The Alchemist's Apprentice (11 page)

“Certainly. And there was no mistake, because we still had Domenico with us when we called on him.”

“Lord Bellamy is a collector of books?” That seemed fairly obvious.

“He isn't
Lord
Bellamy. Why do you Venetians have this extraordinary custom of making all your nobility equal? The rest of the world has dukes and counts and so on, including England. Here everybody is
sier
. Sir Bellamy is a baronet, a chevalier.”

“But he does collect books?”

“Books are one of our objectives. We have also been buying pictures and small sculptures. You said your master had manuscripts to offer?”

I had not said that, but I could think offhand of half a dozen items in his collection that he would willingly unload on wealthy foreigners.

“He will be happy to show them if you and the baronet wish to come and inspect them. I could send his gondola—”

“Let me show you the treasures we have collected so far.”

Taking up the lantern, she marched into the bedroom. I followed, wondering giddily if I was supposed to ask how long we had before her husband came home, but no, she took a taper and began lighting more lamps so she could show me paintings. There were six of them, all framed but not hung, leaning against the walls.

“I realize the light is not very good,” she boomed. “And they aren't very much to show for two months' work, are they? But some real gems! This Tintoretto, for example…”

Maybe
school of
Tintoretto, I thought. And if the next one was a
school of
Titian, the old master had been sparing the rod too much. In the end I was quite certain that two were crude fakes and three made me very uneasy. But there was one I honestly admired. It was the smallest, so I could lift it and carry it to where the light was best.

“I still think we paid too much for that one,” Hyacinth declared, bringing another lamp close enough to singe my ear. “It was the first we bought. But Sir Bellamy knows a nobleman who will pay generously for it.”

Even an art lover would. A few feather shafts protruded from the subject's torso so the Church would accept that he was a martyred San Sebastiano, not just a beautiful young man tied to a tree while wearing only a dishrag. But his musculature was well portrayed and his expression saintly, not agonized or lecherous; also the canvas was unsigned, which was another reason for a cynic like me to think it might be a genuine master. It was old enough for the varnish to have developed craquelure.

I set it back in its place. “A very fine piece, worthy of Giovanni Bellini! But I am no expert in art, madame. My master has shared with me a little of his wisdom on books. When would it suit you and Chevalier Feather to come and view what he has to offer, and perhaps discuss others that he knows of?” I started to move to the door and suddenly she was in front of me.

“First tell me why you really came.” She raised her lamp so she could study my face. “Two nights ago your master, if that is who he is, denied that he sold books, because I asked him. So who are you and what do you want? And don't try anything with me, boy, or I'll break every bone in your body.”

The look in her ice-pale eyes was that of a Persian cat that has just caught a juicy mouse. I had misjudged her. She had been testing me. Inside all that beef there was a smarter woman than I had realized.

“I do serve Maestro Nostradamus, madame. It is true that he is not a book dealer as such, but he owns a large collection and I catalogue it for him, so I know he has some duplicates he would part with if the price was right. I have told you no lies, except to praise the pictures a little more than I should.”

“But what are you really after? Were you in league with that ruffian delivery man?”

“No, madame. I never saw him before. I came to ask you which wine you drank at the Imer residence that night.”

“What?” Not surprisingly, she looked surprised.

“At the viewing…One of the guests was taken ill later. My master is a physician and suspects that one of the wine bottles may have been spoiled. You were offered three wines when you arrived, yes?”

“I took the malmsey,” she said. “Both of us did. It's what we drink at home in England. I don't care for most of the foreign stuff.”

Where did she think malmsey came from? “If my master is correct, you made a wiser choice than you know. You didn't happen to notice anyone tampering with the bottles or the glasses, did you?”

“Of course not.” She seemed to grow even bigger. “I was interested in the books and nothing else.
Tampering?
What business is this of your master's anyway? Why doesn't he report his suspicions to the magistrates?”

That was a very good question, for which I had no good answer. “He has his reasons, madame, which I am not permitted to—”

An explosion of consonants from the doorway spun me around. Sir Bellamy had returned. He was older than Hyacinth and surprisingly short for a man married to a woman so large; he wore clothes that looked more Tuscan than local, but he was sporting a ruff the size of a millwheel and an absurd pointed mustache, neither of which even a Florentine would have willingly been buried in. He was pale with rage, which was understandable—and he wore a sword, which was disturbing.

I bowed and for the moment was ignored.

His wife answered him in the same guttural language, which I assumed was English, but she did not seem in the least discomfitted at being caught alone with a young man in the connubial bedchamber. She gestured at the paintings and pulled a face in my direction. I caught the Maestro's name.

Feather was very loud and very furious. Hyacinth shrugged and continued to answer calmly.

“What is it that you want?” he demanded of me. His accent was not quite as bad as his wife's.

“Two nights ago, at the residence of citizen Imer, observed you a man in purple robes?”

“And two in red. It was more a coronation than a book sale. Answer me! Why do you come here pestering my wife?” He had his hand on his sword. He was fizzing with rage and he was between me and the doorway. This was no time for finesse.

I waved my hands to show that they were empty and I was unarmed. “To warn you, monseigneur, and your noble wife. The older man, the one with the purple robes and the fancy—” I had to gesture to my shoulder, for my French did not extend to the word for tippet. “Procurator Orseolo. He was poisoned at that meeting. Everyone who was present is suspect. You have heard of the Council of Ten?”

“You work for the government?”

“No,
messer
.”

Feather drew his sword. “You dare come here and threaten me, you young—” Fortunately, he reverted to English, although the gist was obvious. He came towards me.

I started backing. “I am unarmed,
messer
. What you are doing is a very serious offense in this city.”

“So is forcing yourself into a lady's bedroom!”

Her word against mine, although if the judges ever saw the size of the potential victim, they would laugh the case out of court. Meanwhile, the crazy
Inglese
was out for blood. I backed rapidly to the pictures and grabbed San Sebastiano to be my shield and defender, while sending a quick prayer of apology to the saint.

“Put that down!” Feather screamed. “Drop it!”

“Put up your sword,
clarissimo
. I wish only to leave in peace. You will not improve the holy man by adding sword wounds to his troubles.” I kept half an eye on the doughty Hyacinth. If she got behind me, she could garotte me with her bare hands.

“Depart!” he bellowed, pointing at the door. For a small man he was both loud and ferocious.

“I will follow you,
clarissimo
. Madame, if you would be so kind as to go and open the outer door? Then you lead,
messer
. San Sebastiano and I will follow.”

“Come, Sir Bellamy,” his wife said. “The boy will not turn his back on your sword.” She led the way, moving with majesty.

It took some more calming talk from me before he followed her, reluctantly walking backwards, not taking his eyes off me. I kept my eyes on him as I edged out through the outer door, dropped the saint at the top of the stairs where he would obstruct pursuit, and took off downward like a rat diving into its hole.

C
arnival revelers were starting to emerge in the alleys and on the canals, the lights had been lit in the corner shrines. Christoforo and Corrado had not drunk themselves stupid and drowned, as I had feared. They were sitting in the bow of the gondola, so obviously pleased with themselves that their father was threatening to send them to confession first thing in the morning.

“I did not give them enough for that,” I said. If I were mistaken, then they would need the Maestro's professional care very shortly.

“How much did you give them?” he asked narrowly.

“Didn't they tell you?”

“They said two
soldi
apiece.”

Blessed Lady help me!
I bit the bullet. “Giorgio, I know this isn't any of my business, but I was their age not so very long ago. My mother was desperately poor, but she let me keep all my earnings as long as I paid for half our groceries. I ate three times what she did, so that was fair, and I learned what honest work was for.” I sighed and said the rest of it: “You are teaching them to tell lies.”

He glowered, but he is a reasonable man at heart. “You gave them more than four
soldi
?”

“Just believe I gave them four to pass on to you. Now take us all home, please, before I starve to death.”

I took my seat inside the felze, but when we were underway I beckoned Christoforo to join me—Corrado is more canny.

“How much did you win?”

His face puckered with guilt. “Me? Eight
soldi
. Corrado got six.”

“And what would you have done if you'd lost it all?”

“We weren't going to gamble it all.”

“You did very well to stop when you were ahead, but believe me, you will lose it all the next time. Gambling is for fools. Tell your brother I said so.” I knew my advice would drive them to exactly the opposite course, because that was how I had reacted at their age. But now they must have enough money to buy a harlot of the lowest sort, so they would be better off losing it at dice. Sometimes life seems unnecessarily complicated.

Back at Ca' Barbolano, I found the Maestro gone, but my side of the desk upholstered with pages of scrawl. He works that hard only when he is seriously frustrated by something, and it invariably means twice as much work for me. He had been at the crystal ball again, too, for the velvet lay on the floor and the slate was adorned with drunken snail tracks. I left that problem until later—I tend to be prejudiced against the crystal, because it never shows me anything except my next encounter with Violetta. The Maestro says I will outgrow that. I say I don't want to.

I began by re-shelving all the books, mostly herbals and ephemerides. The reagents I had bought the previous day I stowed in the appropriate bottles, out of reach of any Angeli toddler who might stray into the atelier. After I had mixed the unguent for madonna Polo, I dusted the entire collection of bottles and shelves to leave no evidence that digitalis had ever been present.

Then I lit the lamp over my desk and inspected the litter. The Maestro insists that everything be kept tidy, but is himself the untidiest of men. He had completed three pages of next year's almanac and four scribbled horoscopes that were the routine jobs I had expected to do that day until murder intervened. He had even made all the calculations, probably more to keep his own mind occupied than out of consideration for me. A fifth horoscope, identified only as “PM,” was obviously the doge and I did not like the look of his immediate future. If you identified him with the Republic itself, which was legitimate synecdoche, and the Republic as Queen of the Sea with the planet Venus, the current conjunction with Saturn was as ominous as it had been for Orseolo. The Maestro posited that the ascendant Turkish Empire should be equated with the moon in some circumstances, and in that case the aspects were even worse. If he had not yet answered Pietro Moro's mocking challenge to read the name of the murderer in the stars, at least he had found some evidence regarding the name of the intended victim. As I was tucking all the papers away in my work drawer with a bundle of routine letters, including the papal piles, out fell a letter addressed to me.

It had been opened, of course, although I recognized Violetta's scent on the paper, and he would have done so also. The contents were terse:

Normally I would be down the hall in my bedroom and half changed within a couple of heartbeats of reading that invitation, but tonight I had far too much work to do and too much sleep to catch up. I wrote my regrets on the same paper, sealed it with my signet, and went in search of Bruno, who was always happy to help, just to justify his existence.

I barely needed to explain. He sniffed the paper, grinned, and made the signs for
woman—belong—Alfeo.
I nodded and off he went. Sending so much beef to deliver so small a load seemed inefficient. I felt I should have enclosed a gift—something pretty, like the Michelangelo
David.

Now I had no more excuses to delay tackling the Maestro's latest prophecy. I brought light and ink and the book to the slate-topped table. It was not as illegible as I had feared, which, as I told you, implied that the events it foretold would not be long delayed. When I had deciphered it, I didn't like it one bit.

Just then Corrado tapped on the door, come to tell me that supper was ready. Before I reached the dining room, I was brought up short by Bruno's smile, looming over me like a rainbow. He had brought back a reply from Violetta.

Which means roughly that business keeps one safe from love—ominous talk when one's lover is a courtesan. I hoped that it was just another literary conceit I ought to know. (It is, I later learned, an apothegm by Ovid.)

To my astonishment, I found the Maestro already at the table. His eyes were bloodshot and I guessed he had a raging headache, but he was not as haggard as I expected after two foreseeings in two days.

The dining hall would seat fifty at a pinch, but only the Maestro and I eat in it. There I can dream that my family's fortunes never sank in the Aegean with the fall of Crete, for our dishes are finest porcelain, our knives and spoons are chased silver, as are the special forks with which we lift the food to our mouths, a custom foreigners find very strange. Colored candles burn in golden candlesticks on the snowy linen cloth between the crystal flagons and enameled beakers.

Normally I feast and my master nibbles, but that night I also had to talk; Mama's superb risotto of Rovigo veal stuffed with oysters grew cold before I was half-done. I told of my visit to the doge, my exchange with Isaia, and the bizarre English couple. Then, I hoped, I was free to eat.

Alas, no. “You saw the latest quatrain?”

I recited what I thought it said and he nodded grumpily.

“It seems to predict violence,” I said. “Whose eyes and legs are going to bleed, do you suppose?”

“Mine. From now on go armed and take Bruno with you everywhere.”

“You are serious?” I am his eyes and his legs, but I had never heard him admit that before.

“Have you ever known me to make a joke?”

“No, master.” I suspect he tried one seventy years ago and nobody laughed. “Why me?” Not getting an answer, I continued. “What else? Unthinkable love? A rain of gold? Eyes of the serpent?”

Seemingly he could make no more sense of the quatrain than I could. He poked more food around his plate aimlessly. He had eaten almost nothing. “You know who is carried shoulder high around the Piazza San Marco, scattering gold coins to the mob.”

“Yes.” I reached for the wine glass I had been neglecting. He had just described the installation of a new doge. “Isaia confirms that the procurator was murdered. Do you seriously believe you can unmask the culprit before the Ten take you in for questioning?”

He did not tell me what he believed, and it was what the Council of Ten believed—and would do about it—that mattered. I tried again.

“You think there was a botched attempt to assassinate the doge?”

Maestro Nostradamus thumped the table furiously with a tiny fist. “I told you this morning that His Serenity was appealing for our help, didn't I? Whether someone is trying to murder him or he was just impetuous, he met with foreigners in a private house. If his enemies have the votes, that is enough cause to depose him, or worse. Any two of the three state prosecutors can indict him. He cannot hope to keep the Ten out of this, but the way the matter is presented may swing the vote.”

I murmured, “Yes, master,” and returned to my veal and oysters.

“There is more than one way to reverse an emperor. Tell me again about your tarot reading last night.”

I was both surprised and gratified, for I suspect that tarot is the one occult skill at which I can better him. I went over my reading again.

“As you say, master, it may be hinting that the doge was the intended victim,” I admitted, refilling my glass. “In spite of what you think of my humor, I do think that Death reversed was
Circospetto
; Raffaino Sciara just looks too much like Trump XIII. He might have brought death and in the end he did not. Justice reversed meant my night in jail, I suppose, or does it mean a murderer getting off scot-free?”

“I think the jail. Your deck must be well attuned at present.”

From him any praise must be counted fulsome. Pleased, I said, “I can fetch it and try a more detailed reading.”

He shook his head like a chicken ruffling its feathers. “Not tonight. You must never overwork a tarot deck.”

Never having been told that before, I waited for more and there was no more. He reached for his staff. I helped him rise and he leaned on my shoulder all the way across the
salone
. He usually returns to the atelier after supper and either reads or lectures me until late, but that night he headed straight to his bedchamber and disappeared with a muttered
Godbless!

 

Now was the moment I had mentally set aside to consult my tarot deck again. Why had the Maestro forbidden me to do so? The only reason he had ever given me for letting a deck rest was that it had started reporting obvious nonsense, and mine was certainly not doing that. What else could I do to help solve the murder? I could not use the crystal as he could.

I could summon Putrid. That was why the old rascal had not wanted me to lay out a tarot spread. My tarot was painted long ago by an artist of superlative skill and subtlety; since then the fears and yearnings of many owners have infused it with deep empathy. If I tried to consult it when I had a fiend in my immediate future, I might ruin it beyond repair.

The Maestro was a murder suspect and had to clear his name. He dare not risk asking a demon for help, but he would let me take that risk, because I needed help less than he did. Another reason was that I was less important and so, in a non-facetious way, relatively innocent. Summoning a minor fiend can stir up a major one instead. You never see senior condottieri fighting in the front ranks; they send the cannon fodder forward and shout encouragement from the rear, but any demon that managed to enslave the great Nostradamus would be capable of performing enormous mischief through him. All the legions of hell would rally to try it. I was mere cannon fodder.

I locked the door, then sat down at my desk and readied pen and paper. A summoning needs careful planning. Even my trivial fiend Putrid can be a terrifying apparition, and to panic and forget what comes next or change plans halfway through could be disastrous. It would do no good to demand, “Tell me who killed Procurator Orseolo,” or even “Procurator Bertucci Orseolo” because there might have been several men of that name in the history of the Republic. And the fiend could just reply “his doctor,” which might be true in a narrow sense. After much thought I wrote down two questions, plus the command of dismissal, which demonologists have been known to forget in emergencies, although none ever more than once. Purists conduct their summonings in Latin. The Maestro says that the fiends themselves don't care what language you use and it is better to be right than classy.

I moved a chair over to the big mirror in the wall of books. Mirrors themselves are no more magical than crystal balls, but both can be used for occult purposes, like the piece of chalk I used to draw a pentacle around myself and the chair. I sat down, tried some deep breaths, and then uttered my first call, summoning Putrid (not his real name) to be manifest in the mirror before me.

The room cooled and dimmed. It always shocks me when mere words can do that. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed to shrink, and I wished I had brought a lamp inside the pentacle with me.