The Mirror Thief (77 page)

Perina, Crivano says. How is she? She took a hard blow from a sbirro’s cudgel.

Bruised. Not badly. She will soon recover. I am tending to her.

Crivano grunts, nods, looks at the screen. It’s open at the bottom; he can see Tristão’s slippered feet. Tristão, he says, what are you doing?

Tristão doesn’t answer. After a moment, he steps into view. He’s attired casually in a belted tunic and hose; he looks well-rested, alert. In his outstretched hands he carries a large brass chamberpot, and as he crosses the room, Crivano catches the odor of feces. Oh, Crivano says. I see.

Perina and I bandaged your injuries, Tristão says. She has, I believe, a genuine gift for the treatment of wounds. If you have been able to review our work, I hope you have found it to be adequate.

I have, Crivano says. And I have. For that I thank you. I suppose I should thank you, too, for engineering my rescue last night. Before I do so, I should like to determine if it was you who put me in danger in the first place.

Tristão stops at a high wooden counter, sets the chamberpot down. He stands with his back turned, his eyes on the distant mountains. A difficult question, he says at last. I do not believe that I placed you in danger. Partly Narkis bin Silen did this. Partly you did it yourself. Also, as always, we must blame Fortune. It is true that I might have helped you more, and sooner. I might have informed better, or explained more. But in so doing I greatly would have endangered myself and my own project. Therefore, I did not. It burdens my heart to confess this, but it is indeed so.

Against the windows, his slender black form is edged by fire. He does not move except to speak. A pair of flies has come upon the chamberpot; they float above it in tight spirals, fighting the changeable breeze.

Tristão, Crivano says, what in God’s name has transpired?

Tristão turns. His face appears and disappears in the scarlet sunset. The events of the past week, he says, are perhaps best likened to an obscure codex with a broken spine, the contents of which have been scattered everywhere. All interested parties possess a few pages, but only the book’s author knows the whole. Indeed, even the author himself may have forgotten.

Who is the author?

I do not know.

Crivano frowns, crosses his arms. Pain shoots down the length of his right ulna, and he uncrosses them again. Very well, he says. Tell me this. What is your interest? How did you come by your pages?

At first Tristão doesn’t answer. He lifts a touchwood from the counter behind him, ignites it in the brazier, and puts it to the wicks of several candles around the room. The high ceiling begins to catch their light. In both Ghettos, he says, I am acquainted with many learned men. Among the so-called German Jews of the New Ghetto, and also in the Old Ghetto, where my own people live. Through these men I have come to correspond with scholars in many cities, Constantinople perhaps foremost among them. Generally our correspondence consists of discussion about our mutual pursuit of secret knowledge, but sometimes we share news, or ask of each other simple favors. This is how I came by my pages.

Someone in Constantinople told you about me. Someone told you that I’m a spy for the haseki sultan.

I have learned that you believed yourself to be so, yes.

And you knew of the plot with the mirrormakers.

I knew what you knew of it, Tristão says. I also knew that Narkis bin Silen had made other arrangements for their removal. Please understand that this, to me, was only trivia. It remained so until I became aware that your enterprise was ruined. At that time I perceived a means of helping you, and of helping myself also. Only then did I interfere.

You arranged my meeting with Narkis at Ciotti’s shop. You knew it to be watched by sbirri. You wanted us to be seen by them. To be seen together.

What you have spoken, Tristão says, is indeed so.

Why?

Tristão lights the last of the candles, throws the slender brand into the brazier. Then he gathers handfuls of firewood chips from a bin and drops them in, as well. They flare and blacken on the white-hot coals, and for a moment the round brazier seems to recapitulate the setting sun.

The sbirri were following you already, Tristão says. I suspect they had already gleaned the crude outlines of your plot. I reasoned that if I could induce you to associate openly with the Minerva bookshop, with the Uranici, with reputed magi like myself, then the dimensions of your conspiracy might seem larger than they were, and the Council of Ten might postpone your arrest until more could be learned. Had not Lord Mocenigus’s unexpected denunciation of the Nolan spurred the Ten to swifter action, you and the mirrormakers might have escaped the city with minimal bloodshed. Narkis bin Silen, of course, had doomed himself from the outset. I had been informed of his intention to remove the mirrormakers to the territories of the Mughals, and I knew this to be hopeless and ridiculous, but I saw no reason why his careful preparations could not be redirected toward practical ends. I lured him to the bookshop to make him known to the sbirri, in the hope that they would eliminate him before his foolishness ruined your entire project.

Crivano purses his lips. He supposes he should be angry, but he is not. When you speak of practical ends, he says, I assume you’re referring—

I mean only that the mirrormakers and their party are now to be taken not to faraway Lahore, nor even to Constantinople, but to Amsterdam, exactly as they have been promised all along.

The expression on Tristão’s face is so sincere, so devoid of irony, that Crivano can’t help but laugh and shake his head. Let me ask once more, Crivano says, for I still lack understanding: what is your interest in this matter? On this you have yet to speak.

Tristão looks at him appraisingly. His eyes seem dimmed by regret, or sadness. In his hesitation Crivano perceives no fear. Almost everyone whom Crivano has met since he came here, even Senator Contarini himself, has seemed wary of him—everyone but Tristão, whose ambitions are even grander than his own, who has even less to lose.

After a moment, Tristão lifts a long metal spoon from the countertop and dips it into the chamberpot. He scoops up a quantity of feces—the stench intensifies in the fire-warmed air—and transfers it to a thick-walled beaker, scraping the spoon clean with a polished wooden rod. Then he adds water from a pitcher, stirs, and turns to the rows of jars and phials in the cabinet behind him. I have, he says, two principal interests. I have pursued both in this city with zeal and considerable satisfaction, but in both I have now reached an impasse. While your recent misfortunes sadden me, they have also provided me with a solution that is, I believe, comprehensive.

You’re going to Amsterdam, Crivano says. With my mirrormakers.

That is my intent, yes.

Crivano shifts his weight, smoothes his matted hair with an absent left hand: the right one hurts too much to lift. He needs a chair. He finds one against the wall by the door, turns it around, drags it noisily across the floorplanks. Then he slumps into it to watch Tristão add blue and green salts to the beaker’s vile contents.

You’re performing the first operation, Crivano says.

I am, yes.

You’re beginning the Great Work with shit.

It is perhaps not the only way, Tristão says, but I think it best. I have been cautious with my diet since the fine meal you and I shared at the White Eagle, eating only what is mercurial, martial, and venereal, according to the classifications of Marsilius Ficinus. It would have been better had I fasted through the previous week, but of course much has arisen that was unforeseen.

You hold with those who believe the
prima materia
to be excrement.

I believe that excrement can serve as such, if one makes certain preparations. In the works of Rupescissa we find the
prima materia
described as a worthless thing, found easily anywhere. Morienus tells us that all men, highborn and low, regard the
prima materia
with contempt, and that the vulgar sell it like mud. To what sort of matter might these descriptions apply, besides dung?

Most alchemists regard those descriptions as allegorical, Tristão.

Yes, Tristão says. In doing so, I believe they are mistaken.

He measures a quantity of red crystals—Crivano can’t tell what—onto a scale until it balances against a five-grain weight. Then he pours them into the beaker, and stirs with a sheepish grin. Of course, he says, all we alchemists regard our rivals as deluded fools. In this I typify my species.

The wooden rod swirls the brown liquid, chimes against the beaker’s edge. It sounds like a churchbell heard on a warm day across miles of calm ocean.

A moment ago, Crivano prompts, you were speaking of your two interests.

Tristão sets the wooden rod on the countertop with a heavy sigh. I hope you will forgive my clumsy reticence, he says. Often I find myself at a loss when compelled to speak of things that are perfectly natural. Of perfectly ordinary human concerns.

You’re referring to Perina, I suppose.

Tristão glances up, his expression bashful, his eyes bright and relieved. Ah! he says. I envy your intuition, Vettor, and am grateful for it. She is, as you have discerned, my love. Because she is a daughter of nobility, and because I am what I am, our union will never be permitted in the Republic’s territories. Thus we have chosen to depart.

Amsterdam will be more accepting, you think?

It scarcely could be less so, my friend.

A set of iron firetools hangs from the brazier’s rim; Tristão reaches for a poker, stirs the blaze, uses a small spade to load the lower chamber of the athanor. Slow squeezes of a bellows coax a steady glow from the coals; Tristão takes up a stout crystal cucurbit on the counter. His firelit face appears fleetingly in the surface of the mirror-talisman; Crivano starts when he sees it, as if it might be a conjured demon wearing the face of its impious summoner. Outside, behind the dark form of the church, the lights of linkboys move down the fondamenta that abuts the canal.

What of your second interest? Crivano says. What is that?

Tristão shrugs, pours ordure from the beaker into the cucurbit. My continued studies, he says. When last we spoke in the Morosini house, I told you I intend to explore optical phenomena associated with the Great Work. I now lack resources to do this; in this city I have no reasonable expectation that my lack will be remedied. I require unfettered access to mirrormakers. In Amsterdam I will have it.

Crivano watches Tristão fasten an alembic to the cucurbit, a glass bulb to the alembic’s downsloping neck. The devices are so well-made and well-cleaned as to be invisible but for the candleflames they reflect. The shape of the alembic echoes the beaked mask of the plaguedoctor. Crivano smiles; his eyelids sag with sleep.

Obizzo told me of your new plans for escape, he says. Rowing to the trabacolo. Feigning an embarkation. Do you really believe this will succeed?

Do you see reason to doubt?

If the Council of Ten knows what ship you intend to use, the sbirri will meet you in the lagoon. Or they’ll already be aboard when you arrive.

They do not know what ship, Tristão says. Aside from the sailors themselves, who have been told nothing of their expected passengers, no soul in this city aside from myself knows the name of the vessel that is to bear us.

Narkis knew, Crivano says. So did the Mughal spies with whom he collaborated.

Tristão busies himself in the athanor’s upper enclosure. He fixes the
cucurbit in a sand-bath, balances the glass apparatus on a rack above the coals’ rising heat. Narkis bin Silen was alone, he says. Even his fellow residents at the fondaco had no knowledge of his activities. And his Mughal friends are not here. They await him in Trieste, I believe.

You’re sure he confessed nothing prior to his death?

I am, yes.

Wherefore this certainty, Tristão?

I was present when Narkis bin Silen died.

Tristão moves his hands away from the arrangement of glass atop the athanor. It retains its position. Then he adjusts the height of the platform that bears the coals below. He does not look at Crivano.

I did not kill him, Tristão says. I certainly would have done so, had that been necessary. But he knew what was possible, and what was not. I told him who I was. He understood. He put a cord around his neck, and he hanged himself from the Madonnetta Bridge. I cut his body down and let him drift in the canal. It was not a happy end, Vettor. Not at all. But for him no better end would have come.

Crivano watches his friend’s smooth face, intent in the orange light. He isn’t sure he believes Tristão. He isn’t sure it matters anymore.

If the Council of Ten doesn’t know what ship you’ll use, Crivano says, why bother with the simulation of boarding? None will be watching to be deceived.

Tristão’s hands fidget around the clay cylinder, although there is nothing more to arrange, no task left to accomplish. An additional precaution, he says. Sbirri will patrol the lagoon, and may see our lights. They will also be keeping careful record of vessels passing through the channel at San Nicolò. Once they learn the glassmakers have gone, they and the guild are likely to send assassins. I much prefer that those assassins be sent to Constantinople, not to Amsterdam.

Crivano is silent. Tristão continues to bustle around his apparatus until this demonstration can’t help but seem asinine. Then he straightens, sighs, turns to meet Crivano’s gaze.

You’re lying, Crivano says.

Tristão looks wounded. Not at all, he says. Why do you accuse me of this?

It’s a foolish risk you’ve planned, to no certain profit. As you’ve said, the sbirri are patrolling the lagoon. Why tarry, then, with elaborate charades that no one may see? Why not row headlong for Mestre?

Tristão remains silent, moistens his lips with his tongue.

It’s not a charade you need, Crivano says. It’s a diversion. You need the Council of Ten to
know
what ship we’ll use. To have good reason to believe we’ve sailed on it.

The trabacolo, Tristão says, is called the
Lynceus
. Its crew expects to sail for Trieste, of course, but for the right sum, I imagine they will go anywhere in the Adriatic. Any port you might wish.