Dave Duncan

The Alchemist's Pursuit

1

This doesn't make any sense," I said. "What use is it?" I saw at once that I had asked a bad question. My master was glaring at me.

He had spent all morning instructing me in numerology-gematria, isopsephy, and similar thrilling pastimes. He had quoted from the Kabbalah, Pythagoras, Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim, Hermes Trismegistus, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Saint John the Divine, and his own celebrated uncle, the late Michel de Nostredame, marking critical passages that I was now required to memorize. He had set me a dozen problems to work out in my free time, if I ever got any.

And I had just implied that he had been wasting his time and mine.

I never know from one hour to the next what he will tell me to do: cast horoscopes, run errands, blend potions, help him with patients, rescue damsels, memorize pages of ancient mumbo jumbo, cast spells, decrypt letters, massage the doge's lumbosacral musculature, or fight for my life-all in the day's work. Apprentices do as they are told; they never ask why.

Yesterday it had been sortilege. Today it was numerology. The real problem was the excess of rheum in his hips, which the current February weather had aggravated until now he was barely able to walk. He had needed help from Bruno, our porter, just to make it out of bed and across the salone to his favorite chair in the atelier. There he had refused any breakfast and set out to stuff me with fifteen hundred years of numerology before noon as a way of taking his mind off hurting and growing old. I had run back and forth at his bidding, doing calculations at the desk, fetching musty tomes from the great wall of books, squatting alongside his chair while we went over the texts, word by incomprehensible word. I admit that he never complains of his infirmities, but when they trouble him he complains massively about everything else. I had never known him crabbier than that morning. It was past noon, dinnertime.

"Sense?" he snarled. "Sense? You mean it does not appear to make sense to you! Do you claim more intelligence than San Zorzi or Pythagoras? Can you concede that smarter or better informed persons might make sense of it?"

"Of course, master."

"For instance, suppose you explain to me how the doge is elected?"

Doge? So far as I knew, our prince was still in reasonable health for his age. I had updated his horoscope just a month ago, and it had shown no need to elect Pietro Moro's successor for several years yet. The way Venice chooses its head of state is certainly madder than any numerology, but I felt the Maestro was playing unfairly by throwing it in my face.

"The patricians of the Great Council, but only those over thirty years of-"

Thunk… thunk…

Saved! Seldom have I been happier to hear our front door knocker. I rose, relieved to straighten my knees. The Maestro scowled, but greeting visitors is another of my jobs. I went out into the salone and opened the big door.

The visitor was unfamiliar, wearing a gondolier's jerkin and baggy trousers in house colors I did not recognize, but his sullen, resentful expression was all too typical of his trade. He was taller, wider, and older than I.

"For Doctor Nostradamus," he said, thrusting a letter at me. That was the name written on the paper, but he wouldn't know it unless he had been told.

"I'll give it to him directly. Wait for the reply." I shut the door on him and went back into the atelier.

"Read it," the Maestro growled impatiently. He is old and shrunken, but that day he seemed more wizened than ever, huddled in his black physician's robe, clutching a cane in one hand, with another lying nearby, balanced on a column of books. Normally he walks with the aid of a long and elaborately decorated staff, but lately he had been forced into using two canes. He dyes his goatee brown and days of neglect had turned the roots to the same bright silver as the wisps of hair dangling from under his bonnet.

I broke the wax and unfolded the parchment. "It's from the manservant of sier Giovanni Gradenigo, written in an appalling scrawl and signed 'Battista' in the same hand. He begs you to attend his master in haste because other doctors have given up hope of his recovery."

The Maestro winced at the thought of going anywhere. "He's no patient of mine."

"No, master. Sier Lorenzo Gradenigo commissioned a horoscope from you four years ago, but he belongs to another branch of-"

"I know that! Tell him to call Modestus."

"The letter is from the Palazzo Gradenigo. Those Gradenigos are richer than the Pharaohs ever were."

The Maestro winced again, this time at the thought of the fee he was losing. Where money is concerned, if he can't take it with him he's not going. His medical practice has dwindled to a few very wealthy or important persons and he rarely gets called out any more, but this attack had him so crippled that he would be unable even to stand at a patient's bedside. "Do as I say!"

"Yes, master."

I went over to the desk and penned a quick note, recommending Isaia Modestus of the Ghetto Nuovo as the second-best doctor in Venice. I signed the Maestro's name to it, sealed it with his signet, and took it out to Surly, who scowled at the soldo I offered him.

"It's as much as I ever get," I told him cheerfully.

"I can see why." With that parting sneer, he took the coin and slouched off down the marble staircase. He ought to know by now that the grander a palace is, the worse the chance of a decent tip.

I locked the door behind him, but I paused outside the atelier because I saw Mama Angeli rolling along the salone toward me without a glance at all the magnificent Titian and Tintoretto paintings, the giant statues, and the shining Murano mirrors she was passing. She carried a burping baby on her shoulder, while a squalling toddler staggered in her wake. She has lots more that came from where those came from-and a flourishing herd of grandchildren besides-but she is the finest cook in Venice, and when I say "rolling" I am not exaggerating much.

She glowered at me, chins raised in anger. "My Filetti di San Pietro in Salsa d'Arencia will be ruined."

I groaned and rumbled simultaneously. "The Ten could use you. None of their torturers can touch you for pure sadism. I'll see what I can do."

That wasn't much. I got no further than the first syllable of Mama's name.

"Sit!" The Maestro jabbed a gnarled finger at the floor by his chair.

"Yes, master." Instead of sitting on the floor as suggested, I planted myself on one of the piles of books that stood around his chair. I wasn't seriously worried that otherwise he might order me to roll over so he could scratch my tummy, but the thought did occur to me. I would probably have to re-shelve every one of the books before I got any dinner, if I ever did get any dinner. Nostradamus forgets all about food at times. He could outfast a camel.

"Now," he said, screwing up his face in a truly hideous grimace, "explain to an ignorant foreign-born how the Venetians elect their doges."

"The Great Council starts by drawing lots," I said. "That's called sortilege." Probably almost all the twelve hundred or so eligible patricians will attend for a ducal election, because they happen rarely. "Each one draws a ball out of the pot and thirty of those bear a secret mark." The Maestro must have been told all this sometime and he never forgets anything. I couldn't see what it had to do with numerology. Or my dinner.

"Then they draw lots to reduce the thirty to nine." I had been hoping to eat quickly and pay a brief but possibly rewarding visit to my adored Violetta, who lives in the house next door, Number 96. She works nights and I work days, so the noon break is our best chance to be together. I had not seen her for three days and was missing her sorely. "Then the nine elect forty. The forty are reduced by lot to-"