The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [16]
He smiled to himself. Knowledge was his speciality. He collected it assiduously. It was his most profound desire to have all of the knowledge in the Universe in one place at one time: a huge Library that any member of any intelligent race could consult without let or hindrance. A dream, of course, but an achievable one. His own race collected knowledge, but as an end in itself, and they never shared it, not even if by doing so they could avert catastrophe and save lives.
Braxiatel believed that perfect knowledge led to peace, and so he had left his people and travelled, seeking out obscure facts to add to his vast and comprehensive database. His presence on Earth, in Venice, was on other business, but he hoped to make a small start here by collecting together works of fact and fiction that would otherwise be burned. Perhaps, at some stage in the planet's future, he might return and see what had become of the Braxiatel Collection.
He took off his bifocal spectacles and polished them with a handkerchief. What was it that Friar Sarpi had called the Index earlier that evening, when he brought the last of the books along?
"The first secret device religion ever invented to make men stupid."
Sarpi didn't agree with the existence of the Index, but he was a Friar when all was said and done, and couldn't be seen to disagree with the Pope's edicts. That was why Sarpi obtained the books in secret and passed them to Braxiatel. To preserve them. To keep their knowledge alive.
"Excuse me, sir."
Braxiatel turned. Cremonini, his manservant, was standing in the doorway. "Yes, what is it?"
"A visitor, sir."
"I'm not receiving anybody tonight. Send them away."
Cremonini coughed discreetly. "No sir, you have a visitor."
"Ah." Braxiatel nodded. "I'll come straight down."
Sperone Speroni bent close to Baldassarre Nicolotti's contorted face, close enough to have kissed the corpse's cold lips, and sniffed.
"That's poison, right enough," he said, pulling back from the body and gazing up at the imposing form of Baron Tommaso Nicolotti.
"Your son was murdered."
Around them, the Tavern of St Theodore and of the Crocodile was empty of patrons. Its buttressed timbers, and the smell of damp wood that underlay the smell of spilled wine, reminded Speroni of the inside of a ship's hull. For a moment he felt a twinge of nostalgia for the Arsenale, and the career he had lost when he was chosen as a Lord of the Night watch, but only for a moment. The simplicity of that life was a fading memory now.
"Are you sure?" the Baron snarled, his voice like gravel shifting at the bottom of some deep well. "Is there no doubt in your mind?"
"None, my lord," Sperone replied. He stood up and brushed at his trousers. Despite Tommaso's saturnine glower and expensive clothes, Speroni was polite but not deferential. "The smell is unmistakable. It's a common compound distilled from the leaf of the laurel bush. Death can occur within seconds or hours, depending on the dosage."
"Common," Tommaso sneered. "The word sums up my son's short and unproductive life. He drank with common gondoliers, consorted with common whores and died from a common poison."
He gazed down at his son's face for a moment, then fastidiously turned the body over with the toe of his boot. "And what of his murderer? Was this attack against my son or against my family?
Was the murderer a jealous lover, a distressed moneylender or an assassin in the pay of the Castellanis?"
"Too early to say," Speroni said, shrugging. "I could have someone tortured, but what would that give us apart from one more corpse?"
"In the hands of even a passable torturer," Tommaso agreed, "the victim will give any answers you want, and none of them are reliable." He turned his gaze upon Speroni. "The only function of torture is to provide an example to others. What of this Paduan teacher? I hear that he was present, and argued with my son. He would make a fine example."
"Galileo Galilei?" Speroni grimaced. "He's a violent man, but poison isn't