The Alchemist's Apprentice

1

I t was the wettest day since Noah. It also happened to be Saint Valentine’s Day, but I was not in a loving mood. The saint himself would have cursed the weather.

Maestro Nostradamus had been even snarlier than usual all morning. Then, halfway through the afternoon, he rattled off a list of reagents he needed for his experiments and ordered me to go out and buy them. I complained, reasonably, that he already had stocks of all of them on the shelves above his alchemy bench. No, he needed more and right away. Worse, since Giorgio, our gondolier, had been given the day off to attend a nephew’s wedding, I would have to go on foot.

I came home when the stores closed, two hours after sunset. I was wet, cold, tired, and late for supper. I found the Maestro in his favorite red velvet chair, dangerously close to the fireplace, with his nose inside a book. As always he was wearing his black physician’s gown; the straggly hair dangling under his hat shone silver in the candlelight.

“Cinnabar,” I said, setting the packets in a row on my side of the big desk, “birthwort, hellebore, realgar, aconite, nux vomica, and powdered stibnite. Two ducats, five soldi.” I counted out the change.

“No dried virgin’s glove?”

“Not a speck of it in the city. Old Gerolamo says he hasn’t carried it in ten years. Yes,” I added before he could ask, “I checked every herbalist in Venice, and every apothecary. I even tried the Ghetto Nuovo.”

He grunted. “You paid too much.”

“That was the realgar. It’s a good piece. Make a nice pendant on a lady’s breast.” I put the coins in the secret drawer where we keep the petty cash.

He sniffed disapprovingly. His disposition had clearly not improved while I was out. “Go and get dry. You have work to do tonight.”

I said, “Yes, master,” politely and headed off to my room. By the time I was toweled and dressed, the Angeli family had returned from the wedding-Giorgio, Mama, and their current brood. I ate in the kitchen, where the children’s excited jabber and two helpings of Mama Angeli’s excellent sardoni alla greca soon restored my normal good humor. I strolled back along to the atelier to learn what my master wanted of me, wondering whether I would get any sleep at all.

You think an astrologer’s apprentice is accustomed to staying awake all night to aim cross-staffs and quadrants at the stars? Then you are wrong, because the celestial science is pursued by day, with pen and paper at a desk, calculating aspects and ascendants from ephemerides. I admit I sometimes have to waste valuable sleeping time up on the roof recording the Maestro’s observations of comets and other meteoric phenomena, but not often. Besides, that night the rain would have blinded us.

I do not mean that he never keeps me up to ungodly hours. He does. Seeming to need almost no sleep himself, he loses track of time. He may spend a long evening instructing me in arcane lore until I am cross-eyed and all reasonable men have gone off to bed-and then decide to dictate lengthy letters to correspondents all over Europe. When that happens, he is quite capable of keeping going until dawn. I, on the other hand, do enjoy my sleep. When I stay up all night by choice, it is for pleasure, not business.

I was surprised to find the big room deserted and dark, the fire dwindled to embers. The Maestro had said he had work for me, but there were no written instructions on the desk. He had not just gone to the privy, because he had doused all the lamps except a single candle, but that one stood on the slate-topped table holding the great globe of rock-crystal that he uses for prophecy. It had been draped in its usual velvet cover when I was there earlier, but that had now been removed, revealing four lines of text scrawled on the slate itself.

Now I understood his curdled mood. Clairvoyance is exhausting and drains him. He had not had time to go into trance while I was changing and eating, so he had done it while I was out. I wondered if he had sent me off on that wild, drenching trek around the apothecaries’ shops just to keep me out of his way, but that seemed unnecessarily callous even for him.

One of my many duties is to copy out his prophecies in a legible hand, for his writing is atrocious at the best of times and execrable when he is foreseeing. I fetched two lamps, my writing implements, and the big book of prophecies. Transcription proved unusually easy, which implied that the events it foretold were near at hand. I had known him to produce much worse cacography and was confident that I was reading it correctly. Nevertheless, when I covered the table, I left the writing in place so he could approve my reading in the morning.

When Death puts up Death upon a vain course,

The Serene One moves and is unmoved;

Wisdom has departed and Silence is deserted,

So the brave Riddler must guard the treasure.

The Maestro’s prophecies are always couched in imprecise language, but this is not trickery-he is often as mystified as anyone, for he retains no memory of writing them or what he has foreseen. We have spent days trying to interpret some of his gibberish. By comparison, this quatrain seemed positively lucid, and he obviously expected me to reach the same conclusion he had, at least about the final line.

When I was growing up in the parish of San Barnaba, most of my playmates were sons of impoverished nobles. Having no wealth, they would brag instead of their ancient lineages. Venice has been a republic for nine hundred years and some boys could claim descent from very early doges. I could always end their arguments, because my family name is Zeno. The Zenos of Venice have produced one doge and many great heros, but I would claim to be a descendant of the philosopher Zeno of Elea, of the Fifth Century BC, who was known for his riddles. Then all the rest of them would pile on top of me. It did end their arguing, as I said, but did me no good, other than eventually teaching me to keep my mouth shut. There are other Zenos around the city, but we are not on speaking terms. I am the Maestro’s guardian. The Riddler was me.

I had intended to bottle and label the reagents I had purchased in the afternoon, but the quatrain’s warning seemed more urgent. In search of a second opinion, I locked up the atelier and went back to my room. There I unwrapped my tarot deck and took a reading, laying out the spread on my bedcover. It almost made my hair stand on end.

I favor a simple five-card cross, which the Maestro scorns as simplistic, but which usually gives me good short-term guidance. It begins with a face-up card to represent the question, the present, or the subject. If the first card produces nothing significant, you can try once or even twice more, but a third denial risks desensitizing the deck. My deck was very well attuned and right off gave me the jack of cups, which always means me, the alchemist’s apprentice. I dealt four cards around it, face down, to make the cross.

The one below represents the past, problem, or danger, and there I turned over Justice reversed. The card on my left-which is the subject’s right, of course-denotes the helper or path, and there I found the Emperor reversed. The card at the top of the cross tells the future, objective, or solution, and was Death, also reversed. The fourth arm of the cross is the snare to be avoided, which in this case was the four of swords. The presence of three of the major arcana implied a very strong reading and the overall spread was definitely a warning, especially the reversal of Justice. I admit I did not understand the counsel it was offering. The Maestro was clearly missing and the reversal of all three trumps suggested no clear-cut solution. The four of swords was worrisome, although not as frightening as either the three or the ten would have been.

Certainly tarot has its limitations, but the overall indication of personal danger was obvious. I gave my deck a kiss of thanks, wrapped it again in its silk kerchief, and tucked it back under my pillow. Then I retrieved my rapier and dagger from the top of the wardrobe.

The house was quiet. I locked the front door behind me and trotted downstairs to find old Luigi, the Barbolanos’ toothless night watchman. Luigi would be less help than a broken ankle in any sort of fight and is also a notorious gossip.

“Have you ever,” I asked him, “in your long and distinguished service, known anyone try to force a way into the Ca’ Barbolano?” Although I am a natural optimist, the tarot’s four swordsmen seemed excessive odds, even to me.

A guard dog should have teeth, but when Luigi smiles he shows mostly gums. “Never! Is not our beloved Republic the most peace-loving place in the world?” He had not even noticed that I was armed.

“And we are protected by our noble lords of the night!”

He cackled at my sarcasm. The Signori di Notte are young nobles elected to lead the local constabulary, whose general incompetence makes them little less dangerous than the criminals they are supposed to catch.

“I am expecting a visitor,” I said. “If you want to keep your eye on the back door, I’ll take the watergate.”

We make this same agreement quite often. He always assumes that I am waiting for a lady. Regrettably he is almost always wrong in that, and the visitor is some nervous client with a clandestine appointment to consult the Maestro. Luigi went shuffling off happily to his kennel at the back, where he would no doubt enjoy a few hours’ illicit sleep. The servants’ entrance there leads out to the walled courtyard, which in turn opens into a narrow, winding calle that will take you eventually to the campo, with its church, bell tower, and parish well, but the gate is locked at night. No visitor of consequence ever comes to the landside door anyway.

The watergate is a three-arched loggia, whose floor is barely above the surface of the Rio San Remo at high tide. That night the tide was out, exposing a slippery carpet of weed on the watersteps. I topped up a lantern with enough oil to burn until dawn and hung it in the central arch. Then I went back in and shot all the bolts on the big doors.

Ca’ Barbolano is not the largest of the great family palaces in the city, but it is not the smallest, either. Mostly I kept my lookout from the mezzanine windows above the watergate, but sometimes I stretched my legs with a stroll along the androne, the single long hall that extends from one door to the other. Its high walls bear tribute to centuries of sea trading by Barbolano ancestors-cobwebbed banners and great bronze lanterns from ancient galleys, arrays of cutlasses, crossbows, and scimitars. Storerooms line both sides, but the glow of my lamp flickered on other wares left heaped on the floor: bales, boxes, and barrels, intermixed with oars and cushions from the gondolas outside, brought indoors for safekeeping.

Out on the canal, wind and rain continued their wild dance. At times the downpour was so heavy that I could barely make out the lanterns on passing gondolas. The light outside our door continued to burn brightly and so did the one outside Number 96, next-door, but even 96 was attracting little business in such weather. Once or twice I saw a light moving on the building site directly opposite, but I could not tell if it was carried by a conscientious watchman or the thieves he was supposed to deter. Midnight came and went. The last of 96’s customers departed. Its windows darkened and eventually a servant took down its lantern and carried it away indoors, leaving me the whole world to myself.

Nothing happened for another hour. I had almost come to believe I had misunderstood my instructions when I saw a light approaching. I could not even make out how many men the boat held, but it pulled in at our watersteps. I raced downstairs, my lamp throwing wild shadows on the walls.

Before they banged the knocker and wakened Luigi, I flipped open the peephole. “Who goes there?”

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 Sciara’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.”