suddenly said, “Forget about those notes. Throw them out. I was wrong. I need more sulfur.”
“The Lord be with you this fine day, master.”
“And with you. I need it right away.”
I rose. “Swift as the stooping eagle.”
He grunted. “I meant send Giorgio. The Dona horoscope is urgent.”
I took some money from the cash cache and went in search of Giorgio. Giorgio, I learned, was presently delivering sier Danese to the Ca’ Sanudo. Before leaving, sier Danese had eaten a large breakfast, so Mama informed me in unusually cool tones.
“Did he take his bag when he left?” I asked hopefully.
Like any first-class servant, Mama can make her feelings known without a word or expression that could possibly cause offence, but the way she shook her chins clearly indicated that she shared my opinion of Danese. Fortunately Giorgio walked in just then, saving me from having to break the bad news to the Maestro so early in the day.
I explained about the sulfur. I walked him to the top of the stairs, so we would be alone when I asked, “Did he tip you for the ride?”
Since Mama has all the spare flesh in the family, Giorgio has only one chin. He wears a neatly trimmed beard on it. The beard bristled. “No.”
“You amaze me,” I said. Danese had not rewarded Mama for his breakfast, either, although guests are expected to tip their hosts’ servants liberally. Perhaps he really was broke, if he had not yet gotten his talons into Grazia’s dowry, but I suspected that the new Danese Dolfin was the same old scrounger I had known back in San Barnaba. I went back to start wrestling with aspects, ascendants, conjunctions, and ephemerides-casting a horoscope, that is.
Near to dinnertime, I explained the situation. The Maestro’s reaction was as negative as I had expected, although he stopped short of turning me into a toad. There are very few people in the world whose company he enjoys, and freeloading guests belong in the nether circles of hell.
“Get rid of him!”
“Yes, master. If I know Danese, though, he will turn up after dark and pull his lost-waif act again. He cannot defend himself with his arm in a sling, so turning him out in the streets at night would be unfair. I can tell him that tonight is the last night.”
“Pack his bag and put it outside the door.”
“He may bring another sack of sequins with him.”
Grunt. Scowl. “Take the money and then throw him out.”
“Yes, master.” Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed he did not mean that.
I copied out the horoscope in fair. The Maestro approved it with barely a glance, and I went out on foot to deliver it, wanting the exercise. The lady whose future I had foretold did not thank me in person, being less than a month old.
Supper came and went with no sign of Danese, but if he turned up late again he would have to be given a second night’s shelter.
Monday being my fencing night, I retrieved my rapier and dagger from the top of the wardrobe, made sure Giorgio knew exactly what to tell Danese, and trotted happily down the stairs. As I neared the piano nobile, I heard voices. There, just inside the doorway, stood our landlord, sier Alvise Barbolano, chattering happily to sier Danese Dolfin. Danese had a lute slung on his back and a very large leather portmanteau at his feet.
Sier Alvise is older than San Marco, gaunt and stooped and toothless. He moves in a senile fog much of the time, with disconcerting flashes of shrewd cunning, and he can throw the entire Nostradamus household out on its collective ear at any time without a moment’s notice. We are all, even the Maestro, very nice to sier Alvise. I cast horoscopes for his ships, mix rat poison for his rats, and audit the Marcianas’ ledgers for him so they do not cheat him unreasonably.
He beamed his gums at me. “Ah, er…Zeno! You didn’t warn me you would be entertaining sier, er…”
“Dolfin,” murmured Danese.
“Dolfin. I knew his father, er, Domenico, when I was wha’ch’m’call’it at Padua! Or was it Verona?”
“Both, clarissimo. My grandfather.”
“Quite. And, um, Danese has promised to play his lute for us as soon as his arm heals. Wonderful young fellow, his father, er, Domenico! Wonderful singing voice…” And so on.
Eventually I managed to make my excuses and creep back upstairs to warn everyone that Danese had arrived to stay.
My fencing that night was terrible. I learned nothing except some spectacular invective, which Captain Colleoni must have picked up in his campaigning days during an especially nasty siege. Even my friend Fulgentio Trau hammered bruises all over my chest and shoulders. I can usually give him as good as he gives me, which is reasonable, as we are exactly the same size and weight and were born only a few days apart.
Fulgentio lives in San Remo also, so we strolled home together through the hot and moonless darkness, our way lit by two Trau servants walking ahead with torches. That saved me from having to light my own torch, but it was a sad reminder that the Traus, although commoners, are richer than Croesus ever was. Fulgentio’s only fault is that he tries too hard to share his good fortune and cannot see how humiliating that can be to us deserving poor. In bad weather he arrives by private boat and gives rides home to three or four of us. That night the air was so unbearably steamy that I wondered why he had chosen to come on foot and why he had not invited others to walk with us. I am suspicious by nature; Fulgentio is not.
The doge’s equerries are always chosen from the citizen class, but usually from those in humble circumstances, so Fulgentio’s appointment had been a surprise. Some members of the Senate had grumbled that they normally worried about the equerries accepting gifts, but now they had to worry about this one offering them. The doge himself had risen to point out that equerries are appointed for life, or until they reach sixty, and most of his were holdovers from previous reigns. One of the equerries’ duties, he had added pointedly, was to guard the ducal bedchamber at night and he had chosen Trau because he was an excellent swordsman-an exaggeration, but one I could take as a personal compliment when I heard about it.
Like the senators, I could not see why Fulgentio should want such a tedious job, playing servant, showing visitors around the palace, and so on. He just said it would be less boring than banking and he would mingle with the great. Why should he want to do that, though? Most of them are too dull to be admirable and not evil enough to be interesting. I am convinced that Fulgentio is completely honest and honorable, but his brothers are quite rich enough to have won him the job by bribing even the doge. More likely the family has some sinister purpose in mind for him that he hasn’t realized yet.
So we walked along calli, over bridges, and across campi, grumbling about the endless summer overstaying its welcome. I admit I was glad of the company, although I never walk the streets at night without making sure I do not look worth robbing, which is not difficult for me. Suddenly my companion changed the subject.
“I hear you were displaying your pathetic swordsmanship on the Rio del Vin yesterday.”
I made some brief remarks.
“Well? Were you?”
“My lips are sealed. What else did you hear?”
He laughed because I had not denied the story. “That sier Zuanbattista’s daughter eloped with his wife’s gigolo. It’s all over the city, Alfeo! There wasn’t a single Contarini to be seen in the Great Council today and usually there’s at least a score of them clucking around there. Hilarious!”
I groaned. “I suppose this means the end of Sanudo’s ducal ambitions?”
“His what?” Fulgentio said sharply. “Him? Doge? He’s a fine man, one of the best, but he could never afford to be doge, my lad! Not before the Second Coming, anyway. Have you any idea of the gold it takes to buy the votes of the forty-one? Or the running expenses in office? Many a doge is worth millions of ducats when he is elected and dies bankrupt. That printing business of Sanudo’s earns him maybe one thousand ducats a year, and the rest of his interests have gone downhill while he’s been gone. He’s been neglecting them! The best fertilizer is the shadow of the farmer on the field, remember.”
“He may have made a lira or two on the side in Constantinople?”
“Not as I hear it. The Senate always expects a ducat’s worth of display for every soldo it votes for its ambassadors’ expenses. A diplomatic posting can bankrupt a man, no matter how rich he was beforehand, and
