The Alchemist's Code

by Dave Duncan

  11

  I laid Danese’s admirable, expensive leather portmanteau on the spare room bed and began to pack it with Danese’s admirable, expensive silken garments. Eva had been generous to her hired lover. He owned luxuries I had never seen before—scented soap and a pearl-handled razor. He had no less than three spare pairs of shoes. One shoe was perceptibly heavier than the other five, though, a phenomenon I soon tracked down to a roll of gold coins tucked in the toe. Faced with a large sum of money and only my own honesty to defend me against later charges of pilfering, I decided to count it, and made it 60 sequins, equal to 165 silver ducats. That is a lot of money. Either Eva had been insanely generous to her hired lover or Danese had been working something on the side. Even I, in my boyish innocence, could think of several possibilities. I put the coins back in the shoe and the shoe in the case.

  I let Bruno carry it downstairs for me, because he would have been hurt had I not. Giorgio rowed me to Ca’ Sanudo and did not offer to lift the case ashore because he knew I would refuse if he did. I wielded the big brass anchor and the summons was answered by Fabricio, the footman. This time he was dressed as a gondolier.

  I was dressed as an apprentice and carried luggage, but he knew me and knew I was recorded in the Golden Book, so he bowed. I inquired after Danese and was assured that he would be informed directly of the honor of my visit if I would be so gracious as to wait in the androne…

  There were fewer crates and fewer empty shelves than before, but a forest had sprouted on the floor, trees of books both high and low, indicating that the huge collection was still being sorted. Let loose in such a feast, the Maestro would starve to death before he remembered to eat. Lucky, perhaps, that he was no longer mobile enough to indulge himself in such bibliophilic orgies.

  Fabricio returned, scooped up the portmanteau, and led me upstairs. Since my last visit the landing at the mezzanine level had been furnished with three marble busts and the fair madonna Grazia, she of the divine eyes and devilish nose. Her gown was a glittering mist of silver taffeta and pearls, her hair had been set in a much less childish style than before, and only time would ever make her look like an adult.

  She beamed, extending both hands to me. “Dear sier Alfeo! I am so ashamed of my cruel words to you on Sunday! Such ingratitude for all your help! Can you ever forgive me?”

  Forgiveness, it is well known, requires repentance. I kissed her knuckles. “Think nothing of it, madonna! You were understandably upset. Your frowns are forgotten and your smiles compensate a thousand times for any trifling service I may have been privileged to offer.”

  “My husband and I are so grateful to you. If the foolish man had just told me that you were a nobile homo I should not have spoken so ungraciously. Sier Danese says you are his oldest friend and he will ask you to be his witness at the formal wedding ceremony.” And so on. Her life had been transformed thanks to me, et cetera.

  I was more than happy, et more cetera. If I was Danese’s best friend, that said a lot about Danese.

  “Fabricio!” the sylph commanded. “Go down and tell sier Alfeo’s gondolier that he can go. Sier Alfeo will dine with us today.”

  There were two doors opening off that landing and Fabricio, interestingly, was just closing the one on the garden side—wrestling with it, for Venice is built on wooden piles sunk in the mud and sand of the lagoon; doors develop minds of their own as they age. I knew that must be Grazia’s chamber. Fabricio no longer carried Danese’s portmanteau. Had Grazia ordered this arrangement and did her parents know of it? That was no business of mine.

  As a matter of form, I had to protest the dinner invitation, but the idea appealed to my gastrointestinal apparatus, which had been complaining noisily all the way from Ca’ Barbolano. Quite apart from the prospect of food, I always enjoy snooping in the homes of the rich, especially if I can win a chance to admire their paintings. With my customary grace I let myself be persuaded.

  I offered the lady my arm to steady her on her platform soles as we proceeded up the second flight, while she continued to chatter. Awaiting us in the salone were Danese, clad in a smug golden glow, and madonna Eva with a smile of welcome carefully chiseled in place. She was decked out in a dark blue gown to set off her golden hair and a treasure of golden ornaments speckled with diamonds. The wonderfully feminine roundness of her chin and bosom were offset by the sapphire hardness of her blue eyes, two jewels on velvet.

  “Sier Alfeo! What a pleasant surprise! You are most welcome. You must join us for dinner.”

  I accepted again.

  She forced the smile a notch or two wider. “Sier Zuanbattista and I never properly thanked you for all you did. Truly you were the white knight to the rescue! So romantic! So poetic!” So nice that you hit my son-in-law with a sword.

  “Come!” Grazia snapped, unwilling to be upstaged. She detached me and dragged me in the direction of the salotto I had visited on Sunday. Mother and daughter were still on speaking terms, but only barely. I could not believe that women would seriously quarrel over Danese Dolfin himself, but they were playing for points that men could not appreciate.

  Great-aunt Fortunata had not been tidied away during my absence, perhaps not even moved for dusting. Crabbed, wizened, lipless, toothless, and malevolent, forked tongued and hairy chinned, she appraised me with two bleary eyes like agate chips in milk and then, to my astonishment, spoke. “The Good Lord told us to judge the tree by the fruit it bears!” I had forgotten how discordant her voice was, the sound of a granite lid being pushed off a crypt.

  “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  “Father Varutti says that even your use of demonic forces to rescue Grazia may not have damned you to Hell because it was in a good cause.”

  “I hope so and believe so,” I agreed, “trusting in the salvation that—”

  “But he is sure that you are damned anyway.”

  If contemplation of homicide was cause enough, then I certainly was. I did not bother to explain that I had used no demonic forces and that clairvoyance is no more a black art than astrology is. Even the Pope employs astrologers.

  A strikingly pretty maidservant brought us wine. I overheard her being addressed as Noelia, so she was the ladies’ maid who had discovered the empty coop. She could not be a day older than twelve.

  Trying to edge closer to the Palma Vecchio portrait, I got cornered by the leering Danese, who thanked me for returning his baggage. The cause of his good cheer was too good to keep secret. “You saved me a journey, old friend,” he whispered triumphantly. “Grazia has finally made her mother see reason. We are man and wife in the eyes of the church. There can be no sin in admitting it.” Or admitting him, in other words. Bedtime, all.

  “Congratulations.”

  So it went. We were obviously waiting for someone, and my next attempt to stalk a painting brought me within range of madonna Eva again.

  “I am so happy that you can stay to dine, sier Alfeo” she declaimed. “I know my husband will be devastated at having missed this opportunity to thank you again, but he will be unable to join us.”

  Danese and Grazia were locked in eye-to-eye adoration, out of the conversation. I rose to the occasion.

  “I don’t imagine you see very much of him just now, madonna.”

  She pouted, obviously not for the first time. Despite her comparative youth, her mouth was settling into mean lines. “Not much more than I saw of him when he was ambassador in Constantinople! The Signoria’s schedule is brutal! At least sier Zuanbattista only has to put up with it for eight months; I cannot imagine how the poor doge stands it as a lifetime ordeal. The Collegio in the morning, the Senate most afternoons, and the Council of Ten in the evenings, not to mention all the purely ceremonial functions, the Great Council on Sundays, and many diplomatic meetings.”

  Then she glanced past me and brightened like fireworks over the Grand Canal. I turned, expecting to see her husband striding through the doorway in his scarlet counselor robe, but it was merely the no
ndescript Girolamo in his ministerial violet.

  There were many emotional crosscurrents in Ca’ Sanudo just then, and that new one sent a shiver down my backbone, followed by several other shivers in tandem. I remembered Violetta drawing my attention to Giro and Eva at the theater, not two weeks ago yet, although it felt like a lifetime. Why? She had never explained her real interest in them. I responded automatically to Giro’s greetings, apologies for not being there to greet me, and protestations of gratitude for services rendered, while part of my brain spun like a windmill trying to work out relationships. If Giro was his stepmother’s lover, as Violetta had hinted…That would hardly be surprising, when he was older than she was and she was thirty or forty years younger than her husband, who had been away for years anyway. These things can happen anywhere, not only in Venice. But if Giro and Eva were lovers, why had Danese lied to me about being her lover as well as her cavaliere servente? Could the lady have two lovers? At the same time? Day shift and night shift?

  And what went on at night in the house now that Zuanbattista was back?

  Giro had returned from the regular morning meeting of the Collegio with the rest of his day free, likely. He hurried off to shed his formal robes and we went into dinner as soon as he returned. Madonna Eva smiled like Medusa as she saddled me with the job of squiring her aunt, who gripped my arm in one claw and a silver-topped cane in the other, and moved like a glacier.

  The dining room was adequate, but far from Ca’ Barbolano’s palatial grandeur. The food was better than Venetian average, but not a patch on Mama Angeli’s—the Risotto di Gò e Bevarasse was overcooked and the Branzino al Vapore in Salsa di Vongole practically raw. It was served by the child Noelia and a fresh-faced youth addressed as Pignate.

  I like risotto. The Maestro denounces rice as a newfangled foreign fad and forbids Mama to serve it. She does, quite frequently, which doesn’t matter because he never notices what he is eating. He often eats more than usual when there is rice in the dish.

  Ca’ Sanudo conversation was infinitely duller than any of the Maestro’s table monologues. Politics was a forbidden topic, of course, as was anything to do with sex. Madonna Eva discoursed at length about the wedding plans, lamenting the haste required and the limits this imposed on the scale of the celebration. I hung on every word—with the rope cutting into my neck. Old Fortunata mercifully remained silent, poking listlessly at the tiny portions put in front of her but rarely eating anything. Danese and Grazia stayed in their locked-eyeball trance, smiling inanely. Giro was as colorless as always, rarely speaking, watching his stepmother’s lips move, but with so little expression or interest that I rejected my earlier suspicions. No one could love a snowbank like Giro. Or perhaps one could and the snowbank could not respond?

  Mother and daughter ignored each other throughout the meal. There could be no question which of the two had the better face or finer figure or greater experience, yet youth could trump all of those. Madonna Eva’s lover had been stolen by her own daughter, and a certain amount of acrimony was understandable. If she had cherished secret hopes of one day wearing cloth-of-gold as dogaressa, they had been trampled in the dust of dead ambitions. One might even permit a small amount of rub-your-nose-in-it jubilation from Grazia. But where was Girolamo in all this? Whose side was he on? I could not hazard a guess.

  Then Danese flashed his perfect teeth at me and asked how I had enjoyed the play. What play? of course, and I had to explain how he and I had met outside the theater the previous week.

  “I understand that some of the dialogue was on the racy side?” he said blandly.

  That was an understatement, because Violetta, always unpredictable, had chosen a bawdy Rabelaisian farce performed by a traveling company from the mainland, a rehash of the adventures of Captain Fear. No woman in Europe is better educated than Violetta, able to quote Ovid or Dante or Sappho at the flicker of an eyelash. She can sing, play the lute, and dance well enough to dazzle men who have known the courts of Paris or Milan. She might have made her selection to spare the strain on my threadbare purse, but she is a woman of unbounded variety and had enjoyed the vulgarity, laughing as loud as any of the groundlings.

  “We do not need to discuss that,” Giro said. “Did Father tell you, Mother, that the tallies of the grape harvest are in?”

  Eva smiled blissfully and I saw that one of Giro’s virtues in her eyes was that he could squelch his new brother-in-law. That did not mean that he had no others, of course, but evidently the lady needed his support against the triumphant Dolfin duo. I could easily imagine Danese throwing off three years’ humility and the rags of obsequious cavaliere servente to swagger in the finery of son-in-law and heir. Every smile must rub salt in the wounds of Eva’s humiliation.

  Giro expounded on the grape harvest from the mainland estates; Danese went back to glowing at his bride in wordless rapture. He held all the cards now.

  Eventually I asked about the Tintoretto on the wall opposite me, although even at that distance I was sure that it was a School of Tintoretto Tintoretto.

  “Oh, my father is the collector,” Giro told me. “He has a great eye for art.”

  He glanced at his stepmother as if this was one of those in-jokes that all families share, and for once there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. It was instantly reflected in hers. That was far from proof of guilt—of course a woman and her stepson are allowed to share a joke about her husband’s foibles! But by then my imagination was running riot and seeing double meanings in everything.

  The meal ended at last. I thanked my host and hostess, congratulated the happy couple again, and was assigned to Fabricio to be rowed home to the Ca’ Barbolano and my afternoon’s labors, whatever they might turn out to be.

  I had more immediate plans, though. I had sensed something far wrong at Ca’ Sanudo and if anyone could reassure me about that noble house, it was Violetta. I asked Fabricio to let me off at the watersteps between Ca’ Barbolano and Number 96, as if I intended to go along the calle to the campo. I tipped him more generously than usual, proving to myself that I was not Danese Dolfin. He flashed me an angelic smile as he thanked me. Not another, surely? My conscience roared at me for being an evil-minded prude.

  I went into the alley, then retraced and emerged. I watched Fabricio row away as I walked along the ledge to the door of 96 and knocked, not having brought my key. If someone in the Sanudo family fancied handsome youngsters on principle—or lack of principles—then Fabricio was a logical choice. The serving girl, the gondolier, the cavaliere servente…madonna Eva herself. Saints! Even the cherubic footman, Pignate! Messer Zuanbattista Sanudo had a great eye for art, his son said. Had he meant beauty?

  Draped in a gown of silver and violet silk, Violetta was seated at her dressing table while Milana brushed out her hair, but she twisted around to offer me a hand. She was Niobe, whose eyes are a gentle hazel, brimming over with pity.

  “Alas! Alfeo, my poor darling! I do wish you’d come sooner, but I cannot dally with you now, or I’ll be hopelessly late. Late even for me, I mean.”

  Seized with guilt for causing such distress, I knelt so I could continue to hold her hand without standing over her. “I’m already late and I have all the time in the world for you. I need to ask you some questions.”

  No matter what persona she happens to be wearing, Violetta can read me like a public inscription. A trick of the light, perhaps, but it was the shrewd gray eyes of Minerva that then appraised me. “Still on about the Sanudos? Ask your questions, clarissimo.”

  “Why the Sanudos?”

  “Because it is not like you to miss a hint, Alfeo.” Minerva’s eyes twinkled with deadly humor. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Why did you point out Giro and Eva to me at the theater two weeks ago?”

  “Because I had found you talking with Danese Dolfin and wondered if you knew who or what he was. You didn’t.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t like to gossip,” she announced with a coquet
tish toss of her head that Milana did not appreciate. “Is it important?”

  “Of course it’s important! Zuanbattista is one of the senior men in the government. Is he not vulnerable to blackmail?” I could not mention Algol, of course, but I was starting to wonder if there was a connection.

  Violetta made a moue, considering. “I don’t think so. The whole city is laughing at his wife but Zuanbattista himself is well liked and the seduction, if it happened, occurred while he was away on government business, so he gets a lot of sympathy. Girolamo doesn’t seem to care about politics.”

  “He is not one of your clients, is he? Or any other lady’s?”

  She chuckled. “His preferences do seem to lie elsewhere. He keeps his emotions under tight control, from what I’ve heard.”

  “A cold fish,” I agreed. Sodomy may be punished by burning at the stake, but in practice is usually ignored or awarded lesser penalties, such as exile. “So, about three years ago, Zuanbattista goes off to Constantinople, leaving wife, daughter, and son behind in Venice, or at the country house at Celeseo.”

  “Both. Mostly the mainland, but they came and went.”

  “Both, then. Knowing his son’s inclinations, he was probably not worried about Eva, and at his age he may not worry much anyway, as long as there is no scandal. Giro is in charge of the household. To discredit rumors of his illegal tendencies, he pretends to be having an affair with his beautiful young stepmother, who is younger than he is.”

  “You’re putting it too crudely, dear. Come around to the other side and hold this hand instead. He was seen squiring a beautiful woman. As long as proprieties are observed, nobody really cares.”

  “But then he instals his catamite, Danese Dolfin, as his stepmother’s cavaliere servente?”

  Minerva regarded me under lowered lashes. “Or Eva hires Danese and Danese takes on additional responsibilities? It would be dangerous to make either statement in public.” Sarcasm dripped slow as syrup. “Or Giro stole his stepmother’s gigolo for other uses?”