The Alchemist's Code aa-2

by Dave Duncan

  “That he is still hunting for the unknown lover. They know who he is and they wasted half the morning trying to find him. I expect Giro is over in Cannaregio watching the gondolas leaving for Mestre. Aunt Fortunata is no doubt pacing the Molo, keeping her beady eye on ferries to Chioggia.”

  The Maestro nodded. “Not bad thinking, Alfeo.” From him that was ardent praise. “Give me an hour. But no more! I know the minute my back is turned you will be plunging into lechery with that harlot of yours.”

  “In a whole hour I should be able to plunge several times,” I said, making him pout at my continuing salacity. What he was really doing was giving me permission and orders to find out what more Violetta knew about the Sanudo family. He would deny that, of course, although he knows that she will never betray my confidence.

  “She’s been away, may not be back yet,” I said wistfully. Sunday’s negotiations at the theater had borne fruit in the form of a new patron, a wealthy commoner named Agostino Buranello, who had whisked her off to Padua on Wednesday so he could flaunt her at a wedding. I had been trying not to think about how she must be suffering.

  Nostradamus rose and hobbled over to the slate-topped table that holds the big globe of rock crystal. I saw him settled on the stool, lit the lamp, closed the shutters, and left him staring into the crystal. I locked the atelier door behind me. The salone was filled with mouth-watering odors, but a thousand ducats carries a lot of weight. I headed for my room.

  Mama Angeli rolled out of the kitchen to accost me. Mama is too good to be true and works hard to remain so. She is also larger than life, always seeming as if about to give birth to twins or triplets, which she does at frequent intervals, and she is a magnificent cook, a rarity in the Republic. The Maestro tolerates the cost of feeding her enormous family because he thereby retains the services of her husband Giorgio, our gondolier, plus a whole army of odd-jobbers. Six or seven young Angeli were leaking out of the kitchen behind her, curious to know who the fancy guy had been and what their employer was up to this time.

  “You haven’t eaten dinner yet!” she said in tones normally reserved for pronouncing death sentences.

  My stomach responded in the same key. “I know,” I added. “I am fasting for the good of my soul.”

  “ You? You could starve to death a hundred times on your sins.”

  “I need to make room for a few more. The matter is urgent, Mama.” I did not move away, because I sensed she had some problem to discuss.

  She pouted. “Vettor was here. He is going to marry that girl!”

  “Giacomina? A wonderful choice! She’s a Virgo, which means purity and service.”

  Mama added more grooves to her pout. “Her dowry is only twenty-seven ducats!”

  “But the children she will give him!”

  That was better, yet Mama’s eyes still gleamed suspiciously. “Children?”

  “Many, many children. But he must marry her soon, while Venus is in the house of Leo. I’ll work out the best possible day for the wedding so she will bear sons. If they wait until the moon reaches conjunction with the Pleiades, then it will be daughter, daughter, daughter…”

  “You swear this?”

  “The stars never lie. Now, please, I must go. See the master is not disturbed.” I made my escape, knowing from Mama’s rapturous smile that the news of many future grandsons would be down at the wellhead in the campo in no time and all over the parish by evening-all over Venice, very likely, for the Angeli clan forms a substantial part of the population.

  The reason the Maestro had not ordered me to try the crystal with him is that it never shows me anything other than my next encounter with Violetta. This is a problem of youth, he says, but youth has its compensations. Furthermore, tarot works well for me, although it lacks the detail of clairvoyance. My deck’s great age makes it extremely sensitive. The cards are shabby and dog-eared, the inks of the drawings almost rubbed away in places. I retrieved it from under my pillow and laid the spread out on my dressing table, a quick five-card cross.

  The face-up card in the center defines the subject or question, and this time it amply confirmed my suspicions, for it showed Love, number VI of the major arcana, a couple holding hands with Eros aiming his arrows. I dealt the other four facedown and turned them over in sequence. The one below, representing the problem, was the king of coins. On my left, which is the subject’s right, the helper or path was the Pope, Trump V. The objective or solution, at the top, was another trump, the World, number XXI. And, finally, the danger to be avoided was the knave of swords. With the possible and worrisome exception of that one, the reading was as straightforward as any I had ever seen. The presence of three of the major arcana made it powerful, but it could not tell me where Grazia Sanudo was at the moment.

  Having tucked my deck away, I went to peek out at Number 96, the smaller house next-door. The leaded panes of my windows bear colored or prismatic glass so no one can see in, but I can peer out through a few clear gaps, and much pleasure I have of them. Number 96 is a bawdy house and on sunny afternoons the inhabitants gather on the rooftop deck, the altana, to bleach their hair. They are fully dressed, you understand, even to hats with no crowns, only wide brims to shade their faces and spread out their hair. The view is admirable all the same, and that day there were fifteen shapely nymphs gathered there. To my joy, fourteen of them were outshone by the radiant beauty of Violetta.

  The calle dividing the buildings is very narrow, so my preferred way of visiting her is to remove a couple of loose window bars, squeeze through, and just jump. That saves me having to walk down forty-eight steps and back up sixteen to her apartment. I haven’t died yet, although a couple of times the results have been in doubt for a freezing fraction of a second. I would not try it before witnesses.

  I opened the casement. “Damsels!” I cried. “I am available to the highest bidder.”

  Were I to record their replies, the Vatican would add this book to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

  “Your ribaldry fails to conceal your lust for my incredible virility,” I said. “Just ask Violetta!”

  “We did,” they replied in chorus, as if they had been rehearsing.

  Abandoning the unequal struggle, I quit the field and went down the conventional way to the watergate, where a lighter was tied up, either half-loaded or half-unloaded, but deserted during the midday break by all save a youthful Marciana watch-boy. There is no pedestrian fondamenta flanking the Via San Remo on our side, only a narrow ledge, along which an agile young man can work his way crabwise as far as the watersteps at the end of the calle. Another ledge beyond that took me to the watergate of 96, where I was admitted by Milana, Violetta’s maid. Milana is tiny and has a twisted back, but she is ever cheerful and devoted to her mistress.

  “My, you must have moved fast,” I told her.

  “The thought of seeing you inspired me, messer. Hurry, she is waiting for you.”

  That remark inspired me, so I took the sixteen treads at a run. Violetta Vitale is the most esteemed courtesan of Venice, and men squander fortunes for a single night with her. Her apartment is opulent, the bedroom most of all. With a silken bed standing on gold columns, walls adorned with splendid art and crystal mirrors, it would not disgrace a king’s palace and she has entertained royalty there. Violetta works by night and I by day, but when she is at home we often manage to meet around noon. Sometimes we just talk. Not often, I admit, and that day she rushed to greet me barefoot, with her hair still flowing loose. She had discarded the high-necked sleeved robe she wears to keep sunlight from darkening her creamy skin, and her silken undergarments hid no secrets. She eclipsed even the three naked goddesses looking down at us from Titian’s magnificent Judgment of Paris.

  “I came on a business matter,” I protested. “I cannot stay.”

  “It has been three days! I am insanely desperate for you, Alfeo Zeno, and if you do not feel the same about me, then you have some explaining to do.”

  She was right, of course,
and actions speak louder than words. Our embrace was fervent, almost frenzied, and no one can arouse a man faster than Violetta when she is in her Helen of Troy mode. By the time her chemise slid down to join my cap and doublet on the floor, I was ready to sweep her up and carry her to the bed. Then she pulled back to stare at me.

  Gazing into furious green eyes, I realized with dismay that now I was holding Medea, who is dangerous, capable of anything. I tried to pull her close again and she resisted.

  “Business? Three days without me and you come here for business?”

  “I was teasing!” I protested. “Joking.”

  “Joking? Teasing? I will teach you to tease.” Hands clawed at my face.

  In my reflex move to avoid damage, I released her. She ran nimbly to the door. I followed without trying to make myself respectable, because the only other person around would be Milana, who must have seen many men wearing much less than I was.

  Violetta’s dining room is small and intimate, of course, sized for two, and there she was already seated at the tiny table, pouring wine. Two steaming dishes of ravioli awaited us, so obviously she had set this up with Milana, who is a good cook, although not in Mama Angeli’s class. Yielding to the inevitable, I finished removing my shirt to help even the odds and sat down beside her.

  Medea was amused by my pretense of calm, knowing perfectly well how ignited I was. She picked up a savory morsel and leaned even closer to put it to my mouth. I accepted it, licked her fingertips, and reciprocated. Most wealthy Venetians have taken to eating with silver forks instead of fingers, a procedure that greatly amuses foreign visitors. Not my courtesan. She can make anything, even feeding, into foreplay.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. The ravioli was excellent. But when Violetta offered wine and I refused, she realized that I was serious. I was thinking of the knave of swords, of course, when I could think of anything other than those incredible breasts so close. Fencing and drinking do not mix.

  “What sort of business?”

  “Zuanbattista Sanudo.”

  Try saying that with your mouth full of shrimp ravioli.

  Violetta popped another treat in my mouth. “Easy. The Sanudos are one of the oldest noble clans, claiming descent from doges of the ninth century. Zuanbattista has served on all the big councils-the Collegio, the Senate, the Forty, the Ten. Fought at Lepanto. Now he’s had three years as ambassador to Constantinople and before that he led a special mission to Paris, triumph upon triumph. He’s in the innermost of the inner circles. His first wife was a Marcello and his second a Morosini, meaning he married into two of the biggest families in Venice. He did well financially out of the second marriage, I believe. She was the sister-”

  “Madonna Eva?”

  “Correct. She or Zuanbattista inherited the publishing business. Likely they’re planning to marry their daughter into another of the big clans.”

  “So he’s a possible future doge, then?”

  “When he’s old enough. Even now, with his diplomatic record and strong connections in the Great Council, he’s almost a shoo-in to be elected a procurator of San Marco as soon as there’s a vacancy.” She fed me again.

  “Rich enough?” I mumbled.

  She shrugged, a magnificent sight. “He owns huge estates on the mainland.”

  Our thighs and shoulders were touching. I was going mad.

  “And how do you know that his wife dreams of being dogaressa?”

  Medea laughed harshly, but the laugh ended as something much gentler. Diamond features softened to pearl and emerald eyes to the dark of a moonlit night. Helen was back.

  “An entertaining young noble I met on the mainland. He made a bid for my affections. He was mad at Eva-a beautiful young wife abandoned by an ancient husband in pastoral tedium, and he so-o-o handsome.”

  “She was not responsive either?” I could guess that the young man’s bid for Violetta had not been high enough, or she would not be discussing him.

  “He never saw even the outside of her bedroom door, so he told me. She claimed she dared not risk her husband’s political future with a scandal. As if anyone would care!”

  “I care,” I said, rising from the table. “And now I really must leave.”

  Medea flickered into view for a moment. “Don’t you dare!”

  I shrugged and turned for the door. I felt the terrazzo floor shiver as she moved. Two soft arms went around me. Hands groped. I moaned and leaned back.

  And so on. Fill in the details for yourself.

  No, it was much better than that. Violetta is the finest courtesan in Europe.

  Later, while we floated together in what the major poets refer to as postcoital euphoria, she inquired sleepily what else I needed to know. Violetta as Helen is the sexiest woman in the world, but that was not her voice. I peeked at her, nose to nose, and confirmed that her eyes had changed from dark to blue, from night to day. She was Aspasia again, ready to share political gossip.

  “And Giro, the son?”

  Violetta, you will recall, had pointed out that gentleman to me at the theater for no apparent reason, so I expected her to clam up at that point, because she will never discuss her patrons. She didn’t.

  “A lawyer.” She sounded oddly uninterested. “Attended university at Padua, served on the Quarantia, elected to some minor post on the mainland.” She paused, reflecting. “He never seemed to care much about politics and they stopped electing him, until last month when they suddenly made him a minister. There were rumors that he wanted to refuse.”

  “He couldn’t!”

  “Not without the Great Council slapping a huge fine on him. They were really honoring his daddy, I heard.”

  It may seem odd that Venice would honor a man by electing his son to an office he did not want, but it does happen. The Great Council can be even more perverse than that, as for example, when it is angry at the doge and keeps on nominating his relatives to posts just for the satisfaction of voting them down.

  “Giro himself ’s a nonentity,” Aspasia said dismissively. “I’ll ask around. Tell me why you need to know.”

  Fair’s fair, although I knew that the reaction was bound to be stormy.

  “Zuanbattista’s daughter may have been kidnapped.”

  Violetta lurched upright, rocking the bed like a minor earthquake. “Or may have run away?” Claws flashed.

  “That’s certainly possible.”

  “You let her be, Alfeo Zeno, or I’ll never speak to you again!”

  Medea was back and I was in imminent danger of losing my eyeballs or worse.

  “Even if she’s been trapped by some predator?”

  “And you will decide which, of course? You won’t let her opinion count at all! Just a stupid, lust-ridden flibbertigibbet, you think, whose life has to be organized by men?”

  I had no answer to that, because an apprentice must obey his master and madonna Eva had bought mine for one thousand ducats.

  3

  D innertime was over and a dozen men and boys of the Marciana family were back at Ca’ Barbolano’s watergate, busily unloading the lighter, but not so busy that they failed to notice my emergence from 96. I worked my way along the ledge and fled upstairs pursued by much jealous ribaldry. A man cannot smile at a girl in San Remo without the entire parish discussing what he is up to-usually in intimate detail.

  Armed with a glass of water from the kitchen, I returned to the atelier. The Maestro had made his way back to his favorite chair, but he was hunched over and shrunken, obviously in pain. Clairvoyance is an ordeal for him, leaving him drained and incapacitated, sometimes for days. He sipped the water, passed it back to me, then again bent over and held his throbbing head in both hands.

  “What did I see?” he mumbled.

  I went over to inspect the results, the scrawl chalked on the slate table. His writing is atrocious at the best of times; when he is foreseeing it can become totally illegible, even to me, and he never recalls what he has written.

  “Impress
ive,” I said. “Almost legible and the words make so much sense I fear I must be missing something.” Clarity normally means short-range prophecy, as this one seemed to be.

  Where the fish stands on a shore of wine and no flags fly,

  Why does a black swan wear a white collar?

  Amid a hundred bronze mouths the great one is silent.

  Steel will ring louder and tears must flow.

  He grunted. “Tomorrow.”

  “That’s how I read it, master.”

  The news would sound a bitter note in Ca’ Sanudo. Give the girl a night away from home with her accomplice and “unharmed” would mean less than her mother was hoping. For my part, I disliked the mention of steel ringing. At least the quatrain mentioned tears flowing, not blood, but drawn swords automatically increase uncertainty and thus blur foresight.

  The Maestro was aware of that also, of course, since he had taught me. “You need not do this, Alfeo,” he mumbled. “Unless you want to.”

  “Good! It sounds far too dangerous. I won’t.”

  He looked up in dismay, visualizing a thousand ducats subliming away like his sulfur crystals.

  I laughed to put him out of his misery. “If you had thought there was one chance in a million I was going to say that, you wouldn’t have made the offer, right? Of course I’ll go. I am the knave of swords who stands between the lovers and the world.”

  “What?”

  “Tarot.”

  He grunted again and heaved himself upright. I handed him his staff. He seemed steady enough, so I left him to thump his way across to the door while I headed for the desk.

  “We need a contract,” he said as he left. “And her father’s authority.”

  “Italic, roman, or gothic?”

  He slammed the door without answering, so I trimmed a quill to write italic.

  Giorgio and I trotted downstairs to sea level and stepped out into the gondola. “That way,” I said, making myself comfortable on the cushions in the felze. “Ca’ Sanudo.”