Together we went up a very broad and impressive stairway of shallow treads and polished stone. And then proceeded down a long gallery. There were spectacular wall hangings everywhere, tapestries of wandering princesses and gallant young men at the hunt, and great sections of the wall painted in brilliant pastoral frescoes. The work looked as fine to me as if it had been done by Michelangelo or Raphael, and for all I knew some of it had been done by their apprentices or students.
We passed now into a chain of antechambers, all with marble tiled floors and scatterings of Persian and Turkish carpets. Magnificent classical scenes of nymphs dancing in paradisal gardens adorned the bare walls. Only an occasional long table of polished wood stood in the center of a room. There were no other furnishings.
Finally the double doors were thrown open to a vast and ornate bedroom, darkened, except for the light that came in with us, and there lay Niccolò, obviously, pale and bright-eyed against a mound of linen pillows beneath a huge red-and-gold baldachin.
His hair was blond and full and matted to his damp forehead. In fact, he looked so feverish and so restless that I wanted to demand someone bathe his face immediately.
It was also plain to me that he was being poisoned. I could tell that his vision was blurred and his hands were trembling. For a moment he stared at us as if he couldn’t see us.
I had the sinking feeling that the poison had already reached the fatal level in his blood. I felt a slight panic.
Had Malchiah sent me here to know the bitterness of failure?
Beside the bed sat a venerable gentleman in a long burgundy velvet robe, with black stockings and slippers of jeweled leather. He had a full head of near-lustrous white hair, with a widow’s peak that gave him considerable distinction, and he brightened at the sight of Vitale. But he didn’t speak.
On the far side of the bed stood a man who seemed so deeply moved by all this that his eyes were wet with tears and his hands were shaking almost as badly as the patient’s hands were shaking.
I could see he bore some resemblance to the old man and to the young man in the bed, but something very different marked his appearance. He lacked the hairline for one thing, and he also had larger and much darker blue eyes than either of the others, and whereas the old man expressed his concern in a devout manner, this young man seemed in the midst of breaking down.
Beautifully dressed in a gold-trimmed tunic with slashed sleeves and silk lining, he wore a sword at his hip, and he was clean shaven with short curly black hair.
All this I took in almost immediately. Vitale kissed the ring of the gentleman seated by the bed, and he said in a low voice,
“Signore Antonio, I am glad to see you downstairs, though sad that you must see your son like this.”
“Tell me, Vitale,” asked the old man. “What is the matter with him? How could a simple injury falling from a horse produce a condition so miserable as this?”
“This is what I mean to discover, Signore,” said Vitale. “I give you my heart as my pledge.”
“You once cured me when every Italian physician had given me up for dead,” said Signore Antonio. “I know that you can heal my son.”
The young man on the far side of the bed became all the more agitated. “Father, though it pains me to say it, we had best listen to the other doctors. I am in terrible fear. My brother lying here is not my brother.” The tears welled in his eyes.
“Yes, this diet of caviar I accept, Lodovico,” said the patient to the young man. “But Father, I have complete trust in Vitale just as you trusted in Vitale, and if I’m not to be cured, then it’s God’s Will.”
He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. He was puzzled by me, and every word he spoke was an effort.
“A diet of caviar?” asked the father. “I don’t understand.”
“That my brother take caviar for the purity of it,” said the young man, Lodovico, “and that he take it three times a day and no other food. I went to the Pope’s physicians for their advice on this. I am only doing what they have told me to do. He has taken this diet now since the fall.”
“Why was I not told this?” asked Vitale, glancing at me, as he spoke, then at Lodovico. “Caviar and nothing else? You are not satisfied with the food I recommended?”
I saw the anger flash in Lodovico’s eyes for an instant, then fade at once. He was too distraught apparently to be insulted.
“My brother was not doing well on such food,” he said with a half smile that quickly faded. “The Holy Father himself has sent the caviar,” he went on patiently to explain to the father, expressing an almost tender trust. “His predecessor swore by it. And he lived well and was hearty and it gave him strength.”
“No insult to His Holiness,” said Vitale quickly, “and it’s kind of him to send this caviar, of course. But I’ve never heard of anything so strange.”
He glanced meaningfully at me, but I doubt anyone else saw it.
Niccolò tried to sit up on his elbows and then sat back, too weak, but still determined to speak.
“I don’t mind it, Vitale. It has some taste to it and it seems I can taste nothing else.” He sighed rather than spoke, and then he murmured, “It burns my eyes, however. But then probably any other food would do as much.”
It burns my eyes.
My mind was mulling over this uneasily. No one had the slightest notion of course that I was a man who’d concocted poisons, disguised poisons and knew how to give them, and if ever there was a food that could mask a poison it was pure black caviar, because you could slip just about anything into it in this world.
“Vitale,” the patient asked. “Who is this man who’s come with you?” He looked up at me. “Why are you here?” It was a struggle for him to get these words out of his mouth.
And finally, much to my relief, a servant woman appeared with a basin of water, and applied a cold rag to his head. She wiped some of the sweat from his cheeks. He was annoyed by it and motioned for her to stop, but the old man directed her to go on.
“I’ve brought this man to play the lute for you,” explained Vitale. “You know how music has always soothed you. He’ll play softly, nothing that agitates you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Niccolò settling back on the pillow. “That is a kind thing indeed.”
“The rumor is in the street that you hired this man to play for the demon in your house,” said Lodovico suddenly. Again he looked to be on the verge of tears. “Is that what you did? And you lie about it now, you say this as a ruse?”