The Alchemist's Pursuit

by Dave Duncan

  I opened my mouth but he forestalled me.

  “Before you ask, I will add that the corpse had obviously been in the water for some days and I spent the previous three weeks in Milan. I was part of a senatorial delegation to the duke; we returned the previous day, so there is no possibility that I killed her. Furthermore, yes I did recognize the amber brooch. I saw it four or five years ago, on a woman whose name I do not recall and have no wish to be informed of now.”

  His beard bristled aggressively. His squeak rose a fifth. “She was a whore and I have no doubt your so-called servant is another. If you are truly a nobile homo, then I suggest you spend more money on clothes and less on servant girls. Go back to San Barnaba and stop pestering your betters.”

  San Barnaba is indeed the parish of my birth, but his remark was only a taunt, not a spectacular guess, because it is also home to many of the impoverished nobility, the barnabotti .

  I bowed low. “I thank you for a very succinct statement, Your Excellency.”

  The manservant still stood by the door. He opened it and I left.

  As I trotted downstairs, I mused that what a successful politician in Venice needs, apart from the accident of noble bloodlines, is oceans of money, a large family, and a strong speaking voice, in that order. Avonal seemed to have none of those and yet he was already in the Senate. He seemed to be an honest man, but I doubted that this was the secret of his success.

  4

  I insisted then that we let Giorgio go home to his brood and Violetta and I celebrate Carnival, for dusk was falling. If the Maestro’s orders to be back by curfew had been intended seriously, he should have known better.

  Donning masks, we went off to celebrate Carnival, dancing and drinking, laughing and eating by the light of bonfires. We cheered the fireworks and booed at a bullbaiting, while all around us swirled bishops and abbesses, duchesses and clowns. It was an enchanting evening, and the crowning episode, as provided by Helen, was beyond compare. It was well after midnight before I hammered Ca’ Barbolano’s door knocker to waken Luigi, the archaic night watchman.

  When I let myself into the apartment I saw light under the Maestro’s door, so I peeked in. He was leaning back on a pile of pillows, reading—and still awake, which was not surprising for he sleeps little at the best of times and even less lately. He reads so much by artificial light that I cannot understand why he hasn’t long since gone totally blind. Scowl and nightcap, sheets and book, together formed a puddle of lamplight in the darkness as if an apprentice artist had been practicing chiaroscuro.

  “Need anything?” I inquired helpfully.

  “No. Learn anything?”

  “I met an honest senator.”

  “Incredible!”

  “We thought so.” I summarized our afternoon. “Lucia was expecting an old friend and went off in a public gondola with an unidentified man. I did not talk with the women who last saw her, because Violetta had already done that. A week later her body turned up in the lagoon. It took a couple more weeks to establish her identity and inform her friends, and if she hadn’t been found by an unusually public-spirited person, no one would ever have known what happened to her. I agree that the case seems hopeless.”

  Nostradamus nodded with satisfaction that the minor mystery of the valuables had been disposed of and the murder case looked so impossible that he need not be tempted by the reward. Then I told him about the second summons and my visit to Palazzo Gradenigo. His face darkened. He loves all mysteries except those he cannot hope to solve and Giovanni Gradenigo might have taken his secret to the grave.

  “I could hardly push myself into a house of mourning when the old man was still warm,” I concluded. “But first thing tomorrow, I go to find Battista.”

  “Not first thing. It will wait. I have letters to be encrypted.”

  “His master has died. He may well be out of a job and gone. He may be gone already.”

  The sage had not thought of that, so I won that round.

  Normally I snap awake just before the marangona bell in the Piazza announces sunrise. That day I heard it as I was walking—or possibly sleepwalking—across the Campo San Polo, heading for the Palazzo Gradenigo. I had not bothered to disturb Giorgio, hoping that some exercise would clear my sleep-deprived wits. Already workers were hurrying to work, many darting into the churches for a hasty prayer. It was a fine day for early February, promising a timely spring.

  At that dewitching hour I did not expect to run into any of the Gradenigo family and even their senior servants might snatch a little extra time on the pillow. A manservant should be an early riser, though, and perhaps an unemployed manservant facing the need to find a new employer would have worried himself awake. I found the rear entrance, a gate into the yard, and to my delight it was already unlocked. Routine in the palazzo was still in disarray, or seemed to be so, for no one argued when I appeared at the servants’ door and announced that it was urgent that I speak to Battista—I did not even have to invent some tale about being sent by the morticians or the attorneys. I made myself as comfortable as possible on a stone bench in the yard and shivered in patient silence.

  In a few minutes a man emerged from the house and hurried over to tell me that he was Battista da Schio. Servants rarely possess family names, and normally have no need of them, anyway. They are often immigrants from the mainland, and for legal purposes are then identified by their birthplace. He was around fifty, a brown-gray sort of person smaller than me, looking as if he might have been chosen for timidity and mousiness.

  “Sit down,” I said cheerfully, which he did distrustfully. “I’m Alfeo, assistant to Doctor Nostradamus.”

  To my surprise, he turned chalk white. His fright was so obvious that I could not ignore it.

  “There’s no need to be alarmed. I apologize . . . The doctor apologizes for misunderstanding your message and not sending me over right away. As I wrote . . . You did receive the reply I sent?”

  Battista shook his head and seemed to grow smaller still. I began to understand.

  “Did sier Giovanni tell you to write to Nostradamus?”

  Shake again. The man had lost his tongue.

  “Then tell me why you did, please. I will keep your secret if you have one, I promise.”

  His tongue returned and played with his lips for a moment. “The master kept asking for . . .” His voice was very soft and hesitant. “. . . for someone to send for Nostradamus. He was a kind master and he was dying and no one was doing what he said.” Taking encouragement from my nods, he went on, a little more sure of himself. “I was attending him all the time. He needed . . . a lot . . .”

  “How did he die?”

  “He bled to death, kept vomiting blood. It started about four days ago and was getting worse. The doctors . . . He sent the doctors away.”

  “Wise of him.” Hematemesis is not the worst way to die, but not the best or most dignified, either. The most likely cause was a tumor in the stomach. “Was he in much pain?”

  “He never said he was, not to me. But I never remember him complaining about anything.”

  “So you were attending him, cleaning up, changing sheets. Horrible job! I hope they paid you extra?”

  He shook his head and avoided my eye.

  “So who else was there?”

  “Friends, family. They’d been coming to say good-bye ever since the doctors told him to send for a priest.”

  I could imagine the scene: The dying man struggling to say his farewells to all the visitors, fighting against nausea, probably also pain and the gross indignity of puking out his own lifeblood. And Battista creeping around like an ant between all the grandees.

  “But you managed to slip away and write for Nostradamus to come?”

  “Er . . . yes.”

  I had not got it quite right, but I had a trump to play. We get good luck and we get bad luck, and there is no sin in taking advantage of the good. As it happened, at my Monday evening fencing class my good friend Fulgentio had grumbled
that it was impossible to keep good servants and his man had just left him, after less than a month. Every gentleman in Venice has his own manservant, of course, so I’m told.

  “What will you do now that messer Gradenigo has been called to the Lord, Battista?”

  “Look for another job, lustrissimo.”

  “I’m not a lustrissimo, but I know one. A good friend of mine, who has more money than the king of Spain. He’s looking for a manservant. I swear as I hope for salvation that that is the truth, or it was true four days ago. Tell me the story properly and I’ll take you to him and introduce you to him in person if he’s home, or to his steward if he’s not. Now talk, because this bench is freezing my ass.”

  Battista very nearly smiled at that. He spoke up more confidently.

  “When the friar came back . . . He’d given the master the last rites the day before, but he came back. And the master kept saying that he needed Doctor Nostradamus, and everyone thought he was rambling, because the other doctors had given up on him. At last the priest, Brother Fedele, said he would write a note and went out of the room. I thought right away he just said that to keep him quiet and he came back so soon that I was suspicious and I went downstairs and asked Giacomo—he’s the chief gondolier—and he said that no message had gone out to any Nostradamus. He asked the boys, and a couple of them knew where Doctor Nostradamus lived. So I wrote a note and Giacomo charged me a ducat to send a boatman with it. I paid him out of my savings.”

  I said, “Giacomo sounds like a first class sewer rat, but at least it did get delivered. And when my reply came back, who got it?”

  Battista scowled at the ground. “The friar.”

  Now the fog had blown away. “He denounced you to . . . ?”

  “Donna Tonina.”

  “Sier Giovanni’s daughter?”

  “His daughter-in-law, Tonina Bembo, wife of sier Marino.”

  “And so you are out of a job?”

  Battista might have been going to lose his job anyway, but a priest’s anger would carry much weight. Why had the two notes arrived in the wrong order? Either the friar had written his version first but had waited to send it until he knew it was too late to do any good, or else he had written his only after he knew that Battista’s had been sent and rejected. Why the delay? And if Fedele had written just to humor a dying man’s delusions, why had he sent the note anyway? In case questions were asked later? Comforting a dying man with little white lies is not a mortal sin. Why involve a total stranger if the dying man is raving and out of his senses? It made no sense.

  “Have you any idea what your master wanted to tell mine?”

  Battista shook his head, but not vigorously enough to convince me, so I waited. Eventually he squirmed and said, “I think I heard him say that Nostradamus could find people, sir.”

  “Ah! Yes, he often can. He has been asked to find missing people many times. Who did sier Giovanni want found, do you know? A missing heir?”

  Good servants do not gossip to strangers, and Battista mumbled and muttered. Then he drew a deep breath and said, “A killer, lustrissimo.”

  I recalled my offhand remark to Violetta about absurd coincidences and dismissed it. “That could be. Even the Council of Ten has consulted Nostradamus sometimes. Go on.”

  Seeing that I was taking him seriously, he said, “My master was troubled about a woman, someone he had known when he was younger. One of his visitors had told him. He mentioned it a lot. She had been found murdered. She had been so beautiful, he said, that Titian had put her in one of his paintings, he said.”

  Not too much of a coincidence, I decided. Everyone in the city would know about Lucia’s brutal killing very shortly, if not already. But why should a dying patrician worry about a murdered prostitute? The social gulf between them had been wider than the Adriatic Sea.

  “A courtesan?”

  Battista nodded, looking so astonished that I felt ashamed of myself.

  “And her name was Lucia?”

  “No, lustrissimo, it was Caterina.”

  That made a big difference.

  5

  I marched Battista out of the yard and took him back with me to Ca’ Barbolano, where I presented him to Mama with orders to feed him until he popped. Then I sent Corrado and Christoforo off to tell Fulgentio that I had a potential servant for him to interview. The twins love running errands to Ca’ Trau, because they are often tipped two or even three soldi apiece there.

  The Maestro had not yet emerged from his room and I needed my hunch confirmed before I stuck my neck too far out, so I slipped into my room and locked the door behind me. Three of the iron bars on the central window are loose enough to lift out and the calle between Ca’ Barbolano and Number 96 is so narrow that I can jump it easily going there and almost as easily coming back. This saves me a lot of stairs at the trifling risk of a very messy death.

  In moments I was climbing over the railing around the altana on 96’s roof. I unlocked the trap and clambered down the steep stairway.

  What had been a late night for me had been an early one for Violetta and I hoped I would find her awake. She wasn’t, but Milana was, cleaning the kitchen. Milana is the most consistently cheerful person I know, although she has a twisted back and is so tiny that she must often get jostled and bullied when she goes to the market. Being devoted to Violetta and totally in her confidence, she knew all about yesterday’s events. Her expression when she saw me that morning told me right away that my guess had been correct. If anyone knew of a second murdered courtesan, it would be people in the trade.

  “Caterina Someone?” I demanded.

  Milana nodded. “Caterina Lotto. She was murdered on Sunday in her room in San Samuele. The sbirri arrested her doorman, Matteo Surian.”

  Doorman is a polite way of saying bravo and pimp, but I knew the name. “Matteo the Butcher?”

  Again Milana nodded.

  “Saints! I wonder they didn’t start a riot.” Matteo had been my childhood hero. I’ll get to him later.

  “I think they very nearly did,” Milana said with a fleeting grin. “He was released before nightfall. It was very sad about signora Lucia. I did not know signora Caterina, but I think my mistress will be unhappy when she hears this news.”

  “I am appalled. The Maestro will be, too. How did Caterina die, do they say?”

  “She was strangled with a cord.”

  Memories of Lucia’s crushed windpipe made me shiver. “Tell Violetta that I shall come back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, any more gossip you can collect, the better.” I turned to go.

  “Sier Alfeo?”

  I turned back and said “?” with my eyebrows.

  “There was a third,” Milana said sadly, “about a week ago—Ruosa da Corone, in San Girolamo.”

  “How?”

  “The same way.”

  Three courtesans, all strangled. Who could doubt that this was the work of one person?

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said. “Bolt the door behind me.”

  I found Nostradamus in his favorite chair in the atelier with no cane or staff in sight, meaning that Bruno had carried him there. In front of him stood Battista—telling him to sit would have made him uncomfortable—answering a barrage of questions. I went quietly to the desk to listen.

  The Maestro was trying to track down the news about Caterina Lotto, whom I had thought to be the second victim, but had apparently been the third. Who had told Giovanni Gradenigo the news? Who had thought an old dying nobleman would be interested in the death of a courtesan? The picture that Battista was painting was a dramatic one, a pageant of Gradenigo’s life trooping past his deathbed to bid him farewell. There had been scores of family members, of course, including noblemen in their floor-length black gowns, with matching bonnets and the cloth strip known as a tippet draped over the left shoulder. There had been senators, wearing the same but in red. There had been sobbing grandchildren and great-grandchildren, servants, tenants, friends from all levels of Venetian
society, and many tradesmen from the scuola.

  The dying man had spoken with every single one of them, Battista reported, refusing to allow anyone to be turned away, interrupting the parade only when overcome by nausea or the need to bring up more blood. It was impossible to say who had told him of the courtesan’s murder, just as it was impossible to know why the information had upset him so much and made him call for Nostradamus.

  “Had he been one of her customers?”

  “Oh no, lustrissimo!” Battista looked more horrified by that slur on his master’s honor than he had when discussing his death. “I was with him for almost twenty years, lustrissimo, and never did I hear any hint of anything that . . . He was an upright Christian, very loving and faithful to his wife. No, no.”

  “What did he say about this Caterina, then? Anything special about her, anything odd, peculiar about her?”

  “Just that she had been so beautiful that the great Titian had painted her.”

  Titian died twenty years ago. A courtesan can fall a long way in twenty years. She would not have been so beautiful at the end.

  “Did he speak of her as if he had actually seen her beauty for himself?”

  Battista thought for a moment and then nodded uncertainly.

  Baffled, the Maestro tugged his beard. “His wife predeceased him?”

  Nod. “Almost a year ago, poor lady. My master never quite recovered from the loss.”

  Nostradamus has an incredible instinct for finding the germane in a jungle of irrelevance. “Then, if sier Giovanni was such an upright, moral man, what was the connection . . . ? What was his attitude to courtesans in general?”

  Battista squirmed. “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Did he despise them? Rant against their wickedness? Call them names, like ‘she-devils’ or ‘vessels of evil’?”

  “Oh, no, lustrissimo! He was a gentle, patient man. I never heard him speak of any sinner like that.”