The Alchemist's Pursuit

by Dave Duncan

  Domenico wore well-cut gentleman’s clothes in sober, somber gray. With his keen, aquiline features and easy charm he seemed all ready to sell me the palazzo of my dreams or relieve me of my current rat-infested hovel, whichever I wanted.

  “So Nostradamus thinks he can find the person who killed my father, does he?”

  “He is willing to try, clarissimo.”

  He leaned back against the parapet and rested his elbows on it, studying me with that odd smile displaying lower teeth.

  “Then I had better start by pleading my own innocence and saving you having to ask. On the night in question, I attended San Zaccaria with my wife and her widowed sister, who was living with us at the time and has since died. The priest could testify that I was there, but the church was very full, so his evidence was not quite as convincing as it would normally have been. My companions later swore that I never went out, but of course they would say that, wouldn’t they? I was wearing my black robes, the church was dark, and we sat near the door.” He shrugged. “I did not slip out and murder my father, but if you want to assume that I was secretly glad when the Ten fixed on someone else as the murderer, then I couldn’t deny it under oath. Does that help?”

  “It helps a lot,” I said. “When did you last see your brother?”

  “Zorzi? Right after the funeral. I met him as he was leaving the house, decked up like a peacock.”

  “Do you know where he was going?”

  “I can guess why, but I don’t know where, or to whom.”

  “Did he say . . . What was his mood?”

  “He was scared out of his wits,” Domenico said brutally.

  “He was?” That was not what donna Alina had told me.

  “He was hiding it, but I knew him well enough to tell. Remember that he was a skilled actor and liar.”

  “Was he?” It must be a family trait.

  “He could never have scored so well with women otherwise. Mostly he bought harlots, but he also collected amateurs.”

  Jacopo had told me that Domenico had taken Zorzi’s side in the family quarrels. Perhaps he had, but now I suspected that he hated his youngest brother. If he hadn’t hated him back then, he hated him now. Because he had been jealous of the young hedonist? Because Zorzi was a killer? Because the possibility of Zorzi returning was a threat to his share of the family fraterna?

  “Do you know what was scaring him?”

  “The Council of Ten, of course. Zorzi was a bad boy, a prodigal, a rakehell. He had gotten away with it until then because of his name, but murder changed the rules.”

  “Do you know who tipped him off that the Ten were about to arrest him?”

  “The Ten, of course.”

  I must have looked surprised, because Domenico laughed.

  “It was the crime of the century, sier Alfeo! A patrician murdered in the Basilica itself! It shook the entire Republic. The Ten were under enormous pressure to find the killer, so look at it from their point of view. Zorzi had motive, because his father was threatening to disinherit him—which he did every Tuesday and Friday, but this time he had sounded more serious. Zorzi had no alibi. He claimed he was defending the name of a noble lady, but who would believe a public outrage like him? No, it was simplest for the Ten just to drop him a hint that Missier Grande was coming to get him and Zorzi would solve their problem all by himself. He ran away so he must be guilty. Simple.”

  And I thought I was a cynic! “Was he guilty?”

  “I think he was,” Domenico said sadly. “Somebody killed our father, and he seemed then, and still seems, the most logical culprit. If so, he deserved the headsman’s ax. If he wasn’t guilty of murder he deserved banishment anyhow, and that’s what he got.”

  “You told me on Saturday that you thought some bounty hunter had turned in his head by now.”

  He sighed. “I still think so.” He paused for a while, pensive, staring down at a potted plant beside the wall. “It’s hard for me to think of Zorzi doing anything so horrible, but even then I couldn’t think of anyone else who would do so and I haven’t since. I certainly think you’re wasting your time trying to find evidence that the Ten couldn’t find eight years ago.”

  “My master owns my time, and he’s the one who’s wasting it.” The noon bell began to sound, notes floating out across the city signaling time to down tools and eat the midday meal. Domenico straightened up and took his elbows off the parapet, tall and hook-nosed like his Orio mother, not broad and beefy like the Michiel strain. His move implied impatience. My time was up.

  “If Zorzi has come back,” I asked, “who is sheltering him?” He rolled his eyes, mockery in his smile. “Oh that would have to be me, wouldn’t it? I scuttle back and forth to the mainland all the time, and up the Brenta River. I own property on the mainland, which I have probably riddled with secret chambers just for this purpose.” Again the curious smirk. “I know, you’re only doing your job and I shouldn’t sneer. I have no idea. Why should he come back and risk his neck? Why should he be going around murdering fallen women? Why should anyone in his right mind help him in that game—because he must have help, his face is too well-known. That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it? Zorzi is only a blind. You really suspect that someone related to him has taken to strangling his old playmates.”

  I felt a little nettled that he could see through me so easily, although it was obvious enough. “If that were true, who would be the most likely killer this time?”

  “Jacopo,” Domenico said firmly, reaching for the door handle. “He’s not up to Zorzi’s standards as a satyr, but he sows enough wild oats to feed the Cossack cavalry. Can’t think why he’d be murdering the lovelies, though.”

  He ushered me back into the library. The artisans had gone but Jacopo was still poring over the drawings. He looked up cheerfully.

  “I sent the men for their dinner, Dom. Your chapel’s too small.”

  His brother frowned and went around the table to look.

  “Make it twice as big,” Jacopo said. He cupped a hand on the paper. “This big.”

  “That would cost eight times as much.”

  “You can’t do style on a shoestring, man!” Jacopo pirouetted, whirling his cape. He was showing off for my benefit, trying to persuade me that in private he was on equal terms with his brothers. “Look—it’s the buttons that make this outfit. My tailor used ugly little glass balls. I made him take it back and put these amethysts on. It cost ten times as much, but look at the result.”

  Domenico stared down at the drawing and then shrugged. “Twice as big it shall be, then. A cathedral of a chapel.” He smiled across at me. “He has an incredible eye. He’s right every time.” So now he was all brotherly love, not mentioning that seconds ago he’d offered up the family by-blow to me as a sacrificial lamb.

  I understood that I was not to dine with the family when I was led to the kitchens. There I got to share a bench at the table reserved for senior servants: Bernardo and Domenico’s respective valets, two popier gondoliers who row at the rear, and Jacopo himself. I could guess from the others’ reactions—or lack of reaction, rather—that Jacopo always ate there. As an apprentice I would not have minded, but Domenico had given me my title, so this put-down was a calculated insult to me, and perhaps to his mother for imposing me on the family.

  The lesser servants, sitting at the other table, were all women except for two junior de mezo boatmen, who would row at the bow, a young page or footman, and a Moorish slave. Such distinctions matter as much at that social level as they do in kings’ palaces. I recognized the maidservant, Agnesina, who had been mending clothes in donna Alina’s company on Saturday, but apparently signora Isabetta ate with the gentry.

  The brighter side of this snub was that I had intended to question the servants anyway and now I had a chance to do so in a relaxed atmosphere. It did not take me long to learn that none of them had been employed there for more than a couple of years. That was not truly surprising, because the rich are constantly complai
ning about the difficulty of holding onto servants, but it was a setback to investigating the murder of Gentile Michiel. As for the courtesan inquiry, I never had any intention of asking the staff who in the house might be creeping out at night to strangle or stab four women. There would be an uproar, a mass flight, and the news would be all over the city in an hour.

  I settled down to making the best of my lesson in humility and the reminder of how the other half eats. My pride suffered less than my stomach.

  Sier Bernardo had returned from his duties in time for dinner and condescended to receive me afterward in his office, which was a small but lavish room containing an oversized desk and very few books. He sat behind the desk. I was left on my feet and so was Jacopo, who stood just behind me so I couldn’t watch him. His inclusion this time was a surprise.

  “My duties for the Republic are weighty and consume much of my time,” the inspector of meats declared in his sonorous orator’s voice. “The matter you are investigating was settled, so far as I am concerned—so far as anyone in Venice except my dear mother is concerned—many years ago, and its resurrection now can serve no purpose. Moreover, I have an important visitor due in a few minutes. What is it that you want to know?”

  “Where you were on the night your father was murdered.”

  He scowled at me under bushy black brows. “I was here, in my residence, at home, and in bed. I had been suffering for several days from a recurrent excess of phlegm and green bile, a cause more of discomfort than danger, I admit, but disabling in spite of its lack of morbidity. The physicians had bled me, so I was in no state to go anywhere at all.”

  As an alibi that was not perfect, but good enough for now. The inquisitors would surely have questioned all the servants who might have discovered his absence during the crucial period. I could not, for they had since scattered to the four winds.

  “Do you believe that your brother was guilty of patricide?”

  “Without a shadow of a doubt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Council of Ten so decreed, and I am a loyal servant of the Republic. To call into question the solemn conclusion of the most senior tribunal of our government verges upon perfidy and sedition. Furthermore, young man, if you believe for a moment that the honored magistrates presently comprising that august tribunal would ever contemplate reversing the deliberated conclusions reached by their sublime predecessors, then you have been led into deep folly, and your duty as a scion of one of the ancient and most noble houses of our patriciate is to educate that foreign-born charlatan you work for in our laws and customs rather than let him confound your thinking.”

  “Your mother does not agree.”

  He drummed fingers on desk, a gesture in a patrician equivalent to a bull pawing turf. “Holy Writ enjoins each of us to honor his father and his mother, and I tolerate her for that reason. Her experience of the world has been greatly limited and you must remember that persons of her sex lack the natural logic and judgmental ability that the Good Lord grants to men. As an elderly, but loyal, daughter of la Serenissima, who has borne many children and endured much suffering through the misdeeds of the youngest of them, she deserves her family’s respect, which I freely grant her. I tolerate the whimsies of her old age with patience, but I cannot let affection mislead me into sharing her delusions.”

  The moment he paused for breath, I asked, “Do you think your brother is still alive?”

  Jacopo wandered over to stare out the window, standing with his back to us as if our conversation was of no interest whatsoever.

  Bernardo growled. “If you ask do I hope that he is still alive, then of course I must answer in the affirmative. I pray daily that he has found happiness through sincere repentance and the grace of God, as I have found it in my heart to forgive him. I am encouraged to believe that he flourishes by letters my mother has received from him, two of which, so I am informed, have been shown to you.”

  “I have seen letters purporting to be from him. Sier Domenico admitted to me that they were forgeries.”

  Bernardo smiled into his beard. “Have you not yet realized that of course he has to say that we believe them to be forgeries? We should have a duty otherwise to turn them over to the Ten.”

  That did not explain a Venetian watermark on a letter written from Savoy.

  “Sier Domenico told me he thinks sier Zorzi is dead.”

  Sigh, another patient smile. “Same answer.”

  “You believe, then, that your brother is still alive?”

  “Zeno, I have neither seen, nor spoken with, my brother Zorzi for eight years. What I believe and what sier Domenico believes are equally irrelevant and immaterial. As indeed, I regret to say, is this whole conversation. I ask and hope that you and your principal will be gracious to my mother and considerate of her feelings, for if you abuse her trust in you, I shall see that the full weight of the Republic descends upon you.”

  “Where does Jacopo get all his money?”

  Dropping his pretense that he was ignoring us, Jacopo spun around.

  “We pay him to wait upon donna Alina,” Bernardo growled. “As she ages, her ability to retain servants has deteriorated markedly. She is moody and intractable.”

  In the background, Jacopo rolled his eyes at an epic understatement.

  “You pay him enough to spend ten ducats for amethyst buttons on a single doublet?” Even if the lady had the disposition of a badger, she could not be worth that much.

  Bernardo scowled, eyes glittering. “She has recently indulged him by letting him collect some of her rents, and I am of a mind to have my bookkeepers review her ledgers to see how much of that money may have inadvertently gone astray, but I do not see how that can possibly concern you. Now, if you have no further questions—”

  I flashed my best mountebank-apprentice smile. “Oh, but I do! Two of them. I should prefer to put them to you in private, though.”

  Furiously red to the tips of his ears, Jacopo marched across to the door and this time he did slam it behind him.

  “I am informed,” I said, “that the Ten sent a fante to ask you some questions just after I left on Saturday. Will you tell me briefly what they wanted to know?”

  I expected the big man to refuse. He swelled even larger, but then he shrugged. “Questions much like yours. Had I heard from Zorzi? Did I know where he was? I told them I had assumed for years that his head had been turned in for the bounty money so the Ten should know the answers better than I did.”

  “Had assumed? You don’t now?”

  “What are you after?”

  “I’m curious to know why the Ten feel the need to ask. That was all they wanted—to rehash the old inquiry?”

  “They asked much the same rubbish you’ve been asking—where I was when Father was murdered. Where Domenico was.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Mine might not be as bushy as his, but they are trained to be expressive. “So the Council doesn’t trust its own records? Or it thinks the case needs revisiting? How interesting! Thank you. The second question. You had a family meeting yesterday. Why was your mother not present?”

  Bernardo reared up on his feet. “This is intolerable! I have been more than patient with you and shall not stand for any more of this insolence. Get out! Remove your impudent, upstart San Barnaba carcase before I have it thrown out.”

  I bowed, backed to the door, and bowed again as if he were the doge himself. I thought I knew who had killed his father and so did he. It had not been Zorzi.

  23

  The moment I closed the door behind me, Jacopo grabbed my shoulder in a crushing grip, spun me around, and slammed me back against the wall. I had not been mistaken in estimating his strength. His eyes blazed; his face was scarlet with fury. He thrust it close to mine.

  “Bernardo is a lying turd!” he roared. “Alina pays me nothing and I do not wait on her! She hates me because I’m living evidence of her husband’s lechery. She treats me like mud, as you saw, and wouldn’t give me a stale crust if I w
ere starving. My money comes from a share in the family fortune.”

  I had hold of my dagger by then, and silently raised it so the point was in the gap between our two noses. Realizing that I could have put it elsewhere and still could, he released me and backed off.

  “I understood that only sons born in wedlock could share in a fraterna,” I said quietly. Was I actually going to hear a true story in the Palazzo Michiel?

  “It’s only a very small share compared to theirs. They voted me in. There’s nothing to stop them doing that.”

  “Why should they? You said they were planning to throw you out last December.”

  Jacopo pouted like a sulky child. “I said that because by then you’d spotted that I was one of Gentile’s by-blows. We try . . . My brothers prefer to keep our relationship a secret. Officially I’m just Jacopo Fauro, Domenico’s secretary.”

  That excuse made no sense, but by then he must have been hopelessly entangled in the conflicting falsehoods he had told me.

  “Why should they be so generous? Just brotherly love?”

  He turned and started walking, forcing me to follow if I wanted to hear his reply.

  “You heard Domenico ask my advice. I help him! I have an eye for design. When he hears of a property that may be available, I go and make the first inspection. He almost always accepts my judgment now. I help conduct buyers around. He needs someone he can trust not to accept bribes.”

  I thought I wouldn’t trust Jacopo to put a soldo in the poor box for me. He stayed quiet until we were descending the great staircase.

  “Dom likes me to dress up,” he said. “It impresses the customers.”

  “And girls?”

  “No. I wear rags when I go prowling. They charge too much if I dress fancy.” He said that seriously. It might even be true.