The Alchemist's Door (9 page)

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Authors: Lisa Goldstein

BOOK: The Alchemist's Door
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Dee saw Loew tense out of the corner of his eye.
“None of these men know who they are. Each lives in ignorance of his purpose in the world. At the moment of their appointed death, though, they are granted understanding, and they must name an heir to carry on their work. And of course this heir does not know what he has been called upon to do, until it is his turn to die.
“And he says that you—that Rabbi Loew—you are not one of them, as you feared.” Kelley's voice grew stronger, deeper, and the cadences he spoke in were different. Dee had never heard him like this; he thought that an angel might actually be speaking through him. “You are the thirty-seventh. You are charged to watch over the others and see that they do not come to harm. If they die before their appointed time they cannot name their heir, and the world will end. There is one here in Prague, especially, who must be guarded, whose life may be in danger.”
“Here?” Loew asked. “Who is he?”
“It doesn't matter,” Kelley said. His voice changed again, becoming low and raspy. It sounded familiar, horribly familiar. “He will die, whatever you do. All is lost, hopeless. Nothing you do can make the slightest difference.”
“Who—who are you?” Dee asked.
“Silence!” Kelley said.
And then all the world went blank. Dee could say nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. He struggled to form words, to scream aloud for help, but he could not move.
D
EE'S MOUTH MOVED WITHOUT HIS VOLITION. “He will die, the world will end, and then we will finally have our triumph,” he heard himself say. “The world will be remade in our image.”
The thing was inside him now. His muscles bunched and released under the thing's control; it was a sickening feeling. He still could not see.
Loew was saying something, but he could not hear what it was. Where was Kelley?
The thing laughed. “Your children will die,” he/it said. “Everything will die, earth, air, fire, water. This world will become our paradise.”
Dimly he could hear Loew shouting in Hebrew, reciting some sort of chant or prayer. He struggled to open his eyes.
He felt his hand reach out. His fingers brushed something round. He lifted it; it felt cold and heavy in his grasp. The showstone.
He raised the stone as if to throw it. Kelley screamed. Loew's chanting became louder, and this time, after great struggle, Dee was able to open his eyes. His hand was poised to throw the stone at Kelley.
Do it,
the thing whispered within him.
Throw it. Why can he see angels and you cannot? Is that fair?
Why not? he thought. Why
could
Kelley see angels, after all?
Kelley screamed again, shrilly. The sound brought Dee back to himself. Good God. Where had that surge of anger come from? What had he been about to do?
He forced his fingers to straighten. The stone dropped and landed with a crack on Loew's desk. He struggled to follow Loew's chanting, the sinuous turns of the melody.
His control continued to return, a little at a time. Thank God, he thought. Thank God. He took a step and stumbled, then fell into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. He was shivering uncontrollably.
He looked up to see Loew regarding both of them uncertainly. “You have not been entirely honest with me, I think,” Loew said. “What was that?”
“I don't know,” Dee said. He shuddered again; he could not seem to stop. His voice felt raw, as if he had been screaming for a long time.
“You don't
know?”
Loew asked.
“It is—it is a demon of some sort. A fallen angel. We first conjured it in London—we called it somehow through the stone. It possessed my daughter Katherine then. That's why we came here. The demon seemed to say that we could outrun it.”
“And you believed it?”
Dee looked at him. “I did, yes. I was terrified for Katherine. I never thought that it might be lying.”
“And so you brought it here,” Loew said flatly.
“You don't know what it was like! It attacked my
child!
I was alone, all alone—no one knew enough to help me. No one could possibly help me. Everything I touched had gone wrong.”
“But why did you call it up in the first place?”
Dee hesitated. He couldn't accuse Kelley, not with the man standing right there. “I didn't intend to,” he said.
“I have heard of these demons,” Loew said. “They are souls that were created by God just before the Sabbath. When the Sabbath came he had to stop work and so he could not make bodies for them. Now these spirits fly through the upper air, looking for bodies to inhabit.”
“No,” Dee said. “It's a fallen angel, one of those that rebelled with Lucifer against God.”
“We don't believe that. We believe—”
“It doesn't matter,” Dee said. He was in no mood to discuss theology with an unbeliever. “What was it you were reciting?”
“The ninety-first psalm. The song against demons, it is called.”
“Which one is that?”
In answer Loew began to recite. “Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day … . No evil shall befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling … . He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'”
“A good psalm to remember,” Dee said. He had heard it, of course, but had not known that it could be used to banish demons.
“And a window must be open while you recite,” Loew said. “There must be somewhere for the demon to go.”
“Is it gone for good, then? Did you get rid of it?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“But can you—”
Loew shook his head. “No, I'm afraid not. I don't know nearly enough. But it must be exorcized, and soon. If it becomes strong enough it can inhabit a man completely, taking over his mind and body forever, extinguishing his immortal soul. You were very fortunate here.”
“I don't feel fortunate.” He tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow.
“There is, of course, a temporary solution, and that is to stop using the showstone.”
Dee picked up the stone gingerly and turned it over in his long fingers. Loew moved to stop him but then sat back and let him continue, as if satisfied he would not do anything rash.
The stone was miraculously unbroken. Could he bring himself to stop using it? He had so many questions left to ask the angels. But he would have to—he couldn't risk possession by the demon again.
“And I will have to find this righteous man the angel spoke of, the one who lives here in Prague,” Loew said. “In fact our tasks may be related. The demon said that if this man is killed the world will end, and then the demons can remake it the way they want. Perhaps if we find this man, and protect him so that the demon cannot harm him—perhaps then it will go away.”
“Find him how?”
Loew shrugged. “I don't know.”
“There's too much we don't know.”
“Yes. We need to learn more. I will ask rabbis and scholars in other towns for help. And you should talk to people you know, all those alchemists and sorcerers I see in the streets. There seem to be more and more of them every day, ever since Rudolf came to Prague.”
“I don't really know them, though. I just arrived here myself.”
“Well, then,” Loew said. “You should try to make their acquaintance, shouldn't you?”
NEITHER DEE NOR KELLEY SAID A WORD ON THE LONG WALK back. It was noon when they got to the house, but Dee went straight to bed and tried to sleep. It was no use. Almost as soon as he closed his eyes he began to relive the scene in Loew's study, feeling the demon crawl inside him like a worm and then take him over completely. He felt dirty, violated.
After a while he stood and looked through the few books he had brought with him. They were no help, though; none of them dealt with anything like this.
He must have slept; he woke in his bed, the sun shining in his eyes. He felt unrefreshed, as if he had spent the night struggling against an irresistible force, and his sheets were bunched in knots. His mouth was dry as a stone.
He went to the kitchen. Jane was already there, setting out
bread and butter for the children. “What happened to you yesterday?” she asked.
He couldn't say that they were no longer safe here, that their brief feeling of safety had been a fool's dream. That they had not escaped after all. Instead, he told her about what he had discovered at Loew's house, the legend of the thirty-six men.
“And that explains why you slept for twenty hours straight,” Jane said sourly.
“I wasn't feeling well,” he said.
He could tell she didn't believe him. “Your friend's gone again,” she said. “That odious man Kelley.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He didn't say anything. He was gone before I got up.”
Dee went out into the city after breakfast, intending to search for the alchemists as Loew had suggested. Kelley had once mentioned a street called Golden Lane, but Dee had no idea where that was. Somewhere across the river, he thought. But the fear that had dogged him since London kept him on his own side; the other side, he remembered, was haunted with angels.
He ended up in a town square. There was a clock here too, a huge thing of blue and gold, with mechanisms for telling the hour and the month and the signs of the zodiac. What a city this is for timepieces, he thought.
As he watched, the figure of Death came out and inverted an hourglass. Then the apostles paraded in front of him; the clock chimed the hour; various allegorical figures followed, Greed and Vanity and Lust. Greed was represented by a Jewish moneylender; he thought of Rabbi Loew, then remembered Hageck's wild claims and shook his head.
“They put his eyes out, you know,” someone near him said.
It was the old woman again, Magdalena; Dee could tell that without even looking, though oddly he could not call up her face. “Whose eyes?” he asked, not turning around.
“The clockmaker's. They didn't want him building anything like this again. About a hundred years ago, this was.”
He faced her. “Were you following me again?”
“Yes.”
“This is intolerable. I'll set the watch on you. I'm not without influence here, you know. King Rudolf himself—”
“You seemed lost. Is there anything you're looking for? Maybe I can help.”
Could she? For the first time he wondered what had brought her to such a pass. How had she come to wander the streets of Prague, as old and infirm as she was? Did she have no family? Or had they thrown her out for working magic?
He found himself, to his own surprise, feeling pity for her. Jane had once told him that he had a good heart, that he could never turn away strays in need of help, not even a criminal like Kelley. “Maybe you can,” he said. “I'm looking for alchemists or astrologers. The men who came here because of King Rudolfs reputation.”
“Of course—I know them all. Come with me.”
He had no choice but to follow her. “Do you know where Golden Lane is?” he asked as they set off.
She laughed. “Oh, you'll find no alchemists there,” she said. “The street got its name from the goldsmiths who work for King Rudolf. Or from the rivers of piss that flow through it—there's nowhere to dump the waste.”
“Where are we going then?”
“Patience,” she said.
Despite this last command they stopped soon afterwards. Magdalena motioned Dee into a tavern. He shrugged and went inside; he had already discovered that Bohemian beer was very good, as tasty as English ale.
The place smelled of cabbages and sausage. His eyes strained to see in the dim light. At first he thought the tavern was empty, but then Magdalena led him toward a trestle table
in the corner, occupied by several men. Yellow candles burnt to fat stubs ranged across the table, lighting the men's faces from below.
Now he could see well enough to recognize some of the people he had already noticed in the city: the man in the black cloak, his two black mastiffs lying on the floor near him; the tall man with the aristocratic bearing who had spoken to thin air. Magdalena sat at one of the benches and began talking to someone hidden in the shadows.
The man who spoke to air noticed him and nodded. “Sit,” he said. “My name is Michael Sendivogius.”
He took a place at one of the benches. The table was made of rough wood and covered with mystical signs scored into the surface, stars and numbers and alphabets, crescents and circles and triangles.
“I am Doctor John Dee.”
“Indeed?” Sendivogius said. “I've heard of you. You wrote a number of books, didn't you?
Monas …”
“Monas Hieroglyphica.”
But Sendivogius was already introducing the others, too quickly for Dee to remember them all. There was someone from Greece—this was the man with the dogs—and a pair of men from Hungary with nearly identical faces: thin and sharpplaned, with long brown hair. One of the men had jewels plaited in his beard. Then Sendivogius introduced a Scotsman, Alexander Seton. “A countryman of yours,” Sendivogius said.
Dee was opening his mouth to explain the difference between England and Scotland when Sendivogius indicated the last person at the table. His hair and eyes and beard were blacker than any Dee had ever seen. He wore a richly embroidered brocade coat, frayed and raveled at the edges.
Dee realized with shock that the man was a Saracen, an infidel. Yet even as Dee thought of bloody religious wars and vowed to have nothing to do with him, he remembered that the
word “alchemy” came from “al Khemia,” or “from Egypt,” and he felt a powerful desire to know more. He noticed, surprised, that the Saracen and Magdalena were deep in conversation.
When the courtesies were done the men continued their conversations among themselves, speaking in a babel of languages. The two Hungarians conducted a heated conversation in a language Dee did not recognize, all sibilants and misplaced accents; it sounded like cats fighting. If this was Hungarian, he thought, it was even more barbaric than Czech.

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