Alchemy, page 15
‘Your sister must be a great beauty,’ Besler said with a flourish of gallantry.
Strada glanced back at him, his smile restrained. ‘I am hardly the person to judge. I think it is more that she has the knack of soothing him. But you can decide for yourself.’ He paused at my puzzled expression. ‘Forgive me – I thought the messenger had explained? It is my father who wished to see you. Here – these are my family’s private quarters.’
We crossed a large, comfortable chamber and Ottavio opened a door into a smaller room, the light dimmed by heavy drapes pulled across the window. I followed him in and caught the close, musty smell of a sickroom. We found ourselves in a bedchamber, a carved four-poster dominating the space, its curtains drawn back to reveal a white-haired man propped amid a complicated scaffolding of pillows. On a chair beside the bed sat a young woman, a book open in her hands, though she had paused in her reading to look up as we entered.
‘Ecco, my father Jacopo Strada,’ Ottavio said, gesturing to the bed. ‘And my sister Katherina.’
The woman stood up and bobbed a brief curtsy. I imagined Besler would be disappointed. She was a few years younger than her brother, who appeared to have inherited all the looks in the family. Katherina was well into her thirties, tall with a flat, boyish figure and brown hair caught up in a twist under a linen cap; her long, straight nose mirrored that of the man in the bed. True, she was no striking beauty in the manner of Esther Loew, but there was a gentleness to her face, especially in her wide brown eyes, that made me see how a man with the cares of empire on his shoulders might want to lay his head in her lap while she stroked his brow.
‘We were just having some Dante,’ she said, raising the book.
‘That would make anyone feel better about his ailments,’ I said, and she smiled shyly.
‘So this is the famous Neapolitan,’ said the old man in the bed, pushing himself upright. ‘Come here and let me look at you.’
His chest rose and fell effortfully as he breathed, but his voice was firm and the dark eyes that settled on me unnervingly bright; nothing wrong with his mind, I thought, seeing the way he appraised me. I took the arthritic hand he extended and kissed it respectfully.
‘My father particularly wanted to make your acquaintance,’ Ottavio prompted. He seemed ill at ease in the old man’s presence, and I wondered if he was embarrassed by Jacopo’s presumption in dragging me across the city at his demand.
‘Signore Strada,’ I said. ‘It is an honour.’
‘Pardon me for greeting you in this state, Dr Bruno,’ Jacopo said. ‘On a good day I get up and dressed, but today is not such a good day. I had hoped to show you around our collection of treasures – my son tells me you are greatly interested in the Kunstkammer.’
‘I could spend a month there and not stop marvelling,’ I said.
‘A month?’ He laughed, which turned abruptly to a coughing fit; Katherina leaned forward anxiously with an enamel bowl for him to spit into. ‘You could be shut in there half a year and not scratch the surface,’ he said, when he had recovered. ‘Once I am well enough, I will give you a tour,’ he added. ‘More than fifty years of collecting, and each object with its own story.’
‘I would like that very much, signore,’ I said, ‘and so would my assistant, Besler.’
Besler stepped forward with a neat bow; Jacopo eyed him briefly and nodded.
‘Well, young man,’ he said in German, ‘if you wish to see the Kunstkammer, I’m sure my son can spare a few moments to show you now, eh Ottavio?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Ottavio shot me a complicit look; evidently his father wanted to speak to me alone.
‘There is one thing Besler is particularly keen to see,’ I said. ‘A certain celebrated door knocker?’
Ottavio smiled. ‘Ah. Of course. If you would care to follow me, Herr Besler, I’m sure we can find plenty to entertain you while they reminisce about the old country.’
‘You don’t mind if I go with him, Maestro?’ Besler asked.
‘On the contrary, I’m delighted for you,’ I said with something of the relief a mother feels when the nursemaid arrives to take the child off her hands.
‘I shall tell you all about it later,’ he assured me.
‘I don’t doubt that for a moment.’
Ottavio put a hand on Besler’s elbow to steer him to the door, when the silence was shattered by a bestial howl from somewhere outside the room, causing us all to leap a couple of inches in the air. I felt the hairs on my arms stand up; it was not quite human, nor quite animal.
‘Madonna porca, Katherina,’ Jacopo cursed. ‘Go and tend to that creature.’
Katherina bowed her head and hurried from the room. Ottavio muttered something I could not catch, but which sounded very like ‘diavolo’, and ushered Besler into the corridor so that I was left alone with Jacopo.
‘You sent for me?’ I prompted.
‘Put another log on the fire, will you?’ he said, slumping back in his nest of cushions.
The room was already overheated, the air thick, but I obeyed, wondering at the ease with which he issued commands from his sickbed as if I were his underling, and my own willingness to do his bidding. Strada senior had a natural air of authority about him, even in his present state. I poked the fire to stoke it, waiting for him to come to the point. As I did so, I glanced up to see a grand portrait mounted above the mantel.
‘This is you?’ I asked, stepping back for a better look. The subject was a self-possessed man in his early fifties, his beard and moustache full and fox-red, his shrewd gaze trained on an object outside the frame. He wore a doublet of black velvet with peach satin sleeves, a gleaming chain of office wound around his neck and a cloak of thick grey fur over his shoulders. The artist had shown him surrounded by the spoils of his profession; in his hands he held a marble statue of a naked goddess, while antique coins and parchments were spread on the table before him. The clothing and the expression were so exquisitely rendered in oils that it had to be the work of a master.
Jacopo gave a rasping laugh. ‘More than twenty years ago, when I still had a full head of hair.’
I peered closer at the artist’s signature and turned back to him, amazed. ‘Tiziano?’
‘Yes. I sat for him in Vienna. That was the year the Emperor Maximillian appointed me court antiquary. Interesting man, Tiziano. Though it is a mixed blessing to lie here looking at my younger self as I waste away.’
‘What ails you?’
‘Sit.’ He indicated the seat Katherina had vacated and sighed. ‘Dr Hajek says there is a growth in my stomach. Like a malign pregnancy. So I suppose I have that in common with my daughter. That monstrous noise you heard just now?’
‘What was that?’
‘Her child. A boy of three years. There’s something wrong with him,’ he added with a marked lack of compassion. ‘She won’t hear it, of course, but I saw it straight away. Doesn’t speak, you know – never has. Just makes those noises. He catches birds to break their wings for pleasure. And it’s in the family line, you know.’
‘What is?’
‘Madness.’ He levered himself forward and took hold of my sleeve. ‘His Majesty’s great-grandmother was famously insane, spent her life locked up. Juana la Loca, they called her.’
‘You mean …’ I paused. Juana la Loca was the grandmother of King Philip of Spain, and therefore also of Rudolf’s mother Maria. ‘Katherina’s child is—’
‘The Emperor’s bastard, obviously. I doubt he’ll be the last she gives him, either.’
‘Does Rudolf acknowledge him?’
‘He provides for him. The boy has no formal title as yet – I suppose His Majesty is waiting to see how he turns out.’ He grunted. ‘He’ll be waiting a long time, if you want my opinion. But we have to nurture the feral creature and hope for the best.’
I bet you do, I thought. So Rabbi Loew was wrong; the Emperor did have a living heir, albeit one who was illegitimate and possibly not right in the head – although in my limited experience all three-year-olds displayed traits of lunacy, so it seemed unfair to write the boy off just yet. And a bird in the hand was something, as the old proverb said. His existence bound the Strada family to the Emperor. I recalled what Ottavio had said about the Catholic faction resenting the influence of his family at court; suddenly his meaning became a lot clearer. I looked at the white-bearded man in the bed, whose sunken face still held a vestige of the strength and purpose that Tiziano had captured in the portrait, and felt a wave of distaste at his willingness to pimp his daughter for the sake of his own status.
‘But I didn’t ask you here to talk about my bastard grandson and his strange ways, nor to admire my portrait,’ he said. ‘Ottavio told me what happened last night. The eyes in the casket.’
I grimaced. ‘Someone wished to send a very literal message to His Majesty.’
‘So it seems. Someone who clearly knew the effect it would have. Rudolf is—’ he searched for the right word as he resettled himself among his pillows. ‘I do not say he is unstable, mark you, but the balance of his mind is delicate. A shock like that – it is guaranteed to throw him into a state of fear and melancholy, where all he thinks of is retreating from the world.’
Pointedly saying Rudolf was not unstable strongly implied that he was, as Jacopo knew.
‘Is that something he does often?’ I asked.
‘Increasingly.’ The old man let out a laboured sigh and shook his head. ‘He is tormented by the idea that his advisers are conspiring against him – even old and trusted counsellors like me and Hajek, who have known him for years. He mutters of curses and poisons, he fears his subjects will rise against him, so he locks himself away with his treasures and will see no one, not even his valet. The servants have to leave food outside his door. In these moods only Katherina can coax him back to himself, and often he refuses to admit even her. I fear that this murder and that vile gesture with the eyes are designed to plunge him into despair. There are those who would profit from his incapacity.’ He fixed me with a meaningful look, as if he expected me to divine who he meant.
‘Who deals with affairs of state when the Emperor shuts himself away?’ I asked.
‘Count Vilem von Rozmberk. He is the Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia, the highest official in the land, and president of the Privy Council. You’ll see his palace on the other side of the castle complex, behind the cathedral.’ He paused for a prolonged bout of coughing, gesturing for me to pass him the bowl for spitting. ‘He avoids the city if he can – spends most of his time at his castle in the south. But when Rudolf falls into one of his black moods for any length of time, Rozmberk is summoned back to manage affairs. You see how precariously Bohemia stands, Dr Bruno?’ He gave a dry laugh and closed his eyes, as if the explanation had exhausted him.
I sat back, trying to fit this new information into my picture of the Prague court. ‘So this Rozmberk effectively rules whenever the Emperor falls prey to one of his fits of melancholy?’ I said. ‘Was that what you meant about profiting from his incapacity?’
‘I was not thinking of him so much,’ Jacopo said. ‘I do not believe Count Vilem has any interest in governing – he is another who spends all his vast fortune pursuing the secrets of the alchemists. Although he has an ambitious new wife, so perhaps that will change. I had one of those myself, so I pity the man.’ He chuckled softly. ‘No – I meant the emissaries of Rome and Spain, the hardline Catholics. They want Rudolf declared unfit to rule so he can be legitimately deposed – I would not put it past them to carry out tricks like this one with the eyeballs, knowing how it would affect him.’
‘Then you think the Catholics ordered the murder of Ziggi Bartos? San Clemente and Montalcino, you mean?’
He sucked in his cheeks. ‘I’m saying it would be in keeping with their longer purpose, certainly. Naturally, one cannot entirely rule out the Jews either.’
‘What? You don’t believe in the Golem, surely?’ I said, surprised.
‘Ha. Of course not. But the Emperor does, and I believe in the existence of a man who is ruthless in the defence of his people’s continued independence and rights.’
‘You mean Rabbi Loew? But you can’t think he would have someone murdered and make it look like the work of a Golem? That makes no sense.’
‘Oh, but it does. If you can’t make people respect you, make them fear you, no?’
‘The Jews are already experiencing reprisal attacks because of this murder.’
‘A double bluff. You think they couldn’t have done that themselves, to make their innocence the more convincing? They look to their own interests as much as anyone. More so – they are notorious for it.’
‘I find the idea highly unlikely.’ I was beginning to wonder if Jacopo’s mind was ailing as well as his gut; either way, I did not want to spend any more time in his company. I shifted in my seat as if preparing to take my leave.
‘I am simply saying,’ he continued, motioning for me to stay, ‘that you should consider every possibility. My son tells me the Emperor has asked you to find the killer?’
I pushed a hand through my hair. ‘I told His Majesty that John Dee could not be responsible, and in doing so it seems I volunteered to prove to him who was. But I confess, I feel at the moment like a man lost in a dark wood. There are so many competing factions in this city, all wanting to cast blame on one another, and I am a foreigner here with no knowledge of how to sift truth from falsehood.’ I had not meant to express myself quite so forcefully to him; perhaps the comfort of relaxing into my own language had lulled me into confidences.
‘I understand. I have been in Prague eight years, since Rudolf first moved his court here, and I still do not know who to trust. But in my experience, the most obvious explanation is usually correct, no? Cui bono. Who stands to gain?’
‘That is the problem. There seem to be any number of people who would have liked Ziggi Bartos dead and their enemies blamed.’
‘Yes, but the manner of his killing. The eyes and the tongue, the inscription. If you simply want rid of a man, you dispatch him and bury him where he won’t be found. So you have to ask yourself – who benefits from making his death a personal message to the Emperor? I have already given you two possible answers.’
‘Have you told His Majesty of your suspicions about the Catholics?’
‘He has not asked my advice,’ Jacopo said, and I heard a note of pique in his voice. ‘Speak to Ottavio. He can help you navigate the tangled connections at court,’ he added when I didn’t respond. ‘He’s a good boy – a quick mind, though his mother cosseted him, against my better judgement.’ I noted the twitch of disdain at the corner of his mouth. ‘He could do with learning a few worldly skills from a man like you, Dr Bruno.’
I gave him an opaque smile. I was not sure what he meant by this; did he want me to teach his son how to hold his own in a bar brawl? Or did he want to make sure that I kept Ottavio informed of whatever I discovered about the murder? Jacopo was certainly very keen for me to look at San Clemente and Montalcino; naturally I was not going to tell him that they also wanted to find out who had killed Bartos. As for the idea that the Jews wanted to stir up belief in a vengeful Golem, I dismissed that as pure prejudice. I shifted the chair back and with startling speed he grabbed my wrist in his gnarled fingers.
‘If you will take one more piece of counsel from me, Dr Bruno,’ he said, drawing me close so that I could smell the sickness on his breath, ‘you are right to be wary of who you trust. And you would do well to start with your host.’
‘Hajek?’ I stared at him. ‘You can’t think he had anything to do with the murder?’
‘I didn’t say that, precisely. I am simply urging you to see that most people in this city, whoever they claim to serve, are usually serving themselves foremost. There is no man closer to the Emperor than Thaddeus Hajek, or so he believes, and he wants to keep it that way. He did not climb so high by being meek and self-effacing.’ The very idea of Hajek possessing these qualities sent him into another bout of laughing and coughing. I felt that Jacopo was unintentionally revealing himself with this observation, but my heart sank nonetheless; I had chosen to be persuaded of Hajek’s integrity because John Dee had been convinced of it, and because the doctor shared so many of my own interests, but Jacopo had a point: all I knew of Hajek was what he allowed me to see, and Dee was, after all, missing.
‘Ottavio told me what was written on the paper that came with the casket last night,’ the old man continued, his chest rasping with the effort of speech. ‘Let us suppose, for a moment, that there was truth in it. Ziggi Bartos had made some momentous discovery in his alchemical experiments. Who would he tell first?’
‘The Emperor, I presume.’
‘My guess is that he would not be able to resist telling his mentor, the man who has nurtured his talent since he arrived in Prague. The man who is responsible for overseeing all the alchemists. And if Hajek recognised that Bartos had genuinely stumbled upon something worthwhile, might he not wish to take the credit himself?’
‘And then draw attention to his theft by taunting the Emperor with a note written in Bartos’s own hand, boasting of his discovery? That seems no more plausible than the idea that John Dee did the same.’
‘Ah, I don’t know, Dr Bruno.’ Jacopo let his head fall back, his eyes fixed on the canopy overhead. ‘I am deeply unsettled by this business and I am clutching at straws in the wind. The one thing that seems certain is that the manner of the alchemist’s cruel death was designed to sow fear, and a fearful populace quickly loses patience with a weak leader.’ His grip on my wrist loosened. ‘Above all, I fear for my daughter.’
‘You think she’s in danger?’
‘She has not confirmed it to me, but she has another one in there, I’m sure of it.’
‘Another child?’
He nodded. ‘That makes her a greater threat to those who have other plans for the Emperor’s affections, and if this killing is part of some scheme to destabilise his throne …’ He let his hand fall to his side. ‘I have done my best to protect my children, Bruno, and perhaps they are somewhat naïve as a result. I fear they do not comprehend how deeply our family is resented in some quarters. If your enquiries should uncover anything that places Katherina in jeopardy, you will tell me, won’t you? Or Ottavio?’
