Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

“Bertucci died yesterday.” The doge pushed a massive arm into the shirt a valet was offering.

Saint Valentine’s day. “My master will be chagrined to learn that his warning was not heeded.” I knew he would also be delighted to have his prophecy meet with such a spectacular and public fulfillment, although of course he would not say so, even to me.

“Oh, he knows! He was one of the guests in the Ca’ Imer.”

“A guest, sire?” Mere physicians are not invited to the nobility’s frolics, not even physicians with international reputations. If they were, everyone would still exclude the Maestro, who has the social skills of a porpentine and either insults people or bores them to death.

The doge raised his chin so the valet could fasten his shirt buttons. “He was present, at least. You did not know?”

“No, sire.” I had gone to my weekly fencing lesson and then squired a certain young lady to Carnival on the Lido. The Maestro had not told me that he had been out also, because he hates sharing personal information with anyone. He trusts me, it’s just the principle of the thing. Bruno had not told me because Bruno does not talk.

“Of course,” Nasone said, “when the procurator was stricken, the learned Nostradamus attended him. He advised that the patient be carried home immediately and his own physician summoned.”

“Did he venture a diagnosis?”

“No, but everyone else did.”

I had enjoyed very little sleep in the last two nights, which is my only excuse for being so obtuse that morning. That comment finally blew away my mental fog.

“Lord have mercy!”

“Amen to that!”

“Your Serenity cannot possibly believe-”

“No. No, I don’t,” the doge said grumpily, heaving himself to his feet. “I don’t believe in claptrap about stars and birth signs, either. I do believe your master is the best doctor in the Republic, but he is also an outrageous charlatan with his almanacs and horoscopes-drivel from beginning to end; vague, shapeless, ambiguous, meaningless bombast. I’m sure he swindled dear old Bertucci out of a scandalous heap of gold for a scrap of parchment whose only value was to demonstrate your excellent calligraphy, sier Alfeo Zeno. But I do not believe Filippo Nostradamus would poison a man just to make one of his own rubbishy prophecies come true.”

The valets had turned away to hide grins. Our beloved doge is an atrocious skeptic, as bad as any Protestant or Freemason. His doubts are not confined to astrology; they extend to all supernatural matters, perhaps even to the spiritual, although even he would not dare admit that.

I could say nothing except, “I cannot believe it either.”

“But the rumors have started.” The doge shrugged to adjust the weight of the massive brocade robe his valets had just hung on his shoulders. “I think I can hold the hounds back for three days. No longer. You should be able to get safely away in that time, both of you.”

“He won’t go.” I spoke automatically. The Maestro was old and almost crippled and stubborn beyond measure. I simply could not imagine him running away from a senseless, trumped-up charge of murder. Wisdom had departed, but I was certain he had not, and never would, flee from Venice.

The doge was scowling. “Then you’d best go without him, lad, because poisoning is classed as witchcraft. If he burns, you’ll burn too.”

“How do you know it was poisoning, sire, not just apoplexy? Even if it was murder, there were other people there. Don’t you have to prove my master did it?”

The old man shook his head scornfully. “It’s obvious because he was the only alchemist present. No, I don’t believe that matters, but many people will, and the Three will certainly investigate any suggestion that a procurator has been murdered. I am one among many in the Ten; I have no control at all over the Three. I am taking a risk even telling you this. You have very little time. Get your master across to the mainland and safely over the border.” He took a lurching step and winced. “Yes, I would appreciate a jar of the unguent as a going-away gift.”

I bowed. “Today, sire.”

The doge nodded and took another couple of steps. “Give him a lira, Jacopo.” He spoke off-handedly, because that was his usual tip, then he chuckled. “No, make it a ducat this time. Sciara was a little over-zealous.”

Before I could express the magnitude of my gratitude, he turned back to glower at me. “But I want my Apologeticus Archeteles returned. It’s mine. I loaned it to him months ago.”

“You did?” I said bitterly. That was not how the old rascal had told me to catalogue it. “Then I will find it and deliver it to Your Serenity.”

I hurried along the loggia, down the giants’ staircase to the courtyard, and out through the Porta della Carta, the main gate. The rain had stopped, but a chill wind still blustered across the Piazza San Marco. Clerks were hurrying to work, beggars were already on their stations, and hawkers with baskets on their heads called their wares. It was too early yet in both the day and the year for the gawking foreigners who usually abound. Normally I would have enjoyed walking home, along winding alleys and over innumerable bridges, savoring the beat of the city’s great heart, but that day the situation was critical-had the Maestro truly fled the city? That seemed beyond all belief. The Ten would take it as a confession of guilt. I would be off to the torturers in no time and sier Alvise would hurl everything the Maestro owned out into the canal, cleansing his palace of the taint of murder.

I headed across the Piazzetta toward the Molo. Public gondolas are expensive. I cannot afford them and the Maestro won’t, as he already owns one of his own and employs a man to row it. That day the expense seemed well justified.

Besides, I was a ducat richer. The Maestro provides my room and board-very sumptuously, I admit-but he is sparing, even miserly, when it comes to a clothing allowance. Almost all my spending money comes from the tips his clients and patients give me for performing my arduous duties-opening and closing doors, for instance, and bowing them out. That is the reason I do not flaunt my “NH.” Some people are embarrassed to tip the nobly-born a soldo or two, or else consider my rank an excuse not to. You’d think they would reward me more, not less.

Yesterday’s events now made perfect sense. Bells ring in Venice all the time, but the Maestro, already worried, must have recognized the tolling for Procurator Orseolo and known that his peril was now much greater. He had sent me off to chase wild geese while he consulted the crystal. A very fine prophecy, too- Death the murder causing death the death penalty to break cover but go after the wrong suspect. Venice as La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic, is feminine. The Serene One, in masculine, would be His Serenity the doge, who had moved to send warning and remained unmoved by my protests. The wise Maestro had departed, leaving the mute Bruno behind. Very succinct!

There were dozens of gondolas tied up at the Molo. I picked out a man with arms like a Barbary ape and began haggling, accepting his second offer on condition he sing to me the whole way.

A few strokes of his oar swung us out into the choppy and iron-gray Basin of San Marco, a February desert. At other seasons it teams with great ships swaying at anchor, best seen all sparkly in misty morning light. Here the convoys gather for voyages to distant lands-Seville, Egypt, Constantinople, or far-off England and Flanders-hundreds of galleys, all identical, all state-built and state-owned, rowed by freemen mostly, not criminals, and every one captained by a Venetian nobleman. Here they return with exotic spices, sulfur, wine, olive oil, raisins, currants, timber, and dozens of other cargoes. As a child I dreamed of being the captain of such a ship and sailing to such places. Some days I still do.