The Alchemist's Pursuit

11

By the time the Maestro appeared the following morning, I had done my daily housework. Like all apprentices I am required to keep my master's work area clean and tidy, and he won't let me do that when he is in there himself, which is almost always. That day I had dusted all the furniture along the southeast wall from the examination couch to the medical cupboard, and tidied the contents of that. I felt virtuous. I often feel virtuous, and with good cause.

I rarely speak to him in the morning before he speaks to me. That day I was quite prepared to break my rule, but did not have to, because he came hobbling in on his canes, and that alone would have justified congratulations. I rose when he entered, as a well-behaved apprentice should, and he gave me a good-morning scowl.

"Willow bark!" he said.

I had the draft ready, and all I had to do was stir it up again and bring it to him as he settled in his chair. He took a few mouthfuls, pulled a face, and then frowned up at me.

"You're looking abominably smug. You captured Honeycat last night after a brilliant display of swordsmanship?"

"No, master. That's tonight's program."

"Then you learned his name."

"Yes, master. Zorzi Michiel."

Nostradamus stopped the beaker short of his lips with his jaw hanging open. It was quite a satisfactory response. Finally he whispered, "Saints preserve us! Who told you that?"

Zorzi Michiel had blazed into infamy just over eight years earlier. I had no professional interest in such matters back then; I was apprenticed to a printer, typesetting six days a week and educating myself letter by letter. My greatest worry had been whether I should shave my upper lip or wait a month or so until the rest of the world could see what I could see growing on it, but I certainly heard about the Michiel trouble. Senator Gentile Michiel had been murdered as he was leaving the Basilica San Marco after late-night Mass. The cathedral of Venice is St. Peter's in Castello, which happens to keep the cardinal-patriarch about as far away from the center of the city as it is possible to be. Glorious St. Mark's is the private chapel of the doge, and Christmas Mass there is a very splendid state ceremony, attended only by the great. Murder in such a holy place and on such an occasion shocked the city to the marrow. The Basilica had to be reconsecrated and the Senate ordered a week of public penance and fasting. To make the crime even worse, it turned out that the murderer had been Gentile's youngest son, Zorzi, and the patricide fled from the Republic and its dominions just ahead of Missier Grande and his sbirri.

"Donna Alessa told me. I caught her in a weak moment," I explained, without mentioning that my stroke of genius had been prompted by a near-dead cat. "She gave me an eyewitness description of his eponymous birthmark, a hemangioma of feline form in the genital area."

Nostradamus drank some more willow bark, grimacing at the bitter taste.

"Young Michiel was exiled," he said. "They put a price on his head."

"A thousand ducats, as I recall. But I misjudged the Ten yesterday. They're not trying to protect him. They know he's back and they want to catch him and do whatever horrible things they do to patricides." Also save the reward money, of course.

"Three brothers," the Maestro mumbled. "Gentile had three sons, Bernardo, Domenico, Zorzi. A couple of months after the crime, Bernardo tried to hire me to track down his brother."

"Oh!" I had not known that. "Did you?"

"Bah! You think I'm stupid, to get mixed up in a thing like that? If I'd thought I could find him, I would have gone after the reward myself. I just waited a few days and wrote back that the fugitive must have moved out of my range and I only charge when successful. Case closed. More willow bark."

He would give himself dyspepsia or even hematemesis if he used too much of it, but I do not presume to lecture him on physic. As I went back to the alchemy bench, I said, "So we abandon the case?" Had we ever bandoned it?

"No. Not now. The madman must be caught before he murders any more of his former playmates." Of course the Maestro now had a passable in-house swordsman to round up the quarry for him so he could pocket the reward, but we never mention such things.

"Why is he murdering them?" I asked.

There was a pause while Nostradamus considered his answer. "Because he is a madman? Because he thinks one of them betrayed him to the Ten? More important, why did at least two of the murdered women agree to receive such a monster?"

I should have wondered that. "Because he told them he was innocent? Had been pardoned? Was going to prove he hadn't done it?"

"Perhaps he didn't?" my master growled. "You say Alessa didn't believe he did."

I turned and stared across the room at him in rank disbelief.

"You plan to solve an eight-year-old murder and disprove the Council of Ten's judgment?" I had seen Nostradamus attempt and often perform miracles, but this seemed beyond even him. The entire resources of the state had pursued the killer of Gentile Michiel.

"Well, let's try a pass or two at it anyway." For the first time, he was showing some real interest in the problem Violetta had brought to him two days past. "Take a letter. Take two. Best paper."

I gave him the potion and returned to my desk. "Ready." "The first to Bernardo Michiel. Wait. We don't know what office he may be holding now, so you'd better make a draft."

I reached in the drawer for a cheaper sheet. "Ready then."

"Usual greetings. Your most esteemed and luminous Excellency-or whatever he is at the moment-will remember how some years ago, during a time of great pain and tragedy, Your Excellency-or whatever-did me the inestimable honor of asking my humble assistance upon a certain private and sorrowful matter but that, to my eternal regret, my talents were too meager to satisfy Your Excellency's gracious needs, so I was unable to oblige Your Excellency-period-I am newly apprised of some information that may pertain to the same subject and hence venture to advise Your Excellency of it in complete confidence and purely as a way of making amends for my earlier failure and without any thought whatsoever of seeking compensation other than Your Excellency's favor and the satisfaction of serving so eminent a noble-period-The bearer of this letter, sier Alfeo Zeno, has my complete trust and will recount the matter to you-period-I remain forever-et cetera. Butter him up more if you think it needs it."

I hate it when he uses my title for his own ends, but that was the least of my worries by then.

"Master," I said grimly, "you expect me to walk into this man's home and tell him his baby brother, who murdered their father to the family's eternal shame and his own damnation, is back in town with a price on his head, slaughtering prostitutes?"

"What can he do except tell you to leave?"

"Have his boatmen beat me to a pulp."

"No he can't. This is Venice, not France. Nobles can't take justice into their own hands. That is certainly what the lawyers will tell you."

Who believes lawyers?

"And all I want you to do is apply your inestimable skill and experience at judging people to decide whether or not he already knows that his brother is back. They may be hiding him in that palace of theirs."

"In that case they'll cut my throat," I said glumly. "Or they may accuse me of attempted blackmail, after the Council of Ten has already warned me off once. Next letter?"

"Do it in good. To sier Carlo Celsi…"

That was better. I like old Carlo.