“How can you do that if you don’t know what language it is?” Vasco demanded.
“Not many languages are likely-Tuscan, Latin, Spanish, Veneziano, Arabic, Turkish, French. They use Old Persian in the Porte sometimes. I can read most of those and recognize the rest. But perhaps I can find another way. Take this trash away, Vizio.” The old man heaved himself to his feet, I handed him his staff, and he hobbled over to the crystal. “You can both get some sleep. I’ll lock up, Alfeo.”
I doused the other lamps and shooed Vasco out of the atelier ahead of me.
I did not offer to share my bed with him, but I did find him a blanket and a pillow. He stretched out on a couch in the salone.
The last thing I did before going to bed was to consult my tarot. It gave me an assortment of the minor arcana, all low numbers without a single court card or trump. I had not seen such a disgusting heap since before I was toilet trained. Deciding I must be overtired, I fell into bed.
10
I awoke at dawn as always. Remembering the work I had to do, I growled myself upright, groaned myself into my clothes, and grouched out into the salone in my stocking soles. The vizio ’s blanket lay unoccupied beside the couch, so he had presumably gone to recharge the canal, and I had a chance to reach the atelier without attracting his unwelcome attention.
The atelier door is both locked and warded at night. The Maestro might have omitted setting the wards if he was exhausted after his clairvoyance, but I played safe and cast the counter-spell before using my key. As soon as I had let daylight in, I went to inspect the slate-topped table.
What I found was ominous. It began in the usual barely legible scrawclass="underline"
When the cat is in the trap, the mouse…
But that was followed by mere chalk scribbles, snail tracks bearing no resemblance to writing at all. I have known the Maestro to prophecy in such appalling cacography that neither of us could read half of it, but I could recall no occasion when he had failed to produce a reasonable attempt at a quatrain.
And my tarot had failed me.
The door closed behind me and I spun around angrily. It was not, as I had expected, Filiberto Vasco snooping. It was Danese Dolfin, obviously released from his kennel and apparently not snooping, because he came striding straight over to me, his manner all but shooting lightning bolts. He had given up wearing his sling.
“Why is the vizio here?” he demanded.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You don’t know?”
“I know, but I can’t tell you.”
That stopped him. I was tempted to suggest he ask around his new family, but even that hint would violate my oath.
“Does sier Alvise Barbolano know he’s here?”
“No,” I said, “and I strongly advise you not to tell him.” Then I remembered old Luigi, whose mouth is larger than the Adriatic. The news would be out the moment Luigi could find a listener.
More wary now, Danese said, “Is he going to stay long?”
There were witty retorts I could have made to that, but I wasn’t feeling witty. “Several days.”
“It’s intolerable!” Danese shouted, turning on his heel.
“Yes,” I said softly as he disappeared. Life holds many trials we can do nothing about, but with luck Vasco would rid us of one of them.
I followed Danese out, locked the atelier, and went in search of shaving water. Halfway along my trek to the kitchen stood Vasco, folding his blanket with the satchel strap over his shoulder like a tippet, as if he had worn it all night. We greeted each other with cold nods, acknowledging that our enforced cooperation was only temporary and battle would resume at the first opportunity.
The kitchen was redolent with ambrosial scents of fresh bread and the khave Mama Angeli was just preparing. Giorgio and four sons sat gobbling at the big table-the older girls would still be dressing small fry. We exchanged blessings and they waited hopefully for me to explain the additional houseguest. I just asked them to keep down the noise outside the Maestro’s room.
In stalked the vizio wearing sword and satchel, closely followed by Danese wearing his lute. They both looked rumpled and unshaven-Danese less so, because he was blond and had not had to sleep in his clothes-and their joint arrival seemed so staged that I half expected them to burst into song.
Vasco asked me, “When will Nostradamus want to see these papers again?”
“Probably not for a couple of hours.”
“May I ask your gondolier to take me home to fetch some clothes? I won’t be long.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Just promise me you’ll keep the door locked while I’m gone.”
“Should I wear my sword?”
“You’re probably safer without it.”
“Very true,” I said, “I hate inquests.” I glanced inquiringly at Giorgio and he nodded, of course. “He will be happy to oblige you, lustrissimo.” I was sorely tempted to add, “But don’t tip him too generously; he isn’t used to it.” I didn’t say that, though, and the self-restraint required must have made all the angels in Heaven cheer.
Danese said nothing, but when gondolier and vizio departed, he went with them. I looked across the table at the amused stare of a descending line of dark eyes-Christoforo, Corrado, Archangelo, and little Piero.
“It’s a good job I like your father,” I said. “Or I’d be praying for sharks to sink his gondola. Chris, go and bolt the front door behind them.”
Eight eyes widened. “Why?” chorused one bass, one baritone, one tenor, and one alto.
“You know the doge is a great book collector and the Maestro is an expert on old books? He’s examining some very rare documents for the doge, so valuable that the doge sent the vizio along to guard them.” That was as close to the truth as I could come and it satisfied the youngsters, although probably not Mama, who never missed a word of any conversation, spoken or unspoken. Hating myself for even that much deception, I beat a fast retreat with a mug of hot water and another of khave.
I checked that both doors were bolted as well as locked.
As soon as I had shaved, I took my tarot deck from under my pillow and tried another reading. It was no more informative than the last one and I tucked the deck away again, fearing that any more attempts to force it might desensitize it. My tarot skill had apparently become as useless as the Maestro’s clairvoyance, which confirmed what I already suspected-that whatever we were up against would not be deterred by bolted doors or Filiberto Vasco’s sword.
When Vasco returned, he found me at my side of the big desk behind a pile of every book on cryptography in the Maestro’s library-Roger Bacon, Johannes Trithemius, Girolamo Cardano, Leon Battista Alberti, Giovani Porta, Blaise de Vigenere. Al-Kindi was there, too, but I can’t read Arabic. Needless to say, I had made small progress with those I could read.
“No sign of the Maestro,” I said. “May I have a look at the evidence?” You cannot conceive how much it hurt me to sound humble.
The vizio could, though, and smirked. “What for?”
“Not the ciphertext, just Circospetto ’s notes.”
He had the effrontery to make himself comfortable in the Maestro’s chair and beam across at me. “Why?”
“I have an idea and I wanted to see if the Ten’s gnomes thought to check for it.”
“What sort of idea?”
“About nomenclators.”
“What’s a nomenclator?”
“This frantic impulse to exercise your brain after so many years of disuse may do serious damage.”
He just smiled.
“I taught you last night,” I said with saintly patience, while silently vowing epochal revenge, “that a simple Caesar alphabet cipher is too easy to break. The most popular way to improve it is to add more symbols, usually numbers. So you have, say, 32 standing for D, 14 for N, and a dozen or so different codes for a very common letter like E -and so on. Then you start adding symbols for common words, perhaps 42 for the and 51 for and. That sort of list is called a nomenclator. It makes the cipher harder to break, but not much. Carry it too far and you’re writing a whole codebook, with numbers for King of Denmark, Venice, Janissary regiment, and Lord knows what. That’s more secure, but then your spy can’t carry the cipher in his head anymore and has to lug a book around with him. If the enemy captures it, a codebook is enough evidence to hang him and reveal all your coded correspondence, past, present, and future. If a Caesar alphabet is compromised, you only have to change the key, which is a single number, whereas replacing a codebook is a huge task. But codebooks are how most states encipher their dispatches.”