by Dave Duncan
Vasco ostentatiously laid a hand on his sword hilt.
Karagounis ignored him and kept staring at me, but sudden hatred burned up in his eyes and some trick of the light made them seem to glint red. He said, “We could help you, Alfeo Zeno!”
Then he turned and dived out the window.
Which was closed. Don’t try it, just take my word for it, but it is almost impossible to jump through a well-made casement, because both glass and lead are resistant to blunt objects. Either Karagounis called on demonic strength or the wooden sash had rotted after a century or so in the damp Venetian climate. Either way, he and the window vanished together, noisily. Vasco cried out in dismay and rushed around the desk. In their dash to join him, his heroes threw me against it, making me bang my injured leg.
By the time I stopped swearing I was alone, the others having raced downstairs to demonstrate their skills at first aid. I limped to the gap in the wall and peered out carefully. My companions had not arrived yet, but Karagounis certainly had, landing half in and half out of the gondola-smashing it and smashing himself and sinking it in two feet of seawater and sewage. Some spectators had been injured by falling debris and a crowd had gathered to shriek like seagulls.
I was sorry about the bystanders, but everything else pleased me. Suicide would be construed as a confession. Neither the Ten nor the gossips of the Rialto would have reason to blame the Maestro for the death of Procurator Orseolo. The doge and his friends should be able to hush up the whole affair. Vasco would probably get half his hide talked off him. I started toward the door and was distracted by a swirl of motion as the wind fluttered the papers on the desk.
I gathered them up before they blew all over the room. When we intruded, Karagounis had been transcribing or translating something. I am no expert like the Maestro, but I could see at a glance that these white sheets were modern, while those yellowed pages were densely inscribed with Greek text in a faded and antique hand. The originals were unbound, but looked as if they had been razored out of a bound book. They might be worth nothing or a lot of something.
Who owned those tatty scraps of manuscript?
Originally they must have been pillaged from a private house or cobwebby monastery in some Christian territory overrun by the Turks, or sold by starving owners for coppers just to buy food. So the sultan probably considered that he owned them, but he had given them to Karagounis to use as bait so he could get within striking distance of the doge. Karagounis had no further use for them and all his goods would be confiscated by the Republic anyway. They would end up locked away as evidence in some musty archive.
Who had unmasked the Grand Turk’s agent at no small risk to himself? Who was going to reward me for this outstanding service to the state? Who had ruined a good pair of hose and very nearly been impaled in six directions that very morning? Was I to be compensated for loss and suffering?
The answers were: me, nobody, me, and not likely. Considering all the factors involved, it did seem that no one had any better right to those papers than I did. I slipped them into the pocket of my cloak and set off to limp down all those stairs, one step at a time.
13
I had no sooner paid off the gondolier outside the Ca’ Barbolano than the Marciana horde swarmed around me to point out that I was bleeding. By the time I had finished explaining that I had just been oozing a little but had now stopped, two of the largest size had lifted me between them to chair me upstairs. Holding my leg straight out while they were doing this took enough effort to start it bleeding again. I thanked them and hobbled into the Maestro’s apartment. Corrado shouted that I was hurt. His mother came flustering out of the kitchen…You would think none of them had ever seen blood before, let alone mine.
I went briefly to my room to shed my cloak. Then I went to report.
When I limped into the atelier, the Maestro was seated by the fireplace. To my amazement, the visitor in the green chair opposite was a nun. I blinked twice before I recognized Violetta, alias Sister Chastity, and remembered that she and I had a date to call on Bianca Orseolo.
The Maestro is enough of a prude to rank courtesans with prostitutes and despise men who pay women for sex when they could buy books instead, but he is not a misogynist-he finds almost everybody stupid and boring, regardless of gender. Violetta is well aware of all this and goes out of her way to charm him. Nobody is less boring or stupid than she when she wants to be. He eats out of her hand and would not notice if she fed him rocks.
I detoured by the desk because there was a letter lying on my side of it. It had been opened, of course.
Dear and honored friend,
The man of whom you enquired was in serious financial straits until recently, having pawned his book collection and some of his furniture. About two months ago he came into better times and paid off all his debts.
I have the honor to be
Your humble servant
Isaia
That testimony would hang Ottone Imer now, if the Ten got hold of it.
On the Maestro’s side, the Midrasch-Na-Zohar had been closed and pushed aside, but Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophia lay open beside it, so he had not given up on cabalism yet.
I headed for the tete-a-tete, collecting a chair on the way. Somehow Violetta seemed much less outrageous in her nun’s costume than she had the previous day. Had I grown used to it, or had Milana altered it for her? Her sun-bleached hair was well tucked away and she wore no face paint, but it was equally possible that Violetta was merely acting nun so effectively that I failed to find her display of ankle and bosom as outrageous as I should.
“Bishop takes pawn.” She lifted her lips to offer me a kiss, but she was Aspasia, so it was a Platonic, political kiss. Besides, bending was awkward for me at the moment. “You are bleeding, Alfeo.”
“Just another jealous husband.” I sat down between them, facing the fire.
“Rook to king’s bishop five,” the Maestro said.
“Ah, disaster!” Violetta said. “I should have seen that! It will be mate in three, won’t it? I should know better than to try to match wits with one of the greatest minds in Europe, but I do thank you for the game, doctor. You look very pleased with yourself, apprentice. Shall I leave, so that you men can talk business?”
“Maestro?”
He said, “Not at all, madonna. I know Alfeo tells you everything anyway.”
He does this just to rankle me, because he knows I will leap to her defense like a dog chasing a stick.
“I do not tell her everything! I tell her nothing. In this case I questioned her because she was one of the witnesses, and a very observant one. She led me to valuable information about Enrico Orseolo, who had to be a prime suspect because he will be the old man’s heir. Other than that, she knows no more than the public at large.”
He pulled a mawkish smile. I had brought back the stick. “Would you tell her what you did with that mirror last night?”
“I haven’t done so, but if you give me permission I will.”
Courtesans have to be the most secretive of people, and he knows that.
“Do so, then.” He leaned back to watch.
“I invoked a fiend last night, love,” I said. “Dangerous but necessary. That’s why I went to the church this morning.” I knew she would have heard about the fight that was the talk of the parish. “The demon showed me the face of the poisoner, and today I went calling on him with Filiberto Vasco. The spy was Karagounis, not his servant. When we questioned him he saw the game was up and jumped out a window. About now the vizio must be trying to explain why he brought in a dead spy. I wish him luck, very bad luck. But the case is closed. The would-be assassin was a Turkish agent. The procurator’s death was an accident, when their glasses got switched. The real plot was to kill the doge, who had been cleverly lured to the meeting.”
“Well, I’m sorry about the old man,” Violetta said softly. “I am glad we don’t have to suspect poor Bianca.” She was Niobe, an aspect of her I rarely see
, the sorrowing mother. Bellini or del Piombo would have taken one look at her and painted her at the foot of the cross for all eternity to admire.
“We need not bother Bianca,” I said happily. “The case is closed.”
“Indeed?” the Maestro murmured.
I almost fell off my chair in alarm. “Am I missing something?”
“You missed something last night,” he said with quiet satisfaction. I detest that sleepy look he puts on. He was going to make me look stupid in front of Violetta.
I spoke through clenched teeth. “Instruct me, master.”
“You are looking for a simple solution after I warned you the matter was complex.” He bunched his cheeks into a mocking smirk. “Evil is rarely simple. Yes, I’ve told you that often enough, but you must also remember that, while fiends are not as clever as certain nuns, they do know their business. A fiend making a mistake would be very unlikely to commit a lesser evil instead of a greater, and yet you are telling me that the fiend-ridden Karagounis poisoned a harmless old man instead of the Republic’s head of state. How very curious! A demon would be much more inclined to err the other way, like a dog spurning fresh meat in favor of a stinking heap of carrion. If the fiend had the chance-by design or by accident-to poison Nasone and did not do so, then the fiend must have been on the track of some greater evil. We must hope that today’s incident has balked it.”
Violetta was silent, watching us both without expression. She must see how the old scoundrel was baiting me.
I said, “You are telling me that Alexius Karagounis did not murder Procurator Orseolo despite what the other demon showed me?”
He nodded smugly. “The logic is inescapable. How exactly did you command the fiend?” He knew that. I had reported every word.
“First, a negative-to go away ‘if there was no murderer present on San Valentine’s Eve last in the room in…’ Oh, confound it!” What I actually thought was Damn you! which is what Putrid had said to me.
“You have it now?”
“Well, I don’t!” Violetta said loyally, probably lying to make me feel better.
“A murderer,” I said, “is a person who has murdered another. The old man did not die until the following day, so the poisoner was not a murderer until then-unless he had killed someone else previously, I mean. Until Orseolo actually died, the crime was merely attempted murder. I should have specified poisoner, not murderer.”
The Maestro picked it up. “Alfeo’s tame fiend would normally have taken him exactly at his word and gone away, to mislead him into thinking that there had been no killer present. But there was a murderer present, one of the sultan’s assassins. The demon would undoubtedly have preferred not to betray that one, because the man had the potential to do much greater evil in the future, but it had to obey Alfeo’s command.”
“What greater evil, Maestro?” Violetta asked anxiously.
“Hell alone knows,” I said. “Karagounis was setting himself up in the city, planning to marry so he could stay here. He had Ottone Imer in his pocket. He organized the book sale so he could meet rich and important people. He must have had some long-range plan. In a few years he might have become truly dangerous.”
He had already been dangerous enough to shed some of my blood that morning. He had known my name and face. Who else but his demon could have warned him about me and told him to send bravi after me? Or tracked me down in the church, a place I do not go as often as I should.
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?”
14
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 tol
d 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.”
