14

The stairs were dusty and cobwebbed, a servants' access no longer used. At the top we emerged through another inconspicuous door, which my guide carefully locked behind us, although from the outside it looked to be of no importance, perhaps a closet. We had come to the sort of luxurious private quarters to be expected in so grand a palace. The decor was modern and I was hard put not to gape around me as my guide led me around a corridor and across an antechamber to a spacious reception room, presently occupied by three women.

I judged the one to my right to be a servant by her clothes, her shriveled, weathered features, and her occupation, for she was presently mending a child's britches. The one on my left was dressed as a lady of means, small and plump, somewhat mousy, aged perhaps thirty. She held a book. I had heard her reading aloud as I crossed the anteroom.

The one on the chair between their two stools was obviously the great person I had been brought to meet, donna Alina Orio, widow of the murdered Gentile Michiel and mother of his infamous killer. She held an embroidery hoop rather too far from her nose.

"Sier Alfeo Zeno, madonna," said my companion.

Skewered by eyes as sharp as the servant's darning needle, I bowed low. She was a tall, but not heavy woman, clad in fine velvet and lace, all in black, and carefully adorned with pearls and face paint. Palace life and ample servants and wet nurses had preserved her well; only the hollow cheeks caused by lost teeth acknowledged that she must be over fifty and had borne many children.

"Why is a messenger boy claiming to be a patrician?" she demanded.

"I am a patrician, madonna; my birth is listed in the Golden Book. I carried only a letter of introduction and bring a message in my head. I am apprenticed to Maestro Nostradamus, the astrologer and philosopher. Those are learned professions, permitted to the patriciate."

"So what is that precious message?"

My immediate fate balanced on a knife edge. If she had summoned me just to see what I looked like, she could now jettison me and carry on with her day.

"It was addressed to your noble son, madonna, but he chose not to hear it."

She considered that answer and decided it would pass muster.

"Leave us," she commanded, and the women rose in a rustle of taffeta. The maid curtseyed and hurried to open the door. The lady companion nodded with no comment and a completely expressionless face, although including her in the same command as the servant had to be a deliberate discourtesy.

"Be seated, sier Alfeo."

She handed the youth her embroidery to put away and clasped her hands together on her lap. They were more timeworn than her face, and the gesture revealed inner tensions that her expression never would.

I thought I had my guide identified by then as her cavaliere servente, gentleman escort and general errand boy, who might, if he was lucky, also be her gigolo. There could be worse occupations, even if the woman was older by thirty years. I began to doubt my judgment when she did not invite him to take the other stool. Besides, donna Orio looked like the sort of grande dame who had conceived her children by prayer and never done anything so undignified as rollick naked with a man.

"Eight years ago next month, I told my oldest son to hire your precious Nostradamus to locate Zorzi for me. You are aware who Zorzi is?"

"Zorzi Michiel, your youngest son, who was sent into exile."

Her knuckles whitened. "Who fled into exile. He was condemned in absentia, the evidence that would have proved his innocence never considered. Nostradamus claimed he could not do what I ordered, but more likely he was playing safe and chose not to. Today the old fraud sends a boy with unspecified information. My son rightly decided to ignore you. Yet you waited two and a half hours and had to be sent packing like a beggar. Are you without shame, sier Alfeo?"

"There can be no shame in serving my master diligently."

She disliked my smart-aleck hint that the shame was her son's. Her mouth curled in an angry pout.

"Why does Nostradamus not deliver his own news?"

"Because he is frail and rarely leaves his residence now."

"Does your message concern Zorzi?"

That question posed a problem, but the Maestro expects me to make my own decisions and be prepared to defend them. He had said that if Bernardo was not hiding Honeycat then he did not know who else to ask. I did, now, but would she tell me anything? And if I told her anything, what would she do?

"Alas, madonna, I cannot reveal that to anyone except sier Bernardo."

That was the right answer and any other would have seen me tossed out a watergate without a gondola.

She sucked in her cheeks angrily, giving herself a monkey face. "Jacopo, where is Bernardo?"

"He is in conference with the bankers, I believe, madonna."

"Domenico?"

"Playing tennis." Jacopo seemed remarkably well-informed about the household's activities.

Alina pouted. "Will he do," she asked me, "or must it be Bernardo?"

"I was sent to sier Bernardo."

"Go and tell Bernardo I want him right away."

Jacopo departed. Bernardo was nominal head of Casa Michiel, but I was alone with the real head. I waited politely for her to name the topic of our conversation.

"My son was never guilty of his father's murder! He was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice."

What else would a mother say?

"Alas, madonna, it is hard to contend with the Council of Ten when it does not reveal the basis for its decisions." It was also dangerous to accuse it of making mistakes.

"There was no evidence, no real evidence. There could not be. Yes, he quarreled with his father. He was wild and outspoken, but what boy of his age is not? His father sowed enough wild oats, even when he was old enough to know better. Zorzi was guilty of lack of respect, nothing more. He would never have hurt anyone deliberately."

"I have been told the same by others," I remarked.

Steely eyes glinted. "What others?"

"Persons who knew him." I did not add, intimately.

"You are too young to remember. You have been going around prying into those matters?" She ought not to scowl; it made her as ugly as a gargoyle.

"I was investigating other matters, madonna, and by accident ran into talk of your husband's death."

She kneaded her wizened lips together for a moment. "Nostradamus claims to foretell the future. Can he also envision the past?"

"Not as such, but I have seen him unravel old mysteries. Some of his methods are occult, but often he just uses the wisdom of a sage to cut away a web of lies and deceit that has concealed the truth."

Silence fell, as if I had dissolved and she were alone, staring at nothing. I was attracted by the painting on the far side of the room. "Is that portrait by Paris Bordone, madonna?"

She frowned as if only the rich should see art. "It is. You approve?"

"At his best he comes very close to the great Titian and I would judge that work to be one of his best. I cannot believe that it did justice to the subject, though." She had never been a beauty, but she had been young.

"Nostradamus teaches you flattery also?"

I laughed aloud. "Forgive me. If you had ever met him, you would understand my levity."

"Who painted that one behind you, sier Alfeo?"

Fortunately I was right again, and winter began to thaw into spring. Before summer arrived, her son did, with Jacopo in tow.

Bernardo Michiel was bulky, a meat inspector who brought his work home with him. Even in ordinary gentlemen's attire, without the imposing robes of a patrician, he was still a domineering presence. His beard was big, black, and bushy; his brows beetled.

I rose and bowed as little as possible without giving direct insult. Neither of us had a chance to speak before Alina Orio did.