I DREW DREW V VITALE WITH ME OUT OF THE SICKROOM AND into the pa.s.sage. into the pa.s.sage.

"Your friend is is being poisoned and the poison is deadly. You feed that caviar to a mongrel dog and you'll see him die before your eyes." being poisoned and the poison is deadly. You feed that caviar to a mongrel dog and you'll see him die before your eyes."

"But who would do this?"

"I fear to tell you: the man's own brother. But you cannot confront him. It won't be believed. This is what you must do. Instantly insist that the patient be given milk and plenty of it. Say that only white food will restore his spirits. Nothing but white food in which nothing dark has been intermixed."

"You think this will work?"

"I know it will work. The poison comes from a tree in the orangery below. It's black. It stains everything it touches black. It's the black seed of a purple flower."

"Oooh, I know this poison!" he said. "It comes from Brazil. They call it the Purple Death. I've only read of it in my manuals, and in Hebrew. I don't think it's known to the Latin doctors. I've never seen it."

"Well, I've seen it and I tell you that there is a great quant.i.ty of it growing on the tree downstairs. It's so poisonous I can't collect it without these gloves and I need a leather pouch in which to put it."

Quickly he removed a pouch from one of the pockets of his tunic, took the gold out, put this in his purse and gave me the pouch. "Here, can you safely collect it now? Will the guilty person know it when you do it?"

"Not if you keep him very busy. Call Signore Antonio. Call Lodovico. Insist they both hear you out. Say that you suspect the caviar has not helped the patient. Say that he must take milk. Say that the milk will line the stomach and absorb what evil elements are tormenting Niccol. Say that a woman's milk is the best of all. But cow's milk will do, and goat's milk, and cheese, pure white cheese of the finest quality. The more of this you get into the patient the better. And meantime I shall take care of the poison."

"But how shall I say I came by this knowledge?"

"Say you have prayed, and you have pondered, and you have considered what has happened since the caviar was first given."

"That I have, there's no lie in that."

"Insist that the milk be tried. The loving father will see no harm in milk. No one will see harm in it. Meanwhile, I'll return to the orangery and I'll harvest as much of the poison as I can. But there's no telling how much the poisoner has already harvested himself for his purposes. I suspect not much. It's too lethal. He's been taking only the smallest doses as he needs them."

Vitale's face darkened. He shook his head. "You're telling me Lodovico has done this thing."

"I believe that he has. But what's important now is that you get the milk to your patient."

I hurried down to the small courtyard. The gates were locked. I tried to force them very gently, but it was impossible. Nothing would have done for it but smashing the lock altogether and that I could ill afford to do.

One of the innumerable servants came up to me, a withered being whose garments appeared more like wrappings than clothes. He asked softly if he might be of help.

"Where is Signore Lodovico?" I asked, to indicate only that I'd been looking for him.

"With his father and with the priests."

"The priests?"

"Let me give you a warning," whispered this thin toothless being. "Get out of this house now while you can."

I gave him a searching look, but all he did was shake his head and walk off muttering to himself, leaving me at the locked courtyard gates. Deep inside the courtyard, I could see the bright purple flowers I had sought to harvest. I knew now there was no time for such a plan. And possibly it had not been the best plan.

As I reached Niccol's bedchamber again, I saw approaching me Signore Antonio with two elderly priests in long black soutanes with gleaming crucifixes on their chests, and Lodovico, holding his father's arm. He was weeping again, but when he saw me, he shot me a glance as sharp as a blade.

There was no pretense of cordiality. Indeed, there was a look very like triumph on his face. And the others eyed me with obvious suspicion, though Signore Antonio himself seemed deeply troubled.

From within, I could hear Vitale ordering someone to take the caviar out. This person was arguing with him, and so was Niccol, but I couldn't make out all that was being said.

"Young man," said Signore Antonio to me, "come in here with me now."

Two other men came behind him, and I saw that they were armed guards. They had visible daggers in their belts, and one wore a sword.

I went into the room first. It was Pico who'd been arguing with Vitale, and the caviar remained where it had been.

Niccol lay there with his eyes half shut, and his lips dry and cracked. He sighed uneasily.

I prayed that it was not too late.

The guards slipped against the wall behind the chair where I'd been playing the lute earlier. We gathered around the bed.

Signore Antonio eyed me for a long moment and then he stared at Vitale. As for Lodovico, he had given way to tears again, very convincingly, as before.

"Wake up, my son," said Signore Antonio. "Wake up, and hear the truth from your brother's lips. I fear it can no longer be avoided, and only in the telling of it can the disaster be averted."

"What is this, Father?" asked the patient. He seemed weaker than ever, though the caviar sat still where we had left it.

"Speak," said Signore Antonio to Lodovico.

The young man faltered, wiped at his tears with a silk handkerchief and then said, "I have no choice but to reveal that Vitale, our trusted friend, our confidant, our companion, has in fact bewitched my brother!"

Niccol sat up with more strength than I'd ever witnessed.

"How dare you say such a thing? You know my friend is incapable of this. Bewitched me how and to what purpose?"

Lodovico gave way to a fresh shower of tears and appealed to his father with open arms.

"Unbeknownst to me, my son," said Antonio, "this man has craved to keep the house in which he lives, the house in which I let him live while you were ill, the house which I had chosen to bestow on you and your bride. He has summoned the evil spirit there to do his bidding, and it is by means of this evil spirit that he has made you gravely ill, and hopes that you will die so that the house may be his. He has prayed for this to his G.o.d. He has prayed for this, and Lodovico has heard his prayers."

"This is a lie. I prayed for no such thing," said Vitale. "I live in the house at your pleasure, and seek to put the old library in order, at your pleasure, and to find what Hebrew ma.n.u.scripts were left behind years ago by the man who left the house to you. But I have never prayed for an evil spirit to aid me in any way, and would never have such evil designs upon my closest friend."

He stared at Signore Antonio in disbelief. "How can you accuse me of this? You think that in hopes of a palazzo I can well afford to buy I would sacrifice the life of my closest friend in all the world? Signore, you wound me as if with a knife."

Signore Antonio listened to this, as if his mind was not made up.

"Do you not have a synagogue within this house?" demanded the taller of the two priests, who was obviously the elder. He was a man of dark gray hair and sharpened features. But his face was not cruel. "Do you not have the Scrolls of your Torah in that synagogue set into an Ark?"

"These things are there, yes," said Vitale. "They were there when I took the house. It's general knowledge that a Jew lived there, and he has left these things, and for twenty years they've been layered in dust."

At this Signore Antonio seemed particularly affected. But he didn't speak.

"You've never used these things in your evil prayers?" demanded the second priest, a more timid man, but one who was now trembling with ill-concealed excitement.

"Well, I must confess in all truth I have not used them in my prayers," said Vitale. "I must confess I'm more the humanist, the poet, the physician, than I am the pious Jew. Forgive me, but I have not used them. I've gone to the synagogue of my friends for my Sabbath prayers, and you know those men, you know them well, they're respected by all of you."

"Ah," said the tall priest. "So you admit you uttered no holy or pious prayers to these strange books, and yet we are to a.s.sume they are your sacred books and not some strange and foreign books of secrets and enchantments?"

"Do you deny you have such things?" asked the younger priest.

"Why do you accuse me of this!" Vitale said. "Signore Antonio, I love you. I love Niccol. I love his bride-to-be as if she were my sister. You have been to me since Padua as my very family."

Signore Antonio was clearly shaken, but he stood up straight as if these accusations required all his resolve.

"Vitale, speak the truth to me," he said. "Have you bewitched my son? Have you said over him strange incantations? Have you made vows to the Evil One that you would offer up to him this Christian death for some dark purpose of your own?"

"Never, never have I uttered a syllable of prayer to the Evil One," said Vitale.

"Then why is my son in this sickened state? Why does he fail day in and day out? Why is he troubled in this way, while a demon roars in your house this very minute, as if he is waiting to see how well you can work your dark charms for him?"

"Lodovico, is this your doing?" Vitale demanded. "Did you put this in the minds of all these who are present?"

"Allow me to speak," I said. "I'm a stranger to you all, but not a stranger to the cause of your son's ailment."

"And who are you that we should listen to you?" demanded the elder priest.

"A world traveler, a student of natural things, of plants and obscure flowers and even of poisons so as to find some cure for them."

"Silence!" said Lodovico. "You dare interject yourself here in this family matter. Father, order this musician out of the room. He's no more than a henchman to Vitale."

"Not so, Signore," said Vitale. "This man has taught me much." He turned to me and I could see the fear in his face, the general suspicion that perhaps the things I'd told him were not true, and now everything hung upon their being true.

"Signore," I said to the old man. "You see the caviar there."

"From the Pope's palace!" declared Lodovico. He then went into a stream of words to silence me. But I persisted. "You see it there!" I said. "It's black, salty to the taste. You know full well what it is. Well, I a.s.sure you, sir, that if you were to eat four or five spoonfuls of it, you would soon be pale and sweating as your son is, and white as he is as well. In fact, a man of your age might well die altogether from that amount of it."

The priests both stared at the little silver dish of caviar and both backed away from it instinctively.

"Signore," I went on. "In your orangery, off the main courtyard below, there is a plant known to the Brazilians as Purple Death. I tell you just one of its black seeds is enough to sicken a man. A steady diet of them, ground up and placed in a pungent food such as that, would very surely kill him."

"I don't believe you!" whispered the old man. "Who would do this?"

"You lie," cried Lodovico, "you tell fantastic lies to protect your cohort and who knows what sins you're guilty of together."

"Then eat the caviar," I said. "Eat not just one small spoon of it, as you try to feed to your brother, but eat all of it, and we shall see if the truth doesn't come out. And if that is not sufficient, I will take you all down and reveal the plant to you, and reveal its powers. Find a pitiful mongrel in the streets of Rome and feed him the seeds of this plant and you'll see him quiver and shake and die immediately."

Lodovico drew his dagger from out of his sleeve.

At once the priests shouted for him to be still, to restrain himself, not to be foolish.

"You need a dagger to eat the food?" I said. "Just take the silver spoon. You'll find it easier."

"These are lies that this man tells," cried Lodovico, "and who under this roof, who would do such a thing to my brother? Who would dare! And this caviar has come from the kitchen of the Holy Father himself. This is vile, I tell you."

A silence fell as if someone had rung a bell.

Signore Antonio stared at his natural son who still faced me with his drawn dagger. I stood as before, the lute slung over my back, merely looking at him. As for Vitale, he was white and shaken and on the verge of tears.

"Why did you plot this thing?" Signore Antonio asked in a soft voice, his question clearly aimed at Lodovico.

"I plotted no such thing. And there is no such plant."

"Oh, but there is," said Signore Antonio. "And you brought it into this house. I remember it. I remember its unmistakable purple flowers."

"A gift for us from those dear kindred of ours in Brazil," said Lodovico. He appeared wounded. He appeared sad. "A beautiful blossom for a garden of beautiful blossoms. I made no effort to conceal this plant from you. I know nothing of its powers. Who does know of its powers?" He looked at me. "You!" he said to me, "and your fellow Jew, Vitale, your fellow cohort in this plot. Are you worshippers of the Evil One together! Did the Evil One tell you what this plant could do? If this caviar is tainted, it's with the poison you both put into it." His wonderful copious tears were flowing again. "How vile of you to do this to my brother."

Signore Antonio shook his head. His eyes were fixed on Lodovico. "No," he whispered. "Neither man could have done this thing. You brought the plant. You brought the caviar into the house."

"Father, they are witches, these men. They are evil."

"Are they?" asked Signore Antonio. "And what friend of ours from Brazil sent us this unusual flower? Rather, I think you purchased it in this very city, and brought it home and placed it very near the table where you do your writings, your translations."

"No, a gift, I tell you. I don't recall now when it came."

"But I do. And it was only a short time ago, and at the very same time that you, my son, Lodovico, hit upon the idea that caviar would sharpen the att.i.tude of your weakened brother."

All this while the patient had watched these proceedings with horror. He'd glanced to the left at his father, to the right at his brother, he'd studied the priests when they spoke. He'd stared at me with piercing horrified eyes as I spoke.

And now he leaned forward and picked up the bowl of caviar in his quivering hand.

"No, don't touch it!" I said. "Don't let it near your eyes. It will burn them. Don't you remember this?"

"I remember it," said the father.

One of the priests reached for the dish, but the patient had set it down on the mount of brocade coverlets, and he stared at it, as if it had a life of its own, as if he were looking at the flame of a candle.

He lifted the small spoon in his hand.

His father suddenly seized it from him and threw the caviar to the side where it fell on the coverlet and stained it black.

Lodovico, before he could check himself, moved back from the bed where the caviar had spilled. He stepped backwards instinctively. And only then did he realize what he'd done. He looked up at his father.

He still held the dagger in his hand.

"You think me guilty of this?" he demanded of his father. "There is no poison there, I tell you. There is nothing but a stain now which the washerwomen will seek in vain to wash out. But there is no poison."

"Come with me," I said, "down to the orangery. I'll show you the tree. Find some hapless animal. I'll show you what this poison can do. I'll show you how very black it is, this seed, and how perfect was the caviar for concealing it."

Suddenly Lodovico rushed at me with the dagger. I knew well how to defend myself, and smashed the hard side of my hand into his wrist, knocking the blade out of his grip, but then he went for my throat with outstretched fingers. I brought my arms up instantly crossed, and struck out, forcing his arms apart with a wild and sudden gesture.

He fell back confounded by these simple moves. Neither of them would have been much of a surprise in our times when martial arts are taught to children. I was ashamed of how much I had enjoyed the struggle.

One of the guards picked up the dagger.

Lodovico stood shaken, and then, desperately, he ran his hand along the stain on the coverlet, gathering up but a few grains of the caviar and he put this on his tongue. "See, I tell you, I am maligned. I am maligned by evil Jews who consort to destroy me for no other reason but that I know their tricks and what they would have done to Niccol."