Suddenly I was in grave danger.

“You dare ask him and I’ll tear your eyes out.” Medea bared her teeth at me. She meant it, too.

“Pasqual?”

“I told you that in confidence, and only because you already knew who escorted me that night. I never discuss my patrons!”

“I won’t mention it, I promise!”

She mellowed slightly, into a still-angry Aspasia. “He is no friend of theirs, so far as I know-and I would know. He told me about them afterwards. He said they’ve been turning up at auctions and making fools of themselves.”

“I didn’t know Pasqual collected old books.”

“He doesn’t. He collects antiquities-King Cheops’s mummy or busts of Julius Caesar. Have you ever noticed how many famous Romans had no noses?”

I laughed and changed the subject by asking about Bianca Orseolo. One of the rewards of being a procurator of San Marco is being housed at state expense in the Procuratie, the long building along the north side of the Piazza. Although it is less than a hundred years old, it is already being called the Old Procuratie because they are building a Procuratie Nuovo on the south side. We were almost there.

Aspasia said, “She’s about sixteen, and a complete innocent, reared in a convent. Her mother was called to the Lord last year and since then she has lived with her grandfather as a companion and, I suppose, hostess, although I doubt if the old man entertained at all. Her father lives at the Ca’ Orseolo and her brother is off on the mainland. She must be terribly lonely. Likely her duties were just to keep an eye on the old man, because he was unsteady on his feet. And in his head. I got the impression that he had become very difficult, but she seems to mourn him deeply.”

“Too deeply?”

Hesitation…“I don’t know her well enough to say.”

“How old is her brother?”

“Benedetto? Early twenties. Neither he nor his father was at the Imer party, so neither could be the murderer, right?”

“I’d think so. You said Bianca had a motive.”

“I did not say she committed the crime, though.” Aspasia made a moue of disapproval. “The old man wanted…was insisting that she return to the convent and take her vows. Bianca’s a lively child, or would be if she got the chance. She did not want to. Now her father is head of the family, and he may be more understanding.”

“I would certainly consider murder if anyone tried to force me into a monastery,” I said. “I would negotiate on a nunnery. She had two aunts who were nuns, according to Alessa.”

I should have known better. It was like asking the Pope about Martin Luther. Or vice versa.

“It’s disgusting!” Aspasia said. “Do you know that at least half the noblewomen of this city are banished into convents and never marry? A family’s accursed honor forbids a girl to marry down the social ladder, and very few families rank higher than Bianca’s. That same stupid honor would require that she bring her husband a gigantic dowry, tens of thousands of ducats!”

“The law forbids huge dowries.”

“But who obeys the law? No family can easily part with that sort of money. So the girl is cloistered and the family wealth stays with the sons.”

And sons brought in dowries. I bear a noble name. Someday a wealthy citizen may offer me a thousand or so ducats to marry one of his daughters and sire patrician grandsons for him, a gaggle of little Zenos.

Violetta was in full flood now. “Then they wonder why their sons have trouble finding noble brides. Of course it’s all right for men to marry beneath them, just as long as the brides have money and not too many brothers. Pasqual’s father applied for permission to marry a citizen’s daughter and the Great Council held its nose and approved. The marriage restored the family fortune and hasn’t even hurt his political career. But Pasqual is an only child. His parents are nagging him to marry and produce an heir.”

A few of the old clans have grown enormously, so there can be fifty members of the Great Council with the same family name-some fabulously rich and some mouse-poor, like me. Others trimmed the herd too small and died out.

Violetta had not done. “Do you know that some fathers have forced their daughters to take their vows at knife point?”

Yes I did, but such things are better not discussed. A mere courtesan should not speak ill of her betters. Alarmed, I said, “Beloved, just what did you say to Bianca in your tete-a-tete yesterday?”

She shrugged as if the question was completely unimportant. “I just told her a few things she did not know. She has no one to turn to, you know, no one at all. No mother or sisters to advise her. All her childhood friends are still in the convent. The Church and the state and the men in her family are all against her.”

“Merciful God, woman, if you advised a procurator’s daughter to take up a career as a prostitute, they will pillory you! They’ll brand you, deport you…I don’t know what all they’ll do to you!”

“I did nothing of the kind,” Aspasia said stiffly. “I told you she was trained in a convent! What do you suppose she knows about Ovid or Boccaccio? She knows no songs but psalms. There is only one way she could entertain a man, and that is the least part of a courtesan’s repertoire. I told her that she was crazy to prefer marriage, that many noblewomen are confined even more strictly than nuns. They are assigned husbands for dynastic reasons, usually much older men, and they often lack even the benefit of company.”

“Thank Heaven!” I said, convinced that I was not hearing the whole truth.

“Of course I did have to agree with her that most, or at least many, young wives acquire a cavaliere servente to brighten their lives while their husbands are occupied with business affairs.”

I shuddered.

“I also listed,” she conceded, “some of the more liberal houses, like San Zaccaria, where the sisters’ habits are of attractive cut and decent fabric, not just sackcloth bags, where the diet and the prayer regimen are not too tyrannical. Where they allow music and so on.”

“That’s all right, I suppose,” I said doubtfully.

“Or San Lorenzo, Maddalena, San Secondo, and some on the mainland and outer islands that are even more forgiving, like San Giovanni Evangelista di Torcello-”

“A common brothel!”

“It has unusually relaxed views, but there are many where the sisters are allowed to entertain friends in the parlor, even friends with whiskers. And so on.”

“But you did not suggest she become a courtesan, did you?”

“I answered all her questions,” Aspasia said evasively. “She asked me how I got started and what sort of money one could earn. I told her about secret marriages, which the Church recognizes and the state does not, and what an outraged father can or can not do about it afterwards-especially to the bridegroom, of course. About how a girl might find a trainer and a protector…Useful information that she wanted to have.”

I shuddered even harder. “Did you mention pox and pimps and turning tricks in alleys?”

“I told her that few were as successful as I am. Do you honestly suspect that sweet child of murdering her grandfather?”

“She had the best opportunity,” I said, happy to return to the safer subject of murder. “Who else knew that he was drinking retsina? She must have been close enough to hear him choose it. The servant said he laughed. Doesn’t that suggest a family joke and an audience to appreciate it?”

“How distinctive is the poison’s taste?”

“We don’t know,” I admitted weakly. “We assume it had a strong flavor and therefore the fact that he chose that wine was important.”

“If you are going to argue that way,” Minerva said, “then you must explain how she knew that retsina would be available. It’s rarely served even in the great houses, and I would not expect to see it offered at a party given by a citizen attorney.”

“You know more about that than I do.”