“Is something wrong, chérie?”
Antuniet felt Jeanne’s hand touch her cheek and brushed it away along with her concern. “I wasn’t expecting you this early.”
“I do hope it’s not too early,” Jeanne said as she swept inside. “I thought I’d bring a luncheon today. Can the work be paused enough for you to enjoy it?”
That was just like her, Antuniet thought. It wasn’t that she was unconcerned with other people’s convenience, but it didn’t enter into her planning until necessary. It was oddly comforting, as if Jeanne’s very presence banished all the shadows. “I can make time,” she answered. It was worth the interruption for that illusion of normalcy Jeanne brought in her wake. She turned to where Anna was peeking out from the inner workshop. “Go tell Iakup to bring the table down from my room. And another chair from wherever he can find it.”
When the table had been placed and a cloth laid, Jeanne turned to Anna while the dishes were being set out. “Do join us. Toneke, tell her she may.”
“I don’t think…” Antuniet began.
Anna offered, “I have my own dinner to eat later, Mesnera.”
“I brought plenty,” Jeanne assured her. “We needn’t stand on ceremony today.”
Antuniet interrupted, “Jeanne, let her be. She isn’t permitted to eat Christian food.”
Confusion gave way to understanding. “Oh! I hadn’t realized—” And then both reactions were driven out by curiosity. “But how does that work, Antuniet? I thought that alchemy was like the mysteries, that it requires the aid of God and the saints. How—?”
Antuniet saw the defiant flash in her apprentice’s eyes and hid a smile. “Anna, are you ready to stand your first examination? Come join us and explain to the vicomtesse how it is that Jews and Christians may join together in the practice of alchemy.”
Once urged past her sudden shyness, Anna filled their ears with the history of the Great Work. Watching Jeanne focus her attention on someone else was enlightening. Was her charm calculated like the movements of her fan? Or did it come as naturally as breathing? Antuniet couldn’t recall ever seeing the act laid aside for more than a startled instant. And yet it never seemed false. Watching them, she would have sworn that Jeanne knew no more fascinating subject in the world than the paths that traced from ancient Egypt through the tangled web of knowledge and enlightenment.
Anna seemed willing to recite the entire history of the field from Maria Ebraica to Saint-Germain, but Antuniet stopped her before it would become tedious. “That will do for now. Go finish measuring out the materials for this afternoon’s work, then take your own dinner.” When the girl had disappeared into the back and closed the door, she asked, “And what do you think of my apprentice now?”
“She suits you,” Jeanne said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have guessed you had the patience for students.”
“How did you think I’ve been earning my bread?”
Jeanne made a dismissive gesture. “People like me don’t give a single thought to earning bread!”
“Don’t you?” Antuniet asked. “I think it’s just a different type of bread.” But she didn’t follow the thought. She pulled out Vitali’s watch to check the alignments. The conjunction wouldn’t be for a little while yet. “I can only spare you another half hour. Tell me what the gossip is.” In truth, she cared nothing for gossip but it kept the illusion in place a bit longer. On days like this, she wondered how long she could last without the glow of Jeanne’s illusions chasing out the shadows.
* * *
Antuniet watched Jeanne being handed up into the fiacre and waved briefly as it pulled away. She stared after the vehicle, wishing that… From the opposite side of the street, a stare caught her attention. Too long for idle curiosity; not long enough for recognition. As the man turned and strolled off slowly, worry settled back into her belly like a small, burrowing creature. She barred the door again and went through to the workroom.
Anna looked up from her jars and powders and asked, “Maisetra, why does the vicomtesse visit you?”
Antuniet considered the easy answer: that she was an old friend. But it wasn’t true. They’d barely been passing acquaintances before her return. “She’s bored and she finds me amusing,” she said at last. It was likely to be close to the truth and it seemed to answer the girl’s curiosity. But the question nagged at her.
She felt…cultivated. Courted, almost. Back when their paths had crossed in the old days, she’d watched Jeanne pursue connections for the sake of her little games of influence. That was the bread she earned: the balls that couldn’t be held without her advice, the hostesses who relied on her to secure the most prestigious guests. Did Jeanne have so much confidence in the eventual success of the Great Work to consider her worth the trouble to attach? It hardly seemed likely. But that left only the possibility that Jeanne had an interest in her. And that was too absurd to entertain for more than a passing moment.
* * *
For days there was nothing new to worry her. Then one morning she needed to open up the door to the lane behind the shop so that Iakup could bring in the coal without trailing dust through the front rooms. And in the wood around the latch there were deep, fresh scores, as from a knife searching for a crack. She was certain they hadn’t been there before. The locks were strong and she still worked Saint Leonhard’s charm over them for whatever good it would add. As Heidelberg had proven, those protections only mattered when her enemies hesitated short of force. And even the best locks could be defeated with enough skill.
She didn’t mention the attempt to the others. It was her they were after, her and DeBoodt’s book. There was no need for Anna to be as worried as she herself was—though it was impossible to keep her concern entirely hidden—and it went beyond Iakup’s duties to play watchman. He was there to escort Anna from home and back and to do those little tasks that required a man’s strength. It would be worth more than his life to be found carrying a weapon, even at her request, and he had his own family to return to at night. This was her burden alone. She tested all the locks and the bolts on the inside of the shutters. It became a nightly ritual to make a circuit of all the rooms to satisfy herself that all was fastened and secure. Sometimes she made it twice, after lying sleepless for an hour trying to remember if she’d checked everything.
But now every sound in the night was full of menace. Was the baker’s dog barking at rats or at furtive shadows? Was that the creaking of the furnace cooling from the day’s work or was some intruder walking across the floor? Sharp winter winds tumbled litter down the streets and against the doors and rattled the shutters. Sleep rarely came until well past midnight and left too early. She filled the dawn hours by slipping down to the neighborhood chapel to give thanks for another night of safety and to pray for protection.
She brought Maistir Monterrez a selection of the small stones she’d succeeded in producing so far to discuss how they might be set for use. So small, and none of the nobler gems had succeeded yet. “These are mostly only ordinary stones, of course,” she told him, “with whatever properties they might have naturally, though the purity makes them stronger than most.” Only that first stone—the one she’d carried away from Prague—had come successfully through the further transformations, the ones that moved her work beyond mere craft. “We need to be sure the gems themselves are flawless before the next steps, but it isn’t too soon to think how they might be set. The stone itself should be both visible and in contact with the bearer’s flesh.”
“A ring would be the first choice,” Monterrez said, setting a loupe to his eye to examine one of the gems more closely. His brow furrowed and he set it down to look her hard in the face and ask, “Are you well? It won’t serve either of our purposes if you work yourself to death. I’m content with my daughter’s progress. Her trade won’t be learned in a day or a month no matter how long the hours.”
Antuniet shook her head. “I have bad dreams, that’s all. Yes, rings would be ideal, I think, but how will it
hold the stone securely if both top and bottom must be bare?”
He took the hint and left the matter alone. “I have some thoughts. Let me try a few designs and you can test them.” He picked carefully over the gems she had brought and selected the carnelian. “This one. It should do for practice.” He held it up to the light. “This is the first one you showed me, isn’t it?”
That was a good sign, Antuniet thought. The stone should have called to him and it had. And while he had it in his keeping, it would bind him more closely to her and her work.
“Will it change the properties if I cut it? The shape is rather awkward.”
Antuniet shook her head. “Cutting should do no harm, but best to do it at dawn when both the sun and Venus are in the sky and their influence is balanced.”
“And if I may,” he continued as he separated out two of the deepest-colored jaspers. “If these are not essential for your work, may I take them in payment for the gold for the ring? I have a commission that they would suit. That precise shade of color is unusual.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Antuniet said. “I hadn’t…I have no need for those in particular.” To her chagrin, she hadn’t given a thought to the cost involved. Monterrez had paid the expenses of the workshop with never a question and she had begun thinking of him more as a distant partner in the work. This was business. It was important to remember that.
* * *
Antuniet didn’t like leaving the workshop entirely empty for long, but it was unavoidable when Anna and Iakup kept their Sabbath. Once, on returning, she thought the clutter of research notes in the workshop was disarranged. What had they been working on last? Surely it had been the winter alignments, not the notes on measuring furnace temperature that now lay on top. She made her circuit of the doors and windows but all were latched and barred. Am I simply going mad? she wondered. There were ways, both mechanical and mystical, to refasten a latch from the outside. But why conceal the search so carefully? They don’t know whether it’s here! she thought suddenly.
Her Austrian shadow had never seen the book himself, only hints and reports of its existence from others. He knew some of what shape her work was taking and could guess from that. But every time he’d caught up to her and searched her belongings, he’d come up with nothing. And then she’d disappeared and he’d had to track her again. That alone could be reason for his caution—waiting for her to make some mistake, to let down her guard. Afraid to set her on the run again. He couldn’t know she had nowhere left to go, could he?
The gems had come out of the matrix flawless and perfect in color for three firings in a row—the jaspers at least. The onyx by the same method was still inclined to craze and crack during the congelation. But they were ready to set systematically to work on the next steps: the nourishing of the first gravelly seeds into larger growths. More diagrams and formulas needed to be copied out. Anna and Iakup had left for the evening and there was time to work undisturbed. Antuniet checked the doors and shutters once more, then took a supply of candles down into the cellar.
At one end of the flag-paved chamber, between the sacks of coal that fed the furnace and the baskets of ores and minerals waiting to be processed, she stood in front of the timber and plaster wall and set the candle down on one of the boxes. The natural place to put a locked chamber would have been under the wooden stairway where rough planks shut off a cramped storage area. The day after she’d moved her things into the building she’d had a carpenter set a door into the planks and fasten it with a strong lock. That was for the deliverymen to see and gossip about. But at the opposite end of the room the wall concealed a small forgotten space. Whatever its original purpose had been, some previous inhabitant had paneled it over. With additional careful paint and plaster work, the door became just another panel and—like the hearthstone in Heidelberg—with the working of a mystery for hidden things, even the knowledge that it had been a door was erased from the memory of the materials.
Antuniet worked the revealing and pushed the panel inward, then took the candle in and closed the door partway behind her again. A traveling desk was set on a table at one end of the space, and she lit half a dozen candles and set them around it in the stumps of old wax standing there. Ink, pens and paper came out. Then at last the book, lifted from the iron-bound box that kept it safe from gnawing things. She weighted it carefully open to the section she needed and began to write.
She didn’t need a full copy, only sufficient notes to remind her of the steps and signs to follow and the diagrams recording DeBoodt’s observations. The alchemist had recorded his experiments in meticulous detail. If the seed-stones were set in a flux at this spacing…if the layers in the crucible were made to this depth…if the work were begun at this hour. The instructions were couched in arcane codes and allusions as well as the cipher. Half the work was simply to make sense of them. Her own results had been somewhat different from DeBoodt’s, but she kept working from his parameters as a touchpoint. Several variant recipes for the flux. She had a favorite that had worked well for the carnelian and jasper, but they shared the influence of Venus, so perhaps that was the fault in the onyx process. Perhaps the second recipe that partook more of Mars. She tamped down the impatient voice that urged her to tackle the more ambitious gems. Step by step. Master the first successes and build on them.
Time was measured only in the ink filling the pages. Ten close-covered sheets were done and at least two more to go when a brief, sharp noise brought her head up, ears straining through the darkness. Long minutes passed. Only the house settling. She raised the pen to continue, when a second sound pulled at her attention: a soft shuffling, as if someone were carefully feeling his way across a dark room. The scratching of the pen would have masked it entirely. There was someone in the house above. Antuniet laid the pen carefully aside and snuffed the candles. She’d tested, to see there were no chinks in the floorboards that would betray the light. But if he came down the cellar stairs…She eased the concealing door closed. No chance to work anew the mystery to hide it. The plaster and woodwork would need to suffice.
The darkness was absolute, as if in her nightmares. The blood singing in her ears threatened to drown out the soft sounds from above. There! The familiar creak from the fourth step up to the over-story where her bedroom was. She tried to remember: the door would be open and even the closed shutters let in enough moonlight to see that the bed was empty. But did he mean to murder her or was he only searching? The same creak again. Not a search, then. Only long enough to see she wasn’t there. They’d never tried entrance when the house was occupied before. Perhaps even now they thought it empty. They…he. She thought there was only one intruder above. A long hesitation, then the faint whisper of the workshop door. Less cautious footsteps now. Yes, he thought he was alone. Antuniet imagined him rifling through her things, sifting through notes, poking at the half-complete work laid out on the bench. Had he lit a lamp? There was no way for her to see. The footsteps returned to the corridor. A longer silence. Had he left? How had he entered? Not the front door—that was barred too solidly. Nor the back, though it gave the most privacy. That door stood right at the top of the cellar stairs and the sound that first alerted her had come from a different angle. One of the windows then, opening on the cramped space between the buildings. The latches were strong but latches could be defeated more easily than bolts. She imagined him boosting himself up over the sill. A small man, thin and wiry. Not the Austrian in that case, but a hireling. What had he been told he was hunting?
The silence was still complete. He must have left by now. Surely it had been a quarter of an hour since she’d last heard anything. Antuniet felt around and laid her hand on the latch of the hidden door. Another creak cut through the dark and she froze. This time he was on the cellar stairs. She heard him descend. A faint spill of light traced across the floor of the hidden room where the door failed to meet the flags. If the candles had still been lit, they would surely have betrayed her. Couldn’t he hear her heartbe
at? She heard tapping at the boards closing in the under-stairs and a series of small metallic tinks as he tried something with the lock. A snick and a creak of hinges. Well, she hadn’t meant it to be more than a decoy. A faint oath. He was getting careless. He was close enough now that she could hear the scrape of his shoes on the flagstones as he circled the small room. Just when she thought surely he would find the hidden door there was a whistle, sharply, from outside. Another oath and quick steps up the stairs.
Antuniet waited in the darkness, daring to breathe again but not to move. The minutes stretched out. Was he gone? She’d thought so before and nearly betrayed herself. The darkness swam before her eyes, like a sinister echo of the visions she sometimes saw during the mysteries. Each time she started thinking that surely she was alone, the building would creak. She could no longer tell the natural sounds from signs of danger. Had it been an hour or only a few minutes?
* * *
At a shout and clatter Antuniet sat bolt upright. The dark—it came back to her. The sound resolved itself into the ordinary noises of the street. It must be morning. She moved stiffly and cautiously to open the door to the hidden chamber. She had no lamp but even the faint light spilling down the stairs seemed like day after that darkness. She took the time to strike a flame and light one of the guttered candles in order to work through the mystery to conceal the door again.
After searching through every corner of every room to make sure no intruders lingered, she examined the window shutters one by one. Yes, there it was: the faintest scratches between two boards where some intricate tool had been slipped in and around to draw the latch. She would have sworn it was proof against mere physical means. But if a housebreaker’s tools were all she had to counter, then iron bolts were her next defense. With luck, it could be done before evening.
The Mystic Marriage Page 10
