The Alchemist's Code

1

A ll week the Maestro indulged himself in alchemical experiments on the sublimation of sulfur, stinking up the entire Ca’ Barbolano and neglecting his correspondence. When his folly caught up with me, I had to spend all Saturday morning in the atelier, writing letters at his dictation, he at one side of the big double desk, me at the other. Progress was slow, because I kept correcting his Latin-he has a nasty tendency to confuse ablatives with datives and is too stubborn to admit it. Some of the letters would have to be enciphered, which would ruin my plans for the afternoon.

By noon he had questioned Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon in England on geography and philosophy respectively, advised Michael Maestlin in Tubingen on the Copernican system and Christoph Clau at Collegio Romano on astrology. Now he was in the process of reassuring Galileo Galilei that his usual room would be available the next time he came over from Padua. I was hungry for dinner; he rarely remembers to eat at all. Mercifully, we were interrupted by a thump of our door knocker.

He scowled so horribly that he actually showed his derelict teeth, which he does very rarely. “Did you forget to tell me of someone’s appointment?”

“No, master. Your next appointment is on Monday at-”

“Tell them I’m busy.”

“Who knows, it may be the doge,” I said flippantly, heading for the door.

It wasn’t, but not far off.

I went out into the salone, which runs the full length of the building and is furnished with huge mirrors, enormous paintings, gigantic statues, spreading chandeliers of Murano glass, and myriad other treasures, all of which belong to sier Alvise Barbolano. He lets the Maestro and his staff live on the top floor of his palace in return for the occasional horoscope, medical consultation, and financial clairvoyance. Visitors are frequently struck dumb by their first sight of such opulence. The moment I opened the door I saw that these callers would not be easily impressed.

The man was tall and gaunt, elderly but well preserved, with a face like the Dolomite Mountains that stand guard along our northern skyline-hard white stone above a spreading forest of silver-streaked beard. He wore the bonnet, long robes, and tippet of the nobility, but in his case they were cut from the rich scarlet brocade of a ducal counselor. To have such a man come calling was startling; to have him arrive without warning was epochal.

The woman beside him seemed more likely to be his granddaughter than daughter. Her face was plump and her dark silk gown well filled. Genuine blond hair is notable, but not truly rare in Venice. I knew who this couple was and so must you, if you were paying attention earlier. The surprising thing was not that I remembered his face from my childhood, because he must have marched in scores of feast-day processions, and the spectators vie to identify important magistrates; what was rare was that I knew his wife’s name at first glance.

Bad luck, the Maestro says, is misfortune; good luck may be treated as a reward for something.

I bowed very low and kissed the man’s sleeve. “Your Excellency is indeed welcome. Madonna Eva Morosini, you honor this house. The Maestro is expecting you and if you will-”

She gasped. “ Expecting us? Who told him we were coming?”

Zuanbattista raised one shaggy eyebrow two hairs higher on his forehead. The reason Venetian nobles are said to be born old is because they never drop their dignity. They speak in grave tones after due consideration. A ducal counselor, especially, stands at the heart of the labyrinth of interlocking committees that run the Republic, being a member of the Signoria, the Collegio, the Senate, and the Council of Ten. One week in every six he presides over the Great Council. No one in the least bit gullible would ever be allowed anywhere near any of that.

I spread my hands in bewilderment. “Maestro Nostradamus is the finest clairvoyant in Europe, madonna. He foresaw the honor of your visit this morning. If you would be so gracious…”

“We just decided! We didn’t tell anyone!” Madonna Morosini was much too much of a lady to dig an elbow in her gangling husband’s ribs, but her tone told him that she had told him so. He remained inscrutable, suspending judgment.

And she? A man rarely sees more than he looks for, the Maestro says, and I had already learned far more from her than I ever would from staring at her companion. I decided she was very slightly disheveled, although it was hard to pick out any one feature that implied this. Were her eyelids slightly pink from weeping, or was her face powder patchy, as if applied in a hurry? Her hair was not as carefully dressed as it should have been. She wore no jewelry at all, and normally a great lady shows some.

The Maestro is old and very frail, but his hearing is as sharp as a scalpel. I had left the door half-open. I led the way to it, pushed it wide. “The Sanudos are here, master.”

Unless newcomers know what to expect, they must be disappointed by their first sight of the celebrated pedant, prophet, polymath, physician, and philosopher. He is bent and wizened, and his black physician’s gown and hat make him look even smaller than he really is. Badly lamed by an excess of rheum in his hips, he should walk with two canes, but prefers a single long staff inlaid with silver sigils. His hair hangs in untidy silver rat-tails, but he dyes his wispy goatee brown, for no reason I have ever been able to discover.

Visitors are always impressed by the atelier, though-the double desk, the examination couch, the great armillary spheres, globes both terrestrial and celestial. Sanudo was too dignified to stare at the alchemical bench or the wall of books, but he certainly noticed them in passing and would know that this room was the Maestro’s own, not just borrowed for the morning.

The Maestro had left the desk and was standing by his favorite red velvet chair beside the carved marble fireplace-not that the fireplace was in use on a sweltering September noon, but that is where he sits to interview visitors. “You are a little earlier than I expected, Your Excellency…madonna Eva…but of course most welcome. My home is honored…” His flattery became a mumble as he bowed. He would have hobbled forward to kiss sier Zuanbattista’s sleeve, but Sanudo stopped him with a gracious gesture.

“Do be seated, Doctor.”

I led the way to the green chairs, and the nobility floated behind me with the grace of galleons crossing the lagoon. There are always two chairs opposite the red one and if the Sanudos assumed that they had been arranged especially for them, that was their own mistake, not misinformation from me. As soon as all three principals were settled, I returned to the desk by the windows to watch faces and take notes if needed. The Maestro had his back to the light, not by accident.

Madonna Eva was trying to appear as calm as her husband, but her lips were compressed and her seething hands struggled to destroy a wadded lace hankie.

Zuanbattista said, “If you foresaw our coming, lustrissimo, no doubt you already know the nature of our problem?” His tone contained no irony whatsoever, but it was there in his eyes.

I hate skeptics. I love watching the Maestro deal with them.

“Only in a general way, clarissimo. Family trouble, of course. Quite sudden…and just this morning? When did you discover her absence?”

Madonna Eva lost color under her paint and even messer Zuanbattista deigned to look startled, but it is simple enough if you work it out. Family trouble because Sanudo had brought his wife or, more likely, she had insisted he bring her to consult the famous clairvoyant. Sudden because of the woman’s swollen eyelids. Just this morning because he knew they had not told anyone they were coming, and also to win another minuscule nod without committing himself to anything. And her absence because by then he could be nine-tenths sure that the problem was a missing daughter. Eva Sanudo was of an age to have nubile daughters, if only just. Even if it wasn’t a daughter, half the things that can be lost take a feminine pronoun in Veneziano .

“You impress us, Doctor,” Sanudo admitted.

“Now it is your turn.” The Maestro smiled by stretching his mouth sideways and bunching his cheeks. “The details if you please.”

“This is confidential.” Sanudo glanced suspiciously across at me.

“Certainly. Sier Alfeo has my complete confidence in all matters.”

He almost never uses my title in front of a client or patient. When he does, his instinct is infallible. Many nobles bristle when they hear that one of their own is demeaning his class by earning an honest living, but sier Zuanbattista glanced across at me with interest.

“Family?”

“Zeno, clarissimo,” I said.

“A descendant of Doge Renier Zen?”

“Twelve-greats grandson. My father was Marco Zeno.”

“The Marco Zeno who fought so well at Lepanto?”

“That one,” I said proudly. “He died in the plague of 1576.”

“Ah, as did so many! I saw your father at Don Giovanni’s council the day before the battle, but there were many officers there and I had no chance to speak with him.” That was nicely done-he had implied that he would have spoken to my father without actually lying about it. Nodding to show approval of my existence and presence, Sanudo looked back to the Maestro. “My daughter was taken in the night.”

Was taken? The words saddened me. I would already have bet some of my dearest body parts that the correct term was ran away. Venice, on its hundred man-made islands, is a tight pack of tiny communities, an almost impossible place to stage a holding-for-ransom. Many people, especially women, never leave the parish of their birth and know the comings and goings of every other inhabitant. Start buying more groceries than usual and the fact will be noted and discussed; the Council of Ten’s army of informers will overhear. No one keeps secrets in Venice! But the Sanudos were not ready to admit that their child had eloped.

I reached for my quill as the lady began to speak. She declaimed, as if she had memorized an address to the Senate: “My maid found her gone in the morning. She helps Grazia as well as me and there was no answer to her knock. The door was locked on the inside. She came straight to tell me, of course. We looked out the window and there was a ladder lying right there, on the grass under her room!”

I had heard similar stories before, and the way they were told mattered more than the words. Madonna Eva was neither terrified nor distraught. Madonna Eva was shocked, yes, but mostly she was furious.

Curious.

“We wakened Giro,” she went on, “and sent him to look. He climbed in through Grazia’s window. Her bed had not been slept in.”

That, she seemed to think, was that, but then the Maestro began asking questions. No ransom note had been found or delivered. Nothing had been stolen and there seemed to be no clothes missing, or perhaps just a few minor garments. Her jewels had gone, but “only the trinkets she kept in her room; her pearls were still in the usual safe place.” Even in its wild distress, the family had thought to check that.

And Giro?

“My son Girolamo,” Zuanbattista explained, “minister for the navy.”

“And who else lives in the house?”

Sanudo’s pause was not quite long enough to be called a snub, but enough to imply nicely that he had not come to Ca’ Barbolano to be interrogated by a foreign-born mountebank physician. “Her aunt, Madonna Fortunata Morosini, and three servants-Fabricio our gondolier, Pignate my valet, and the ladies’ maid Noelia, mentioned earlier.”

That was a small household for a man of Sanudo’s high station, even in Venice, where land is at a premium and the nobility have a long tradition of thrift. Even today it is not uncommon to see senators buying their own vegetables in the Erberia. Possibly the Sanudos had other servants coming in during the day, or the ladies’ maid might also clean silver, the gondolier just love gardening, and the valet like to dress up as a footman. Aunt Fortunata might even adore cooking.

“And they are all accounted for?” the Maestro asked. “No one else in the household is missing?”

“No one,” Sanudo said firmly. “I fail to see the need for all these questions, lustrissimo. We came to consult you because you have a reputation as a seer. Can you tell us where our daughter is?”

“No, Your Excellency.” The Maestro stretched his face in a close-lipped smile. “I may or may not be able to see where she will be at some point in the very near future. The questions are necessary if I am to have some idea of what I am looking for. Now, a strange thing to ask a man in your distinguished position, but have you informed the sbirri?”

“We don’t want any scandal,” the lady said firmly, with a glare to scare Medusa. Her reaction was reasonable in one who dreamed every night of becoming dogaressa.

Her husband’s expression was cryptic. “I have little faith in the local constabulary. Nor do we want to put our daughter in danger.”

That a ducal counselor would hesitate to involve the ineffective sbirri I could understand, for they are less use than wheels on a seagull, but what of the Council of Ten? The abduction of a ducal counselor’s child was an obvious threat to the security of the Republic, a crime it both could and should investigate. Sanudo must be seriously at fault in not reporting his problem immediately. True, the full Ten would not meet until late in the day, but the three chiefs are always on duty in the Doges’ Palace. They could order Missier Grande to start wheels turning-setting a watch on the ferries, and so on. Why not?

“That is good,” the Maestro said, nodding so the wattles of his neck flapped. “An official investigation would make my seeing much harder.”

“Why? How?”

“Please trust me on that, clarissimo. Clairvoyance is very hard to describe. Does your daughter have any romantic attachments?”

“Certainly not!” her mother said indignantly. “She never leaves the house except to take Communion, at Easter and Christmas. Even at Celeseo she did not walk in the grounds without madonna Morosini or I in attendance.”

I could not see the Maestro’s expression, but his tone expressed mild surprise. “She was not convent educated?”

“My husband’s duties for the Republic have involved him in much traveling for the last few years. I chose to live in our house in Celeseo, near Padua, and keep Grazia with me for company. The country is healthier for a growing child. Grazia is extremely well versed in the classics and arts. Fortunata has tutored her.”

“So when did you return from the mainland?”

“Is this relevant?” sier Zuanbattista demanded.

“Perhaps not,” the Maestro admitted, but it would be very relevant if the young lady had run off with a lover she had met on the mainland. “Suffer me that one question, madonna?”

“At the end of July.”

“No wedding plans?”

“We-”

“Nothing decided,” Sanudo said quickly. “We have had some discussions.”

“Of course,” the Maestro said with a dry chuckle, “it takes two to elope, and if you suspected she had an accomplice, you would have investigated him before coming to see me.” He waited for a confession, but none appeared. “So you want me to find and recover your missing child?”

“Can you?” they said together.

The Maestro gestured with one hand. He has very small hands. I could guess at his expression of unruffled confidence. “I have succeeded in similar cases in the past.”

And men had been exiled as a result. I was confident that he was playing with his visitors out of plain nosiness, because he had promised me he would never again meddle in elopements. I was confident by then that Grazia had eloped and her parents knew who had been holding the ladder. Nostradamus also knew that, so in a moment or two he would tire of the game and demand a fee of three hundred ducats; I would show the visitors out, and that would be that.

“Just tell us where she is and we will fetch her,” her father said.

The old man sighed. “If possible I would certainly do that, but prediction is not so predictable, paradoxical as that seems. I would do my best and my fee would be contingent on results.”

“We must have no gossip or scandal,” madonna Eva repeated.

“That objective is secondary to your daughter’s safety, surely? I mean, the paramount aim is to return her, safe and sound, to the bosom of her family?”

“Of course.” She sounded neither convinced nor convincing.

“Her date of birth, if you please, with the exact hour and minute if you know them?”

They did. I wrote it down. Grazia was fifteen, and thus in the pride of desirable maidenhood, as nubile as they get.

“Have you a recently painted portrait or miniature of her?”

The Sanudos exchanged glances. He said, “We have a family group, painted three years ago. It is too big to transport easily and she was only a child then.”

The Maestro shrugged. “Describe her, please.”

The woman said, “Grazia is vivacious, nimble. She sings and dances and is remarkably intelligent. She has a marvelous complexion and her eyes are just amazing. She looks even younger than her years, because she is so petite.”

Her father smiled ruefully, as if amused by his wife’s equivocation. “She is small and skinny-quite pretty, but her nose is too large for classical beauty. She does have wonderful eyes, I agree, and an endearing smile, but Titian would not have painted her.”

His wife pouted but did not protest this vapid praise.

The Maestro sighed. “Thank you. A frank and helpful answer. What fee are you offering?”

His Excellency’s angular, stony face seemed to petrify even further. “What is your usual charge?”

“You want me to put a price on your daughter?”

“A fee to do what?” Sier Zuanbattista’s tone had chilled considerably. “To tell us stories of how she has been spirited away to the Sultan’s harem?”

“If I produced proof, Your Excellency, even that would be an improvement on your present uncertainty. I expect no payment for my unsupported word.”

“To help us get her back, safe and unharmed!” madonna Eva said, “a thousand ducats!”

I swore under my breath. The lady had sensed the Maestro’s reluctance. The old miser would never resist such a bribe. A thousand ducats is a fortune; it is almost fifty times the legal annual wage of a married journeyman laborer.

In a notable breach of tradition, Sanudo raised both eyebrows. “I think we had better define the terms of this contract very carefully.”

His wife glared at him. “You think I would grudge it to have my child back? If you will not pay it, messer, I will sell my mother’s jewels.”

“It is acceptable,” the Maestro said. “I have charged more, but you did well to consult me so promptly.” He had never earned a fraction of that on a missing person case since I had known him. “Returned safe and in good health, one thousand ducats.”

There was a significant difference in wording there, depending on how one defined “unharmed,” but sier Zuanbattista nodded. “Failing which, for proof of her whereabouts, one hundred.”

“Very fair. Clarissimo, madonna, the sooner I get started, the sooner I should be able to tell you something.” The Maestro gripped the arm of his chair and I rose to fetch his staff.

“How soon?” the woman demanded, rising.

“An hour, maybe two. I will send sier Alfeo with news as soon as I have some.”