from auditing the Marcianas’ ledgers that he must have one of the largest incomes in Venice, yet he and his wife never employ more than a single servant; they wear old-fashioned garments, faded, threadbare, and often in need of a wash.
He peered at Vasco with extreme distaste and then literally wagged a finger in front of my nose. “I won’t have it, you hear?”
“God bless you, messer,” I said. “How have I displeased you?”
“How?” the old man barked, spraying me. “ Sbirri all over the place? Inquisitors, Missier Grande himself, and”-he pointed-“ him? You think I run a house of ill-repute? I won’t have it! Get out, all of you! Go! Go and tell Nostradamus to take his rubbish and leave! Today! Now!”
He might have continued in the same vein for some time, but my display of horror stopped him. “Why’re you pulling faces, boy?”
“Because of the date, clarissimo! The stars! This is a fearfully inauspicious day. The Maestro says he has never seen a day so ill-omened for making decisions.”
The old man shied. “Stars?”
“And planets. Mars is in Libra in opposition to Mercury, messer! The moon in your own birth sign of Virgo makes you especially vulnerable. I beg you to wait at least until Tuesday before making any move that you might possibly regret later. Any decision you make before that will certainly be star-crossed.”
Barbolano chewed his tongue for a few moments indecisively. Then he pointed again at Vasco. “Well, at least get rid of him! You write out a notice evicting Nostradamus and bring it to me to sign on Tuesday without fail!”
I bowed. “Very wise, clarissimo.”
He disappeared in a thunderclap of the great door.
“A disastrous decision, I would say,” said Vasco. “So that is how it is done? Bombast and stultiloquence!”
“You think this day is not disastrous?” I strode off up the stairs.
He followed. “So far it has proved highly auspicious, one of the best I can recall.”
I marched into the atelier, closed the door in his face, and locked it.
“Greetings, noble master!” I proclaimed, detouring around by the big mirror to make sure the spyhole from the dining room was closed. “I unmasked Algol for you. I foolishly saved Filiberto Vasco from the demon and out of gratitude he accuses me of witchcraft. Messer Ottone Gritti is much inclined to agree with him. Also sier Alvise has given us notice to vacate the premises by Tuesday and what’s the matter?”
The Maestro was huddled in his favorite red chair, clutching a pottery jug in both hands and looking about a thousand years old. He grunted. I paused at the slate-topped table with the crystal ball, whose cover lay crumpled on the floor. He had been foreseeing and the resulting chalk scrawl was just one more horror to add to the day. I would need an hour to decipher it, if I ever could.
“It doesn’t help,” he muttered.
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know. It’s too far off to be relevant.”
I noticed with relief that the late Danese Dolfin had been removed, although the medical equipment and a bloodsta
ined sheet still lay under the couch. I headed in that direction to tidy up.
“Sit down here and talk.” The Maestro raised the jug to his mouth and drank.
Obediently I settled on one of the green chairs-an unusual honor for me-and talked. I gave him everything that had happened since I left with Gritti to visit madonna Corner. I didn’t mention eating, since I hadn’t, but only barely managed not to mention that I wasn’t mentioning it.
Although never predictable, Nostradamus is almost always bad tempered after a farseeing. But when I came to the end of my morning and told him how I had deterred Alvise Barbolano from evicting us on the spot, he actually swore, which he almost never does. We were in trouble.
“So that nuisance Vasco is still underfoot?”
“Like dirt.”
“Bah! Well he mustn’t find out what we’re doing. I promised to deliver Algol to Gritti personally, and I shall.”
I repeated that sentence to myself and decided I had heard it correctly. “You don’t think the walking book was the ghoul?”
“Bah! No. Certainly not! You are confusing Algol with the jinx, and they’re completely different. Oh, the jinx made the Sanudos prone to disaster. You notice that Sanudo himself did very well when he was in Constantinople, far out of its range, but plunged into trouble as soon as he returned? It cursed everyone who came in contact with it. As soon as we became involved in the family’s affairs, it blurred my clairvoyance and blinded your tarot. But Algol is a person, one of the jinx’s evil effects, no doubt, but not the jinx itself. The fact that Algol’s employers, whoever they are, named him The Ghoul may be only a coincidence. I don’t recall the Church ever informing us of a patron saint of coincidences, but a patron demon may be more appropriate. It’s the human Algol that the Ten want. I could tell Gritti what he’s overlooked and he would put all his spies to work and find the real Algol in a few days, but I promised to turn him in myself, so I must.”
