“Or Nostradamus.”

“He doesn’t get out much,” I agreed. She was right, as always. The murderer must have carried the poison to the reception, so the crime was premeditated, but then to count on the victim drinking or eating something with a very powerful flavor seemed strangely hit-and-miss. “Who, apart from Imer and Karagounis knew there would be retsina available?”

“Let’s ask Bianca,” Violetta said as the gondola nudged against a mooring post.

I gripped her arm. “You wait here! It’s far too dangerous for you to go around masquerading as a nun. Suppose we run into her father?”

“Her brother would be more dangerous.” Medea struck my hand away, scorching me with a warning glare. “Just how do you think an unknown, unattached young man like you is going to get in to speak with an unmarried girl of her lineage and upbringing? On the very day of her grandfather’s funeral? You are not usually so stupid, Alfeo Zeno.”

“Ah, flattery!” I stepped ashore and handed her up beside me. She turned to the nearest door, and I said, “No, this way.”

“You have been here before?”

“Two years ago. I delivered the procurator’s horoscope.” Then I had been sent around to the tradesmen’s entrance, but I had argued my way up into the state rooms by refusing to deliver the scroll to anyone other than the great man himself. I had been tantalized by glimpses of marvelous paintings that I had not been able to examine properly.

This time I expected a tomb of a house, draped in mourning and silent as the streets of Atlantis, but a barge tied up at the steps was half full of furniture. Two workmen came out carrying a chest. On our way upstairs we passed a team bringing down a wardrobe.

“The family has three days to move out,” Violetta told me.

“That seems cruelly soon.”

“It is usual. Funeral this morning; tomorrow they will accept condolences in the palace courtyard. The Great Council will elect a new procurator on Sunday. You can be certain that vote buying and arm twisting have already begun.” That was Aspasia speaking, of course.

“Surely the family will have already gone to the Ca’ Orseolo?” I said.

A line of workmen ran up past us to fetch more furniture.

“She said not yet.” Helen wafted her lashes at the harassed young doorman who accosted us. “Sister Maddalena and sier Alfeo Zeno, to see Madonna Bianca.”

He had certainly expected me to speak, not her, and was perhaps startled to discover that nuns even had eyelashes. Confused, he mumbled, “The family is not receiving visitors today, sister.”

“Madonna Bianca agreed to receive us this afternoon.”

Understandably, he went and fetched the majordomo, who frowned suspiciously at me, as if trying to remember where he had seen me before. He was older and less susceptible to eyelashes, but Helen had already lowered her veil and yielded place to Aspasia, who explained about her friendship with Bianca and their appointment for this afternoon. We were shown into a reception room overlooking the Piazza. Violetta swept forward to look out the window, while I followed unhappily, squirming at intruding on a family’s bereavement-we were not even wearing mourning! Half the room had already been stripped of furniture. Two men followed us in and left with a bundle that probably contained a harpsichord. I had mad visions of being left behind, locked up in an empty apartment with Violetta.

Outside, the Piazza was being swept by damp gusts of February. Official mourning had also helped reduce the usual bustle, but the mountebanks at their stalls were still hawking their quack nostrums. The beggars were still in evidence, the hawkers, porters, priests, nuns, monks, and, of course, the inevitable crowds of aimless foreigners from all corners of the world. I could not hear their voices, but I could guess at many of the costumes-Egypt, Turkey, Dalmatia, Spain, France, Greece, England.

Leaving the depressing wintery sight, I went to admire a large Titian, a family group adoring the Virgin: two men and five youngsters, no wives and mothers allowed. Titian died when I was a toddler, so even if this were a late work, as the fashions suggested, the old man on the right was the wrong generation to be our murdered procurator. I recognized the martyred Bertucci in the heavy-jawed central figure who dominated the composition, the suppliant who would have paid for the painting. He was wearing the robes of a ducal counselor. The children were his brood as listed for us by Alessa-two youths destined to die abroad, two girls to burn in a convent fire, and Enrico. After so much tragedy, it seemed macabre to keep the picture hanging in full view. My mental image of the late Bertucci Orseolo was not yet clear enough to tell me if he had been a maudlin romantic who enjoyed weeping at the sight of his dead children, or the exact opposite, a Spartan with a marble heart and the hide of a crocodile.

Violetta joined me and went through the same reasoning. “That must be Enrico,” she said, pointing to the youngest boy. “The only one of the lot still living.”

The workmen had cleared the last of the furniture and were rolling up a rug at the far end of the hall, ignoring us. From the noises I could hear, the entire house was infested with them.

I was just about to head for another picture-a mythological free-for-all between centaurs and armed nudists-when a rapid tap of heels made me turn, knowing that whoever was coming was not Bianca. He was about my age; tall, self-assured, and holding his chin high as befitted a man whose ancestors had helped rule the Republic for nine hundred years. He wore a black robe of mourning with a train, a black bonnet, and a sling supporting his right arm, all of them beautifully tailored, even the sling.

“Sister Maddalena? May I ask what business you have intruding on my sister’s-” Silence.

Violetta had folded back her veil again. His face turned ivory-white. My heart dropped like an anchor.

She curtseyed. “My most sincere sympathy on your loss, Bene.”

“You are no nun!”

She smiled. “As you well know.”

“What do you want with my sister? Why does a harlot force herself on a girl of patrician rank? She says you were here yesterday, too.”

“I came to help her, Benedetto.”

“Help her? Help her in what way?”

He had recovered from his first shock and was moving swiftly to anger. Had I been alone I might have taken to my heels, but I was much more frightened about what might happen to Violetta than I was about any danger to me.

Aspasia remained serene and confident. “How are you enjoying Padua?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“Who suggested you go there?” Her smile would have dissolved the stoniest heart. “Be fair, Benedetto! Admit that you have benefitted from my help in the past. When I made you welcome in my bed, you called me courtesan, not that other word.”

He colored. “State your business!”

She sighed. “May I present sier Alfeo Zeno? Will you listen to what he has to say, please, Benedetto? Then you will see why this is important.”

At a glance Benedetto assessed my best outfit as rags and me as poor trash, probably her pimp. He barely nodded to my bow.

“ Clarissimo,” I said, “my sympathy on your sad loss. The news I bring can only increase the pain. Your honored grandfather,” and I pointed up at the painting, “was murdered.”

He bristled. “I give you two minutes to justify that remark.”

“One will suffice. You have no doubt heard gossip that the procurator’s death was prophesied in a horoscope prepared for him by Maestro Nostradamus. Your sister may have told you that the doctor Nostradamus who came to his aid when he took ill at the supper party was the same man. He immediately recognized the symptoms of a certain poison. Whether you believe in astrology, as your grandfather did, or scoff at it like His Serenity Pietro Moro, you must acknowledge that Nostradamus is a celebrated doctor. He says that your grandfather was poisoned. I am helping him discover who did this terrible thing.”