The Alchemist's Apprentice

27

B y 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.

We took Pulaki into the atelier and put him on the examination couch. I lit lamps while the Maestro dosed him with laudanum and proceeded to unwrap the bandage on his mutilated hand. Two fingers were so horribly crushed and swollen that the only thing to do was apply leeches and wait to see if they could reduce the swelling.

“Did they do anything else to you?” I asked.

He mumbled about his back, so I helped him out of his doublet and shirt to uncover a bandage adhering to three circular burns where the torturers had branded him. Only time was going to heal those, but the Maestro did the best he could with ointment and a fresh bandage. Eventually he managed to pick some fragments of bone out of the crushed fingers and splint the entire hand. By that time the laudanum had put Pulaki almost into coma, and I thought I would have to go and waken Bruno to move him. We managed, though, the two of us reeling across the salone like a drunken snake.

When I had made him as comfortable as he could be in the guest bedroom, I went to check on the Maestro, who was not far off having a reaction himself. It had been a strenuous night for the world’s most sedentary scholar.

As I was helping him into bed, I said, “A remarkable performance, master.”

“It went well.”

“And much as you expected?”

“Fairly close,” he muttered. “Water, if you please.”

I fetched a jug of our best mainland water, imported from the Brenta. “Without your clairvoyance I should never have believed that a man like Orseolo, with so much power and wealth, would throw it all away on a cow like that Hyacinth woman.”

The Maestro yawned heavily. “Foresight helped, but simple logic would lead you to the correct answer.”

“Yes,” I said, smiling to myself. “It was quite obvious after you pointed it out.” At the door, I added a quiet, “God bless,” but heard no reply. Probably he was already asleep.

I headed for my own room with a sigh of contentment. I replaced my rapier and dagger atop the wardrobe, and shed all Fulgentio’s finery, folding it with due respect. I was in bed and just about to blow out the lamp when I heard the watergate doorknocker.

The night was not over yet.

Barefoot and wrapped in my cloak, I went out to investigate. From the top of the stair, I could see old Luigi’s lantern far below me, and hear him talking through the spyhole. He looked up and saw my light.

“A lady,” he called. “To see the Maestro.”

“Anyone with her?”

“No.”

I knew who the lady must be. “Let her in and tell her I will come down right away.” I hobbled back inside to find clothes of my own to wear-and my sword, of course. When I left the apartment, I locked the door behind me.

Veiled and muffled against the storm, the visitor stood beside Luigi, fidgeting nervously with her hands. She reacted with dismay when she saw me coming down alone.

“I came for Doctor Nostradamus!”

Reaching ground level, I bowed to her. “I am reluctant to waken the good doctor, madonna. He is very old and tonight was a strain on him. We can talk in the boat.”

“No, I must see him. It is urgent!”

“If your concern is a medical matter,” I countered, “then surely you should have sent a gondola to fetch your family doctor?” Thanks to the Maestro’s teaching, I am as competent at first aid as most doctors, but the city health department, the Sanita, does nasty things to laymen who practice medicine. “If it is a matter of mistaken identity, then I can help you as much as he can, and certainly much sooner.”

“It is extremely urgent!” She wrung her hands.

“Then let us move quickly.” I glanced in exasperation at blabbermouth Luigi, who was hanging on every word. “I know why you have come, madonna. You wish to tell the Maestro that he pulled the wrong ballot out of the urn this evening.”

She nodded in shocked silence.

“That was no error,” I said. “No one was deceived. Did you come here alone?”

“Just the boatman.”

“Then we must hurry. Luigi, lock up after us.” I heaved on the bolt. “I can explain exactly what happened.”

“You are very kind, sier Alfeo.”

In happier circumstances I would have made some gallant retort. As it was, I just offered my arm and squired her out into a drenching gale that made us stagger even in the loggia. Her gondolier was waiting there and helped us board the tossing boat. The weather was at least as bad as on the night Sciara hauled me off to the Leads, as if the Orseolo affair must end as it had begun.

I huddled into the felze beside her. Obviously her gondolier would overhear nothing of our conversation in such a wind, but I decided to wait rather than have to repeat it all when we reached the Ca’ Orseolo.

“You and your brother will have to be very brave,” was all I said. I put an arm around her. She did not object. Indeed she cuddled closer, and soon I realized that she was weeping on my shoulder. That was probably the best thing she could do, so I just sat and held her in mournful silence all the rest of the way. The world can be very unkind.

Ca’ Orseolo was as full of darkness and spooky echoes as Ca’ Barbolano had been, but the night watchman was younger and more impressive than Luigi. He avoided looking straight at me, although he must have been tortured by curiosity. We removed our cloaks; Bianca unveiled. Telling the doorman to stay at his post when he wanted to play link boy to light our way, she took the lantern from him and handed it to me. We went up to the piano nobile together. It was a strange and creepy experience, that silent trek through a great palace with a girl I did not know and had hardly met. She was overloaded with grief and I was half out on my feet with fatigue.

We reached a door that must be our destination and I opened it into a blaze of candlelight, the mood abruptly changed. Bianca cried out in horror and rushed over to the fireplace. I closed the door hastily and followed, but one glance told me there was not enough blood to worry about. The room was a small salotto, luxurious but cosily intimate, reeking of wine and wood smoke. Benedetto sat on the floor before the fireplace, surrounded by bottles and holding a dagger in his right hand. His left forearm was bare and his wrist had bled enough to ruin the rich silk Turkish rug, but not enough to damage him.

I caught Bianca’s shoulder and eased her away from him. “Don’t spoil your gown. I’ve seen nosebleeds worse than that. Find me a handkerchief, and I will bandage it for him.”

I knelt down to peer into Bene’s blurred and reddened eyes. He stared back at me resentfully, not quite unconscious but close to it. I was tempted to offer him a lesson in anatomy-blood vessels run lengthwise and he had cut crosswise, which is the wrong way to do it if you seriously want to rush into the afterlife.

“Can you move your hand like this? Your fingers?”

He could and did, once he had worked out the meaning of my questions.

“You have done no serious harm, just a scratch.” I accepted the handkerchief his sister had brought. “A quill pen and a bucket would be a good idea,” I told her. “And a pitcher of water, if you please.” As soon as I had tied off the bandage, I took one of the wine bottles and smashed it on the fireplace. “You cut your arm on the glass,” I explained, but he was too drunk to understand.

Bianca efficiently brought bucket and feather. Taking Benedetto by the hair, I pulled his face over the former and pushed the latter down his throat. I steadied his head while he vomited. After a few repeats, when he seemed to have brought up as much wine as he was likely to, I released him and gave him water to rinse his mouth and drink. When he had done, I moved the bucket to a more pleasant distance. I tipped the rest of the water over the bloodstains on the rug. It was already ruined for Ca’ Orseolo, but some humbler family would appreciate it.

Then I selected a chair. Benedetto leaned back against another, making no effort to rise. Bianca sat down between us. She looked at me and smiled wanly.

“Thank you, sier Alfeo. I am very grateful.”

“My pleasure. I wish I could do more to help you both. Are you going to try again, messer? Do we need to set servants to watch over you?”

“The Ten are going to garrote me,” he mumbled.

I was surprised that he was still capable of understanding such problems. “No they won’t. The Ten delegated the matter to the Three, or the inquisitor would not have come. And the Three seem likely to let you go. I am truly sorry about your father, but you must not waste his sacrifice.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“Of course he didn’t, but he did send the bravos to kill me and the penalty for that is death. The two watchmen told the truth. I know Maestro Nostradamus very well, and he would never suborn witnesses.” Quite apart from ethics, it would be an insanely stupid crime.

I was directing my words to the boy but meant them for his sister, who would remember them in the morning. She nodded; I continued.

“The Maestro knew that the Feather woman murdered your grandfather. He was there, he recognized the poison, and logic told him that she must have done it while her companion created a diversion by shouting at the host. I should have worked that out for myself. Once he explained, it was very obvious.

“But the Feathers had no known motive and she had used a very potent and obscure toxin, not some crude rat poison. The logical conclusion was that they were hired killers, acting for someone else. In which case the true murderer was not there that night! ”

That took him longer, but Bianca understood, and her eyes were wide with horror.

“In other words,” I said, “the rest of the people present were innocent. Who was not present who had a motive?” A lurid imagination might have considered blaming the Council of Ten or even the papacy, which has had a reputation for using poison ever since the days of the Borgias. I did not bother going up those blind calli.

“I never asked your father where he had been that evening, and I am sure his duties as great minister could have been arranged to provide him with an excellent alibi, had he known that he would need one. Besides, if he had wanted to kill your grandfather, he would have taken much less risk by administering the poison himself, at home. But you, sier Benedetto, were not only in Padua, miles away, you were in jail that night. Your alibi, clarissimo, was much too good! It could have been arranged very easily, though, at the cost of a dribble of blood and a little pain. You at once became the obvious suspect.”

He blinked owlishly.

His sister said, “That’s absurd! He wasn’t in the city. Why did he need any better defense than that?”

“Because he did not know how the killers he had hired were going to strike. He knew the likely day, but not the means they would choose. He probably expected sier Bellamy to jump out of the shadows and attack the old man with a sword. A fast boat down the Brenta can bring a man from Padua to the lagoon of Venice in a couple of hours. He could kill a man here and be home in Padua by morning. So clever sier Benedetto arranged to spend the night in a Paduan jail, well out of suspicion’s way. I expect he set up an immovable alibi every time the procurator was due to leave the Procuratie.

“When I worked that out, I was convinced, but such logic would not stand up in court. Having demonstrated that your father had tried to kill me, the Maestro accused him of the murder that did succeed. No doubt he expected the Three to take over the case at that point and discover the real truth by interrogating the Feathers. But your father accepted the blame for both crimes. Obviously his confession was a lie and he was sheltering one of you, his children. Possibly both of you, but if you had wanted to kill the old man, madonna, you could have done so at any time. You could have stumbled on the stairs and tripped him.”

Her eyes flashed. “I wish now that I had!”

So did I. “But you didn’t. That left your brother.”

“Why do you say my father’s confession was an obvious lie?”

“Because it was ridiculous. A great minister certainly knows all about the Council of Ten, and the Council of Ten most certainly keeps its unwinking gaze on ministers. He could never have hoped to have an affair with a foreigner and keep it secret. Never! At best he would be stripped of his office and sent into exile. At worst he would die as a traitor. I don’t suppose he ever set eyes on Hyacinth Feather before tonight.”

I also had great difficulty imagining Enrico Orseolo losing his head over a woman like Hyacinth Feather, but love is blind and my opinions were not evidence. No matter-by elimination, the mastermind had been the drunken sot on the rug at our feet.

“It was me,” he said quietly, staring at the fire. “I found the foreigners in jail in Padua, charged with conspiring to murder a rich old woman. I paid for their defense by selling some jewels our mother left me last year. She did not leave them to Bianca, because Bianca was destined for the convent. I got the foreigners off and promised them more money if our grandsire died before Easter. I told them all about him, everything I could think of.”

I had guessed that. “Even his taste in wine?”

He nodded. “But he almost never went out. Not even to the Senate any more, just to sales of books or paintings. I suggested they pose as buyers to meet him. Bianca knew nothing about the Feathers, I swear!”

“But I kept writing you helpful letters,” Bianca said bitterly. “Day after day. I told you about every chance I got to go out, every trip to the market or the book dealers. I told you everything that was planned. I had nothing better to do than write you letters and dream of the next time Grandsire would take me to an art auction. That’s how that awful woman knew everything, messer -I told Bene and he told her.”

“When did your father find out?” I asked.

For a while Benedetto continued to stare into the fire as if he had not heard me. Then he muttered, “The night you went to the Feathers and started asking questions…You scared them. Bellamy came to see me and told me I must pay them right away so they could leave Venice. I had no money with me. I went and wakened Father. I confessed. He knocked me down, he was so furious. I got up and he knocked me down again. He said he would have heard by then if the Ten suspected murder, but he said we must stop Nostradamus. The old man was too clever, he said. If we could just remove you, then the man would be helpless and we would be safe. He paid Feather something to get rid of him. Then he and I went out together, to see some men he knew. It was not an area for a man to go alone.”

“But why kill old Bertucci anyway?” I asked. “Just because he was getting old and cranky?”

Benedetto turned to look at me for the first time. His eyes were still bleary but a sudden rage seemed to sober him. “Not for me. For Bianca. Because he was a tyrant! A despot. I could put up with him jerking my strings for a year or two more. But if he forced her into taking her vows, that was a life sentence! You know what they would do to her? She has to lie on the floor and be covered with a black cloth, while they sing and pray over her-three times they do that. And they take away anything pretty like embroidery. And then they cut off her hair, while the whole congregation watches. Every nun in the convent comes and cuts off a lock of her hair and throws it on the ground. Snip, snip, snip…They wrap her in sackcloth and put a crown of thorns on her head…” Bene began to weep. “And it’s forever! She’s locked up until she dies. Do you wonder she was terrified? The old man was crazy. He should have been locked up, not her. Father would never stand up to him, no matter how bad he got.”

So it was all his sister’s fault? What pathetic trash he was! He could not even kill himself properly. Bianca was sobbing too, silent tears flowing down her cheeks. In her place, I would have taken up the fire irons and made a clean sweep of the Orseolo males.

And that was the unthinkable love of the quatrain. I am certain that there was nothing carnal about it, just brotherly love carried to the point of madness.

It was time to go, or I would fall asleep in my chair. “Your father is trying to save you. He can only die once, so he took all the blame. I knew he was lying. The Maestro knew he was lying, and Inquisitor Dona knew he was lying-but he accepted the confession. You’ve got your life back, Benedetto Orseolo. Try to put the rest of it to better use.”

“You mean that?” Bianca whispered. “The Three won’t send Missier Grande to arrest him?”

“I don’t think so. Dona will have to talk the other two inquisitors into it, but I think they will go along.” The Lizard would make his last deal.

“You’re wrong,” the boy said. “They won’t hang father for trying to kill you. The Ten will take his money instead.”

Bianca stared at me, waiting for my comments. This was the crux of the problem. Shamefully, there are precedents. More than one noblemen convicted of murder has offered to pay an enormous fine instead and the Council of Ten has accepted it.

“That’s impossible now,” I said wearily. “He’s confessed to treason and parricide. They can’t overlook those crimes. If you interfere now, you’ll probably get both of you hanged. Sweat it out, boy. Your penance begins now.” I hauled myself to my feet. “If your gondolier is still awake, madonna, I would appreciate a ride home.”