The Alchemist's Code (2 page)

A
ll week the Maestro indulged himself in alchemical experiments on the sublimation of sulfur, stinking up the entire Ca' Barbolano and neglecting his correspondence. When his folly caught up with me, I had to spend all Saturday morning in the atelier, writing letters at his dictation, he at one side of the big double desk, me at the other. Progress was slow, because I kept correcting his Latin—he has a nasty tendency to confuse ablatives with datives and is too stubborn to admit it. Some of the letters would have to be enciphered, which would ruin my plans for the afternoon.

By noon he had questioned Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon in England on geography and philosophy respectively, advised Michael Maestlin in Tübingen on the Copernican system and Christoph Clau at Collegio Romano on astrology. Now he was in the process of reassuring Galileo Galilei that his usual room would be available the next time he came over from Padua. I was hungry for dinner; he rarely remembers to eat at all. Mercifully, we were interrupted by a thump of our door knocker.

He scowled so horribly that he actually showed his derelict teeth, which he does very rarely. “Did you forget to tell me of someone's appointment?”

“No, master. Your next appointment is on Monday at—”

“Tell them I'm busy.”

“Who knows, it may be the doge,” I said flippantly, heading for the door.

It wasn't, but not far off.

I went out into the
salone
, which runs the full length of the building and is furnished with huge mirrors, enormous paintings, gigantic statues, spreading chandeliers of Murano glass, and myriad other treasures, all of which belong to
sier
Alvise Barbolano. He lets the Maestro and his staff live on the top floor of his palace in return for the occasional horoscope, medical consultation, and financial clairvoyance. Visitors are frequently struck dumb by their first sight of such opulence. The moment I opened the door I saw that these callers would not be easily impressed.

The man was tall and gaunt, elderly but well preserved, with a face like the Dolomite Mountains that stand guard along our northern skyline—hard white stone above a spreading forest of silver-streaked beard. He wore the bonnet, long robes, and tippet of the nobility, but in his case they were cut from the rich scarlet brocade of a ducal counselor. To have such a man come calling was startling; to have him arrive without warning was epochal.

The woman beside him seemed more likely to be his granddaughter than daughter. Her face was plump and her dark silk gown well filled. Genuine blond hair is notable, but not truly rare in Venice. I knew who this couple was and so must you, if you were paying attention earlier. The surprising thing was not that I remembered his face from my childhood, because he must have marched in scores of feast-day processions, and the spectators vie to identify important magistrates; what was rare was that I knew his wife's name at first glance.

Bad luck,
the Maestro says,
is misfortune; good luck may be treated as a reward for something.

I bowed very low and kissed the man's sleeve. “Your Excellency is indeed welcome. Madonna Eva Morosini, you honor this house. The Maestro is expecting you and if you will—”

She gasped. “
Expecting us?
Who told him we were coming?”

Zuanbattista raised one shaggy eyebrow two hairs higher on his forehead. The reason Venetian nobles are said to be born old is because they never drop their dignity. They speak in grave tones after due consideration. A ducal counselor, especially, stands at the heart of the labyrinth of interlocking committees that run the Republic, being a member of the
Signoria
, the
Collegio
, the Senate, and the Council of Ten. One week in every six he presides over the Great Council. No one in the least bit gullible would ever be allowed anywhere near any of that.

I spread my hands in bewilderment. “Maestro Nostradamus is the finest clairvoyant in Europe, madonna. He foresaw the honor of your visit this morning. If you would be so gracious…”

“We just decided! We didn't tell anyone!” Madonna Morosini was much too much of a lady to dig an elbow in her gangling husband's ribs, but her tone told him that she had told him so. He remained inscrutable, suspending judgment.

And she?
A man rarely sees more than he looks for,
the Maestro says, and I had already learned far more from her than I ever would from staring at her companion. I decided she was very slightly disheveled, although it was hard to pick out any one feature that implied this. Were her eyelids slightly pink from weeping, or was her face powder patchy, as if applied in a hurry? Her hair was not as carefully dressed as it should have been. She wore no jewelry at all, and normally a great lady shows some.

The Maestro is old and very frail, but his hearing is as sharp as a scalpel. I had left the door half-open. I led the way to it, pushed it wide. “The Sanudos are here, master.”

Unless newcomers know what to expect, they must be disappointed by their first sight of the celebrated pedant, prophet, polymath, physician, and philosopher. He is bent and wizened, and his black physician's gown and hat make him look even smaller than he really is. Badly lamed by an excess of rheum in his hips, he should walk with two canes, but prefers a single long staff inlaid with silver sigils. His hair hangs in untidy silver rat-tails, but he dyes his wispy goatee brown, for no reason I have ever been able to discover.

Visitors are always impressed by the atelier, though—the double desk, the examination couch, the great armillary spheres, globes both terrestrial and celestial. Sanudo was too dignified to stare at the alchemical bench or the wall of books, but he certainly noticed them in passing and would know that this room was the Maestro's own, not just borrowed for the morning.

The Maestro had left the desk and was standing by his favorite red velvet chair beside the carved marble fireplace—not that the fireplace was in use on a sweltering September noon, but that is where he sits to interview visitors. “You are a little earlier than I expected, Your Excellency…madonna Eva…but of course most welcome. My home is honored…” His flattery became a mumble as he bowed. He would have hobbled forward to kiss
sier
Zuanbattista's sleeve, but Sanudo stopped him with a gracious gesture.

“Do be seated, Doctor.”

I led the way to the green chairs, and the nobility floated behind me with the grace of galleons crossing the lagoon. There are always two chairs opposite the red one and if the Sanudos assumed that they had been arranged especially for them, that was their own mistake, not misinformation from me. As soon as all three principals were settled, I returned to the desk by the windows to watch faces and take notes if needed. The Maestro had his back to the light, not by accident.

Madonna Eva was trying to appear as calm as her husband, but her lips were compressed and her seething hands struggled to destroy a wadded lace hankie.

Zuanbattista said, “If you foresaw our coming,
lustrissimo
, no doubt you already know the nature of our problem?” His tone contained no irony whatsoever, but it was there in his eyes.

I hate skeptics. I love watching the Maestro deal with them.

“Only in a general way,
clarissimo
. Family trouble, of course. Quite sudden…and just this morning? When did you discover her absence?”

Madonna Eva lost color under her paint and even
messer
Zuanbattista deigned to look startled, but it is simple enough if you work it out.
Family trouble
because Sanudo had brought his wife or, more likely, she had insisted he bring her to consult the famous clairvoyant.
Sudden
because of the woman's swollen eyelids.
Just this morning
because he knew they had not told anyone they were coming, and also to win another minuscule nod without committing himself to anything. And
her absence
because by then he could be nine-tenths sure that the problem was a missing daughter. Eva Sanudo was of an age to have nubile daughters, if only just. Even if it wasn't a daughter, half the things that can be lost take a feminine pronoun in
Veneziano
.

“You impress us, Doctor,” Sanudo admitted.

“Now it is your turn.” The Maestro smiled by stretching his mouth sideways and bunching his cheeks. “The details if you please.”

“This is confidential.” Sanudo glanced suspiciously across at me.

“Certainly.
Sier
Alfeo has my complete confidence in all matters.”

He almost never uses my title in front of a client or patient. When he does, his instinct is infallible. Many nobles bristle when they hear that one of their own is demeaning his class by earning an honest living, but
sier
Zuanbattista glanced across at me with interest.

“Family?”

“Zeno,
clarissimo
,” I said.

“A descendant of Doge Renier Zen?”

“Twelve-greats grandson. My father was Marco Zeno.”

“The Marco Zeno who fought so well at Lepanto?”

“That one,” I said proudly. “He died in the plague of 1576.”

“Ah, as did so many! I saw your father at Don Giovanni's council the day before the battle, but there were many officers there and I had no chance to speak with him.” That was nicely done—he had implied that he would have spoken to my father without actually lying about it. Nodding to show approval of my existence and presence, Sanudo looked back to the Maestro. “My daughter was taken in the night.”

Was taken?
The words saddened me. I would already have bet some of my dearest body parts that the correct term was
ran away
. Venice, on its hundred man-made islands, is a tight pack of tiny communities, an almost impossible place to stage a holding-for-ransom. Many people, especially women, never leave the parish of their birth and know the comings and goings of every other inhabitant. Start buying more groceries than usual and the fact will be noted and discussed; the Council of Ten's army of informers will overhear. No one keeps secrets in Venice! But the Sanudos were not ready to admit that their child had eloped.

I reached for my quill as the lady began to speak. She declaimed, as if she had memorized an address to the Senate: “My maid found her gone in the morning. She helps Grazia as well as me and there was no answer to her knock. The door was locked on the inside. She came straight to tell me, of course. We looked out the window and there was a ladder lying right there, on the grass under her room!”

I had heard similar stories before, and the way they were told mattered more than the words. Madonna Eva was neither terrified nor distraught. Madonna Eva was shocked, yes, but mostly she was
furious
.

Curious.

“We wakened Giro,” she went on, “and sent him to look. He climbed in through Grazia's window. Her bed had not been slept in.”

That, she seemed to think, was that, but then the Maestro began asking questions. No ransom note had been found or delivered. Nothing had been stolen and there seemed to be no clothes missing, or perhaps just a few minor garments. Her jewels had gone, but “only the trinkets she kept in her room; her pearls were still in the usual safe place.” Even in its wild distress, the family had thought to check that.

And Giro?

“My son Girolamo,” Zuanbattista explained, “minister for the navy.”

“And who else lives in the house?”

Sanudo's pause was not quite long enough to be called a snub, but enough to imply nicely that he had not come to Ca' Barbolano to be interrogated by a foreign-born mountebank physician. “Her aunt, Madonna Fortunata Morosini, and three servants—Fabricio our gondolier, Pignate my valet, and the ladies' maid Noelia, mentioned earlier.”

That was a small household for a man of Sanudo's high station, even in Venice, where land is at a premium and the nobility have a long tradition of thrift. Even today it is not uncommon to see senators buying their own vegetables in the Erberia. Possibly the Sanudos had other servants coming in during the day, or the ladies' maid might also clean silver, the gondolier just love gardening, and the valet like to dress up as a footman. Aunt Fortunata might even adore cooking.

“And they are all accounted for?” the Maestro asked. “No one else in the household is missing?”

“No one,” Sanudo said firmly. “I fail to see the need for all these questions,
lustrissimo
. We came to consult you because you have a reputation as a seer. Can you tell us where our daughter is?”

“No, Your Excellency.” The Maestro stretched his face in a close-lipped smile. “I may or may not be able to see where she will be at some point in the very near future. The questions are necessary if I am to have some idea of what I am looking for. Now, a strange thing to ask a man in your distinguished position, but have you informed the
sbirri
?”