The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  The moment his head touched the pillow the tears started flowing.

  XII

  Cologne, 1421-2

  Konrad Schmidt was a generous teacher, but there was one aspect of his trade he never spoke of. He never told me how much profit he made. I never asked; I did not have to. My father’s wealth had always been vague – dispersed in warehouses and barges the length of the Rhine – but the goldsmith’s was tangible, displayed for all to see in the iron-bound cabinet in the shop window. Month by month, my midnight expeditions turned up fewer and fewer treasures. Pieces disappeared and were not replaced; those that remained were pushed to the front so that customers would not notice the empty shelves behind. One day, I caught Konrad on his hands and knees in front of the melting hearth, his arms black with soot as he sifted through the cold ashes. When he noticed me, I was shocked by the wild look in his eyes.

  ‘The gold that overflows the mould when we make castings – what happens to it?’ he demanded. ‘There ought to be a treasure trove down here but I cannot find one grain. Do you know anything about this, Johann?’

  I kept silent. Sweeping out the grate was Pieter’s task, but I did it in his place. I told him it was so he would have more time to finish his work in the shop, that if his father found out he would only assign him some other chore. I picked up the crumbs of spilled gold, and kept them in a bag under a floorboard in the attic – not a treasure trove, but enough that when the time came to make my master-piece I would not want for material.

  Konrad’s mood matched the decline in his fortunes. He beat me and Pieter for trivial offences, and abused Gerhard viciously for imagined shortcomings. Gerhard took out his frustration by beating me and Pieter even more. We did not sit down much that winter. At night, we would lie naked on the bed and compare our bruises while I tried to hide my longing.

  Strange things started to happen in the house. New vials and jars appeared on the shelves in the workshop, daubed with cryptic symbols that meant nothing to me. Konrad forbade us even to open them. Once a month, often around the time of the full moon, he would send us to bed early while sounds of earnest conversation drifted up from the workshop late into the night. We never saw who visited. One night, when I went out on the stairs to relieve myself, I looked down and saw the forge glowing hot in the yard. Konrad crouched in front of it, bare-chested. He seemed to be holding a large, egg-shaped crucible in his tongs which he thrust into the fire, muttering words I could not make out. He did not see me watching.

  One night in May I discovered Konrad’s secret. He had gone to meet a friend at a tavern. I waited until I heard Pieter’s familiar little snores on the pillow next to me, then crept out of the room and down the outside stairs to the workshop. I took my purse, and also my key. Konrad now insisted on watching while Pieter cleaned out the melting hearth, but he had to wait until morning for the embers to cool. I had discovered that if I went down in the night, I could pick out the biggest nuggets of gold for myself and still leave enough to convince Konrad he was not being cheated. Sometimes it singed my hands, especially if we had been casting late in the afternoon, but the blisters and calluses were a price I happily paid.

  I lay on my belly in front of the hearth, holding my hand over the ashes to let it warm to the heat. I was just steeling myself to delve in when suddenly I heard sounds at the front of the shop. Footsteps, several pairs approaching our door, and a dry cough I had heard a hundred times in the workshop.

  I leaped to my feet, scalding the back of my hand on the grate, and ran to the back door which I had left open. But curiosity stayed me. Two water barrels stood in the corner of the room: I dived behind them, just as the front door swung open.

  Someone lit a lamp. The cheap oil spluttered and fizzed, casting a diabolical glow around the shop that thankfully did not penetrate my corner. I peered through a crack between the barrels.

  Four men stood around the table. My master, with his back to me; a hook-nosed man I recognised as an apothecary from the neighbouring street; a deacon from the cathedral whose name I did not know; and a fourth I had never seen before. He was a dwarf, or short enough for one, with a bristling black beard and a slanted cap. As I watched, he dragged a stool across from the hearth and jumped up on it so that he could look the others in the eye. He unhooked a small bag from his belt and laid it on the table.

  ‘The apothecary told me you have suffered many setbacks. Perhaps I can supply what you lack.’

  His voice was harsh and screeching, like an owl. He pulled back the cloth. His hands blocked my view, but between his fingers I made out the shape of a small box.

  ‘I bought this in Paris, in the shadow of the Church of the Innocents.’ A nasty chuckle. ‘The man who sold it to me did not know what it was worth. But I do – and you will, if you can persuade me to part with it.’

  ‘Can we see?’ The deacon reached across the table. As his hand passed the lamp it cast a monstrous shadow over the far wall, trembling in a way I did not think was caused by the light.

  ‘Any man can look,’ said the dwarf dismissively. He handed the box to the deacon. Only when the cleric opened it did I see it was not a box but a book. Bronze straps across the cover gleamed in the lamplight.

  The deacon turned a few pages and passed it wordlessly to the apothecary, who examined it more closely.

  ‘This was all Flamel used?’ he asked cryptically.

  ‘All his secrets from the Book of Abraham,’ was the dwarf’s equally mysterious answer.

  The apothecary gave the book to Schmidt. ‘What do you think?’

  Konrad waited a long time. I could not see his face, but I saw the way he hunched over the book, the knots in his hands as he gripped the table. My knees ached; my thigh began to spasm from my awkward posture.

  At last Konrad spoke. ‘If everything you say is true, why are you offering the book to us?’

  The dwarf laughed – a harsh, braying noise. ‘Why do men sell you raw gold when they could sell you a goblet for a higher price? Because I do not have the craft or the ingenuity, nor the tools nor indeed the materials. All I have is this book. And that is all you need to perfect your art.’

  He fixed Konrad with a wicked smile and reached across the table to slide the book away. Konrad slapped his hand down heavily to stop him.

  ‘We will take it.’

  He pulled the key from around his neck and unlocked the cabinet. The dwarf hopped off his stool and followed, staring up at the chalices, cups, plates and bowls displayed on its shelves. He licked his lips. He pulled one piece down and examined it, then another. Sometimes he had to point to something on the upper shelves for Konrad to reach. There was something in the way he touched the precious objects that I recognised: a jealousy, a kindred spirit.

  ‘This one. This one for the book.’

  He held up a richly enamelled chalice. The base was embossed with scenes from the life of St John, the cup supported by arms of intricately braided wire. An abbot had commissioned it and then died; his successor, a more ascetic monk, had refused to honour the contract. Konrad had been furious, but I think a part of him was relieved to keep hold of it, for it was a rare piece of work. The one I would have chosen.

  Konrad swallowed, then nodded. The lamp flame flickered, darting around the bowl like a serpent’s tongue. The dwarf stuffed the cup into a sack.

  ‘You have made a fine bargain.’

  The others did not linger long after he had gone. The deacon and the apothecary excused themselves; Konrad sat at the table for some minutes staring at the book, then reluctantly closed it and locked it in the cabinet. I waited. When he left, I listened to the sound of his footsteps mounting the outside stairs and crossing the ceiling, the squeaky board at the threshold to the bedroom, the creak as the bed took his weight. I counted to one hundred. Then I crept out from behind the barrels, lit the lamp and opened the cabinet.

  The book was small and worn, the edges of the binding frayed and the pages shrivelled. A brass clasp kept it shut, but otherwis
e there was nothing to suggest why Konrad should have paid so much for it. I unhooked the clasp.

  It was written in Latin in a small, hurried hand, with many corrections and notes in brown ink in the margins. Seven of the pages were given over to drawings: a snake curled around a cross, a garden sprouting a forked tree, a king with a giant sword watching his soldiers dismember children into buckets. I shuddered and wondered what story they could possibly tell.

  As I turned the pages, phrases leaped out at me from the text. ‘I have opened the Books of the Philosophers, and in them learned their hidden secrets.’ Then: ‘The first time that I made projection was upon Mercury, whereof I turned half-a-pound, or thereabouts, into pure Silver, better than if it had come straight from the Mine.’ And eventually: ‘In the year of the restoring of mankind 1382, on the five and twentieth day of April, in the presence of my wife, I made projection of the Red Stone upon the like quantity of Mercury, which I transmuted truly into almost half a pound of wondrous, soft, perfect Gold.’

  I spent the next day in a dream, my head dizzy with possibilities. I was a virgin with a new lover: I could not wait for night to come again. Gerhard thrashed me for spilling too much gold when I poured it out of the crucible, and thrashed me again when a careless slip of my burin left an ugly scar on a brooch I had been engraving. Konrad was little better. His face had aged ten years overnight; he wandered around his shop like a ghost, fingering the key around his neck and checking the cabinet three times an hour.

  Konrad went to bed late that night. The cathedral bell sounded out the hours, and I counted every one. At last I heard the creak of the stairs, the muffled squeak of the bedroom floor and a sleepy murmur from his wife. Still I waited, until the loudest sound in the house was Pieter’s soft breathing beside me.

  At last I crept downstairs. By then, I knew every inch of the way in darkness. The fifth and eighth stairs which creaked too loudly, the way to lift the bolt so it did not rasp, the precise amount of pressure to use on the lock of the cabinet to prevent it making a noise when it opened. I felt inside. My fingers brushed across the shelf, tracing familiar contours of plate, until they felt the leather binding.

  There was a sound behind me and I froze. I listened to the night, unconsoled by silence. It was probably just coals settling in the grate, or Konrad turning over in his bed – but I needed to concentrate. I also needed light, and I did not want a zealous watchman peering through the windows that night.

  I climbed back to my attic. It was only when I reached the top of the stairs that I realised I had left the cabinet open. I cursed, but it did not matter. I would have to replace the book before morning anyway. I lit the lamp by my bedside and trimmed the wick low. Pieter turned and murmured something in his sleep; he thrust out an arm as if falling. It settled on my thigh and I did not remove it. It only added to the perfection of the moment.

  I do not know how long I lay there, puzzling over that mysterious book. It made no sense to me. It told the miraculous story of how the author, a Frenchman, had toiled for decades to unlock the secret of the Stone, which seemed to be not a rock but an element by which quicksilver was turned to silver and gold. But how he had done it, despite the dwarf’s assurances, was a mystery. He spoke of snakes and herbs; the moon and sun and Mercury; red and white powders and even the blood of infants. But what he meant by it all I could not fathom.

  ‘The Jew who painted the book figured it with very great cunning and workmanship: for although it was well and intelligibly painted, yet no man could ever have been able to understand it without being well skilled in their Cabala.’ I stared at the pictures until my eyes ached, but I knew nothing of the Jewish Cabala. The secrets buried in plain sight remained hidden.

  At some point, I must have fallen asleep. All my dreams were golden. I stood on a mountain bathed in hot sunlight that turned the grass, the rocks, the hills and valleys gold. A golden cross stood behind me. Then I looked down and saw two snakes slithering through the grass towards me. I cried out – but instead of attacking me the snakes turned on each other. One devoured the other, then chased himself, slithering in a circle until he blurred into a haze. He fastened his jaws around his tail and began swallowing himself whole.

  I looked again and saw that the snake had become a golden ring. I picked it up; I put it on my head as a crown, and the moment I did so I felt a shaft of golden light well through me like a fountain, connecting the mountain at my feet with the heavens in perfect oneness. An angel with a trumpet appeared in the likeness of my father. He touched my forehead, and the seal of the prophets was set on my brow in gold. I fell to my knees and embraced the golden earth, which was soft and warm and infinitely forgiving.

  I woke from my dream. To my horror and delight, I found that Pieter’s outstretched arm had drifted across my waist, his hand cupped between my legs. I had been rubbing myself against him in my sleep. A golden pleasure suffused my body.

  Alas, the demons who possess us know our weaknesses and bide their time. My dreams had intoxicated me: I knew I should stop but could not. Whether the same demon had possessed Pieter, or whether he was too sleepfast to recognise what he did, he responded willingly, even eagerly. I kissed him all over his body; I ran my fingers through his golden hair and pressed his face against my chest; I kneaded his soft skin until he gasped. He rolled me onto my side and pressed himself against me, kissing the nape of my neck. We fitted together like two spoons in a drawer. My whole body shuddered with desire and my blood flowed hot like molten gold.

  With a crash of thunder, the attic door flew open. The gold in my veins turned to lead. Konrad Schmidt stood on the stair outside, a lantern in his hand and his face slack with bewilderment. I do not know what he expected to find, but surely not his naked son tangled with his apprentice in the most wanton abomination imaginable.

  Confusion turned to fury. He stepped into the room, touching the place on his waist where his knife should have been. The attic was narrow and confined; there was no way past him to the door.

  I took a final, longing look at Pieter, cowering naked on the bed and screaming it was not his fault. Then I leaped out of the window.

  XIII

  New York City

  For five or ten seconds Nick didn’t remember. He lay between the stiff hotel sheets feeling warm and dislocated, drifting between worlds. The rain had gone; sunlight shone through the white curtains.

  Then it came back to him, and he knew the world would never be the same. He rolled over and buried his head in the pillow, as if he could smother the thoughts that overwhelmed him. He sobbed; he tossed and thrashed under the sheets like a drowning man. Images repeated themselves in his mind: Gillian, Bret, the killer chasing him up an endless flight of stairs. He felt broken.

  The ring of his cellphone cut through his grief. He groaned and ignored it, wishing it away. It persisted.

  He reached out and scrabbled on the bedside table. ‘Nick?’

  A woman’s voice. British. Did he recognise it? ‘It’s Emily Sutherland.’ She waited. ‘From the Cloisters?’

  ‘Right, yes.’ There was some part of Nick that could still function. ‘Listen, it’s not really-’

  ‘I did some research on that card you brought me. It’s… intriguing.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Can I meet you to talk about it?’

  ‘Can you tell me now?’

  She hesitated. ‘I – It would be easier in person. It raises some interesting questions. I need to be at the Metropolitan Museum this afternoon. Can you meet me on the roof terrace there?’

  ‘Sure.’ Anything to get her off the phone.

  ‘I’ll be there at four.’

  He mumbled a goodbye and hung up. He still had the phone in his hand when it rang again. He dragged it back to his ear. ‘Yes?’

  ‘How you doing this morning?’ It was Royce, a voice from his nightmares. He carried on without waiting for an answer, ‘We need you to come down to the precinct to give us a statement about last night?’
r />   Another wave of tiredness hit Nick. ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘Twenty after nine. Come as soon as you can.’

  The police station on Tenth Street was a squat block that must have been modern once, flanked by two grey towers. Nick was expected. A uniformed officer led him from the lobby through a beige labyrinth of corridors to a small room somewhere deep in the building. There were no windows, only a wide linoleum-framed mirror across one wall. Nick glimpsed his reflection in it and winced. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday. Something he’d lain in on the rooftop had left an oily smear all across the front of his shirt. A thin itch of stubble dishevelled his cheeks. His eyes were baggy, his hair limp despite the best efforts of the hotel shampoo. His heart sank when he saw a video camera poised on its tripod to record him.

  Royce kept him waiting for a quarter of an hour. The moment he entered the room Nick felt himself wilt. Royce was a vampire, feeding off other people’s energy. He flopped into the chair across the table from Nick and leaned forward on sharp elbows.

  ‘Thanks for coming in. I know it’s a tough time for you.’ He pushed his chair away and leaned back, crossing his legs. He drummed his fingers on the side of his shoe while the technician fiddled with the camera.

  ‘OK.’ Underneath the lens, a dark red light blinked at Nick. ‘Let’s go. Could you state your name and occupation for the record.’