"Then came a breakthrough. An admitted prostitute accused Zorzi Michiel of confessing while talking in his sleep.

"The Three, armed with all of the Ten's powers, decided to take the anonymous letter seriously. They arrested Zorzi Michiel-in secret, as is customary-and they put him to the Question. They had his wrists bound behind him. They had him raised on the cord and then dropped. The pain is beyond description as the victim's shoulders are-"

"You need not elaborate," the friar snapped. "We have all seen it done in the Piazza. It is a common enough punishment."

"But the criminal usually knows how many hoists he must endure, and three or four are usual. In interrogations the witness knows only that the torment will continue until he can stand no more, and on, beyond even that. He may be repeatedly dropped. He may have weights tied to his feet. His hands and face turn an incredible red. His joints are wrenched apart, his ligaments torn. The strain-"

"Stop!"

"If you wish. As you know, Brother, the pain is so terrible that a man who does not confess on the cord cannot be hanged. Zorzi did not confess. He died. Possibly his heart stopped, or his rib cage collapsed. It can happen. It did happen."

Pause. Then the friar whispered, "How do you know this?"

"Because it explains what followed. The state inquisitors faced a new problem. They still had no culprit and now they had a dead man to explain. What could they do next? Torture the boy's mother?

"They committed perjury. They disposed of the body and announced that they had found proof of Zorzi's guilt but he had escaped. Nothing too unexpected there, not in the Venetian system of justice. Case closed. But they made no effort to find out where he might have gone-they did not even question his mother about that!"

"Is there much more of this?" Fedele asked wearily.

"I fear there is, Brother. Because Foscari, before he died, perhaps prompted by his confessor, summoned sier Bernardo and told him the story of his brother's death. Bernardo went home and wisely told no one. Like a fool, though, he wrote it all in his diary, perhaps thinking that it might clear the family name at some far future date. He told the rest of you last Sunday. The sickness you had all thought cured erupted again; the buried corpse rose from the grave.

"Unfortunately, by then Jacopo had already read the diary. And he had told your mother that Zorzi had been betrayed by a whore. Your mother was the only person on earth who knew for a fact that Zorzi Michiel had not stabbed his father. All these years she had believed him safe and sound somewhere on the mainland. She determined to be revenged on the perjurer, whoever she might be."

"Alfeo, Alfeo! You are saying that my mother, donna Alina Orio, not only killed her husband but has now set out to kill all the fallen women in Venice?"

"Not all, only those your brother was patronizing in the weeks leading up to Gentile's death-any woman who might have lain with him after that sad event and betrayed his confession. She had a list of possible culprits because Zorzi recounted all his exploits to her, and she kept a record of them. I cannot explain her motives for doing so, but perhaps you have met such a sin before."

"You have any evidence to support this ridiculous allegation?"

"We did have. We had the diary your mother kept of her youngest son's fornication. Now the Council of Ten has that record. Both names and handwriting match. Your mother's crimes were proven beyond doubt this evening, Brother. She attempted to murder another courtesan, who would have been the fifth she had slain. Fortunately she was caught in time. She is presently at home in the custody of your brothers."

Fedele bent his head and prayed.

The cat watched him.

An aged man with a cane entered the church, put a coin in the box for a candle from the rack beside us, and then headed off toward the altar. He seemed not to have noticed our little group, not even the cat.

Shivering as the cold sank through to my bones, I waited until Fedele had completed his prayer and was ready for more.

"Now it is obvious why your mother hired Nostradamus. The diary named the courtesans but not the 'amateurs'-as your brother Domenico called them, the adulterous married women that Zorzi seduced. She hoped he would identify some of them for her to hunt down.

"Last Wednesday, you were summoned to the deathbed of Giovanni Gradenigo. He did not know that the friar who arrived at his bedside had once been Timoteo Michiel, any more than you had realized that your own father's death would play a part in his confession.

"Of course Gradenigo told you much the same story as Foscari had told his confessor, except that he went further, because one of Zorzi's women at that time was not a courtesan but a highborn lover, an adulteress by the name of Tonina. That is a rare name, and in this case it referred to donna Tonina Bembo Gradenigo, wife of Marino Gradenigo, Giovanni's son. After the Council of Ten proclaimed Zorzi Michiel's guilt and flight, she went to her father-in-law and admitted that Zorzi had been with her when Gentile was stabbed. Zorzi was innocent, she said, and must be pardoned and recalled. But Zorzi was beyond recall, alas.

"Gradenigo concluded that he had tortured an innocent man to death and blackened a noble family's name. Racked by guilt, he swore his daughter-in-law to secrecy. He abandoned politics and devoted the rest of his life to good works."

Pause. Then Fedele said harshly, "This is unbelievable!"

"There is an alternative," I admitted, "but it is even worse. Zorzi had truthfully said he could not produce an alibi without betraying a lady. Perhaps he was just posturing and believed that he could always tattle if he had to-until he learned, too late, that his lover was the daughter-in-law of one of the state inquisitors, one of the men interrogating him. Had he not known that? Did they break him on the cord so that he blurted out Tonina's name, but Gradenigo and his partners refused to accept the alibi and just kept on torturing him?"

After a moment Fedele mumbled, "Gradenigo was an honorable man."

That was the only answer I would ever get. It seemed that Zorzi had withstood the torment and taken his secret to the grave. Despite his debauchery, he had been no weakling.

"But you have no proof of any of this flummery," the friar said harshly.

"No, Brother? When Gradenigo was dying you blocked his dying wish to speak with Nostradamus. When you came calling on Sunday and the Maestro speculated that the murder weapon had been available in Palazzo Michiel, you encouraged him to think so. You did not actually tell a lie, although you knew very well that his guess was wrong. You did not want the case reopened, although by then you knew that Zorzi had been unjustly condemned. You were hiding something."

"I did not wish my family to suffer more," the friar muttered.

He was still twisting the truth.

"That too, no doubt," I said. "But now I have seen the anonymous letter, and last Thursday you wrote a note to me, if you remember." Of course one could not hang a man on a mere handwriting resemblance and I had compared them in memory only, but Fedele did not know this.

He sighed. "Many laws still define a cleric as a person who can read and write, Alfeo. Not a day passes but some illiterate person asks me to write a letter for him."

"Brother, you are still doing it! Do you honestly expect me to believe that you wrote out a virtual death warrant for your own brother without insisting that the true author's name be included?"

Fedele was silent, staring blindly along the great nave toward the faint candles on the main altar beyond the choir and screen.

"You composed that note!" I insisted. "Why, why? What motive could you possibly have had to bring a false accusation against your own brother in full knowledge of the horrors that might result?"