Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

“Madame!” I proclaimed in French, offering a gymnastically low bow suitable for reverence to a goddess. “May I be of assistance?” I added in Veneziano, “Shut up and let me deal with her.”

She uttered a satisfied, “Ha! At last! You speak French, monsieur!”

Better French than she did. “A little,” I said. “Is this oaf causing you trouble?”

“He has brought our costumes for Carnival and refuses to give them up without payment, although we had made an agreement with the seamstress.”

I understood the problem already, but decided to spin it out. “Talk back and threaten me,” I shouted in Veneziano so broad that even a Paduan would not have understood. “Slum-dwelling, dung-eating spawn of a canal rat, you insult the madonna?”

His response flaked plaster off the walls. He was either a lot more skilled at invective than I was, or just well worked up already. Fortunately he had his hands full and I had two to wave, which evened the odds a little. I responded and we screamed at each other for a few minutes. Then I turned to the lady.

“Madame,” I explained calmly. “The wretch expects to be paid for delivering the goods, as if one glimpse of your divine beauty should not be sufficient recompense in itself. Permit me to settle the matter.”

I palmed him half a lira, which was five times what he was demanding and ten times what he had expected. “For the lesson in abuse,” I bellowed, waving a fist. “You have the foulest mouth it has ever been my privilege to meet.”

He thrust the package at me and slunk off as if I had whipped him, calling back curses over his shoulder. What he actually said was, “Blessings on you, lustrissimo, and give the foreign mare the ride of her life.”

Hyacinth said, “Oh! What a disagreeable man! That was most kind of you, m’sieur. If you will wait a moment I will find my purse.”

“I should not dream of accepting one soldo, madame. The honor of being of assistance is recompense enough. You are the Contessa Hyacinth of Feather, are you not, the celebrated English beauty I came to meet? Permit me.” I offered another bow. “Alfeo Zeno, assistant to the celebrated Maestro Nostradamus, clairvoyant, physician, astrologer, philosopher, and sage, honored to be at your service, madame.”

Even in distant England, they knew that name. A tiny frown ruffled her eyebrows. “Nostradamus died years ago.”

“Not Michel Nostradamus, but his even greater nephew, Filippo. You met him two nights ago. And he has talked of little else since.”

“He has?” She peered down at me suspiciously.

My hopes of being invited inside were fading. “He was at the book viewing. You spoke with him.”

“Oh, that shriveled little gnome behind the table? I asked him if he was the clerk. He didn’t speak like a Frenchman.”

She was not the first person I had heard say so. Loyalty has always forbidden me to ask. “He is an expert on old manuscripts.”

“You are selling manuscripts? Why didn’t you say so sooner? Come in, monsieur, er…”

“Zeno.”

She let me enter and locked the door, then marched me through to a roomy, but rather cluttered salotto, whose furniture looked as if it had been rented in the Ghetto, although I could make out little by the light of a single oil lamp. She bade me sit and brought me a glass of malmsey with her own soft, white, shovel-sized hands. She strode around like a musketeer and declaimed louder than a sergeant drilling a platoon. Statuesque, she was. She would have been right at home embracing Mars on the giants’ staircase.

“Sir Bellamy went out to call on some dealers, monsieur. We had promised the servants a night off to enjoy Carnival and Sir Bellamy always keeps his word, although without Domenico it is difficult for us to manage by ourselves.”

Her clothes and hair styling were wrong and I could not read her signals. It was unheard of for a lady of the Republic to entertain a man in her husband’s absence and the absence of servants made the unspeakable unthinkable. Romantic near-darkness would normally turn hint into blatant invitation. Perhaps this was normal social behavior in cold, foggy England, or perhaps she was confident she could knock me senseless with a single blow if I tried anything. Who was Domenico? She was still proclaiming.

“That disgusting exhibition the other night was quite typical. If any Englishman spoke to us the way that vulgar Imer man did, Sir Bellamy would have given him a thorough thrashing. And if he didn’t I would. But it is a joy to meet a man who understands French.”

I suspected that many others did but were unwilling to swim against her accent. “Is it that you have traveled widely, madame?”

“Just France and Rome and Savoy and Tuscany. We brought letters of introduction from many respectable people, including several members of the English and French nobility, you understand, but the recipients have not responded warmly.” She pouted. Her lips looked like ripe plums in the dusk.

“You find our city appealing?”

“Most beautiful!” she said. “But the canals do smell and the people are not friendly. Not like Padua or Verona, even. We have not been invited to a single ball or banquet since we arrived.”

“I am sure this is only a language difficulty, madame. Veneziano is not Roman or Tuscan.”

“Absolutely unintelligible! Nothing like proper Latin. But even when we had Domenico, the nobles never invited us into their palaces. It is most unfriendly. And I know that some of them are very pressed for cash just now. A lot of fine art has been coming on the market, and Sir Bellamy represents several important collectors. He is willing to pay in gold if the price is reasonable.”

She paused to draw breath and I whispered, “Domenico?”

“Domenico Chiari. Sir Bellamy hired him to be our guide and interpreter. He ran out on us three days ago. It makes things very difficult.”

Rich foreigners are always suspect. Either Domenico had been spying for the Ten, or he had been taken in for questioning. “Did he take his belongings with him?”

“Well, yes, he did. Why do you ask?” Sudden suspicion pulled rolls of flesh in around her eyes.

“People can meet with accidents and I could have advised you on how to report the matter.”

I could see no way to bring the conversation around to wineglasses and poison. I wondered how I could lure this bell tower of a woman and her so-trusting husband to Ca’ Barbolano so that the Maestro could interrogate them for himself. She was still galloping ahead of me-

“He walked out on us without asking for his pay. It makes our task here almost impossible. Like two nights ago, when we met your master. The book dealer had told us about the sale at Master Imer’s residence. He assured us that it was open to the public, and of course Sir Bellamy was not going to disgorge the sort of money he wanted without seeing how much other people were willing to pay. The host told us to leave and was very rude about it. Sir Bellamy apologized for the misunderstanding-extremely politely for him-and offered to show the color of his money, but then he became even more offensive and ordered us out of the house at once. He asked your master to translate for him. Sir Bellamy was much offended. He is talking seriously of breaking our lease on these premises and leaving the Republic as soon as possible. The weather is appalling. Worse than England. We can make better purchases in Florence.”

“Karagounis himself had invited you to the supper party?”

“Certainly. And there was no mistake, because we still had Domenico with us when we called on him.”

“Lord Bellamy is a collector of books?” That seemed fairly obvious.

“He isn’t Lord Bellamy. Why do you Venetians have this extraordinary custom of making all your nobility equal? The rest of the world has dukes and counts and so on, including England. Here everybody is sier. Sir Bellamy is a baronet, a chevalier.”