The Alchemist's Apprentice

by Dave Duncan

  The night growled, “Visitors to see Doctor Nostradamus.” The speaker was standing with his face in shadow. His voice was familiar.

  “He is not at home.” Wisdom has departed.

  “Open this door, Zeno!”

  “I have orders to admit no one. Anyone else you wish to speak with, I shall be happy to fetch. But the Maestro is not at home.”

  Then the speaker edged back so the light was on his face. “Open in the name of the Republic!” said Raffaino Sciara.

  The night was now much colder. In theory I could have demanded to see his warrant, but if I delayed him any longer, Sciara could set his men to work on the big brass door knocker, and the last thing the Maestro would want would be a clamor to rouse the household and let the Barbolanos learn that he was in trouble with the government.

  “At once, lustrissimo!” While I was hauling on the bolts, my mind chased its tail puppy-wise, wondering what could possibly have provoked this invasion. As soon as I had one flap open, I grabbed up my lamp again and backed away. I smiled a toothy welcome at the fanti as they entered—four of them, just as my tarot had warned. Fanti wear no armor, but they carry swords concealed in their cloaks.

  It was the man behind them who gave me intestinal cramps. Raffaino Sciara is tall, stooped, and cadaverous, with all the lovesomeness of a serpent. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the image of Death in my tarot deck. His cloak of office is blue, but otherwise put a scythe in his hand and he would be dressed for Carnival as the Grim Reaper. He is Circospetto, chief secretary to the Council of Ten, which plays at the capital crimes table.

  I bowed gracefully. “Welcome to Ca’ Barbolano, lustrissimo.”

  The death’s-head inspected me with a sneer that would curdle spring water. “Where is your master, boy?”

  “He is not here.”

  “I can see that, Alfeo.”

  “Can I assist you in his absence? Read your palm? Cast your horoscope?”

  The Maestro might have accused me of childish babbling to conceal fear and for once I would not have argued. The Venetian Council of Ten runs the finest international spy network in Europe, but it also knows everything about everyone within the Republic itself. Its members come and go, but its secretaries remain forever, and Sciara must have more secrets fluttering around inside his memory than San Marco has pigeons. Whatever personal hopes or motives he may have are hidden behind a mask of absolute loyalty to the state. I suspect he has been dehumanized by all the uncountable death sentences and forced confessions he must have recorded.

  “He never leaves this house.”

  “Not never, sir. Just rarely. His legs—”

  “Did he go by boat or by land, Alfeo?”

  “I honestly do not know.” Innocence glowed in my countenance, I hoped. “I deeply regret that you should have wasted a journey on such a horrid evening—”

  “Where is he?”

  “Lustrissimo, I have no idea.” I love telling the truth, because it needs so little effort. “Did you hope to catch the world’s greatest clairvoyant unawares? He foresaw visitors looking for him tonight and instructed me to make sure that nothing was stolen in his absence.”

  “Ha!” Sciara’s breath was as sour as his face. “You have two choices, Zeno. You can take me at once to your master, or you can come with me.”

  I would be astonished if the Ten ever issued a warrant to search a nobleman’s house, and if they did it would not be served by Circospetto, but by Messier Grande, the chief of police. On the other hand, Sciara and his four henchmen could certainly take me in for questioning, and questioning can be the least pleasant of experiences.

  “I swear I do not know where he is, lustrissimo.”

  Circospetto showed his teeth in a death’s-head smile. “Show me.” He nodded to the fante with the fanciest silver badge on his belt. “Guard the door and try not to steal anything.”

  I said, “This way, then,” and headed for the stairs.

  Yes, I was shaken. Officially the Ten investigate major crimes against the state, but they will meddle in anything they fancy. I must trust that the Maestro had acted upon his own warning and departed. I was certain that he would not be found if he did not want to be found. Although I had been his apprentice for years, I still did not know the limits of his powers.

  The first flight of stairs brought us to the mezzanine landing where I had spent most of the night. Doors there lead into two apartments occupied by the Marciana brothers, who are sier Alvise Barbolano’s business partners. I raised my lantern in passing…“Such a shame you did not come in daylight, lustrissimo. Sier Alvise just acquired this painting, San Marco Blessing the Fishing Boats. Quite a rarity. By Sebastiano del Piombo.”

  Sciara did not spare it a glance. Philistine!

  Another flight brought us to the piano nobile, the Barbolano residence itself. The doors there are twice my height and can be opened wide enough to row a galley through. They were shut, of course. I did not draw our visitor’s attention to the Tintoretto on the wall. His continuing silence did not seem to be from lack of breath and the old skeleton had no trouble keeping up with me, although I had a forty-year advantage.

  The last two flights brought us to the top floor, which the noble Alvise Barbolano puts at the disposal of the celebrated Maestro Filippo Nostradamus. I unlocked the door and stood aside to let my companion enter, striding in like a de-horsed horseman of the Apocalypse. Our two lanterns did very little to raise the darkness, for the salone runs the full length of the building and its ceiling is twenty feet high; it takes a lot of flames to illuminate it. The statues glimmered spookily and stars twinkled from gilded cornices and picture frames, from chandeliers of Murano glass.

  Sciara seemed unimpressed. “His bedroom?”

  I led the way across to the appropriate door. The Maestro had prophesied that he would not be there and I believed him.

  “Open it!”

  “It is not booby trapped, lustrissimo. Once in a while I will balance a bucket of water on it just to make him laugh, but—”

  “I told you to open it.”

  I opened it gently and raised my lamp. Then I walked in.

  The Maestro earns a lot more money than he ever admits, but he could not support the upkeep of one broom closet in Ca’ Barbolano. His bedchamber alone is fit for a king, but everything in it—furniture, paintings, tapestries, chandeliers, statuary—is owned by sier Alvise. The bed, standing on gilded columns, displayed undisturbed bedding of silk and lace. The Maestro might be hiding in one of the marquetry chests, but Sciara seemed to consider that possibility as unlikely as I did.

  “Where does his horse sleep?”

  “Horse, lustrissimo? He owns no horse that I know of.”

  “You know who I mean! The mute.”

  “Ah!” I led the way along to a smaller room—a comparatively humble room, although some of the richest men in the Republic sleep in worse. I marched in, not bothering to be quiet, for Bruno has been stone deaf since birth. Stretched flat out across two beds put together, the giant was snoring loud enough to raise waves on the lagoon. Being very close to naked, he was an impressive sight. “There is more of him,” I said, “but we keep the rest in storage.”

  I did not draw Circospetto’s attention to the Veronese Madonna on the wall. It is only a small one, but Bruno likes it.

  “Your tongue will strangle you yet, Zeno. Let me see the study.”

  I led the way again, going a little slower as I worked out what to do. So far so good—the Maestro had gone, leaving Bruno behind. Wisdom had departed and Silence was deserted. But, although Sciara had visited the Maestro’s atelier before, he had never had a chance to snoop around there at will. Now the brave Riddler must guard the treasures. My first problem was that I had not only locked the door, but also warded it, as I always do at night. The one time I forgot to disable that curse, it threw me halfway across the salone and tied me up in an agony of cramp. What had disabled a healthy youngster like me might well kill a man of Sc
iara’s age.

  I unlocked the door, but then I hung my keys back on my belt and turned to face him, folding my arms. “First you must give me your oath that you will not remove anything.”

  “Stand aside.”

  I said, “Gladly,” and did so. “But I warn you, lustrissimo, that if you touch that door handle you may receive a very unpleasant surprise.”

  Lantern light turned his osseous smile into a sigil of crooked shadows. “Are you threatening me with violence, messer? That is a serious criminal offense.”

  “Warning you of danger, merely.”

  “Open the door, or you will come back with me and explain your refusal to the magistrates.”

  “I expect sier Alvise Barbolano will lodge a complaint with the Council.”

  “What the nobleman may choose to do is not your concern. Open the door or fetch your cloak.”

  I was damned either way. My refusal might even be all the evidence the Ten would need to issue a formal search warrant. I knew of evidence in there that could be used to hang the Maestro and me with him. Among his papers were prophecies, letters written in cipher from people all over Europe, horoscopes for senior members of the government, and many other documents that could be regarded as evidence of treason or heresy.

  Furious, I turned my back on the intruder to conceal my hands. I made the passes and muttered the incantation needed to remove the wards. Then I led the way inside.

  The room was dark and unoccupied, but the poisons I had brought back the previous evening still sat in full view on the desk. Both Gerolamo the herbalist and Danielle the apothecary had warned me to be careful with those. Sciara made a methodical circuit of the room, starting at the alchemical workbench with its mortars and alembics, lingering to look at the scores of jars on shelves above it.

  I stayed very close, prepared to grab away anything he tried to pocket.

  He took even longer at the wall of books, raising his lantern to scan the titles—books and more books, all bound in embossed leather and lettered with gold leaf. The Republic is the greatest center of printing in Europe, so the Maestro’s collection is far from being the largest in the city, but it contains many rarities—manuscripts and fragments centuries old. More to the point, no library in Europe contains more works on the arcane: cabalism, demonology, alchemy, Gnosticism, and other heresies banned by the Church. Venice pays much less attention to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum than the rest of Catholic Europe does, but just because a law is rarely applied does not mean that it cannot be, so forbidden books are never displayed. Some have been rebound and incorrectly titled. Others are hidden inside other books, hollowed out for the purpose, a few are locked away in secret compartments behind the walls behind the books. Books are rarely evidence of treason, but they can suggest heresy or witchcraft. Sciara was looking at enough evidence to send the Maestro to the stake, if he wanted to. He would have to find it first, but he had all the time in the world and unlimited resources.

  He ignored the velvet cloth over the crystal ball, as if to imply that he would not be distracted by hocus-pocus. He passed the fireplace and came to the big double desk near the windows, littered on the Maestro’s side with books and on mine with the packets of reagents I had left there, plus the letter I had been working on when I was sent shopping. Sciara reached for the paper.

  “I should warn you, lustrissimo,” I said, “that that is a confidential document addressed to the Pope.”

  He read it anyway, then turned his skeletal smile on me. “This is your side of the desk, your writing.” He had noted the gold inkstand and the bronze one, the location of the windows, and the fact that I wore my sword on my left side. He had drawn the correct conclusion.

  “I am the only person who can read my master’s.”

  “Was he dictating to you, or do you presume to advise the Holy Father on medical matters?”

  “The Holy Father’s physicians wrote to consult him. He told me to recommend his standard treatment.” Which I knew by heart, papal hemorrhoids being much like any humble sinner’s.

  Sciara glanced over at the great armillary sphere, the terrestrial globe from Gerardus Mercator, a celestial globe that is reputed to be by Nicolaus Copernicus but probably isn’t, the equatorium, cross-staffs, and so on, but did not bother to go closer. “Where is Filippo Nostradamus?”

  “I do not know, lustrissimo.”

  “You swear that?”

  He might be hiding in the apartment. He might be hiding elsewhere in the house, and it would take days to search that. He might have gone out, although he could not travel far without riding on Bruno’s great shoulders or employing methods I dare not mention. I did not know.

  “I swear by Our Lady and all the saints.”

  “May they give you strength in the days to come. Get your cloak, boy.”

  He was serious. I have fallen into frigid canals often enough and recognized the feeling. “On what charge?”

  Sciara curled his lip. “Practicing sorcery on a door knob.”

  “Rubbish! I was trying to bluff you. You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”

  “What matters is what the Council believes. Cloak or not, you come with me.”

  2

  When he found the atelier door unlocked, the Maestro would know I had not left the apartment willingly; I repeated the message by leaving my sword and dagger in full view on the bed. My cloak was still damp, but a mere apprentice is lucky to own even one good cloak and mine is of finest kidskin, a gift from an admirer. As I went downstairs with my baleful guide, I asked leave to go and waken Luigi, so he could lock up behind us. The secretary sent one of his flunkies instead. The manner of my departure was to remain as secret as possible.

  The two boatmen had been sheltering inside the loggia. I followed Sciara down the slimy watersteps to embark, and joined him on the cushioned bench in the felze, leaving the boatmen and fanti out in the rain. I spared a charitable thought for convicts sentenced to the galleys, chained to their oars and exposed to the weather day and night. We are never more than a few feet from seawater in Venice, but a galley bench would be too much close.

  The city slept. Rain roared on the felze and painted golden haloes around the lantern on our prow and the little shrine lights that mark the corners of the canals. We passed no other boats and the only illuminated windows told of people sick, or dying, or giving birth. Oars creaked, ripples splashed sometimes, and one of the guards had a worrisome cough, but otherwise I could brood undisturbed.

  Life as a galley slave is still life, and the punishment for sorcery is death by burning. Despite the weather that night, I had no desire to become toasty warm while chained to a post between the columns on the Piazzetta.

  Like his celebrated uncle, the late Michel de Nostredame, the Maestro is both astrologer and physician. Those are honorable professions—the cardinal-patriarch himself employs an astrologer and the Pope has several. It is the Maestro’s dabbling in alchemy and other arcane lore that teeters on the brink of the forbidden. He had often been pestered with accusations of witchcraft and fraud, which obviously could not both be true, but so far his many clients in the nobility had always stood by him and none of the slanders had ever been taken seriously. If the Ten had decided to charge him with magic or demonology, then it would have sent Missier Grande to arrest him, not a glorified clerk like Sciara.

  So I kept telling myself, anyway.

  That did not explain why I was being abducted. Sciara flatly refused to answer my questions. The Council of Ten is notoriously secretive. Its judgments cannot be appealed. I had no right to counsel, or even to know who had accused me of what. I could expect to be tortured. There was a famous case once of a doge’s son being tortured to make him confess to a crime that, as it later turned out, he had not committed.

  The Council of Ten is so named because it consists of seventeen men, except when it is increased to thirty-two. That is typical of the tangle of misnamed and interlocking committees that govern the Republic. All mem
bers of all committees are noblemen, those whose names are written in the Golden Book. Commoners cannot be elected to office, but the most senior citizens, whose names are recorded in the Silver Book, are eligible for appointment to bureaucratic posts. Sciara is one of those.

  As a fanatical optimist, I tried to convince myself that things could be worse. I might have been arrested by the Three, the state inquisitors. “The Ten can send you to jail and the Three to the grave,” says the proverb. But the Ten can burn or bury you just as easily, and for all I knew I had been summoned by the Three. I could only wait and see.

  We came at last to Rio di Palazzo, the narrow canyon between the towering walls of the Doges’ Palace on one side and those of the New Prisons on the other. The New Prisons are not yet in use, so the only lights visible were those marking the watergate to the palace. Our approach had been noted, and as the boat pulled up at the wide double arch, a pair of armed night guards appeared there to help us up the slippery steps. Sciara went first and I followed, aided by the grip of a powerful, calloused hand. The fanti from the boat joined us in a clatter of boots.

  The Doges’ Palace is one of the wonders of the world, a huge building blending the most sublime with the utterly squalid. Although we were not in the sublime part, at least we were out of the rain, standing in a wide, pillared passage leading through from the canal to the central courtyard. On the left, light spilled out from a guardroom door and I had no doubt there would be a brazier and other comforts in there. A closed door in the opposite wall led, I knew, to the most squalid part of all.

  Another fancy helmet saluted Circospetto and asked what he could do to help the lustrissimo. Alongside his sword hung a matchlock pistol, which is a useful weapon if you want to club someone to death.

  “This,” Sciara said, “is Alfeo Zeno, apprentice to the philosopher Filippo Nostradamus. You should tuck him away somewhere safe where we can find him again when we need him. A charge sheet will be drawn up in due course.”