The Alchemist's Apprentice aa-1

by Dave Duncan

“Yes.”

  “Offered a choice of refosco, malmsey, or retsina, which did you choose?”

  Grunt. “I never drink retsina except with a certain friend I expected to see there. I knew he would choose it, so I did, for old times’ sake. We used to drink it together years ago during the Cyprus campaign. It still tastes like turpentine.”

  “Yes, sire. That is the whole point.”

  He had completed his business. Jacopo put away the chamber pot and began assisting him adjust his draperies. It was a few moments before the doge turned to scowl at me. “What are you blathering about, Alfeo?

  “Could Your Serenity have switched glasses with your friend?”

  “Mother of God!” The ruddy ducal complexion paled visibly. “He really was poisoned?”

  “My master believes so.”

  The doge sank onto a chair, official business forgotten. “What evidence has he?”

  “His professional opinion, sire-his medical opinion.” Not something he had read in the stars, I meant. “He detected symptoms of a certain drug. That is why he asks if you might have accidentally switched glasses with the procurator.”

  Nasone pondered for a moment. “I cannot swear we didn’t. We looked at some books together.”

  “But you noticed no sudden change in the taste of the wine? You had no intestinal problems later, no irregular heart beat or excessive saliva?”

  Mention a symptom to some people and they will at once imagine experiencing it, but Pietro Moro is the least suggestible of men, a human barnacle. “No. I hardly touched it before I spoke with Bertucci. When we had finished our discussion, I gulped down the rest and left.”

  “Who could have known Your Serenity would be there?”

  He leaned back and glared at me. Legally doges may be figureheads, but they usually get what they want. They do not appreciate being cross-examined by mere apprentices.

  “Only Bertucci himself. This is your master asking all this, not just apprentice Alfeo Zeno wasting an afternoon to get out of honest work?”

  “I am here by his leave and will report every word to him, I swear.”

  He stared hard at me. “We are both liable to get in trouble over this, lad. We ought to be singing this song to the state inquisitors. And they may be a lot less gentle with you than they will be with me.”

  I said, “The matter is still in doubt, sire. The drug my master detected can also be a physic and we have not yet learned whether or not Procurator Orseolo’s physician had prescribed it. If he had, then the procurator’s death might have been due to an accidental overdose.”

  Moro grunted again. “Listen, then. The Imer man wrote to tell me he had some rare books for sale. I sent for him and looked them over. Most were the usual monastery scrapings-tedious preaching by long-dead bores. But there were a couple I found interesting. One was a fine fragment of Virgil’s Aeneid and the other was a play I did not know, which Imer claimed was a lost Euripides. It looked exciting, but of course I was noncommittal. I named an agent who should be invited to the general viewing and might bid on my behalf. At the end of my meetings that day, I found a note from Bertucci Orseolo confirming that he would be going to the sale in person. He had heard disturbing rumors about Imer and wondered if the books were all they seemed to be.”

  So that was how it had been done? The doge must have seen a reaction in my face. He paused, but I outwaited him, all eager and expectant.

  “It was too late for me to be sure of getting hold of my agent to change my instructions. I decided to go and see for myself if there had been substitutions made. There had not. Your master agreed that the Virgil was a very early, very valuable copy. He said he thought the Meleager was just Hellenistic imitation. So did Bertucci. I was not at all sure I believed either of them, but a doge must not risk being made to seem a fool, so I had a footman fetch my agent, told him not to bid on the Euripides, and left. You’re suggesting I was lured there to be poisoned?”

  The valet was chalk-white.

  “I think the possibility should be kept in mind, Your Serenity.”

  “Bah! A doge is not a king. I have no real power. Why should anyone try to assassinate me, huh?”

  “Ambition, sire? Terror? If the sultan can strike you down, he can make other rulers tremble.”

  “Ridiculous! That’s far-fetched. And I very rarely go charging out of the palace on a whim, Alfeo.”

  “Of course not, sire. But if you had been taken ill later, you might not have mentioned that you had done so. It is only a theory so far, I agree. Why should anyone want to kill the procurator either? My master believes he was poisoned in that room.”

  “Bah! Your master claims to be able to read the future, too. The past is usually a lot easier.” Pietro Moro glared at me, his mouth moving as if he wanted to grind his teeth. He heaved himself to his feet, and paused. “I won’t accept any babbling about planets, but if my old friend Bertucci really was murdered, just tell me who did it and I will see his head roll across the Piazzetta, understand? I don’t care who he is!”

  “I understand, sire.”

  “Tell Sciara when you have anything to report. Jacopo, give him a lira.”

  I bowed and withdrew-with my lira.

  The short winter day was already ending when I boarded the gondola at the Molo.

  “Where to now, Your Excellency?” Giorgio asked.

  That was a good question. “No sign of those two fine boys of yours?”

  “None.”

  “I still need to see Karagounis.” He lived quite close. “But Doctor Modestus is more urgent and I must consult him before they lock up the Ghetto. I don’t want to kill the horse, though.” The Ghetto is at the far end of the Grand Canal.

  “It’s a good, strong stud horse, Alfeo. This is my job.” Giorgio is far stronger than he looks. He worked the gondola out into the Basin and then began swinging his oar like a fly whisk, stooping into every stroke, overtaking everything in sight. Admittedly he did not try to sing at the same time.

  There is no finer street in the world than the Grand Canal, whose waters lap the doorsteps of gilded palaces and bustle with boats of every kind-gondolas, galleys, barges, rafts, and skiffs. I have never seen it look more beautiful than it did that evening, lit by the low sun and a-sparkle in its own strange light. We passed by the Customs House and a succession of great family houses-the Giustinians’, Corners’, Darios’, Barbaros’, the House of the Duke of Milan, and many more. We swept past my birth parish of San Barnaba, where the barnabotti brood in their embittered poverty, and then more palaces, the new Rialto Bridge coming into sight, a single great arch of marble double-edged with shops. Beyond the bridge and around the second bend we passed the great markets, stripped now of their morning crowds, and then another magnificent parade of palaces escorted us to the Canal Cannaregio, where we turned off to follow lesser ways to the Ghetto Nuovo.

  Ghetto is a Venetian word, of course, and a concept that has been copied by many other cities, but Venetian Jews fare much better than most. Christoforo saw me and came slithering through the throng that was streaming in and out of the great gate, shouting my name and grinning with delight at accomplishing his mission.

  “He’s still in there. Come along!”

  The Ghetto is a warren of narrow calli and a central campo seething with people, almost all of them Jews in their required red hats. The buildings are higher than anywhere else in the city; there are shops and stalls everywhere, but no church, no wayside shrines. The women wear bright clothes and jewelry-rings and chains of gold-and some are very beautiful. Christoforo slipped through the crowd like a minnow, so I was hard put to keep up with him, but he led me unerringly to the door where his brother waited.

  “He’s still here,” Corrado said. “Five floors up, he said.”

  I told my helpers where they could find their father and solemnly handed them four soldi apiece. Belatedly wondering at my chances of getting that back from the Maestro, I began my climb. At the top of the first flight up I hea
rd and then saw the second-best doctor in the Republic plodding down toward me, bag in hand.

  Isaia is narrow-shouldered and stooped-almost hollow-chested-with a permanently worried look, which he claims increases the fees people are willing to pay him. He dyes his beard gray to look older, is armed with a sense of humor deadlier than a bravo’s stiletto, and plays the deadliest chess west of Cathay.

  “Alfeo! Your helpers assure me that your master is well.”

  “Much better than he deserves. If he weren’t, you are certainly the one he would send for.”

  “Why not a restorer of antiquities?” He showed strong teeth in a smile. “So you must be the one with a problem. A case of the French disease, is it?” We were nose-to-nose in a dingy, dimly lit stairwell that bore a strong smell of old cooking. It was an odd place for a medical consultation.

  “No. Chastity and frequent self-flagellation protect me. The Maestro wants your opinion on a case.”

  Modestus rolled his eyes. “The Lord’s wonders never cease. This is only the third time he has done that and I must have asked his advice two dozen times. I shall be happy to do what I can. Will you tell me here, or shall we go to my house?”

  “Here will do well. The subject was an elderly male of choleric humor. He limped slightly on his right leg…”

  Isaia listened without comment, but I could soon sense that he had guessed the name of the deceased. When I had finished, he said, “Those symptoms sound to me like poisoning with the herb digitalis.”

  “Not oleander?”

  “Possible. Digitalis more probable.”

  “My master’s opinion also. Treatment of choice?”

  He sighed. “Very difficult in a man of his years. He was already trying to vomit, so perhaps water, as long as he was capable of swallowing. The point is moot, though, isn’t it? His doctor bled him that night and again the following morning, then attributed the subsequent death to old age.”

  “You are ahead of me,” I said. “I was going to ask you the doctor’s name so I could find out what medicines he had prescribed, if any.”

  “I am still ahead of you, but I feel unhappily close to betraying a colleague.” The gloom did not hide Isaia’s discomfort. “He is a good man, although he was a better one twenty years ago. He, too, asked my opinion of the case this afternoon.”

  “Why consult you if he believed the death was natural?”

  “He was having second thoughts about it, although foxglove had not occurred to him. When I suggested it, he admitted he had never prescribed it in his life or seen its symptoms. I advised him to take his suspicions to the Ten.”

  “Will he?”

  Isaia laughed. “What do you think?”

  But now that Isaia had confirmed that there had been murder done, I had no excuse not to do so. I could feel thin ice cracking under my feet.

  “I am very grateful and will tell my master. Also, I ask a more personal favor. There is an attorney named Ottone Imer.”

  Isaia is much too quick-witted ever to hesitate. His pause was deliberate.

  “I have heard of him.” The near-darkness emphasized how resonant and compelling his voice is. Usually it is soft, a comforting bedside voice, but now I heard the steel in it, warning me off.

  I said, “I heard rumors that he is heavily in debt.”

  Even in the Republic, which tends to listen to its purse more than its Pope, officially only Jews lend money, and moneylenders are as secretive as doctors or courtesans.

  “This is important, Alfeo, or you would not ask?”

  “It may turn murder into treason. That could not make the crime more serious, but it might save some innocent people from suspicion.”

  Isaia sighed. “Then I agree that it is important. I will ask around. They will tell me if I say it is important, and I will let you know very soon.”

  I thanked him, aware that the Ten’s spies might take many days to dig out what I was going to learn “very soon” and Isaia’s information might be better than anything they would gather.

  “And now you should go, gentile,” Isaia said, “or you will be locked in with us unbelievers all night and have to eat my wife’s cooking and play chess with me and evict my children from their bed and worry your master.”

  “You make it sound very tempting, doctor,” I said.

  8

  G iorgio was still at the quay, standing within a group of gondoliers and listening more than talking, as always. He strolled over to meet me.

  “No boys?” I asked.

  He gave me a blood-chilling look. “You didn’t give them money, did you?”

  “You think I am an idiot? A half-witted softhearted troublemaker?”

  “How much?”

  I dodged the question. “Not enough to buy them any serious trouble. I expect they’ll be here shortly, I just have to visit the Ca’ della Naves and I can walk there from here. I won’t be long.” I fled the field.

  Like almost any father, when his sons are old enough to earn money at odd jobs, Giorgio insists they turn it in as part of the family income. Corrado and Christoforo, for instance, had been working on and off at the building project on the other side of Rio San Remo. I felt he should let them keep at least some of their wages, else why should they bother? But it was none of my business and I must not meddle in his affairs.

  The mysterious foreigners who had gate-crashed the book showing lived a few minutes’ walk away, so I might as well go and see them. Had I been offered my choice at that point, I would have spoken with the procurator’s granddaughter, the mysterious Bianca, who had probably had more opportunity than anyone to tamper with his wine, but the Orseolo family was in mourning and I had no authority to intrude.

  As I hurried through the darkening calli of San Marcuola parish, I worried how much things had changed the moment Isaia confirmed that the procurator’s death was murder. I had a clear duty now to report that fact to the authorities. Of course an apprentice is bound to obey his master, so I might argue that I must report to the Maestro first, but I did not think that excuse would weigh very much with the Ten.

  And what if the Maestro refused? If he still insisted on trying to find the killer by himself, he would be courting disaster. His efforts to unmask the murderer might well be seen as an attempt to bury evidence, not uncover it. Or we might scare the criminal into fleeing beyond the reach of justice. Then both of us would find ourselves where I had been that morning, in the Leads. If that shock didn’t kill the old man outright, the disgrace would ruin him. Sier Alvise Barbolano would evict him, his clients desert him.

  But I hate to start something and not finish it. So does he. Half-done is do, he tells me often enough. He had occult tools that the Ten did not, or at least would never admit to using. Even I could invoke a fiend, and that might be less dangerous than what I was doing now, meddling in the Ten’s business.

  And then there were the doge’s parting words: I will see his head roll across the Piazzetta. The doge did not trust the Council of Ten to see justice done. The Ten are politicians, all seventeen of them, and the other sixteen are eagerly planning promotion to higher office. They lust after votes in the Great Council, and if the murderer turned out to be a patrician, then the nobles of the Ten would be wary of antagonizing his relatives and friends.

  I peered into the parish tavern, partly to see if the twins were there, which they were not, and also to inquire which apartment in the Ca’ della Naves was infested with heretics. The drinkers gave me the information I wanted plus some seriously disapproving looks.

  As I started up the stairs in the big house, I began to have misgivings. The Republic’s attitude to foreigners is complicated. For centuries, pilgrims have passed through Venice on their way to the Holy Land, and there are state officials, tholomarii, stationed at San Marco to take care of them, to see that they find proper housing and transportation. The inns they use are carefully regulated and, although they do have to pay more for goods and services than residents do, they must not be chea
ted any more than the law allows. On the other hand, the senate is very wary of foreign politics. Contact between Venetian nobles and foreigners is strongly discouraged, and is actually illegal in the case of foreign ambassadors. A nobleman can be put to death just for meeting with a foreign ambassador in private. Feather was not an ambassador, but a procurator had been murdered. What I was about to do began to seem foolhardy.

  I was very close to talking myself out of my mission when I heard voices just above me, one more flight up. Not just voices, but a woman shouting a barbaric guttural rant that I could barely recognize as French. I swallowed the bait and took the rest of the stairs at a trot.

  Thus do the stars dictate our lives.

  She was just inside the door. He was just outside it. She was one of the largest women I had ever seen, so much taller than I that at first glance I thought she must be wearing the stilt shoes of a courtesan. She was blonde, not just Violetta’s bleached reddish gold, but a Germanic ash-blonde displaying a complicated sculpture of silvery curls on which balanced a tiny bonnet. A high fan-shaped collar formed a backdrop, her neckline was surprisingly demure, yet her gown was a voluminous mass of purple brocade and gold lace that would have been denounced by the Venetian Senate as absurd extravagance. It was not, obviously, a local costume. Her eyes were the watery blue of sapphires and her cheeks were flushed with anger.

  He was clutching a parcel with both arms and prepared to defend it to the death. She was speaking loudly and clearly, so his failure to understand her was pure perversity.

  “Madame!” I proclaimed in French, offering a gymnastically low bow suitable for reverence to a goddess. “May I be of assistance?” I added in Veneziano, “Shut up and let me deal with her.”

  She uttered a satisfied, “Ha! At last! You speak French, monsieur!”

  Better French than she did. “A little,” I said. “Is this oaf causing you trouble?”

  “He has brought our costumes for Carnival and refuses to give them up without payment, although we had made an agreement with the seamstress.”