Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Code

“Yes, I know. Tomorrow at breakfast. Can you think of a way to stop him burning me at the stake for witchcraft right after?”

“You were an idiot to use the Word in front of a witness, especially him.”

“I didn’t use it in front of Gritti himself, but I agree it was stupid. After all, how much worse could demonic possession make Vasco? And he might have bitten the jinx, instead of the other way around.”

“I’ll worry about you later,” my master said impatiently. “Meanwhile the most important thing is to preserve my reputation by exposing Algol. I decided there were three ways to proceed-three strings to my bow.”

“And the first one didn’t work?” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder at the crystal ball.

He pouted, which was agreement. “I overshot the mark by at least a century. You’ve eaten?”

Astonished, for food rarely enters his mind, I said, “Not this week, I think, master.”

“Well, I am waiting for-”

Knuckles rapped.

I raised an eyebrow and, when he nodded, the rest of me also. I went and opened the door to find the twins, Corrado and Christoforo, beaming eagerly. They will never interrupt the Maestro without express orders to do so, so I stepped aside and let them enter. Then I closed and locked the door again, although there was no sign of Vasco out in the salone. The boys were sweaty and puffing as if they had been running, but they had taken time to rehearse, because they reported in counterpoint.

Corrado began, “Marco Piceno, cobbler…”

“Marco Gatti, attorney…”

“Matteo Tentolini, musician…”

“And Dario Rinaldo, carpenter,” Chris concluded triumphantly.

The names meant nothing to me, but from the Maestro’s demonic expression, I guessed that they were bad news, so the second of his three bowstrings had just proved as untuneful as the first. Two down, one to go.

“Very good!” he said. “Alfeo will give you two soldi apiece after he has dined. Meanwhile, I have another errand for you. Fetch Michelina if she is around. Go and eat, Alfeo.”

Michelina is a year older than the twins and a splendid beauty, engaged to be married. The only reason the Maestro could possibly want her then was to dictate a letter, because she writes a fine secretary hand. I taught her myself.

“I won’t die of starvation in the next hour,” I complained, resentful that anyone else would sit at my desk and do my work.

“No, no.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “You must keep up your strength for tonight’s ordeal.”

When he gets in that mood, he keeps secrets even from me, because he is convinced my face always gives me away when I tell a lie. This is an absurd untruth, but that day we had that historically celebrated snoop Filiberto Vasco underfoot and peering underbed, so extreme caution might be justified.

“I dread the prospect,” I said and marched off in search of nourishment, ignoring the twins’ wide-eyed stares at this hint of dark deeds ahead.

I t was long past our usual noon dinnertime, but nothing daunts Mama Angeli and I found Vasco in the kitchen cleaning up a plate of her magnificent Burano-style duckling, Masorin a la Buranella. I asked her to send mine to the dining room, where the company was more appealing, and on my way there I helped myself to one of the few remaining bottles of the Maestro’s hoarded 1583 Villa Primavera. This might be the last decent meal I would ever eat.

I was not allowed long to enjoy my solitude, of course, before Vasco sauntered in to join me, bringing his raisin fritters dolce with him. He sniffed the wine bottle and pursed his lips.

“Nice! The condemned man ate a hearty last meal?”

“Not at all. Celebrating the coming exposure of the false witness.”

He smiled and leaned back to admire the ceiling art and chandeliers. “Nice place you had here. A pity about your landlord’s little fit of pique.”

“He laughs best who laughs last.”

“I entirely agree,” Vasco said solemnly. “And I admit it feels very nice. I have warned you so often!”

“Nil homine terra pejus ingrato creat.” Violetta taught me that, but she was not applying it to me at the time.

“The ingrate is certainly the worst of men,” Vasco agreed, “but what makes you think I have reason to be grateful to you? You have always been an upstart, conceited, interfering pest.”

If I accused him of ingratitude for denouncing me after I had saved him from the jinx, he would claim I was confessing to performing magic, so I ate on in silence. I took comfort from reflecting that I had been in tight corners before and the Maestro had always jumped to the rescue.

Corrado peered in. “Old…The Maestro wants to know if we have…I mean if he has any henbane and, er, mandrake?”

“Henbane is the third jar on the second shelf down, labeled Hyoscyamus,” I said. “Mandrake root is in the fourteenth jar, bottom shelf, Mandragora. Be careful with those!” I yelled after him as he ran off. The Maestro knew the answers quite as well as I did, so the purpose of his questions had been to misinform Vasco, who must know those two plants’ reputation for magical powers. Misinform him of what, though? And why? Well, it was an encouraging sign that the old mountebank had something in mind. Or up sleeve, perhaps.

Later, as Mama was asking me if she should fry up a third plateful of fritters for me and I was regretfully deciding that I would not be able to do them justice, Christoforo appeared.

“Maestro says he is going to rest, but we must waken him when anything develops. And he says you should rest, too.”

“Tell him my strength won’t fail him.”

“And he wants to see you, Mama.”

His mother frowned and waddled out.

“Burning isn’t so bad really,” Vasco remarked. He took a swig from the wine bottle. “They strangle you with a cord before the flames get to you. Usually, that is.”

Could my position be any more desperate if I set his hat on fire right then?

A scream of mortal agony echoed along the salone, loud enough and long enough to bring Vasco off his chair and startle even me.

“Mama has a weakness for dramatics,” I explained as my companion bolted out the door, hell-bent on rescue. “Nostradamus probably found a spider under his bed,” I called after him. By the time I had polished off the last scraps of my dolce, drained my glass, and followed the vizio, I was just in time to see the Maestro disappearing into his bedroom and Mama Angeli shooing almost her entire clan out the front door-Giorgio, Corrado, Archangelo, Christoforo, Michelina, and even Noemi. The most junior members were apparently being left in the care of Piero, who is only eleven. Two of them thought they had been abandoned and were screaming in terror.

“What is going on?” Vasco demanded.

“Oh, it’s often like this around here,” I said. “Make yourself useful. Practice your babysitting skills.”

I went back to the atelier, leaving the door open so I could keep an eye on the spy. I had the big room to myself, but some badly trimmed quills were evidence that Michelina had been working at my side of the desk. I tidied that and the medical corner, then set to work on the ugly scrawl beside the crystal globe.

Working for a clairvoyant is frustrating because you know you will never live to see half your work completed. In Nostradamus’s case, the worse his writing and the more obscure his syntax, the further out the prophecy, and that was why he had told me that this one overshot the mark. At least it was in words, not doodles, so the jinx’s evil influence was no longer evident, but I spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to read the quatrain before I decided I had done all I could with it. I was still unsure of a few words.