"But you managed to slip away and write for Nostradamus to come?"

"Er… yes."

I had not got it quite right, but I had a trump to play. We get good luck and we get bad luck, and there is no sin in taking advantage of the good. As it happened, at my Monday evening fencing class my good friend Fulgentio had grumbled that it was impossible to keep good servants and his man had just left him, after less than a month. Every gentleman in Venice has his own manservant, of course, so I'm told.

"What will you do now that messer Gradenigo has been called to the Lord, Battista?"

"Look for another job, lustrissimo."

"I'm not a lustrissimo, but I know one. A good friend of mine, who has more money than the king of Spain. He's looking for a manservant. I swear as I hope for salvation that that is the truth, or it was true four days ago. Tell me the story properly and I'll take you to him and introduce you to him in person if he's home, or to his steward if he's not. Now talk, because this bench is freezing my ass."

Battista very nearly smiled at that. He spoke up more confidently.

"When the friar came back… He'd given the master the last rites the day before, but he came back. And the master kept saying that he needed Doctor Nostradamus, and everyone thought he was rambling, because the other doctors had given up on him. At last the priest, Brother Fedele, said he would write a note and went out of the room. I thought right away he just said that to keep him quiet and he came back so soon that I was suspicious and I went downstairs and asked Giacomo-he's the chief gondolier-and he said that no message had gone out to any Nostradamus. He asked the boys, and a couple of them knew where Doctor Nostradamus lived. So I wrote a note and Giacomo charged me a ducat to send a boatman with it. I paid him out of my savings."

I said, "Giacomo sounds like a first class sewer rat, but at least it did get delivered. And when my reply came back, who got it?"

Battista scowled at the ground. "The friar."

Now the fog had blown away. "He denounced you to…?"

"Donna Tonina."

"Sier Giovanni's daughter?"

"His daughter-in-law, Tonina Bembo, wife of sier Marino."

"And so you are out of a job?"

Battista might have been going to lose his job anyway, but a priest's anger would carry much weight. Why had the two notes arrived in the wrong order? Either the friar had written his version first but had waited to send it until he knew it was too late to do any good, or else he had written his only after he knew that Battista's had been sent and rejected. Why the delay? And if Fedele had written just to humor a dying man's delusions, why had he sent the note anyway? In case questions were asked later? Comforting a dying man with little white lies is not a mortal sin. Why involve a total stranger if the dying man is raving and out of his senses? It made no sense.

"Have you any idea what your master wanted to tell mine?"

Battista shook his head, but not vigorously enough to convince me, so I waited. Eventually he squirmed and said, "I think I heard him say that Nostradamus could find people, sir."

"Ah! Yes, he often can. He has been asked to find missing people many times. Who did sier Giovanni want found, do you know? A missing heir?"

Good servants do not gossip to strangers, and Battista mumbled and muttered. Then he drew a deep breath and said, "A killer, lustrissimo."

I recalled my offhand remark to Violetta about absurd coincidences and dismissed it. "That could be. Even the Council of Ten has consulted Nostradamus sometimes. Go on."

Seeing that I was taking him seriously, he said, "My master was troubled about a woman, someone he had known when he was younger. One of his visitors had told him. He mentioned it a lot. She had been found murdered. She had been so beautiful, he said, that Titian had put her in one of his paintings, he said."

Not too much of a coincidence, I decided. Everyone in the city would know about Lucia's brutal killing very shortly, if not already. But why should a dying patrician worry about a murdered prostitute? The social gulf between them had been wider than the Adriatic Sea.

"A courtesan?"

Battista nodded, looking so astonished that I felt ashamed of myself.

"And her name was Lucia?"

"No, lustrissimo, it was Caterina."

That made a big difference.

I marched Battista out of the yard and took him back with me to Ca' Barbolano, where I presented him to Mama with orders to feed him until he popped. Then I sent Corrado and Christoforo off to tell Fulgentio that I had a potential servant for him to interview. The twins love running errands to Ca' Trau, because they are often tipped two or even three soldi apiece there.

The Maestro had not yet emerged from his room and I needed my hunch confirmed before I stuck my neck too far out, so I slipped into my room and locked the door behind me. Three of the iron bars on the central window are loose enough to lift out and the calle between Ca' Barbolano and Number 96 is so narrow that I can jump it easily going there and almost as easily coming back. This saves me a lot of stairs at the trifling risk of a very messy death.

In moments I was climbing over the railing around the altana on 96's roof. I unlocked the trap and clambered down the steep stairway.

What had been a late night for me had been an early one for Violetta and I hoped I would find her awake. She wasn't, but Milana was, cleaning the kitchen. Milana is the most consistently cheerful person I know, although she has a twisted back and is so tiny that she must often get jostled and bullied when she goes to the market. Being devoted to Violetta and totally in her confidence, she knew all about yesterday's events. Her expression when she saw me that morning told me right away that my guess had been correct. If anyone knew of a second murdered courtesan, it would be people in the trade.

"Caterina Someone?" I demanded.

Milana nodded. "Caterina Lotto. She was murdered on Sunday in her room in San Samuele. The sbirri arrested her doorman, Matteo Surian."

Doorman is a polite way of saying bravo and pimp, but I knew the name. "Matteo the Butcher?"

Again Milana nodded.

"Saints! I wonder they didn't start a riot." Matteo had been my childhood hero. I'll get to him later.

"I think they very nearly did," Milana said with a fleeting grin. "He was released before nightfall. It was very sad about signora Lucia. I did not know signora Caterina, but I think my mistress will be unhappy when she hears this news."

"I am appalled. The Maestro will be, too. How did Caterina die, do they say?"

"She was strangled with a cord."

Memories of Lucia's crushed windpipe made me shiver. "Tell Violetta that I shall come back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, any more gossip you can collect, the better." I turned to go.

"Sier Alfeo?"

I turned back and said "?" with my eyebrows.

"There was a third," Milana said sadly, "about a week ago-Ruosa da Corone, in San Girolamo."

"How?"

"The same way."

Three courtesans, all strangled. Who could doubt that this was the work of one person?

"I'll be back as soon as I can," I said. "Bolt the door behind me."

I found Nostradamus in his favorite chair in the atelier with no cane or staff in sight, meaning that Bruno had carried him there. In front of him stood Battista-telling him to sit would have made him uncomfortable-answering a barrage of questions. I went quietly to the desk to listen.

The Maestro was trying to track down the news about Caterina Lotto, whom I had thought to be the second victim, but had apparently been the third. Who had told Giovanni Gradenigo the news? Who had thought an old dying nobleman would be interested in the death of a courtesan? The picture that Battista was painting was a dramatic one, a pageant of Gradenigo's life trooping past his deathbed to bid him farewell. There had been scores of family members, of course, including noblemen in their floor-length black gowns, with matching bonnets and the cloth strip known as a tippet draped over the left shoulder. There had been senators, wearing the same but in red. There had been sobbing grandchildren and great-grandchildren, servants, tenants, friends from all levels of Venetian society, and many tradesmen from the scuola.