The Alchemist's Apprentice (5 page)

“So what was this message?” the Maestro demanded.

“I paid the gondolier five
soldi
.”

His eyes glinted. “That's your privilege if you're too lazy to walk.”

“True. But then I can't be here for another twenty minutes.”

I spooned soup, smacking my lips to decorate the silence. I'm never quite sure when his crabbiness is genuine and when he's just staging a fit of pique for our mutual amusement.

This time he conceded the point. “Enter it in the ledger, then.”

“Oh, thank you, master! Most generous of you. As you foresaw, we had an important visitor about an hour after midnight. I congratulate you on the quatrain. Admirable personification, antanaclasis, and metonymy.” I gulped and winced my way through my soup and the events of the night while the Maestro never took his eyes off me. He kept his book open and his finger on the place.

“It was a charade, of course,” I concluded. “The doge is the only permanent member of the Ten and Sciara has been
Circospetto
for years, so they must know how to work together. They want to give you a chance to escape before they are forced to open a formal inquiry. Sciara was mad that you were not here for him to bully. That's all.”

“If you believe that, you're even more naive than you look.” My master smiled, meaning he bunched up his cheeks and stretched his lips sideways without showing his teeth.

With saintly patience, I said, “If you had been home last night, Sciara would have given you the message and left, taking his guards with him. You weren't, so he made the point more forcibly by scaring me half to death. But the doge is insistent—you must flee!”

I could guess what was coming from the jutting angle of the goatee.

“No! I'm too old to start over somewhere else. There is my wealth—” He waved a hand at the bookshelves. “Will you carry them for me? And where will I find a new clientele, a new palace to live in, new printers for my almanacs?”

I sympathized. I did not want to run away either, to be a homeless vagrant. But the risk was appalling.

“Can you prove that Procurator Orseolo died of apoplexy or hemorrhage or anything other than poison?”

The Maestro removed his finger and slammed the book shut. “Of course not. As soon as I examined him I knew he had been poisoned.”

I burned my tongue and spluttered. “Did you say so?”

“You think I am an idiot?”

“Not until now. It wasn't your doing, I hope?”

“No, it was not.” The fact that he answered the question at all showed that he was worried. He could see his predicament; it was the solution he rejected.

I cut myself a hunk of bread and a wad of mozzarella. Needing some chewing time, I said, “If you didn't poison him, who did?”

“I don't know.” He seemed to shrink slightly, unaccustomed to admitting ignorance. “Ottone Imer is an attorney of citizen class and a bibliophile with more taste than money. Alexius Karagounis is a book dealer from Athens. He had some rare volumes to offer—looted from some Macedonian monastery, no doubt. Imer invited a few of the city's most prominent collectors to view them at his house.”

In this case
prominent
meant
wealthy
. The Greek would face tax or licensing problems if he tried to sell the books openly in the Republic. Imer had acted as official host in return for a commission, and the learned Doctor Nostradamus had been hired as a consultant to testify to the works' authenticity. He was a prominent collector too, but he could not compete with the truly rich. This all made sense.

“Did he have anything worthwhile?”

“Three or four minor pieces.” My master sighed piteously. “An almost complete Book Ten of the
Aeneid
written in an uncial hand that cannot possibly be later than Eighth Century. Incredible condition, but unmistakably genuine. Possibly the oldest copy known. Then there was something that
might
be one of the lost plays of Euripides.”

I gulped down my cud to ask, “Worth killing for?”

Another sigh. “If genuine it would fetch thousands of ducats.”

“I would kill for that.”

Nostradamus ignored my repartee. “I arrived early,” he continued, “so I could view the books. I met Imer and Karagounis, and they showed me the manuscripts, all laid out on one long table. I inspected them and agreed that they all appeared to be quite genuine. I remained in my chair—and the Greek stayed with me as if he thought I might grab his treasures and run away with them! I resented his supervision at the time, but now I welcome it, for I cannot be accused of tampering with the wine. I was never near the wine! When the guests arrived, most were shown into the
salotto
. The prospective buyers came into the dining room to inspect the books with their glasses already in their hands. Eventually our host realized that I had not been offered refreshment and ordered the footman to bring me the wine of my choice.”

“Then the books were auctioned?”

“Nothing so crass! Discreet negotiations were to be held later in the evening. When everyone had expressed admiration, we joined the ladies and other gentlemen in the
salotto
so the servants could lay out a supper in the dining room. Eventually we all went back there, but we had not even started on the antipasto when the procurator was stricken and we all went home.” Again he sighed and his eyes grew quite misty. “The Greek still owns his books. But he is a foreigner. They will suspect him first.” He was conveniently forgetting that he was foreign-born himself, although he had been granted full citizenship as a bribe to move to the city, many years ago. The Republic is notorious for luring all the best doctors in Italy to come and live in Venice.

I said, “The Greek is not an alchemist, and you are. Sudden death always provokes rumors of poison and most people cannot distinguish between poisoning and witchcraft. That was why you were so crabby yesterday. Also why you sent me out to buy half the poisons in the pharmacopeia—nux vomica, hellebore…You are planning to test each one to find out which creates the same symptoms? Shall I ask Giorgio to bring in his children?”

“Fool! I do not know why I put up with you. I knew at once.” The Maestro leaned on his elbows and put his fingertips together, a sure sign that I was about to be lectured. His hands are as delicate as a woman's. “The patient was an elderly male of choleric temperament. He limped slightly on his right leg and had old trauma scars on his right hand, with some loss of mobility. These were likely related to his reputation as a former war hero. I detected minor flashes of irascibility and hints of dysphasia, which I posited as the onset of
dementia senilis
. They would not yet be obvious to the layman. His family probably just regarded him as testy. He began to show signs of distress at the supper table—profuse sweating and salivation. I was not at all surprised when he excused himself and got up from his chair.”

“Nausea? Urination? The company would forgive an elderly man's need to visit the closet, surely?”

“But he stumbled as he turned. A footman caught him and of course I went to assist. I detected an extremely rapid and irregular heartbeat; also some vomiturition. The patient displayed confusion, not recognizing me although we had spoken only minutes earlier. He asked me several times why I was blue.” The Maestro's little cat smile meant that it was time for me to interpret.

“Oleander poisoning?”

He nodded grudgingly. “A not unreasonable hypothesis. Many physicians would make the same mistake. But oleander induces retinal toxicity only in chronic cases.”

So the blue illusion must be significant, but it was a new symptom to me. I thumped my brain to spill out whatever it knew about diuretics and expectorants. Nothing relevant appeared, but Gerolamo the herbalist had mentioned a laxative that might be appropriate. I made a guess.

“Virgin's glove?”

The Maestro's nod of approval was intended to mask annoyance. His hands withdrew into his lap. “Very good! Continue.”

“Also known as fairy thimbles or witches' gloves or foxglove. In his celebrated
De Historia Stirpium Commentarii
, the learned Leonard Fuchs named it digitalis.” Which was how it was labeled in the Maestro's collection—so why had he sent me to buy more, and under another name? “As I recall the medical uses of foxglove, the fresh leaves, when bruised, are efficacious in the treatment of wounds and the juice is used to relieve scrofula. Internally it can be taken as a laxative, but is unpredictable and dangerously toxic. What treatment did you advocate?”

He pouted. “I suggested that his own physician be summoned at once, as he would be more familiar with the procurator's regimen.”

The first treatment for suspected poisoning is to induce vomiting, but the patient had been retching spontaneously without ejecting any matter. A rapid pulse would suggest that the patient should be bled, but he was elderly and might have unknown ailments. Even sips of water might have been dangerous. The Maestro had diagnosed murder and seen his own danger; any advice he had given would have been suspect. I could not blame him for taking the path of caution in this instance.

“Can you estimate when the patient ingested the poison?”

He shrugged. “He had obviously not eaten recently.”

“You imply that he must have been poisoned after he arrived?”

“An obvious hypothesis. And whatever the toxin, it must be extremely potent to be concealed in a glass of wine. The learned Paracelsus wrote that anything is poisonous in sufficient dosage.”

Worse and worse. “So there is no hope of laying the blame on tainted food in his own household?”

“No, and he had certainly not been munching on a salad of oleander. The dried and powdered leaf of digitalis can be prescribed for internal use, as a laxative, and it is rumored to soothe a raging heart. Possibly he took an accidental overdose, in which case we need not fear a murder charge. The man's doctor must be interrogated.”

I said, “He's probably a Jew, in which case he has likely been arrested already. If I were one of the state inquisitors, I should now be putting Imer's servants to the question, especially the footmen who served the wine.”

“But you are not!”

“Then why don't you offer one of the servants an enormous bribe to run away and take the suspicion with him?”

He shook his head, still angry. “No, we can ignore the servants, so—”

“Why?”

The Maestro matched up his fingertips again for another lecture. “Why should an attorney's footman want to murder a procurator? Only if bribed to do so by someone of high rank, and if he is fool enough to be still in the city, then the Ten can catch him and torture the truth out of him. The doge would not be warning me away if he expected that to happen. But even the Three will not question the gentry rigorously without good reason to do so, certainly not torture them. The courtesans may not fare quite as well as the nobility, but even they—”

“Courtesans?”

He pouted. “There were several there. Your friend was one of them. Is she capable of poisoning a man, one who insulted her, say?”

“Certainly. I'll ask her if she remembers doing so.” Violetta is a neighbor and the most prized courtesan in the city. The lady and I are friends, but I do not employ her services. One night with Violetta costs more than I earn in a year.

The Maestro pulled a sour smile. “Then you now have two reasons to help me find the murderer. If I had the birthday and time of birth of everyone who was present, their horoscopes…but the law will require palpable evidence, either eyewitnesses or a confession.”

“Denizens of the infernal regions must know.”

“Don't be absurd!” He glared at me. “Beg my life from a fiend? Don't you hear anything I teach you? I can't do that.”

He was hinting that I could. For me to try to save him would be altruistic and therefore less dangerous. Not safe, just less dangerous. Summoning is best done after dark, when demons are more active and there are fewer people around to catch you at it. I would decide then whether to take the risk.

I thought of another problem. “How much foxglove would be needed? And what does it taste like?” I rose to reach for the
De Historia Stirpium Commentarii
that lay on his side of the desk. “Would wine disguise its taste?”

“Sit down. You think I have not consulted the herbals? Most poisons are vile-tasting, as you know, because they are tainted by the Evil One. Foxglove is so bitter that livestock will not graze it, whereas they do die from eating oleander. The taste and dosage would depend on how the essence was extracted. Steeping in water may be enough, or spirituous extraction followed by reduction. I shall conduct some experiments.”

“If you have any sense at all,” I said, “you will throw your entire supply in the canal and destroy the label on the bottle. Yesterday you sent me out to buy every nasty thing in the pharmacopeia. Was that a wise action?”