Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Allow me to introduce Vettor Crivano, he says, who is to be your collaborator on this morning’s errand. Dottore Crivano is from Cyprus, and lived for a number of years among your people. Dottore Crivano, this is Narkis bin Silen, who joins us today from the Turkish fondaco.

Crivano and Narkis exchange stiff bows.

My eminent friends, Ciotti says, I have no wish to detain you today longer than is necessary. My request is simple. A young gentleman of my acquaintance has recruited me to publish — in limited circulation — a Latin rendering of a brief practical work by the Muhammadan alchemist Geber. The work has come into this gentleman’s possession in its original Arab script, and I have retained a scholar from Padua to execute a translation. My concerns, and those of my patron, center on the accuracy of this translation. I gather that our scholar is a very learned man, but also a bit of a poet, and somewhat given to ornament at the expense of clarity. You both have the advantage of knowing the great Geber’s original tongue, and you share an understanding of the practical considerations of a working alchemist. I ask merely that you examine the Latin against the original and evaluate its suitability with these concerns in mind. I can compensate you in coin, or in merchandise. Although, he smiles, I strongly encourage you to take the merchandise.

Ciotti chases the two proofreaders from the shop, sending them off with fistfuls of copper gazettes to a casino on the opposite side of the block, then lays the manuscripts on the thick table. The sun is high enough that it misses the window, but it bounces from the fresh-plastered wall across the alley, giving them plenty of light to work.

Ciotti returns to his office, but leaves his door open. Crivano searches Narkis’s face for a sign of how to proceed, but the look he gets back is so bereft of recognition that he wonders for a moment, against all reason, whether this can be Narkis at all, and not some never-suspected identical twin. The little Macedonian seems to assess him with an equal measure of curiosity and revulsion, as one might inspect a strange songbird found dead beneath a newly glazed palace window.

They seat themselves. With a flicker of his eyes, Narkis indicates that Crivano should take the original document. Crivano settles in his chair and begins to read from it aloud. It’s a brief text; he reads slowly. Narkis moves an inkwell within his reach and stares down at the Latin translation with steady half-lidded eyes.

The text is a treatise on the transmutation of metals, fairly unremarkable in its content had it not been written by the great Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, known to the Franks as Geber. As Ciotti no doubt knows, it’s almost certainly a fake — a latter-day imitator or, worse, a translation into Arabic of an original Latin forgery. But this is not the issue Ciotti has asked them to address.

Crivano steals a glance at Narkis from time to time as he reads. Their encounter in the apothecary’s shop was fleeting by design; this is the first close look Crivano has managed since their appointment months ago in Ravenna. Narkis’s face is smooth, unfurrowed, almost a child’s face, fairer than Crivano’s and Ciotti’s both. Even here he retains his stork-like sense of enclosed calm. The hand which travels to and from the inkwell has a black bird emblazoned on its skin, the emblem of his orta, and Crivano considers how different his own fate would have been had Fortune seen him marked thusly, rather than on his chest and his leg, under his clothes.

For half an hour they work through the text. Narkis sometimes interrupts with a question, sometimes makes a notation in his margins. The tension is almost unbearable. Crivano begins to wonder if Narkis is waiting for some signal from him, but can’t imagine what that might be. He becomes sloppy in his recitation, repeating some lines while skipping others, and Narkis gently corrects him.

Then, without looking up, Narkis makes a swift gesture with his right hand and touches his fingers to his lips. This is işaret, the language of deaf-mutes, known by all who have served in the sultan’s silent inner court. Crivano never managed to learn it well; much of what he once knew he’s forgotten. But he understands well enough now. Speak , Narkis says. Tell me .

Take any portion of the stone with its mixture , Crivano reads, and grind it with copperas and sal ammoniac and water until it becomes black . The glassmaker and the mirrormaker are both committed, and are ready to depart upon a few hours’ notice. We await your instructions. Then subject it to very slight heat until it takes on the odor of a man’s ejaculate .

Crivano keeps his voice flat, his inflection uniform. His stomach tightens as he makes his report, though he knows no one within earshot but Narkis can understand his Arabic words; they hear only his ongoing recitation.

Narkis’s hands speak again: What of the dead man?

He’s in the lagoon. No one will find him. I have heard of no disturbance related to his vanishing. When it has that smell, remove it and wash it gently with pure water, then roast it with low heat until you perceive a visible vapor .

Narkis nods. Then he speaks aloud, also in Arabic. The glassmaker’s refusal to leave Murano without his wife and sons is very bad, he says. The risk is unreasonable. Can he be dissuaded? Can you convince him that they will be delivered to him in time?

This was the principal demand in Serena’s hidden message, the chief feature of Crivano’s encoded report. He’d hoped that it wouldn’t present any great difficulty — once Narkis has arranged an escape for three men, what trouble is the addition of two boys and a woman? — but evidently his hope was misplaced. The glassmaker is no fool, Crivano says. We have to do what he asks. Don’t worry about the family. I’ll find a way to include them without compromising our project. In this fashion the water will be driven off, and the weight of the stone will be reduced, yet without the loss of its essence .

I have found a ship, Narkis says. It departs from Spalato in three weeks’ time.

It’s now Crivano’s turn to be vexed. From Spalato? he says. Why not from here? Remove it and submerge it again in water, and make a powder of it under water, and roast it again as before. Its blackness now diminishes .

Too dangerous , Narkis says with his hands. The journey must begin by road .

He’s worried about the uskoks, Crivano realizes. Take off the dry stone when the water has been absorbed , he says. This is certain to create difficulties. The craftsmen still believe they’re being taken to Amsterdam, not Constantinople. The mirrormaker in particular is very desperate, and will not be easy to control. I fear he’ll try to escape to the Netherlands on his own if he reaches the mainland. Grind it in pure water and roast it again. It becomes green, and the blackness vanishes .

Persuade him to cooperate , Narkis’s hands say. Then his voice. I will take my payment today in coin, he says. You will take yours in books. I will hide the information you need inside the Latin Kitab-al-Manazir on our host’s front table. The second book in the stack. You and the craftsmen must be prepared to embark at Cannaregio for the mainland in three days.

Narkis looks up from the manuscript to meet Crivano’s eyes. He holds them for a moment, then looks down, and does not speak again.

Within the hour the text is finished. The two of them browse the books in the front room in silence as Ciotti fetches Narkis’s payment from his strongbox: a small stack of soldi. Crivano presents Ciotti with his selections — a new translation of Galen, one of the Nolan’s works, the Kitab-al-Manazir —and by the time Ciotti has deducted them from his inventory, Narkis has gone.