The Alchemist's Secret

  ‘Is he dead?’ Ben repeated.

  The alchemist’s eyes were far away. Ben waved his hand in front of them.

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of him, Ben,’ Roberta said.

  Ben nodded. He put a hand on the old man’s shoulder and softly shook him to his senses. ‘Monsieur Clément, listen carefully and remember this. You have to leave here for a while.’

  The old man’s eyes slid back into focus. ‘Why?’ he croaked.

  ‘Because there are some men who might come here. Not nice men, you don’t want to meet them, you understand? They’ve been asking questions at your brother’s house and they may know where to find you. I’m afraid they might want to hurt you. So I want you to take this.’ Ben took out a thick wad of banknotes.

  Clément’s eyes opened wide when he saw how much there was. ‘What is that for?’ he quavered.

  ‘It’s to pay for you to leave here for a while,’ Ben told him. ‘Get yourself some new clothes, go to a doctor if you need one. Take a train as far away as possible and rent yourself a place somewhere for a month or two.’ He reached back into his pocket and showed Clément another bundle of notes. ‘And I’ll give you this too, if you’ll agree to sell me that book.’

  23

  ‘Interesting reading?’

  ‘Pretty interesting,’ he replied absently, looking up from his desk. Roberta was sitting gazing out of the window, sipping on a coffee and looking bored. He returned to the Journal, carefully turning the age-yellowed pages and scanning through some of the entries composed in the alchemist’s smooth and elegant hand.

  ‘Worth thirty grand?’

  Ben didn’t reply. Maybe it was worth what he’d paid Clément, and maybe not. Many of the pages seemed to be missing, others damaged and unreadable. He’d been hoping the Journal might contain some clues about the fabled elixir, maybe even a recipe of some kind. As he leafed through it he realized that that was probably a naïve expectation. It seemed to be a diary like any other, a day-to-day account of the man’s life. His eye settled on a lengthy entry and he began to read.

  February 9th, 1924

  The climb up the mountain was long and perilous. I am getting far too old for this kind of thing. Many times I nearly fell to my death as I found myself inching my way numbly up near-vertical rock and the falling snow grew into a blizzard. Eventually, I dragged myself up onto the summit of the mountain and rested my weary body for a few moments, wheezing, muscles trembling from the exertion. I wiped the snow from my eyes and looked up to see the ruined castle in front of me.

  The passing of the centuries has not been kind to what was once the proud stronghold of Amauri de Lévis. Wars and plagues have come and gone, warrior-dynasties have flourished and died out, the land has been passed from one ruler to another. It is over five centuries since the castle, by then already ancient and battered, was besieged, bombarded and finally wrecked in the course of some long-forgotten clan feud. Its strong round towers are mostly reduced to rubble, the battle-scarred walls covered with moss and lichen. At one time fire must have devastated the inside of the castle and collapsed the roof. Time, wind, rain, sun have done the rest.

  Much of the ruin is overgrown with gorse and brambles, and I had to cut a way through the Gothic archway of the main entrance. The wooden gates have rotted away to nothing and only their blackened iron hinges remain, hanging by rusty rivets from the crumbling stone arch. As I entered the gate, the deathly silence of a graveyard hung over the empty grey shell. I despaired of ever finding what I had come for.

  I wandered inside the snowy courtyard and looked around me at the remnants of the walls and ramparts. At the bottom of a winding, descending stairway I found the entrance to an old storeroom, where I sheltered from the wind and lit a small fire to warm myself by.

  The blizzard trapped me inside the castle ruin for two days. The meagre rations of bread and cheese I had brought were sufficient to sustain me, and I had a blanket and a small saucepan for melting snow to drink. I spent my time exploring the ruin, fervently hoping that what my researches had revealed to me would prove true.

  I knew that my prize, if it existed, would be found not above ground in what remained of the ramparts or the towers, but somewhere down below in the network of tunnels and chambers carved out in the rock beneath the castle. Many of the tunnels have collapsed over time, but others remain intact. At the lower levels I discovered dank dungeons, the bones of their miserable inhabitants long since reduced to dust. Wandering through the dripping black passageways and winding staircases by the light of my oil lamp, I searched and I prayed.

  After many hours of cruel disappointment I crawled through a half-collapsed tunnel deep underground and found myself in a square chamber. I raised my lantern, recognizing the vaulted ceiling and crumbled coats-of-arms from the decayed old woodcut I had found back in Paris. At this moment I knew that my quest was fulfilled, and my heart leapt with joy.

  I circled the chamber until I came to the spot. I scraped aside thick cobwebs and blew away clouds of dust, and the time-smoothed markings in the stone block appeared before me. As I had known they would, the markings directed me to a particular flagstone in the floor. I dug the damp earth away from its edges until I was able to get my fingers underneath, then with great effort I heaved it upright. When I saw the stone hollow it had concealed and realized what I had found, after a lifetime of searching, I sank to my knees with silent tears of relief and exultation.

  My heart was pounding fearfully as I dragged the weighty object out of the hole and scraped away the dirt and the decayed remnants of its sheepskin wrapping. The steel casket is well preserved. There was a hiss of escaping air as I prised the box open with my knife. I reached inside with trembling fingers, and by the flickering glow of my lantern I drank in the sight of my incredible find.

  Nobody in almost seven hundred years has laid eyes on these precious things. What joy!

  I believe the artefacts to be the work of my ancestors, the Cathars. They are a work of great mastery, which has been hidden from ages and from generations. Together they may hold the key to the Secret of Secrets and the goal of all our work.

  It is a miracle so great that I fear to contemplate its power…

  Ben flipped on a few pages, eager to find more.

  3rd November, 1924

  It is as I suspected. The ancient scroll has proved much harder to decipher than I had first anticipated. Many months I have laboured over the translation of its archaic languages, its deviously encrypted messages, its numerous deliberate deceptions. But today Clément and I have at last been rewarded for our long toil.

  The substances were melted in a crucible over the furnace after being reduced to their salts and undergoing special preparations and distillation. There was a startling hiss and streams of vapour filled the laboratory. Clément and I were amazed by the scent of fresh earth and sweet-smelling flowers. The water turned a golden colour. To this we added a quantity of mercury and the solution was left to cool. When we opened the crucible…

  The rest of the page was eaten away by damp and mice. ‘Shit,’ Ben breathed. Maybe there was nothing useful in this thing after all. He read on, staring closely at the faded writing. In some places it was barely visible through the damp stains.

  December 8th, 1924

  How does one test an Elixir of Life? We have prepared the mixture according to my ancestors detailed instructions. Clément, that lovable fellow, was afraid to take it. I have now consumed approximately thirty drachms of the sweet-tasting liquid. I observe no adverse effect. Only time will tell of its life-preserving powers…

  Time will tell, all right, Ben thought. Frustrated, he skipped a few pages and found himself looking at an entry from May 1926 that was undamaged and intact.

  This morning I returned to Rue Lepic from my daily stroll to be greeted by the most putrid stench emanating from my laboratory. Even as I hastened down the stairway to the cellar I knew what had happened, and much as I expected,
when I threw open the laboratory door I discovered my young apprentice Nicholas Daquin standing surrounded by clouds of smoke and the wreckage of a foolish experiment.

  I doused the flames, and coughing from the smoke I turned to him. ‘I have warned you about this sort of thing, Nicholas,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nicholas replied with that defiant look of his. ‘But master, I almost succeeded.’

  ‘Experiments can be dangerous, Nicholas. You lost control of the elements. Balancing the elements requires a very fine touch.’

  He looked at me. ‘But you told me I had a good feel for this, master.’

  And so you do,’ I replied. ‘But intuition alone is not enough. Your talent is raw, my friend. You must learn to curb your youthful impulsiveness.’

  ‘It all takes so long to learn. I want to know more. I want to know everything.’

  My twenty-year-old novice is at times wilful and arrogant, but that he has a great talent I cannot deny. I have never before come across a young student so eager. ‘You cannot expect me to condense into a few lessons three thousand years of philosophy and the efforts of my whole lifetime,’ I told Nicholas patiently. ‘The mightiest secrets of nature are things that you must learn slowly, step by step. This is the way of alchemy.’

  ‘But master, I’m so full of questions,’ Nicholas protested, fixing me with his dark, intense eyes. ‘You know so much. I hate the feeling of being so ignorant.’

  I nodded. ‘You will learn. But you must learn to control your headstrong nature, young Nicholas. It is unwise to try to run when one has not yet learned to walk. You should confine yourself to theoretical studies for the moment.’

  The youth sat down heavily on a chair, looking agitated. ‘I’m tired of reading books, master. Learning the theory of our work is all very well, but I need something practical, something I can see and touch. I have to believe there’s a purpose to what we’re doing.’

  I told him I understood. As I watched him, I worried that too much theoretical learning might, in the end, put off this extremely gifted student. I am all too well aware myself how arid and fruitless a life of study feels without the reward of a real breakthrough, a tangible prize.

  I thought of my own prize. Perhaps if I could share a little of that incredible knowledge with Nicholas, it would surely satisfy his burning curiosity?

  ‘All right,’ I said after a long pause. ‘I will let you see more, something that is not in your books.’

  The youth jumped to his feet, his eyes flashing with excitement. ‘When, master? Now?’

  ‘No, not now,’ I replied. ‘Do not be so impatient, my young apprentice. Soon, very soon.’ Here I raised a warning finger. ‘But remember this, Nicholas. No student of your age will ever have been taken so far or so quickly into alchemical knowledge. It is a heavy responsibility for you, and you must be ready to accept it. Once I have shared the greatest secrets with you, they must never be divulged to anybody. Not to anybody, do you understand? I will swear you to this oath.’

  In his proud manner he raised his chin. ‘I’ll take the oath right now,’ he declared.

  ‘Reflect upon it, Nicholas. Do not rush into this. It is a door which, once opened, cannot be shut.’

  As we spoke, Jacques Clément had come in and started quietly clearing up the mess from the explosion. When Nicholas had gone, Clément approached me with a look of apprehension. ‘Forgive me, master,’ he said hesitantly. ‘As you know I have never questioned your decisions…’

  ‘What are you thinking, Jacques?’

  Jacques spoke cautiously. ‘I know you have great esteem for young Nicholas. He is bright, and keen, of that there is no doubt. But this impetuous nature of his…he yearns for knowledge the way a greedy man lusts for wealth. There is too much fire in him.’

  ‘He is young, that’s all,’ I replied. ‘We were young ourselves once. What are you trying to say, Jacques? Speak freely, my old friend.’

  He hesitated. ‘Are you quite sure, master, that young Nicholas is ready for this knowledge? It is a great step for him. Can he handle it?’

  ‘I believe so,’ I replied. ‘I trust him.’

  Ben closed the Journal and reflected for a moment. It was clear that whatever this great knowledge was, Fulcanelli had learned it from the artefacts he’d recovered from the castle, and which were now, apparently, in the hands of Klaus Rheinfeld. At last, he had a proper lead.

  Beside him at the desk, the laptop was humming quietly. Ben reached over to it and started clicking the keys. There was the familiar grinding screech of the internet connection, and the homepage for the Google search engine popped up. He entered the name klaus rheinfeld into the search box and hit GO.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Roberta asked, pulling out a chair next to him.

  The websearch results screen popped up, surprising him with 271 matches for the term ‘klaus rheinfeld’. ‘Christ,’ he murmured. He started scrolling down the long list. ‘Well, this looks promising.’

  Klaus Rheinfeld directs ‘Outcast’, starring Brad Pitt and Reese Witherspoon….

  ‘A gripping suspense thriller…Rheinfeld is the new Quentin Tarantino,’ she read out.

  Ben grunted and scrolled down further. Almost everything on the list was featuring reviews of the new movie Outcast or interviews with its director, a thirty-two-year-old Californian. Then there was Klaus Rheinfeld Exports, a wine merchant.

  ‘And here’s Klaus Rheinfeld the horse whisperer,’ she pointed out.

  Several pages into the search results they came to a regional news item. It was taken from a small newspaper in Limoux, a town in the Languedoc region of southern France. The headline read

  LE FOU DE SAINT-JEAN

  ‘The madman of Saint-Jean,’ he translated. ‘It’s dated October 2001…OK, listen to this…’

  An injured man was discovered wandering semi-naked in the forest outside the village of Saint-Jean, Languedoc. According to Father Pascal Cambriel, the local village priest who found the man, he was babbling in a strange language and appeared to be suffering from severe dementia. The man, identified from his papers as Klaus Rheinfeld, a former resident of Paris, is believed to have inflicted serious knife wounds on himself. An ambulance worker told our reporter: ‘I have never seen anything like it. There were strange markings, triangles and crosses and things, all over him. It was sickening. How could someone do that to themselves? Rumours have suggested that these bizarre wounds are linked to Satanic rituals, though this was rigorously denied by local authorities. Rheinfeld was treated at the Hospital of the Sainte Vierge…

  ‘Doesn’t say where they took him after that. Damn. He could be anywhere.’

  ‘He’s alive, though,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Or was alive six years ago. If it’s even the same Klaus Rheinfeld.’

  ‘I bet you anything it’s the same guy,’ she said. ‘Satanic markings? Read alchemical markings.’

  ‘Why was he all cut up?’ he wondered.

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was just crazy.’

  ‘OK…so we’ve got one crazy German covered in knife wounds, who may or may not be carrying import ant secrets connected to Fulcanelli, and who could be anywhere in the world. That narrows things down nicely.’ He sighed, cleared the screen and started a fresh search. ‘While we’re online we might as well check this out.’ He typed in the name of Michel Zardi’s email server, waited for the site to load up and entered the account name. He just needed the webmail password to access the messages, and he knew that most people use some word from their private life. ‘What do you know about Michel’s personal life? Girlfriend, anything like that?’

  ‘Not much–no steady girlfriend that I know of.’

  ‘Mother’s name?’

  ‘Um…hold on…I think her name is Claire.’

  He typed the name in the password box.

  Claire

  incorrect password

  ‘Favourite football team?’

  ‘Not a clue. I don’t think he was
the sporty type.’

  ‘Make of car, bike?’

  ‘Used the Métro.’

  ‘Pets?’

  ‘A cat.’

  ‘That’s right. The fish,’ he said.

  ‘That asshole with his fish…how could I forget? Anyway, the cat’s name was Lutin. That’s L–U–T–I–N.’

  lutin

  ‘Bingo.’ Michel’s messages scrolled down on the screen. They were mostly spam, selling Viagra pills and penis extensions. Nothing from any of his mysterious contacts. Roberta leaned forward and clicked on SENT ITEMS. All the messages containing Michel’s reports to ‘Saul’ flashed up in a long column in order of date sent.

  ‘Look at them all,’ she said, running the cursor up the list. ‘Here’s the last one, with the attachment I told you about.’ She clicked on the paper-clip logo again and showed him the JPEG photo files. He glanced through them before closing the box and clicking on COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE. A blank window flashed up.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Resurrecting our friend Michel Zardi.’ He addressed the new message to Saul, like the others. Her eyes widened in alarm as he typed.

  Guess who this is? That’s right, you got the wrong guy. You bastards killed my friend. Now, you want the Ryder woman, I have her. Follow my instructions and I’ll give her to you.

  ‘Not exactly Shakespeare, but it’ll do the job.’

  ‘What the hell are you writing?’ She jumped to her feet, staring at him in horror.

  He took her wrist. She struggled against his grip. He slackened it, and guided her gently back into her seat. ‘You want to find out who these people are, don’t you?’ She sat down again, but he could see the mistrust in her eyes. He sighed and tossed a bunch of keys onto the desk. ‘There. Like I told you, you’re free to go any time you want. But you agreed to do this my way, remember?’

  She didn’t say anything.