"Arghrraw…"
A cat standing on its hind legs, scratching at a door? Sooner done than said. Some reactions are instantaneous, no matter how many words are needed to describe them later. Cats rarely condescend to be taught tricks, but will sometimes teach themselves, and this one must have learned that such antics would sooner or later persuade some friendly passerby to let it in. Probably the whole parish knew it and was proud of its cleverness. If that was the situation, the door was not kept locked. I was more than happy to let the cat in, follow it inside, and slam the door behind me.
I found a bolt and slid it. Then I slid myself-to the floor. For a while I just sat there, leaning back against the planks and gasping. The cat had vanished into the darkness. Judging by the smell, the cat often did not go outside.
Evidently my pursuers had not been close enough to see how or where I managed my disappearing act, for no one hammered on the door. As soon as I had caught my breath, I stripped off my cloak, doublet, and shirt, all of them blood soaked. I wrapped the shirt tightly around myself to bandage the gash slanting across three ribs, and then dressed again, hoping I was putting the cloak dark side out. Maybe Fulgentio's invention did have some uses, but dark red would be more appropriate than black.
I stood up with care and the world did not spin or tilt at odd angles. There would be blood on the floor in the morning, but at least my exsanguinous corpse would not be there also. I whispered, "Thanks, cat," to the darkness. Rabid or otherwise, cats could be surprisingly useful. I opened the door and stepped out into the night with my head high, being as unfurtive as possible.
17
Since I had the big courtyard key with me, I let myself in the back way and did not terrify Luigi with my blood-stains. The stairs were even steeper than usual that night. Needless to say, the Maestro was not pleased to be wakened, but he could not refuse to sew his apprentice together. I put my garments to soak in a bucket, all except the cloak, which I burned in the kitchen fire. Only then was I free to go to bed.
Sunday, I decided, would be a day of rest.
I woke at dawn, as I always do. I rolled over and went back to sleep, which I never do.
When I did appear, the Maestro poked and prodded me and claimed that he detected no sign of the wound fever that kills more victims than wounds do. I knew that it was still too early to tell.
We said nothing more. We did not make eye contact until well after noon. I had failed him. He had foreseen when and where the Strangler would strike again and I had failed to block the attack. That was failure, the bitterest of tastes. The Maestro, for his part, had almost had to sign a receipt for one dead apprentice, and that was not part of the agreement either. Small wonder we had little to say to each other.
Most of the morning I spent reading and trying to memorize some of Ovid's Metamorphoses so I could be more worthy of my lady. He sat in his red chair with a copy of Paracelsus's Paragranum, but I noticed that he wasn't turning pages. He appeared to be staring at the slate table, doing absolutely nothing, which was another end-of-an-epoch landmark.
At one point I lowered my book because the print was a blur.
"He wasn't tall enough," I said.
Silence.
"Bulky," I said, "but not tall. Domenico said that Zorzi was tall. The Honeycat I caught wasn't tall."
"Honeycat uses a rope, not a dagger."
"A cord isn't fast enough in a crowd. He was forced back to using a knife because there were too many witnesses."
My master snorted. "Or because he wasn't Honeycat."
"But then…" But then had the Maestro's clairvoyance been distracted by a pending murder involving a different murderer?
"But what?" he snarled.
I thought it out as he has taught me. "He was Honeycat," I said. "Don't ask me why I think that, because I have no rational reason to, but I am positive that the man I grabbed as I fell was Honeycat. I know that isn't logical."
"But it may still be correct," he growled. "Stop thinking about it and eventually you will understand, even if you have to dream it."
The news had reached the parish and was distributed in the campo after Mass. There would have been no use my heading over to San Zanipolo to ask the residents what had happened there the previous night. I was an outsider and if the Virgin herself had returned to earth there to bless Carnival, even that would still be none of my business. The Council of Ten would have heard from its local spies, though, and I was half expecting Missier Grande to coming a-knocking at our door, or even send his vizio for me, which would be much more humiliating. Fortunately the Ten hesitate to invade the privacy of a noble's house and sier Alvise Barbolano is as noble as they come.
The Maestro lacks the Ten's resources, but he does have Giorgio and Mama Angeli. Both belong to enormous families, and there is hardly a parish in Venice that does not include some relative of theirs. In this case, as Giorgio explained when they all returned from church, one of his cousins' husband's brother Andreo lived in San Zanipolo where another poor woman had been murdered.
"I need to talk with him," the Maestro said. "Fetch him. Bring an eyewitness, too, if he can find one for you. Bring his entire family and feed them here if you want."
"He is not married," Giorgio replied without a flicker of a smile. "But he will eat enough to make up for that."
Finding a bachelor on a day of rest could have been tricky, but we were fortunate. Within twenty minutes a young man in his Sunday best was standing in front of the Maestro's chair, answering questions. Andreo was an apprentice carpenter and a juvenile version of Giorgio himself-short, heavy shouldered, and given to thinking before he spoke. He was as much of an eyewitness as we were likely to find, having been right there in the Campo San Zanipolo when the terrible thing happened. He had spoken with people who had seen the fight.
"They say she was attacked by two men, one of them dressed as a friar and the other wearing a white cloak."
"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.