The Alchemist's Apprentice

by Dave Duncan

  It was neither of the Angeli boys that entered, though, but a man in his twenties, wearing his church best, obviously a laborer and a scared one.

  Missier Grande closed the door behind him. “Do what I said. Take your time and don’t be frightened.”

  Pulping his cap in both hands, the man walked along the line of us and then turned and walked back again. It is amazing how much guilt that sort of inspection can generate. I searched my soul all the way back to puberty. I didn’t bother going farther than that, because my earlier memories are less interesting.

  “Well?” Missier Grande said. “If you recognize him, point.”

  The man raised a very shaky hand and pointed. Nobody said a word, but Bianca stifled a gasp.

  The first witness was dismissed. The second had more confidence, although he was only a youth, little older than the twins. Grinning cheekily and without even removing his cap, he strolled along the line. He, too, stopped in front of Enrico Orseolo.

  “Him, Missier Grande.”

  “Are you sure? You haven’t looked closely at all of them.”

  “No, him. I’m sure.”

  The door was closed behind him. We returned to our seats, mostly in the same places, but I strolled along to the end, where I had a better view of them all.

  The great minister stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. It was a bizarrely informal pose for a Venetian magistrate. “Well, Missier Grande? Who were those men and what am I supposed to have done?” He was admirably calm. His children, flanking him, looking considerably more frightened than he did.

  Inquisitor Donà said, “Maestro Nostradamus?”

  Fingertips went back against fingertips. “Yesterday morning, assassins tried to kill my apprentice. Such things happen in the Republic, but rarely in broad daylight, and it would be stretching belief to dismiss a connection between that assault and his inquiries into the procurator’s death. At that time very few people knew that he had begun asking questions about it. The doge did, but it was at his suggestion that I had set Alfeo to work on the matter. Alfeo began by consulting a physician I respect, and a couple of personal friends. All of those we trust. He also called on the Feathers. Bellamy, if that is his name, drove him out at sword point.” The Maestro chuckled. “It is an interesting, but probably immaterial, question as to whether the alleged sier Bellamy is naturally so irascible, or if he has been acting so at every opportunity on the woman’s orders in order to justify the outburst he staged in this room four nights ago.

  “I was already confident that the Feathers as a team had committed the crime, but I did not know why. Without a motive, they were unassailable, so why should they have been sufficiently worried by a boy’s questions to attempt a second murder? By his own admission, Alfeo had no authority and fled from Bellamy’s threats. They are strangers to our city. They had met me, but a senescent bibliophilic doctor should not seem dangerous, even if they knew of the spectacular clairvoyance I demonstrate in my almanacs and horoscopes. How would they find their murderous assistants in time? They had acted extremely fast to prepare such a trap overnight.

  “Many great houses employ large staffs of manual workers—boatmen, warehousemen—and sometimes employ them for wrongful purposes. It was more than likely that Alfeo’s attackers came from such a source, but two of them had been killed and thus would be missed by their workmates. Although the Council of Ten has sometimes been accused of turning a blind eye to misbehavior of the nobility, this case was clearly related to the death of a senior magistrate—the doge knew that, even if no one else in the Ten did. I could be confident that inquiries would be made in both Ca’ Orseolo and Ca’ Tirali. The fact that both Your Excellencies were available to attend this conference is evidence that the thugs did not come from either of your workforces. I hasten to add that I would not expect either of Your Excellencies to be so foolish as to involve your own workers in a criminal affair already being investigated by the Ten.

  “So the would-be assassins, despite their lack of swords, had been drawn from the ranks of bravos who lurk in the dark corners of our fair city. I should know where to send Alfeo to hire such vermin and I expect most of you would. But would foreigners know this? Unlikely! So they must have reported to a local, an accomplice, who took fright and arranged for my investigation to be hamstrung by the loss of my mobile assistant. Perhaps I was supposed to be frightened off by such terror tactics.

  “I already knew that the Feather woman was the murderess. How had a married woman, staying with her husband in a strange city, passed word at night to—I assumed—another man? I surmised that Feather was not her husband and her local accomplice would turn out to be a lover.”

  The Maestro peered around as if looking for argument, but no one spoke.

  “So how did he set up the ambush? Walk into any parish in the Republic, other than your own, and start asking questions about a resident, and in moments you will find the local men around you six deep, asking counterquestions. Someone who already knew the victim by sight would have to identify him, either to the entire gang or to one member of it. One member would make my problem more difficult, for two men gossiping on a corner or in a boat are not remarkable. But the attack went off so fast that there had been no time for elaborate preliminaries. The whole gang must have been standing by, ready to pounce as soon as their prospective victim was pointed out. A lurking gang should have been noticed.

  “No doubt the Ten’s agents in our parish have been making inquiries, but my gondolier has a pair of sons with wearisome amounts of youthful energy. As residents, they can ask questions, so I set them to work. They met with no success in our parish, but they are resourceful and they were lucky. Some days the boys do odd-job work at a building site directly across the canal from my residence. On the morning of the attack, as you will recall, the town was in mourning. The builders were not working, but a man and a youth were on watch, with little to do. At dawn they noticed a gondola full of men loitering on the canal just beyond the bridge near our watergate. So many men with time on their hands seemed unusual enough to attract their attention.

  “The boat stayed in place for about an hour, they said, and then suddenly approached the Ca’ Barbolano. No doubt these predators expected their quarry to embark in my gondola as he usually does, and were prepared to give chase to some distant place where the crime could be committed. The plan went awry, because Alfeo went along the calle to the campo instead. Six of the men disembarked and ran after him—and that was very curious behavior! It is not surprising that the witnesses remembered. The boat departed, bearing its gondolier—and you, Your Excellency.”

  Bianca cried out and clapped her hands over her mouth.

  Benedetto said, “No! That is—”

  “Shush, both of you!” their father commanded. “This is total rubbish. My government duties keep me far too busy to go wandering around at random. I have not been near Ca’ Barbolano in months and I never saw that woman before the night my father took ill. How much did you pay those louts to identify me? Did you explain the penalty for perjury?” The politician was about to start bargaining.

  The room was very quiet. I expected the inquisitor to comment, but he did not.

  “You served two terms as rector of Verona,” the Maestro said. “And the woman mentioned Verona to Alfeo. You summoned her or she followed you here, to Venice. You knew that your father would choose retsina if it were offered. He walked with a cane, had a crippled hand—easy to describe to someone who had never met him. You killed him without even being in the room! And you knew Alfeo by sight, because you had ordered him out of the house several times rather than pay a trivial debt. When he went to her house and started asking—”

  Orseolo rose to his feet. “Slandering a member of the Collegio is criminal sedition. Marco, you have known me for years. You cannot believe this. Why should I murder my own father?”

  The inquisitor’s face was grim indeed. “The law does not care why, but I expect Doctor Nostradamus can tel
l us why. We must hear the rest of what he has to say.”

  The Maestro bunched his cheeks in an antiquated pixie smile. “Because his father discovered he was throwing away his political career on a woman. You may be able to find witnesses who have seen him visiting the Ca’ della Naves. A similar thing happened a few years ago, when his father forced him to dismiss a courtesan he was supporting, a woman who goes by the name of Alessa. Granted His Excellency is now a widower, and can reasonably be expected to take a mistress; but that Feather woman is a foreigner and he is a senior minister in the government.”

  Which would make their intrigue treason under Venetian law. Such love is unthinkable, as the quatrain had said. The least penalty Orseolo could hope for would be dismissal from political office and loss of his place in the Golden Book. Exile or the gallows were possible.

  Bianca and Benedetto were on their feet, saying, “Father! Father, you—” but Enrico bellowed for silence.

  “You are a clever devil, Filippo Nostradamus. May you burn in hell for all eternity!” he put his arms around his children. “I am sorry, my darlings. Yes, what he says is true.”

  “Father!”

  “You are admitting the charge?” old Donà demanded, horrified.

  “I admit it. My father was a tyrant, and I have never been able to stand up to him. There was a time when I could make him see reason, but lately he had become close to irrational. Yes, I met Hyacinth in Verona and we fell hopelessly, madly, in love, like adolescents. My term of office there ended and we had to part, but we found we could not live without each other. A few months ago I wrote and urged her to come to Venice. We were happy again, briefly, until my father learned of her and swore he would expose us. He was immune to all argument. The murder was my idea. I talked her into it. Show her mercy if you can.”

  Bianca was weeping, Benedetto ivory-white with shock.

  “Take your sister home, Bene. Look after her. Be a better brother than I have been a father.”

  For fire read passion, the tower destroyed, the man and woman falling.

  Missier Grande opened the door. Enrico Orseolo released his children and walked out. The Lizard could not negotiate a compromise this time, not on a charge of parricide. Quazza followed him out. It is not every day that a great minister needs to be escorted to jail.

  It was over. Brilliant! The Maestro can still amaze me.

  “That concludes my case, Your Excellency,” he said.

  Donà remained slumped in misery. He had expected Hyacinth, but never Enrico. As members of the inner circle of government, the two men must have known each other and worked together for decades. Apart from any personal loss, the scandal of a great minister confessing to the murder of his own distinguished father was going to shake the city harder than the earthquake of 1511.

  I walked along to the inquisitor. After a moment he realized I was standing there and looked up with a scowl.

  “Your Excellency, may the man Pulaki Guarana be released now? He obviously played no part in the murder. From the look of him, he must have told you everything he knows about Karagounis, and he could benefit from medical attention.”

  He shrugged. “We do seem to have concluded the evening’s business.”

  “Not quite, Your Excellency,” said Filiberto Vasco.

  I had not noticed him return. He was smiling. He was smiling at me.

  The inquisitor said, “What?”

  “We have not yet solved the problem of the books.”

  My bowels felt as if I had swallowed an anchor. I had forgotten the jack of swords, but of course no card in the tarot deck would be a better fit for the vizio. Vasco, not Benedetto, was the snare to be avoided. The palace cells might have to admit a fourth new guest tonight.

  Donà frowned. “What books?”

  The vizio bowed. “Your Excellency will recall that at the meeting of the Ten at which I had the honor of reporting on the suicide of Alexius Karagounis, His Serenity inquired what had happened to the books exhibited at this address on the night of the thirteenth. Acting on instructions from Missier Grande, I examined the literary material I had removed from the deceased’s residence. I identified all the antique papers and submitted them for His Serenity’s inspection. He ordered that they be kept in secure storage until the Council of Ten could make determination of their ownership, but he also confirmed that one was missing, a unique copy of a lost work by Euripides. His Serenity described it as ‘priceless’.”

  His Excellency muttered, “Bloody books,” under his breath. “Go on.”

  Vasco continued, smiling at me all the time. “I went upstairs, Your Excellency, to the Leads, where the manservant Guarana was being interrogated. I added the missing book to the list of questions he was required to answer.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Pulaki had crept closer and now fell on his knees, groveling before the inquisitor. “I said everything, Your Excellency, everything I know! You think I would have not told about a stupid book when they were doing such things to me?”

  “What he claimed,” Vasco said happily, “was that the deceased, Alexius Karagounis, was working with that very manuscript at the time I called on him in the company of sier Alfeo Zeno. I recall clearly that there were papers on his desk. When the spy jumped out the window, I ran downstairs with my men. Regrettably, I left Zeno there unsupervised.”

  “I couldn’t run,” I said. “I had a sore leg.”

  Everyone ignored that.

  “When I returned,” Vasco continued, “both Zeno and the papers had gone. I accuse NH Alfeo Zeno of stealing a document that the doge himself describes as priceless.”

  This was obviously my cue to do some fast talking, but I felt as if I were standing on mist. “Oh come, Filiberto, you can’t hang me any higher for priceless than you can for just pricey.”

  “You admit your guilt?”

  “Never! What His Serenity told me was that it was worthless. He cancelled his bid for it.”

  “But you did steal it?”

  “No, I did not.” That was true. I had been bewitched into taking it. Regrettably, that would not be a promising line of defense. “I suggest you dredge the canal for it. The entire window had gone and there was a strong wind blowing. We were up high, remember? Papers were whirling around when I left. Besides, if you torture a man he will say anything he thinks will make you stop. Can you read and write, Pulaki?”

  Wide-eyed the boy said, “No, messer.”

  “But you can identify an antique Greek document lying on a desk, seen casually from across a room, when you are standing behind four other men?”

  “Messer, they were crushing my fingers in the pilliwinks! Bone by bone…”

  “No more questions,” I said. “If they did that to me, I’d confess to burning the Library of Alexandria.”

  Vasco widened his leer by four teeth. “You removed nothing from the desk before leaving the room?”

  “No,” I said. The Jesuits lost a great casuist in me. I had not removed nothing.

  But I was not a good enough liar to deceive the vizio. He had me cornered and knew it. No one would ever believe I had burned the book. Even the Maestro could not testify on oath that he knew for certain what he had seen me cast into the fire. I had told him it was the Meleager, but I could have been lying. I was doomed and if he tried to support me, he would be doomed too.

  The vizio glanced around. “Where is our host? Lustrissimo, will you please bring a Bible or some holy relic so that sier Alfeo can give us his sacred oath?”

  Even if I perjured my immortal soul, he could still arrest me.

  The Maestro said, “Have you a home to go to tonight, Pulaki?”

  The footman was almost out of his mind with terror. He took a moment to find the speaker and understand the question, but then he shook his head. “I am from Mestre, lustrissimo. I have no money for a gondola.”

  “Your Excellency,” the Maestro said, “this man needs medical attention. Will you release him into my custody f
or tonight, please? As a personal favor?”

  The old rascal was taking a serious risk by coming to my rescue, which is what he was doing, because Marco Donà was another politician who knew how deals were made. He looked from the Maestro to me and back again. He could guess where the book had gone and he knew who collected books. He also knew that Pulaki was merely a decoy and I was the real favor being requested. If I were put to the question, by morning I could be made to confess to eating the Library of Alexandria and would implicate my master and everyone I knew. I would say anything at all to make the pain stop. If the inquisitor wanted to, he could take this chance to retaliate against the man who had forced him to destroy his friend Enrico Orseolo.

  I’m sure he thought of it, but he didn’t do it. “And then, I suppose you will send the Republic a bill for medical services?”

  The Maestro winced. “No bill, Excellency.”

  Donà nodded, satisfied. Who cared about a moldering old manuscript? This was a way to reward the Maestro for service to the state without cost and without the embarrassment of having to admit what service had been provided. “Take him. Send someone to the palace tomorrow and we will issue a release. Vizio, you cannot accuse sier Alfeo on such flimsy evidence.”

  Filiberto Vasco flushed scarlet and showed us every last one of his teeth. They were nice, strong teeth. I thought he was going to sink them in my throat.

  “We can interrogate him!”

  Donà scowled. “Are you telling me how to do my job, boy?”

  Vasco crumpled. “Of course not, Your Excellency!”

  I was saved. Christoforo and Corrado were standing in the doorway with eyes and ears wide open. They are not as stupid as they often pretend.

  “Tell Bruno it’s time to go home,” I told them. “And warn your father we have an extra passenger.”

  27

  By the time we reached the Ca’ Barbolano, another winter squall was thrashing the city, hurling rain in faces. Pulaki had succumbed to an ague, a reaction to the end of his ordeal. I had to help him up the stairs. Giorgio and his sons stayed behind to stow the oars and cushions and lamps in the androne. Bruno ran all the way up with the Maestro on his back, and had to wait for me to arrive with the key, because everyone else had gone to bed.