superiors to sneer at each other over their heads. The bizarrely contorted remains of Danese Dolfin remained under a sheet in the corner.
The inquisitor folded his hands over his round little paunch, and said, “Proceed, Doctor.” After that he almost seemed to doze, eyes half-shut, as he listened to the story. Once in a while he would nod thoughtfully, or even smile. I suspect that at the end he could have recited the entire report word for word.
The Maestro recounted the events of the last week. He left out the size of his fee for finding Grazia and did not mention pyromancy or the Aegia Salomonis, but he did admit he had used clairvoyance. His celebrated uncle, Michel de Nostredame, made clairvoyance as respectable as astrology. Even Gritti would have trouble declaring that to be black magic. Fortune telling with tarot, on the other hand, remains a criminal offense.
I listened with half an ear while I worked out the tide of events in the Doges’ Palace after we had left. The Maestro’s VIRTU bombshell would have launched a frantic hour of deciphering. At the end of it, the chiefs must have known a lot more about Algol’s activities than previously, but they had not uncovered his identity. If they had, then Gritti would never have bothered to come to Ca’ Barbolano; a mere murder would be beneath his notice. Contrariwise, if Algol’s dispatches had turned out to be gossip and fraud, the case would have been closed presto. Therefore, by elimination, the chiefs had concluded that Algol had knowledgeable sources high in the government, perhaps even in the Council of Ten itself. Rather than reveal this new development to the spy, they had turned the case over to the Three. Overruling the chiefs’ decision to withdraw Vasco, the Three had sent the vizio back to Ca’ Barbolano. The fact that he had arrived not long after ten o’clock showed that La Serenissima can move fast when she wants to.
“Fascinating,” Gritti murmured at the end. He sat in silence for a while.
I realized I had stopped breathing, and started again.
“The doctor failed to mention,” Vasco said, “that his apprentice left the building clandestinely during the night.”
“He climbed out the window and jumped across the calle?” Gritti said. “He does that all the time. Whose lust is aroused by the danger, Zeno? Yours or the harlot’s?”
“Hers, Excellency,” I said. “Just the thought of her is all I need.”
He chuckled. “I don’t blame you. I’m jealous.”
Of course the Ten keep a dossier on me and Gritti knew my mistress’s name. My midnight excursion was no longer relevant as long as Gritti accepted that Danese had stolen my sword.
“Fascinating,” the inquisitor repeated. “I am familiar with the Sanudo story, of course. The tale has been the talk of the broglio for days-the Contarini betrothed who ran off with barnabotto trash.”
Vasco shook his head pityingly at the other barnabotto trash. I ignored him.
“Zuanbattista’s political career may never recover,” the inquisitor mused. “He is due to chair the Great Council tomorrow and so far he has not backed out. This murder may finish him, though. Now you say that Dolfin’s death is ‘certainly’ connected to the Algol espionage case. I do not see that as self-evident. Justify your allegation, Doctor.”
The Maestro put on his bewildered senility expression. “I am certain that it is correct, Your Excellency, but I am not yet in a position to back it up with evidence.”
Gritti smiled fondly, as at a stubborn child. “I do understand the difference between a proof and a working hypothesis.”
“Yet I must decline to reveal conjectures I cannot yet substantiate.”
Vasco raised two eyebrows; nobody defies the Three and gets away with it.
Gritti settled back in his chair and dropped the comedy mask in favor of the tragic. “Your work in breaking the Algol cipher was brilliant, Doctor, and the Republic will reward you handsomely for it, but now you are implying that one of the most senior men in the government is a traitor and I demand to hear your reasons. I will not rush out and arrest people on mere suspicion. Let us hear it, Nostradamus.”
A grunt from the Maestro made my heart plunge. His stubbornness approaches suicidal insanity.
“I cannot accept these conditions,” he said. “I regretfully decline to work further on this case.”
“You think you can withhold evidence vital to the security of the state?”
“I specified that it is mere opinion, not evidence.”
I could not see the Maestro’s face, but his voice seemed amazingly calm. Gritti, opposite, was starting to show signs of annoyance. His already ruddy face was redder than ever.
“Alfeo, will you answer my question?”
I hope that my start of alarm concealed my simultaneous cold shiver. “I cannot, Your Excellency! I have no idea why my master believes the two crimes are connected. On the face of it, that would be a very strange coincidence.”
“No it wouldn’t,” Gritti said impatiently. “Dolfin is…was, I mean-a notorious lecher. The Ten opened a file on him when he was fifteen. Yesterday, you tell me, he was restored to the delights of his new bride’s bed after a week’s enforced celibacy. Yet instead he leaves Ca’ Sanudo and rushes back here to Ca’ Barbolano to consult the Maestro in an ‘agitated’ condition. Did he know of the Algol case?”
“I do not believe…” I said. “No, he couldn’t possibly. The Angelis never gossip about the Maestro’s affairs and even they know only that he went twice to the palace. The Marcianas downstairs jabber like starlings, but they knew nothing of importance. Danese…he saw the vizio here that morning and would have guessed that he had come on state business. Danese was clever.”
“Sly, you mean,” the inquisitor said with distaste. “So he went looking for his sword and found yours instead? That was enough, apparently. That was what he had come for. Any sword would do. So he ran off. Does it not make sense that he had stumbled on evidence of treason at Ca’ Sanudo and that was why he wanted his sword? Do you swear that this idea has not even occurred to you, Zeno?”
My mouth was very dry, my bladder unbearably full. “I thought of it and discarded it, Your Excellency.”
“Why?”
“Because Danese was no hero. He was an inept, untrained swordsman, a playboy who wore a sword for swagger. Had he found the evidence you suggest, he would have run straight to the palace and informed the chiefs in the hope of gaining a reward. He cuckolded sier Zuanbattista, then betrayed his mistress so he could seduce her daughter, all in the quest for money. I remember when he was a child…If you look at the first entries in that dossier you mentioned, Excellency, I think you will find reports that his greed exceeded his scruples even then. He would have betrayed his wife’s father or brother for gold, but he would never have faced them down himself.”
“It remains a valid hypothesis. Doesn’t it, Doctor?”
“Not to me,” the Maestro said. “I agree with Alfeo. If Dolfin had been able to inculpate the Sanudos, father and son, then their daughter would have inherited everything and he could have cleared the table. It would have all been his.”
Gritti said. “So who killed him?”
“I suspect but cannot prove.” We were back to the beginning.
“Are you gambling that I dare not use force on you because of your age, Nostradamus?”
The Maestro cackled. “Faugh! Tie me on the strappado and I would break in pieces at the first hoist. My heart would stop.”
“Your apprentice is a strong young lad.”
Vasco raised his eyes to Heaven, silently mouthing prayers of thanks.
“Alfeo doesn’t know what I think,” the Maestro said, less confidently. “His brain is not his best organ.”
“You can stop his interrogation at any time.”
“Bah! Has the Republic sunk to torturing the innocent?”
The inquisitor laughed. “Not yet! You always were a pigheaded old scoundrel, Doctor, and every year you get worse. Keep your theories, then, but I shall cancel your reward for the code breaking.”
That was different. The Maestro thumped a tiny fist on the arm of his chair. “It is blatantly obvious! I warned the chiefs last night that I expected attacks against us that the vizio could not repel, and by morning there was a corpse on our doorstep. Why here, at Ca’ Barbolano? Surely Algol arranged that to ensnare my investigation in an irrelevant murder case?”
Gritti leaned forward eagerly. “You credit the spy with magical powers?”
“Who named him Algol?”
