The Alchemist's Pursuit

14

The stairs were dusty and cobwebbed, a servants' access no longer used. At the top we emerged through another inconspicuous door, which my guide carefully locked behind us, although from the outside it looked to be of no importance, perhaps a closet. We had come to the sort of luxurious private quarters to be expected in so grand a palace. The decor was modern and I was hard put not to gape around me as my guide led me around a corridor and across an antechamber to a spacious reception room, presently occupied by three women.

I judged the one to my right to be a servant by her clothes, her shriveled, weathered features, and her occupation, for she was presently mending a child's britches. The one on my left was dressed as a lady of means, small and plump, somewhat mousy, aged perhaps thirty. She held a book. I had heard her reading aloud as I crossed the anteroom.

The one on the chair between their two stools was obviously the great person I had been brought to meet, donna Alina Orio, widow of the murdered Gentile Michiel and mother of his infamous killer. She held an embroidery hoop rather too far from her nose.

"Sier Alfeo Zeno, madonna," said my companion.

Skewered by eyes as sharp as the servant's darning needle, I bowed low. She was a tall, but not heavy woman, clad in fine velvet and lace, all in black, and carefully adorned with pearls and face paint. Palace life and ample servants and wet nurses had preserved her well; only the hollow cheeks caused by lost teeth acknowledged that she must be over fifty and had borne many children.

"Why is a messenger boy claiming to be a patrician?" she demanded.

"I am a patrician, madonna; my birth is listed in the Golden Book. I carried only a letter of introduction and bring a message in my head. I am apprenticed to Maestro Nostradamus, the astrologer and philosopher. Those are learned professions, permitted to the patriciate."

"So what is that precious message?"

My immediate fate balanced on a knife edge. If she had summoned me just to see what I looked like, she could now jettison me and carry on with her day.

"It was addressed to your noble son, madonna, but he chose not to hear it."

She considered that answer and decided it would pass muster.

"Leave us," she commanded, and the women rose in a rustle of taffeta. The maid curtseyed and hurried to open the door. The lady companion nodded with no comment and a completely expressionless face, although including her in the same command as the servant had to be a deliberate discourtesy.

"Be seated, sier Alfeo."

She handed the youth her embroidery to put away and clasped her hands together on her lap. They were more timeworn than her face, and the gesture revealed inner tensions that her expression never would.

I thought I had my guide identified by then as her cavaliere servente, gentleman escort and general errand boy, who might, if he was lucky, also be her gigolo. There could be worse occupations, even if the woman was older by thirty years. I began to doubt my judgment when she did not invite him to take the other stool. Besides, donna Orio looked like the sort of grande dame who had conceived her children by prayer and never done anything so undignified as rollick naked with a man.

"Eight years ago next month, I told my oldest son to hire your precious Nostradamus to locate Zorzi for me. You are aware who Zorzi is?"

"Zorzi Michiel, your youngest son, who was sent into exile."

Her knuckles whitened. "Who fled into exile. He was condemned in absentia, the evidence that would have proved his innocence never considered. Nostradamus claimed he could not do what I ordered, but more likely he was playing safe and chose not to. Today the old fraud sends a boy with unspecified information. My son rightly decided to ignore you. Yet you waited two and a half hours and had to be sent packing like a beggar. Are you without shame, sier Alfeo?"

"There can be no shame in serving my master diligently."

She disliked my smart-aleck hint that the shame was her son's. Her mouth curled in an angry pout.

"Why does Nostradamus not deliver his own news?"

"Because he is frail and rarely leaves his residence now."

"Does your message concern Zorzi?"

That question posed a problem, but the Maestro expects me to make my own decisions and be prepared to defend them. He had said that if Bernardo was not hiding Honeycat then he did not know who else to ask. I did, now, but would she tell me anything? And if I told her anything, what would she do?

"Alas, madonna, I cannot reveal that to anyone except sier Bernardo."

That was the right answer and any other would have seen me tossed out a watergate without a gondola.

She sucked in her cheeks angrily, giving herself a monkey face. "Jacopo, where is Bernardo?"

"He is in conference with the bankers, I believe, madonna."

"Domenico?"

"Playing tennis." Jacopo seemed remarkably well-informed about the household's activities.

Alina pouted. "Will he do," she asked me, "or must it be Bernardo?"

"I was sent to sier Bernardo."

"Go and tell Bernardo I want him right away."

Jacopo departed. Bernardo was nominal head of Casa Michiel, but I was alone with the real head. I waited politely for her to name the topic of our conversation.

"My son was never guilty of his father's murder! He was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice."

What else would a mother say?

"Alas, madonna, it is hard to contend with the Council of Ten when it does not reveal the basis for its decisions." It was also dangerous to accuse it of making mistakes.

"There was no evidence, no real evidence. There could not be. Yes, he quarreled with his father. He was wild and outspoken, but what boy of his age is not? His father sowed enough wild oats, even when he was old enough to know better. Zorzi was guilty of lack of respect, nothing more. He would never have hurt anyone deliberately."

"I have been told the same by others," I remarked.

Steely eyes glinted. "What others?"

"Persons who knew him." I did not add, intimately.

"You are too young to remember. You have been going around prying into those matters?" She ought not to scowl; it made her as ugly as a gargoyle.

"I was investigating other matters, madonna, and by accident ran into talk of your husband's death."

She kneaded her wizened lips together for a moment. "Nostradamus claims to foretell the future. Can he also envision the past?"

"Not as such, but I have seen him unravel old mysteries. Some of his methods are occult, but often he just uses the wisdom of a sage to cut away a web of lies and deceit that has concealed the truth."

Silence fell, as if I had dissolved and she were alone, staring at nothing. I was attracted by the painting on the far side of the room. "Is that portrait by Paris Bordone, madonna?"

She frowned as if only the rich should see art. "It is. You approve?"

"At his best he comes very close to the great Titian and I would judge that work to be one of his best. I cannot believe that it did justice to the subject, though." She had never been a beauty, but she had been young.

"Nostradamus teaches you flattery also?"

I laughed aloud. "Forgive me. If you had ever met him, you would understand my levity."

"Who painted that one behind you, sier Alfeo?"

Fortunately I was right again, and winter began to thaw into spring. Before summer arrived, her son did, with Jacopo in tow.

Bernardo Michiel was bulky, a meat inspector who brought his work home with him. Even in ordinary gentlemen's attire, without the imposing robes of a patrician, he was still a domineering presence. His beard was big, black, and bushy; his brows beetled.

I rose and bowed as little as possible without giving direct insult. Neither of us had a chance to speak before Alina Orio did.

"Here is my son, messer Zeno. Let us hear Nostradamus's message."

"Certainly, madonna. If he agrees?"

"Yes!" Bernardo barked. "Go on!"

"My master merely wishes to warn you, clarissimo, that there are rumors that your exiled brother may have returned to the city. Nostradamus advises you of this purely as a token of gratitude for your earlier interest in his work and seeks nothing in return."

The inspector of meats exchanged glances with his mother. "Rumors? You come here to repeat rumors? Neither facts nor evidence, merely scuttlebutt and tittle-tattle? I can gather a bellyful of that at any time from the sharks in the Ghetto Nuovo or the fish skinners of the Pescaria." His voice was the resonant trumpet of a trained orator and I was a public meeting.

I must now walk very close to the perilous edge of accusing the Michiel black sheep of three more murders. I drew comfort from the weight of my rapier at my belt, because I was fairly certain that either Bernardo or Jacopo could throw me out single-handedly, and they could call on unlimited assistance.

"I was instructed to mention two facts that may be relevant. First, a certain courtesan received a note purporting to be from a man she had known some years ago-not giving sier Zorzi's own name, I hasten to add, but a nickname by which he was known to her."

Bernardo's heavy features did not change by one eyebrow hair. "What nickname?"

"Honeycat. Based on a birthmark, I was told." Seeing no reaction to that, either, I continued. "Second, and perhaps more significant, the Council of Ten officially warned my master not to continue his current inquiries. So, of course, he will not."

It is very rare to mention the Ten without seeing some sort of response, but I saw none then.

"That's all? You have posited your premises, posed your paradoxes, and presented your peroration?"

"I have." I also scorn sarcasm and abhor alliteration, but did not say so.

"Then you have said all you wanted to say and may leave."

Jacopo moved forward to assist.

"Wait!" said the lady. "Thank you for coming, Bernardo. I have another matter to discuss with sier Alfeo." She waited until her son had stalked out in dudgeon and Jacopo had closed the door behind him before she continued. "Bring the casket."

Jacopo crossed the room and left by a second door, through which I glimpsed a bedchamber.

"Now, sier Alfeo, give me your opinion of that small painting above the escritoire over there."

I rose and went across to peer at the panel in question. My first reaction was repugnance, but after a moment it began to speak to me. I returned to my seat.

"Daring, but powerful. I have never heard of the artist, madonna. A Greek, from the signature, and his choice of forms and colors is unusual… At the risk of being presumptuous, I would guess that he is fairly young, searching for a personal style."

She raised eyebrows and pursed lips in guarded approval. "He was young when he painted that. "Domenicos Theotokopoulos, from our colony on Crete. He later went on to Spain, and I have been told he has met with success there. A very odd young man, he was. And the desk beneath it?"

Was hideous. "I claim no knowledge of furniture, madonna."

"It is made of ebony wood from the Spice Lands, very rare."

Very funereal. I praised a bronze cherub instead and she dismissed my opinion with a sniff.

"The escritoire belonged to my father. I should say that ebony furniture used to be rare. I have seen examples in several great houses recently. I do hope it doesn't become a fad." Anything popular would be contemptible, obviously.

Jacopo returned with a shallow silver box, decorated with pseudoclassical figures in bas-relief. Donna Alina placed it on her lap and spread her papery hands on the lid possessively as if afraid it might float away.

"My dearest treasure," she said with a thin-lipped smile. "My son is not back in Venice. I can prove it. I know he did not murder my husband, messer Zeno. I know this as surely as I know the name of my Redeemer. I want Nostradamus to prove his innocence, by finding out who did slay my husband."

I had been expecting almost anything but that. I hoped my shock did not show as much as Jacopo's did. He looked at her as if she were raving. I pulled my wits together.

"Eight years is a long time, madonna. Memories fade, witnesses may no longer be available. Even my master may balk at such a challenge. Of course I will convey your wishes. And the Ten… I mean, he will have to consider whether the Ten's interdict covers that matter also." Even trying to overthrow the Ten's judgment on so notorious an affair might be judged subversive.

"I know things that the Ten do not," she declared confidently. "I know where my son is."

She opened the box without using a key, but I had recognized the words and gesture she used earlier to remove a warding spell. The same actions might or might not work for anyone else. She removed a slim book bound in brown leather, which she placed on her lap under the box, out of the way. Then she produced some loose papers.

"These are his letters. He does not write often, you will understand, because it is dangerous, but a few months after he fled he sent me his most solemn assurance, an oath sworn on his immortal soul, that he was nowhere near the Basilica when Gentile died." She took up the topmost paper and held it at arm's length. "This is the most recent. It is dated just after Epiphany." She squinted at the text. "Yes… Maria now expects her confinement about Easter… after her difficulties with Gentile I try not to show her my concern… And later he says, Gentile is a very active little terror, and swims like a dolphin. I spend at least an hour every day with him… You see, sier Alfeo? Would a man name his firstborn son after a father he had murdered?" She smirked triumphantly.

"I suppose not," I said. But why not?

"In one of his earlier letters he remarked how much he had enjoyed his father's attention in his own childhood and hoped to be as loved by his own children. He is engrossed with his family and concerned about his wife. He is in a far land which I shall not name, and not here in Venice writing letters to courtesans."

"Madonna, may I examine that letter you are holding and also the first one that you mentioned?"

"Certainly not!" She thrust the paper back in the box and put the book back on top of them. "It has his new address on it. There is still a price on his head, you stupid boy!"

"If Jacopo were to lay the paper on that escritoire," I said, "and cover the address with… with one of those books on the shelf, then I could see the rest of it. And the first letter is eight years old, so it can contain no secrets now."

She clutched the casket protectively in her talons. "Why? Why do you want to see my son's letters?"

"So I can assure my master that I have done so. I also want to compare the handwriting."

"Why?"

"Because my master has taught me much curious wisdom about handwriting. The first letter must have been written under great stress. The latest one sounds like the musings of a very happy man, even if he does have worries about his wife's lying-in. The writing should show that. Even at this distance I can perceive that he is left-handed."

"How do you know that?" she snapped, burning with suspicion.

"From the slant of the vertical strokes, madonna. Likely he was taught right-handed and tries not to use a reverse slant, but it shows here and there."

She hesitated, but then curiosity won out and she opened the box again. She gave Jacopo the top and bottom papers. He laid them on the ebony desk, covering part of one with a book, which he held firmly in place. Only then did I go over to join him and study the letters. The old one was much thumbed, almost falling apart, the second much fresher.

"Yes," I said. "I think sier Zorzi is not admitting how much he is worried about his wife-there is stress in those vertical strokes. But he obviously loves her very much, and his son also. And the first letter…"

I babbled on for much longer than it took me to memorize both pages, but my main interest was neither the text nor the handwriting. I thanked her. It was time for me to go. The day was drawing on toward evening and after dark I had a date, I hoped, with the Strangler.

"By your leave, madonna? Of course I will convey your wishes to my master. If he is willing to accept the challenge you have suggested, then I shall return on Monday with a contract for you to sign."

Donna Alina graciously allowed me to kiss her fingers, which were scented with rose water, and Jacopo escorted me out.

"That was neatly done," he remarked as we strode along the corridor. "I always thought one had to hold paper up to the light to see the watermark."