The Alchemist's Code

27

G iorgio was sitting in the government boat, trading gossip with Gritti’s boatmen-waiting for me is a large part of his job. He knows me so well that one look at my face was enough to inform him that I was not my usual cheerful and witty self. He said, “Home?” and accepted my nod as sufficient reply.

Feeling understandably malicious, I spread myself on the felze cushions, forcing Vasco to sit on the thwart outside. Unfortunately the rain had stopped. Finding my contempt amusing, he beamed around benevolently at the scenery as Giorgio sped us along the Rio di Maddalena and Rio di S. Marcuola. When we emerged onto the Grand Canal, he honored me with the most sanctimonious smile I had ever seen.

“Alfeo, Alfeo! You cannot say you were not warned. I have told you many times not to meddle in matters that imperil your immortal soul. See where it has gotten you now? Do you not feel repentance?”

“I feel homicidal. It has gotten me to thinking that I would rather be beheaded than burned at the stake. I’m a better swordsman than you are. Giorgio won’t notice a quick murder-will you Giorgio?”

Normally Giorgio pretends not to overhear what is said on his boat, but this time he answered. “Not if it is done in a good cause, clarissimo.”

“Couldn’t be better,” I replied, but my threat failed to worry the vizio, who merely smirked more broadly than ever.

I truly thought that a day that began with my finding a corpse on the doorstep and continued through my being charged with homicide, menaced by a demon, and then accused of witchcraft could not possibly get any worse. I was wrong. Back at the Ca’ Barbolano, I jumped ashore and trotted up the stairs without waiting for Vasco, who would be certain to stick to me tighter than my ears from now on. I heard his boots tapping close behind me as I reached the piano nobile. To my dismay, one flap of the great double doors stood open and on a stool outside it sat Renzo Marciana. His relief at seeing me suggested that he had been ready to expire from boredom. The Marcianas jump to our landlord’s bidding also, just as high as the Maestro and I do.

“ Sier Alvise wants to see you,” he explained. With an uneasy glance at my keeper, he rose and went in to announce my return.

“No doubt the noble lord dislikes corpses cluttering up his watergate,” Vasco opined at my shoulder. “So untidy!”

I suspected the crusty antediluvian patrician liked the recent living intruders even less than the dead ones and in a few moments Barbolano came dithering out to confirm my suspicions. I know from auditing the Marcianas’ ledgers that he must have one of the largest incomes in Venice, yet he and his wife never employ more than a single servant; they wear old-fashioned garments, faded, threadbare, and often in need of a wash.

He peered at Vasco with extreme distaste and then literally wagged a finger in front of my nose. “I won’t have it, you hear?”

“God bless you, messer,” I said. “How have I displeased you?”

“How?” the old man barked, spraying me. “ Sbirri all over the place? Inquisitors, Missier Grande himself, and”-he pointed-“ him? You think I run a house of ill-repute? I won’t have it! Get out, all of you! Go! Go and tell Nostradamus to take his rubbish and leave! Today! Now!”

He might have continued in the same vein for some time, but my display of horror stopped him. “Why’re you pulling faces, boy?”

“Because of the date, clarissimo! The stars! This is a fearfully inauspicious day. The Maestro says he has never seen a day so ill-omened for making decisions.”

The old man shied. “Stars?”

“And planets. Mars is in Libra in opposition to Mercury, messer! The moon in your own birth sign of Virgo makes you especially vulnerable. I beg you to wait at least until Tuesday before making any move that you might possibly regret later. Any decision you make before that will certainly be star-crossed.”

Barbolano chewed his tongue for a few moments indecisively. Then he pointed again at Vasco. “Well, at least get rid of him! You write out a notice evicting Nostradamus and bring it to me to sign on Tuesday without fail!”

I bowed. “Very wise, clarissimo.”

He disappeared in a thunderclap of the great door.

“A disastrous decision, I would say,” said Vasco. “So that is how it is done? Bombast and stultiloquence!”

“You think this day is not disastrous?” I strode off up the stairs.

He followed. “So far it has proved highly auspicious, one of the best I can recall.”

I marched into the atelier, closed the door in his face, and locked it.

“Greetings, noble master!” I proclaimed, detouring around by the big mirror to make sure the spyhole from the dining room was closed. “I unmasked Algol for you. I foolishly saved Filiberto Vasco from the demon and out of gratitude he accuses me of witchcraft. Messer Ottone Gritti is much inclined to agree with him. Also sier Alvise has given us notice to vacate the premises by Tuesday and what’s the matter?”

The Maestro was huddled in his favorite red chair, clutching a pottery jug in both hands and looking about a thousand years old. He grunted. I paused at the slate-topped table with the crystal ball, whose cover lay crumpled on the floor. He had been foreseeing and the resulting chalk scrawl was just one more horror to add to the day. I would need an hour to decipher it, if I ever could.

“It doesn’t help,” he muttered.

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. It’s too far off to be relevant.”

I noticed with relief that the late Danese Dolfin had been removed, although the medical equipment and a bloodstained sheet still lay under the couch. I headed in that direction to tidy up.

“Sit down here and talk.” The Maestro raised the jug to his mouth and drank.

Obediently I settled on one of the green chairs-an unusual honor for me-and talked. I gave him everything that had happened since I left with Gritti to visit madonna Corner. I didn’t mention eating, since I hadn’t, but only barely managed not to mention that I wasn’t mentioning it.

Although never predictable, Nostradamus is almost always bad tempered after a farseeing. But when I came to the end of my morning and told him how I had deterred Alvise Barbolano from evicting us on the spot, he actually swore, which he almost never does. We were in trouble.

“So that nuisance Vasco is still underfoot?”

“Like dirt.”

“Bah! Well he mustn’t find out what we’re doing. I promised to deliver Algol to Gritti personally, and I shall.”

I repeated that sentence to myself and decided I had heard it correctly. “You don’t think the walking book was the ghoul?”

“Bah! No. Certainly not! You are confusing Algol with the jinx, and they’re completely different. Oh, the jinx made the Sanudos prone to disaster. You notice that Sanudo himself did very well when he was in Constantinople, far out of its range, but plunged into trouble as soon as he returned? It cursed everyone who came in contact with it. As soon as we became involved in the family’s affairs, it blurred my clairvoyance and blinded your tarot. But Algol is a person, one of the jinx’s evil effects, no doubt, but not the jinx itself. The fact that Algol’s employers, whoever they are, named him The Ghoul may be only a coincidence. I don’t recall the Church ever informing us of a patron saint of coincidences, but a patron demon may be more appropriate. It’s the human Algol that the Ten want. I could tell Gritti what he’s overlooked and he would put all his spies to work and find the real Algol in a few days, but I promised to turn him in myself, so I must.”

To call Maestro Nostradamus pigheaded is an insult to swine.

“Yes, I know. Tomorrow at breakfast. Can you think of a way to stop him burning me at the stake for witchcraft right after?”

“You were an idiot to use the Word in front of a witness, especially him.”

“I didn’t use it in front of Gritti himself, but I agree it was stupid. After all, how much worse could demonic possession make Vasco? And he might have bitten the jinx, instead of the other way around.”

“I’ll worry about you later,” my master said impatiently. “Meanwhile the most important thing is to preserve my reputation by exposing Algol. I decided there were three ways to proceed-three strings to my bow.”

“And the first one didn’t work?” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder at the crystal ball.

He pouted, which was agreement. “I overshot the mark by at least a century. You’ve eaten?”

Astonished, for food rarely enters his mind, I said, “Not this week, I think, master.”

“Well, I am waiting for-”

Knuckles rapped.

I raised an eyebrow and, when he nodded, the rest of me also. I went and opened the door to find the twins, Corrado and Christoforo, beaming eagerly. They will never interrupt the Maestro without express orders to do so, so I stepped aside and let them enter. Then I closed and locked the door again, although there was no sign of Vasco out in the salone. The boys were sweaty and puffing as if they had been running, but they had taken time to rehearse, because they reported in counterpoint.

Corrado began, “Marco Piceno, cobbler…”

“Marco Gatti, attorney…”

“Matteo Tentolini, musician…”

“And Dario Rinaldo, carpenter,” Chris concluded triumphantly.

The names meant nothing to me, but from the Maestro’s demonic expression, I guessed that they were bad news, so the second of his three bowstrings had just proved as untuneful as the first. Two down, one to go.

“Very good!” he said. “Alfeo will give you two soldi apiece after he has dined. Meanwhile, I have another errand for you. Fetch Michelina if she is around. Go and eat, Alfeo.”

Michelina is a year older than the twins and a splendid beauty, engaged to be married. The only reason the Maestro could possibly want her then was to dictate a letter, because she writes a fine secretary hand. I taught her myself.

“I won’t die of starvation in the next hour,” I complained, resentful that anyone else would sit at my desk and do my work.

“No, no.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “You must keep up your strength for tonight’s ordeal.”

When he gets in that mood, he keeps secrets even from me, because he is convinced my face always gives me away when I tell a lie. This is an absurd untruth, but that day we had that historically celebrated snoop Filiberto Vasco underfoot and peering underbed, so extreme caution might be justified.

“I dread the prospect,” I said and marched off in search of nourishment, ignoring the twins’ wide-eyed stares at this hint of dark deeds ahead.