If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 5

Mack followed the servant to Medici's palace, which was in a small, exclusive suburb of palaces close by the Arno. It was a fine-looking place, with white marble pillars and a porch in the Attic style. The doors were of varnished mahogany and extensively carved in the manner originated by Damiato the Damned. There were servants at the door, wearing lounge suits and white-on-white shirts in the latest Neapolitan style. They looked askance at Mack, because his clothing here, uptown, as it were, didn't look half as good as it did in the clash of illusions that was the marketplace. But they passed him through in response to the old servant's plea.

Weeping and wringing his hands, the servant led Mack down quiet corridors with oil paintings on the walls, down to a big rosewood door at the far end. Tapping to make his presence known, the servant pushed open the door and Mack looked in on a room that would not have disgraced a king.

A large, tall, gorgeously carved, and sumptuously canopied bed dominated the chamber. Tall wax candles had been brought in and put around the bed on more end tables. A fire in the fireplace flickered and glowed red.

"Who is there?" asked Lorenzo de' Medici.

Lorenzo, well tucked up in the bed, looked every one of his seventy years, plus a few more. Dropsy had robbed his body of vigor. He peered at Mack from a fat, gray face. It was a countenance in which shrewd little eyes struggled to make a deal with mortality and stay alive a little longer, but with class, of course, since he was Lorenzo de' Medici and class was his middle name. He wore a long white cotton nightgown embroidered with unicorns, and a black cap with bobbin lace was tied under his chin. His face, where it bore any flesh at all that was not puffed out with rottenness, sagged toward the bone clearly visible beneath. His lips, formerly ruddy in the days when a Medici Pope considered announcing the unique existence of a Medici God, were withered, having tasted the bitterness of the world for so many years. An artery in his neck pulsed, as though wondering why it hadn't collapsed like the others.

The fingers of his left hand, palsy stricken, made little fluttering movements.

"I'm Dr. Faust," Mack said. "What seems to be the trouble?"

"I," said Medici, in a voice that, even as a shadow of its former timbre, was enough to excite the dust particles on the top of the chandelier, "am the richest man in the world."

It was one hell of an opening line, but Mack was not to be thus put down.

"And I," he said, "am the world's most expensive doctor. How fortuitous that we have met!"

"How do you propose to heal me?" Medici growled, with such dominance that the very maggots in his flesh stopped their gnawing for a moment out of respect.

Mack knew that the cure was simple enough. Just take out the vial that Mephistopheles had given him and pour its contents down Medici's throat. But he wasn't going to let Lorenzo know that. Who'd pay a fortune for something as simple as a slug of elixir? No, the contents of the vial might be the final step, but procedure, as Galen and others had pointed out, was the irreducible framework. And the procedure had to be impressive.

"First we'll need a gold basin," Mack said. "Only twenty-four karat will do."

It had crossed his mind that a gold basin would be a good thing to have on hand in case anything went wrong. Funny, the things you think about in a crisis.

"See that it is done," Medici said to the servants.

The servants scurried around. There was a brief delay while they searched for the key to the bin where the gold pots and pans were kept.

The servants brought the gold basin, and also the alchemical equipment Mack asked for. That was not difficult to come by, since Lorenzo was a collector of all sorts of things, and he had a whole room full of alchemical equipment of the latest models. His alembic alone, all gleaming glass and polished bronze, was a sight to behold. And his furnace could perform such miracles of calibration that it was a wonder Medici hadn't cured himself with all his fancy junk on the basis of his pillaged knowledge.

Tall and ghastly pale was this monk who was the talk of all Italy. He fixed his burning eyes on Medici and said, "They said you wanted to see me about something."

"Yes, Brother," Medici said. "I know we've had some differences, but I think we can both say we stand for a strong Italy, a balanced lire, and no more Church corruption. I'd like to make my confession and receive absolution."

"Delighted to arrange it," Savonarola said, taking a parchment out of his cloak, "if you will sign over all your goods and monies to a nonprofit organization I have founded, which will see that they are distributed to the poor."

He slid the parchment beneath Medici's rheumy eyes with an alacrity that belied his slender frame and fever-swept body; for the friar was suffering toothache and so far hadn't been able to pray it away.

Medici's rheumy old eyes swept the manuscript, then narrowed in suspicion. "You drive a tough bargain, Brother. I'm prepared to make a good bequest to the Church. But I've got relatives who have to be taken care of."

"God will provide," Savonarola said.

"No insult intended, but I don't think so," said Medici.

"I think we're about ready with the medicine," Mack said, seeing that he was losing out to the newcomer.

"Sign the parchment!" shouted Savonarola. "Confess yourself a sinner!"

"I'll talk to God in my own heart, Girolamo! But I'll not say it to you!"

"I am a monk," Savonarola said.

"You are vain, and proud," Medici said. "To hell with you. Faust! The medicine!"

Mack hurriedly took out the vial and struggled to uncork it. It had one of those thin little wires wrapped around it that are so hard to cut if you don't have pliers.

And back then, before even the circle was standardized, hardly anyone had pliers. Medici and Savonarola were screaming at each other. The servants were cowering. Outside, church bells were ringing. Mack finally got the bottle cap off. He turned to Medici.

The Magnificent had fallen suddenly silent. He lay in bed motionless, jaw agape. Blind eyes, still rheumy, but over which a milky film was beginning to form, stared up at nothing.

Medici dead? "Don't do this to me," Mack muttered, and forcing the vial into Medici's mouth, poured.

The liquid came bubbling out of Medici's mouth, untasted. The great man was finally and definitively dead.

He stood for a moment on the street, wondering if he had forgotten something. Damn it, he had forgotten the gold basin! He turned to go back in. But it was too late now. He was swept up into the crowd and carried along by the laughing, screaming, singing, praying multitude. It was the time of the burning of vanities, and all was madness.