Archie Greene and the Alchemist's Curse

by D D Everest

  FRESH BREAD, said the sign on the shop next door. THOMAS FARRINOR, ROYAL BAKER, EST 1646. Archie heard footsteps approaching.

  At first he could not see anyone, but then the figure of a man in a scarlet cloak loomed out of the fog. Archie couldn’t see his features clearly, but he recognised the white streak of hair from the painting. It was Fabian Grey.

  Grey looked straight through him. Archie’s retrospectre was no more than a shadow to him.

  Grey approached the bakery, but as he did, the stranger who had spoken to the town crier earlier, appeared out of the mist. The two men talked briefly. The stranger handed Grey a note and disappeared back into the fog.

  Grey read the note. He stood for a moment, thinking, and then he stuffed the piece of parchment into his pocket and opened the front door to the bakery. Archie watched as he disappeared down some stairs into the cellar. He slipped down the stairs behind Grey.

  He found himself in a narrow passageway. Grey had vanished. Ahead of him, a sliver of light spilled from under a doorway. Archie crept quietly up to the door and put his ear to it.

  He could hear muffled voices. Kneeling down, he put his eye to the keyhole and looked into the cellar. He could see five shadowy figures.

  Even in the poor light, Archie recognised them from the painting: Angelica Ripley, Felicia Nightshade, Roderick Trevallen and Braxton Foxe. Grey had his back to Archie, but Archie could see the streak of white in his otherwise dark hair.

  ‘Is everything ready?’ Grey asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Felicia. ‘We have followed the instructions you gave us to the letter.’

  The cellar was larger than Archie had realised. In the centre, five flaming torches had been placed in a circle. The five alchemists took up positions behind the flames, facing one another.

  Grey addressed them. ‘Azoth is made of the four elements: water, earth, air and fire. Each of you was given instructions to collect one of the four. Have you done as you were asked?’

  The other four alchemists nodded. In the torchlight, Archie could see that each held something in his or her hand. Grey opened his bag and took out a notebook and a crystal chalice.

  ‘I will pass it among you. Each of you must add your element in the correct order, starting with you, Braxton.’

  He passed the glass to Braxton Foxe, who held up a glass flask for all to see and poured in a liquid. ‘Water from on high: rain collected from the highest mountain in the Himalayas,’ he declared.

  Foxe passed the chalice to Roderick Trevallen, who added a brown powdery substance. ‘Salt of the earth: soil from the crater of a volcano,’ he pronounced.

  Angelica Ripley was next. She held up a tiny leather bellows and inserted its nozzle into the glass. ‘Air of innocence: the first breath from a newborn babe,’ she said, as she squeezed the bellows, sending bubbles of air to mingle with the other ingredients.

  ‘And now you, Felicia,’ said Grey.

  Felicia held up a glass flask containing some glowing embers. ‘Immortal fire: a light from the Flame of Pharos,’ she said, emptying the embers into the mixture.

  ‘And finally,’ said Grey, ‘the secret ingredient that has eluded us so long, the essence of magic itself.’

  He sprinkled something into the mixture, a golden powder that glistened in the torchlight. The solution flared, and the five flames all turned red.

  In a loud, clear voice, Grey pronounced:

  ‘Powers of the universe

  Drawn by Nature’s right

  The moment of Creation

  All of magic’s might.’

  The solution began to seethe and boil. Suddenly, there was a roaring sound and a blinding flash. The liquid started to glow with a golden light.

  ‘Behold,’ declared Grey, holding the glass aloft. ‘Azoth! Each of your quills must be dipped in it!’

  Archie watched in awe as Grey took a golden quill from his bag and immersed its tip in the liquid. One by one the other alchemists produced their quills and did the same. Braxton Foxe went first, then Roderick Trevallen and Angelica Ripley. Archie could see the golden nibs glowing in the gloom.

  Felicia Nightshade was last. In her hand she held a black quill, which she thrust into the glass chalice. Then she produced a black book from her bag and opened it.

  ‘You cannot write magic yet,’ cried Grey. ‘It is too soon!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ cried Felicia. Holding the quill firmly, she began to write in the book.

  As she scribbled on the dry parchment, fiery letters began to appear in the air above her head. The other alchemists watched in hushed awe, and Archie gazed in wonder.

  The air crackled with static electricity.

  The fiery letters began to form into words. Black words.

  In dark places where none may go

  Grey stared at the dark letters in the air. ‘What is that book?’ he cried.

  Felicia seemed to be in a trance. The fiery letters above her head started to twist and writhe.

  Shadows linger from long ago …

  ‘It is The Grim Grimoire!’ cried Grey. ‘Felicia, stop before it is too late!’

  Felicia hesitated.

  Archie heard another voice. It sounded like fat spitting on a fire. ‘Finish the spell!’ it shrieked. It was coming from the Grimoire.

  Felicia’s hand began to move, but Grey snatched the black quill from her and tried to snap it in two. The quill bent but did not break.

  The black letters began to unravel, scattering flaming fragments around the room.

  ‘No!’ cried Felicia. ‘You have interrupted the spell.’

  The cellar was on fire now. The other alchemists stepped away from their flames. They were backing away towards the door.

  Archie stared in horror at the events unfolding in the cellar. He had assumed that Fabian Grey was the reason for the accident. After all, he was the leader of the Alchemists’ Club. But now it seemed that it had been Felicia. Was this Grey’s great mistake – to trust his friends with the power of writing magic?

  He could see Grey’s despair. There was nothing he could do to stop the magical experiment from raging out of control. It was no longer being controlled by any of the alchemists. It had taken on a dark power of its own.

  The black quill twitched in his hand. Felicia snatched it away from him and began to write again. Her blank eyes stared straight ahead.

  ‘If I cannot finish Hecate’s spell, then I will use the Grimoire’s power to curse you all!’ she roared.

  The fiery letters that formed in the air were distorted, with misshapen letters, but they were still readable.

  A curse be upon you

  And all those whose name

  Is marked out for greatness

  By the magical flame.

  When seven times fifty

  Have passed round the sun

  Old scores shall be settled

  Or the spell be undone.

  ‘Felicia, no!’ cried Grey. ‘What have you brought upon us?’

  The cellar was in chaos now. The letters from the failed spell were setting fire to whatever they touched. As the flames threatened to engulf them, Angelica Ripley and Roderick Trevallen turned and ran to escape the fire. Archie stood aside as they sped past him and up the stairs.

  ‘It’s hopeless! You must save yourselves,’ cried Braxton Foxe as he, too, turned and ran for the door.

  Flames had surrounded the black book, as if daring anyone to go near. Felicia was trying to reach it but the flames were too fierce and beat her back. Grey stood motionless, transfixed by what was happening around him. He still had his back to Archie, but his shoulders had slumped like those of a broken man. Felicia’s look of triumph had turned to something else. Scorn. She seized Grey’s notebook and ran for the door.

  With a final glance into the burning cellar, Archie sped up the stairs after the fleeing alchemists. The fire had begun to spread, and new shrieks from the neighbours answered the desperate cries of the alchemists. As Archie fought his way through the c
hoking smoke, a man in a blue cloak, the stranger from earlier, passed him on the stairs, heading in the opposite direction towards the fire.

  By the time Archie reached Pudding Lane, the bakery was ablaze. For a moment, he stood in the street and watched the tongues of flame as the breeze spread them to the adjacent houses. The street was filling with people abandoning their homes or coming to see what was going on.

  ‘Gadabout,’ Archie whispered. He closed his eyes and felt himself being drawn back to the present day.

  *

  When he opened his eyes again, he was in the Scriptorium. He held up his hand. It shimmered and he knew he was still in his retrospectre.

  His mind was reeling from what he had just seen. ‘Gadabout,’ he said, and his retrospectre evaporated like mist in sunlight as he sank into his own body.

  The others were still talking as if he had never been away and no time had passed at all.

  ‘Are you telling us they made azoth?’ asked Bramble later, when he told them what he’d seen in The Book of Yore.

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie, ‘I saw them mix it.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ said Bramble. ‘No one has been able to make azoth in hundreds of years.’

  ‘But it all went wrong when they tried to write new magic,’ said Arabella. ‘I told you it was dangerous.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that,’ said Archie thoughtfully. ‘It was the book that Felicia Nightshade was using. She was writing dark magic.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Bramble.

  ‘Certain,’ said Archie.

  13

  The Black Door

  The members of the re-formed Alchemists’ Club were alarmed by what Archie had discovered. The curse meant they were in real danger. They had formed the club to try to save the museum, but they were beginning to realise that they might need saving themselves.

  Elsewhere in the magical realm, the news was grim. There were reports of two more Greader attacks. A potions expert had been attacked at home and his house in Wales ransacked; and a magical bird collector who lived in the Highlands of Scotland had been murdered and his collection of feathers stolen. Amos Roach had been spotted near the scene on both occasions.

  The news had hit Loretta and Woodbine hard. They were growing increasingly concerned about the safety of the children.

  ‘Make sure you wear your keepsafes at all times,’ Loretta told them. ‘And don’t talk to any strangers.’

  To make matters worse, Woodbine had been called away. The details were sketchy. All the children knew was that Gideon Hawke had sent him on a secret mission. Neither Woodbine nor Loretta would say exactly what it was for, but there was mention of finding a book and tracing a family tree. More than that they would not say. But it meant that Woodbine would be away from home for a while. Archie and his two cousins speculated that it was Fabian Grey’s notebook that Woodbine was searching for. All in all it made for a very unsettled feeling at 32 Houndstooth Road.

  There was one piece of good news, but even that had a barb. Archie had been puzzling over the meaning of the riddle in the curse, and thought he’d finally worked it out.

  ‘It takes the earth a year to travel around the sun,’ he explained at the next meeting. ‘And seven times fifty is three hundred and fifty. So as the curse was made in 1666, it’s due to return in three hundred and fifty years. That’s … any time now!’

  This made it even more vital that they find a way to write magic and lift the curse. Spurred on by this, the children had redoubled their efforts to find a new meeting place for the Alchemists’ Club. They couldn’t keep using the Scriptorium. It was already making the elders suspicious. Their last meeting had been interrupted three times – first by Graves, then by Gloom and finally by Rusp, who had increased his patrols, and had told them they had no business there and sent them packing.

  They needed somewhere secret to conduct their experiments if they were to stand any chance of rewriting The Book of Charms in time.

  When they weren’t carrying out their apprentice duties, Archie and Thistle spent their time searching for Fabian Grey’s laboratory. They had to be discreet, so they mostly confined their activities to the evenings when the museum was quieter. They used Thistle’s curiosity compass to search for places with unusually high magical energy.

  So far they had concentrated on the main museum. But they had decided they should widen their search to include the Aisle of White.

  They chose Screech’s day off and waited until Marjorie and Old Zeb had gone home. Then Archie used his key to let them into the shop. They spent an hour walking up and down the aisles between the bookcases, staring at the compass. The needle started spinning at one point, but their excitement turned to disappointment when it turned out to be a broom cupboard containing a mildly magic mop and feather duster.

  At this point they were so desperate that they would have considered a cupboard. Unfortunately, this one was too small to fit five people, even after removing the mop and duster. They had found nothing since, but they hadn’t given up hope.

  ‘Let’s try the mending workshop,’ suggested Archie. ‘I’ve got a key, and with Old Zeb out of the way, we’ll have the place to ourselves.’

  They ducked through the velvet curtain at the back of the shop and walked along the passageway. Archie heard the magic books on the bookcase wishing him luck. To Thistle’s bewilderment, he thanked them. Then he took a lantern from the shelf, and they hurried down the spiral stairs to the underground passage that led to the workshop.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Thistle paused in the passageway outside the first arched door. ‘There’s all sorts of magical energy coming from there,’ he said, looking at the compass in his hand.

  ‘There would be,’ confirmed Archie. ‘That’s the enchanted entrance I told you about. I’ve used it a couple of times to get into the museum.’

  Thistle moved along to the second door. ‘And there,’ he said, indicating the blue door.

  ‘That’ll be the crypt,’ said Archie. ‘Best not to go in there. We don’t want to disturb the bookend beast. Let’s try the workshop.’

  He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the third door. They walked through the large workshop, but Thistle shook his head.

  ‘Apart from the Word Smithy, there’s nothing out of the ordinary,’ he said.

  ‘That’ll be the Flame,’ said Archie. ‘But we haven’t tried over there yet,’ he added, pointing at the area of the workshop by the door.

  Thistle took another reading from the compass. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘There’s a strong magical energy coming from somewhere.’

  His face creased into a frown. ‘That’s odd, though. It’s not coming from inside the workshop. It’s coming from the passageway.’

  ‘It’ll be the enchanted entrance or the crypt, then,’ said Archie, disappointed.

  ‘No,’ said Thistle, stepping through the door into the corridor. ‘It’s coming from the other direction. What’s up there? It looks like a door.’

  Archie felt a surge of excitement. The black door! Old Zeb had said it had been sealed more than three hundred years ago. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? That would be about the same time as the Great Fire of London!

  The two boys advanced down the passageway. Archie held up the lantern so they could see the door clearly. It was made from black oak, heavily reinforced with iron, and locked with a bolt and heavy chain.

  Archie examined the lock, which was also black. ‘Wait here,’ he said, handing Thistle the lantern. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He raced back to the workshop and checked the hooks where Old Zeb kept his keys. Next to the gold key for the enchanted entrance was a black key. By the look of the rust on it, it hadn’t been used in many years. Archie grabbed it and tore back along the passageway.

  ‘Hold up the light so I can see,’ he said. He fitted the black key into the lock. It turned with a hollow click. The two boys looked at each other, hardly able to breathe for excitement.

  Th
e door groaned on its hinges and they stepped inside, brushing through thick cobwebs and leaving a trail of footprints in the dust-covered floor. The air smelled stale from being shut up so long. There was an acrid aroma of burnt chemicals and stale magic.

  At that moment, a flame ignited in a sconce on the wall so they could see clearly. They found themselves in a long, low-ceilinged room. Rows of shelves displayed glass jars filled with murky solutions. Archie peered into one and pulled back when he realised that the black object suspended in the cloudy liquid was a perfectly preserved scorpion.

  A long wooden bench dominated the room, with more glass flasks connected by a spaghetti-jumble of rubber tubing. Several open books were scattered face down along the bench, discarded years ago by someone too busy or preoccupied to close them. Some of their pages had been badly singed. Along the bench, too, were black scorch marks.

  In one corner, an old dustsheet lay on the ground and paint speckled the floor and splashed up the walls. Someone had used the room as a studio. An inscription on a wooden plaque above the bench said: WE PLEDGE TO RESTORE MAGIC TO ITS FORMER GLORY.

  Archie felt goosebumps. They had found it: Fabian Grey’s laboratory!

  *

  The two boys raced off to tell the others. Half an hour later, all five members of the Alchemists’ Club were standing in the laboratory, their faces flushed with excitement. Bramble picked up one of the discarded books on the bench.

  ‘The Alchemy of Magic,’ she said, reading its spine. ‘Grey and the others must have used this place for their early experiments in writing magic. And by the look of those burn marks on the bench and on the floor, some of them weren’t a great success.’

  She pointed at some iron braziers stacked in one corner of the room. ‘I bet these are what made the scorch marks.’

  The others were nosing around the room. ‘Look at this,’ cried Rupert, pointing at something floating in one of the glass jars. ‘It’s a tarantula.’