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“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 manuscripts 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 assume 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 Niccolò. 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 assure 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.”
