The Alchemist's Apprentice

by Dave Duncan

The captain regarded me with little interest. “In the Wells, lustrissimo?”

  Sciara pretended to consider, watching me with amusement, his face more sepulchral than ever in that gloomy, lantern-lit crypt. “Well, despite his humble garb, he is NH Alfeo Zeno, so perhaps you should find him something more befitting his rank. As I recall, the Leads have been honored by his presence in the past.”

  I ignored the mockery. It is true that I am entitled to put the letters NH before my name; they stand for nobile homo and mean that my birth is recorded in the Golden Book, as Sciara’s is not. Perhaps that rankled, but at least he had not publicly accused me of sorcery. The captain nodded to one of his men, who went into the guardroom and returned with a lantern and a jingling ring of keys. He crossed the passage and unlocked the door to the Wells.

  “If messer would be so kind as to follow me?” The captain led the way.

  The ground floor of the palace is put to mundane uses. The stables are there, the guardrooms, and two sets of prison cells. The Wells are by far the worst of the jails, small stone kennels without windows, damp and dark and airless. They stink most horribly.

  That eastern wing is very old and the stairs that lead from the Wells all the way to the top of the palace are steep, narrow, and oddly haphazard, as if they have been reorganized many times over the centuries. They are not intended to impress, because they are never seen by anyone except the fanti and their prisoners. Winding back and forth in the near-darkness, I had to concentrate on where I was putting my feet and soon lost count of what floor we were on.

  The second story is mostly occupied by the bureaucracy—the High Chancellor and his staff of secretaries and notaries. The Golden and Silver Books are maintained there, for instance, and another office will issue the permits you need to do anything more than breathe. The third floor belongs to government, for it includes the doge’s apartments and meeting rooms for magistrates and many councils, including the appeal courts and the Great Council itself. The fourth story is where the Collegio and the Senate meet, and also the Council of Ten.

  Above those are attics containing the prison cells known as the Leads because they are directly under the great sheets of lead that cover the roof. It is not true, though, that the inmates bake in summer and freeze in winter. These cells are used for gentlemen prisoners, mostly political offenders, and they are not uncomfortable as prisons go. The room to which I was conducted was spacious enough, although utterly barren. I scanned it hastily by the light of the guards’ lanterns. The walls were of heavy planks and the only furnishings, if you could call them that, were a bucket in one corner and a crucifix hanging on the wall opposite the door. A small grilled window admitted sounds of rain. The lights were withdrawn, the door banged, the lock clattered, and I was alone in the dark.

  Most inmates would be terrified at that point. I was merely furious. My tarot had warned me of Justice reversed. Deciding that the floor was the best place to sit, since I had no other choice, I huddled myself down in a corner, as small as possible. I hated to dirty my cloak, but I was shivering too much to think of removing it. The vermin that swarmed in summer were mercifully absent.

  My next decision required more thought. I had two options—I could wait there in my cell until I was taken down to appear before the tribunal, taking the risk that it would send me straight back up to the torturers. If that happened, my ensuing experiences were likely to be both unpleasant and prolonged, since I had no idea where my master had gone and to confess to assisting him in the black arts would be suicide.

  Or I could leave.

  Here I must digress to list the three laws of demonology, with apologies to those of you who already know them. Firstly, you can summon and direct a fiend if you know his true name and a few simple precautions. Secondly, being evil incarnate, the demon will do anything he can to defeat your purpose; he will always strive to deceive and betray you. And thirdly, accepting favors from a fiend will weaken your hold over him and let him gain power over you. That is how Faust was damned. The only defense against being possessed is purity of purpose.

  After teaching me those rules, my master told me the name of a minor demon. I shall not repeat it here—it is unpleasant to say, leaving a foul taste in the mouth, and writing it down might cause the paper to go on fire. I shall refer to him as Putrid. Putrid is not especially powerful as fiends go, but I could command him to whisk me to anywhere in the Republic, either within the city or in the territories it controls on the mainland, or even to foreign states beyond its borders. There I should have to make a new life for myself. Any life that came from Putrid would be nasty and brutish. Understand?

  In my present circumstances, I had even more problems. The Maestro might have called on demonic aid for his escape from Ca’ Barbolano; he knows the names of many fiends more potent than Putrid. I hoped he had used some other sorcerous technique, one that did not risk his immortal soul, for he has many arts that he has not yet shared with me.

  Putrid was all I had, though. I had no means of inscribing a pentacle, which is a sensible precaution, although neither essential nor foolproof. The crucifix on the wall would make a summoning difficult at best, perhaps impossible. I concluded that Putrid had better remain a last resort for the time being. I wedged my head back in the corner and went to sleep.

  The bell tower of San Marco stands just across the Piazzetta from the palace, and I was jarred awake by the clang of the great Marangona bell announcing the start of a new day. The first light of a winter dawn was creeping in through the grilled window. A few minutes later, the lock rattled again and the door creaked. So did my neck.

  “You are summoned!” the guard announced.

  “How about some breakfast?” I grumbled.

  “There might be some left when you return, if you’re still hungry.”

  Back down those dark, contorted stairs I went, stumbling after my solitary guide’s lamp. Before we had gone far, he threw open a door and I was dazzled by a blaze of daylight. There, in a fine meeting room where magnificent paintings hung on leather-covered walls and others shone overhead in gilt-framed ceiling panels, a man sat on one of the benches, obviously waiting for me. He rose to greet me; then he tilted his head slightly and regarded me with distaste.

  “There has been a mistake,” he said with hauteur. “I was expecting a sier Alfeo Zeno.”

  “Your prayers have been answered,” I said.

  In Venice people are defined by their costumes. A tradesman does not dress like a shopkeeper or a courtesan like a lady. It mattered that I was stubbled, tangled, and rumpled, but it mattered much more that I was dressed as an apprentice, not a nobleman. He, on his part, looked both splendid and ridiculous, because his beard was streaked with white and he had to be at least fifty, yet he was decked out like a youth. His spindly calves were enclosed in full-length silk hose, his gaudy tunic and fur-lined brocade surcoat barely reached to his thighs, and his bonnet bulged almost as high as mine. He was, in fact, clad in the livery of a ducal equerry, a member of the doge’s official entourage who does everything from guarding his bedchamber to showing visitors around the palace and marching in parades. He thought he was magnificent, but he looked silly to me. I knew most of the equerries by sight, but not this one.

  “This is the right man, clarissimo,” the guard said.

  The equerry shrugged. “Well, His Serenity did mention something about an astrologer. Obviously astrology doesn’t pay well.”

  He was sneering. After an unearned night in jail, I resented that. “And obviously you fought at Famagusta.”

  Bull’s-eye! The equerry started. “How do you know that?”

  “From the stars. Are we keeping the doge waiting?”

  He shot a worried glance at the guard and crossed himself. “If you would be so kind, sier Alfeo…” He gestured at the door, very nearly bowing.

  I did bow. “Do, please, lead the way, messer equerry.”

  A cheap trick, yes, but as my master says, Sometimes a cheap trick is all yo
u can afford. Of course I had been lucky. I do not recall my grandparents, but I had met enough of their friends to hear a trace of Cyprus in the equerry’s Veneziano, and the way he had angled his head when he looked at me reminded me of one of the Maestro’s patients who had suffered an eye injury. The doge had distinguished himself at the disastrous siege of Famagosta, so it was reasonable that he would have given a sinecure job in the palace to a man who had served under him back then, and had since, likely, fallen on hard times.

  I followed my chastened guide through another grandiose meeting room and across the third-floor landing of the Golden Staircase. We were now in one of the areas designed to impress visitors and I felt a great deal more cheerful. My arrest had been absurdly unorthodox, I had not been properly charged or booked in as a prisoner, and now the doge had sent a senior equerry to fetch me at such a bleary hour that we were very unlikely to meet anyone on the way. Doge Pietro Moro has a reputation for being impatient with rules.

  The entrance to the doge’s personal apartments is through the equerries’ hall, which is large and imposing, furnished with benches and couches and a few tables. In the past I had spent many hours in it, waiting on His Serenity. The paintings had been changed since my last visit, but I could hardly demand time to inspect them. A couple of the inmates—both much younger than my keeper—were sitting by the fire, playing a game of tarot. They looked up and frowned at the squalid company their colleague was attending. I smiled politely as we passed through.

  “Sier Alfeo Zeno, sire.” We had reached our destination. I walked around the equerry into a dressing room where the doge was having his hair cut by a valet. I doffed my bonnet and bowed low. We Republicans do not kneel to our head of state.

  “Thank you, Aldo.”

  The door closed.

  Our most serene prince, Pietro Moro, is large and grizzled; he has a rheumatic back, is of the sanguine temperament as defined by the immortal Galen, and at that time was in his late seventies. It is rare for a man much younger than that to be elected doge—Venetians favor rapid turnover in the supreme office of the state. At the far end of the room stood a row of mannequins draped in different versions of the state robes, one of which was being vigorously brushed by a second valet. The doge goes garbed in white and ermine and cloth of gold; he wears a brocade cap called the corno because it rises at the back in a horn. This protuberance bears a marked resemblance to an oversized nose, so it is regrettable that the present incumbent has been known all his life as Nasone, Big Nose.

  Keeping his head still for the scissors, he squinted at me out of one eye. “You seem to be in trouble again, lad.”

  “I suspected so, Your Serenity. I don’t know why.”

  “An old friend of mine died yesterday.”

  I could not see where that led. “I offer my humble condolences. I heard the bell tolling yesterday and was informed that a procurator had entered into grace.” Danielle the apothecary had told me.

  There are nine procurators of San Marco. They are state trustees, managing endowments, caring for widows and orphans, supervising trusts. The office is unpaid, but brings such honor and precedence that the procurators are recognized as the “grand old men” of the Republic, the only officials other than the doge who are elected for life and are permanent members of the Senate. When a doge dies, the electoral college will almost always choose one of the nine to succeed him. I had no idea why the death of one of them should imperil me.

  “Bertucci Orseolo.”

  “I do recall the name, sire.” He was not one of the Maestro’s patients, but he had been a client. I could recall transcribing his horoscope a couple of years ago. I could also recall the trouble I had had extracting payment for it.

  Silence, except for the faint snip of scissors. Was it still my turn?

  “I have never heard a bad word said about him.” Apart from some I had uttered myself, that was.

  “I have!” The doge chuckled. “Many. But he was a great fighter in his youth. And a fine servant of the state, a credit to one of the oldest families in the Republic. Older than yours, even.”

  I was never sure whether Pietro Moro was shocked or amused that his doctor’s assistant was listed in the Golden Book.

  “I am proud of my descent from the forty-fifth doge, Your Serenity, but my branch blew off the family tree a long time ago.” I stand fourteen generations from Doge Renier Zeno. Although I do have rich relations, they were never close and they all became much more distant after the Turks stole Cyprus away from the Republic and ruined my grandparents.

  The doge said, “Hmm!” which needed no reply.

  Wealth is not the same as nobility. Most European aristocrats are descended from warrior barons, but the ancestors of our Venetian nobility were all merchant princes—sailors and traders, not fighters. Three hundred years ago the ruling families closed the Golden Book to newcomers, and since then many distinguished families have fallen into poverty, just as some outsider families have grown immensely rich. And yet, as long as a man is of legitimate birth and does not descend to manual labor, he can retain his designation of nobile homo and write NH before his name. The poor nobility are known as barnabotti, after the parish of San Barnabà, where most of them live, and they are numerous. In theory, when I reach the age of twenty-five, I will be eligible to take my seat in the Great Council and begin a career in politics, but a man without fortune or family cannot hope to be elected to office without endless kowtowing to his betters. The prospect held no appeal. One cranky master was better than twelve hundred of them.

  The doge said, “I am almost out of the unguent.” His back pains him, especially in damp weather.

  “I have a note on my calendar to mix more and deliver it to Your Serenity next week. Should I do so sooner?”

  “No. You will have more important things to do. Your master has a copy of Apologeticus Archeteles, does he not?”

  “Er…” We were not alone. Either or both of the valets could be a spy for the Three or the Church. Pietro Moro shares the Maestro’s passion for old books, but no one except high church officials may read books by the notorious Protestant heretic Ulrich Zwingli. Was the old man trying to trap me? Or test me? If he was just playing games, juggling sabers would be safer. Yet only the wiliest politicians ever get to wear the corno. Gruff and overstuffed though he was, Doge Moro was as wily as they come, and he must have some reason for his dangerous question.

  Such problems are too complicated to analyze on an empty stomach.

  “I do not recall any book by that name, sire. I will look when I get home.” If I get home. “He is always happy and honored to lend Your Serenity works from his collection.”

  The valet was reaching under the massive ducal nose to trim minute amounts of hair from the ducal mustache, ending the conversation for a few moments. I was happy to wait. Attending the head of state’s levee was more pleasant than rotting in his jail.

  When the scissors had been put away and a comb run through the doge’s beard, he could turn to frown at me. He raised a leg so a kneeling valet could drag a stocking over his varicosis. “Procurator Orseolo took ill suddenly at a private party on Valentine’s Eve.”

  Sweet Lady defend me! Orseolo! My memory reported for duty at last.

  “And about, er, two years ago I think, the Maestro cast His Excellency’s horoscope…” I write out all his horoscopes in fair. I cast many of them, too, although the Maestro would do that himself for a procurator. “As I recall the problem, there was a conjunction of Venus and Saturn in Aquarius, his birth sign. The Maestro’s exact words were that His Excellency should ‘beware the coming of the lover,’ sire.”

  His Serenity snorted. “You are wasted on that old fraud. You ought to be serving the Republic. There are ways to get a man of your age into the Great Council, you know.”

  “Your Serenity honors me greatly.” I could also apply for a posting as a gentleman archer on a galley, which would certainly be more pleasant and likely safer than the free-for-all p
olitical games of the Venetian aristocracy.

  “Bertucci died yesterday.” The doge pushed a massive arm into the shirt a valet was offering.

  Saint Valentine’s day. “My master will be chagrined to learn that his warning was not heeded.” I knew he would also be delighted to have his prophecy meet with such a spectacular and public fulfillment, although of course he would not say so, even to me.

  “Oh, he knows! He was one of the guests in the Ca’ Imer.”

  “A guest, sire?” Mere physicians are not invited to the nobility’s frolics, not even physicians with international reputations. If they were, everyone would still exclude the Maestro, who has the social skills of a porpentine and either insults people or bores them to death.

  The doge raised his chin so the valet could fasten his shirt buttons. “He was present, at least. You did not know?”

  “No, sire.” I had gone to my weekly fencing lesson and then squired a certain young lady to Carnival on the Lido. The Maestro had not told me that he had been out also, because he hates sharing personal information with anyone. He trusts me, it’s just the principle of the thing. Bruno had not told me because Bruno does not talk.

  “Of course,” Nasone said, “when the procurator was stricken, the learned Nostradamus attended him. He advised that the patient be carried home immediately and his own physician summoned.”

  “Did he venture a diagnosis?”

  “No, but everyone else did.”

  I had enjoyed very little sleep in the last two nights, which is my only excuse for being so obtuse that morning. That comment finally blew away my mental fog.

  “Lord have mercy!”

  “Amen to that!”

  “Your Serenity cannot possibly believe—”

  “No. No, I don’t,” the doge said grumpily, heaving himself to his feet. “I don’t believe in claptrap about stars and birth signs, either. I do believe your master is the best doctor in the Republic, but he is also an outrageous charlatan with his almanacs and horoscopes—drivel from beginning to end; vague, shapeless, ambiguous, meaningless bombast. I’m sure he swindled dear old Bertucci out of a scandalous heap of gold for a scrap of parchment whose only value was to demonstrate your excellent calligraphy, sier Alfeo Zeno. But I do not believe Filippo Nostradamus would poison a man just to make one of his own rubbishy prophecies come true.”