With the poker and a couple of logs from the scuttle, I gave the fire new life. Then I pulled up a chair, laid my forearms on my knees, and looked across at Alessa. Her eyes had been following me, but so far she had not spoken a word.

"Well?" I said. "Violetta isn't here. You are ready to tell me Honeycat's name."

She shook her head and held out her goblet. I confirmed that the bottle on the floor beside her was empty, found another, opened it, poured her a drink, and returned to my post. "Well?" I said again.

"He didn't do it." She spoke with the fastidious care of the very drunk. "Not Honeycat I knew. Ish a common enough pet name." She turned her gaze on the fire and fell silent.

"Tell me about the Honeycat you knew." In vino veritas.

"He was lovely," she told the fire. "He was young and dish-gush-tingly rich. He was fun. He was joy. Very few giovani we look forward to, Alfeo, but I adored Honeycat. We'd fight over him, us girls. Rich, noble, handsome. Knew his classics: Ovid, Plato, and all the rest. He was a lover. He lived to make love. Never tired. Mosht greedy men are rough-bang, bang, bang. Not Honeycat. Was patient, clever.

"He had a red birthmark. Down here… Looked like a cat, so 'course he wash known ash Honeycat. He'd arrive in his gondola at noon, take me to a dinner, then a ball. Senators, procurators, and their wives. Dance till midnight. Oh, he could dance! Then back here and row the boat till dawn. Over and over. Don't know how he did it. Felt I ought to be paying him, not him me. Sometimes we'd throw parties for him-two, three girls, and he'd go all night, never sleep. Always left a present, diamond ring, pearls…"

"Go on," I said. "I want to hear more about this prodigy." His name! What was his name?

"Getting old, Alfeo." She sighed. "Even the nights were bright back then. Did I ever tell you about the time the doge-"

"Tell me about Honeycat, Alessa."

"Ashk Violetta."

"She never met him."

"Lucia in'rodushed them."

"Yes?" I clamped my lips shut because they were trying to snarl. This was what I feared most.

"She was fifteen. Sweet as a rosebud." Silence. All this time Alessa had been speaking to the fire, not me.

"How old was he?"

"Mm? 'Bout nineteen."

Aha! Now I had a lead, because his birth would be recorded in the Golden Book.

"He lined her up right away," Alessa mumbled. "Violetta. Three days in the country at one of his family's places. Right after the funeral. Oh, I was jealous! She'd have come back hundreds of ducats richer after that." Laughter made Alessa's breasts gyrate like gypsy dancers. "Tired, but richer."

What funeral?

"She told me she didn't know Honeycat."

Again that earthquake laugh. "No. We never told. A girl had to discover the mark for herself."

"And Violetta didn't?"

"He never showed up for her. Was the day he ran."

"Ran?" I held myself back from physical assault with an effort. "Alessa, what was his name?"

She drained her glass. "Didn't kill anyone. He wouldn't. All Honeycat ever wanted was girls, girls, girls. Wouldn't've harmed a flea."

I slid to my knees beside her and ran a hand up her arm. "Tell me his name, Alessa. The Honeycat you knew? Not the killer, the one you knew?"

For a moment I thought she still wouldn't. Then she hurled the empty glass into the fire. "Michiel!" she said. "Zorzi Michiel!" She began to weep, great convulsive sobs.

Zorzi Michiel? Oh my God!

No wonder Vasco had warned me off.

I had what I had come for, and the implications were too staggering to think about right then. I stood up.

"Thank you, Alessa. Come along. I'll see you to bed."

She took my hands like a child, but I had to haul her upright. I put one of her arms around my neck and half walked, half carried her to her bedroom. As I said, she would still be worth a tumble, but in that condition she did not tempt me at all. I tucked her in, pecked a kiss on her forehead, and left.

Downstairs, I warned Antonio that Alessa's door was not locked; he said he would see to it. So I emerged into the loggia and the bleak night wind. There was no sign of the cat. Rather than risk the ledge, I paid one of the boatmen a couple of soldi to ferry me sixty feet or so back to Ca' Barbolano.

Zorzi Michiel, the patricide, the worst criminal in a hundred years! And I had been totally wrong about the Council of Ten.

11

By the time the Maestro appeared the following morning, I had done my daily housework. Like all apprentices I am required to keep my master's work area clean and tidy, and he won't let me do that when he is in there himself, which is almost always. That day I had dusted all the furniture along the southeast wall from the examination couch to the medical cupboard, and tidied the contents of that. I felt virtuous. I often feel virtuous, and with good cause.

I rarely speak to him in the morning before he speaks to me. That day I was quite prepared to break my rule, but did not have to, because he came hobbling in on his canes, and that alone would have justified congratulations. I rose when he entered, as a well-behaved apprentice should, and he gave me a good-morning scowl.

"Willow bark!" he said.

I had the draft ready, and all I had to do was stir it up again and bring it to him as he settled in his chair. He took a few mouthfuls, pulled a face, and then frowned up at me.

"You're looking abominably smug. You captured Honeycat last night after a brilliant display of swordsmanship?"

"No, master. That's tonight's program."

"Then you learned his name."

"Yes, master. Zorzi Michiel."

Nostradamus stopped the beaker short of his lips with his jaw hanging open. It was quite a satisfactory response. Finally he whispered, "Saints preserve us! Who told you that?"

Zorzi Michiel had blazed into infamy just over eight years earlier. I had no professional interest in such matters back then; I was apprenticed to a printer, typesetting six days a week and educating myself letter by letter. My greatest worry had been whether I should shave my upper lip or wait a month or so until the rest of the world could see what I could see growing on it, but I certainly heard about the Michiel trouble. Senator Gentile Michiel had been murdered as he was leaving the Basilica San Marco after late-night Mass. The cathedral of Venice is St. Peter's in Castello, which happens to keep the cardinal-patriarch about as far away from the center of the city as it is possible to be. Glorious St. Mark's is the private chapel of the doge, and Christmas Mass there is a very splendid state ceremony, attended only by the great. Murder in such a holy place and on such an occasion shocked the city to the marrow. The Basilica had to be reconsecrated and the Senate ordered a week of public penance and fasting. To make the crime even worse, it turned out that the murderer had been Gentile's youngest son, Zorzi, and the patricide fled from the Republic and its dominions just ahead of Missier Grande and his sbirri.

"Donna Alessa told me. I caught her in a weak moment," I explained, without mentioning that my stroke of genius had been prompted by a near-dead cat. "She gave me an eyewitness description of his eponymous birthmark, a hemangioma of feline form in the genital area."

Nostradamus drank some more willow bark, grimacing at the bitter taste.

"Young Michiel was exiled," he said. "They put a price on his head."

"A thousand ducats, as I recall. But I misjudged the Ten yesterday. They're not trying to protect him. They know he's back and they want to catch him and do whatever horrible things they do to patricides." Also save the reward money, of course.

"Three brothers," the Maestro mumbled. "Gentile had three sons, Bernardo, Domenico, Zorzi. A couple of months after the crime, Bernardo tried to hire me to track down his brother."