I began by re-shelving all the books, mostly herbals and ephemerides. The reagents I had bought the previous day I stowed in the appropriate bottles, out of reach of any Angeli toddler who might stray into the atelier. After I had mixed the unguent for madonna Polo, I dusted the entire collection of bottles and shelves to leave no evidence that digitalis had ever been present.
Then I lit the lamp over my desk and inspected the litter. The Maestro insists that everything be kept tidy, but is himself the untidiest of men. He had completed three pages of next year’s almanac and four scribbled horoscopes that were the routine jobs I had expected to do that day until murder intervened. He had even made all the calculations, probably more to keep his own mind occupied than out of consideration for me. A fifth horoscope, identified only as “PM,” was obviously the doge and I did not like the look of his immediate future. If you identified him with the Republic itself, which was legitimate synecdoche, and the Republic as Queen of the Sea with the planet Venus, the current conjunction with Saturn was as ominous as it had been for Orseolo. The Maestro posited that the ascendant Turkish Empire should be equated with the moon in some circumstances, and in that case the aspects were even worse. If he had not yet answered Pietro Moro’s mocking challenge to read the name of the murderer in the stars, at least he had found some evidence regarding the name of the intended victim. As I was tucking all the papers away in my work drawer with a bundle of routine letters, including the papal piles, out fell a letter addressed to me.
It had been opened, of course, although I recognized Violetta’s scent on the paper, and he would have done so also. The contents were terse:
Lover-The ball is canceled. Come and entertain me tonight.
– V
Normally I would be down the hall in my bedroom and half changed within a couple of heartbeats of reading that invitation, but tonight I had far too much work to do and too much sleep to catch up. I wrote my regrets on the same paper, sealed it with my signet, and went in search of Bruno, who was always happy to help, just to justify his existence.
I barely needed to explain. He sniffed the paper, grinned, and made the signs for woman-belong-Alfeo. I nodded and off he went. Sending so much beef to deliver so small a load seemed inefficient. I felt I should have enclosed a gift-something pretty, like the Michelangelo David.
Now I had no more excuses to delay tackling the Maestro’s latest prophecy. I brought light and ink and the book to the slate-topped table. It was not as illegible as I had feared, which, as I told you, implied that the events it foretold would not be long delayed. When I had deciphered it, I didn’t like it one bit.
Dark deeds, dark night, but bright the gold.
Gold rains brighter than the eyes of the serpent;
Eyes and legs a-bleeding on the campo,
So unthinkable love will triumph from afar.
Just then Corrado tapped on the door, come to tell me that supper was ready. Before I reached the dining room, I was brought up short by Bruno’s smile, looming over me like a rainbow. He had brought back a reply from Violetta.
Cedet amor rebus, res age, tutus eris.
– V
Which means roughly that business keeps one safe from love-ominous talk when one’s lover is a courtesan. I hoped that it was just another literary conceit I ought to know. (It is, I later learned, an apothegm by Ovid.)
To my astonishment, I found the Maestro already at the table. His eyes were bloodshot and I guessed he had a raging headache, but he was not as haggard as I expected after two foreseeings in two days.
The dining hall would seat fifty at a pinch, but only the Maestro and I eat in it. There I can dream that my family’s fortunes never sank in the Aegean with the fall of Crete, for our dishes are finest porcelain, our knives and spoons are chased silver, as are the special forks with which we lift the food to our mouths, a custom foreigners find very strange. Colored candles burn in golden candlesticks on the snowy linen cloth between the crystal flagons and enameled beakers.
Normally I feast and my master nibbles, but that night I also had to talk; Mama’s superb risotto of Rovigo veal stuffed with oysters grew cold before I was half-done. I told of my visit to the doge, my exchange with Isaia, and the bizarre English couple. Then, I hoped, I was free to eat.
Alas, no. “You saw the latest quatrain?”
I recited what I thought it said and he nodded grumpily.
“It seems to predict violence,” I said. “Whose eyes and legs are going to bleed, do you suppose?”
“Mine. From now on go armed and take Bruno with you everywhere.”
“You are serious?” I am his eyes and his legs, but I had never heard him admit that before.
“Have you ever known me to make a joke?”
“No, master.” I suspect he tried one seventy years ago and nobody laughed. “Why me?” Not getting an answer, I continued. “What else? Unthinkable love? A rain of gold? Eyes of the serpent?”
Seemingly he could make no more sense of the quatrain than I could. He poked more food around his plate aimlessly. He had eaten almost nothing. “You know who is carried shoulder high around the Piazza San Marco, scattering gold coins to the mob.”
“Yes.” I reached for the wine glass I had been neglecting. He had just described the installation of a new doge. “Isaia confirms that the procurator was murdered. Do you seriously believe you can unmask the culprit before the Ten take you in for questioning?”
He did not tell me what he believed, and it was what the Council of Ten believed-and would do about it-that mattered. I tried again.
“You think there was a botched attempt to assassinate the doge?”
Maestro Nostradamus thumped the table furiously with a tiny fist. “I told you this morning that His Serenity was appealing for our help, didn’t I? Whether someone is trying to murder him or he was just impetuous, he met with foreigners in a private house. If his enemies have the votes, that is enough cause to depose him, or worse. Any two of the three state prosecutors can indict him. He cannot hope to keep the Ten out of this, but the way the matter is presented may swing the vote.”
I murmured, “Yes, master,” and returned to my veal and oysters.
“There is more than one way to reverse an emperor. Tell me again about your tarot reading last night.”
I was both surprised and gratified, for I suspect that tarot is the one occult skill at which I can better him. I went over my reading again.
“As you say, master, it may be hinting that the doge was the intended victim,” I admitted, refilling my glass. “In spite of what you think of my humor, I do think that Death reversed was Circospetto ; Raffaino Sciara just looks too much like Trump XIII. He might have brought death and in the end he did not. Justice reversed meant my night in jail, I suppose, or does it mean a murderer getting off scot-free?”
“I think the jail. Your deck must be well attuned at present.”
From him any praise must be counted fulsome. Pleased, I said, “I can fetch it and try a more detailed reading.”
He shook his head like a chicken ruffling its feathers. “Not tonight. You must never overwork a tarot deck.”
Never having been told that before, I waited for more and there was no more. He reached for his staff. I helped him rise and he leaned on my shoulder all the way across the salone. He usually returns to the atelier after supper and either reads or lectures me until late, but that night he headed straight to his bedchamber and disappeared with a muttered Godbless!
Now was the moment I had mentally set aside to consult my tarot deck again. Why had the Maestro forbidden me to do so? The only reason he had ever given me for letting a deck rest was that it had started reporting obvious nonsense, and mine was certainly not doing that. What else could I do to help solve the murder? I could not use the crystal as he could.