The Alchemist's Code aa-2 Page 2

  The Maestro had left the desk and was standing by his favorite red velvet chair beside the carved marble fireplace-not that the fireplace was in use on a sweltering September noon, but that is where he sits to interview visitors. “You are a little earlier than I expected, Your Excellency…madonna Eva…but of course most welcome. My home is honored…” His flattery became a mumble as he bowed. He would have hobbled forward to kiss sier Zuanbattista’s sleeve, but Sanudo stopped him with a gracious gesture.

  “Do be seated, Doctor.”

  I led the way to the green chairs, and the nobility floated behind me with the grace of galleons crossing the lagoon. There are always two chairs opposite the red one and if the Sanudos assumed that they had been arranged especially for them, that was their own mistake, not misinformation from me. As soon as all three principals were settled, I returned to the desk by the windows to watch faces and take notes if needed. The Maestro had his back to the light, not by accident.

  Madonna Eva was trying to appear as calm as her husband, but her lips were compressed and her seething hands struggled to destroy a wadded lace hankie.

  Zuanbattista said, “If you foresaw our coming, lustrissimo, no doubt you already know the nature of our problem?” His tone contained no irony whatsoever, but it was there in his eyes.

  I hate skeptics. I love watching the Maestro deal with them.

  “Only in a general way, clarissimo. Family trouble, of course. Quite sudden…and just this morning? When did you discover her absence?”

  Madonna Eva lost color under her paint and even messer Zuanbattista deigned to look startled, but it is simple enough if you work it out. Family trouble because Sanudo had brought his wife or, more likely, she had insisted he bring her to consult the famous clairvoyant. Sudden because of the woman’s swollen eyelids. Just this morning because he knew they had not told anyone they were coming, and also to win another minuscule nod without committing himself to anything. And her absence because by then he could be nine-tenths sure that the problem was a missing daughter. Eva Sanudo was of an age to have nubile daughters, if only just. Even if it wasn’t a daughter, half the things that can be lost take a feminine pronoun in Veneziano .

  “You impress us, Doctor,” Sanudo admitted.

  “Now it is your turn.” The Maestro smiled by stretching his mouth sideways and bunching his cheeks. “The details if you please.”

  “This is confidential.” Sanudo glanced suspiciously across at me.

  “Certainly. Sier Alfeo has my complete confidence in all matters.”

  He almost never uses my title in front of a client or patient. When he does, his instinct is infallible. Many nobles bristle when they hear that one of their own is demeaning his class by earning an honest living, but sier Zuanbattista glanced across at me with interest.

  “Family?”

  “Zeno, clarissimo,” I said.

  “A descendant of Doge Renier Zen?”

  “Twelve-greats grandson. My father was Marco Zeno.”

  “The Marco Zeno who fought so well at Lepanto?”

  “That one,” I said proudly. “He died in the plague of 1576.”

  “Ah, as did so many! I saw your father at Don Giovanni’s council the day before the battle, but there were many officers there and I had no chance to speak with him.” That was nicely done-he had implied that he would have spoken to my father without actually lying about it. Nodding to show approval of my existence and presence, Sanudo looked back to the Maestro. “My daughter was taken in the night.”

  Was taken? The words saddened me. I would already have bet some of my dearest body parts that the correct term was ran away. Venice, on its hundred man-made islands, is a tight pack of tiny communities, an almost impossible place to stage a holding-for-ransom. Many people, especially women, never leave the parish of their birth and know the comings and goings of every other inhabitant. Start buying more groceries than usual and the fact will be noted and discussed; the Council of Ten’s army of informers will overhear. No one keeps secrets in Venice! But the Sanudos were not ready to admit that their child had eloped.

  I reached for my quill as the lady began to speak. She declaimed, as if she had memorized an address to the Senate: “My maid found her gone in the morning. She helps Grazia as well as me and there was no answer to her knock. The door was locked on the inside. She came straight to tell me, of course. We looked out the window and there was a ladder lying right there, on the grass under her room!”

  I had heard similar stories before, and the way they were told mattered more than the words. Madonna Eva was neither terrified nor distraught. Madonna Eva was shocked, yes, but mostly she was furious.

  Curious.

  “We wakened Giro,” she went on, “and sent him to look. He climbed in through Grazia’s window. Her bed had not been slept in.”

  That, she seemed to think, was that, but then the Maestro began asking questions. No ransom note had been found or delivered. Nothing had been stolen and there seemed to be no clothes missing, or perhaps just a few minor garments. Her jewels had gone, but “only the trinkets she kept in her room; her pearls were still in the usual safe place.” Even in its wild distress, the family had thought to check that.

  And Giro?

  “My son Girolamo,” Zuanbattista explained, “minister for the navy.”

  “And who else lives in the house?”

  Sanudo’s pause was not quite long enough to be called a snub, but enough to imply nicely that he had not come to Ca’ Barbolano to be interrogated by a foreign-born mountebank physician. “Her aunt, Madonna Fortunata Morosini, and three servants-Fabricio our gondolier, Pignate my valet, and the ladies’ maid Noelia, mentioned earlier.”

  That was a small household for a man of Sanudo’s high station, even in Venice, where land is at a premium and the nobility have a long tradition of thrift. Even today it is not uncommon to see senators buying their own vegetables in the Erberia. Possibly the Sanudos had other servants coming in during the day, or the ladies’ maid might also clean silver, the gondolier just love gardening, and the valet like to dress up as a footman. Aunt Fortunata might even adore cooking.

  “And they are all accounted for?” the Maestro asked. “No one else in the household is missing?”

  “No one,” Sanudo said firmly. “I fail to see the need for all these questions, lustrissimo. We came to consult you because you have a reputation as a seer. Can you tell us where our daughter is?”

  “No, Your Excellency.” The Maestro stretched his face in a close-lipped smile. “I may or may not be able to see where she will be at some point in the very near future. The questions are necessary if I am to have some idea of what I am looking for. Now, a strange thing to ask a man in your distinguished position, but have you informed the sbirri?”

  “We don’t want any scandal,” the lady said firmly, with a glare to scare Medusa. Her reaction was reasonable in one who dreamed every night of becoming dogaressa.

  Her husband’s expression was cryptic. “I have little faith in the local constabulary. Nor do we want to put our daughter in danger.”

  That a ducal counselor would hesitate to involve the ineffective sbirri I could understand, for they are less use than wheels on a seagull, but what of the Council of Ten? The abduction of a ducal counselor’s child was an obvious threat to the security of the Republic, a crime it both could and should investigate. Sanudo must be seriously at fault in not reporting his problem immediately. True, the full Ten would not meet until late in the day, but the three chiefs are always on duty in the Doges’ Palace. They could order Missier Grande to start wheels turning-setting a watch on the ferries, and so on. Why not?

  “That is good,” the Maestro said, nodding so the wattles of his neck flapped. “An official investigation would make my seeing much harder.”

  “Why? How?”

  “Please trust me on that, clarissimo. Clairvoyance is very hard to describe. Does your daughter have any romantic attachments?”

 
“Certainly not!” her mother said indignantly. “She never leaves the house except to take Communion, at Easter and Christmas. Even at Celeseo she did not walk in the grounds without madonna Morosini or I in attendance.”

  I could not see the Maestro’s expression, but his tone expressed mild surprise. “She was not convent educated?”

  “My husband’s duties for the Republic have involved him in much traveling for the last few years. I chose to live in our house in Celeseo, near Padua, and keep Grazia with me for company. The country is healthier for a growing child. Grazia is extremely well versed in the classics and arts. Fortunata has tutored her.”

  “So when did you return from the mainland?”

  “Is this relevant?” sier Zuanbattista demanded.

  “Perhaps not,” the Maestro admitted, but it would be very relevant if the young lady had run off with a lover she had met on the mainland. “Suffer me that one question, madonna?”

  “At the end of July.”

  “No wedding plans?”

  “We-”

  “Nothing decided,” Sanudo said quickly. “We have had some discussions.”

  “Of course,” the Maestro said with a dry chuckle, “it takes two to elope, and if you suspected she had an accomplice, you would have investigated him before coming to see me.” He waited for a confession, but none appeared. “So you want me to find and recover your missing child?”

  “Can you?” they said together.

  The Maestro gestured with one hand. He has very small hands. I could guess at his expression of unruffled confidence. “I have succeeded in similar cases in the past.”

  And men had been exiled as a result. I was confident that he was playing with his visitors out of plain nosiness, because he had promised me he would never again meddle in elopements. I was confident by then that Grazia had eloped and her parents knew who had been holding the ladder. Nostradamus also knew that, so in a moment or two he would tire of the game and demand a fee of three hundred ducats; I would show the visitors out, and that would be that.

  “Just tell us where she is and we will fetch her,” her father said.

  The old man sighed. “If possible I would certainly do that, but prediction is not so predictable, paradoxical as that seems. I would do my best and my fee would be contingent on results.”

  “We must have no gossip or scandal,” madonna Eva repeated.

  “That objective is secondary to your daughter’s safety, surely? I mean, the paramount aim is to return her, safe and sound, to the bosom of her family?”

  “Of course.” She sounded neither convinced nor convincing.

  “Her date of birth, if you please, with the exact hour and minute if you know them?”

  They did. I wrote it down. Grazia was fifteen, and thus in the pride of desirable maidenhood, as nubile as they get.

  “Have you a recently painted portrait or miniature of her?”

  The Sanudos exchanged glances. He said, “We have a family group, painted three years ago. It is too big to transport easily and she was only a child then.”

  The Maestro shrugged. “Describe her, please.”

  The woman said, “Grazia is vivacious, nimble. She sings and dances and is remarkably intelligent. She has a marvelous complexion and her eyes are just amazing. She looks even younger than her years, because she is so petite.”

  Her father smiled ruefully, as if amused by his wife’s equivocation. “She is small and skinny-quite pretty, but her nose is too large for classical beauty. She does have wonderful eyes, I agree, and an endearing smile, but Titian would not have painted her.”

  His wife pouted but did not protest this vapid praise.

  The Maestro sighed. “Thank you. A frank and helpful answer. What fee are you offering?”

  His Excellency’s angular, stony face seemed to petrify even further. “What is your usual charge?”

  “You want me to put a price on your daughter?”

  “A fee to do what?” Sier Zuanbattista’s tone had chilled considerably. “To tell us stories of how she has been spirited away to the Sultan’s harem?”

  “If I produced proof, Your Excellency, even that would be an improvement on your present uncertainty. I expect no payment for my unsupported word.”

  “To help us get her back, safe and unharmed!” madonna Eva said, “a thousand ducats!”

  I swore under my breath. The lady had sensed the Maestro’s reluctance. The old miser would never resist such a bribe. A thousand ducats is a fortune; it is almost fifty times the legal annual wage of a married journeyman laborer.

  In a notable breach of tradition, Sanudo raised both eyebrows. “I think we had better define the terms of this contract very carefully.”

  His wife glared at him. “You think I would grudge it to have my child back? If you will not pay it, messer, I will sell my mother’s jewels.”

  “It is acceptable,” the Maestro said. “I have charged more, but you did well to consult me so promptly.” He had never earned a fraction of that on a missing person case since I had known him. “Returned safe and in good health, one thousand ducats.”

  There was a significant difference in wording there, depending on how one defined “unharmed,” but sier Zuanbattista nodded. “Failing which, for proof of her whereabouts, one hundred.”

  “Very fair. Clarissimo, madonna, the sooner I get started, the sooner I should be able to tell you something.” The Maestro gripped the arm of his chair and I rose to fetch his staff.

  “How soon?” the woman demanded, rising.

  “An hour, maybe two. I will send sier Alfeo with news as soon as I have some.”

  2

  T he Maestro’s infirmity excuses him from excessive formalities. Normally I show his visitors out and am tipped a soldo or two for my pains. I rely on those tips. At the end of my seven-year apprenticeship Nostradamus will pay me my accumulated salary of seventeen ducats, but until then he provides only food, shelter, and a minuscule clothing allowance. In this case he had revealed my rank, so I had to behave like a noble, bowing low to Sanudo at the top of the stairs, waiting to exchange bows again when he reached the first landing, then going out on the balcony to bow farewell as they departed in their gondola. And no tip.

  And only one gondolier? Most rich folk employ two boatmen, one fore and one aft. Of course good servants are hard to find and if the Sanudos had only recently opened their home in Venice, they might still be building up their household.

  I went back into the atelier, where Nostradamus had disappeared into his chair again. He was thinking, tugging his beard, but not so lost in thought that he was unaware of my return.

  “How did you happen to know the woman’s name?”

  I explained. He frowned when I mentioned Eva’s brother, Nicolo, the publisher.

  “The girl…You cavort with girls of that age. What do you think?”

  I folded my arms, not presuming to sit unless told to. “Master, I am much too old to interest girls of that age and have been for at least a month, but I’ll bet your thousand ducats to a soldo that she went down that ladder of her own free will and they know it.”

  He scowled, well aware that I was right. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because they waited until noon to come and consult you. Because they did not bring clever brother Giro with them. Because Zuanbattista did not run straightway to the Council of Ten. He doesn’t want the other geriatrics laughing at him, but surely that means that he believes his daughter is in no real physical danger. You noticed he accepted your definition of ‘unharmed’? You are not required to restore her maidenhead by magic.”

  “Do not be salacious!” Filippo Nostradamus is a prude.

  “It’s what he meant, though. They had a splendid marriage in view and Grazia prefers someone half the bridegroom’s age.” That seemed certain as holy writ. “The matter is urgent financially. The rich fiance will call it off if he learns she has wallowed in another man’s bed.”

  “You spend too much time a
t the theater watching hackneyed plays.”

  “Hackneyed because they are based on life, and life keeps singing the same old songs.”

  Few masters permit such back talk from their apprentices. Nostradamus enjoys it because it gives him an excuse to snarl and snap at me, although he would never admit that. “And in this romantic drama of yours, whose side is her mother on?”

  What had he seen that I hadn’t? “She wants no scandal, doesn’t she? And her daughter back?”

  “So she says.” He smiled wickedly. “Her own husband must be twice her age, even now, and was three times as old when they were married. Suppose she doesn’t want to see her daughter put through what she was put through? Who did you say was holding the ladder?”

  I humbly admitted I had not seen that possibility. “And she aided her daughter’s escape by talking her husband into coming to you instead of initiating a proper pursuit?”

  That suggestion made him scowl. “Then she may be surprised.”

  “I’ve heard you say that you’ll never take another elopement case.”

  Scowl became snarl. “Nicolo Morosini was a friend of mine.”

  No. Tiny Venice is the greatest book publishing city in Europe, and two men especially made it so-Aldus Manutius and Nicolo Morosini the elder. Both are long dead, but Nicolo’s family maintained his interests and a younger Nicolo had seemed likely to surpass his great-grandfather. On the very first day of my apprenticeship, a man with a nose like the ram on a war galley had come calling on the Maestro to show him some books. Needless to say, I have not forgotten a moment of that day, and I well remember how the two men argued over the value of some manuscripts while I stood in a corner, supposedly grinding rock salt in a mortar, but mostly listening openmouthed as they so casually batted incredible prices at each other over crumbling wads of paper.

  They had behaved far more like rivals than friends, so the Maestro was rearranging his memories to suit his present needs. The thousand ducats must have been irrelevant, because he did not mention it. Instead he said, “What is your logic on the missing Girolamo?”