“It doesn’t help,” he muttered.

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. It’s too far off to be relevant.”

I noticed with relief that the late Danese Dolfin had been removed, although the medical equipment and a bloodstained sheet still lay under the couch. I headed in that direction to tidy up.

“Sit down here and talk.” The Maestro raised the jug to his mouth and drank.

Obediently I settled on one of the green chairs-an unusual honor for me-and talked. I gave him everything that had happened since I left with Gritti to visit madonna Corner. I didn’t mention eating, since I hadn’t, but only barely managed not to mention that I wasn’t mentioning it.

Although never predictable, Nostradamus is almost always bad tempered after a farseeing. But when I came to the end of my morning and told him how I had deterred Alvise Barbolano from evicting us on the spot, he actually swore, which he almost never does. We were in trouble.

“So that nuisance Vasco is still underfoot?”

“Like dirt.”

“Bah! Well he mustn’t find out what we’re doing. I promised to deliver Algol to Gritti personally, and I shall.”

I repeated that sentence to myself and decided I had heard it correctly. “You don’t think the walking book was the ghoul?”

“Bah! No. Certainly not! You are confusing Algol with the jinx, and they’re completely different. Oh, the jinx made the Sanudos prone to disaster. You notice that Sanudo himself did very well when he was in Constantinople, far out of its range, but plunged into trouble as soon as he returned? It cursed everyone who came in contact with it. As soon as we became involved in the family’s affairs, it blurred my clairvoyance and blinded your tarot. But Algol is a person, one of the jinx’s evil effects, no doubt, but not the jinx itself. The fact that Algol’s employers, whoever they are, named him The Ghoul may be only a coincidence. I don’t recall the Church ever informing us of a patron saint of coincidences, but a patron demon may be more appropriate. It’s the human Algol that the Ten want. I could tell Gritti what he’s overlooked and he would put all his spies to work and find the real Algol in a few days, but I promised to turn him in myself, so I must.”

To call Maestro Nostradamus pigheaded is an insult to swine.

“Yes, I know. Tomorrow at breakfast. Can you think of a way to stop him burning me at the stake for witchcraft right after?”

“You were an idiot to use the Word in front of a witness, especially him.”

“I didn’t use it in front of Gritti himself, but I agree it was stupid. After all, how much worse could demonic possession make Vasco? And he might have bitten the jinx, instead of the other way around.”

“I’ll worry about you later,” my master said impatiently. “Meanwhile the most important thing is to preserve my reputation by exposing Algol. I decided there were three ways to proceed-three strings to my bow.”

“And the first one didn’t work?” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder at the crystal ball.

He pouted, which was agreement. “I overshot the mark by at least a century. You’ve eaten?”

Astonished, for food rarely enters his mind, I said, “Not this week, I think, master.”

“Well, I am waiting for-”

Knuckles rapped.

I raised an eyebrow and, when he nodded, the rest of me also. I went and opened the door to find the twins, Corrado and Christoforo, beaming eagerly. They will never interrupt the Maestro without express orders to do so, so I stepped aside and let them enter. Then I closed and locked the door again, although there was no sign of Vasco out in the salone. The boys were sweaty and puffing as if they had been running, but they had taken time to rehearse, because they reported in counterpoint.

Corrado began, “Marco Piceno, cobbler…”

“Marco Gatti, attorney…”

“Matteo Tentolini, musician…”

“And Dario Rinaldo, carpenter,” Chris concluded triumphantly.

The names meant nothing to me, but from the Maestro’s demonic expression, I guessed that they were bad news, so the second of his three bowstrings had just proved as untuneful as the first. Two down, one to go.

“Very good!” he said. “Alfeo will give you two soldi apiece after he has dined. Meanwhile, I have another errand for you. Fetch Michelina if she is around. Go and eat, Alfeo.”

Michelina is a year older than the twins and a splendid beauty, engaged to be married. The only reason the Maestro could possibly want her then was to dictate a letter, because she writes a fine secretary hand. I taught her myself.

“I won’t die of starvation in the next hour,” I complained, resentful that anyone else would sit at my desk and do my work.

“No, no.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “You must keep up your strength for tonight’s ordeal.”

When he gets in that mood, he keeps secrets even from me, because he is convinced my face always gives me away when I tell a lie. This is an absurd untruth, but that day we had that historically celebrated snoop Filiberto Vasco underfoot and peering underbed, so extreme caution might be justified.

“I dread the prospect,” I said and marched off in search of nourishment, ignoring the twins’ wide-eyed stares at this hint of dark deeds ahead.

I t was long past our usual noon dinnertime, but nothing daunts Mama Angeli and I found Vasco in the kitchen cleaning up a plate of her magnificent Burano-style duckling, Masorin a la Buranella. I asked her to send mine to the dining room, where the company was more appealing, and on my way there I helped myself to one of the few remaining bottles of the Maestro’s hoarded 1583 Villa Primavera. This might be the last decent meal I would ever eat.

I was not allowed long to enjoy my solitude, of course, before Vasco sauntered in to join me, bringing his raisin fritters dolce with him. He sniffed the wine bottle and pursed his lips.

“Nice! The condemned man ate a hearty last meal?”

“Not at all. Celebrating the coming exposure of the false witness.”

He smiled and leaned back to admire the ceiling art and chandeliers. “Nice place you had here. A pity about your landlord’s little fit of pique.”

“He laughs best who laughs last.”

“I entirely agree,” Vasco said solemnly. “And I admit it feels very nice. I have warned you so often!”

“Nil homine terra pejus ingrato creat.” Violetta taught me that, but she was not applying it to me at the time.

“The ingrate is certainly the worst of men,” Vasco agreed, “but what makes you think I have reason to be grateful to you? You have always been an upstart, conceited, interfering pest.”

If I accused him of ingratitude for denouncing me after I had saved him from the jinx, he would claim I was confessing to performing magic, so I ate on in silence. I took comfort from reflecting that I had been in tight corners before and the Maestro had always jumped to the rescue.

Corrado peered in. “Old…The Maestro wants to know if we have…I mean if he has any henbane and, er, mandrake?”

“Henbane is the third jar on the second shelf down, labeled Hyoscyamus,” I said. “Mandrake root is in the fourteenth jar, bottom shelf, Mandragora. Be careful with those!” I yelled after him as he ran off. The Maestro knew the answers quite as well as I did, so the purpose of his questions had been to misinform Vasco, who must know those two plants’ reputation for magical powers. Misinform him of what, though? And why? Well, it was an encouraging sign that the old mountebank had something in mind. Or up sleeve, perhaps.

Later, as Mama was asking me if she should fry up a third plateful of fritters for me and I was regretfully deciding that I would not be able to do them justice, Christoforo appeared.

“Maestro says he is going to rest, but we must waken him when anything develops. And he says you should rest, too.”