Page 171 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 9.

A disturbing eavesdropping

The kind Dr. Ludovico Valerius was a busy man, even though he had but two patients:
the Duke and Duchess de’ Medici. But when he’d heard that one of the painters, Santi del
Meglio, had been killed, he didn’t initially believe it. He thought perhaps the painter had taken
ill like his father, perhaps, and had collapsed in some corridor or office of I Magistrati. But
Santi was, indeed, nowhere to be found in the Uffizi. Not on the scaffolds or in the various
offices, empty or occupied. Some of the offices had already completed their conversion into
galleries, but they were large, empty rooms for the most part, and Santi was not in any of them.
There were magistrates, mathematicians, scientists, astrologists, alchemists, jewelry makers,
fabricanners and servants, but among the painters Valerius counted only: Old Man Allori at the
far south end of the hallway, coloring a Venus and Mars between two pairs of satyrs; Tozzo,
slaving on a scene of two clashing soldiers on horseback; and the deaf painter, silently working
on a Daedalus and Icarus. Santi was nowhere in the Uffizi.

One thing in I Magistrati had struck Valerius as odd. There was a crowd gathered in one
of the rooms near the middle of the hallway, far from Valerius’s office. The crowd was in what
once had been the seventeenth and eighteenth offices from the north until the architect
Buontalenti had combined them, removing the common wall between them and setting off angles
in each of the corners, resulting in a most unusual eight-sided room which had become known as
“The Tribune”. Valerius peered inside, scanning the room, but there were no painters in the
room, only magistrates and ducal adjuncts and the alchemist, all whispering amongst themselves,
very hushed, as though not wanting to be overheard.

When one of the magistrates saw Valerius peering into the Tribune, he strode over to the
entrance arch, his back to Valerius, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, not too subtly, next to a
colleague, blocking the entrance completely, such that Valerius couldn’t see into the room at all
any more. A face appeared suddenly, visible between the backs of the two magistrates; a dark,
scowling grey-bearded pock-marked face, like some evil wizard in a children’s tale, startling
Valerius. “Go away!” said the face. “This room doesn’t concern you, Doctor.” This was the
duke’s alchemist, Chimento Zaccario, who delighted in appearing and being far more mysterious
than he actually was.

“Oh, I couldn’t care less about your secrets,” said the doctor. “I’m looking for one of the
ceiling painters -- the young one, Santi. But I see he’s not in the Tribune, so never mind.”

“I warn you not to eavesdrop, Doctor,” said Zaccario, “not on the Tribune. There are
deadly secrets lurking here.”

“Yes, yes,” said Valerius, adding an exaggerated spooky-monster laugh, “Rhhah-hah-hah
yourself, Zaccario.” The doctor and the alchemist were not friends.

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