8

G iorgio was still at the quay, standing within a group of gondoliers and listening more than talking, as always. He strolled over to meet me.

“No boys?” I asked.

He gave me a blood-chilling look. “You didn’t give them money, did you?”

“You think I am an idiot? A half-witted softhearted troublemaker?”

“How much?”

I dodged the question. “Not enough to buy them any serious trouble. I expect they’ll be here shortly, I just have to visit the Ca’ della Naves and I can walk there from here. I won’t be long.” I fled the field.

Like almost any father, when his sons are old enough to earn money at odd jobs, Giorgio insists they turn it in as part of the family income. Corrado and Christoforo, for instance, had been working on and off at the building project on the other side of Rio San Remo. I felt he should let them keep at least some of their wages, else why should they bother? But it was none of my business and I must not meddle in his affairs.

The mysterious foreigners who had gate-crashed the book showing lived a few minutes’ walk away, so I might as well go and see them. Had I been offered my choice at that point, I would have spoken with the procurator’s granddaughter, the mysterious Bianca, who had probably had more opportunity than anyone to tamper with his wine, but the Orseolo family was in mourning and I had no authority to intrude.

As I hurried through the darkening calli of San Marcuola parish, I worried how much things had changed the moment Isaia confirmed that the procurator’s death was murder. I had a clear duty now to report that fact to the authorities. Of course an apprentice is bound to obey his master, so I might argue that I must report to the Maestro first, but I did not think that excuse would weigh very much with the Ten.

And what if the Maestro refused? If he still insisted on trying to find the killer by himself, he would be courting disaster. His efforts to unmask the murderer might well be seen as an attempt to bury evidence, not uncover it. Or we might scare the criminal into fleeing beyond the reach of justice. Then both of us would find ourselves where I had been that morning, in the Leads. If that shock didn’t kill the old man outright, the disgrace would ruin him. Sier Alvise Barbolano would evict him, his clients desert him.

But I hate to start something and not finish it. So does he. Half-done is do, he tells me often enough. He had occult tools that the Ten did not, or at least would never admit to using. Even I could invoke a fiend, and that might be less dangerous than what I was doing now, meddling in the Ten’s business.

And then there were the doge’s parting words: I will see his head roll across the Piazzetta. The doge did not trust the Council of Ten to see justice done. The Ten are politicians, all seventeen of them, and the other sixteen are eagerly planning promotion to higher office. They lust after votes in the Great Council, and if the murderer turned out to be a patrician, then the nobles of the Ten would be wary of antagonizing his relatives and friends.

I peered into the parish tavern, partly to see if the twins were there, which they were not, and also to inquire which apartment in the Ca’ della Naves was infested with heretics. The drinkers gave me the information I wanted plus some seriously disapproving looks.

As I started up the stairs in the big house, I began to have misgivings. The Republic’s attitude to foreigners is complicated. For centuries, pilgrims have passed through Venice on their way to the Holy Land, and there are state officials, tholomarii, stationed at San Marco to take care of them, to see that they find proper housing and transportation. The inns they use are carefully regulated and, although they do have to pay more for goods and services than residents do, they must not be cheated any more than the law allows. On the other hand, the senate is very wary of foreign politics. Contact between Venetian nobles and foreigners is strongly discouraged, and is actually illegal in the case of foreign ambassadors. A nobleman can be put to death just for meeting with a foreign ambassador in private. Feather was not an ambassador, but a procurator had been murdered. What I was about to do began to seem foolhardy.

I was very close to talking myself out of my mission when I heard voices just above me, one more flight up. Not just voices, but a woman shouting a barbaric guttural rant that I could barely recognize as French. I swallowed the bait and took the rest of the stairs at a trot.

Thus do the stars dictate our lives.

She was just inside the door. He was just outside it. She was one of the largest women I had ever seen, so much taller than I that at first glance I thought she must be wearing the stilt shoes of a courtesan. She was blonde, not just Violetta’s bleached reddish gold, but a Germanic ash-blonde displaying a complicated sculpture of silvery curls on which balanced a tiny bonnet. A high fan-shaped collar formed a backdrop, her neckline was surprisingly demure, yet her gown was a voluminous mass of purple brocade and gold lace that would have been denounced by the Venetian Senate as absurd extravagance. It was not, obviously, a local costume. Her eyes were the watery blue of sapphires and her cheeks were flushed with anger.

He was clutching a parcel with both arms and prepared to defend it to the death. She was speaking loudly and clearly, so his failure to understand her was pure perversity.

“Madame!” I proclaimed in French, offering a gymnastically low bow suitable for reverence to a goddess. “May I be of assistance?” I added in Veneziano, “Shut up and let me deal with her.”

She uttered a satisfied, “Ha! At last! You speak French, monsieur!”

Better French than she did. “A little,” I said. “Is this oaf causing you trouble?”

“He has brought our costumes for Carnival and refuses to give them up without payment, although we had made an agreement with the seamstress.”

I understood the problem already, but decided to spin it out. “Talk back and threaten me,” I shouted in Veneziano so broad that even a Paduan would not have understood. “Slum-dwelling, dung-eating spawn of a canal rat, you insult the madonna?”

His response flaked plaster off the walls. He was either a lot more skilled at invective than I was, or just well worked up already. Fortunately he had his hands full and I had two to wave, which evened the odds a little. I responded and we screamed at each other for a few minutes. Then I turned to the lady.

“Madame,” I explained calmly. “The wretch expects to be paid for delivering the goods, as if one glimpse of your divine beauty should not be sufficient recompense in itself. Permit me to settle the matter.”

I palmed him half a lira, which was five times what he was demanding and ten times what he had expected. “For the lesson in abuse,” I bellowed, waving a fist. “You have the foulest mouth it has ever been my privilege to meet.”

He thrust the package at me and slunk off as if I had whipped him, calling back curses over his shoulder. What he actually said was, “Blessings on you, lustrissimo, and give the foreign mare the ride of her life.”

Hyacinth said, “Oh! What a disagreeable man! That was most kind of you, m’sieur. If you will wait a moment I will find my purse.”

“I should not dream of accepting one soldo, madame. The honor of being of assistance is recompense enough. You are the Contessa Hyacinth of Feather, are you not, the celebrated English beauty I came to meet? Permit me.” I offered another bow. “Alfeo Zeno, assistant to the celebrated Maestro Nostradamus, clairvoyant, physician, astrologer, philosopher, and sage, honored to be at your service, madame.”

Even in distant England, they knew that name. A tiny frown ruffled her eyebrows. “Nostradamus died years ago.”