The Alchemist's Apprentice (2 page)

I bowed gracefully. “Welcome to Ca' Barbolano,
lustrissimo
.”

The death's-head inspected me with a sneer that would curdle spring water. “Where is your master, boy?”

“He is not here.”

“I can see that, Alfeo.”

“Can I assist you in his absence? Read your palm? Cast your horoscope?”

The Maestro might have accused me of childish babbling to conceal fear and for once I would not have argued. The Venetian Council of Ten runs the finest international spy network in Europe, but it also knows everything about everyone within the Republic itself. Its members come and go, but its secretaries remain forever, and Sciara must have more secrets fluttering around inside his memory than San Marco has pigeons. Whatever personal hopes or motives he may have are hidden behind a mask of absolute loyalty to the state. I suspect he has been dehumanized by all the uncountable death sentences and forced confessions he must have recorded.

“He never leaves this house.”

“Not
never
, sir. Just rarely. His legs—”

“Did he go by boat or by land, Alfeo?”

“I honestly do not know.” Innocence glowed in my countenance, I hoped. “I deeply regret that you should have wasted a journey on such a horrid evening—”

“Where is he?”

“
Lustrissimo
, I have no idea.” I love telling the truth, because it needs so little effort. “Did you hope to catch the world's greatest clairvoyant unawares? He foresaw visitors looking for him tonight and instructed me to make sure that nothing was stolen in his absence.”

“Ha!” Sciara's breath was as sour as his face. “You have two choices, Zeno. You can take me at once to your master, or you can come with me.”

I would be astonished if the Ten ever issued a warrant to search a nobleman's house, and if they did it would not be served by
Circospetto
, but by
Messier Grande
, the chief of police. On the other hand, Sciara and his four henchmen could certainly take me in for questioning, and questioning can be the least pleasant of experiences.

“I swear I do not know where he is,
lustrissimo
.”

Circospetto
showed his teeth in a death's-head smile. “Show me.” He nodded to the
fante
with the fanciest silver badge on his belt. “Guard the door and try not to steal anything.”

I said, “This way, then,” and headed for the stairs.

Yes, I was shaken. Officially the Ten investigate major crimes against the state, but they will meddle in anything they fancy. I must trust that the Maestro had acted upon his own warning and departed. I was certain that he would not be found if he did not want to be found. Although I had been his apprentice for years, I still did not know the limits of his powers.

The first flight of stairs brought us to the mezzanine landing where I had spent most of the night. Doors there lead into two apartments occupied by the Marciana brothers, who are
sier
Alvise Barbolano's business partners. I raised my lantern in passing…“Such a shame you did not come in daylight,
lustrissimo
.
Sier
Alvise just acquired this painting,
San Marco Blessing the Fishing Boats.
Quite a rarity. By Sebastiano del Piombo.”

Sciara did not spare it a glance. Philistine!

Another flight brought us to the
piano nobile
, the Barbolano residence itself. The doors there are twice my height and can be opened wide enough to row a galley through. They were shut, of course. I did not draw our visitor's attention to the Tintoretto on the wall. His continuing silence did not seem to be from lack of breath and the old skeleton had no trouble keeping up with me, although I had a forty-year advantage.

The last two flights brought us to the top floor, which the noble Alvise Barbolano puts at the disposal of the celebrated Maestro Filippo Nostradamus. I unlocked the door and stood aside to let my companion enter, striding in like a de-horsed horseman of the Apocalypse. Our two lanterns did very little to raise the darkness, for the
salone
runs the full length of the building and its ceiling is twenty feet high; it takes a lot of flames to illuminate it. The statues glimmered spookily and stars twinkled from gilded cornices and picture frames, from chandeliers of Murano glass.

Sciara seemed unimpressed. “His bedroom?”

I led the way across to the appropriate door. The Maestro had prophesied that he would not be there and I believed him.

“Open it!”

“It is not booby trapped,
lustrissimo
. Once in a while I will balance a bucket of water on it just to make him laugh, but—”

“I told you to open it.”

I opened it gently and raised my lamp. Then I walked in.

The Maestro earns a lot more money than he ever admits, but he could not support the upkeep of one broom closet in Ca' Barbolano. His bedchamber alone is fit for a king, but everything in it—furniture, paintings, tapestries, chandeliers, statuary—is owned by
sier
Alvise. The bed, standing on gilded columns, displayed undisturbed bedding of silk and lace. The Maestro might be hiding in one of the marquetry chests, but Sciara seemed to consider that possibility as unlikely as I did.

“Where does his horse sleep?”

“Horse,
lustrissimo
? He owns no horse that I know of.”

“You know who I mean! The mute.”

“Ah!” I led the way along to a smaller room—a comparatively humble room, although some of the richest men in the Republic sleep in worse. I marched in, not bothering to be quiet, for Bruno has been stone deaf since birth. Stretched flat out across two beds put together, the giant was snoring loud enough to raise waves on the lagoon. Being very close to naked, he was an impressive sight. “There is more of him,” I said, “but we keep the rest in storage.”

I did not draw
Circospetto
's attention to the Veronese Madonna on the wall. It is only a small one, but Bruno likes it.

“Your tongue will strangle you yet, Zeno. Let me see the study.”

I led the way again, going a little slower as I worked out what to do. So far so good—the Maestro had gone, leaving Bruno behind.
Wisdom had departed and Silence was deserted
. But, although Sciara had visited the Maestro's atelier before, he had never had a chance to snoop around there at will. Now the brave Riddler must guard the treasures. My first problem was that I had not only locked the door, but also warded it, as I always do at night. The one time I forgot to disable that curse, it threw me halfway across the
salone
and tied me up in an agony of cramp. What had disabled a healthy youngster like me might well kill a man of Sciara's age.

I unlocked the door, but then I hung my keys back on my belt and turned to face him, folding my arms. “First you must give me your oath that you will not remove anything.”

“Stand aside.”

I said, “Gladly,” and did so. “But I warn you,
lustrissimo
, that if you touch that door handle you may receive a very unpleasant surprise.”

Lantern light turned his osseous smile into a sigil of crooked shadows. “Are you threatening me with violence,
messer
? That is a serious criminal offense.”

“Warning you of danger, merely.”

“Open the door, or you will come back with me and explain your refusal to the magistrates.”

“I expect
sier
Alvise Barbolano will lodge a complaint with the Council.”

“What the nobleman may choose to do is not your concern. Open the door or fetch your cloak.”

I was damned either way. My refusal might even be all the evidence the Ten would need to issue a formal search warrant. I knew of evidence in there that could be used to hang the Maestro and me with him. Among his papers were prophecies, letters written in cipher from people all over Europe, horoscopes for senior members of the government, and many other documents that could be regarded as evidence of treason or heresy.

Furious, I turned my back on the intruder to conceal my hands. I made the passes and muttered the incantation needed to remove the wards. Then I led the way inside.

The room was dark and unoccupied, but the poisons I had brought back the previous evening still sat in full view on the desk. Both Gerolamo the herbalist and Danielle the apothecary had warned me to be careful with those. Sciara made a methodical circuit of the room, starting at the alchemical workbench with its mortars and alembics, lingering to look at the scores of jars on shelves above it.

I stayed very close, prepared to grab away anything he tried to pocket.

He took even longer at the wall of books, raising his lantern to scan the titles—books and more books, all bound in embossed leather and lettered with gold leaf. The Republic is the greatest center of printing in Europe, so the Maestro's collection is far from being the largest in the city, but it contains many rarities—manuscripts and fragments centuries old. More to the point, no library in Europe contains more works on the arcane: cabalism, demonology, alchemy, Gnosticism, and other heresies banned by the Church. Venice pays much less attention to the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
than the rest of Catholic Europe does, but just because a law is rarely applied does not mean that it cannot be, so forbidden books are never displayed. Some have been rebound and incorrectly titled. Others are hidden inside other books, hollowed out for the purpose, a few are locked away in secret compartments behind the walls behind the books. Books are rarely evidence of treason, but they can suggest heresy or witchcraft. Sciara was looking at enough evidence to send the Maestro to the stake, if he wanted to. He would have to find it first, but he had all the time in the world and unlimited resources.

He ignored the velvet cloth over the crystal ball, as if to imply that he would not be distracted by hocus-pocus. He passed the fireplace and came to the big double desk near the windows, littered on the Maestro's side with books and on mine with the packets of reagents I had left there, plus the letter I had been working on when I was sent shopping. Sciara reached for the paper.

“I should warn you,
lustrissimo
,” I said, “that that is a confidential document addressed to the Pope.”

He read it anyway, then turned his skeletal smile on me. “This is your side of the desk, your writing.” He had noted the gold inkstand and the bronze one, the location of the windows, and the fact that I wore my sword on my left side. He had drawn the correct conclusion.

“I am the only person who can read my master's.”

“Was he dictating to you, or do you presume to advise the Holy Father on medical matters?”

“The Holy Father's physicians wrote to consult him. He told me to recommend his standard treatment.” Which I knew by heart, papal hemorrhoids being much like any humble sinner's.

Sciara glanced over at the great armillary sphere, the terrestrial globe from Gerardus Mercator, a celestial globe that is reputed to be by Nicolaus Copernicus but probably isn't, the equatorium, cross-staffs, and so on, but did not bother to go closer. “Where is Filippo Nostradamus?”

“I do not know,
lustrissimo
.”

“You swear that?”

He might be hiding in the apartment. He might be hiding elsewhere in the house, and it would take days to search that. He might have gone out, although he could not travel far without riding on Bruno's great shoulders or employing methods I dare not mention. I did not know.

“I swear by Our Lady and all the saints.”

“May they give you strength in the days to come. Get your cloak, boy.”

He was serious. I have fallen into frigid canals often enough and recognized the feeling. “On what charge?”

Sciara curled his lip. “Practicing sorcery on a door knob.”

“Rubbish! I was trying to bluff you. You didn't think I was serious, did you?”

“What matters is what the Council believes. Cloak or not, you come with me.”

W
hen he found the atelier door unlocked, the Maestro would know I had not left the apartment willingly; I repeated the message by leaving my sword and dagger in full view on the bed. My cloak was still damp, but a mere apprentice is lucky to own even one good cloak and mine is of finest kidskin, a gift from an admirer. As I went downstairs with my baleful guide, I asked leave to go and waken Luigi, so he could lock up behind us. The secretary sent one of his flunkies instead. The manner of my departure was to remain as secret as possible.

The two boatmen had been sheltering inside the loggia. I followed Sciara down the slimy watersteps to embark, and joined him on the cushioned bench in the
felze
, leaving the boatmen and
fanti
out in the rain. I spared a charitable thought for convicts sentenced to the galleys, chained to their oars and exposed to the weather day and night. We are never more than a few feet from seawater in Venice, but a galley bench would be too much close.

The city slept. Rain roared on the
felze
and painted golden haloes around the lantern on our prow and the little shrine lights that mark the corners of the canals. We passed no other boats and the only illuminated windows told of people sick, or dying, or giving birth. Oars creaked, ripples splashed sometimes, and one of the guards had a worrisome cough, but otherwise I could brood undisturbed.

Life as a galley slave is still life, and the punishment for sorcery is death by burning. Despite the weather that night, I had no desire to become toasty warm while chained to a post between the columns on the Piazzetta.

Like his celebrated uncle, the late Michel de Nostredame, the Maestro is both astrologer and physician. Those are honorable professions—the cardinal-patriarch himself employs an astrologer and the Pope has several. It is the Maestro's dabbling in alchemy and other arcane lore that teeters on the brink of the forbidden. He had often been pestered with accusations of witchcraft and fraud, which obviously could not both be true, but so far his many clients in the nobility had always stood by him and none of the slanders had ever been taken seriously. If the Ten had decided to charge him with magic or demonology, then it would have sent
Missier Grande
to arrest him, not a glorified clerk like Sciara.

So I kept telling myself, anyway.

That did not explain why I was being abducted. Sciara flatly refused to answer my questions. The Council of Ten is notoriously secretive. Its judgments cannot be appealed. I had no right to counsel, or even to know who had accused me of what. I could expect to be tortured. There was a famous case once of a doge's son being tortured to make him confess to a crime that, as it later turned out, he had not committed.

The Council of Ten is so named because it consists of seventeen men, except when it is increased to thirty-two. That is typical of the tangle of misnamed and interlocking committees that govern the Republic. All members of all committees are noblemen, those whose names are written in the Golden Book. Commoners cannot be elected to office, but the most senior citizens, whose names are recorded in the Silver Book, are eligible for appointment to bureaucratic posts. Sciara is one of those.

As a fanatical optimist, I tried to convince myself that things could be worse. I might have been arrested by the Three, the state inquisitors. “The Ten can send you to jail and the Three to the grave,” says the proverb. But the Ten can burn or bury you just as easily, and for all I knew I
had
been summoned by the Three. I could only wait and see.

 

We came at last to Rio di Palazzo, the narrow canyon between the towering walls of the Doges' Palace on one side and those of the New Prisons on the other. The New Prisons are not yet in use, so the only lights visible were those marking the watergate to the palace. Our approach had been noted, and as the boat pulled up at the wide double arch, a pair of armed night guards appeared there to help us up the slippery steps. Sciara went first and I followed, aided by the grip of a powerful, calloused hand. The
fanti
from the boat joined us in a clatter of boots.

The Doges' Palace is one of the wonders of the world, a huge building blending the most sublime with the utterly squalid. Although we were not in the sublime part, at least we were out of the rain, standing in a wide, pillared passage leading through from the canal to the central courtyard. On the left, light spilled out from a guardroom door and I had no doubt there would be a brazier and other comforts in there. A closed door in the opposite wall led, I knew, to the most squalid part of all.

Another fancy helmet saluted
Circospetto
and asked what he could do to help the
lustrissimo.
Alongside his sword hung a matchlock pistol, which is a useful weapon if you want to club someone to death.

“This,” Sciara said, “is Alfeo Zeno, apprentice to the philosopher Filippo Nostradamus. You should tuck him away somewhere safe where we can find him again when we need him. A charge sheet will be drawn up in due course.”

The captain regarded me with little interest. “In the Wells,
lustrissimo
?”

Sciara pretended to consider, watching me with amusement, his face more sepulchral than ever in that gloomy, lantern-lit crypt. “Well, despite his humble garb, he is
NH
Alfeo Zeno, so perhaps you should find him something more befitting his rank. As I recall, the Leads have been honored by his presence in the past.”

I ignored the mockery. It is true that I am entitled to put the letters NH before my name; they stand for
nobile homo
and mean that my birth is recorded in the Golden Book, as Sciara's is not. Perhaps that rankled, but at least he had not publicly accused me of sorcery. The captain nodded to one of his men, who went into the guardroom and returned with a lantern and a jingling ring of keys. He crossed the passage and unlocked the door to the Wells.

“If
messer
would be so kind as to follow me?” The captain led the way.

The ground floor of the palace is put to mundane uses. The stables are there, the guardrooms, and two sets of prison cells. The Wells are by far the worst of the jails, small stone kennels without windows, damp and dark and airless. They stink most horribly.

That eastern wing is very old and the stairs that lead from the Wells all the way to the top of the palace are steep, narrow, and oddly haphazard, as if they have been reorganized many times over the centuries. They are not intended to impress, because they are never seen by anyone except the
fanti
and their prisoners. Winding back and forth in the near-darkness, I had to concentrate on where I was putting my feet and soon lost count of what floor we were on.

The second story is mostly occupied by the bureaucracy—the High Chancellor and his staff of secretaries and notaries. The Golden and Silver Books are maintained there, for instance, and another office will issue the permits you need to do anything more than breathe. The third floor belongs to government, for it includes the doge's apartments and meeting rooms for magistrates and many councils, including the appeal courts and the Great Council itself. The fourth story is where the
Collegio
and the Senate meet, and also the Council of Ten.

Above those are attics containing the prison cells known as the Leads because they are directly under the great sheets of lead that cover the roof. It is not true, though, that the inmates bake in summer and freeze in winter. These cells are used for gentlemen prisoners, mostly political offenders, and they are not uncomfortable as prisons go. The room to which I was conducted was spacious enough, although utterly barren. I scanned it hastily by the light of the guards' lanterns. The walls were of heavy planks and the only furnishings, if you could call them that, were a bucket in one corner and a crucifix hanging on the wall opposite the door. A small grilled window admitted sounds of rain. The lights were withdrawn, the door banged, the lock clattered, and I was alone in the dark.

Most inmates would be terrified at that point. I was merely furious. My tarot had warned me of Justice reversed. Deciding that the floor was the best place to sit, since I had no other choice, I huddled myself down in a corner, as small as possible. I hated to dirty my cloak, but I was shivering too much to think of removing it. The vermin that swarmed in summer were mercifully absent.

My next decision required more thought. I had two options—I could wait there in my cell until I was taken down to appear before the tribunal, taking the risk that it would send me straight back up to the torturers. If that happened, my ensuing experiences were likely to be both unpleasant and prolonged, since I had no idea where my master had gone and to confess to assisting him in the black arts would be suicide.

Or I could leave.

Here I must digress to list the three laws of demonology, with apologies to those of you who already know them. Firstly, you can summon and direct a fiend if you know his true name and a few simple precautions. Secondly, being evil incarnate, the demon will do anything he can to defeat your purpose; he will always strive to deceive and betray you. And thirdly, accepting favors from a fiend will weaken your hold over him and let him gain power over you. That is how Faust was damned. The only defense against being possessed is purity of purpose.

After teaching me those rules, my master told me the name of a minor demon. I shall not repeat it here—it is unpleasant to say, leaving a foul taste in the mouth, and writing it down might cause the paper to go on fire. I shall refer to him as Putrid. Putrid is not especially powerful as fiends go, but I could command him to whisk me to anywhere in the Republic, either within the city or in the territories it controls on the mainland, or even to foreign states beyond its borders. There I should have to make a new life for myself. Any life that came from Putrid would be nasty and brutish. Understand?

In my present circumstances, I had even more problems. The Maestro might have called on demonic aid for his escape from Ca' Barbolano; he knows the names of many fiends more potent than Putrid. I hoped he had used some other sorcerous technique, one that did not risk his immortal soul, for he has many arts that he has not yet shared with me.

Putrid was all I had, though. I had no means of inscribing a pentacle, which is a sensible precaution, although neither essential nor foolproof. The crucifix on the wall would make a summoning difficult at best, perhaps impossible. I concluded that Putrid had better remain a last resort for the time being. I wedged my head back in the corner and went to sleep.

 

The bell tower of San Marco stands just across the Piazzetta from the palace, and I was jarred awake by the clang of the great
Marangona
bell announcing the start of a new day. The first light of a winter dawn was creeping in through the grilled window. A few minutes later, the lock rattled again and the door creaked. So did my neck.

“You are summoned!” the guard announced.

“How about some breakfast?” I grumbled.

“There might be some left when you return, if you're still hungry.”

Back down those dark, contorted stairs I went, stumbling after my solitary guide's lamp. Before we had gone far, he threw open a door and I was dazzled by a blaze of daylight. There, in a fine meeting room where magnificent paintings hung on leather-covered walls and others shone overhead in gilt-framed ceiling panels, a man sat on one of the benches, obviously waiting for me. He rose to greet me; then he tilted his head slightly and regarded me with distaste.

“There has been a mistake,” he said with hauteur. “I was expecting a
sier
Alfeo Zeno.”

“Your prayers have been answered,” I said.

In Venice people are defined by their costumes. A tradesman does not dress like a shopkeeper or a courtesan like a lady. It mattered that I was stubbled, tangled, and rumpled, but it mattered much more that I was dressed as an apprentice, not a nobleman. He, on his part, looked both splendid and ridiculous, because his beard was streaked with white and he had to be at least fifty, yet he was decked out like a youth. His spindly calves were enclosed in full-length silk hose, his gaudy tunic and fur-lined brocade surcoat barely reached to his thighs, and his bonnet bulged almost as high as mine. He was, in fact, clad in the livery of a ducal equerry, a member of the doge's official entourage who does everything from guarding his bedchamber to showing visitors around the palace and marching in parades. He thought he was magnificent, but he looked silly to me. I knew most of the equerries by sight, but not this one.

“This is the right man,
clarissimo
,” the guard said.

The equerry shrugged. “Well, His Serenity did mention something about an astrologer. Obviously astrology doesn't pay well.”

He was sneering. After an unearned night in jail, I resented that. “And obviously you fought at Famagusta.”

Bull's-eye! The equerry started. “How do you know that?”

“From the stars. Are we keeping the doge waiting?”

He shot a worried glance at the guard and crossed himself. “If you would be so kind,
sier
Alfeo…” He gestured at the door, very nearly bowing.