The Stone of Madness

by Nick Baker

  Seoc was desperately keen to show Lily that he was also no slouch with the rod. He quickly cast the line, and it was not long before another perch had found its way into the net, much to the boy’s delight. By now, the weak winter sun had fallen below the trees, and its meagre warmth dissipated, leaving the three friends feeling chilly, despite the excitement of the last hour.

  ‘Come on. We better be getting back,’ said Aedh.

  They quickly packed up and returned to the boat just as it was getting dark.

  ‘Would you care to join us for supper?’ Aedh said to Lily once they were safely inside.

  ‘Fresh fish and potatoes are on the menu,’ Seoc said. ‘I’ll show you how to gut and prepare the fish if you like.’

  Lily briefly thought about heading home. She did not want to be out when her father returned, but she did not know where he had gone, and with a flash of defiance, she decided that if he could come and go as he pleased, then so could she. The excitement of the fishing and the cosy atmosphere inside the cabin with her friends was too much to refuse, and with a smile, she replied, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  10

  THE STONE OF MADNESS

  Death and the Miser

  HENRY PRICE SAT BATHING in the warmth of a small, sparsely populated café tucked away on a narrow side street close to the old city docks. He had arrived well ahead of schedule for a meeting brokered by Cornelius Spydre and was killing time before setting off for a run-down area of deserted warehouses that sprawled down to the river in a decaying tribute to the once great trading heart of the conurbation.

  The coffee sitting in front of him was dark and a little too bitter for his liking. The remnants of the acrid liquid lay cold and vanquished at the bottom of the cup. The coffee was an attempt at self-reinvigoration, yet so far, the caffeine had failed to alleviate the fatigue and melancholia that had afflicted him for the past few days. He swept back a strand of straight, shoulder-length hair that had strayed across his face and scanned the pages of the newspaper laid out before him. He looked up from a copy of the Comet he had picked up from a corner street news vendor and reflected on the call from his old friend that had led to the appointment. Spydre had made some enquiries following their recent discussion and had come up with the name of an art scholar who was an expert on Hieronymus Bosch. Price was sceptical about the meeting, but it was still better than treading water ahead of the Council meeting that had already delayed his plans to visit Amsterdam by several days.

  He glanced at an article unrelated to its bold banner headline, but when it failed to hold his attention, his thoughts drifted back to a topic that had troubled him for as long as he could recall: the path his life had taken following the death of his beloved Saskia. At the time, he had craved for revenge, yet with the concurrent death of Pearly Black, his only remaining choice was to track down Black’s allies. Not surprisingly, his lack of success in finding them had done little to lift his dark brooding, and if it had not been for Lily, he would never have had the strength to carry on.

  After Saskia’s death, Lily had been the main impetus in his life, and while he was delighted at the way she had matured, he sometimes wondered why he was so intent in pushing her into areas of study that had dominated his own early years. Her aptitude for learning was extraordinary, and although he would never admit it, she was far further advanced in alchemical lore, particularly in a practical sense, than he had been at a similar age.

  Lily had recently demonstrated her potential to a level that had shocked him, and while the burgeoning in her abilities was quite remarkable, it also troubled him in a way he had never anticipated. He sometimes wondered whether the knowledge he was teaching her was too much or even too dangerous for her, and despite her undoubted alchemical talent, she also lacked application in areas of her education she considered irrelevant, and this, of course, was the reason behind their increasingly acrimonious clashes.

  Price took another sip of coffee. He returned the cup to its saucer, grimacing at the bitter taste the thick, dark fluid left in his mouth. He vowed to stop thinking about Lily and turned his attention to an experiment he had performed earlier in the day.

  One of his many talents as an alchemist derived from an age-old principle of the discipline—the ability to manipulate metals. Alchemical science had evolved over many hundreds of years following attempts to transmute base metals into gold, subsequently effecting many miraculous discoveries that, inconceivably to him, were regarded as dangerous meddling by the mainstream scientific community.

  The occasional witnessing of an awe-inspiring spectacle had only compounded this sense of mistrust, giving rise to the widespread belief that alchemy was little more than a form of witchcraft. It was no surprise that alchemy had fallen into disrepute, resulting in a rapid diminishing in the numbers of those studying the arcane arts with even fewer institutions left to teach them. Price had no desire to see the discipline die out altogether and this had convinced him that alchemy’s fortunes could only be resurrected by blending it with contemporary scientific research; his current alchemical research was a case in point.

  He had always held a fascination for the sub-molecular properties of metals and he had spent many hours in the basement laboratory of his home theorising and testing the practicalities of varied hypotheses. For some time now, his thoughts had been occupied by the properties of electrons in metals and how alchemical lore could harness their oddly incongruent behaviour. At a fundamental level, electrons were the infinitesimally small, negatively charged particles that whizzed around the atomic nucleus in a cloud of ethereal nothingness. Movement of electrons in response to a potential difference was responsible for the inherent conductivity of metals, and through painstaking study, and to some extent, trial and error, he had discovered that it was possible to make electrons move, not as they habitually did in an electrical current, but in a rhythmical motion on a metal’s surface.

  He had been experimenting with a variety of silver alloys and had recognised that by setting the electrons resonating, he could produce a dramatic reduction in the metal’s light-scattering properties. Spurred on by this, he had fashioned a complex metamaterial with unique circular geometry demonstrating variable electromagnetic properties across its surface that made it interact with light in a precise way. Objects were only visible to the naked eye because of the way they reflected light, and miraculously, the material he had fabricated made light flow around it, thus rendering what lay beyond it invisible.

  While recalling these thoughts, Price absent-mindedly removed a small square of a peculiar, shimmering foil from his pocket. He looked down at the material nestling in the palm of his hand, and without thinking, he draped it over the redundant coffee cup still perched on the table in front of him.

  He looked up to make sure that no one was watching him and noted the waitress leaning on her elbows, aimlessly filing her nails at the serving hatch. She appeared engrossed in her thoughts and uninterested in this strange-looking man who provided little respite from the boredom of her mundane job.

  Price returned his attention to the iridescent material that, unlike a metal foil, could adapt itself to the shape of an object. He reached out and touched the material. He smiled as the coffee cup shimmered, then faded, and finally disappeared from view. Although he knew that the cup was still there, he felt a great sense of satisfaction when all that remained visible was a coffee stain on the gingham tablecloth adjacent to where the cup had been standing.

  ‘Top-up, sir?’ the waitress said pleasantly, proffering a percolator full of fresh coffee.

  Price started, having been staring trance-like at the spot where the cup had been visible. ‘Er, I …’ he began, flustered.

  When the girl went to pour some of the foul-tasting brew, she took a sudden step back when it dawned on her that the cup was no longer there.

  Before Price realised what he was doing, he had slipped the material from the cup with a sleight of hand that would have done credit
to the cardsharp he had passed on his way to the docks.

  The waitress blinked in amazement, evidently at a loss to make sense of what she had just witnessed. She backed away to the safety of the counter without taking her eyes from the cup that had somehow miraculously reappeared in front of this mysterious man.

  Price could see the waitress eyeing him suspiciously from the safety of her stool, making him realise it was time to go. He deposited more than enough money on the table to settle the bill and left without a second glance at the girl.

  As he slipped from the café, he returned the material to his jacket pocket. It had taken many years of toil in the subterranean vault of his home to get the blend of metals right, crafting the alloy by painstakingly mixing and melding silver, vanadium and neodymium in crucibles until he had the right quantities of each. Many times he had removed the cooling metal from the furnace and beat the malleable mixture into a foil with the sweat and toil of his own hands on the anvil next to the cooling water bath, until eventually, he had finally succeeded in constructing a material he had always known was possible.

  He hoped he had not frightened the waitress, but he could not resist a smile as he headed for the river, thankful that the melancholia that had plagued him for the past few days had temporarily lifted.

  Price made for the Old Wharf Road, a long, straight thoroughfare separated from the river by warehouses and depots that had once served the thriving inland docks before they had fallen into disrepair. The trade that had once flourished here had gradually been supplanted by more accessible ports to the south. The river traffic, once so plentiful, had dwindled to the occasional small vessel making the arduous journey upriver for obscure, or more likely, illegal activities.

  The road was empty and the surrounding dilapidated buildings lay deserted, but this was not a place to wander alone, particularly at night. Price was well aware of the gangs that had taken refuge in these buildings, using them as a base for their nefarious, and often, drug-fuelled activities.

  Price made his way circumspectly towards a large warehouse that was still reputedly importing to the location. Spydre’s concise directions were most impressive. As the instructions predicted, the building sported the sign, Praego Da Largos & Sons – Importers of Fine Wines, est. 1792.

  He turned into a narrow street at the far end of the building and set off towards the river along a cobbled street bounded by the towering walls of the depot on one side and a row of neglected garages and lock-ups on the other. The place was strangely quiet apart from the resonating sound of his own clipped heels, but just as he was beginning to relax, he sensed movement. He whirled round to confront any would-be assailant, but with a combination of relief and repulsion, he saw a brown rat scurrying from under the grate of a manhole cover. Price watched in amazement as the brazen rodent passed within a few inches of his black leather shoes before squeezing under the rotten wooden door of a garage. He waited to regain his composure and allow the hammering in his chest to recede before heading off towards his destination.

  Further along the alley, he caught the sound of labour ringing out from a garage a few doors down. As he approached a set of peeling doors propped open on bricks, his eyes were drawn to a young man sitting on a stool amidst myriad nuts and bolts, gaskets, pistons, cylinders, gears, valves, rods and shafts surrounding the skeleton of what appeared to be a motorbike. The man had dark cropped hair and a bushy black beard. He looked up as Price walked past and threw him a friendly smile before returning his attention to the contraption. His calloused hands were thick with grease, and as Price paused to watch him work, he noted with approval how dexterously the man manipulated the pieces in his reassembly of the machine. The man’s skill was evident from the fleeting moment Price had witnessed him work, and after he had passed the garage, he could not resist turning round to look back and admire the craftsmanship on display. The man, however, was no longer at his stool and had disappeared from view.

  After a final check of Spydre’s instructions, Price was pleasantly surprised to discover that he had arrived at his destination. The imposing glossy black double doors seemed oddly out of place with the rest of the neighbourhood, although there was no doubting he was at the right place. He squinted at the small brass plaque next to the door engraved with the words, ‘Le Cart’, which he knew to be the name of the business. Despite racking his brain, he could not recall the meaning of the words from his limited French vocabulary. Just below the plaque was a bell, which he pressed. He waited patiently and was beginning to wonder whether anyone was in when an intercom next to the door crackled into life.

  ‘Hello?’ said a soft, female voice.

  ‘Hello. My name’s Henry Price. I believe you were expecting me?’

  The woman did not reply but a short buzz followed by a sharp click indicated the door’s locking mechanism had released. Price turned the chrome handle and noted with approval the weight of the hardwood doors, bearing in mind the insalubrious reputation of the neighbourhood.

  He entered a sparse hallway leading directly to a set of stairs. When no one came down to greet him, he made his way upstairs. The climb was steep, but the effort was worth it. He gaped in wonder as he entered the vast space that opened out in front of him, bathing in dazzling light that streamed in through two impressive glass skylights.

  There was no sign of the girl, and as he waited patiently for her to appear, he looked around at the numerous tripods carrying frames of various shapes and sizes hidden beneath white muslin drapes.

  ‘Hello,’ he called out again while lifting the nearest drape to peer at the canvas. The painting was only partially complete, but Price vaguely recognised the bold depiction of a large tree trunk in a channelled glade. The painting was sketched in graphite, but shades of green and brown had been added here and there to make up a meticulous portrayal of the trunk that dominated the foreground.

  He stood gazing at the half-finished painting, feeling baffled by the emotions it stirred inside him. He quickly released the drape when he heard footsteps on the wooden steps leading down from a galleried landing behind him. He turned round to see a woman wiping her hands on a filthy rag covered in paint, and as their eyes met, she smiled, causing his stomach to lurch. He was immediately startled by her eyes, which radiated an inner calm. Her face was most beguiling, and as he looked at her, he realised that she was scrutinising him with the same curious manner that he supposed he was directing at her.

  The sunlight cascaded in through the skylight, enhancing her dark brown, shoulder-length hair that shone with a high lustre. The draw of her emerald eyes was irresistible, and as he stared in wonder, a sense of guilt spread through him as his thoughts turned to Saskia. He crossed the studio to greet her at the foot of the stairs while attempting to banish the memory of his former lover.

  ‘Professor Price, welcome. I’m Natacha Lec,’ she said, extending a hand.

  Price shook her hand warmly. ‘Please, call me Henry,’ he said self-consciously.

  ‘And you must call me Natacha,’ she replied. She ushered him towards the large glass windows fronting the studio and into a comfortable leather sofa that looked across the street to the warehouse.

  The glass was meticulously designed, Price noted, to maximise the light pouring through the sloping skylights, and also to provide an extensive view of the river to the north and a broad expanse of skyline to the south. The resplendent sunshine flooded through the glass, and he could feel its radiated heat as he sat down on the sofa bordered by two lush coconut palms happily flourishing in the room’s temperate climate.

  Natacha sat down beside him. ‘I think you know my father, Sir Robert.’

  The connection suddenly dawned on him. Spydre had been deliberately evasive when Price had quizzed him about the meeting. All he would reveal was that the girl was an expert on Reformation art, and apart from her name and the directions, he had offered little else. He recalled that Spydre had been a contemporary of Sir Robert Lec and they had studied together at Oxf
ord. His old friend’s evasiveness disturbed him, and he wondered whether there was anything else Spydre had kept from him at their last meeting.

  Brushing aside these thoughts, Price nodded his assent. ‘Indeed, I know him well. We’ve worked together for many years.’

  Natacha returned the nod, suggesting she already knew this. ‘My father called me yesterday. He asked if I’d be happy for you to pick my brains. He said he had no idea what it was all about, although I’m not sure I believed him,’ she replied, accompanying her words with an enigmatic smile. ‘I was intrigued, however, when he told me who’d requested the meeting.’

  Price returned the smile. ‘You honour me. I appreciate your time. You’re clearly very busy with your work.’

  ‘Busy by necessity, I’m afraid. Despite the location, I struggle with the rent, not to mention the costs I incurred when renovating the place.’

  ‘It’s most impressive,’ he remarked, looking once more in astonishment around the room.

  ‘Yes,’ Natacha said proudly. ‘The light is, of course, paramount. Of the numerous sites I visited when I was searching for a studio, this was by far and away the best. The glass was specially manufactured. It filters out all the unwanted lower frequencies of the spectrum, the reds and yellows, and allows only the higher frequencies, the blues and greens, to pass. Speak to any artist and they’ll tell you the nature of the light goes a long way towards the quality of their work.’

  ‘Have you always worked in the city?’

  ‘Like many artists, I spent some time living by the sea. The light is of a much purer quality there; a combination of the deep blue of the sea and our beautiful skies.’

  Price nodded. ‘What brought you back?’

  ‘Quite simply, I missed the city. I love the hustle and the bustle, the people, the crowds, the sheer intensity of it all, you know. When I returned, I decided to bring the light with me,’ she said, gesturing in the direction of the vast overhead windows.