The Alchemist's Code

4

I am not the greatest swordsman in the world. I rank third or fourth among the dozen in Captain Colleoni’s Monday evening fencing class for young gentlemen. Most of the others are mere dilettantes, though, and there is a world of difference between recreational fencing and red-blood fighting. The great advantage I have over the playboys is that I have been in real sword fights and survived. I have bled, on occasion, but now I know I will not panic, and keeping your head is nine-tenths of a real battle. This knowledge was surprisingly little comfort when I was standing in a shadowy doorway on a misty, clammy dawn, and the world’s greatest clairvoyant had warned me I was going to need my rapier. I shivered.

It was Sunday, so the great marangona bell in the Piazza San Marco had not rung to announce the start of the working day, but already the seventy or so parish bell towers were sounding for early Mass. This day, of all days, no laundry flapped from balconies and roof terraces. We had done everything we could to fulfill the prophecy and now it was up to Destiny to finish the job. I hoped she would do so soon, for the devout were setting out to church. Soon there would be crowds into which our quarry might disappear, and far too many witnesses.

I wore my rapier and dagger.

The henchman at my side was Bruno, our porter. Calling Bruno big would be like saying the sea is moist, but he is the gentlest of men, refusing to carry even a cudgel. He is a deaf-mute, so I had explained in the sign language that the Maestro invented for him: Bad man-steal-woman. Alfeo and Bruno-find-woman-woman happy. He has enough wits to recognize a good cause and had agreed to bring along the only weapon he will tolerate, Mama Angeli’s largest flatiron in a canvas sack.

A path alongside a canal is a fondamenta, but make it wide enough for off-loading cargo and it becomes a riva. We stood in a doorway on the Riva del Vin, just seaward of the great Rialto bridge, the place the quatrain had named. On any other day this quay would be a buzzing hive of barges and lighters and gondolas, loud with abuse, banter, and complaint, but today it was deserted. The forest of striped mooring posts stood abandoned in the water, serving only as perches for yellow-eyed gulls, who stared suspiciously at us obvious intruders.

On the far side of the Grand Canal, the city’s main street, lay the Riva del Ferro, backed by a wall of buildings, four, five, or even six stories high. The traghetto there was almost deserted, although one of the few boats lingering by it was the Maestro’s, with Giorgio standing ready to hasten to our aid.

More gondolas plied the Grand Canal before us, standing well out to clear the marble arch of the Rialto. In my boyhood gondolas had been bright hued and flamboyant, vibrant with color and gilt, every felze sporting rich curtains and every hull proclaiming its owner’s garish escutcheon. Alas, the Senate took offense at such blatant competition and decreed that gondolas should be plainer and plainer, until now they are all black, with black curtains and black leather cushions. Only a few trim items escaped the clammy grip of uniformity, especially the rowlock and the post near the bow that bears a lantern by night and a flower by day-those posts are often gilded still-and private owners are allowed to display their arms on the left side of the boat. Gondolas for hire show the Virgin or a saint.

Then came a gondola moving fast and bearing neither flower nor lantern, but a white cloth tied around its bow post so it could be identified at a distance. Black swan, white collar, it glided in toward the watersteps in front of us. Two people emerged from the calle del Sturion to my left and walked swiftly across to meet it. They had not come from the doorway of the Sturgeon Inn as I had expected, but the Sturgeon is only the oldest and most famous of many inns patronized by foreigners near the Rialto, and they might have spent the night in a private house anyway. He was tall, wearing a short blue cloak over an indigo doublet and knee britches, and white silk stockings. He carried a leather portmanteau. She did not come up to his shoulder, but she was certainly not resisting him. In fact they were holding hands and swinging arms in the sort of childish display that lovers use to warn other people away. I hoped Bruno would do nothing reckless, but sign language cannot convey such subtleties as, “The bad man may be only bad in the eyes of the law and the girl may not be unhappy.”

I ran forward. “Madonna Grazia Sanudo!”

The girl screamed. The man dropped his bag, flashed out his rapier, and slashed at me like a madman. Rapiers are not intended for slashing, but he was aiming at my face. I parried with my arm, then drew. Despite being forewarned, I barely had time to go to guard before I was fighting for my life. He was fast and had a significant advantage in reach, but his technique was erratic and reckless. He had either never taken lessons or, if he had, had forgotten them all in the horror of being in a real fight. Captain Colleoni would have blistered him with derision.

“Stop it, you fool!” I said, more or less. I parried, parried, and parried, not riposting. “There are people watching!”

Then I recognized him, yelled, “Saints! Danese? ” and narrowly escaped taking three feet of metal in my right eye. That did it. “Idiot!” I grabbed his rapier with my left hand and slammed mine down across his wrist. I used the false edge, but a steel rod can hurt without cutting.

He yelled and let go of his sword; his gondolier friend tried to smash my head in with his oar. Fortunately Bruno had seen the threat coming and arrived in the fight like a middling-sized earthquake. He snatched up the gondolier, oar and all, and without breaking stride bore him to the edge and threw him well out into the canal.

Grazia Sanudo screamed in fury and sprang at me, clawing for my eyes. I was forced to drop Danese’s sword and grab her by the neck with my left hand to hold her off.

I shouted over her yells, “I intend no harm to Danese! Your father told me to tell you that he loves you and wants you to be happy.”

She froze, glaring up at me with two of the largest, darkest eyes I had ever seen. They startled me. A man could drown in those eyes, had they not been so filled with rage and hatred. “You swear that?”

“I swear by all the saints. Danese has known me all his life, haven’t you, old friend?”

Our ogreish abductor was clutching his right arm and trying to curl up without falling over. I released his wretched prisoner, who rushed to wrap herself around him with many cries of, “My darling, my lover, are you all right, my heart, my…whatever…” And so on.

Sickening.

“He broke my wrist!”

“You damned nearly killed me!” I retorted. I sheathed my sword and retrieved his. Seeing that the fight was safely over, men were running in from both ends of the riva and also emerging from the calle. “Danese, old friend!” I detached the girl so I could embrace him myself. That, being a proper greeting in Venice, would hopefully discourage the busybodies starting to wander in around us.

I told his ear, “Let’s get out of here before someone calls the sbirri. We can talk it over somewhere quieter.” Releasing him, I said loudly, “I regret I frightened you, madonna. Your parents are very worried about you. I do have your father’s written permission to take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home!” Her voice was larger than she was. “My father has no authority over me now. This man is my husband!”

“Yes,” I sighed. “I know. Do you want to argue that to a magistrate? Now let’s go before the sbirri get here.” Taking him along was not part of the plan and would complicate matters considerably, but I knew him and had hurt him. Call me a softie, but I could not just abandon him.

Venetians are good Venetians first and good Catholics next, but most priests will marry a couple who threaten to embrace adultery-or embrace adulterously-no matter what the law says about parental permission. My tarot had told me what was brewing.

Giorgio had already brought the Maestro’s gondola across and I urged everybody aboard. Danese was in too much pain to argue and the girl clung to him like tree bark. Their would-be gondolier had emerged from his bath. Had I thought that he was just a gondolier, I might have tipped him a lira for his trouble, but he had tried to brain me and I need all the brains the good Lord gave me. The fight had gone out of him; he did not try to block our departure.

A grinning bystander handed me the portmanteau Danese had dropped. I thanked him politely.

The girl went in the felze, of course, but when her evil kidnapper tried to follow her I told him to sit on the thwart and trail his hand in the water to keep it from swelling.

“You think you’re a doctor?” he snarled.

“Not quite, but that’s the best way to ease the pain and stop it swelling.” I clambered in beside Grazia, being careful to leave visible space between us. A grinning Bruno settled in behind the felze , raising our prow significantly, and of course Giorgio stood at the stern, wielding his oar.

I told him, “Ca’ Barbolano please.” The original plan had been straight to the Ca’ Sanudo. He turned our stern to the Rialto and headed home.

Grazia was small, as I said, and seemed little older than she had in the family portrait. Her nose…Either Maestro Michelli had flattered his subject, or her nose had grown more than the rest of her since he painted her likeness. Truly she had her uncle Nicolo’s nose and on a woman it was a disfigurement. Her body might just qualify for “sylphlike” instead of “skinny” but her complexion was unremarkable and there was an unwelcome trace of hardness about her mouth. Her dress looked childish and somewhat crumpled. But oh, her eyes! They almost atoned for everything else. Without her excess of nose they would have made her a beauty.

Danese I have already described. Normally he always seemed a little too conscious of his good looks, but just then he was more like a lemon, pale and bitter.

“Damn you, Alfeo Zeno!” he whimpered. “Why are you meddling in my life? And how did you find us?”

The first answer was, “One thousand ducats,” and better not said.

“You have heard of the celebrated Maestro Nostradamus? Grazia’s parents hired him to find her. I am his apprentice. I will take you to his home so he can treat your hand. And maybe we can talk this out. You do have a piece of paper with a priest’s signature on it?”

“Of course we do!” the girl shouted at me, although we were side by side. “What sort of a woman do you think I am?”

Young and incredibly gullible to fall for a fast-talking snake like Danese Dolfin, despite his luminous sapphire eyes and subterranean voice. “But you did not have your father’s permission to marry, so you are married only in the eyes of the church, not under the laws of Venice.”

Danese said, “But we are married.” His sneer implied that he had made sure the Church would allow no annulment.

“Do you have the Great Council’s approval?”

He went back to sulking without answering my question. His name would be struck from the Golden Book, but that would be the least of his worries if Zuanbattista Sanudo chose to lay charges. Then he would face exile, or three years in the galleys, or worse. The galleys are a slow death sentence, each year counted equal to two years in jail. Grazia would still be married and likely doomed to end her days in a convent.

Grazia sobbed at my side, her hands covering her face. She was hoping, no doubt that a lovable, romantic young man like me could never resist such an appeal, but she was miscalculating. I felt no impulse to clasp her in my arms and beg forgiveness. She was too young to light my touch-paper, and her fake tears merely made her seem more childish.

“Madonna,” I said, “now that you are married, will not your family accept your husband and forgive? Your father did tell me that he loves you.”

She muffled a couple of quite realistic gasps. “He should have thought of that before he ordered me to marry Zaccaria Contarini.”

“What is wrong with Zaccaria Contarini?”

“He’s old and ugly.”

Now I knew the name of the king of coins. The Contarini clan is one of the largest in the Republic, with scores of votes on the Great Council. That might account for Zuanbattista Sanudo’s election to ducal counselor. With his own Sanudo clan, and marriage connections to the Marcellos, the Morosinis, and potentially the Contarinis, Zuanbattista would have about a hundred votes for the asking.

Grazia lowered her hands and fixed me with her lustrous eyes. They did not look as if they had been weeping much lately. “Who are you? I mean really?”

“I told you.”

“An apprentice?” She glanced over my apparel and it did not impress her. “Look!” She pulled back a sleeve to reveal a bracelet of gold and amber. “This is very old. Byzantine work, from Constantinople. My grandmother left it to me. I’ll let you have it if you’ll let us go. It’s worth two hundred ducats.”

I thought maybe thirty or forty. They make them by the score on Murano. “It looks much prettier on you than it would on me, madonna. It probably wouldn’t close around my wrist.”

“You could sell it, you stupid boy!”

Danese curled his lip at me. “Don’t try to bribe him, Grazia. You’re wasting your breath. He’s an idiot and always was.”

Whereas Danese had always had an aye for a good offer.

Whether or not Grazia had been foolish to turn down a Contarini, I thought she had been utterly daft in her choice of alternative. A week before, at the theater, Danese had been dressed like a wealthy young patrician. That had not been a one-time extravagance or rags borrowed for the occasion, because his present outfit was even grander. Somehow he had come into real money. Not by marriage, unless he was a secret bigamist, and not from his sisters if they had all married artisans or laborers, as he had told me. Looks, birth, and money together work miracles for a man’s eligibility. Just because I had always found him insufferable did not mean that Grazia Sanudo was not entitled to worship his footprints. Nor did it mean that I wanted to see him chained to an oar for years on end.

My head and my heart were locked in battle. We could still report that the fugitives had escaped and hope that no details of the fight ever got back to the Council of Ten. The decision would be up to Maestro Nostradamus, but I could not imagine him passing up a thousand ducats.