The Alchemist of Rome

by M C Dulac

  Carissa was silent, but as we approached Valletta she began ranting again. She had a way of talking about me as if I were not there.

  “He has the elixir in his blood.”

  “He is not as strong as the Knight. Antonio’s eyes are much dimmer.”

  “But if it is in his blood, then we can drain it.”

  “Carissa, we have few friends here. I cannot let you kill him.”

  Carissa’s features were obscured beneath her veil, so I could see only her eye sockets and the slash of her mouth. She glared at me until we reached the city walls. If only we had known then what thoughts were brewing in her mind.

  We returned to the house and I fled to my quarters. Despair hung over my master and mistress.

  But Schumann was not to be defeated. The next night I saw that he had divided the elixir of decay into three separate glasses.

  “We will not let the old fool discourage us,” he said, “We will experiment on each glass. I will change the composition and see if I can reverse the effect. We are not dead, so some life must live in this elixir. We must find what it needs to grow.”

  It sounded plausible.

  Carissa came into the cellar and watched.

  “If these alchemists will not help me, then I will find my own medicine,” Schumann said, sprinkling salt into the first glass. We watched and we waited.

  The servants refused to stay in the house at night now. I had enough trouble convincing them to stay during the day. My master and mistress were truly startling, for they had begun to wear their masks and gloves indoors. And Carissa had a terrible temper. The Maltese muttered and crossed themselves when Schumann and Carissa were not looking. They thought we were all devils.

  Schumann’s experiments continued. His ideas were sound, and once when he poured the elixir on a leaf, it appeared to grow glossy. But it was a temporary recovery and it shriveled again. Although, we had now learned if something extra was added to the elixir, maybe its processes changed.

  Little else in the books of alchemy interested Schumann. He did learn one trick, which he practised on me. I was sleeping in my room when I felt panic, as though something terrible was about to happen. I leapt to my feet, searching for the cause of this sudden dread. At last I came to the cellar and found Schumann grinning. Apparently he was able to project feelings. This did not always work, and his power varied. I was not a victim again, but unfortunately he practised this trick on the servants, causing them to drop their brooms or be overwhelmed with chills, adding to our reputation of being a house of unease and nightmares.

  Eventually we had only two servants, women from the island of Gozo. I knew they wanted to return home, but did not have enough money for their passage. One night Schumann and I were in the cellar when we heard Carissa scream. Another scream followed - the servant girl’s. Schumann raised an annoyed eyebrow and told me to find out what had happened.

  I got as far as the top of the steps. I took a deep breath, as I was not sure what sight was more horrifying. Carissa’s veil had slipped. Her face was contorted with rage. It was not decay or fury that disturbed me, but the unnatural distortion of her once beautiful features. She was as monstrous as Medusa, or any fiend from mythology. She was dragging the servant girl along the hallway.

  “You spied on me!”

  “You are a monster!”

  “You hid in my room.”

  “It is true, they say you are all monsters. I will tell the Knights and they will burn down this house and all who dwell in it!”

  Carissa grabbed the girl by the hair and flung her down the stairs. I had noticed that Carissa and Schumann had unnatural strength now. They were either helplessly weak, or violently powerful. The poor girl fell hard, and lay lifeless on the cellar floor.

  Schumann jumped up, “Carissa!”

  Carissa took a deep breath, “Why worry, she is only a servant.”

  “We are strangers here! We will all be put to death. Is she dead?”

  I knelt down and took her pulse. I nodded.

  Carissa bent down and looked at the girl’s limp arm, “She is so young.”

  “We must move her at once,” Schumann said, “Antonio, help me.”

  “What?”

  “We must get rid of her. Get the cart.”

  The girl looked like my sister, or Maria, the maid in Rome. I fell to my knees, and touched her cheek. She was no older than fifteen.

  “Get the cart, Antonio.”

  “No, sir. This house is full of enough horror. I will not be part of it.”

  “We must do it now, before that other servant woman returns.”

  I raked my hands through my hair.

  Carissa knelt beside me. She had a strange glint in her eye, “She is still warm.”

  “Go, Antonio,” Schumann ordered.

  “My brother killed a man once,” Carissa said, “He looked like he was sleeping. It takes time for the chill of death to set in.”

  I felt ill. I longed to be free of this evil. And in that moment, I ran up the stairs. Perhaps Schumann thought that I was going to help him, for he did not come after me. I ran into the street and down the long roads to the harbour. I reached a wall high above the water and gazed at all the ships in the docks.

  I found a path down the hillside. I had a gold coin in my pocket. But where would I go, and how would I live? Schumann might find me and have me arrested again. Or my old master in Rome might return, and arrest me for breaking my apprenticeship. Although I wore fine clothes, I was no gentleman. My only skill was drawing pictures.

  I saw two workmen dragging a cart. They were strong like my father, and had a look of beaten exhaustion. I knew how their coarse shirts felt and could imagine the squalid rooms in which they lived. I knew the bitter pride they had in their physical strength, and in the hardships they survived. They glared at me with resentment, as if wondering why such a finely dressed man had stumbled into their world.

  Since joining Price in Rome, I was used to palazzos and villas and moonlit lawns. Even if I were not part of it, I was used to a world of beauty. Would I ever be accepted by my family and old friends again? Could I ever be happy among them again? Or had I changed, not from the elixir but from the new experiences I had gained?

  One thing was clear. I would not return to Schumann and Carissa. They were vile liars and thieves, and now they were murderers. I shuddered to think what they would do with the body of the poor girl who had uncovered their secret. Would they take her to an unmarked grave, unknown to her mother and priest? The Knight was right. It was as though the elixir knew who deserved to drink life and who deserved to drink death. What would Schumann and Carissa have become if they knew the true secrets of alchemy? What if they had become immortal?

  I must have walked along the entire waterfront and back again that night. There was no point trying to join a German or English ship. I spoke only Italian. Nor would I be much use to the Knights’ navies. I was slim and strong, but I did not have the muscles necessary to hoist sails or row oars. My hands were soft and would be cut to pieces by the coarse ropes. I would never be able to paint again.

  At last I took off my coat and wrapped it in a ball. I placed it under my head and folded my arms, trying to sleep on the edge of a dock. The water lapped against the seawall, and I thought of that elixir I had splashed into the cove on the night the fleet came. Was there some immortal fish, now swimming in the ocean?

  My head ached in strange places when I opened my eyes. A bright sun was rising over the Mediterranean. My arm was numb, and the morning sea mist had soaked my shirt. And someone was kicking me.

  I closed my eyes. I had no papers. Now the Knights were going to arrest me. Only prison awaited. But when I turned around, I saw a tall figure blotting out the sun. The hat and cloak looked familiar. As I squinted in the dawn, I felt like I had seen a ghost.

  “Get up, Antonio,” Schumann said.

  I scrambled to my feet. Schumann was not fully recovered, but he looked human again. He tried to
face the sun. He was not strong, but he was no longer dying.

  “What happened? Where is Carissa?”

  Schumann’s jaw was grim. Soldiers were walking nearby, “Carissa is dead.”

  “Dead? What have you done? How many have you killed?”

  “Lower your voice, Antonio. I did not kill her.”

  He carried his bag in his hand, as he stared around the docks. Was he going somewhere?

  “What happened?”

  “Since you absconded and neglected your duties, I had to find a cart to take away that girl myself.”

  “Murderer.”

  “Be silent, Antonio. When I returned, Carissa had attempted a terrible experiment. She had extracted from the dead girl an amount of blood, and mixed it with the elixir of decay. I can only think she drank too much, for it had killed her at once. But in her recklessness, drops had fallen into the next glass. When I arrived, the fluid was clear. I had nothing to lose. I was to be hung anyway, due to the horror in that cellar and the fact I had two dead girls in my house. I drank it as a condemned man. But then I felt its fizz, and I knew I was whole again.”

  “You are a fiend.”

  “Probably. Or I am the greatest alchemist that ever lived. The secret of youth is youth.”

  “Where are the girls now?”

  “I have made arrangements to conceal the bodies. But I must leave Malta at once. And you too, Antonio. This is a cursed place for us.”

  I shivered and pulled my coat around me.

  “I will run to the end of the earth to get away from you,” I cried.

  “It may be easier to run to Venice,” Schumann said, “I have acquaintances there who know nothing of this. There is a ship leaving this morning. I do not know how long this elixir lasts. I need your knowledge, Antonio. And I can give you protection from the law.”

  “I do not want your protection.”

  “We will both be hung for murder if we do not leave here at once. I could have told the Knights you were the murderer. Instead, I offer you salvation. Take it.”

  He strode along the dock. There was a ship ahead and the sails were being hoisted.

  “You will find the palazzo in Venice comfortable. Now Price is gone, I presume you are seeking a new position.”

  I stared at that deep blue harbour and thought of the midnight plains and the fortress city of the nobles and mysterious knights. I thought of the tenements of Naples and the barn in Rome. I thought of chains and gates and the cell at the bottom of the prison. I had no past and I had no future. What could I do?

  And then I ran after Schumann, and joined him on the ship.

  chapter nineteen

  And so began my life with Schumann. He never ceased to remind me he was my protector. I was still a condemned man in Naples and I had never been released from my apprenticeship in Rome. Schumann had his own fears too. He did not want to return to Germany, for the elixir of decay had changed him. Deep down, I believe he was beset by dread and guilt. We were two uneasy exiles.

  We settled in a large villa outside Venice. We made our first vat of gold, and with it, Schumann began to gain favour with the local nobles. Over the next ten years, Schumann became a successful banker and his confidence returned. He had to accept that men thought him sixty, rather than forty, and that women no longer found him irresistible. If he was embittered, he hid it behind an iron determination to succeed. Schumann and his gold were soon indispensable to the courts of northern Italy.

  The following year, we traveled to Frankfurt, where Schumann had arranged to meet his old servants. The workshops and mines in the Ruhr, owned by his family for generations, soon had hidden rooms, devoted to making gold.

  A suitable period of time had passed to justify the change in his appearance. He presented the diaries of his Grand Tour to his old university. The diaries, written before he had met Price, described a journey full of discovery and delights. Did the university elders wonder why Schumann had become such a tortured, haunted figure?

  It was in Germany that his illness suddenly returned. He had been talking to some bankers in his sitting room, when the door flung open. In the hall mirror, we both saw the spidery veins of the monstrous decay spreading over his face. I helped him upstairs, then sent the visitors away. He lay in semi-darkness, cursing and raging.

  I found the last bottle of the elixir he had made in Malta. He drank it in one gulp. The hours until he recovered were terrible. I thought that death would finally claim him. But he survived, and when he had regained his strength, he declared that we must return to Italy. He feared the northern climate had been the cause of his relapse and he was frightened of what the bankers might have seen.

  In the carriage over the alps, he was silent and grim. The last time he had made this journey southward was on his Grand Tour, when he had no idea what lay ahead. The sunny shores of Amalfi must have called to him, for he continued on, leaving me in Rome. A few days later, I learned he had purchased the Palazzo Ombre.

  He had also bought Price’s apartment off the Corso. He treated anything that Price had touched as though it had a sacred power. It was a strange feeling to open that door again, and see the familiar furnishings. There was no trace of Price now, except the objects he had hidden in the compartment in the roof. It was I who sat behind the desk in the study, answering correspondence and reviewing Schumann’s accounts. When I wasn’t working, I returned to my art, sketching the city of Rome, over and over, with an intensity that alarmed my few friends.

  But in the year 1850, I received a letter ordering me to Amalfi. The handwriting was twisted and ink blots stained the page. It was a late November day when I approached the Palazzo Ombre. All was still. The orchards were overgrown and the hedges untended. I stepped out of the carriage with trepidation.

  A sombre servant led me to the cellar. Schumann cowered in the darkness, surrounded by smashed bottles and burnt powders. He had fallen ill again, but the illness had taken a new form, as though the decay were animated. He had none of the old elixir left - not even a drop to use as a base. Schumann wrote out a letter with his gnarled hand. He was sending me to England, to seek the advice of scientists there.

  I caught a ship from Naples but storms plagued us across the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. What a shadowy figure I became in London! I met physicians in secret rooms and scientists in abandoned graveyards. But these men had no cure. I received another desperate letter from Schumann, ordering me to Dublin. The physician I met behind Dublin Castle one night knew nothing of Schumann’s elixir.

  I wrote to Schumann from Dublin, setting out all I had learned. I feared his wrath, even at that distance. When I had exhausted my enquiries, I returned to Rome, taking the overland route.

  It was almost a year since I had left Italy. I did not know if Schumann were alive or dead. Then I heard that the peasants in Amalfi had begun to speak of a monster - a monstrous wraith, clad in fine clothes, who roamed the coves and cliffs at night. The monster had hypnotic powers - girls had disappeared from their homes, and were last seen wandering through orchards and across beaches in a trance. More than a dozen had gone missing over summer. In Malta, only one girl had to die, so I dreaded to think what had gone wrong.

  The monster roamed the coast for a year, and then the disappearances stopped. I wrote to Schumann again, but received no reply. As the months passed, I dared to hope that he had died, and the curse had lifted.

  Then one night Schumann appeared at my door in Rome. He had recovered. But something had changed in his appearance, as though it reflected a deterioration in his soul.

  “What is this evil potion that Price brewed?” he said, “I created the elixir of decay just as the books said, and added the drops of blood, the ingredient that I alone discovered. But it did not work, Antonio! Two days later, I woke in agony. I found another wretch, and this time the potion lasted for an hour. I had to hunt for nights and months. You do not know how many lives I had to take!”

  I made the sign of the cross, but this
enraged him more.

  “You must learn the secrets of the elixirs, Antonio. If I sicken again, you must bring me the elixir and the girl, at once.”

  “I cannot, master.”

  “Then make me the elixir. I will do the rest. Or I will force the elixir of decay down your throat with my own hands.”

  Schumann left me that night. I do not know how I lived with myself from that time on. Perhaps I hid our awful reality in a dark part of my mind.

  I wanted nothing to do with alchemy, but I studied the books, as Schumann ordered. I found the recipe for a potion that gave me a chance to forget - the elixir of the elements. Not to die, but to dissolve. I sipped some and felt peace. I did not have the courage to drink more.

  Schumann remained healthy. I hoped that the last draught had stopped the progress of the decay. But the elixirs were mercurial. In 1890, Schumann arrived again at my door in Rome.

  The decay was spreading over him as I watched. His carriage had been driving along the Corso when the illness struck. He had not had time to reach the safety of his home in Rome, or to set out for Amalfi.

  He was in great agony. Fear overcame me. I glanced up and down the hall to make sure he had not been seen. I helped him to the carriage. His driver looked as though he had seen the devil, but at least the shock stunned him into silence. I ordered the driver to go straight to Schumann’s villa in Rome.

  In the cellar, I mixed the elixir of decay without thinking. Schumann watched me with blazing eyes. His weakness was deceptive. As I sat in the shadows of that laboratory, I felt I was in the presence of a new monster.

  “It is done,” I stared at the green fluid. I stood up but Schumann barred my path.

  “I am too ill to hunt on my own.”

  “I said I cannot, master.”

  His gnarled fingers reached around my neck, “The warrant for your arrest is eternal, Antonio. Remember that and do whatever I tell you. You are my servant, and nothing more.”