“Head injuries,” the Maestro muttered sadly. “Difficult prognosis. Prolonged rest is indicated.”

“No, he’s just drunk,” I said. “He never can hold his liquor. After all that lost blood, he’s sprung his timbers.”

“Over there?” Vasco pointed. “There’s a spyhole beside the mirror. I watched from the dining room. I saw it all! I heard the ghost speak in Dolfin’s voice!”

Missier Grande strode over to inspect. “That is correct,” he announced. “There is a spyhole and the cover is currently open.”

I felt as if I had been clubbed between the eyes. How had he done that? Someone might have opened it that morning, but I was certain I had seen it closed last night before we began our seance. Had Vasco himself used occult means to open the shutter so he could spy on us?

“Necromancy?” Gritti declaimed. “In all my years I have never heard a more terrible accusation. “ Missier Grande, take Nostradamus and Zeno to the palace and lock them in separate cells. They are to be charged with practicing Satanism.”

“I’m ravenous,” I said. “Providing first aid to critically wounded comrades is very hunger-making work and I need my breakfast. Mama Angeli has prepared a marvelous prima colazione in your honor, Excellency. Can’t we eat first?”

The inquisitor stood up. “No,” he said. “I will not sup at the table of a man I believe to be an agent of the Fiend.”

“This is ridiculous!” roared the Maestro. “That boy is confused by concussion and also quite obviously drunk, and yet you accept his wild allegations as reliable testimony? Am I an idiot that I would perform forbidden rites where he could overlook me, when I knew he was in the house? Do you think we don’t know the spyhole is there? If you think I am so senile that I would forget about it, do you believe Alfeo would? Your Excellency, you are running a travesty of an investigation!”

Ignoring the tirade, Gritti had beckoned in the two fanti, but I reached the Maestro first and helped him up. I handed him his staff and gave him my arm to lean on. If he was going to be humiliated by being carried off like baggage to jail, then the least I could do was help him postpone the indignity as long as possible. Besides, I did not have my sword with me, so I couldn’t put the time to better use by sending Vasco to hell with a warning I was coming.

I had always overestimated that dog’s human qualities.

We shuffled out into the salone. The Angelis were emerging from the kitchen, just about all of them, and Bruno was with them. Bruno was going to be a problem. Already he was sensing the tension and frowning. The fanti would have to carry the Maestro downstairs and the moment they laid hands on him, Bruno was going to charge along the hall like my father’s galley at Lepanto.

“Can you manage the stairs?” Missier Grande asked Vasco, eyeing the group of us. The Maestro must be carried, I must be watched, he had only two able-bodied men to assist him, and he must realize that Vasco would be in danger if he stayed around Ca’ Barbolano unprotected.

“Do let me assist,” I said. “I’ll give him a helping foot.”

Someone rapped the front door knocker.

F orce of habit sent me to open the door and nobody moved to stop me. Outside, beaming, stood sier Alvise Barbolano in his formal nobile homo robe, or as much of it as the moths had left. At his side simpered madonna Maddalena compressed into a puce brocade gown that had been the fashion and perhaps her size about when I was born. She was ballasted by a display of jewelry that would have surprised the Sultan.

“We are not too late, I hope?” sier Alvise demanded.

I stopped gaping and bowed low to stimulate blood flow to my brain, but all too soon I had to straighten up and speak. “Right on time, I’d say, clarissimo. Oh, madonna, what a tragedy that Titian did not live to paint you!”

“He did,” Alvise said, leading her past me. “Twice. So did Jacopo Palma il Vecchio. Ah! Clarissimo!” He swooped at the nonplused Ottone Gritti and embraced him fondly. “I did not expect you also, messer. My dear, of course you remember Orlando Grimani?” Despite his notorious savaging of names, the old aristocrat seemed unusually spry, worked up about something that totally escaped me.

Gritti kissed the lady’s hand with a murmured pleasantry. But then he fixed a rapier stare on Barbolano. “I understood that you were planning to evict your tenants, clarissimo. I was informed that Nostradamus would be thrown in the canal on Tuesday.”

I caught the Maestro’s eye and we exchanged slight nods. Vasco had been present when Barbolano gave me that ultimatum but had not had a chance to report it to Gritti. Renzo Marciana must have overheard it also, and would certainly have told the news to the rest of the Marciana tribe. At least two of them spy for the Council of Ten.

“What?” Alvise blinked. “Did I say that? Of course not! Have they arrived yet, Doctor?”

“They seem to have been delayed, clarissimo,” the Maestro said. “But if you would care to wait over here, I-”

“They’re here!” yelled Corrado Angeli, coming racing up the stairs.

I think Inquisitor Gritti guessed right away who they were, for he muttered something angrily under his breath, but I was still somewhere off in the paddy fields of Cathay. The Maestro was having trouble hiding a smirk. Had all his deliberate baiting of Gritti been merely a delaying tactic? A near-suicidal one, if it was. And I still could not see whose arrival could save us from the Three at this late date, except possibly the entire Turkish army’s.

Nevertheless, moving with complete assurance that I knew what I was doing, I released the second flap of the double doors and swung them both wide. Let the Sultan ride through!

No. The head of the procession came into view on the first landing down, and the men leading it were Fulgentio Trau and another ducal equerry. Many voices drifted up to me. I turned and surveyed the reception party lining up to greet them-Alvise Barbolano and his wife, burning with excitement, savoring one of the greatest moments of their lives, perhaps the greatest; the Maestro leaning heavily on his staff, but smirking at my nod of appreciation as I came to understand the majestic coup he had pulled off; and State Inquisitor Ottone Gritti, who was now redder than ever and chewing his beard in fury. And Vasco blinking in drunken confusion.

The equerries reached the top and took up position by the door, Fulgentio flashing me a wink. I wanted to fall on my knees and weep all over his feet in gratitude. He must have done some very fast talking.

Then Nasone himself, Il Serenissimo Doge Pietro Moro, a grizzled bear of a man in his ermine cape and cloth-of-gold robes, with the horned corno on his head, pausing in the doorway to catch his breath. Venetians live with stairs all their lives, but he is old enough to be forgiven a little puffing after a long climb. We all bowed; republicans do not kneel to their head of state.

“Sire, you are most welcome to our humble home,” old Barbolano bleated.

“The pleasure is mine, sier Alvise.” The doge strode forward, leading in his six scarlet-clad ducal counselors, most of them about as old as he. These seven were not quite the full Signoria, for that includes the three chiefs of the Quarantia, but they are the seven who also belong to the Council of Ten. Granted that seven is not a majority of seventeen, it is very difficult to imagine the other ten overruling the doge and his counselors when they have agreed on something, and that day they had clearly agreed to sup with Maestro Nostradamus. That may not be an unheard-of honor, but it would be the talk of the city for weeks.

Gritti refused to eat at the table of a man he believed to be an agent of the Fiend, but so would the Signoria. Therefore they did not believe that Nostradamus was a witch. One of the counselors now embracing sier Alvise was a co-member of the Three with Gritti.