The Alchemist's Apprentice (6 page)

He bunched his cheeks. “I wanted to discover if digitalis is presently available in the city. Since only the murderer and I knew the poison used, I preferred not to advertise its name.”

“Even if Gerolamo and the rest do not stock it, surely foxglove can be grown in any little garden plot. It likes sandy soil, as I recall.”

As a feat of memory that remark was pure show-off, and his wizened little eyes tightened to show that he knew it. “But that would still be evidence of premeditation.”

And oleander was common enough. “So anyone could acquire the plant. But who,” I asked innocently, “could possibly have the arcane knowledge to extract and concentrate the venom? Or is this where we began this conversation?”

The Maestro scowled, because Italians are notorious as the poison experts of Europe, the Venetian Council of Ten has the same reputation within Italy itself, and the Council of Ten has been known to consult Maestro Nostradamus on such matters. And that, I realized, might well be what it was up to in the present instance, except that it was putting the demand for assistance in the form of a personal warning from the doge. That would explain why Sciara had felt justified in dragging me off to jail.

I opened my inkwell. “You will, of course, now write to the Lion's Mouth to report your suspicions that Procurator Orseolo died of an overdose of medicinal digitalis. You will have to sign it.”

The
bocca di leone
is any of several drop boxes available in the palace to accept accusations of treason or other major crimes. Anonymous tips are supposedly ignored, but no one believes that.

The Maestro grimaced. “No. I despise men who work in silence and darkness. Very few people could have committed the crime. It must be possible to work out which one did.
Then
we can report to the Ten.”

There is no use arguing with him when he sticks out his goatee like that. “We have two days.” The doge had given me three, but I was allowing one for travel. I opened a drawer and selected a quill and a sheet of our best rag paper. “The attorney, Imer, is the man to start with. He must be quaking in his dancing pumps.”

Maestro Nostradamus said, “Faugh! You still don't know how bad this is. Take a cheaper sheet.”

I changed the paper.

“There were about thirty guests in all,” he said, “but not all are suspect. Only the procurator was affected, so the poison was not in the bottle. It must have been put in his glass. It acts quickly but not instantaneously—I know that but the Ten do not. So the only persons who matter are those who came in to look at the manuscripts.”

He leaned back wearing an expression of extreme smugness like a suit of plate mail. I plodded through his logic and decided it would have to do for now. I could not possibly question thirty people in two or three days.

“Clear crystal glasses, or colored?”

“Murano ruby glass. You could not tell what anyone else was drinking, and if the poison made the wine cloudy, that would not show either.”

“And what sort of wine?”

“We were offered a choice of three: refosco, malmsey, or retsina. I had the refosco. It was a good jar.”

He fancies himself as a connoisseur of wines. I plan to study them when I am rich.

“Refosco is red, malmsey a sweet white. The other one is Greek, yes?”

He made a steeple of his fingers again for a sermon. “Yes. Retsina is most vile, flavored with resin. Served in honor of the Greek merchant, I suppose. It is pungent enough to hide the taste of lye or vitriol, but few Venetians would touch it. Malmsey is so sickly it might suffice. Refosco would not. Let us review the suspects. I proclaim my innocence, and in any case I was seated behind the table. I could not have put poison in anyone's glass without standing up and stretching across, which would have been a very conspicuous action. Write my name in the first row.

“The Greek was in the room all the time. Our host came and went. As organizers of the affair, they must be suspect. Imer and Karagounis in the second row.”

He closed his eyes to think. “I was early, as I told you. Imer and his wife greeted the guests as they arrived and saw that they were given wine. Most went to the
salotto
, only the book collectors came into the dining room. The first buyer to enter was Senator Tirali. He wished me well and at once walked the length of the table, on the far side from me, inspecting the goods. I felt like a shopkeeper!”

“I believe you, master.” I knew of another Tirali, the senator's son. Neither was a patient of the Maestro's.

“Close behind him came Procurator Orseolo, leaning on a cane. He and Tirali greeted each other coolly. They were old rivals as collectors.”

“Put Tirali in the second row?”

“I suppose so, but I doubt if their rivalry ran to murder. Orseolo had a woman attending him. I didn't hear her name and she stayed close to him. Next came a foreign couple, who did not introduce themselves to me. They spoke in French with barbarous accents, questioning me about the books. They knew nothing about books. All they were interested in was price.”

I added them to the second row:
two foreigners.

“Two footmen poured the wine. We should include them in the second row, if the Three have not gotten to them first.” The Maestro opened his eyes. “Then
sier
Pasqual Tirali, Giovanni's son. With your friend.”

I wrote Violetta's name in the first row and started a third for Pasqual Tirali, vowing to send him to the torturers for prolonged interrogation. I get twinges of jealousy sometimes, when I think of her evenings.

“They were the last to arrive. There was one other before them, Pietro Moro. First row.”

I stood my quill in the inkwell, laid my forearms flat on the desk and glared belligerently across at my master. “You are hallucinating!” The nightmare had just turned into sheer terror, as nightmares do.

He shook his head smugly. “I warned you that you were being naive.”

“Master, before a doge is crowned he has to swear an oath known as the
promissione
. It is no trivial matter. He swears to shun each and every mistake and crime of all his predecessors in the last thousand years. The
promissione
is read to him every two months during his reign to remind him. He can barely blow his nose without his counselors' consent. He must not leave the ducal palace without their permission. He must not meet with foreigners! He…I cannot imagine all the promises the doge would have broken if he went to that supper party!”

“He wasn't wearing his ducal robes and
corno
. I expect that's another. But Moro is a fanatical collector of books.”

“Then why did the sellers not offer him a private viewing in the palace?”

The Maestro scowled horribly. “I do not know the answer to that. But I don't suppose for a moment that Moro is the first doge to slip out for an evening incognito, playing Haroun al-Raschid.”

“And somebody tried to assassinate him? Is that what you mean? The poison went to the wrong man?”

The Maestro pursed his lips. “I wondered how long it would take you.”

Even more aghast now, I said,
“The Serene One moves and is unmoved
? The procurator got the wrong glass and the poison meant for the doge? Is that what it means?”

“Possibly. A hypothesis to keep in mind. Even if not, do you see why I cannot write to the Lion's Mouth? The Council of Ten must not have cause to investigate the procurator's death, not officially. A suspicious death involving illicit acts by the doge may bring on a constitutional crisis, just when relations between the Republic and the Turks may be boiling up to another war. What you got this morning was not a warning, it was a cry for help!”

I stared down at my list, although I was seeing nothing. I did not want to see old
Nasone
either murdered or deposed, but all doges have political enemies. “Did everyone see him there?”

“Probably not,” the Maestro conceded. “He came in, looked at the books quite briefly, and spoke with Orseolo. Then an argument broke out with the foreigners. I think he left then. He was not at the supper table later.”

“What sort of argument?”

“The foreigners had not been invited. Imer told them to leave. Probably the doge had not been invited either. Faugh! Moro has always been impulsive. He champs under all the restraints of his office, the eternal committee meetings. Read me the list.”

“You assume too much. Move your friend to the list of suspects.”

I protested, “Did you see her tipping poison into the victim's wine glass?”

“Bah! Of course I didn't. I didn't see anyone doing that. I very much doubt if anyone did. It would be too obvious.”

That had already occurred to me. “You said Orseolo had a crippled hand and used a cane. He must have laid his glass down when he wanted to handle one of the books? The others would too, perhaps, but he must have done so more often?”

My master nodded. I could see that he had been hoping to point that out himself.

“So,” I said, “the murderer unobtrusively poisoned his own drink and then switched it for the victim's. Did you see that happen?”

“No,” he admitted sourly, “but I was constantly being distracted by stupid questions. It is likely that somebody did. Tell Angeli you need him shortly.”

I went over to the door and stuck my head out to tell one of Giorgio's brood to warn him. When I returned, the Maestro was staring fixedly at the window and tugging his beard. I know better than to interrupt him when he is thinking on that scale. I took up my knife to sharpen my pen.

Eventually he sighed and looked at me as if wondering where I had been. “A letter.”

I took a sheet of rag from the drawer and dipped the quill.

“About ten lines,” he said, so I would know how to place it on the sheet.

“Italic, roman, or gothic?”

“Italic, of course. ‘To the exalted chiefs of the noble Council of Ten. Usual bootlicking…It is with deep sorrow that I most humbly bring to Your Excellencies' attention certain evidence pertaining to the despicable murder of…'”

G
iorgio was ready in his standard gondolier costume of red and black, so we trotted downstairs and embarked. He is a wiry man and not tall. Standing in the stern of the gondola he looks far too slight to move a thirty-foot boat at all, but he is as proficient with his oar as he is at making babies. We skimmed off along the Rio San Remo, sliding between the traffic. The sun was shining with as much enthusiasm as it ever musters in February; bridges and buildings had a well-washed look. Women on balconies were hanging out washing, peeling vegetables, shouting conversations across and along the canal, lowering baskets to vendors in boats or on footpaths below them. Often they were singing. So were the cage birds, which had been brought out to enjoy the morning and tantalize the cats. Seagulls flapped clumsily or just stared. Almost all the boatmen were singing, too, when not fluting the odd cries they use to warn on which side they intend to pass. They say we have ten thousand gondolas in Venice.

“Is it true the Maestro was at the supper where the procurator died, Alfeo?”

Mama does the talking in the Angeli family. Most of the time Giorgio says little, although his silences have an uncanny knack of prompting other people to tell him secrets. He would not question me unless he were seriously worried.

I said, “He was taken ill at the supper. The Maestro went to help, as you would expect. The procurator died yesterday, at home, tended by his own doctor.”

“Oh.” Apart from returning hails from other gondoliers going by, Giorgio wielded his oar in silence for a while.

“The Maestro didn't poison him.”

“Alfeo! I never said that he did! That's a terrible—”

“That's the rumor. It's a lie. Last night I was called in to the palace for a consultation. I was not arrested, not questioned. My arms are no longer now than they were before. Don't worry about it.”

A man who has to support a two-digit family must worry about his employer's fate. Giorgio slid the gondola through a minuscule gap beside a farmer's boat already on its way home for the day. He ducked as we shot under a bridge. Then he had time to speak again.

“You are not nearly as good a liar as the master, Alfeo. You are worried, so I am.”

“Then I confess! I'm on my way to tell the Council of Ten I did it.”

The whole boat shuddered. “Don't make jokes like that, Alfeo!”

It was less of a joke than he thought, although I had no intention of posting the incriminating letter I carried. “How was the wedding?”

Family is one topic on which Giorgio will talk, and talk at length. His children are outnumbered only by his brothers and sisters; Mama has even more; add in aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces and the wedding party must have outnumbered the Turkish army on campaign. Giovanni from Padua and Aldo from Vicenza and Jacopo and Giovanni from Murano…He was still reciting the guest list when we arrived at our destination.

Ottone Imer shared chambers with several other attorneys in the maze of alleys in San Zulian, just north of the Basilica of San Marco. That the house included living quarters and premises grand enough to entertain thirty guests I took on trust from the Maestro's account. It is an expensive part of town, so either Imer had family money behind him or he was successful professionally. So why was he dabbling in the used book trade?

The black-clad clerk who peered disapprovingly at me over his glasses looked somewhat dusty and dog-eared himself, as if he needed to be taken down off his shelf more often. He conceded that the learned attorney was in, but that was all he would concede. If I wanted to get any closer to his employer, he suggested, I must state my business in some detail. The learned attorney was not, he implied, about to stop doing whatever he was doing to oblige a mere apprentice, even if, he hinted, the apprentice's master was a well-known charlatan dabbling in shady arts. I could make an appointment for next week, or Lent, or next summer, he intimated.

Attorneys do not usually turn down business sight unseen, but attorneys rarely have important nobles collapse at their supper tables in a hiss of dangerous whispers. Was Imer hiding from everyone or just from anyone connected with that unfortunate event?

I shrugged. “Then I must take the matter higher up.”

The watchdog's manner grew even chillier. “Take it as high as you wish.”

I produced my letter and held it where he could read the inscription. “Is this high enough?”

He had seemed pale before. He turned ashen and stumbled to his feet.

“Run,” I said sweetly, and he very nearly did.

In moments I was ushered into the private office of Attorney Imer, which was dim, cramped, and untidy. The owner stood beside a desk heaped with ribbon-tied bundles of paper. Briefs seldom are. He was tall, severe, fortyish, and had an unfortunate tick at the left corner of his mouth. I wondered if it appeared when he addressed the bench, or if only mention of the Ten set it off.

I bowed. “At the
lustrissimo
's service.”

“My clerk said you had a letter to show me?”

He did not invite me to sit, so I sat. He remained standing, eyes icy, mouth twitching. He looked down his chin at me. Lawyers are very highly thought of in Venice, especially by other lawyers.

I said, “My master was the first physician to attend Procurator Orseolo when he was stricken, two nights ago. He was disturbed by the symptoms he observed—so much so that he believes it may be his duty to draw them to the attention of the Ten. He takes this step reluctantly, as you may imagine, knowing the suffering it may cause to innocent people. He is aware that there may be other explanations for what he saw, and invites you to go and discuss the matter with him.”

Roses bloomed on the attorney's cheeks. “Blackmail? He plans to extort money from me?”

I have never known the Maestro to turn away money, but to say so just then would have been indiscreet. “
Lustrissimo
, I would not serve a master who committed such crimes.”

“You prefer selling horoscopes?” Evidently Imer was a skeptic, like the doge. “Yes, the procurator took ill here, in my house. He died at home, I assume in his own bed. He was old. Old men do that. What is left to discuss?”

I stood up. “Evidence of poison. I thank you for your time.” I started to turn, then had second thoughts. “Just out of personal curiosity…Is the servant who poured the wine your employee, or did you hire him for the evening?”

“You can take your personal curiosity to hell with you, boy, and keep it there.”

“And the man with the big nose?”

The attorney's mouth twitched violently four times. “Let me see that letter!”

I passed it over. It was not sealed. He twitched six times while reading it. “Extortion! If your master wants to come here and ask some questions on a professional matter, I shall try to make time to see him. Ask my clerk to set up an appointment.”

I shook my head. “My master has difficulty walking, sir. My orders are to take you back to visit with him or else drop his letter in the
bocca di leone
. You may come and watch me do so if you wish. My gondola is waiting.”

“Blackmail, I say!”

“May the Lord be with you,
lustrissimo
.” I held out my hand for the letter.

“Very well. I will come with you, so I can personally caution Doctor Nostradamus that he is violating serious laws.”

He shooed me out ahead of him in case I tried to rummage through his briefs.

 

Imer might be doing well for an attorney, but the Ca' Barbolano overwhelms almost anyone. Sheer size, to start with. In a city squeezed onto a hundred man-made islands, space is the ultimate luxury and the Maestro's
salone
is enormous, stretching the length of the building. Huge mirrors alternate along the walls with paintings by Veronese and Tintoretto, chandeliers spread crystal foliage overhead, and the inhabitants on view are built to scale. Michelangelo's
David
from Florence stands nearest the door. Beyond him are Sansovino's
Mars
and
Neptune
from the giants' staircase in the Doges' Palace, and the
Laocoön
from Rome. More titanic sculptures loom beyond these. All of them are copies carved in chalk, but the ones I can vouch for are very good copies; the rest are certainly impressive.

Ottone Imer made a cynical effort to shrug off the vista he saw from the doorway, no doubt assuming that Maestro Nostradamus could not possibly own all this and his real quarters were probably some servant's kennel under the roof. But when I showed him into the atelier, its display of books, charts, quadrants, alembics, globes, armillary sphere, and the rest told him at once whose territory he was on. There was no one there. I gave him a moment to gape at it all.
First impressions last
, my master says.

Belief begins with the wish
, is another of his.

I conducted Imer across to the fireplace and the two green velvet chairs facing the window, the two reserved for visitors.

“The Maestro will be here directly.” I went to the red chair, adjusted its position slightly, moved the candelabra out of the way, looked past our guest, and said, “
Lustrissimo
Imer, master.”

“Good of you to come,
lustrissimo
. My legs are—”

Imer almost jumped out his seat. The door was across the room to his left, in plain view so he knew it had not opened, and the old man had not been there a few moments before.

Another cheap trick, alas. The old mountebank
can
move quietly when he wants, even with his staff. He would have had Corrado or Christoforo watching for our return. The wall of books is divided in two by a central alcove, which contains a huge wall mirror—a beautiful piece if your taste runs to the syrupy, being oval in shape, with a wide frame of mosaic cherubs and flowers. It turns on a pivot, providing access to the dining room—not truly a secret door, just an inconspicuous one.

He greeted his visitor with a twisted bow. I saw him comfortably seated and leaned his staff against the fireplace where he could reach it. He enjoys deference when we are alone and insists on it when we have company. Then I went to sit at the desk, where I could take notes if required or just watch the visitor's face.

Imer was scowling. “Trickery!”

The Maestro smiled ingratiatingly. “Of course, but effective.” When he wants to, he can seem very old and small and vulnerable. “My sympathy on your supper party the other night. A most unfortunate—”

“Your apprentice threatened to denounce me to the Ten. I am contemplating lodging a complaint of attempted extortion.”

Without turning to look at me, the Maestro said, “Alfeo, did you threaten the learned attorney?”

“No, master. I asked him if he would help you clear up a mystery before innocent people became involved. He agreed to come and see you.” Just as I had agreed to go with Raffaino Sciara.

Imer's mouth twitched. “Criminal investigation is the responsibility of the state inquisitors, nothing to do with you!”

“We all have a duty to report evidence of crime,” the Maestro said. “Are you sure there was a crime? Let me explain. When the procurator was overcome, I hurried to his aid as fast as I could. I detected symptoms characteristic of a certain poison. However—” He raised a tiny hand to forestall an interruption. “The substance in question is also a potent physic. The procurator was old and perhaps forgetful. If he accidentally took his medicine twice, or if he had an unusually severe reaction to the drug, which is possible, or if he had just opened a fresh preparation that happened to be a little stronger than intended…then there was no crime. We need to know if the procurator's own physician had prescribed this particular physic for him. You must know who was sent for that night? So will you tell me the doctor's name?”

“And then what will you do? Blackmail him as you have tried to blackmail me?”

The Maestro dropped his pathetic-old-man mask, shedding ten years and dropping his voice an octave. “Alfeo, you brought me an idiot. Put him back where you found him and give that letter to the lion.” He reached for his staff.

“Wait!” Imer snapped. “I withdraw that remark. It was uncalled for and I apologize. What exactly are you proposing?”

The Maestro leaned back and studied him with distaste. Eventually he said, “I am proposing,
lustrissimo
, to wind up the medical case on which I was consulted in your house two nights ago. If I can satisfy myself that the patient died by misadventure, I shall so report to a certain senior magistrate who has already asked me, unofficially, to investigate the matter. It is my hope that the authorities will then be content to let the matter rest. If I do not, a formal inquiry will be launched. Then you, and I, and a great many other people, will be seriously inconvenienced, embarrassed, and disturbed. If that is what you prefer, then go away and stop wasting my time. If you want to have your skull crushed in a vise, you will be on the right track. Otherwise you should give me your full cooperation.”