The Alchemist's Apprentice

23

B runo has his own strange ways of knowing things, and when I returned to the casa with my worthy apparel, he became excited and asked if the Maestro was going to need him later. When I nodded, he ran to get out the carrying chair and strap it on. For the next two hours he wandered about wearing it, a menace to the Barbolano artwork every time he turned around.

But eventually I was ready too. Blue has always been my best color. It sets off my sultry good looks, or something. I had chosen a doublet of peacock blue silk, embroidered in gold, with a wide white ruff collar, puffed sleeves tied at points with silver ribbon and frothy white linen peeking out through the slashes. My buttons were nuggets of amber shaped like pears, and amber strawberries decorated my belt. Below a very low waist I sported matching knee britches and white silk stockings tight and sheer enough to reveal every wrap of the bandage on my calf. My fur-trimmed short cloak of silver brocade hung on my shoulders so as not to conceal my sleeves; my bag-shaped bonnet stood half a yard high. I hoped Violetta would be able to control herself when she clapped eyes on such splendor. With a last minute adjustment to the hang of my rapier and dagger, I minced out into the salone in my gold-buckled shoes.

Christoforo cried out and dropped to his knees. Corrado and Archangelo came running to see what was wrong and were even more overcome, falling on the floor, writhing and moaning. Then came a torrent of younger brothers and sisters, Mama herself, and Giorgio in his best red and black. Giggling at their clowning brothers, the small fry began bowing and curtseying. The merriment stopped when a steady thumping announced the arrival of the Maestro in his black physician robe-even the twins mind their manners near him, having been warned so often that he might turn them into frogs. Which the rest of us think would be an improvement, mind you.

Bruno rushed over and knelt to offer the chair. I went to assist, moving carefully in case my cloak fell off and shamed me. The Maestro eyed my radiance with intense dislike.

“How much did all that cost?”

“About twenty ducats, I suppose. It isn’t brass and glass, you know.”

He said, “Obscene!” and clambered awkwardly into the chair.

As soon as he was settled, I tapped Bruno’s shoulder to let him know he could now rise, and the three of us followed Giorgio downstairs. It was a fine evening and Carnival revelers were out already, boatloads of them singing along with their gondoliers, even on sleepy Rio San Remo. The Maestro and I made ourselves comfortable in the felze -I having some trouble managing sword and bonnet, I admit. Bruno sat in the bow to block the view as only he could. Giorgio pushed off.

“The twenty ducats, master? I can enter them in the ledger?”

The old miser chuckled. “Enter whatever you spent. But tomorrow you must take the clothes back to the Ghetto and get whatever you can for them. Enter that in the ledger as a credit.”

I can never fool him. We have played out this farce before, when he wants me dressed up, and I always solve the problem the same way. I went across the campo to the Ca’ Trau San Remo, home of my friend Fulgentio, now ducal equerry. As I told you, he and I are the same size, and fortunately he was home. When I explained that I needed to shine before some important people, he at once rang for his valet and told him to dress me. I refused to cooperate until I had made Fulgentio promise to take the clothes back the next day and not try to make them a gift. He agreed unwillingly, grumbling that he rarely got to wear decent things now, having to spend all his days and half his nights disguised as a gargoyle in equerry rags.

The Maestro has no idea how humiliating this is for me. I keep promising myself that next time I will take him at his word and actually spend some of his golden hoard. So far I never have. He would weep.

I got down to business. “Master, I need instruction. You have deciphered the rest of the quatrain? The gold and the eyes of the serpent were about the attempt on my life. But unthinkable love triumphs from afar sounds like a clue to the murder.”

“It may well be so.”

Resisting a temptation to grind my teeth or punch out his, I said, “I tried a reading before we came out.”

“Tarot? Old wives’ nonsense.”

“It may well be so.”

“Bah! What did it tell you?”

“For question, subject, or present I dealt out Fire, Trump XV. That puzzles me. It obviously doesn’t represent me, or you, or a murderer.” Fire shows a tower being struck by lightning, with a man and woman falling from it. “Can it mean danger to the Republic?”

He chuckled. “Not in this case. I’m glad you weren’t stupid enough to reject it and start over. Tell me the rest of it.” Obviously he already understood more than he was going to tell me, but at least he was showing real interest and had stopped scoffing.

“For past, problem, or danger, I turned over the two of cups. That one seems easy. It must represent the two glasses that were switched.”

“Or the two waiters?”

I grunted, not having thought of that possibility. “For future, objective, or solution, I got Trump XII, the Traitor, reversed. And that I most certainly do not understand!”

The Traitor depicts a man suspended from a tree by one ankle. Hanging his corpse upside down is the traditional Italian way to disparage a traitor, but in my deck the Traitor seems alive and happy in his odd position and has a mop of golden hair like a halo. He is not just a convicted criminal.

“What did I teach you about XII?” my master murmured cautiously.

“That it may represent a change of loyalty or viewpoint, or a rebirth, because we all take our first breath upside down. But reversed? What does that mean? No sudden change of viewpoint-we were right all along?”

After a significant silence, my master said, “In this case I think it may be a warning not to jump to premature conclusions. What else did you find?”

“For helper or path, I turned over the two of staves, which I do not understand at all. And for the warning, the snare to be avoided, I got the jack of swords, which tonight ought to mean me.” Jackanapes of swords, perhaps.

The Maestro was nodding. “That’s very good! Excellent, an excellent foretelling. You are becoming quite skilled with tarot.” Praise indeed!

“But why the jack of swords as the warning? Am I going to commit some fatal error?”

He chuckled like a hen calling her chicks. “I shouldn’t think so. The program seems reasonably foolproof. Perhaps the jack of swords may mean someone else. Benedetto Orseolo, for example?”

“It would be a lackluster match, even if my leg wound is worse than his shoulder’s. What does the rest of the spread mean?”

“It tells you who committed the murder and how I shall reveal the truth. Think about it.”

I resisted an urge to throw the old mummy into the canal. Bruno would just rescue him, and I might get Fulgentio’s outfit splashed.

At the top of the stairs, Bruno knelt to let the Maestro dismount. Ottone Imer was waiting there for us in his black attorney’s gown, and I was amused to see his mouth twitch a few times when he registered my sartorial apotheosis. I could almost imagine his brain turning from the Apprentice page to the NH page. The Maestro had been right, as usual- clothes talk.

I granted our host a small bow. “I see you have done us proud, lustrissimo.” The hallway was cramped, but he had not spared on candles. Wine bottles and goblets of crimson glass were arrayed on a table, and the servant Benzon was waiting there. He was staring wistfully at my gold and amber.

Imer said, “Welcome back to my house, Doctor Nostradamus. I hope this will be a happier visit than the last. May I offer you wine?”

“No. You did not the last time, not when I arrived. I hope we can duplicate the last time as closely as possible. Of course people will probably not arrive in the same order. I dislike standing…”

Imer conducted the Maestro into the dining room. Bruno, I noted, had shed the carrying chair and was taking it away to some nether corner of the house, probably the kitchen, where he would wait as patiently as a mountain all night, terrifying servant girls by smiling at them. I saw no reason why I could not try a glass of wine. I went over to Benzon.

“Blessings on you, Giuseppe. You have the same wines as last time?”

He nodded. “Yes, messer.”

“Which one is poisoned?”

His eyes narrowed. “All of them, Alfeo. Which one would you like?”

I had told him to call me Alfeo. I laughed. “The arsenic. I’ll try the retsina, please.” As he poured me a generous glassful, I said, “You may have your friend Pulaki back to help you shortly.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” Benzon said sulkily. “I never saw him before that night.”

I took a sip and grimaced. “You weren’t joking about the poison.”

“And I wish you wouldn’t! I didn’t poison anybody!”

I realized that he was terrified, a midget caught up in a clash of titans. I apologized. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” I assured him.

“No? You swear that?”

“Not unless you poisoned the old man. Maestro Nostradamus knows who did and is going to expose him. So you can relax.” Unless the tarot’s two of cups meant the waiters, of course.

Imer came stalking out of the dining room. “Doctor Nostradamus wants the guests shown into the salone,” he told Benzon, “and not served wine until later.” He noticed my wineglass, but did not comment on it. “How many will be coming, er… clarissimo?”

I made a graceful gesture with the glass. “I don’t know exactly. There were thirteen in the room on the thirteenth, but two are dead-the procurator and Alexius Karagounis. I doubt if the doge will appear again, but someone else can play his part. I expect Great Minister Orseolo, Missier Grande, and possibly his vizio. Perhaps others from…”

Imer drew breath sharply; his mouth twitched. In his blue and red robe, Missier Grande was mounting the stairs. Gasparo Quazza is an ominous sight at any time, yet it was his young companion I watched, the Greek’s servant Pulaki Guarana. He moved with difficulty, one hand gripping the balustrade and the other heavily bandaged and held tight against his chest. He wore the same clothes he had worn the previous morning, but they looked the worse for wear. So did he, face pallid under a heavy beard shadow, eyes sunk in deep wells.

Imer uttered a croak of welcome. I laid down my glass and bowed to Missier Grande.

“I am only here to observe,” he told Imer. “This man is a state prisoner. He has agreed to cooperate with the evening’s procedure.”

Pulaki nodded as if he would agree to anything that would delay his return to prison.

“And I am merely following sier Alfeo Zeno’s orders,” Imer twitched, dissociating himself from anything horrible that might happen and probably would.

Missier Grande turned his regard on me. It traveled from my cap to my shoes and back up to my eyes. “So what orders do you have for me, clarissimo?”

I find jokes from Gasparo Quazza unnerving. “I believe that all you have to do is observe, lustrissimo. What action you take is up to you. The meeting will be held in that room there. So far only my master is here. Will Domenico Chiari be attending?”

“No. He has other business.” I wondered if Quazza’s eyes had always been that cold or if his job had made them so. He turned and walked into the dining room. I heard him greet the Maestro.

“What did they do to you?” Benzon whispered.

Pulaki just shook his head, unwilling or unable to say.

“We don’t need you yet,” I said. “Go and wait in there, please.” I pointed to the salone, and he limped away while the three of us stared after him in horror.

All states use torture, of course. The confessions it extracts come with no guarantee of truth, so its main value is to incriminate people-either the victim or others-and terrorize all the rest. Was Domenico Chiari even then twisting on the cord with blocks of stone tied to his feet? In the Republic such questions are never answered and rarely even asked.

Now the suspects were starting to arrive, all determined not to keep the Council of Ten waiting. The Tirali men were first-Ambassador Giovanni in scarlet robes, sier Pasqual in black. They were steadying Violetta between them as she teetered up the stairs on her ten-inch stilt courtesan shoes. She was a grounded angel in a silver brocade gown, glittering with precious gems, her red-gold hair piled in two horns, her low neckline exposing peerless breasts padded to ride high. Her eyes widened when she saw me. I thought I recognized Aspasia behind them, calculating the political significance of my finery. If clothes spoke, mine were saying surprising things that evening. I kissed the ambassador’s sleeve. He was too gracious to ask, but he was definitely puzzled, wondering why his intelligence on me had been faulty.

Pasqual named Violetta to me as if we had never met. A glint of Medea’s smile warned me to be careful, but I had to live up to my debonair persona.

“I have heard tales of madonna Vitale and thought they were only myths. Now I see that they are legends.”

Aspasia’s response was instant. “Your subtlety flatters my wits, messer!”

“Alas, your wits are faster than my wit, madonna.”

“I keep my wits about me and they introduce me to others.”

“To wit?”

“To who? To you, messer.”

“Can you keep up with this sort of play, Pasqual?” the ambassador asked.

“Usually.” Pasqual was eyeing me thoughtfully.

Clothes talk, but mine had run out of funny things to say. I asked the Tiralis to wait in the salone.

And already the Orseolo contingent was approaching, three figures draped in mourning. I had expected Enrico to escort his daughter, but was surprised he had brought Benedetto. Bene had his sling on again, so perhaps he just wanted to remind everybody of his alibi. Unarmed, he did not look like a good candidate to be the jack of swords. Bianca, alas, was veiled and shrouded. Displayed as she should be, she would give even Violetta competition. I introduced Imer to the men, we both kissed the minister’s sleeve, and I sent them all off to the salone.

The heady sense of power I obtained from ordering a great minister provoked me to smile broadly when I turned to the stairs and realized that Filiberto Vasco had arrived in time to see me do it. He was escorting the northern barbarians.

I made them welcome. “You all know the learned Attorney Ottone Imer, of course…”

Vasco started to translate, but milord Bellamy did not wait for him.

“This outrages me! I have sent complaints to the English ambassador.”

“I hope it will be over very quickly, messer. ”

The foreigner’s absurd horned mustache quivered. He began to gabble and Vasco rattled off a translation. He was good. “We were due to leave today. The boatmen we had hired insisted on payment. The carriage waiting on the mainland will want an extra day’s money. Who will compensate me for these losses?”

There are times when my humor gets the better of my discretion. I pointed to the salone. “In there, messer, is sier Enrico Orseolo-the elder of the two men in mourning weeds. He is one of the six great ministers of the Republic. More even than the doge himself, the great ministers run the government. Why don’t you go and present your problem to him?”

That, I thought, ought to put the chickens in the fox house. As Sir Feather offered his wife his arm, the big woman disconcerted me yet again.

“How much for your outfit, Alfeo?”

“You want me to quote it as a complete set or item by item?”

“Every stitch.” Either she had the strangest way of flirting I had ever met, or her wheels were well off center. I could engage verbal rapiers with Violetta, but the foreigner’s signals confused me.

“Perhaps you and I can discuss that after the meeting?” I said, half expecting her husband to whip out his sword and start yelling at me. He just took her elbow and steered her away.

I noted with amusement that the buzz of conversation from the salone ceased abruptly when the foreigners entered. I smiled at Vasco, who was practicing looking intimidating but had a long way to go.

“You are also welcome, Vizio. The guests are assembled through there, and Missier Grande is in here.” I turned to Imer. “ Lustrissimo , that should be everybody.” I was wrong.

Imer was not looking at me. He was staring aghast at the stairs. Majestic in his scarlet robe and patriarchal white beard, Ducal Counselor and State Inquisitor Marco Dona was ascending at a measured pace. I clenched my teeth tightly so they would not start chattering. The last time we had met, he had sent me to the torture chamber.