Trist?o shrugs, pours ordure from the beaker into the cucurbit. My continued studies, he says. When last we spoke in the Morosini house, I told you I intend to explore optical phenomena associated with the Great Work. I now lack resources to do this; in this city I have no reasonable expectation that my lack will be remedied. I require unfettered access to mirrormakers. In Amsterdam I will have it.
Crivano watches Trist?o fasten an alembic to the cucurbit, a glass bulb to the alembic’s downsloping neck. The devices are so well-made and well-cleaned as to be invisible but for the candleflames they reflect. The shape of the alembic echoes the beaked mask of the plaguedoctor. Crivano smiles; his eyelids sag with sleep.
Obizzo told me of your new plans for escape, he says. Rowing to the trabacolo. Feigning an embarkation. Do you really believe this will succeed?
Do you see reason to doubt?
If the Council of Ten knows what ship you intend to use, the sbirri will meet you in the lagoon. Or they’ll already be aboard when you arrive.
They do not know what ship, Trist?o says. Aside from the sailors themselves, who have been told nothing of their expected passengers, no soul in this city aside from myself knows the name of the vessel that is to bear us.
Narkis knew, Crivano says. So did the Mughal spies with whom he collaborated.
Trist?o busies himself in the athanor’s upper enclosure. He fixes the cucurbit in a sand-bath, balances the glass apparatus on a rack above the coals’ rising heat. Narkis bin Silen was alone, he says. Even his fellow residents at the fondaco had no knowledge of his activities. And his Mughal friends are not here. They await him in Trieste, I believe.
You’re sure he confessed nothing prior to his death?
I am, yes.
Wherefore this certainty, Trist?o?
I was present when Narkis bin Silen died.
Trist?o moves his hands away from the arrangement of glass atop the athanor. It retains its position. Then he adjusts the height of the platform that bears the coals below. He does not look at Crivano.
I did not kill him, Trist?o says. I certainly would have done so, had that been necessary. But he knew what was possible, and what was not. I told him who I was. He understood. He put a cord around his neck, and he hanged himself from the Madonnetta Bridge. I cut his body down and let him drift in the canal. It was not a happy end, Vettor. Not at all. But for him no better end would have come.
Crivano watches his friend’s smooth face, intent in the orange light. He isn’t sure he believes Trist?o. He isn’t sure it matters anymore.
If the Council of Ten doesn’t know what ship you’ll use, Crivano says, why bother with the simulation of boarding? None will be watching to be deceived.
Trist?o’s hands fidget around the clay cylinder, although there is nothing more to arrange, no task left to accomplish. An additional precaution, he says. Sbirri will patrol the lagoon, and may see our lights. They will also be keeping careful record of vessels passing through the channel at San Nicolò. Once they learn the glassmakers have gone, they and the guild are likely to send assassins. I much prefer that those assassins be sent to Constantinople, not to Amsterdam.
Crivano is silent. Trist?o continues to bustle around his apparatus until this demonstration can’t help but seem asinine. Then he straightens, sighs, turns to meet Crivano’s gaze.
You’re lying, Crivano says.
Trist?o looks wounded. Not at all, he says. Why do you accuse me of this?
It’s a foolish risk you’ve planned, to no certain profit. As you’ve said, the sbirri are patrolling the lagoon. Why tarry, then, with elaborate charades that no one may see? Why not row headlong for Mestre?
Trist?o remains silent, moistens his lips with his tongue.
It’s not a charade you need, Crivano says. It’s a diversion. You need the Council of Ten to know what ship we’ll use. To have good reason to believe we’ve sailed on it.
The trabacolo, Trist?o says, is called the Lynceus. Its crew expects to sail for Trieste, of course, but for the right sum, I imagine they will go anywhere in the Adriatic. Any port you might wish.
Crivano stares at Trist?o. Then his eyes sink to the rush-strewn laboratory floor, tracing patterns in the matted carpet of dry stalks and coarse sand. A few specks move there: weevils, beetles, fleas, the tiny spiders that hunt them. Impossible from this height to tell which are which. Crivano could slide from his chair and come to rest among them, could spend the rest of his life watching their microscopic intrigues. In his very vastness he would be invisible: a peculiar new mountain.
The Church of Saint Jeremy rings the first bell; Saint Jerome echoes it a moment later, along with others. Crivano rises, walks past Trist?o to look out the west-facing windows. The sun-absented sky has turned an angry violet.
Even now, Crivano says, sbirri comb the streets for me. But the Council of Ten is ignorant of your involvement. Am I not right?
You are correct.