by Tom Harper
‘I sat in his workshop as I sit with you now.’
‘For how long?’
‘Many years. He died, God rest him, fifteen winters ago.’
‘And were you there when he produced the gold?’
The old man shook his head. Wine stained the hairs around his mouth like a gash. ‘Perenella, his beloved wife. She was the only one.’
‘But afterwards,’ Tristan prompted him, ‘he told you his secret?’
Master Anselme held out his glass for more wine. Tristan waited.
‘The Art is not magic. Do you know what the Stone really is? It is medicine, a tonic for all the diseased matter of this world.’
He lifted his left arm, which I saw was stunted and withered, quite useless. ‘This limb is still a part of me, however frail it becomes. The soul that unites my being runs through it as much as anywhere else. So with metal. What you call lead or tin are no different from gold and silver, except in the degree of their perfection.
‘There is one perfect substance in this universe – ether, quintessence, first matter, call it what you like. In its truest state it is without form. Only when it allies with the material of this world does it take shape. It is a principle, an idea that animates. It runs purest in the noble metals, and weakest in the base. You do not transmute lead into gold like a street magician changing an egg into a kitten. You purify it. You alloy it with the Stone, so that the seeds imprisoned in the metal blossom, until in the unity of perfection it can take any shape you command. Not for wealth or riches, but to perfect the universe.’
Tristan, whose interest could blaze and cool like air over coals, looked suspiciously at Anselme’s limp arm. ‘I heard that the Stone could also cure men. If you knew Flamel so well, why did you not heal yourself?’
The old man coughed. ‘I am a feeble vessel. The Stone is valuable beyond measure. I would not waste it on such humble flesh. Flamel himself believed that – used correctly – the Stone might work on our human forms so profoundly as to render us immortal. But he never discovered that art.’
‘Obviously,’ said Tristan. ‘But how did he find the Stone?’ I rubbed the blisters on my hands where I had been too eager to pick up vessels fresh from the fire. ‘I have read that it can be extracted from gold.’
‘Yes. Yes, precisely.’ Spittle flew from his mouth. He regathered some of it by licking his lips prodigiously. His tongue was truly enormous. ‘Gold is where it is most abundant. But even gold is filthy as mud when set against the Stone. It must be purified in the three furnaces. You must extract the seeds of sulphur and mercury, then combine them in the Hermetic Stream. That is what Flamel did.’
‘But how-’
‘You must watch the colour. In the fire it will change seven times, until in the moment of perfection it casts a light like a rainbow. That is the sign.’
Tristan leaped to his feet. Master Anselme glanced around fearfully.
‘You are a liar. Get out.’ Tristan kicked the table; the jars, bottles and flasks arrayed on it shivered and chattered. ‘Did you think you could come here and recite half-remembered lies you picked up from Flamel’s gutter – if you ever knew him? Get out of my house.’
He grabbed the old man by his shoulder and flung him halfway to the door. If I had not been standing there to catch him he might have broken his neck.
The incident with Master Anselme put Tristan in a strange mood for the next fortnight. Once when I came back into the tower I found him standing over shards of a broken bottle. Blood was beading around his wrist, and when I tried to bind it he shook me off angrily. His nights with the whores became more frequent. Sometimes he invited me to join them – at first half-heartedly, when he thought I might accept, then with malicious pleasure when he realised I would not. He called me ‘monk’ when he was kind or ‘eunuch’ when he was not, though he never guessed the real reason for my abstinence.
Perhaps Master Anselme was a fraud, haunting St Innocent’s churchyard and preying on the dreams of those who came to study Flamel’s figures. But something in his babble had struck home, a thread through the labyrinth. I followed it day after day, sometimes stretching it almost to breaking, sometimes tangling my mind in knots. And I began to understand.
All my life I had been captivated by gold. In the depths of my fall I had scrabbled to claw a few precious grains out of the river mud; even in Basle I had defined myself by the renunciation of my obsession. Yet now I saw it was not its glitter that bewitched me, as it did other men. Even in my ignorance I had seen through its surface, had sensed something of the divine universal housed within. I had felt it in the perfection of the gulden, in the gold leaf we hammered out in Konrad Schmidt’s workshop and in the wisdom of Nicholas Cusanus.
I knew why these things had obsessed me. It was because I could imagine perfection, as real as a dream, and the world would not be whole until I had grasped it.
I redoubled my efforts. While Tristan gave himself over to his dubious pleasures, I took Flamel’s book back to St Innocent’s. ‘In the churchyard in which I put these Hieroglyphical Figures,’ wrote Flamel, ‘I have also set on the wall a Procession, in which are represented by order all the colours of the Stone as they come and go.’ The wall paintings in Tristan’s tower showed the seven panels from the arch, the same seven pictures as were drawn in the book. But there were others he had not bothered to have copied, the women on either side of the arch processing towards the centre.
I studied them in the light of what Master Anselme had said. ‘You must extract the seeds of sulphur and mercury.’ By then I knew that sulphur and mercury were not the substances commonly called such, but wise names for mystic elements, the two opposing principles of heat and cold.
‘You must watch the colour. In the fire it will change seven times.’ I counted the women in the processions: seven on each side. As I looked at them, I began to realise they were all the same. Artfully painted so that no two seemed exactly alike – some turned to face the churchyard, others looking away or staring straight ahead, smiling, frowning, laughing, desolate – but all incarnations of the same woman, differing only in the colour and length of their hair. Sometimes it was white as the moon, sometimes black as night; brown, bronze, amber, honey-yellow or steel-grey. And at the front of each procession, where two identical women with knowing smiles faced each other across the open arch, red like cedar bark. The colour of the Stone.
And so I scoured the apothecaries’ shops and tapped their lore. I sought learned men and wise women. I pored over Flamel’s book until I could recite it word perfect and draw the figures in my sleep. I teased meanings from his riddles, mined the pictures until I struck new seams of understanding. I melted, alloyed, quenched and boiled. I learned more of the ways of metals than I would have in seven years in Konrad Schmidt’s shop. With many errors and missteps, I followed Flamel’s progress.
Along the way I made some curious discoveries. I burned copper oxide, reduced it with litharge and produced a liquid that was black as sin, yet dry to the touch in a very short time. Another time I alloyed lead, antimony and tin to create a wondrous new metal that melted easily over a flame, yet hardened like steel as soon as it cooled. When I showed it to Tristan he only grunted and asked if it brought us closer to the Stone.
It was not a happy time. When fatigue or Tristan’s petty cruelties drove me close to tears, I cursed my fate and despaired. What evil drove me on? I had spent ten years curing myself of my immoderate desires, years of agonies and mortification that drove me at last to the river ooze. In Basle I had been happy with a cell and a pen, a faithful servant to the ambitions of worthier men. A chance encounter and a single sentence in a book had undone it all. I felt as if I was stumbling through a dark tunnel, with an enormous burden crushing my back and chains dragging around my ankles.
But I was making progress. Gold turned black, then bronze, then a cloudy grey, then wine-red as I found ways to tinge it according to Flamel’s scheme. Silver resisted me longer, but after weeks of frustra
tion it too yielded. At last, one night deep in November, I lifted my grinding mortar and, trembling, beheld a reddish powder the colour of cedar bark.
I dabbed a few grains on my fingertip and held them up to the lamp. It was very fine, like dust, sweet-smelling but dry as salt to the touch. There was terrifyingly little. All my weeks of labour had reduced to not much more than a thimbleful of the stuff.
I covered the bowl with an upturned jar, took the lamp and went to fetch Tristan. The house was dark, its filth disguised. As the costs of our experiments mounted, Tristan had dismissed the servants one by one until we were alone in our squalor. It made the cavernous house even more frightening. Rats played among the cobwebs just beyond the reach of my lamp; terrible creatures stalked me from the tapestries hanging on the walls. Once I knocked over a wooden stool and almost died of terror. My whole body was sunk in grim exhaustion, yet at the same time I thrilled to the wonder of the moment.
I found Tristan in his bed. A scrawny prostitute lay sprawled over him. Both were naked and half-asleep; I could see the scabs of flea bites down the backs of her legs, and something moving in her hair that looked like lice. Evidently the servants were not the only economy Tristan had made.
He propped himself up on his elbow. The prostitute rolled off him, revealing a meagre pair of breasts and a great deal of hair.
‘Have you come to join us after all?’ leered Tristan. ‘I have it.’
He pushed the whore aside and leaped out of bed, kicking over a glass of wine on the floor. He grabbed his father’s sword, which rested on a shelf in its scabbard. ‘Are you sure?’
‘There is one way to prove it.’
We returned to the tower, under the gaze of Flamel’s inscrutable figures. Black infinity yawned above us. Working in silence, I heaped up the powder on a fold of paper. I had wanted to hold some back in case the first projection did not work, but there was so little I did not dare spare a grain. I twisted it shut and sealed it with wax. A silver mirror lay on the bench from when I had tried to trap the sun’s rays: I glimpsed my reflection in it and trembled. My skin was grey, my hair thin and my eyes sunk beyond sight. The skin on my hands was pink and shiny, smooth as a baby’s from all the burns I had suffered in my haste. A splash of vitriol had seared a crescent scar into my cheek.
Tristan brought out an egg-shaped vase made of blown glass. He filled it with powdered lead which he measured in a balance, then sprinkled it with a few drops of quicksilver. Then he fitted a crystal plug to its end and burned the edges with a taper. While he did that, I shovelled coals into the furnace and worked the bellows. I watched the colours of the fire change, from red to orange to a brilliant white too painful to behold. When I saw that, I knew we were ready.
I grasped the glass egg with a pair of iron tongs and thrust it into the centre of the fire. Tristan rested his arm on my shoulder and leaned forward to look. Though the night was cold, we were both soaked in sweat.
‘How long will it take?’
‘We will know when the moment comes,’ I told him.
We stood there and watched, our bodies pressed together so close our sweat mingled into one. I hardly noticed. Steam began to curl out of the metal in the vase. The lead softened, melted and bubbled, drinking up the quicksilver.
I pulled away from Tristan and squeezed the bellows, building up the fire to new fury. The heat seared my face; smoke billowed into the tower. Tristan stumbled away with his hands over his eyes, but I stayed rooted in front of the furnace.
Something flashed in the glass and I knew the time had come. I reached in and knocked out the crystal plug with a poker, then lifted the paper twist in the tongs and flung it in. It dropped through the opening, fell onto the boiling metal in the base and burst into flame. It was the purest, whitest flame I ever saw, like sunlight on snow. And as it burned I saw an aura, an iridescent halo that filled the vase with colours. The rainbow.
I cried out to Tristan. He must have seen it too for he ran to my side. Together, we dragged the vase out of the fire and stood it upright on the floor. Tristan drew his sword, raised it and struck. The glass egg cracked in two and fell apart. Through the smoke and sweat that stung our eyes, we stared down at what we had created.
XXIII
New York City
Going back to the apartment was worse than he’d expected. A uniformed officer gave them plastic gloves and elasticated bags like shower caps to wear over their shoes, then lifted the tape that barricaded the door. Nick and Seth ducked under it into the living room.
The last time he’d seen it, Nick realised, had been on Buzz. He looked at Bret’s desk, then back where the video camera had pointed, trying to figure out where the killer had stood. Bret’s computer was gone, as was the chair he’d been tied to. So, thankfully, was the body, though there were stains on the carpet that might have been Bret, once. How long did you have to preserve the evidence at a crime scene?
He went into his own bedroom. The police must have been in here, too: it was tidy enough but disarranged, a product jammed back in its packaging. He made to sit on the bed and thought better of it. His whole body crawled with the fear that he would contaminate anything he touched. He crouched in front of the bedside table and pulled out the drawer. A leather travel wallet, a graduation present from his parents, lay buried at the back under the usual debris of aftershaves, paperbacks and condoms. He took the passport out, then slipped the wallet into his jacket pocket. You never knew what might prove useful. A gold eagle with a sheaf of arrows in its claws glared at him from the passport cover.
‘Nick?’
He pushed the drawer shut and turned around, trying not to look guilty. Seth was standing in the door, the policeman beyond watching over his shoulder. Had they seen him? Did the wallet make a bulge?
‘Got it.’ His voice sounded lifeless in the still apartment. He tossed the passport to Seth. ‘Let’s go.’
He took a last look around the room. A balled-up sock sat on the floor where he’d left it three nights ago. A magazine lay open to the article he’d been reading over dinner that night. Two creased shirts he’d meant to iron hung on the closet door. His former life. He remembered an article he’d seen once in National Geographic about a caveman found frozen in the Alps. He’d been perfectly preserved, even down to the bowl of berries still clutched in his hands. The scientists thought he must have fallen asleep next to the glacier, swallowed by the advancing ice. Nick had always wondered about him. Did he realise what was happening? Was there a moment when he woke up, too cold, and found himself trapped? Was the ice clear enough for him to see the sunlit world outside? Did he scream, or had the ice frozen his lungs?
He glanced at the alarm clock by the bed to get his bearings, but even that had fallen victim to the spell in the room. 00:00. 00:00. 00:00. The blue numbers flashed their non-time at him. The police must have unplugged it when they searched the room.
‘C’mon.’ Seth was waiting.
Nick walked slowly to the door, trying to cram in as many memories as he could. That was when he saw the picture of Gillian. She sat on his dresser, watching from behind the bottles and aerosols. Somehow he’d never got round to putting it away. He reached to get a closer look.
‘Don’t,’ said Seth. He waved the passport. ‘You’ve given the police enough help.’
Nick hadn’t used his passport since he came back from Berlin eighteen months ago. He wasn’t even sure if it was still valid. But now that he’d given it away he felt trapped without it, as if he’d handed his jailers the key to his cell. Locked out of his home, locked into the city. Almost.
With nowhere to go, he wandered the streets. The temperature had dropped overnight; the radio was forecasting snow. Gusts of steam billowed out of the manhole covers; Haitian street vendors tried to sell him ice scrapers and black leather gloves. The buildings reflected the concrete sky.
He knew he needed to go to the bank but kept putting it off: he dreaded the thought of another rebuff, more suspicion. He invented other
things to do, department-store windows to stare at or bookstores where he could flip through the magazine racks. One had a coffee shop; he searched his bag and dug out enough change for an espresso.
The coffee shop was hot and crowded. Nick couldn’t get a table of his own, but had to share with a young woman who was working her way through a three-inch stack of fashion magazines. She gave him a discouraging scowl when he sat down, and afterwards ignored him completely.
He perched the laptop on the edge of the table and booted it up. He had vague thoughts of doing some work, but most of it was held on the servers at the FBI, and the rest was in the police station on Tenth Street. Inevitably, he went back to the card, scratching a scab he’d already dug raw. Bear is the key. Except it wasn’t. Nor was grizzly, panda, koala, polar, Kodiak, Yogi, brown…
Nick killed the program. His head was beginning to ache. He searched his bag and found a nickel but no painkillers. There were some back in the apartment, but he doubted Royce would let him back to the crime scene for that. He could almost script the conversation. ‘Do you have a painkiller addiction? Did you supply drugs to Ms Lockhart? Why did you keep a photograph of her on your desk when – by your own admission – you broke up six months ago?’
The photograph. He opened a new folder on the screen. In the real world it would have been covered in dust and yellowing at the edges, perhaps blotted with a few dried tears. In the digital realm it was just one among a dozen identical icons, as fresh and sterile as the day he’d created it. Inside were a couple of dozen photographs, perfectly aligned like pinned butterflies, all he had of Gillian. For a woman who could make a date with a stranger on an empty train, she’d been surprisingly self-conscious when it came to cameras. He hit the SLIDESHOW button and let the images segue across the screen. Six months of his life played out in less than a minute.
The photograph from his room came near the end. He remembered exactly when he’d taken it. He’d gone out to lock up and come back into the bedroom to find Gillian curled up on the bed wearing nothing except the old college T-shirt she used as pyjamas. It wasn’t exactly an unusual sight, but something about that moment had captivated him: the low light from the bedside lamp and the shadow between her thighs where the T-shirt rode up, the swell of her breasts under the torn V-neck, the auburn hair tangled around her throat. It caught her perfectly: beautiful, irresistible and his. He’d seen the camera on the bookshelf, grabbed it and squeezed off the photo before she could object. Later, he’d had it printed and framed. Gillian had complained, of course, but he didn’t care. It was the first time he’d felt confident enough to display a trophy of their relationship, and he felt the pride of ownership.
