The Alchemist's Apprentice

17

T he senator sent his gondolier along to ferry me home, but I found Giorgio waiting for me down at the watergate. As I dismissed the Tirali man I felt a mad impulse to tip him a few silver ducats for two minutes of his time. The Rome offer was already making my head spin like a windmill.

“No boys?” I asked as I boarded.

“They’re on some errand for the Maestro,” Giorgio said, adding gloomily, “I hope he doesn’t pay them too much.”

“I will bet you everything I own that he won’t.”

“No takers.”

So I came back to the Ca’ Barbolano as day turned to night and a shivery-cold sea fog drifted in over the city. As I reached the atelier, the twins emerged, whispering excitedly and looking dangerously pleased with themselves. They barely even noticed me. Inside I found the Maestro at the desk, crouched over a book like a black spider, as usual. Also as usual, he had not bothered to light more than a single candle. The fire had almost gone out. I poked it up and added more wood.

He looked up with a scowl. “Construe this sentence…”

“No,” I said, sagging down on my seat. “You shouldn’t read Hermes Trismegistus so late in the day. You know he always gives you an attack of choler. There was no murder.”

He looked at me blankly. “Murder?”

“Procurator Orseolo.”

“Oh, yes.” He smirked disagreeably. “I am engaged in more important matters. I have discovered the real reason the ancients distinguished between the natures of Hermes and Mercury in some of their texts.”

“I have discovered that there was no murder. I have spoken with everyone who was in the room. His granddaughter was at his side the whole time. Nobody could possibly have poisoned his wine. Two people reported seeing him pulling a face when he emptied his glass, but that doesn’t prove anything. And besides, nobody had a motive. The poison you suspect is not available in the city. None of this may be enough to stop the Ten from taking you in and interrogating you, at the very least.”

He grunted. “Those boys-”

“Corrado and Christoforo? What about them?”

“I gave them fifty soldi. Five each for them and two lira for expenses. Write it in the ledger.”

“Saints’ laundry! What did they do for you-murder someone?”

He ignored that. “You look tired.”

“I am tired!” I snapped. “It has been quite a day.” It had begun with six toughs trying to kill me, continued through a spectacular suicide, and ended with someone trying to redirect my entire life.

“Let me see that leg.”

“It’s fine.”

“Show me!”

I removed my hose and spread one leg on the desk. “I shall have a scar.”

“It won’t be the first.” He brought the candle close enough to produce an odor of singed hair. “It seems to prosper. If you don’t succumb to lockjaw or wound fever, you will be as good as new. Put the bandage back on. ‘If you encase your spirit in the flesh and abase yourself, saying, “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot ascend to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?’”

“What’s that from?”

“ Hermes Trismegistus.” Gathering up his book and the candle, he hobbled towards the fireplace.

“And what does it mean?” I demanded, contorting myself to bandage my calf in the dark without bending my knee.

“It means that the procurator was murdered and I know who did it and how.”

The old scoundrel refused to say more. I should not have made fun of his contempt for Hermes. He was allowed to insult the book; I wasn’t. He did not ask me to report on my afternoon, which was a bad sign. I went to my room to freshen up.

When I came out, I was accosted by the terrible twosome. They exchanged conspiratorial glances.

“You had a good day, I hear.”

“Our lips are sealed,” Corrado said.

“We are sworn to secrecy,” Christoforo explained.

Pause. Christoforo said, “Alfeo? How much do you need to…How much do the, er…”

“Next door…If a man wants…”

“Not old…”

They were both bright red by this time. I sighed. “That depends.”

“Depends on what?” they asked together.

“On how fussy you are. And whether you want the French pox or not. Let me talk with a friend of mine and I’ll advise you.”

They agreed to that with relief. I went in search of Giorgio and found him alone, or almost so, for he was in his bedroom, bent over double so Matteo could hold his fingers in a walking lesson. Matteo would not repeat what we discussed, because he spoke no better than he walked.

“You should have taken my bet,” I said. “The Maestro had a brainstorm.”

He looked at me in alarm. “How much?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t, because they might have retained some of the expense money as well as their wages. “They obviously think they have enough to buy serious trouble. If you like, I can arrange it so they won’t come to real harm.”

No father enjoys hearing that his authority is being flouted. Giorgio turned bright red. He began with, “I’ll whip their backsides raw,” progressed through, “I give them ample pocket money!” and finished with, “We need that money to buy their clothes!” and talk of hellfire. I countered with French pox and similar arguments. In the end his fatherly pride won out. He agreed that this was Venice, after all, and he had been not much older than them when, and some of their brothers…He sighed and told me to take care of it, as long as I swore not to tell Mama.

The Maestro was still in the red velvet chair, reading. He ignored me completely, so I knew he was planning something I was not going to like, and I had a strong hunch what it would be. I wrote a note to Alessa, asking that the two bearers be given quality treatment and promising I would be good for the balance of the fee, if any. I sealed it and took it out to them.

Corrado turned pale and Christoforo bright red.

“Now?” Corrado said. “Right now?”

“You’d rather wait until they’re busy and want you to hurry?”

Grabbing my letter, Corrado vanished down the stairs with his brother in hot pursuit. This was Venice.

They missed a magnificent supper. Mama’s Lombardy quail with baby calamari is always divine, and that night she excelled herself.

The Maestro brought Hermes with him and propped it up on the table. He paid far more attention to the book than he did to his food, grumbling angrily over every page and ignoring me. I was happy enough to savor the meal and dream of the wonderful gift I would buy for Violetta when I had sold the Euripides manuscript. Rubies, I decided.

The moment I wiped my plate with a last crust and leaned back, sighing contentedly, the Maestro slammed his book shut.

“Bring a glass of water with you.”

My fears were confirmed. “I’ll carry Hermes,” I said. He had enough trouble managing his staff.

He hurried off back to the atelier like a little black ant and went straight to the crystal ball on its stand, whipping away the cover. Then he adjusted himself on his chair, laid his staff on the floor beside him, and rubbed his hands expectantly. He enjoys a soothsaying as much as I detest it.

I laid the Hermes on the desk and the glass of water beside the crystal. “This really isn’t necessary,” I complained. “I can tell you everything you want to know without this.”

“What color are the drapes in Attorney Imer’s office?”

“I don’t think there are any drapes. Why-”

“But you don’t know!” he said triumphantly. “Next time I ask, you will tell me exactly. You will tell me whatever I want to know. There’s too much light. Bank the fire. And lock the door so we won’t be disturbed.”

I laid fresh logs over the embers. I locked the door and extinguished all the lights except one candle. I cannot put myself into a trance deep enough to see the future in the crystal, as the Maestro can. That is clairvoyance. Soothsaying is speaking truth, and for that he puts me into the trance. It gives me perfect recall, so that I can recount conversations verbatim and describe everything I have seen. What I hate is that I remember nothing of what he asks or what I tell him. I lose an hour of my life, and for all I know he pries into all sorts of personal details that do not concern him.

“I thought you said you had solved the mystery?” I was moving as slowly as I dared.

“I have. I knew the answer last night, but I need evidence that will convince the Ten. Tomorrow you will take a letter to the Lion’s Mouth announcing that I have the solution. Come and sit down!”

I sat opposite him. He moved the candle so the crystal glowed with fire for me. I stared into the sun, burning gold in the utter dark of space.

“You have had a hard day. You are tired. You are sleepy.”

That was true, I was.

“Recite the twelve gates to alchemy, according to the learned Ripley.”

“Calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection.”

“And backwards?”

“Projection, multiplication…exaltation…”

I was gone.