The Alchemist's Apprentice

by Dave Duncan

  I bowed and for the moment was ignored.

  His wife answered him in the same guttural language, which I assumed was English, but she did not seem in the least discomfitted at being caught alone with a young man in the connubial bedchamber. She gestured at the paintings and pulled a face in my direction. I caught the Maestro’s name.

  Feather was very loud and very furious. Hyacinth shrugged and continued to answer calmly.

  “What is it that you want?” he demanded of me. His accent was not quite as bad as his wife’s.

  “Two nights ago, at the residence of citizen Imer, observed you a man in purple robes?”

  “And two in red. It was more a coronation than a book sale. Answer me! Why do you come here pestering my wife?” He had his hand on his sword. He was fizzing with rage and he was between me and the doorway. This was no time for finesse.

  I waved my hands to show that they were empty and I was unarmed. “To warn you, monseigneur, and your noble wife. The older man, the one with the purple robes and the fancy—” I had to gesture to my shoulder, for my French did not extend to the word for tippet. “Procurator Orseolo. He was poisoned at that meeting. Everyone who was present is suspect. You have heard of the Council of Ten?”

  “You work for the government?”

  “No, messer.”

  Feather drew his sword. “You dare come here and threaten me, you young—” Fortunately, he reverted to English, although the gist was obvious. He came towards me.

  I started backing. “I am unarmed, messer. What you are doing is a very serious offense in this city.”

  “So is forcing yourself into a lady’s bedroom!”

  Her word against mine, although if the judges ever saw the size of the potential victim, they would laugh the case out of court. Meanwhile, the crazy Inglese was out for blood. I backed rapidly to the pictures and grabbed San Sebastiano to be my shield and defender, while sending a quick prayer of apology to the saint.

  “Put that down!” Feather screamed. “Drop it!”

  “Put up your sword, clarissimo. I wish only to leave in peace. You will not improve the holy man by adding sword wounds to his troubles.” I kept half an eye on the doughty Hyacinth. If she got behind me, she could garotte me with her bare hands.

  “Depart!” he bellowed, pointing at the door. For a small man he was both loud and ferocious.

  “I will follow you, clarissimo. Madame, if you would be so kind as to go and open the outer door? Then you lead, messer. San Sebastiano and I will follow.”

  “Come, Sir Bellamy,” his wife said. “The boy will not turn his back on your sword.” She led the way, moving with majesty.

  It took some more calming talk from me before he followed her, reluctantly walking backwards, not taking his eyes off me. I kept my eyes on him as I edged out through the outer door, dropped the saint at the top of the stairs where he would obstruct pursuit, and took off downward like a rat diving into its hole.

  9

  Carnival revelers were starting to emerge in the alleys and on the canals, the lights had been lit in the corner shrines. Christoforo and Corrado had not drunk themselves stupid and drowned, as I had feared. They were sitting in the bow of the gondola, so obviously pleased with themselves that their father was threatening to send them to confession first thing in the morning.

  “I did not give them enough for that,” I said. If I were mistaken, then they would need the Maestro’s professional care very shortly.

  “How much did you give them?” he asked narrowly.

  “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “They said two soldi apiece.”

  Blessed Lady help me! I bit the bullet. “Giorgio, I know this isn’t any of my business, but I was their age not so very long ago. My mother was desperately poor, but she let me keep all my earnings as long as I paid for half our groceries. I ate three times what she did, so that was fair, and I learned what honest work was for.” I sighed and said the rest of it: “You are teaching them to tell lies.”

  He glowered, but he is a reasonable man at heart. “You gave them more than four soldi?”

  “Just believe I gave them four to pass on to you. Now take us all home, please, before I starve to death.”

  I took my seat inside the felze, but when we were underway I beckoned Christoforo to join me—Corrado is more canny.

  “How much did you win?”

  His face puckered with guilt. “Me? Eight soldi. Corrado got six.”

  “And what would you have done if you’d lost it all?”

  “We weren’t going to gamble it all.”

  “You did very well to stop when you were ahead, but believe me, you will lose it all the next time. Gambling is for fools. Tell your brother I said so.” I knew my advice would drive them to exactly the opposite course, because that was how I had reacted at their age. But now they must have enough money to buy a harlot of the lowest sort, so they would be better off losing it at dice. Sometimes life seems unnecessarily complicated.

  Back at Ca’ Barbolano, I found the Maestro gone, but my side of the desk upholstered with pages of scrawl. He works that hard only when he is seriously frustrated by something, and it invariably means twice as much work for me. He had been at the crystal ball again, too, for the velvet lay on the floor and the slate was adorned with drunken snail tracks. I left that problem until later—I tend to be prejudiced against the crystal, because it never shows me anything except my next encounter with Violetta. The Maestro says I will outgrow that. I say I don’t want to.

  I began by re-shelving all the books, mostly herbals and ephemerides. The reagents I had bought the previous day I stowed in the appropriate bottles, out of reach of any Angeli toddler who might stray into the atelier. After I had mixed the unguent for madonna Polo, I dusted the entire collection of bottles and shelves to leave no evidence that digitalis had ever been present.

  Then I lit the lamp over my desk and inspected the litter. The Maestro insists that everything be kept tidy, but is himself the untidiest of men. He had completed three pages of next year’s almanac and four scribbled horoscopes that were the routine jobs I had expected to do that day until murder intervened. He had even made all the calculations, probably more to keep his own mind occupied than out of consideration for me. A fifth horoscope, identified only as “PM,” was obviously the doge and I did not like the look of his immediate future. If you identified him with the Republic itself, which was legitimate synecdoche, and the Republic as Queen of the Sea with the planet Venus, the current conjunction with Saturn was as ominous as it had been for Orseolo. The Maestro posited that the ascendant Turkish Empire should be equated with the moon in some circumstances, and in that case the aspects were even worse. If he had not yet answered Pietro Moro’s mocking challenge to read the name of the murderer in the stars, at least he had found some evidence regarding the name of the intended victim. As I was tucking all the papers away in my work drawer with a bundle of routine letters, including the papal piles, out fell a letter addressed to me.

  It had been opened, of course, although I recognized Violetta’s scent on the paper, and he would have done so also. The contents were terse:

  Lover—The ball is canceled. Come and entertain me tonight.

  —V

  Normally I would be down the hall in my bedroom and half changed within a couple of heartbeats of reading that invitation, but tonight I had far too much work to do and too much sleep to catch up. I wrote my regrets on the same paper, sealed it with my signet, and went in search of Bruno, who was always happy to help, just to justify his existence.

  I barely needed to explain. He sniffed the paper, grinned, and made the signs for woman—belong—Alfeo. I nodded and off he went. Sending so much beef to deliver so small a load seemed inefficient. I felt I should have enclosed a gift—something pretty, like the Michelangelo David.

  Now I had no more excuses to delay tackling the Maestro’s latest prophecy. I brought light and ink and the book to the slate-topped table. I
t was not as illegible as I had feared, which, as I told you, implied that the events it foretold would not be long delayed. When I had deciphered it, I didn’t like it one bit.

  Dark deeds, dark night, but bright the gold.

  Gold rains brighter than the eyes of the serpent;

  Eyes and legs a-bleeding on the campo,

  So unthinkable love will triumph from afar.

  Just then Corrado tapped on the door, come to tell me that supper was ready. Before I reached the dining room, I was brought up short by Bruno’s smile, looming over me like a rainbow. He had brought back a reply from Violetta.

  Cedet amor rebus, res age, tutus eris.

  —V

  Which means roughly that business keeps one safe from love—ominous talk when one’s lover is a courtesan. I hoped that it was just another literary conceit I ought to know. (It is, I later learned, an apothegm by Ovid.)

  To my astonishment, I found the Maestro already at the table. His eyes were bloodshot and I guessed he had a raging headache, but he was not as haggard as I expected after two foreseeings in two days.

  The dining hall would seat fifty at a pinch, but only the Maestro and I eat in it. There I can dream that my family’s fortunes never sank in the Aegean with the fall of Crete, for our dishes are finest porcelain, our knives and spoons are chased silver, as are the special forks with which we lift the food to our mouths, a custom foreigners find very strange. Colored candles burn in golden candlesticks on the snowy linen cloth between the crystal flagons and enameled beakers.

  Normally I feast and my master nibbles, but that night I also had to talk; Mama’s superb risotto of Rovigo veal stuffed with oysters grew cold before I was half-done. I told of my visit to the doge, my exchange with Isaia, and the bizarre English couple. Then, I hoped, I was free to eat.

  Alas, no. “You saw the latest quatrain?”

  I recited what I thought it said and he nodded grumpily.

  “It seems to predict violence,” I said. “Whose eyes and legs are going to bleed, do you suppose?”

  “Mine. From now on go armed and take Bruno with you everywhere.”

  “You are serious?” I am his eyes and his legs, but I had never heard him admit that before.

  “Have you ever known me to make a joke?”

  “No, master.” I suspect he tried one seventy years ago and nobody laughed. “Why me?” Not getting an answer, I continued. “What else? Unthinkable love? A rain of gold? Eyes of the serpent?”

  Seemingly he could make no more sense of the quatrain than I could. He poked more food around his plate aimlessly. He had eaten almost nothing. “You know who is carried shoulder high around the Piazza San Marco, scattering gold coins to the mob.”

  “Yes.” I reached for the wine glass I had been neglecting. He had just described the installation of a new doge. “Isaia confirms that the procurator was murdered. Do you seriously believe you can unmask the culprit before the Ten take you in for questioning?”

  He did not tell me what he believed, and it was what the Council of Ten believed—and would do about it—that mattered. I tried again.

  “You think there was a botched attempt to assassinate the doge?”

  Maestro Nostradamus thumped the table furiously with a tiny fist. “I told you this morning that His Serenity was appealing for our help, didn’t I? Whether someone is trying to murder him or he was just impetuous, he met with foreigners in a private house. If his enemies have the votes, that is enough cause to depose him, or worse. Any two of the three state prosecutors can indict him. He cannot hope to keep the Ten out of this, but the way the matter is presented may swing the vote.”

  I murmured, “Yes, master,” and returned to my veal and oysters.

  “There is more than one way to reverse an emperor. Tell me again about your tarot reading last night.”

  I was both surprised and gratified, for I suspect that tarot is the one occult skill at which I can better him. I went over my reading again.

  “As you say, master, it may be hinting that the doge was the intended victim,” I admitted, refilling my glass. “In spite of what you think of my humor, I do think that Death reversed was Circospetto; Raffaino Sciara just looks too much like Trump XIII. He might have brought death and in the end he did not. Justice reversed meant my night in jail, I suppose, or does it mean a murderer getting off scot-free?”

  “I think the jail. Your deck must be well attuned at present.”

  From him any praise must be counted fulsome. Pleased, I said, “I can fetch it and try a more detailed reading.”

  He shook his head like a chicken ruffling its feathers. “Not tonight. You must never overwork a tarot deck.”

  Never having been told that before, I waited for more and there was no more. He reached for his staff. I helped him rise and he leaned on my shoulder all the way across the salone. He usually returns to the atelier after supper and either reads or lectures me until late, but that night he headed straight to his bedchamber and disappeared with a muttered Godbless!

  Now was the moment I had mentally set aside to consult my tarot deck again. Why had the Maestro forbidden me to do so? The only reason he had ever given me for letting a deck rest was that it had started reporting obvious nonsense, and mine was certainly not doing that. What else could I do to help solve the murder? I could not use the crystal as he could.

  I could summon Putrid. That was why the old rascal had not wanted me to lay out a tarot spread. My tarot was painted long ago by an artist of superlative skill and subtlety; since then the fears and yearnings of many owners have infused it with deep empathy. If I tried to consult it when I had a fiend in my immediate future, I might ruin it beyond repair.

  The Maestro was a murder suspect and had to clear his name. He dare not risk asking a demon for help, but he would let me take that risk, because I needed help less than he did. Another reason was that I was less important and so, in a non-facetious way, relatively innocent. Summoning a minor fiend can stir up a major one instead. You never see senior condottieri fighting in the front ranks; they send the cannon fodder forward and shout encouragement from the rear, but any demon that managed to enslave the great Nostradamus would be capable of performing enormous mischief through him. All the legions of hell would rally to try it. I was mere cannon fodder.

  I locked the door, then sat down at my desk and readied pen and paper. A summoning needs careful planning. Even my trivial fiend Putrid can be a terrifying apparition, and to panic and forget what comes next or change plans halfway through could be disastrous. It would do no good to demand, “Tell me who killed Procurator Orseolo,” or even “Procurator Bertucci Orseolo” because there might have been several men of that name in the history of the Republic. And the fiend could just reply “his doctor,” which might be true in a narrow sense. After much thought I wrote down two questions, plus the command of dismissal, which demonologists have been known to forget in emergencies, although none ever more than once. Purists conduct their summonings in Latin. The Maestro says that the fiends themselves don’t care what language you use and it is better to be right than classy.

  I moved a chair over to the big mirror in the wall of books. Mirrors themselves are no more magical than crystal balls, but both can be used for occult purposes, like the piece of chalk I used to draw a pentacle around myself and the chair. I sat down, tried some deep breaths, and then uttered my first call, summoning Putrid (not his real name) to be manifest in the mirror before me.

  The room cooled and dimmed. It always shocks me when mere words can do that. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed to shrink, and I wished I had brought a lamp inside the pentacle with me.

  I summoned a second time. Now the mirror showed very little more than my own white face with darkness behind it, and the air was filled with a nauseating stench. Think of every bad smell you have ever experienced—bad fish, cesspools, warm pig dung—add them all together and multiply by thirteen. Gagging, anxious to get the seance over with, I spoke the wor
ds a third time.

  My scared face in the mirror blurred and melted into a reddish globe, which shrank back and resolved as the iris of an eye. The surrounding space cleared into scaly, scabrous flesh of an indeterminate green-purple color, like a very ripe bruise. The monster moved farther back yet, until a second eye came into view. Whatever shade or shape they choose for the rest of themselves, fiends always seem to prefer red eyes. Putrid had begun his apparition the size of a house, and even now I could see only part of his face peering in, huge as the mirror was. The less I saw the better.

  “You!” he said. He slobbered and his breath stank even worse than the rest of him. “I will eat you.”

  I peered at my script in the feeble firelight.

  “You have a nice smell of fresh sin on you, sier Alfeo Zeno,” the fiend said chattily. “You should have been shriven before you called me. And your harlot also I will eat.”

  Another rule is that you never listen to fiends.

  “Putrid, I command you by your true name that if there was no murderer present on San Valentine’s Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”

  The fiend coughed, spraying the inside of the mirror with spit and almost choking me with putrescent fumes. My skin crawled.

  “That’s clever,” he growled. “Thought that up all by yourself, did you, Alfeo?” He was still there, which disposed of any last hope that the procurator’s death had been an accident.

  “Look, Alfeo,” the fiend said. “Violetta with her customers. Let me show you what she does, Alfeo. Look!”

  I did not look. “Putrid, I command you by your true name that until and only until I clap my hands three times you show me in this mirror before me the murder committed by the murderer who was present on San Valentine’s Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, and I further command you by your true name that when and only when I clap my hands three times that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”