Three men came plodding up the stairs and stopped in alarm when they saw the vizio and a crazy foreigner arguing with him. Vasco, who was starting to turn red himself, stepped out into the hallway.

“If you came to take the foreigners’ baggage, you are not required today.”

They shrugged and removed themselves without a word. He turned and the door slammed in his face with a peal of thunder. He laughed.

“Having a better day than you expected?” I inquired.

“Oh, much better! Stay here, Zeno. I don’t suppose they will try to slip away without their baggage, but I must find some reinforcements.” He dashed off down the stairs.

I waited, hoping the door would open. After a few minutes it did. Hyacinth peered out, then emerged fully.

“We demand to see the English ambassador!”

“I cannot help you, madame. The matter is in the hands of magistrates.”

She eyed me thoughtfully. “I could reward you well if you would take a message to him. Two ducats?”

I sighed and shook my head in deep regret.

She changed signals, lowering eyelashes, pursing plum lips. “If you could help me, I should be very much in your debt, lustrissimo.”

Saints protect me! I imagined a tussle with those great limbs and hastily thought of Violetta instead. “It would do no good. The vizio has gone to fetch guards. If you try to leave the city, you will be stopped, madame. I am sorry.”

She went back in and slammed the door.

Vasco reappeared at the bottom of the topmost flight of stairs, beckoning me to go down to him.

“All arranged?” I asked. “That was quick.”

He smiled smugly. “All arranged.”

Venice supports nothing like the great police forces found in most cities, but the Council of Ten has agents everywhere. Without doubt someone was already carrying word to the palace and others would keep watch so the Feathers did not slip away.

As we walked back to the gondola, I asked, “Am I to be charged with attempted rape?”

“I hope that can be arranged,” the vizio said happily. “It will depend, I suspect, on what happens this evening. If we need a way to solve our Alfeo Zeno problem, and the Feathers need permission to leave the city, something can be worked out to our mutual satisfaction, if not to yours.”

“Certainly not to mine,” I agreed. “An automatic death sentence, commuted to ten years in the galleys?”

“I wouldn’t count on that last bit if I were you.”

Another point to him.

I said, “You mentioned that you shared a tutor with Domenico Chiari. What subject were you studying?”

“English and German.”

“Why?”

“You think I got this job entirely on my good looks?”

“Obviously not.” He had gotten it by being somebody’s nephew, but it would be petty to say so. “So Domenico was planted on the foreigners to spy for the Ten, but he only admitted to knowing French, not English, so that he could eavesdrop on their private conversations?”

“That’s very obvious, Alfeo. Quite simplistic.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just a dumb monseigneur. And has Domenico Chiari now returned to his normal job at the bank, spying on foreign currency transactions?”

We arrived at the mooring and had climbed into the gondola before I received an answer. I told Giorgio to take us to the Ca’ Orseolo. When I joined Vasco in the felze he said:

“I don’t know what’s happened to Domenico. He’s not a close friend of mine, but he is a friend. That’s another reason the Feathers will not be leaving Venice today.”

22

C a’ Orseolo fronted on the Grand Canal, naturally. It was too old to be one of the truly splendid palaces, but it still gave off a reek of money that annoyed me intensely when I remembered all the trouble I had had collecting the Maestro’s fee for the ill-fated horoscope. Two large cargo barges were tied up at the watergate when we arrived, and Giorgio had trouble docking. Although Florence is a greater weaving center, Venice trades in wool from England and Flanders, cotton from Egypt, silk from Cathay. I knew that Ca’ Orseolo was one of the principal importers of finished fabrics, and I counted ten men unloading bales. Inside the androne I saw stacks of furniture that had probably just arrived from the Procuratie.

By myself, and especially after the previous day’s spitting match, I would have needed the backing of a brigade of musketeers to get close to any member of the family. I had dear Vasco instead. Without hesitation he strode into the androne, headed straight to a man issuing orders, and demanded to be taken at once to the noble Enrico. And so he was, with me smiling happily along at his side. We did not even have to go upstairs. The Lizard and his son were closeted in a counting room nearby with an elderly clerk and a dozen massive ledgers. None of them was wearing formal mourning, so grief had been stoically set aside in favor of tallying up the inheritance. Or possibly young Benedetto was being given a lesson in the family business. His sling still hung around his neck, but did not contain his arm. That hand held a pen, and he was making notes. A fast healer, obviously.

Father and son stared in blazing disbelief at the intruders, from Vasco to Zeno and back again. Vasco stepped aside with a flourish to give me the stage. The clerk tactfully scuttled out, closing the door.

I bowed with grace. “Your Excellency… sier Benedetto…I am deeply sorry to have to intrude on your grief again. I did inform Your Excellency yesterday that officers of the Republic were supporting my investigation of your honored father’s death.” I paused so Enrico might comment. He merely laid his arms on the desk and stared at me with his bulging eyes like Jupiter aiming thunderbolts.

I continued. “This evening, one hour after Angelus, the persons who were present in the Imer residence on the evening of the thirteenth will assemble there again, at which time my master, Doctor Nostradamus, will demonstrate how and by whom your father was murdered. Since your daughter was one of the witnesses, we request that she attend.”

Enrico waited to see if that was all, then snake-eyed my escort, “You are the genuine vizio, Filiberto Vasco?”

“I am, Excellency.”

I wondered if the great conciliator was about to offer us a deal, something involving only half my head on a plate.

“I wanted to be quite sure. The swindler beside you intruded on our house of mourning yesterday claiming to speak for the Council of Ten and accompanied by a prostitute masquerading as a nun. He created a disturbance, even threatening to draw on my son, who was unarmed. I am surprised by the company you keep, Vizio.”

Vasco’s day just kept getting better. How he managed to keep from giggling I could not imagine.

“I am deeply shocked to hear these charges, Your Excellency. They are most serious and I am certain that the Ten will react with great severity.”

“Is he a nobile homo as he claims?”

Vasco sighed. “Regrettably, yes, at the moment, but even if he escapes the gallows, he will certainly be stricken from the Golden Book when he is sent to the galleys.” He gave me a warm smile. “His master does have permission to stage a reenactment this evening, though, and action against both of them will have to wait until after that is completed. I expect that Missier Grande himself will be there, and will certainly oblige a minister of your eminence by taking Zeno into custody as soon as the farce is over. I may report that your daughter will attend?”

I was keeping an eye on Benedetto, who looked troubled. Alfeo with the vizio ’s backing was a much more credible threat than Alfeo without.

His father said, “As a member of the Collegio, I take grave exception to this harassment in my time of sorrow. The Council of Ten has approved the farce you describe?”

Vasco would not have arrived where he had without some natural skill at obfuscation. “The chiefs raised no objections to Maestro Nostradamus’s proposal, but they granted him no immunity either. He and Zeno may both be vulnerable to prosecution for malicious mischief, at the very least.”