Alchemist's Apprentice (9 page)

‘No,' said the alchemist. ‘There was a window there once, but it has long since been blocked up.' He walked the length of the room and drew the curtain aside.

Jack stepped backwards until he collided with the end of the range and was made to stop. Beneath the curtain was a picture which filled him at once with fear and exhilaration. It was of a man though he was, like the alchemist himself, much more than a man. There were wings on his heels and on the silver helmet that he wore. In one hand he held a sword with flames coming out of its tip, and in the other a staff around which two snakes intertwined. At his feet a third snake lay in a circle, its tail in its mouth. Beneath him were the Red King and the White Queen, kneeling.

‘This is he who watches over the great work,' said the alchemist. ‘Without him there is no hope of success. He is the highest and the lowest, the master of all ingenuity and inspiration. He is everywhere.'

‘But … who is he?'

‘He has many names. Hermes, Mercurius, Mercury. He is the lord of the secret art, the seal of our crucibles, the spirit in matter. There are many who call our learning the hermetic philosophy because of his rulership over it. Without Hermes, there is no alchemy. It is as simple as that.' He stepped back and drew the curtain again. ‘
Solvite corpora et coagulate spiritum
,' he said. ‘Do you know Latin, Jack?'

Jack shook his head. ‘Do I need to?' He was beginning to sense that the whole business was way beyond him. Part of him was already wishing that Barnstable would realise how unsuitable he was and throw him back out into the relative safety of the rain.

‘Some time, perhaps. But not now. What I said was “Dissolve the body and coagulate the spirit”. It means to make the body liquid and the spirit solid.' The alchemist saw Jack's confusion and laughed. ‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘There are plenty of things that you can't be expected to understand just yet. There's no hurry. Take your time. Don't be a puffer. Always remember that patience is the ladder of the philosophers.'

Jack discovered that he was required to exercise it immediately. The river slopped against its banks and the rain stopped, started, and stopped again while the alchemist explained every single feature of the workshop. He showed Jack the different kinds of vessels; alembics for purifying chemicals, pelicans with many-layered caps for distillations, crucibles for the heavier work of smelting ores and precious metals. He showed him some of the ingredients used in the great work; red sulphur with the rotten egg smell, white magnesia which he called the ‘salt in the pottage', and finally, he showed him brilliant mercury itself, quicksilver, a metal that looked like silver but behaved like water.

‘This one is the master of them all, Jack,' he said, pouring a small sample from a phial on to a marble work-bench where it scattered into small balls and skittered about.

‘Can you catch him, Jack? Can you pick him up and hold him in your hand?'

Jack reached for one of the larger balls of quicksilver, but when he touched it, it broke into smaller ones which slithered away from his fingers. For a while he chased them fruitlessly, until eventually he managed to brush one from the edge of the bench on to the palm of his hand.

The alchemist looked delighted. ‘Well done, well done. There he is, sitting on your hand like a butterfly. But how will you hold on to him, eh? In case he slips away again?'

Jack closed his fist around the silvery bead and watched helplessly as it broke into tiny droplets which squeezed between his fingers and fell to the floor. Barnstable laughed, gleefully.

‘That is his nature, Jack. Don't ever forget it.'

They moved on around the workshop and discussed the different fireboxes in the range; open ones for direct heat, contained ones for fusion, and the great athanor, the oven within an oven where the philosopher's egg could be kept at an ever-constant temperature. Finally, when Jack feared that his patience was about to run out, the alchemist showed him a vessel just like the one that he had found in the river. The only difference was that this one was empty. Its neck had not been sealed.

‘Would you like this one to be yours, Jack?'

‘Mine?'

‘Yours.'

‘To make gold in?'

The alchemist nodded, but Jack could see a twinkle in his eye that he was beginning to recognise. The realisation came to him that since he had first found the pot floating in the river his life had consisted of rising hopes that proceeded to get dashed. He looked up at the curtain which hung over the picture of Hermes on the wall. He could feel his presence like dampness in the air.

‘But it's not that simple, is it?'

The alchemist roared with laughter. ‘I knew I wasn't wrong,' he said. ‘You felt him, Jack, didn't you? You listened and you heard him, right here in this room. I'll make an alchemist of you, yet!'

Jack felt himself lifted on the crest of Barnstable's delight. ‘Will you?' he said.

‘Of course! And what's more, lad, the vessel is yours. It is as simple as that.'

Jack forgot about Hermes. ‘Is it?'

‘It is.' Barnstable opened the workshop door and ushered Jack through ahead of him. Then, as he closed it again behind them both, he said, ‘But it might not be as easy as you think.'

It took Jack's appetite away. The fire was still burning gently beneath the pot and the little room was fuggy with rich steam from the pottage. Outside the misted window the birds were celebrating the end of the rain, but Jack's heart was hollow. He was tired, and not at all sure that he wanted to continue with this apprenticeship.

The alchemist took the lid from the pot and made all kinds of appreciative noises, then filled two bowls to the brim. As soon as he began to eat, Jack's appetite returned and neither of them said a word until the pot was empty and the bowls and spoons licked clean. Then the alchemist sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.

‘There is one ingredient of the great work,' he said, ‘that cannot be found in my laboratory.'

‘Oh?' said Jack.

‘Nor in any laboratory, for that matter. Yet without it no philosopher has any chance of success. It is called the
prima materia
.'

It was the straw that broke the camel's back. Jack's mind buckled beneath the weight of new information. Words tumbled around inside his head; alembic, magnesia, athanor, mercury. He couldn't remember what any of them meant. There was only one way to escape them, and Jack took it. Before the alchemist had even begun to explain, he was fast asleep on the chair where he sat.

J
ACK WOKE IN DARKNESS
. The world was full of roaring and his mind was reeling with terrifying images of snakes and strange beasts, watched over by a man with wings on his heels. For a few, dizzy moments, he was utterly lost, with no idea at all of where he was. Then his gaze fell upon the dull glow of the dying embers and he remembered. The roaring sound was the alchemist snoring in the loft somewhere above his head.

Jack must have been snoring as well. His throat was sore and his mouth was wooden with thirst. He sucked on his tongue and tried to go back to sleep, but despite the warm blanket that the alchemist had wrapped around him as he slept, it was no use. Sooner or later he would have to get a drink.

The moon was quite bright, but the window was small and very little light came in to see by. Jack stood up and, treading warily, began to make his way across the room towards the scullery. The door was stiff, wedged on to the uneven stones of the floor. Jack had to put his shoulder to it, and it squawked horribly as it opened, causing Barnstable up in the loft to gasp in his sleep and turn over. When he was snoring comfortably again, Jack crept forward in the dark, reaching out with blind hands for the water crock. He found it with his toes. The water was cool and sweet and he drank deeply.

But by then, sleep had abandoned him. Instead of going straight back to his blanket, Jack crossed to the window of the scullery, drawn by the pale, clear light. The sky was frothy with clouds, but the face of the moon looked down between them and brought the surface of the river alive with gentle glints. On the other side, the grey land stretched away beyond seeing, so completely different from the daytime landscape that it filled Jack with a nameless dread. Out there, in every field, in every road and stream and hedgerow, Hermes and his mischief were waiting. It had been Hermes who sent him to sleep and caused the carts to get jammed, Hermes who had led him to the water's edge to find the philosopher's egg, Hermes who had brought him here to study his own, clandestine art.

Jack felt powerless in the face of such mystery, which seemed to roll away like the darkness towards infinity. His mind could cast no more illumination on it than a candle could cast on to the night landscape outside. The only comfort lay in the certainty that the alchemist understood. He would shelter Jack and teach him, until he could find his own way through the dark.

It was fully light when Jack woke. Barnstable was on his knees in front of the hearth, blowing gently on a couple of weakly glowing cinders and causing ashes to billow up in a fine cloud around his head. The night terrors had vanished and Jack felt surprisingly confident.

‘If that's not puffing,' he said, ‘I don't know what is.' Barnstable laughed delightedly and knelt up. Jack slipped down on to the hearth beside him and together they snapped tiny beech twigs and fed them to the recalcitrant embers, which finally consented to burn.

‘Damp sort of day,' said the alchemist. ‘Gets into my old bones.' Still on his knees, he shuffled over to the nesting box and lifted the lid. ‘Like to feed her?'

Jack nodded. The hen popped out and ruffled her feathers energetically, then ejected a sloppy white mess on to the floor behind her. Barnstable stood up and untied a small sack from a rope which hung from the beams above his head. Jack reached into it and took out a handful of oats. Kneeling down again in front of the hearth, he called to the hen. She regarded him coldly with one eye and shook herself again. He dribbled a few oats out on to the floor. She came over and pecked at them, then gobbled the rest from his open hand. The blunt stabbing of her beak made him giggle and squirm.

The alchemist looked on with a benign smile. The hen left Jack and helped herself to water from a little dish beside the box. Then she ruffled herself once more, scolded the crackling twigs briefly and hopped back on to her nest.

Jack closed her lid. ‘Can I feed the others outside?'

‘With pleasure,' said Barnstable, handing over the oat sack. ‘I'm beginning to wonder why I didn't take on an apprentice before.'

The day was overcast and drizzly, but Jack's good humour brightened it. He tried to feed the outside hens from his hands as well, but the cock flew at him and gave him a fright and he decided it would be safer to scatter the oats instead. Afterwards he wandered round the garden, rescuing some bean poles which had blown down in the night and collecting green windfalls from beneath the trees. The alchemist was so pleased that Jack found more work to do, filling the water crock with buckets from the well on the other side of the track and then bringing in enough firewood for two days. It was the kind of work he enjoyed, and by the time breakfast was ready he had almost forgotten the tedium of the laboratory and the confusion of all those new words. But Barnstable reminded him.

‘Do you remember much of what I told you yesterday?'

‘A little,' said Jack.

‘Good. But it's of no consequence, really. Most of the things we discussed will be of no use to you until much later on in your apprenticeship.'

Jack looked up from his porridge and grinned with delight, but the alchemist's eyes seemed to lack their customary spark.

‘It has been a pleasure having you around,' he said. ‘You're a helpful lad and I could use someone to lighten the load on these old bones.'

Jack felt the cold shadow of Hermes creeping across the room. ‘But I thought I was staying,' he said. ‘I thought I was your apprentice.'

‘You are, you are. And no matter what happens to you in life, you will always be my apprentice, even if you forget it yourself from time to time.'

Jack's mental fabric was beginning to fray around the edges again. ‘Well, then …'

‘You were very sleepy last night, weren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘And perhaps you didn't hear what I told you about the
prime materia
?'

Jack looked glumly into his porridge. ‘I might have been asleep. I don't remember.'

There was a long silence. Barnstable continued to eat his breakfast and Jack followed suit. Not until they had both finished did the alchemist speak again.

‘The
prima materia
,' he said, ‘is the basis of our art. It is the elemental matter from which the work begins. Without it, all our metals and powders and salts are quite worthless. Without it there is no alchemy. It is sometimes known as the stone of the philosophers, though it is not the same as the philosopher's stone, which can be fashioned from it. Within the
prima materia
spirit and matter come together and enter into conflict. He who holds it holds chaos. But only he who knows its nature can transmute it into gold.'

Jack didn't like the sound of it at all. He glanced round edgily. ‘Where is it?' he asked.

Barnstable shrugged. ‘Only you can know where your particular stone can be found.'

‘You mean I have to go out and look for it?'

‘That's right, yes.'

‘But where? Where do I look for it?'

Again the alchemist shrugged. ‘I don't know. But perhaps I can give you some clues. The stone, they say, lies alone in deep hollows, or in places where water has stopped running or else risen in flood. It can be found among the ashes of lost dreams or at the graveside of vanity. Dark places, Jack;
in stercore invenitur
. It is found in filth.'