The Alchemist's Code

5

A s we disembarked, I signed Bruno, Go quick-tell-Mama-lady-here. He grinned and went charging up the stairs as if shot from a bombard. Grazia and Danese were entangled again and she was sobbing on his chest. I carried the bag and his sword.

The androne, where the business is done, was silent that holy day. We started up the stairs, passing the mezzanine apartments where the Marciana families live-Jacopo and Angelo are citizen-class partners of sier Alvise Barbolano. He contributes housing and certain trading rights restricted to the nobility; they and their sons do the work. We carried on up.

As we passed the piano nobile, where Barbolano himself dwells, Danese muttered, “You live here, Zeno?”

“I do.” I did not mention cuisine or silk sheets.

He said, “Oh!” His eyes and mouth were round.

As we reached the top floor, Mama Angeli came scurrying along the great salone to meet us. I presented Grazia formally as “madonna Gracia Sanudo Dolfin,” which produced a gasp of joy from her, followed instantly by a wail of despair. But Mama is not mother of half the world for nothing, and easily whisked her away for some feminine consolation.

I directed our other visitor to the left and marched him into the atelier. The Maestro was perched on his high stool at the alchemy bench, heating a brown fluid in an alembic over a brazier. He looked around in annoyance at the interruption. I closed the door behind us.

“Doctor Filippo Nostradamus,” I said. “ Nobile homo Danese Dolfin. Sier Danese and I used to fight over crusts from the garbage when we were cutie putti together in San Barnaba. Recently he has risen in the world, talked a priest into marrying him to madonna Grazia, and probably fractured his radial styloid process.”

The Maestro said, “Tut! Careless of him. Show me your hand, clarissimo.”

“I was trying to break your bravo’s sword,” Danese said as we approached the alchemy bench. “And how can a man be apprenticed to a doctor?”

“He can’t,” I said. “I am apprenticed to a sage, clairvoyant, alchemist, astrologer, and all-round philosopher, who also happens to be personal physician to the doge. If I ever need a degree in medicine, I shall go over to Padua and foresee all the answers in the finals before the professors have thought of the questions.” I stalked across to the medical cupboard. “Plaster, master?”

“Just a bandage and a sling,” the Maestro said. “At worst he has cracked the radius. It may need a cast in a day or two, when the swelling has gone down. You will live to fight again, sier Danese.”

“He had better take more lessons first,” I said. “Start talking, messer. How did you get rich?”

Danese glared stubbornly, but he was tense with fear. “What business is that of yours?”

“None. It is the Maestro’s business, for he must decide what to do with you. We were not told your name, so our plan was to return Grazia to her parents and let you slither back into your hole, whoever you were. Now we have the alternative of sending them word that they can come and get her and you, too. Even if you still had your sword, which you don’t, I could lock you up until Sanudo arrived with the sbirri. Yet another possibility, although a highly unlikely one, would be for the Maestro to let the two of you go free and lose his fee. So be persuasive.”

The Maestro stared at me in outrage, wondering what I was dreaming of. Danese tried to fold his arms in defiance and yelped when he jostled his hand. I returned with the bandages.

“I’m not rich,” he said sulkily. “If you’re hoping to extort money from me, you’re on the rocks. I had a well-paying job, is all. I gave it up for Grazia. We are madly in love. I love her more than life itself. We were heading over to, ah, a place on the mainland where I have friends.”

“To starve?” I persisted.

“I can read and write. I’ll find a job as a teacher, or a musician.” He winced again as the Maestro started wrapping his wrist.

“What sort of job did you give up?” I demanded. “Teaching and writing didn’t pay for those drapes.”

“Mind your own…” He gave me a baleful look and the Maestro another, then remembered the power we had over him and shrank into a pathetic sulk. “I was a cavaliere servente.”

I said, “Oh, my god! For her mother? ” Even Nostradamus looked startled.

Danese flushed crimson. “No! Well, yes. But it wasn’t like that! I fetched her fan and brushed her hair and fed her canary. I played the lute and sang to her, read her poetry, told her how beautiful she looked, squired her to recitals and viewings because her husband was away, and told her how beautiful she looked. That night you and I met at the theater I was hunting for her to tell her where her gondola was tied up. A lapdog, that’s all-not what you’re thinking.”

Half the wealthy women of Venice employ handsome young men to dance attendance on them, but the duties normally extend to more intimate matters than any so far mentioned. Their husbands hire courtesans; why should they not employ gigolos? This is Venice. I could imagine Danese singing very well, with that deep rich voice of his. He would be very effective at whispering endearments into shell-like ears.

As he adjusted his patient’s sling, the Maestro said softly, “I am somewhat amazed to hear that madonna Eva was stupid enough to keep her innocent, unmarried daughter sequestered in the same house as an exceptionally good-looking young man. That she would do so and also expect both of them to remain chaste I find incredible.”

Danese grimaced. “Well, what if I was her mother’s paid lover? Does it make you happy to hear me admit that, Alfeo? Most of the last three years she’s been living at Celeseo and there’s totally nothing else to do there except count ducks. A common gigolo, tumbling a fat old woman on demand? I worked hard for my pay, but I swear I did not prey on Grazia. I did not sink to that. We spoke of love, but we never as much as touched fingertips. Not until I found her weeping in a corner a week ago and she told me of the wedding plans. I kissed her-that’s all, I swear! One kiss and I told her I loved her. Our first kiss. And right then her mother came around the corner and caught us.”

I sighed at this romantic cliche. “Paolo and Francesca?”

“Who?”

“A literary allusion,” I muttered, exchanging meaningful looks with the Maestro. The Sanudos had assured us that no household members were missing, but had not mentioned that one had been thrown out on his ear a few days earlier. Now we knew why the Sanudos were so insistent that there be no scandal. Grazia running off with a gardener would be a trivial misdemeanor compared to eloping with her mother’s pretty boy. If Sanudo had promised his daughter to a Contarini and the daughter had preferred the gigolo, then the Great Council would roll in the aisles for weeks. It would be the scandal of the decade.

“What do you want me to do, master?” I asked.

The alembic had begun to bubble. Nostradamus’s attention was wandering. He sighed angrily. “Is that the whole truth, messer? Did you purloin the lady’s jewels when you left? Help yourself to silverware?”

“Nothing,” Danese muttered, squirming in the nethermost pit of humiliation. “I give you my solemn oath. Grazia brought some jewels, but they’re her own. I have a few trinkets Eva gave me. She let me take them and my clothes. That was good of her, but I had done my best for her until then. Gesu, had I ever! Grazia was a virgin until last night- after the wedding! She isn’t now. What other prurient details entice you?”

I said, “The question is whether the Sanudos will accept you as her husband. Is that what you want? Or would you rather they just paid you to disappear?”

He flushed even redder. “If I had my sword-”

“You don’t. I do. You got yourself into this,” I said. “But I promise we won’t turn you in. For old times’ sake, I will not send you to the galleys.”

He muttered, “Thank you, Alfeo,” as if the words hurt. “I want Grazia to be happy. I love her, damn you! Have you never been in love? I want whatever she wants.”

The Maestro was peering into the alembic. “Alfeo, take her home. I want my fee. I earned it.”

Funny that I hadn’t noticed him rushing to my defense on the Riva del Vin. “Yes, master.”

“Negotiate anything else you like as long as it’s legal. And hurry back because I have notes for you to transcribe.”

That was ominous news. He probably meant he couldn’t read his own scrawl and wanted the rest of my Sunday. I led the way out into the salone and closed the atelier door.

“Well, clarissimo?” I said. “ Sier Zuanbattista really did tell me he wants his daughter to be happy. I don’t know if that means he will accept her choice of sleeping partner, but it’s up to you. You can trust him and come to Ca’ Sanudo with us. Or you can head for the Mestre ferry and vanish into the sunset. You decide.”

Danese dithered, looking everywhere but at me. “I want whatever Grazia wants,” he muttered to the floor.

Looking tiny as a doll beside the great statues, Grazia was running toward us from the kitchen.

“You wait here,” I told her husband. “I want to hear it from her own lips.”

I strode forward to intercept her; she tried to dodge; I sidestepped to block her. We studied each other appraisingly. I had not veered from my first impression, that Grazia Sanudo was cast from the same hard metal as her mother. She was wondering how to play me, which should not be a difficult decision, given our respective ages and genders.

“Madonna, I must take you home. My master’s orders. Do you want Danese to accompany us?”

She blinked several times, but no tears welled up in her magnificent eyes. “ Sier Alfeo, how could you? You think I would marry a man yesterday and cast him off today?” She dropped her gaze and smothered a dramatic sob. Better, but she needed practice. She had never learned how to speak to men other than relatives or servants.

“No. But he may be taken from you. I told you the message your father sent. Do you trust his word? Will your parents accept Danese now?”

Another dry little sob…“You realize what they may do to him? You condemn me to a life sentence in a convent? You will send your childhood friend to jail or exile?”

“No. If you think that, he is free to go.” Good riddance, mustn’t say so.

She hesitated, chewing her lip. The tragic heroine role is hard for fifteen-year-olds. We both knew that if Danese walked out of her life now she would never see him again.

I was confident that whatever choice she made would be the wrong one. The previous day, just for my own amusement, I had cast Grazia’s horoscope, using the date and time her parents had given the Maestro. The stars were very bad for her at the moment and had been for several days, with Mercury in the house of Virgo. Next weekend her fortunes should improve dramatically. Curiously, my own horoscope showed the reverse-good now, bad later.

“Your father said-”

“Yes, I know!” she snapped furiously. “I heard you. I always knew he would say that. Of course he will take me back! I never doubted it. But did my mother say the same? She’s mad because Danese loves me and she thought he loved her!”

Both ladies had relied on information from the same source. Love makes fools of us all.

“Won’t your father have final say? Why do you doubt?” I asked patiently.

“Because it’s too soon!”

Ah! The Sanudos were supposed to suffer. “Would it help if I asked them for you?”

She melted. “Oh, would you? Please, sier Alfeo?”

Back down to the gondola we went. Grazia naturally took the place of honor, the left side of the felze, and this time I did not stop Danese from joining her. He wrapped his good arm around her and the two of them sat there like birds in a cage, scowling at me. Giorgio pushed off. Nobody said a word until we emerged from the narrow ways onto the Grand Canal.

Grazia had not given up on me yet. “How did you find us?”

“The Maestro foresaw you.”

“That’s witchcraft!” She appealed to her husband. “Isn’t it, dearest?”

“Probably.”

She tried her best tigress stare on me. “We shall report you to the Council of Ten!”

“Don’t waste ink,” I said. “Every year Nostradamus publishes his almanac and includes a dozen or so prophecies. Every year I deliver a copy for the doge and another for the cardinal-patriarch.” I did not suggest that those esteemed gentlemen ever actually read the books, but they did not lay charges either.

“And can you foresee what my parents are going to decide about Danese?”

“The Maestro probably could, but he charges a lot of money for private predictions. I don’t have the knack. I can cast horoscopes, though, and I drew yours.”

She hesitated, but a desire to know the future stands very high in human wants. “And what did you foresee?”

“I saw your present trouble-which wasn’t difficult, of course,” I added quickly, foreseeing her sneer from the way her lip had started to curl. “But I also predict a dramatic improvement in your affairs about a week from now.”

She turned and beamed at Danese. Danese was quick; he saw the ambiguity right away, but he turned his snarl at me into a smile at his wife.

“Then we may just have to be patient a little longer, beloved,” he said.

I leaned forward and closed the curtains on them.

So we returned to the Ca’ Zuanbattista Sanudo. Giorgio tied up alongside the family gondola and I left the lovers hidden in the felze while I set off to face the music for them. A footman opened the door, but he was young and broad shouldered, and I recognized yesterday’s gondolier…Fabricio.

I gave my name and was escorted upstairs and to the same salotto as the previous day. Zuanbattista stood with his arm around his wife. Her antediluvian aunt had been moved to another seat, but did not as much as twitch at my entrance, or indeed during my stay. Girolamo hovered in the background.

I bowed. “ Messere, madonna-Grazia is safe and I can go and fetch her directly. I must inform you that yesterday she performed the sacrament of holy matrimony with sier Danese Dolfin.”

Eva’s mouth hardened like cement.

Zuanbattista sighed. “Your news is welcome. I hope no daughter of mine would sleep with a man without the blessing of Holy Mother Church.”

At their back, Giro merely shrugged, which for him was a wild display of emotion. I gathered that the decision had already been made.

“I confess,” I said, “that I exceeded my instructions. By coincidence, Danese and I knew each other as children. He drew on me and I had to disarm him. I gave him my word that I would not turn him in to the authorities. If you will give me your word likewise, messer , then I can bring him here also.”

Eva showed her teeth and looked up at her husband as if daring him to do any such thing. She had been made the laughingstock of the Republic, the woman who lost her daughter to her cavaliere servente. Dreams of being dogaressa clad in cloth of gold had been dashed by a child’s romantic delusion.

“We do not want a galley slave in the family,” Sanudo told me. “You have my word as a Venetian nobleman, messer. Go and fetch them both.”

Good for him! I resisted the temptation to slap him on the back, and bowed instead. “I brought them both with me.”

The old man had guessed I would say that. I returned to the watergate with the Sanudos trailing at my heels. To my surprise, they even followed me out to the fondamenta, which was conveniently deserted. The felze blinds were still down, but as I approached I heard a girlish snigger, followed by a deep male chuckle. For the moment, at least, Grazia was happy.

“You can come out,” I said. “The pasta is ready and the fatted calf won’t be long.”

Danese handed her ashore and watched her tumble into her mother’s arms in an orgy of mutual hypocrisy. He followed and bowed warily to his father-in-law.

Feeling unwanted, I stepped aboard. “Home, Giorgio, please.”

“Wait!” Zuanbattista’s command knelled in the manner of one that must be obeyed.

“Clarissimo?”

He parted his jungle of beard long enough to display a smile. “I shall make arrangements to pay Maestro Nostradamus his fee. Meanwhile, this is for you, messer, for a job well done.” He tossed me a purse, whose weight astonished me.

Noble is as noble does. I bowed so low I almost fell out of the gondola. He had my vote for doge.