Page 257 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 31.

With both sides of my face

Francesco disliked the feuding between his wife and his mistress. Other men might have
enjoyed being fought over, but he found Joanna's flights of anger to be unpleasant and even
occasionally dangerous, what with the flying pots and Austrian tradition of overturning tables.
The more Joanna raged, the more he disliked her. She had become an annoyance, an irritant.
And now that he had a legitimate male heir to his fortunes, Joanna's usefulness to him was
severely diminished. That got him to thinking about a second right of passage for all Medici
men: the murder of their wives. So he visited his beloved and reliable alchemist, Chimento
Zaccario, in his weird offices.

“Office” is not the right word, of course. “Crucible” is perhaps closer. Distillery. Trial-
and-error-room. Lair. Whenever Duke Francesco stepped into the alchemist's lair, he was
immediately disoriented by the smells (salts, vinegars, sulphurs) and the haphazard placement of
tables, racks, glasswares, bowls on every conceivable working surface. Zaccario’s alchemical
laboratory was, above all things, dark. Part of that was for show (the mystery, the mystery!), but
part of it was practical, because some of the chemical elements he manipulated reacted
differently when exposed to light, either from the sun or from fire. There were no windows in
the alchemist’s offices, which was not of itself unusual; there were plenty of other offices in I
Magistrati without windows. But Zaccario magnified the gloom and shadows by placement of
torches and oil lamps in corners or behind objects which cast big dimnesses on the walls and
ceilings. Also, it was crowded. There were books, of course, as you would expect, but perhaps
more earthenware than you would. Many a clay and porcelain urn, pot, vessel, container of
every shape and size, for experimentation ruled the day in Zaccario’s laboratory. The secret
texts were deliberately unclear about lengths of cooking time as well as shapes of cooking
vessels, so some had lids, some had spouts, some were flat, some were round. Many were clay,
many were glass, many were a sort of hybrid. Some stood alone, but more stood together,
linked, passing vapors or trickles or oozings from one vessel to the next, both heated and cooled.
Dominating one end of the laboratory was a forge and a series of contiguous stone ovens, along
with bellows, tinderboxes, kindling and tongs. To complete the picture, add in your mind
measuring devices such as rulers and sticks, but also scales, weights, fixed-volume flasks; and
finally, cover every shelf and cranny with oddities and bric-brackeries, some utilitarian such as
globes, hourglasses, cucurbits and matulas, but many more for show, such as goat skulls, dried
flowers and thorns, frogs, salamanders, knucklebones and bird skeletons.

“You understand, Zaccario,” said Francesco to his alchemist, “that what I say to you now
must remain in absolutely confidence and no one else must know of it.”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“No!? What do you mean, no? If you repeat what I say, it will be the last words you
speak as a free man. The new improvements at the prison of Il Bargello will suit you --”

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