The Alchemists pursuit aa-3

by Dave Duncan

  "Arghrraw…"

  Now I could see it better-tail up, back arched. Cats rarely contract rabies, but they are especially vicious when they do. A bite from a rabid cat must be one of the least pleasant ways of going to one's eternal reward, and I did not trust my swordsmanship against feline reflexes.

  "And a fine evening to you also, sier Felix," I said. "Sorry to have disturbed you." I backed cautiously away and it did not follow.

  10

  The wider calle brought me, of course, to the watersteps and Number 96, whose welcoming lantern still burned, for it was not yet midnight. The land door opens into the waterfront loggia, where half a dozen boatmen sat huddled around a brazier. Their gondolas nodded among the mooring posts outside the arches. Ripples slapped.

  Violetta would not be back yet from the musical salon at Ca' Grimini, and she would not return alone anyway, so normally I would have gone right on by, walking to the far end of the gallery and then negotiating the ledge to the narrower calle and Ca' Barbolano. That would have required me to run the gauntlet of the boatmen's foul ribaldry, of course, but anyone who worries about gondoliers' manners should never visit Venice. What made me hesitate was not fear of ridicule but the thought of Alessa. Although she had refused to share information with us over dinner, she had now had many hours to reconsider. Ignoring several boatmen's offers to row me to much better establishments, I opened the door and went in.

  The entrance is a cosy parlor, illuminated by numerous lamps and warmed in winter by a toasty fire, mainly for the benefit of skimpily dressed hostesses. The decor is heavy on red and gold and gilt-framed paintings of nudes that never saw the inside of Titian's studio. The air was weighty with wine and perfume, and sounds of drunken revelry were audible beyond the door at the back, which leads through to ground floor rooms for those who are short of either time or money and thus cannot afford to linger. The staircase in the corner leads to the owners' apartments on the piano nobile and then on up to a second commercial area, of higher delights and much higher prices.

  Uttering cries of joy, two girls on duty jumped up to greet me. I rewarded them with a polite smile and headed to the stairs, where scar-faced Antonio perched awkwardly on a stool. On my admittedly rare visits to the brothel when it is open for business, I had never seen the chief guard displayed so prominently. Obviously security was tighter than usual at Number 96 and perhaps at every brothel in the city. Word gets around. Because of the temperature, he was stripped down to a shirt and breeches, which made him look even meaner than he does when respectably dressed, while the contrast with his two delectable companions emphasized his nightmare ugliness. He knows me, but he eyed me distrustfully on principle.

  "She's still out?" I asked.

  Antonio nodded.

  "With someone known to you? Not masked, I hope."

  "Of course," he growled. "Think I'm stupid? And we don't admit friars."

  So many words had gotten around, and perhaps Honeycat would have to hunt outdoors from now on, as the Maestro's quatrain suggested.

  "I need to speak with Alessa."

  He frowned and then shrugged. Antonio's shrugs create drafts. "She's upstairs. I'll ask." He went, striding two treads at a time.

  "You're Violetta's doorman aren't you?" asked the taller of the two seminudes. She advanced predatorily.

  "You should try a little variety," the other suggested, starting a flanking maneuver.

  "You're much too cute to waste on just her."

  "Beware!" I cried, retreating into a corner. "Think what Violetta will do to you if you molest my innocence."

  "On, now I have heard everything!"

  "Shameless! Who's going to tell her?"

  "I'm here on business!" I protested.

  "So are we."

  I was saved from an unmentionable fate by a blast of cold air from the outer door, wafting in a couple of drunken sailors, masked for Carnival and eager to open negotiations. While the girls were deftly removing the men's masks and boosting their ardor, Antonio came clattering down the stairs and beckoned me. I followed him up to where a second bravo guarded the door to the piano nobile.

  Antonio introduced us while he fumbled for the key. "Luigi… Alfeo… Alfeo's all right. A friend." Once inside, he led the way along a dark corridor to Alessa's door, where he paused, as if suddenly uncertain. "She's not herself."

  "What way not herself?"

  "She's pretty drunk."

  "Violetta would murder me."

  The big man chuckled. "So she would." He stalked away.

  A faint wedge of light showed under the door. As Venice sinks slowly into the mud of the lagoon, its doors and windows-even its walls-forswear right angles in favor of ideas of their own. I tried the handle and went in. Alessa lacks Violetta's flair for artistic arrangement and her apartment is overly cluttered with expensive knickknackery. I picked my way in near darkness through this forest of glass, ceramic, and plaster until I found her in an armchair in her salotto, huddled close to a dying fire and clad in a loose robe that no respectable lady would wear even when alone. Her hair was unbound, dangling everywhere, her face paint messed. Fortunately the single lamp on the mantel shed very little light on her shame, but the reek of wine confirmed what Antonio had told me. First Matteo and now Alessa-Honeycat was doing good things for the vintners of Venice.

  With the poker and a couple of logs from the scuttle, I gave the fire new life. Then I pulled up a chair, laid my forearms on my knees, and looked across at Alessa. Her eyes had been following me, but so far she had not spoken a word.

  "Well?" I said. "Violetta isn't here. You are ready to tell me Honeycat's name."

  She shook her head and held out her goblet. I confirmed that the bottle on the floor beside her was empty, found another, opened it, poured her a drink, and returned to my post. "Well?" I said again.

  "He didn't do it." She spoke with the fastidious care of the very drunk. "Not Honeycat I knew. Ish a common enough pet name." She turned her gaze on the fire and fell silent.

  "Tell me about the Honeycat you knew." In vino veritas.

  "He was lovely," she told the fire. "He was young and dish-gush-tingly rich. He was fun. He was joy. Very few giovani we look forward to, Alfeo, but I adored Honeycat. We'd fight over him, us girls. Rich, noble, handsome. Knew his classics: Ovid, Plato, and all the rest. He was a lover. He lived to make love. Never tired. Mosht greedy men are rough-bang, bang, bang. Not Honeycat. Was patient, clever.

  "He had a red birthmark. Down here… Looked like a cat, so 'course he wash known ash Honeycat. He'd arrive in his gondola at noon, take me to a dinner, then a ball. Senators, procurators, and their wives. Dance till midnight. Oh, he could dance! Then back here and row the boat till dawn. Over and over. Don't know how he did it. Felt I ought to be paying him, not him me. Sometimes we'd throw parties for him-two, three girls, and he'd go all night, never sleep. Always left a present, diamond ring, pearls…"

  "Go on," I said. "I want to hear more about this prodigy." His name! What was his name?

  "Getting old, Alfeo." She sighed. "Even the nights were bright back then. Did I ever tell you about the time the doge-"

  "Tell me about Honeycat, Alessa."

  "Ashk Violetta."

  "She never met him."

  "Lucia in'rodushed them."

  "Yes?" I clamped my lips shut because they were trying to snarl. This was what I feared most.

  "She was fifteen. Sweet as a rosebud." Silence. All this time Alessa had been speaking to the fire, not me.

  "How old was he?"

  "Mm? 'Bout nineteen."

  Aha! Now I had a lead, because his birth would be recorded in the Golden Book.

  "He lined her up right away," Alessa mumbled. "Violetta. Three days in the country at one of his family's places. Right after the funeral. Oh, I was jealous! She'd have come back hundreds of ducats richer after that." Laughter made Alessa's breasts gyrate like gypsy dancers. "Tired, but richer."

  What funeral?

  "Sh
e told me she didn't know Honeycat."

  Again that earthquake laugh. "No. We never told. A girl had to discover the mark for herself."

  "And Violetta didn't?"

  "He never showed up for her. Was the day he ran."

  "Ran?" I held myself back from physical assault with an effort. "Alessa, what was his name?"

  She drained her glass. "Didn't kill anyone. He wouldn't. All Honeycat ever wanted was girls, girls, girls. Wouldn't've harmed a flea."

  I slid to my knees beside her and ran a hand up her arm. "Tell me his name, Alessa. The Honeycat you knew? Not the killer, the one you knew?"

  For a moment I thought she still wouldn't. Then she hurled the empty glass into the fire. "Michiel!" she said. "Zorzi Michiel!" She began to weep, great convulsive sobs.

  Zorzi Michiel? Oh my God!

  No wonder Vasco had warned me off.

  I had what I had come for, and the implications were too staggering to think about right then. I stood up.

  "Thank you, Alessa. Come along. I'll see you to bed."

  She took my hands like a child, but I had to haul her upright. I put one of her arms around my neck and half walked, half carried her to her bedroom. As I said, she would still be worth a tumble, but in that condition she did not tempt me at all. I tucked her in, pecked a kiss on her forehead, and left.

  Downstairs, I warned Antonio that Alessa's door was not locked; he said he would see to it. So I emerged into the loggia and the bleak night wind. There was no sign of the cat. Rather than risk the ledge, I paid one of the boatmen a couple of soldi to ferry me sixty feet or so back to Ca' Barbolano.

  Zorzi Michiel, the patricide, the worst criminal in a hundred years! And I had been totally wrong about the Council of Ten.

  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 nee
ds 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.

  12

  I went on foot because I needed the exercise. Jostling and dodging through the teeming alleyways of the city on a busy morning is a good all-over workout. Besides, if I had asked Giorgio to row me there, he would have wanted to wait for me and that might have cost him his whole morning. Sometimes Celsi has a room full of people waiting to see him, on other days he lacks company and will talk for hours. Celsi is the unofficial archivist of the city, constantly scribbling, filling tome after tome with accounts of all political and historical events, and even the major social ones. If anybody outside the inner circle of the nobility knew the truth about the Michiel scandal, it would be Celsi. He has never been one of the inner circle, for he is a blabbermouth and the First Ones prefer to act in silence, but he has ways of finding out what they have been up to. Even Violetta does not know as much about the doings of the nobility as Celsi does, so the Maestro consults him quite often. But Violetta can keep secrets and never expects any quids pro quos.