The Alchemist's Pursuit

by Dave Duncan

  “I need to see her,” he muttered.

  I refrained from uttering mocking laughter. “Even Violetta couldn’t talk her way into Santa Giustina. Probably Lucretzia was allowed out to visit her family only because her brother asked. An abbess won’t talk back to a priest, but she’d surely set the dogs on people like you and me.”

  Nostradamus sat and glared at the offending book. “This thing is poison! I don’t see why it hasn’t provoked more killings already. I ought to have you take it straight to the palace and give it to the chiefs of the Ten.”

  “I’ll take my rowing clothes with me.” I wasn’t joking, much. The galleys were starting to seem like a real possibility now.

  He did not deign to answer. After a while he started tugging at his goatee, which is a sign that he is thinking hard. I quietly opened a drawer and took out Johannes Trithemius’s Steganographia so I could get started on the numerology home-work my master had set me five days ago. The learned abbot of Sponheim instructed us in how to send messages to specific angels, and after about an hour, when I was seriously considering an appeal for help to Gabriel, Nostradamus at last emerged from his reverie.

  “Damnātio!”

  “Master?” I closed the book on a finger.

  “Donna Alina seems to have faith in me. She could have given the book to her daughter to deliver to me.”

  “If she is not the killer . . .” I had not quite rid my mind of that assumption. “Why the nun, though? Surely a nun should hurl such smut into the nearest canal?”

  “Because Lucretzia is the only one Alina trusts?”

  I gulped and said, “Yes, master,” humbly.

  “Get me the knight of cups!”

  “Er . . . ?”

  “Vitale’s solution was to be the knight of cups reversed, you said? Get him. Bring him.”

  Somewhere a shutter opened . . . “Ah! The cavaliere servente ?” I should have seen that Jacopo might fit the “solution” card in the reading I had made for Violetta, but I hadn’t met him when I did it.

  “Of course. Bring him and I’ll reverse him.”

  “How far may I turn the screw?”

  “All the way to the headsman’s ax.”

  I pursed my lips in a silent whistle. He rarely gives me so much leeway.

  “If he won’t come, any second-best?”

  “No, it must be Jacopo. And I want Vitale here when he arrives.”

  “Master, Violetta never rises before noon!”

  “Then waken her. This is urgent. Tell her to dress like . . . provocatively.”

  “You’re not asking for much,” I murmured, but I couldn’t have been quiet enough, because he glared at me. He expected me to drag a natural-born citizen away from whatever he was doing as if I were a Council of Ten sbirro. And also dictate how Violetta was to dress, which was even more dangerous. Tactics would be important. I marked my place in the thrilling Steganographia, selected pen and paper, and wrote a brief note, which I rolled up and tied with a ribbon.

  “I think I’ll go armed, if you don’t mind.”

  No reply. I set off to fetch my sword. As I stepped out into the salone, someone rapped the door knocker.

  It was early for visitors. It was even earlier to see Fulgentio Trau active in the world, but from the look of him he had been on night duty, guarding the doge’s bedchamber. He was clearly a bearer of bad news. He spoke no greeting, smiled no smile.

  “The doctor awake?”

  I nodded and stepped aside to let him enter, ushered him into the atelier.

  Nostradamus moved as if to rise, for a ducal equerry far outranks him.

  Fulgentio raised a hand in forbiddance. “Please stay, Doctor. I bring a very brief message to you and to your apprentice. It is from ‘a high official,’ but I am forbidden to say whom.” He glanced at me to make sure I was also listening. “I am instructed to tell you both that this is your last warning, and you are granted this mercy only because of your many past services to the Republic. You must stop asking questions about the death of Gentile Michiel. You will disregard this warning at your peril, both of you.”

  Fulgentio shrugged, and muttered, “That’s all. Sorry.”

  As he turned away, the Maestro said, “Wait!”

  “Doctor?”

  “I would take it as a great favor, lustrissimo, if you would deliver a very brief note to the distinguished person who gave you that warning.”

  Fulgentio smiled sadly but warily. “I will gladly try, of course. But I may not succeed and I doubt very much that it will do any good.”

  “Understood,” the Maestro muttered. “Alfeo?”

  I strode across to the desk and readied my pen and inkwell in record time, choosing a sheet of our finest rag paper.

  “Two lines should do it,” he said. “I give my sacred word that I have no interest in previous crimes and my only intent is to prevent future murders. Sign it for me.”

  I pursed lips in a silent whistle of astonishment. If the old miser was sincere in abandoning the Gentile murder contract, then he was voluntarily giving up a significant fee for the first time in my experience. I went off to the kitchen for a lighted candle. When I returned, I affixed his signet, then handed the letter to Fulgentio.

  “And tell them that goes for me, too, with brass buttons,” I said.

  He gave me a look that said I was walking on a razor’s edge. He bowed to the Maestro and headed for the door. As I let him out of the apartment he said, “For God’s sake, make him be careful!” and then trotted off down the stairs.

  I went back to the Maestro, who looked as if his fuse had burned down to the touchhole and he was ready to explode.

  “Any instructions for today, master?”

  “Aargh!”

  Not promising. “That warning came from the doge himself, I think.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh! Master, have you any idea why the Ten don’t want you to investigate this affair?”

  He repeated, “Aargh!” even louder.

  “You are keeping secrets from me.” I was hurt. I knew everything he did; what had he seen that I hadn’t?

  “Some things are too dangerous to know. Just because you are my apprentice, you are not required to break the law. The instructions I gave you a few minutes ago still stand, but if you refuse to obey them, then I am helpless.”

  “I’ll get my sword,” I said, and departed.

  Violetta had only recently gone to bed. Even little Milana’s normally unshakable good cheer faltered when I gave her the message I brought.

  “It’s not an hour since her patron left, clarissimo.”

  She only calls me that when I am being completely unreasonable. I apologized, assured her it wasn’t my fault, and insisted that the matter was urgent, all of which I had done already. Then I made a quick and cowardly escape, down to where Giorgio was waiting for me. I settled in the felze. He already knew where we were bound.

  He pushed off. “You look worried.”

  I adjusted my face to a smile. “I’m just annoyed that I can’t see what the Maestro has seen.”

  “Your whole life must be a misery then.”

  It would be worse if I finished up chained to an oar. “I think this Honeycat case is about to blow open,” I said. “But I don’t know who’s going to come down in pieces.”

  “That,” the gondolier barked, “is a disgusting expression.”

  “It’s a disgusting case,” I said.

  The doorman at Palazzo Michiel must have known me by then, but the studied lack of recognition in his expression warned of choppy water ahead. I asked to see Jacopo Fauro.

  “I regret to report that I have orders not to admit you, clarissimo. I may accept written communications only.”

  Congratulating myself on my foresight, I produced the scroll I had prepared. It was addressed to Jacopo and said only, Her dearest treasure is going to the chiefs. The doorman took it and closed the door on me. Declining to take a seat alongside the half dozen other men wait
ing for audience—several of whom were smirking at the sight of a sword-bearing sprout being refused admittance—I strolled across the riva to stare out at the ships and lighters in the basin. A chilly wind made the morning sunlight dance on the water, but spring would come. I could see Giorgio along at the Molo, chatting with some other gondoliers.

  I wondered who would receive the note. The Michiel household had more crosscurrents than the lagoon of Venice itself and Jacopo lurked in the center of it all, a spider in a web of lies. At times he was a flunky, at others a fraternal partner. Sometimes he served donna Alina, sometimes he spied on her for her children. He obviously spied on them for her. Bernardo and Domenico told different stories as the fancy took them. Zorzi had been framed for murder, possibly with his own connivance, but certainly helped along by someone. Now one of the two religious in the family had exploded a mine under it by revealing that odious diary. Mixing metaphors is one way of passing the time.

  The door swung open and Domenico Michiel appeared in the opening, red faced and pugnaciously prognathous. “Zeno!”

  I strolled in his direction and he vanished back into the dimness of the androne to await me. I entered and closed the door. Apart from Domenico himself, the big hall was deserted. The real estate trader and I could have a good, no-holds-barred, uninterrupted rowdy-dowdy.

  He shook my note under my nose. “What does this mean?”

  “It means that you read other people’s correspondence, clarissimo.”

  “Fauro is a servant. What do you want of him?”

  “He told me he was your business partner.”

  “Tell that to the Turks. What do you want of him?”

  “The truth.”

  “Go to the ninth circle of hell.”

  I thought his rage seemed contrived, but if he truly did not know what my note meant, he must have shown it to someone who did and that someone had reacted strongly. I confess I was enjoying myself.

  “Then the book must go to the chiefs of the Ten.”

  “What book?”

  I quirked an eyebrow skeptically. “Your lady mother knows what book. Or Jacopo does. Briefly, clarissimo, certain evidence that has come into my master’s possession shows beyond doubt that someone in this house is connected to a continuing series of murders in this city. The learned doctor wishes to question Jacopo Fauro concerning the matter. If Fauro is unable to allay his suspicions, my master will have no choice but to deliver the documentary evidence to the authorities. Then it is highly likely that Missier Grande will show up here within hours.”

  “For Jacopo?” Domenico’s shock was more convincing than his previous anger. Had he expected another name?

  “Perhaps for other people also. I repeat, clarissimo, that the implications appear damning.”

  “My mother engaged Nostradamus to learn who murdered our father, on the baseless assumption that it wasn’t Zorzi. How can Jacopo possibly know anything that will help? He was only a—”

  “My master already knows who murdered your father, messer, although he has not yet assembled a legally admissible case.” What was one more small lie in that temple of deception? “His first priority is to prevent any more courtesans being murdered.”

  “You dare to threaten me? You dare accuse my half-brother of being a murderer?”

  Why not, when he had one convicted murderer in the family already? “My understanding is that he is a vitally important witness.”

  “By Heaven, your master has fancy ideas for an upstart foreign leech! If he wants to speak to anyone in this household, let him come himself. We’ll see who questions whom.” Sweat gleamed on the bridge of his aquiline nose.

  I explained about my master’s infirmity. For a moment I was afraid that sier Domenico would decide to return with me in Jacopo’s stead, which was not what the Maestro wanted at all. Nostradamus could hope to browbeat Jacopo, but not his older, richer, patrician half-brother. It was not yet time for Domenico.

  I bowed. “I shall inform my master of your decision, clarissimo . He will have to make his report to the Ten without your assistance.”

  My bluff worked.

  “Wait! Wait there!” Domenico jabbed a finger toward the bench I had decorated for so long on Saturday, spun on his heel, and disappeared at a very fast walk.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  I was not seriously worried that Ca’ Michiel would send word for the sbirri to come and relieve them of that intolerable nuisance, Alfeo Zeno. The book was my defense. The Michiels would dance to the Maestro’s fiddle as long as he held the book.

  The knocker rapped. The footman emerged from his unseen kennel to admit two artisan-class men, who asked to see Domenico and were told to wait outside.

  At last Jacopo came trudging down the stairs, alone. He was dressed much more modestly than I had yet seen him and I judged that he was scared. Not terrified, but more worried than angry.

  I smiled. “Good morning.”

  He scowled at me and said nothing.

  Nor did he speak as we walked along the riva, to the Molo where our boat waited. I put him in the felze and sat on the thwart facing him, because I did not trust him within snatching range of my sword or dagger. Still neither of us spoke until Giorgio had rowed us away from the watersteps and started to sing. It’s not easy to eavesdrop while singing.

  “How did you steal the old cat’s diary?” Jacopo asked.

  “She hadn’t missed it?”

  “No. She screamed and spat and threatened to claw Domenico’s face off. What’s in it to get her so riled?”

  “I think you know.”

  He shook his head. He was recovering his normal insouciant self-confidence already. Some people believe that they can lie their way out of anything.

  “I’ve seen it there in the casket, but never seen it opened. How did you get hold of it?” His eyes narrowed. “Magic?”

  “No magic. I can’t tell you, but my master may.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting that I go around murdering whores, are you?” He portrayed the innocence of angels.

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Nostradamus does the thinking, I’m just the messenger boy. It might not hurt if you thought back to where you were on the nights they were attacked, though.”

  He saw the trap right away. “Tell me what nights those were and I’ll try.” He smirked. Jacopo Fauro thought he was smart and so he was, but he was in for a surprise when he went up against Nostradamus.

  26

  Jacopo did get a surprise, but not quite in the way I expected. I was surprised, too, although I should have been forewarned by the witless expressions on the faces of the twins, Corrado and Christoforo, who were lurking in the salone outside the atelier door.

  To start with, Nostradamus was on the wrong side of the fireplace, sitting very upright in one of the green chairs. Secondly, he was socializing in a most atypical manner with the person beside him in the other, but even he cannot avoid being charmed by Violetta when she exerts herself. I had passed on his instructions that she was to wear something provocative and the result had the impact of a Jovian thunderbolt. The square-cut neckline on her gown of crimson and silver silk extended halfway to her bellybutton and the lace bodice under it was a cover in name only. The skirts were as sheer as a dawn mist. She rose and curtseyed to Jacopo when I introduced him. His eyes bulged as if he had a severe case of goiter.

  I had my hand on my sword hilt. If she blurted out that they had met before, back when he called himself Zorzi, he might attack her or try to flee. She did not, though, and the moment of danger passed. He bowed to her.

  I saw him settled in the red chair and went to the desk to record the match, which ought to be a walkover. The odds were terrible. He had a clear view of Violetta and if he could keep his mind on the Maestro’s questions at the same time, then he was not the hot-blooded adolescent he was supposed to be. Violetta was not there just to distract him, although that might be a useful side benefit.

  Yes,
primarily she had been brought in to identify Zorzi, in case that was Jacopo’s real name. With that possibility now disposed of, Nostradamus still had a second string to his bow, which is quite typical of the way his mind works. Violetta was being set up as bait for Honeycat. Did she know? I did not comment, but nor did I bother to hide my anger when I caught the Maestro’s eye. He ignored it, waiting while I organized paper and pens. When I dipped my quill, he began.

  “I hope you do not object to signorina Violetta’s presence here, signor Fauro. She has an interest in this investigation.”

  Jacopo laughed. “Who could possibly object to the presence of such a goddess? I shall drag out this meeting for as long as I possibly can. And I must say that I am deeply honored to meet a man whose fame has spread all over Europe.” He was holding his own so far.

  I wrote it all down—not with my normal penmanship, and much abbreviated, but within my powers to turn into an accurate transcription.

  “Donna Alina retained me to investigate the death of your honored father, and I was already looking into the death of Lucia da Bergamo for signorina Violetta.”

  “Poor Lucia was a friend of mine,” Violetta explained sadly.

  They were overdoing it. The message they wanted to convey was that Violetta was a courtesan, and Jacopo would have to be a babe in arms not to know that just from her dress.

  “I regret that I was not familiar with the lady,” he said blandly.

  “Lucia,” said the Maestro, “was one of at least four courtesans recently murdered in the city. It appears that all of these deaths are related.”

  “You think Zorzi has returned to Venice and is murdering more people?”

  The Maestro stretched his lips in what he thinks of as a smile. “That would be the implication if I believed that your brother committed the first murder, but I don’t. What exactly is your position in the Michiel household, signor Fauro?”

  “Galley slave.”

  Violetta grinned encouragingly.

  The Maestro said, “Be more explicit.”