The Alchemist's Code (9 page)

The doge serves for life, although most doges are very old men when they are elected. The Ten's four secretaries are of the citizen-by-birth class and appointed for life. Everyone else is temporary. Members serve for one year, counselors for eight months, and neither can be re-elected to the same position until they have sat out at least one term. There is nothing to prevent them from being elected to the other position, though, and many of the nobles on the dais would have served as both in the past. The three black robes to the doge's right wore red tippets and were therefore the three “chiefs of the Ten,” that month's steering committee. It would be they who had decided to summon the Maestro.

“Doctor Nostradamus,” said the middle chief. He was a gaunt, silvery man of considerable age,
sier
Tegaliano Trevisan, and the Maestro had cast his horoscope a few years earlier. Offhand I did not recall its predictions, although I knew I could if I had to. His elongated face reminded me of driftwood, eroded and bleached by long turmoil in the breakers. “The Council understands that you have many times displayed great skill at finding missing persons.”

I wished that I had left while I had the chance and kept on running. Trevisan
might
mean that the Council was seeking advice from the greatest clairvoyant in Europe, but he might equally mean that the Maestro had been accused of black magic. I would be interrogated as a witness, very likely tortured, and probably burned at the same stake. I glanced at Zuanbattista Sanudo in his huge black cloud of beard and wondered why he had reported the story, for it made him seem a fool who could not even control his own daughter. So far he had paid about a third of his fee. A heap of cinders cannot sue to collect a debt.

The doge pulled a face. His Serenity is a total skeptic where the supernatural is concerned. He is not alone in that folly, but most of those present probably knew better.

“I have,” the Maestro said calmly. “How may I assist Their Excellencies?”

“Could you locate a spy?”

The other sixteen had all known what was to be asked, and showed no surprise.

“I assume that Your Excellency refers to a specific spy?”

Every state in Europe employs spies. If you include the Ten's own army of informers, you could fire a musket across the Piazza and pick up one or two any day.

“A specific spy,” the chief agreed in his dusty, wormwood voice. “We have good reason to believe that a particular spy is doing great damage to the Republic and we are anxious to identify him.”

The Maestro waited, but when nothing more was said, he cleared his throat. “Your Serenity, Your Excellencies…This noble Council is renowned and envied everywhere for its expertise and resources. If your normal methods have failed, you are obviously asking whether I can employ spiritual methods? If I speculate on this, it will be understood that I speak of what I have read in my studies and not from first-hand experimentation?”

“You are not on trial, Doctor,” Trevisan said. “Your testimony is privileged and will not be held against you.”

I started breathing again.

“My almanac for this year,” the Maestro said, “showed no great calamities in store for
La Serenissima
, so I am optimistic that someone will catch your scoundrel soon. Indeed, the imminent conjunction of Venus and Mercury provides strong support for that surmise.”

I knew that he was merely letting his mouth run while he rummaged through his brain, but Moro was scowling ferociously along at the three chiefs. Even with only one vote among the seventeen, the doge has enormous power to bear grudges and reward friends. None of the three chiefs looked at him, but they all began to fidget.

“I will certainly provide whatever assistance I can,” the Maestro said. “But I can do nothing without more information about the person I am to locate. Normally I have at least a name to go on. Can you give me a sample of handwriting? A description? Even the nation or cause he serves?”

Trevisan nodded. “We anticipated such a request. If you present yourself tomorrow morning at the Chancellor's office, the learned Secretary Sciara will show you what we have. We can provide a desk…”

The Maestro was shaking his head and I knew what was coming. Very few people defy the Council of Ten, but he was not going to come trotting to the palace every day like some whistled dog. “No,” he said. He was adamant. He would work at home with his library, or he could do nothing.

“Oh, saints preserve us!” the doge shouted. “I told you he would say that. Give him what we agreed.”

Trevisan nodded nervously. “We can provide you with the little information we have, but we shall set restrictions on its use and send a guard to watch over it. May Heaven bless your work.”

That was that, we had been dismissed.

T
he man who rose from the secretaries' table to lead us out was the chief secretary himself, Raffaino Sciara, widely known as
Circospetto
. Noble politicians come and go; like the doge, citizen Sciara goes on forever and he hoards more secrets than the Vatican. He and I have tangled in the past. He has a face like a skull and a sense of humor to match, but that evening I looked forward to fireworks, for the Maestro dislikes him even more than I do.

Out in the anteroom, Bruno had been standing within a wide clearing, glowering ferociously at the door. Seeing us safe, he spread an enormous grin and swept forward like a galleon, nobility hastily clearing a path. He was not needed yet, though, because Sciara led us across to the corner screen, which conceals two doors, one leading to the jails and torture chamber, and the other to the room of the chiefs of the Ten. That was our destination and I beckoned for Bruno to follow us through.

It is a rich room, although small, but that evening it was dim and haunted by shadows, lit by only two small lamps on the grand table behind which the three chiefs sit while interrogating witnesses, and two more on the recording secretaries' desk at the side. Beside that stood
Vizio
Filiberto Vasco in his red cloak, looking as if he had just been sentenced to twenty years in the galleys. For once his distress did not make me happy, because I could guess what was going to happen. He appeared to be guarding a leather satchel, and it was to the secretarial desk that Sciara went.

I helped the Maestro to a chair, Sciara took another, and I plonked myself down on the third. Vasco just stood, scowl firmly in place, arms folded. Very few chairs fit Bruno and he knelt to grin at the tiled floor, whose pattern of black and white reverses perspective while you look at it. Sciara proceeded to open the satchel.

“We refer to the unknown as Algol,” he said. “We know of his existence from reports by our own intelligence.”

“Venice's spies in the Porte,” the Maestro said.

The Sublime Porte is the Turkish government. Algol is the name of a star, but it means The Ghoul.

“Possibly.” Sciara extracted a sheaf of papers. “These are copies—”

“I need originals,” the Maestro said.

“You can't have them. Our agent risked his life to supply even this much.”

I saw at a glance that the text was enciphered, the letters grouped in fives.

The Maestro looked disgusted. “You expect me to decipher this for you?”

The worst thing about
Circospetto
is his smile. I always expect maggots to fall out of it. “When you do you may instruct us.”

The Maestro is a genius in steganography, or hidden writing, as he is in just about everything, but the Council of Ten has been renowned throughout Europe for its expertise with codes and ciphers ever since it employed the great Giovanni Soro. The Vatican itself would send Soro intercepted dispatches to be deciphered and he would send them back in plaintext—keeping a copy, of course. They say that the only time he was stumped was when Rome sent him a message in its own cipher and asked if he could read it; he sent it back, saying that he could not. It must be a terrible sin to lie to the Pope.

The Ten are reputed to keep three cryptographers toiling away somewhere in the palace behind locked doors. If they could not break Algol's cipher, no one in Europe could.

“What language?” the Maestro demanded.

“We don't know.”

I lost interest at that point, knowing of no way to decipher an unknown language. The Maestro did not seem deterred, though. He held a sheet closer to the lamp.

“Roman alphabet. How many letters?”

“Twenty-three.”

In Venice we mostly use the old twenty-three-letter Roman alphabet, dropping
K
and
Y
and adding
V
and
J
. Tuscan spurns
J
and
H
, but a cryptographer may double up rarely used letters or add some, at his whim.

“Not a nomenclator, then,” Nostradamus said, “unless the characters are represented by letter pairs. Have you checked couplet frequency?”

“Minor deviations,” Sciara said. “Probably just happenstance. The same with single letter frequency. It is not truly random, but certainly neither a Caesar nor a transliteration of Arabic letters into Roman.”

“Nor a transposition, then. Curious.”

It is a rare treat to watch the Maestro fencing wits on equal terms with someone. I had a fair idea of what they were gabbling about because I have to encipher and decipher much of his correspondence, but a glance at the
vizio
told me that he was utterly at sea. Bruno had gone to smile at the pictures.

“I put a summary of our experts' work notes in here,” Sciara said, tapping the satchel, “to save you from wasting time attempting to decipher the code. I know it is the sort of puzzle that distracts you. Their Excellencies accept that it is unbreakable.” The skull sneered. “They hope your occult methods will identify Algol where our cryptography has failed, and this is the only lead they can offer.”

Nostradamus snorted. “But if I break the cipher, the plaintext would lead you back to Algol, almost certainly, and would also be admissible evidence. I shall do both. What else can you tell me? How long has this Algol been operating? What departments of government has he penetrated? How does he communicate with the Porte that you are able to intercept his mail?”

“Their Excellencies have not authorized me to release such information.”

“Have they asked for a
zonta
?”

The secretary twitched as if jabbed by a needle. “I do not discuss Their Excellencies' deliberations!”

The Maestro smiled foxily. “And to whom do I report my findings?”

Sciara actually hesitated before replying. “If you have evidence pertaining to the safety of the Republic, report it to the chiefs of the Ten—
messere
Tegaliano Trevisan, Tommaso Soranzo, and Marino Venier. If you find nothing of interest, just return these papers to me. Me personally.”

“Why bother, if they contain nothing of interest? Have they been debated in the Council,
lustrissimo
?”

Even Vasco had caught the drift of the Maestro's questions now and looked horrified.

Circospetto
said, “I told you, Doctor, I do not discuss Their Excellencies' discussions.”

The Maestro chuckled and handed the papers back to Sciara. “On what terms may I take these?”

“They stay in the possession of
Vizio
Vasco. He will watch while you study them, collect them when you are finished, also any copies or extracts you have made of them and all your work notes. When you are done, he will bring the material back to me.” The old man handed the satchel to Vasco.

“Then I shall see what I can do,” the Maestro said.

“You really expect to succeed?” Sciara said scornfully.

Nostradamus stared at him with an expression of bemused innocence. “Why not? I have already narrowed the field, haven't I?”

I rose and went across to tap Bruno's arm and gain his attention.

 

As we trooped down the great dim staircase—the link boys first, then Bruno and the Maestro, with Vasco and me in the rear—Vasco caught my arm to hold me back.

“What did Nostradamus mean by narrowing the field?” he whispered.

“It's not too difficult to guess,
Vizio.
Even you—”

His nose twitched. “He thinks there's a traitor in the Council of Ten? That's outrageous!”

“Sciara damn near confirmed it,” I said cheerfully. “He made sure we knew the names of the chiefs! They haven't told the whole council what evidence they have, because that would betray the Republic's agents in Constantinople. And why not? Remember 1355?” No Venetian forgets that date, the year the doge himself, Doge Marino Falier, was beheaded for conspiring against the state. If a doge could be a traitor, anyone could. “You need me to spell it out for you?”

“Oh, please do,
sier
Alfeo. In large type. Very large!”

Vasco attempts wit only when he thinks he is on top and ahead, so that sarcasm should have alerted me, but I missed it.

“Well, the procedure was wrong to start with. Normally the chiefs would have summoned the Maestro and questioned him themselves, then either just authorized him to proceed on their own authority, or asked the Ten's approval at the evening meeting. They would not drag him out before the whole council.

“This elliptical procedure suggests,” I continued, amused to hear echoes of the Maestro's lecturing manner in my own voice, “that the chiefs are very scared indeed, and whoever else is in the know is scared also.” I meant the doge, most likely, and probably Zuanbattista Sanudo, because it must have been he who suggested bringing in Maestro Nostradamus. “The fox is so well disguised as a hound that they don't know which one he is. The Ten's normal reaction to a sticky problem is to ask for a
zonta
, right?” A
zonta
is an addition, usually of fifteen men, elected by the Great Council. The advantage of the Ten being thirty-two instead of just seventeen is that all the great clans can be represented. This spreads the guilt and dilutes grudges.

“Sciara did not deny that they were thinking about it,” I concluded. “No, ‘no' means ‘yes' in that world. Would you like the lecture on cryptography now?”

“Later,” Vasco said. “Much later. Tell me again why the Maestro was paraded before the entire Ten, if the spy may be a member?”

I used a phrase I would have to remember for my next confession. Why had I not seen that for myself?

“Blasphemy!” the
vizio
said smugly. “But I think you've got it this time.”

“And are you being sent along to guard—what?” I asked furiously.

“Maestro Nostradamus, of course.” Vasco smiled beatifically at having caught me out.

“Bait?”

“Exactly. There's a remote chance that Algol will be superstitious enough to believe in the old fraud's posturing. In that case he must seem to be a danger, so Algol may try to dispose of him—and then he will run into me.
Missier Grande
mentioned that I should keep a protective eye on you at the same time, but I'm sure he was just joking there.”