I spread my hands in bewilderment. “Maestro Nostradamus is the finest clairvoyant in Europe, madonna. He foresaw the honor of your visit this morning. If you would be so gracious…”
“We just decided! We didn’t tell anyone!” Madonna Morosini was much too much of a lady to dig an elbow in her gangling husband’s ribs, but her tone told him that she had told him so. He remained inscrutable, suspending judgment.
And she? A man rarely sees more than he looks for, the Maestro says, and I had already learned far more from her than I ever would from staring at her companion. I decided she was very slightly disheveled, although it was hard to pick out any one feature that implied this. Were her eyelids slightly pink from weeping, or was her face powder patchy, as if applied in a hurry? Her hair was not as carefully dressed as it should have been. She wore no jewelry at all, and normally a great lady shows some.
The Maestro is old and very frail, but his hearing is as sharp as a scalpel. I had left the door half-open. I led the way to it, pushed it wide. “The Sanudos are here, master.”
Unless newcomers know what to expect, they must be disappointed by their first sight of the celebrated pedant, prophet, polymath, physician, and philosopher. He is bent and wizened, and his black physician’s gown and hat make him look even smaller than he really is. Badly lamed by an excess of rheum in his hips, he should walk with two canes, but prefers a single long staff inlaid with silver sigils. His hair hangs in untidy silver rat-tails, but he dyes his wispy goatee brown, for no reason I have ever been able to discover.
Visitors are always impressed by the atelier, though-the double desk, the examination couch, the great armillary spheres, globes both terrestrial and celestial. Sanudo was too dignified to stare at the alchemical bench or the wall of books, but he certainly noticed them in passing and would know that this room was the Maestro’s own, not just borrowed for the morning.
The Maestro had left the desk and was standing by his favorite red velvet chair beside the carved marble fireplace-not that the fireplace was in use on a sweltering September noon, but that is where he sits to interview visitors. “You are a little earlier than I expected, Your Excellency…madonna Eva…but of course most welcome. My home is honored…” His flattery became a mumble as he bowed. He would have hobbled forward to kiss sier Zuanbattista’s sleeve, but Sanudo stopped him with a gracious gesture.
“Do be seated, Doctor.”
I led the way to the green chairs, and the nobility floated behind me with the grace of galleons crossing the lagoon. There are always two chairs opposite the red one and if the Sanudos assumed that they had been arranged especially for them, that was their own mistake, not misinformation from me. As soon as all three principals were settled, I returned to the desk by the windows to watch faces and take notes if needed. The Maestro had his back to the light, not by accident.
Madonna Eva was trying to appear as calm as her husband, but her lips were compressed and her seething hands struggled to destroy a wadded lace hankie.
Zuanbattista said, “If you foresaw our coming, lustrissimo, no doubt you already know the nature of our problem?” His tone contained no irony whatsoever, but it was there in his eyes.
I hate skeptics. I love watching the Maestro deal with them.
“Only in a general way, clarissimo. Family trouble, of course. Quite sudden…and just this morning? When did you discover her absence?”
Madonna Eva lost color under her paint and even messer Zuanbattista deigned to look startled, but it is simple enough if you work it out. Family trouble because Sanudo had brought his wife or, more likely, she had insisted he bring her to consult the famous clairvoyant. Sudden because of the woman’s swollen eyelids. Just this morning because he knew they had not told anyone they were coming, and also to win another minuscule nod without committing himself to anything. And her absence because by then he could be nine-tenths sure that the problem was a missing daughter. Eva Sanudo was of an age to have nubile daughters, if only just. Even if it wasn’t a daughter, half the things that can be lost take a feminine pronoun in Veneziano .
“You impress us, Doctor,” Sanudo admitted.
“Now it is your turn.” The Maestro smiled by stretching his mouth sideways and bunching his cheeks. “The details if you please.”
“This is confidential.” Sanudo glanced suspiciously across at me.
“Certainly. Sier Alfeo has my complete confidence in all matters.”
He almost never uses my title in front of a client or patient. When he does, his instinct is infallible. Many nobles bristle when they hear that one of their own is demeaning his class by earning an honest living, but sier Zuanbattista glanced across at me with interest.
“Family?”
“Zeno, clarissimo,” I said.
“A descendant of Doge Renier Zen?”
“Twelve-greats grandson. My father was Marco Zeno.”
“The Marco Zeno who fought so well at Lepanto?”
“That one,” I said proudly. “He died in the plague of 1576.”
“Ah, as did so many! I saw your father at Don Giovanni’s council the day before the battle, but there were many officers there and I had no chance to speak with him.” That was nicely done-he had implied that he would have spoken to my father without actually lying about it. Nodding to show approval of my existence and presence, Sanudo looked back to the Maestro. “My daughter was taken in the night.”
Was taken? The words saddened me. I would already have bet some of my dearest body parts that the correct term was ran away. Venice, on its hundred man-made islands, is a tight pack of tiny communities, an almost impossible place to stage a holding-for-ransom. Many people, especially women, never leave the parish of their birth and know the comings and goings of every other inhabitant. Start buying more groceries than usual and the fact will be noted and discussed; the Council of Ten’s army of informers will overhear. No one keeps secrets in Venice! But the Sanudos were not ready to admit that their child had eloped.
I reached for my quill as the lady began to speak. She declaimed, as if she had memorized an address to the Senate: “My maid found her gone in the morning. She helps Grazia as well as me and there was no answer to her knock. The door was locked on the inside. She came straight to tell me, of course. We looked out the window and there was a ladder lying right there, on the grass under her room!”
I had heard similar stories before, and the way they were told mattered more than the words. Madonna Eva was neither terrified nor distraught. Madonna Eva was shocked, yes, but mostly she was furious.
Curious.
“We wakened Giro,” she went on, “and sent him to look. He climbed in through Grazia’s window. Her bed had not been slept in.”
That, she seemed to think, was that, but then the Maestro began asking questions. No ransom note had been found or delivered. Nothing had been stolen and there seemed to be no clothes missing, or perhaps just a few minor garments. Her jewels had gone, but “only the trinkets she kept in her room; her pearls were still in the usual safe place.” Even in its wild distress, the family had thought to check that.
And Giro?
“My son Girolamo,” Zuanbattista explained, “minister for the navy.”
“And who else lives in the house?”
Sanudo’s pause was not quite long enough to be called a snub, but enough to imply nicely that he had not come to Ca’ Barbolano to be interrogated by a foreign-born mountebank physician. “Her aunt, Madonna Fortunata Morosini, and three servants-Fabricio our gondolier, Pignate my valet, and the ladies’ maid Noelia, mentioned earlier.”
That was a small household for a man of Sanudo’s high station, even in Venice, where land is at a premium and the nobility have a long tradition of thrift. Even today it is not uncommon to see senators buying their own vegetables in the Erberia. Possibly the Sanudos had other servants coming in during the day, or the ladies’ maid might also clean silver, the gondolier just love gardening, and the valet like to dress up as a footman. Aunt Fortunata might even adore cooking.