He was hinting that I could. For me to try to save him would be altruistic and therefore less dangerous. Not safe, just less dangerous. Summoning is best done after dark, when demons are more active and there are fewer people around to catch you at it. I would decide then whether to take the risk.
I thought of another problem. “How much foxglove would be needed? And what does it taste like?” I rose to reach for the De Historia Stirpium Commentarii that lay on his side of the desk. “Would wine disguise its taste?”
“Sit down. You think I have not consulted the herbals? Most poisons are vile-tasting, as you know, because they are tainted by the Evil One. Foxglove is so bitter that livestock will not graze it, whereas they do die from eating oleander. The taste and dosage would depend on how the essence was extracted. Steeping in water may be enough, or spirituous extraction followed by reduction. I shall conduct some experiments.”
“If you have any sense at all,” I said, “you will throw your entire supply in the canal and destroy the label on the bottle. Yesterday you sent me out to buy every nasty thing in the pharmacopeia. Was that a wise action?”
He bunched his cheeks. “I wanted to discover if digitalis is presently available in the city. Since only the murderer and I knew the poison used, I preferred not to advertise its name.”
“Even if Gerolamo and the rest do not stock it, surely foxglove can be grown in any little garden plot. It likes sandy soil, as I recall.”
As a feat of memory that remark was pure show-off, and his wizened little eyes tightened to show that he knew it. “But that would still be evidence of premeditation.”
And oleander was common enough. “So anyone could acquire the plant. But who,” I asked innocently, “could possibly have the arcane knowledge to extract and concentrate the venom? Or is this where we began this conversation?”
The Maestro scowled, because Italians are notorious as the poison experts of Europe, the Venetian Council of Ten has the same reputation within Italy itself, and the Council of Ten has been known to consult Maestro Nostradamus on such matters. And that, I realized, might well be what it was up to in the present instance, except that it was putting the demand for assistance in the form of a personal warning from the doge. That would explain why Sciara had felt justified in dragging me off to jail.
I opened my inkwell. “You will, of course, now write to the Lion’s Mouth to report your suspicions that Procurator Orseolo died of an overdose of medicinal digitalis. You will have to sign it.”
The bocca di leone is any of several drop boxes available in the palace to accept accusations of treason or other major crimes. Anonymous tips are supposedly ignored, but no one believes that.
The Maestro grimaced. “No. I despise men who work in silence and darkness. Very few people could have committed the crime. It must be possible to work out which one did. Then we can report to the Ten.”
There is no use arguing with him when he sticks out his goatee like that. “We have two days.” The doge had given me three, but I was allowing one for travel. I opened a drawer and selected a quill and a sheet of our best rag paper. “The attorney, Imer, is the man to start with. He must be quaking in his dancing pumps.”
Maestro Nostradamus said, “Faugh! You still don’t know how bad this is. Take a cheaper sheet.”
I changed the paper.
“There were about thirty guests in all,” he said, “but not all are suspect. Only the procurator was affected, so the poison was not in the bottle. It must have been put in his glass. It acts quickly but not instantaneously-I know that but the Ten do not. So the only persons who matter are those who came in to look at the manuscripts.”
He leaned back wearing an expression of extreme smugness like a suit of plate mail. I plodded through his logic and decided it would have to do for now. I could not possibly question thirty people in two or three days.
“Clear crystal glasses, or colored?”
“Murano ruby glass. You could not tell what anyone else was drinking, and if the poison made the wine cloudy, that would not show either.”
“And what sort of wine?”
“We were offered a choice of three: refosco, malmsey, or retsina. I had the refosco. It was a good jar.”
He fancies himself as a connoisseur of wines. I plan to study them when I am rich.
“Refosco is red, malmsey a sweet white. The other one is Greek, yes?”
He made a steeple of his fingers again for a sermon. “Yes. Retsina is most vile, flavored with resin. Served in honor of the Greek merchant, I suppose. It is pungent enough to hide the taste of lye or vitriol, but few Venetians would touch it. Malmsey is so sickly it might suffice. Refosco would not. Let us review the suspects. I proclaim my innocence, and in any case I was seated behind the table. I could not have put poison in anyone’s glass without standing up and stretching across, which would have been a very conspicuous action. Write my name in the first row.
“The Greek was in the room all the time. Our host came and went. As organizers of the affair, they must be suspect. Imer and Karagounis in the second row.”
He closed his eyes to think. “I was early, as I told you. Imer and his wife greeted the guests as they arrived and saw that they were given wine. Most went to the salotto, only the book collectors came into the dining room. The first buyer to enter was Senator Tirali. He wished me well and at once walked the length of the table, on the far side from me, inspecting the goods. I felt like a shopkeeper!”
“I believe you, master.” I knew of another Tirali, the senator’s son. Neither was a patient of the Maestro’s.
“Close behind him came Procurator Orseolo, leaning on a cane. He and Tirali greeted each other coolly. They were old rivals as collectors.”
“Put Tirali in the second row?”
“I suppose so, but I doubt if their rivalry ran to murder. Orseolo had a woman attending him. I didn’t hear her name and she stayed close to him. Next came a foreign couple, who did not introduce themselves to me. They spoke in French with barbarous accents, questioning me about the books. They knew nothing about books. All they were interested in was price.”
I added them to the second row: two foreigners.
“Two footmen poured the wine. We should include them in the second row, if the Three have not gotten to them first.” The Maestro opened his eyes. “Then sier Pasqual Tirali, Giovanni’s son. With your friend.”
I wrote Violetta’s name in the first row and started a third for Pasqual Tirali, vowing to send him to the torturers for prolonged interrogation. I get twinges of jealousy sometimes, when I think of her evenings.
“They were the last to arrive. There was one other before them, Pietro Moro. First row.”
I stood my quill in the inkwell, laid my forearms flat on the desk and glared belligerently across at my master. “You are hallucinating!” The nightmare had just turned into sheer terror, as nightmares do.
He shook his head smugly. “I warned you that you were being naive.”
“Master, before a doge is crowned he has to swear an oath known as the promissione. It is no trivial matter. He swears to shun each and every mistake and crime of all his predecessors in the last thousand years. The promissione is read to him every two months during his reign to remind him. He can barely blow his nose without his counselors’ consent. He must not leave the ducal palace without their permission. He must not meet with foreigners! He…I cannot imagine all the promises the doge would have broken if he went to that supper party!”
“He wasn’t wearing his ducal robes and corno. I expect that’s another. But Moro is a fanatical collector of books.”
“Then why did the sellers not offer him a private viewing in the palace?”
The Maestro scowled horribly. “I do not know the answer to that. But I don’t suppose for a moment that Moro is the first doge to slip out for an evening incognito, playing Haroun al-Raschid.”
“And somebody tried to assassinate him? Is that what you mean? The poison went to the wrong man?”
The Maestro pursed his lips. “I wondered how long it would take you.”
Even more aghast now, I said, “The Serene One moves and is unmoved ? The procurator got the wrong glass and the poison meant for the doge? Is that what it means?”
“Possibly. A hypothesis to keep in mind. Even if not, do you see why I cannot write to the Lion’s Mouth? The Council of Ten must not have cause to investigate the procurator’s death, not officially. A suspicious death involving illicit acts by the doge may bring on a constitutional crisis, just when relations between the Republic and the Turks
