The Alchemist's Code

by Dave Duncan

  My mouth was very dry, my bladder unbearably full. “I thought of it and discarded it, Your Excellency.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Danese was no hero. He was an inept, untrained swordsman, a playboy who wore a sword for swagger. Had he found the evidence you suggest, he would have run straight to the palace and informed the chiefs in the hope of gaining a reward. He cuckolded sier Zuanbattista, then betrayed his mistress so he could seduce her daughter, all in the quest for money. I remember when he was a child…If you look at the first entries in that dossier you mentioned, Excellency, I think you will find reports that his greed exceeded his scruples even then. He would have betrayed his wife’s father or brother for gold, but he would never have faced them down himself.”

  “It remains a valid hypothesis. Doesn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Not to me,” the Maestro said. “I agree with Alfeo. If Dolfin had been able to inculpate the Sanudos, father and son, then their daughter would have inherited everything and he could have cleared the table. It would have all been his.”

  Gritti said. “So who killed him?”

  “I suspect but cannot prove.” We were back to the beginning.

  “Are you gambling that I dare not use force on you because of your age, Nostradamus?”

  The Maestro cackled. “Faugh! Tie me on the strappado and I would break in pieces at the first hoist. My heart would stop.”

  “Your apprentice is a strong young lad.”

  Vasco raised his eyes to Heaven, silently mouthing prayers of thanks.

  “Alfeo doesn’t know what I think,” the Maestro said, less confidently. “His brain is not his best organ.”

  “You can stop his interrogation at any time.”

  “Bah! Has the Republic sunk to torturing the innocent?”

  The inquisitor laughed. “Not yet! You always were a pigheaded old scoundrel, Doctor, and every year you get worse. Keep your theories, then, but I shall cancel your reward for the code breaking.”

  That was different. The Maestro thumped a tiny fist on the arm of his chair. “It is blatantly obvious! I warned the chiefs last night that I expected attacks against us that the vizio could not repel, and by morning there was a corpse on our doorstep. Why here, at Ca’ Barbolano? Surely Algol arranged that to ensnare my investigation in an irrelevant murder case?”

  Gritti leaned forward eagerly. “You credit the spy with magical powers?”

  “Who named him Algol?”

  “That means nothing. He could as easily be called Hercules or Solomon. I want you to name him for me. Now. His real name. If all you have is a suspicion, I will still hear it. If you refuse, I shall be forced to take you and your apprentice into custody. And cancel your bonus.”

  I was holding my breath again. Gritti had the powers to issue any threat he liked and then carry it out.

  Nostradamus knew that. Stubborn is stubborn, but this was ridiculous. He pouted. “Give me until tomorrow. Then I shall give you Algol, if not in person, at least his name and address and the evidence to hang him.”

  Gritti sat back to consider the offer. “When?”

  “About this time. But here at Ca’ Barbolano, if you please. I have done far too much traveling in the last few days, and my joints already feel as if I had spent all yesterday on your strappado. My staff please, Alfeo. Come and have prima colazione with us tomorrow, Your Excellency. I have an excellent cook, and I will serve up Algol to you for dessert.”

  “Mmm? And in the meantime, you do what?”

  “Collect the evidence I require to confirm my hypothesis.”

  Gritti smiled angelically. “I am a patient man. As you wish. But that will be your last chance.” He laid his hands on the arms of his chair to rise. “Now I must go to Ca’ Sanudo and see what that end of the story reveals. I shall, as you suggested, look out for a puddle of blood. Vizio, last night my colleagues and I ordered you to defend Zeno, so I suppose you had better continue to do so.” He smiled a silver-framed, snaggle-toothed smile.

  The old scoundrel was going to have Vasco dog my footsteps on whatever errands the Maestro had in mind for me. If I uncovered Algol, Vasco would be able to arrest him on the spot and claim the credit. He had not yet worked that out, though. All he could see was being my nursemaid for another day, and he looked disgusted at the prospect. “Certainly, Excellency. Do I defend him against the perils of foreign travel?”

  “Meticulously.”

  That was better—he was to be my jailer. “And what should I do with his sword?” The answer he would really like was obvious.

  Gritti heaved himself to his feet. “Clean the blood off it and give it back to him. I hope you never seriously believed, Vizio, that Alfeo Zeno would murder a man and forget to take his own monogrammed rapier out of the corpse?”

  19

  I went ahead to get the door, but it was opened before I reached it by one of the fanti. Behind him stood sier Zuanbattista. Very few people would have been allowed to interrupt Ottone Gritti, but ducal counselors are not just anyone. The week since I had last seen Sanudo had taken a toll. He seemed grayer and not quite so erect as before, but it would be hard for a man of his eminence to endure the mirth of his peers behind his back. He had to be aware of it and yet there was nothing he could do, no way he could strike back or deny allegations that had not been made to his face. He and Gritti greeted each other with the usual deep bows, but omitted the embrace. They ignored the rest of us.

  “We were on our way to the palace,” Sanudo explained. “We are already late, of course.” He meant late for the daily meeting of the full Collegio, which the doge and his counselors attend, and therefore should include both him and Girolamo. “I came around this way to ask the good doctor if he had seen any sign of Danese Dolfin, who disappeared from our house last night.” He stopped then and waited, but it was obvious that he had heard the news—possibly from the fanti or even the Marcianas downstairs—and his eyes kept flickering to the draped shape on the medical couch.

  “He has been called to the Lord, clarissimo.” Gritti led him over to the corner and uncovered Danese’s face.

  Zuanbattista’s reaction seemed convincing, neither too much nor too little. You cannot tell, though. A man who has killed another in near darkness may faint at the first daylight view of his corpse, but I have seen mass murderers display complete indifference.

  “He was found this morning, downstairs,” the inquisitor explained. “He had been run through with a rapier. My wife will join me in extending our deepest sympathy to you and your family. Your poor daughter will be distraught.”

  Zuanbattista flashed him a searching look, as if he suspected mockery, or was tempted to say that his stupid daughter was the cause of all this trouble. “Downstairs? Here?”

  “In the loggia. He was not killed there, though.”

  “And you have no idea who did this, or why?”

  “Not yet. He may have been an innocent bystander caught up in the affair that Doctor Nostradamus has been investigating for us. That is the learned doctor’s belief, at any rate—that Dolfin was unfortunate enough to be handy when the person we seek wished to confound the doctor’s investigations by leaving a corpse on his doorstep. When did he leave Ca’ Sanudo?”

  Only now did Zuanbattista turn around as if to inspect his audience—Vasco, the Maestro, and me. We all bowed. He did not respond, so perhaps he did not even see us. “According to my daughter, they spent a quiet evening together, just talking. They have had very little time alone to get to know each other.” Much too little, he meant. “About eight o’clock he informed her that he had a call to make. She was annoyed, of course, but he explained that he had promised to visit his mother in San Barnaba and would not be long. He assured Grazia that he had enough money to hire gondolas. About an hour later she retired and eventually went to sleep. Obviously, he had not returned by morning.”

  “Your gondolier says…?”

  “Nothing. Fabricio had already left to fetch my wife and me from a con
cert. Giro was also out.”

  Gritti turned his milky blue eyes on me. “How long would it take you to get here from Ca’ Sanudo, youngster?”

  The snag, of course was that Santa Maria Maddalena is in Cannaregio, north of the Grand Canal, and San Remo is south of it, in San Polo, so a pedestrian must go around by the Rialto bridge. “At night? No more than ten minutes if I managed to flag a gondola, Excellency. On foot, fifteen or twenty. If Danese was not armed, he might have taken longer to avoid the seedy areas.”

  In other words, we could not tell exactly, but the timing was reasonable. San Remo was not on his shortest route to San Barnaba, but not far off it. He had arrived here about half past eight, according to Giorgio, and left before the curfew rang at nine, when Luigi was supposed to lock up. And he had died, by the Maestro’s estimate, before ten. At an unknown hour before the heavy rain started, his remains had been delivered like groceries back at the Ca’ Barbolano. Where he had died was now much more important than when. There had been time for him to walk to anywhere in the city.

  “You are telling me,” Sanudo said, “that my son-in-law’s death was just one of those random killings that so grievously blight our city?”

  Silence.

  He was tall and doubtless still quite strong, but he was old. Despite his age, if messer Zuanbattista Sanudo were a trained fencer, I could imagine him besting Danese with a sword. Not at wrestling, though. If the fire vision had given me a true witness of events, Zuanbattista had not personally murdered his son-in-law, but he did have a potent motive and he certainly had enough money to hire bravos to do it for him. Such alley rats usually work in gangs, while pyromancy had shown only one assailant. How literally should I take those visions?

  “That is one hypothesis,” Gritti conceded at last.

  “But you do not believe it.” Despite his normal patrician stolidity, Zuanbattista’s craggy face flushed almost as red as his counselor’s robe. Street crime belongs to the Signori di Notte, not the Three. Gritti was investigating treason.

  They stared hard at each other, those two old men, one red-robed and one black-, one tall and angular, one short and grandfatherly—at the very least they must have worked together for decades, on and off, on councils and boards and committees. For all I knew they had been friends since boyhood, yet now one must consider the possibility of arresting the other for treason. Zuanbattista had not said, Et tu, Brute? aloud, but he was looking it.

  Gritti sighed. “I did not mean that. I could believe that the choice of victim was happenstance had he been found floating in a canal, but the location where the corpse was left was certainly chosen for some reason. I am honor bound to distrust the coincidence, as Nostradamus does, of a murder complicating his sensitive work for the Ten.”

  Zuanbattista seemed remarkably unimpressed by that. “You will forgive me if I suggest that the choice of victim might equally be intended as a distraction to turn suspicion on my house and away from the real quarry?”

  “That is another valid hypothesis, clarissimo,” Gritti agreed. “Why did you come here, though? Did you not inquire first whether he ever arrived at his mother’s house?”

  The pause grew into a silence before Sanudo said, “Grazia seems to have made a mistake when she took note of madonna Agnese Correr’s address. It is somewhere in San Barnaba, but when Giro and I inquired where she told us, the lady was not known there.”

  Other residents of the parish would know where she lived, but would not willingly disclose that information to strangers, especially two senior members of the government.

  Gritti glanced at me. “If memory serves…?”

  I sighed. “The lady’s name is Agnese Corner, not Correr.”

  “A handwriting slip,” the inquisitor said soothingly. “It is not the first time those two noble patrician names have been confused. You have not met the lady?”

  Zuanbattista was not deceived by the politeness. “No. The day we learned of the marriage we sent Danese off with an invitation to meet us, but she declined, pleading infirmity. Danese told us that in fact she was ashamed of her poverty and asked us to be patient while he found her some clothes worthy of his future station. And now she must be informed of her son’s death, and asked her wishes about the funeral.”

  “The priest will know where she lives,” Gritti said smoothly. The Ten’s informers would know, too. “I will send word, so he can go and comfort her. It will be best if I come and make some inquiries of your household right away, lustrissimo, and get it over with. You will be returning home now, I imagine, to break the tragic news to your daughter?”

  And the welcome news to your wife? Did he mean that also? Was he hinting that he could carry the entire Sanudo establishment off to the palace for interrogation? That would be how lesser folk would be treated.

  Sanudo’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, we must. Can you spare a man to carry a message to His Serenity, explaining our absence?”

  “Certainly. Alfeo, some paper, if you please.”

  I swiftly produced pen, ink, sand, wax, and paper, laying them out on my side of the desk, because I knew Sanudo to be right-handed and he would prefer the window on his left. By the time he had settled into my chair and I had lit a candle so that he could seal his letter, the door was open again and Gritti was calling to the violet-robed Girolamo, who must have been waiting out in the salone.

  Suspect number two.

  Giro returned the inquisitor’s bow perfunctorily, for his eyes had already located the ominous figure in the corner. Without a word, he strode across and lifted the sheet from the face. He stood in silent contemplation for a moment, then sank to his knees and prayed. I looked thoughtfully at the Maestro, but he was studying Gritti, who in turn was watching me, and seemed amused by something. Who could tell what might amuse such a man?

  Suspect number two: Girolamo would certainly have a better chance in a brawl with Danese than his father would, but I would still have bet against him, especially if Danese had been armed with a sword and he only had a cudgel, as my pyromancy suggested. Like his father, Giro could afford to send hired help in his stead. Again, motive was easy enough to find. Not likely politics, I decided, nor even money. Zaccaria Contarini would have commanded a huge dowry to marry Grazia, but Danese Dolfin would undoubtedly have had to settle for much less. But passion? Had he in truth been Giro’s lover? Jealousy and betrayal have triggered many a violent death.

  Girolamo finished his prayer and rose. When he turned around, his expression was as impassive as ever, and yet there was a shine to his eyes that suggested he had been weeping, or very close to it. The man of ice was melting. “Who did it and why?”

  Gritti explained again.

  The Maestro still sat in his red chair, clutching his staff as if he were some evil, wizened little tree elf, eyes missing nothing. I was wondering what he had seen or worked out to make him so sure of Algol’s identity. It sounded as if he needed more evidence and gathering evidence is my job, but how was I supposed to do that with Vasco on my heels all day? My stomach muttered something about breakfast. I had not even had a chance to shave.

  Zuanbattista sealed his note with wax and his signet ring and rose to hand it to Gritti. Then he turned to Nostradamus. “I understand that he had no male kin, so it is up to us to organize the funeral. I will send for the body.” He looked to me. “Zeno, do you know where madonna Corner Dolfin lives?”

  “I know where she lived six years ago, clarissimo.” It was longer than that since I had spoken with the lady, and the prospect of breaking such terrible news to her did not appeal at all. I could, of course, just find Father Equiano or another priest and drop the dread burden on his shoulders. On the other hand, I did want to know if Danese had gone there after he stole my sword.

  “Grazia says you were his best friend. It would be a favor to her and all of us if you were to break the news to his family.”

  I rejected the temptation to tell him that his late son-in-law had been an egregious liar, but I did make a n
ote to clarify that with the inquisitor.

  “Alfeo can do you a much bigger favor than that, Your Excellency,” the Maestro said with a smirk I had long since learned to distrust. “I mean no personal offense when I say this. Please believe that I have only your well-being at heart. I am now convinced that there is a curse upon your house and it is the cause of all of your troubles.”

  Ottone Gritti tensed like a hound scenting game. Everyone else just looked stunned and I am sure that included me.

  “What sort of curse?” the inquisitor demanded. “You talk of witchcraft?”

  I had a very uneasy feeling that Nostradamus was talking nonsense just to get his own back for Gritti’s bullying. If so, he was playing a very dangerous game and I might be the first to suffer for it.

  “No,” he said solemnly. “Or rather, yes, but not witchcraft performed by any living witch, no one within your reach. I don’t know where it came from. I suspect it is ancient, dating back several centuries. Have you ever heard of a jinx, Your Excellencies?”

  “There’s a bird by that name,” Zuanbattista said. “I saw a caged one in Constantinople.”

  “Interesting,” the Maestro murmured, staring at him. “But probably irrelevant. Yes, too late. These misfortunes predate your visit there. The jynx is a type of woodpecker found in the Balkans, among other places. When disturbed, it will turn its head around to an extreme degree and hiss at the intruder. It has long been used in witchcraft as a means to lay misfortune on people. Indeed, it has given its name to such curses, so if I say that your current problems stem from a jinx, clarissimo, I do not imply that you have a dead bird hung around your neck.”

  “Just what do you imply, then?” the big man demanded angrily.

  “That there is some cursed item in your house that is spreading evil as the miasma of a fetid marsh spreads fever. It is a talisman in reverse, a source of misfortune instead of good. Whatever it is, it should be hunted down and destroyed. Alfeo can at least identify the source of the evil for you.”