Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

“I would know those gorgeous calves anywhere.” She laughed and melted before my eyes, becoming Helen. Helen of Troy, that is. Violetta does not play roles, as an actress does. She truly is several different people by turns. She says she cannot control her changes, they just happen, but I have rarely seen the wrong persona appear for any given situation. Medea’s voice is hard and metallic, Helen’s low and husky. Even her face is softer, more rounded. As Helen, she is the most beautiful, desirable, and skilled lover in the world. As Medea she is as dangerous in bed as she is anywhere else.

Helen held out her arms to me. The sheet dropped, of course. Encrusted in her finery, Violetta can be the cynosure of a ducal ball. I cannot begin to describe her appeal when she is still warm and drowsy and flushed from bed, still smelling of sleep, wearing nothing under a silken sheet. Her natural hair is middle-brown, but she bleaches it to a reddish gold. For formal affairs she dresses it in two upstanding horns, but then it hung tumbled loose in thick waves. I wanted to plunge into those waves and drown.

“Please!” I begged. “Business first.”

“You are not business, Alfeo Zeno! Don’t you dare be business! You are strictly pleasure. Every wife in the city has a cavaliere servente . Cannot I?” Her eyes were dark with promises of unimaginable delights.

I needed digitalis to soothe a raging heart. “Very soon, beloved, you will have the finest lover in the Republic all over you, but I do need some serious talk first. Noble Bertucci Orseolo died, did you hear?”

“And people are whispering that he was poisoned by your master to fulfill his own prophecy. I sent him a note yesterday. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Not directly. I was out shopping.”

“It’s absurd! An old man drops dead and everyone suspects poison.”

“It was poison.”

Helen sighed. Reluctantly she pulled the sheet up and straightened her legs. Her face and voice changed again. She become thinner, and I recognized the one I call Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom. The Greeks knew her as “Owl-eyed” or “Gray-eyed” Athena. Violetta’s eyes were gray and the mind behind them blazed. “That is terrible news. Can I help?”

“We think the venom was in his wine.”

“A poisoned glass substituted for his?” Typically, she had worked that out faster than I had. Minerva may be even smarter than the Maestro.

“It would have to be done that way, we think. I know you can take one glance at a ballroom and describe every gown to the last stitch. Can you tell me who stood next to Orseolo at the book table?”

She did not deny my exaggeration. “Let’s see…I came in on Pasqual’s arm. Don’t pull faces. You know how I earn my living. We were on our way to the Lido, but his father was going to be buying old books. Pasqual wanted to make sure the old man wasn’t blowing away the family fortune, he said. We stayed a few minutes and then left.

“As we came in, the viewers at the table all had their backs to us; your master was opposite, facing us. On my left…a footman was refilling glasses for the procurator and his companion, or offering to. Of course he was the one who collapsed later, Orseolo. Then that awful English couple-”

“Ah! The ones who spoke in French? Do you know their names?

Stars twinkled in her heavenly eyes. “I do know their names, Alfeo, but Parisians would not know their French. He is sier Bellamy Feather. Her name is Hyacinth. They have rented an apartment in Ca’ della Naves over in San Marcuola. Protestant heretics, probably spies.”

That was bad news. If even Violetta thought they might be spies, the Ten’s informers would be crawling around them like flies on a dung heap.

“Next to them was the swarthy Turk…and an old man wearing senatorial scarlet. He had a big nose. Next to him there was a gap and then Pasqual’s father. We went to the gap, of course, and Pasqual asked if he was going to buy Cleopatra’s diary.” She smiled knowingly. “I pretended not to recognize the nose on my left. He kept his eyes on the books and ignored me.”

“Then he’s older than I thought.” In fact, having access to Pietro Moro’s medical files, I knew that he still engaged in sex, although not as often as he would like. Doge or apprentice, some problems are universal.

“You knew Nasone was there?” Violetta asked.

“The Maestro told me. It is a complication. Have you ever seen him skulking around incognito before?” She had been to a thousand balls and banquets for every one I had.

“Never.”

I tucked that piece of information away to deal with when I was less distracted by shadows through silk. “The Turk you mentioned was probably the book seller, a Greek named Alexius Karagounis. You did not know Procurator Orseolo, so you did not know the lady with him?”

Minerva-Violetta shook her head. “A girl. No older than your alleged virgin. Not a courtesan.”

“A lover or a relative?”

Violetta would certainly know. The Maestro had not noticed her, but if Orseolo had recently acquired a lover, that would have fulfilled the prophecy in his horoscope. And she would have been close enough to switch glasses.

“Most likely a granddaughter. If they were lovers, she would have had to work hard.”

“You are an amazing witness!”

Minerva was amused by my praise. “People are my business, Alfeo dear. They moved around, though, and I can’t remember all the moves. Our host came in briefly and left again. Orseolo and the girl walked down to the far end to see what was there. And there were the two waiters. Don’t forget them.”

“I heard there was just one footman in the room.”

“Now you know that there were two. One was stocky, about your age, with eyebrows almost as sexy as yours, and the other middle twenties, slender, dusky, looked like a Moor. Ah! Yes!” Her eyes grew as bright as they would be when she put belladonna in them that evening. “When we arrived, we were offered a choice of three types of wine. You think the poison was in the retsina?”

“Probably. But other people drank it, too.”

Her eyes went out of focus for a moment. “I think…Yes, when they offered refills, the waiters came around with a bottle in each hand. Yes, I’m sure. Two waiters, three wines, four bottles. Does that sound suspicious?”

“You amaze me. You should be elected to the Council of Ten!”

Minerva said, “Only if I get to choose the other nine,” with a hint of Helen in her voice. “Alfeo, suppose the Moor is a spy for the sultan and tried to poison the doge?”

“By the Moor you mean the dusky footman with the un-sexy eyebrows?”

“His brows were moderately sexy, just not to be mentioned in the same sigh as yours.”

I had not realized how much my eyebrows contributed to my celebrated good looks. I made a note to examine them some time. “Assassinate the doge and the Great Council will at once elect a replacement.”

Violetta is the supreme courtesan because she is whatever woman her current companion requires. Mention politics and she is Aspasia. Where Minerva is imperious, brilliant, all-knowing, and tolerates no disagreement, Aspasia is cultured and subtle, her voice infinitely persuasive.

“The doge does have a significant influence on the conduct of foreign affairs,” Aspasia said, “although the Senate can overrule him. Pietro Moro is respected and has a following. He is standing up well to the saber-rattling from Constantinople, so his successor might be more malleable, but that certainly would not be true if the assassination were exposed. Then the explosion of anger in the Republic would guarantee the corno going to an even harder-liner, and the Sultan will be worse off than before. Of course that might be the purpose-faking a botched attempt on the doge’s life to win support for his policies. I wonder what England’s position is in the current crisis?”