The Alchemist's Code

18

S ier Ottone Gritti is a short and portly man who has seen many winters. The years have softened his features, weathered his face to a sienna red, faded his eyes to a milky blue, and frosted his close-trimmed beard; wisps of silver show under the edge of his flat bonnet. Stooped and flatfooted, he looks like an archetypical grandfather. Although he is rarely seen without a sleepy, benevolent smile, his nose is a bony hook that a raven might admire. That is a warning. He wore, of course, the black robes of the patriciate, marked in his case by the dangling sleeves of a member of the Council of Ten. A couple of fanti followed him in.

The sight of an inquisitor at the door would rank high in most people’s list of Ten Worst Nightmares, especially if the inquisitor in question happened to be Ottone Gritti.

The three state inquisitors are not the three chiefs of the Ten. They are a permanent sub-committee of the Ten, always two of the elected members and one ducal counselor, two black robes and one red. Both positions carry a contumacia, meaning that a man must sit out one full term before being re-elected, but an easy way around that restriction is to alternate the two posts. I remember few times when Gritti was not one of the Three. As soon as his term in one office lapses, Gritti is elected to the other. Even that wriggle should leave him off the Council of Ten for four months in every twenty-four, but at least once I recall the Great Council enlarging the Ten with a zonta of fifteen and including him in it. It is as if the nobility cannot sleep well unless Gritti is keeping an eye on things for them, probably because he is reputed to be the most skilled and merciless interrogator in the Republic. The Council of Ten never reveals secrets about its methods or its members, of course, but rumors persist that Gritti is quite happy to sit on the rostrum in the torture chamber and direct the torment, a task most sane men shun. They say that he can break a stubborn witness faster than anyone else can-which is a sort of mercy, I suppose.

So far so good. Gritti is staunch in the defense of the Republic against her enemies and we all support him in that.

He has a darker side. Where Doge Pietro Moro is a profound skeptic concerning the supernatural, Gritti is a fervent believer, which is much worse. If I pulled a silver ducat out of a child’s ear, the doge would not believe I had pulled a silver ducat out of a child’s ear and might have me charged with fraud. Gritti would believe. He would call it black magic and me a witch. He is reputed to be more assiduous at torturing confessions out of suspected witches than even the King of Scotland is. Sometimes his colleagues manage to restrain him, but sometimes they do not, and in the present instance we had hints of demonic forces involved with an issue of national security. No one would try to hold Gritti back in that. The Maestro has repeatedly warned me that he is the most dangerous man in Venice.

The room had fallen silent.

“Well, well!” the newcomer murmured, beaming around. “I hear we have a problem here.” He acknowledged those present with nods: “Clarissimo?” -to Zancani-“Father? Doctor? Missier Grande? Vizio? Sergeant Torre, I trust your wife is on the mend now? And Alfeo Zeno, of course! Are you in trouble again, Alfeo?”

I bowed low. “It seemed so for a few moments, Your Excellency, but I believe the crisis is over.”

Vasco’s face said it had barely begun. Vasco will die happy if he can just see me hauled off to the galleys, but burning at the stake would be much nicer.

Without going close, Gritti frowned at the corpse in the corner. “Nostradamus, is this misfortune connected with the matter you were asked to investigate two nights ago?”

The Maestro said, “I am certain it is, messer.”

That was enough. A state inquisitor outranks just about anybody. In seconds, Father Farsetti had gone, Zancani had gone, taking Sergeant Torre and his sbirri, and Giorgio had been sent off to attend to his duties. Missier Grande was dismissed with a terse, “I know you are urgently needed elsewhere, lustrissimo.” The two fanti were last to leave, ordered to guard the door.

Gritti settled himself on one of the green chairs, while Vasco and I took up positions behind out respective superiors to sneer at each other over their heads. The bizarrely contorted remains of Danese Dolfin remained under a sheet in the corner.

The inquisitor folded his hands over his round little paunch, and said, “Proceed, Doctor.” After that he almost seemed to doze, eyes half-shut, as he listened to the story. Once in a while he would nod thoughtfully, or even smile. I suspect that at the end he could have recited the entire report word for word.

The Maestro recounted the events of the last week. He left out the size of his fee for finding Grazia and did not mention pyromancy or the Aegia Salomonis, but he did admit he had used clairvoyance. His celebrated uncle, Michel de Nostredame, made clairvoyance as respectable as astrology. Even Gritti would have trouble declaring that to be black magic. Fortune telling with tarot, on the other hand, remains a criminal offense.

I listened with half an ear while I worked out the tide of events in the Doges’ Palace after we had left. The Maestro’s VIRTU bombshell would have launched a frantic hour of deciphering. At the end of it, the chiefs must have known a lot more about Algol’s activities than previously, but they had not uncovered his identity. If they had, then Gritti would never have bothered to come to Ca’ Barbolano; a mere murder would be beneath his notice. Contrariwise, if Algol’s dispatches had turned out to be gossip and fraud, the case would have been closed presto. Therefore, by elimination, the chiefs had concluded that Algol had knowledgeable sources high in the government, perhaps even in the Council of Ten itself. Rather than reveal this new development to the spy, they had turned the case over to the Three. Overruling the chiefs’ decision to withdraw Vasco, the Three had sent the vizio back to Ca’ Barbolano. The fact that he had arrived not long after ten o’clock showed that La Serenissima can move fast when she wants to.

“Fascinating,” Gritti murmured at the end. He sat in silence for a while.

I realized I had stopped breathing, and started again.

“The doctor failed to mention,” Vasco said, “that his apprentice left the building clandestinely during the night.”

“He climbed out the window and jumped across the calle?” Gritti said. “He does that all the time. Whose lust is aroused by the danger, Zeno? Yours or the harlot’s?”

“Hers, Excellency,” I said. “Just the thought of her is all I need.”

He chuckled. “I don’t blame you. I’m jealous.”

Of course the Ten keep a dossier on me and Gritti knew my mistress’s name. My midnight excursion was no longer relevant as long as Gritti accepted that Danese had stolen my sword.

“Fascinating,” the inquisitor repeated. “I am familiar with the Sanudo story, of course. The tale has been the talk of the broglio for days-the Contarini betrothed who ran off with barnabotto trash.”

Vasco shook his head pityingly at the other barnabotto trash. I ignored him.

“Zuanbattista’s political career may never recover,” the inquisitor mused. “He is due to chair the Great Council tomorrow and so far he has not backed out. This murder may finish him, though. Now you say that Dolfin’s death is ‘certainly’ connected to the Algol espionage case. I do not see that as self-evident. Justify your allegation, Doctor.”

The Maestro put on his bewildered senility expression. “I am certain that it is correct, Your Excellency, but I am not yet in a position to back it up with evidence.”

Gritti smiled fondly, as at a stubborn child. “I do understand the difference between a proof and a working hypothesis.”

“Yet I must decline to reveal conjectures I cannot yet substantiate.”

Vasco raised two eyebrows; nobody defies the Three and gets away with it.

Gritti settled back in his chair and dropped the comedy mask in favor of the tragic. “Your work in breaking the Algol cipher was brilliant, Doctor, and the Republic will reward you handsomely for it, but now you are implying that one of the most senior men in the government is a traitor and I demand to hear your reasons. I will not rush out and arrest people on mere suspicion. Let us hear it, Nostradamus.”

A grunt from the Maestro made my heart plunge. His stubbornness approaches suicidal insanity.

“I cannot accept these conditions,” he said. “I regretfully decline to work further on this case.”

“You think you can withhold evidence vital to the security of the state?”

“I specified that it is mere opinion, not evidence.”

I could not see the Maestro’s face, but his voice seemed amazingly calm. Gritti, opposite, was starting to show signs of annoyance. His already ruddy face was redder than ever.

“Alfeo, will you answer my question?”

I hope that my start of alarm concealed my simultaneous cold shiver. “I cannot, Your Excellency! I have no idea why my master believes the two crimes are connected. On the face of it, that would be a very strange coincidence.”

“No it wouldn’t,” Gritti said impatiently. “Dolfin is…was, I mean-a notorious lecher. The Ten opened a file on him when he was fifteen. Yesterday, you tell me, he was restored to the delights of his new bride’s bed after a week’s enforced celibacy. Yet instead he leaves Ca’ Sanudo and rushes back here to Ca’ Barbolano to consult the Maestro in an ‘agitated’ condition. Did he know of the Algol case?”

“I do not believe…” I said. “No, he couldn’t possibly. The Angelis never gossip about the Maestro’s affairs and even they know only that he went twice to the palace. The Marcianas downstairs jabber like starlings, but they knew nothing of importance. Danese…he saw the vizio here that morning and would have guessed that he had come on state business. Danese was clever.”

“Sly, you mean,” the inquisitor said with distaste. “So he went looking for his sword and found yours instead? That was enough, apparently. That was what he had come for. Any sword would do. So he ran off. Does it not make sense that he had stumbled on evidence of treason at Ca’ Sanudo and that was why he wanted his sword? Do you swear that this idea has not even occurred to you, Zeno?”

My mouth was very dry, my bladder unbearably full. “I thought of it and discarded it, Your Excellency.”

“Why?”

“Because Danese was no hero. He was an inept, untrained swordsman, a playboy who wore a sword for swagger. Had he found the evidence you suggest, he would have run straight to the palace and informed the chiefs in the hope of gaining a reward. He cuckolded sier Zuanbattista, then betrayed his mistress so he could seduce her daughter, all in the quest for money. I remember when he was a child…If you look at the first entries in that dossier you mentioned, Excellency, I think you will find reports that his greed exceeded his scruples even then. He would have betrayed his wife’s father or brother for gold, but he would never have faced them down himself.”

“It remains a valid hypothesis. Doesn’t it, Doctor?”

“Not to me,” the Maestro said. “I agree with Alfeo. If Dolfin had been able to inculpate the Sanudos, father and son, then their daughter would have inherited everything and he could have cleared the table. It would have all been his.”

Gritti said. “So who killed him?”

“I suspect but cannot prove.” We were back to the beginning.

“Are you gambling that I dare not use force on you because of your age, Nostradamus?”

The Maestro cackled. “Faugh! Tie me on the strappado and I would break in pieces at the first hoist. My heart would stop.”

“Your apprentice is a strong young lad.”

Vasco raised his eyes to Heaven, silently mouthing prayers of thanks.

“Alfeo doesn’t know what I think,” the Maestro said, less confidently. “His brain is not his best organ.”

“You can stop his interrogation at any time.”

“Bah! Has the Republic sunk to torturing the innocent?”

The inquisitor laughed. “Not yet! You always were a pigheaded old scoundrel, Doctor, and every year you get worse. Keep your theories, then, but I shall cancel your reward for the code breaking.”

That was different. The Maestro thumped a tiny fist on the arm of his chair. “It is blatantly obvious! I warned the chiefs last night that I expected attacks against us that the vizio could not repel, and by morning there was a corpse on our doorstep. Why here, at Ca’ Barbolano? Surely Algol arranged that to ensnare my investigation in an irrelevant murder case?”

Gritti leaned forward eagerly. “You credit the spy with magical powers?”

“Who named him Algol?”

“That means nothing. He could as easily be called Hercules or Solomon. I want you to name him for me. Now. His real name. If all you have is a suspicion, I will still hear it. If you refuse, I shall be forced to take you and your apprentice into custody. And cancel your bonus.”

I was holding my breath again. Gritti had the powers to issue any threat he liked and then carry it out.

Nostradamus knew that. Stubborn is stubborn, but this was ridiculous. He pouted. “Give me until tomorrow. Then I shall give you Algol, if not in person, at least his name and address and the evidence to hang him.”

Gritti sat back to consider the offer. “When?”

“About this time. But here at Ca’ Barbolano, if you please. I have done far too much traveling in the last few days, and my joints already feel as if I had spent all yesterday on your strappado. My staff please, Alfeo. Come and have prima colazione with us tomorrow, Your Excellency. I have an excellent cook, and I will serve up Algol to you for dessert.”

“Mmm? And in the meantime, you do what?”

“Collect the evidence I require to confirm my hypothesis.”

Gritti smiled angelically. “I am a patient man. As you wish. But that will be your last chance.” He laid his hands on the arms of his chair to rise. “Now I must go to Ca’ Sanudo and see what that end of the story reveals. I shall, as you suggested, look out for a puddle of blood. Vizio, last night my colleagues and I ordered you to defend Zeno, so I suppose you had better continue to do so.” He smiled a silver-framed, snaggle-toothed smile.

The old scoundrel was going to have Vasco dog my footsteps on whatever errands the Maestro had in mind for me. If I uncovered Algol, Vasco would be able to arrest him on the spot and claim the credit. He had not yet worked that out, though. All he could see was being my nursemaid for another day, and he looked disgusted at the prospect. “Certainly, Excellency. Do I defend him against the perils of foreign travel?”

“Meticulously.”

That was better-he was to be my jailer. “And what should I do with his sword?” The answer he would really like was obvious.

Gritti heaved himself to his feet. “Clean the blood off it and give it back to him. I hope you never seriously believed, Vizio, that Alfeo Zeno would murder a man and forget to take his own monogrammed rapier out of the corpse?”