"Tell me about the woman," Nostradamus said.
Andreo made the sign of the cross. "Marina Bortholuzzi was her name, lustrissimo."
"Stabbed where?"
"In the, um, chest, lustrissimo."
"What sort of woman?"
"The women claim she was a prostitute," Andreo said, carefully distancing himself from such knowledge-no man in the parish would now admit ever having heard of Marina Bortholuzzi. "They say she was past her best. Used to be very high and mighty and lately hasn't been paying her rent on time. So the women were saying."
The man in the white cloak had shouted and run away, drawing the crowd off so his accomplice could escape in the darkness. So Andreo said, and no doubt that was the popular account. It did not worry me overmuch, because the gash on my ribs was evidence as to what had really happened.
The Maestro sighed and thanked him. "Alfeo, a ducat for him."
He had done well. I had not. Lucia, Ruosa, Caterina, and now Marina.
Failure.
Soon after that we went into dinner, Nostradamus walking with the aid of his canes, although Bruno hovered anxiously in the salone, eager to assist.
We ate without exchanging a single word, the Maestro and I. I did not speak because I had nothing useful to offer. Zorzi had been tall. The false friar I had assaulted on Campo San Zanipolo had not been tall. Zorzi was almost certainly dead, his brother had said, murdered by a bounty hunter. Our evidence for identifying the killer as Zorzi Michiel was looking flimsier by the hour, and yet something nibbled and nagged away at the back of my mind, some thought that I could not get hold of.
The Maestro's silence was ominous. I kept hoping he would decide to try another foreseeing, but he didn't. Judging by past experience, I feared that he had dreamed up something else, some maneuver so exotic and dangerous that he was trying to find an alternative.
After dinner, when we returned to the atelier, he was hardly into his chair before he said, "You must go and see Carlo Celsi again."
"Sunday afternoon. He'll be attending the Great Council." And Fulgentio Trau would be on duty, which explained why he had not come to see me.
"This evening will suffice. Now a contract with donna Alina Orio. Better do a draft first."
"What terms?" I asked, reaching for a sheet of paper.
"Three hundred ducats to prove that Gentile Michiel was stabbed by someone other than his son, Zorzi."
I selected a quill and inspected its tip carefully. "You believe that?"
"Yes, but as yet the evidence is merely indicative, not indisputable."
Evidence? What evidence? He waited for a moment, no doubt hoping I would ask him so he could tell me to work it out for myself. When I didn't, he continued.
"The primary objective remains to track down this killer of courtesans, and I still believe that the two cases are connected. I want you to question every soul in that house who may, in your opinion, have any useful knowledge of either matter. The old lady can impose that on them, can't she?"
"Possibly not on Bernardo or Domenico, but I fancy everyone else is sufficiently terrified of her."
"Mm. Make that just two hundred ducats. I don't want to frighten her into changing her mind. And I shall need a week. If I haven't caught Honeycat by then, we shall have to try something else."
If he wanted me to go back to Carlo Celsi, he must already have something else in mind. He would have to tell me eventually, so I wasn't about to ask. I set to work on a draft, trying out a Carolingian minuscule hand that I had been studying. I was close to finished when someone rapped on the front door.
I rose eagerly, despite an angry reprimand from my stitches, because I hoped that the caller would be Violetta returned from her house party. As always, I left the atelier door ajar so that the Maestro could listen. I opened one flap of the big outer doors.
Many odd people come calling on the Maestro, but probably no couple I have ever found waiting out there at the top of the stairs has surprised me more. The woman was swathed from the ground up in the habit of a Benedictine nun, with only her fingers visible to show that there was a woman inside that menacing pillar of black. The man at her side, gray robed and tonsured, was the third Michiel son, the former Timoteo. I bowed to his austere, Old Testament stare.
"This is an unexpected honor, Brother."
"Unexpected no doubt, my son, but no honor." This was an attempt at humility, but it needed work. "Tell your master I wish to see him."
When necessary I can obstruct and obfuscate with the best of them, giving the Maestro time to escape by the secret door, but I was confident that Nostradamus would want to see this pair. I swung the atelier door wide.
"Brother Fedele and Sister Lucretzia, master."
Fedele shot me an angry glance, perhaps annoyed that I had been meddling enough in his family's affairs to know his sister's name, but he did not deny it. He strode in, gown swirling above bare feet, and paused to look around disapprovingly at the wall of books, the alchemy bench, the examination couch, and other curiosities. The nun followed him in and he pointed at one of the spare chairs we keep on hand for larger groups, one of two behind the door, near the great armillary sphere. She went to it without a word. Then the friar marched over to the Maestro, who smiled up at him.
"I am suffering from reminders of mortality today, Brother. Pray excuse my failure to rise, and do be seated."
Fedele perched straight-backed on the edge of one of the green chairs. "I am sorry to hear of your infirmity, Filippo. I shall keep my visit brief."
I crept back to the desk, turning my chair slightly so I could also keep a corner of an eye on the nun, sitting off to my right, but she was motionless as a statue. I wondered how much her eyes wandered behind her veil.
The Maestro was on his best behavior. "Your visit is welcome. May I offer you refreshment?"
"Thank you, no."
"Won't you present me to your honored sister?"
"No. I am escorting her back to Santa Giustina and dropped in here on the way. You sent your apprentice to see my mother yesterday."
"I sent him to see your brother Bernardo."
"Why?" No, Fedele was not Old Testament. He was a martyr, and his emaciated, anguished features belonged on a crucifix or a triptych from some gloomy, sin-obsessed medieval monastery. He looked as if he had been fasting since midsummer on an exercise regime of three flagellations a day.
"To give him a message."
"Why?"
The normal response would have been, What message? The Maestro hesitated a moment before speaking.
"Because I considered it my duty."
"Or to extract money from my family by preying on their sorrow?"
"No."
"But you will accept money if it is offered?"
The Maestro gingerly eased himself back in his chair and then put his fingertips together, five on five, which normally indicates the start of a lecture.
"Who wouldn't?"
That was almost a demand for a sermon, and the friar rose to the bait.
"You would be well advised to, Filippo. I look around at all this unseemly display and remember the words of our Lord about the camel failing to pass through the eye of a needle."
"Ah, an interesting metaphor. According to the revered Bishop Theophylact of Bulgaria, there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem so narrow that in order to take a camel through, you would have to unload all its burdens and-"
"Let us talk about your burdens, my son."
The Maestro cackled one of his irritating cackles. "Brother, I believe we are talking at cross-purposes. You have asked five questions. Now let me have a turn, and then we may understand each other better. You were sixteen or seventeen when your father was murdered, may Our Lord rest his soul. You would not have been present in the Basilica, but you were old enough to comprehend. Describe the wound that killed him."
The green chairs face the window so that the Maestro has a better view of visitors than they do of him. So do I if I am at the desk. The priest must have found the question outrageous, but he hid his revulsion well.