The Alchemist's Door

by Lisa Goldstein

“I’m sorry to disabuse you, my friend. Izak is not here. It seems your precious Rabbi Loew was wrong.”

  “May I come in and look?”

  “Of course not. There’s a good deal in here I don’t want anyone to see. Especially Loew.”

  “Loew isn’t interested in anything but Izak.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. You tell your owner that he knows the terms of our bargain. He tells me the name I want, and I release Izak.”

  Dee heard a scuffle, and then a thump as something hit the floor. He stuck his head out cautiously. Kelley lay prone across the doorway. Yossel was nowhere to be seen.

  “What is it?” Loew said intently.

  “Yossel pushed past Kelley and went inside.”

  Nothing happened for long moments. Bells rang out somewhere in the city. A coach drove down the street and Dee and Loew ducked back into the shelter of the doorway. “Do you see anything?” Loew asked impatiently.

  Just then Yossel ran from the house. He looked wildly up and down the street and rushed past them.

  “Yossel!” Loew said. “Come here! Now! Yossel!”

  The golem paused. Something had terrified him badly, Dee saw. How could a lump of clay have such a searing expression? The golem headed toward them reluctantly.

  “What happened?” Loew asked. “What did you see?”

  Yossel shook his head.

  “What? What was it?”

  “I can’t—I can’t say.” The golem’s voice was low, rasping.

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Kelley’s moving,” Dee said. “He’s going to wake up soon. We’ve got to go.”

  Without discussing it they headed around the market, anxious to put the noise and bustle between them and Kelley. “Tell me,” Loew said urgently. “What did you see in Kelley’s house?”

  “Nothing can make me speak of it,” Yossel said. “Not even if you were to promise me an immortal soul.” And he said nothing else on the way back to Loew’s house, though both Loew and Dee tried to draw him out.

  Shadows were lengthening across the streets by the time they reached the Jewish Quarter, the evening finally bringing the promise of cooler weather. Someone had placed a bundle of rags against the wall near the gate. As they came closer the bundle moved and stood up, and Dee saw that it was Magdalena.

  She had insisted on traveling to Prague with him but had gone her own way when the coach reached the city; she had not thought Loew would welcome her, and he had to admit that she was probably right. Now he nodded to her as she came toward them. “Good day, Doctor Dee,” she said.

  “Good evening, more like,” Dee said.

  Loew looked from Dee to Magdalena. For an instant Dee saw her as Loew did, a shapeless mass of soiled and ragged clothing, and he felt briefly embarrassed. Then he thrust the feeling away. Magdalena was a good person; he had no reason to be ashamed of her.

  “This is Magdalena,” he said to Loew. “She’s been helping me with my investigations.” He turned to Magdalena. “And this is Rabbi Loew.”

  Loew nodded without turning toward her. Dee felt annoyed at his rudeness; then he remembered that Loew did not look directly at any woman other than his wife.

  “And who is this?” Magdalena asked, indicating the golem.

  “My name is Yossel, lady.” He held out his hand. Magdalena took it gravely.

  “I have a great deal to tell you,” Dee said. “Is there a place we can go to talk?”

  “There’s a tavern,” Magdalena said.

  “Good. Will you join us, Rabbi Loew?”

  Loew hesitated. “Yes, very well. But I don’t think they will look kindly on Yossel.” He turned to the golem. “Yossel, go home. Go to your room. Do not talk to anyone on the way. Do you hear me?”

  Yossel nodded and shuffled through the gate into the Quarter.

  The tavern was like a border outpost, Dee saw as they went inside, a place that served Jews, Christians, and Saracens alike. It reminded him of that other borderland he had visited, István’s realm, with its confusion of different peoples and religions. The three of them, mismatched as they were, drew no stares from the other patrons.

  As they went toward an empty table they passed a group of women seated together. One of them turned, and Dee recognized Marie.

  “Doctor Dee!” she said. “You must—you must—”

  The German defeated her. She spoke to one of her companions in French and the other woman translated.

  “You must be careful,” the woman said. “My friend Marie says she has seen the countess Erszébet in Prague.”

  “Erzsébet! Here?”

  Marie spoke again. “Yes,” her friend said. “There is—there is a door the countess wants to keep open. Do you understand what she means by that?”

  “I’m afraid I do,” Dee said. “Thank her for the warning. And ask her how she is, please. Has she found lodging in Prague?”

  “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “She is staying with me. She had a terrible scare in Transylvania, apparently, something so frightening she will not talk about it. Did it have something to do with this Hungarian woman?”

  “Yes, it did. She’ll have to tell you herself what it was, though.”

  “I understand. And meanwhile I will see that she is well taken care of.”

  Loew and Magdalena had found a table, he saw. He bid farewell to Marie and her friend and went toward them, deep in thought.

  So Erzsébet was here, in Prague. Everyone was here, it seemed, everyone and anyone who would benefit from keeping the door open, or from closing it. Prague was the center, the place where all the lines crossed.

  He had not come here accidently, he saw. He had been brought here, the demon chivvying him, harassing him, leading him every step of the way to the one spot in the world where it could come through the door the easiest.

  Once again he remembered the old Yorkshireman’s story about the farmer who had been tormented by a Boggart for years and who, in running away from it, had only managed to bring it with him. “We may as well turn back to the old house,” the farmer had said, “as be tormented in another that’s not so convenient.”

  If only they could somehow turn back to the old house. If only they could return to England, away from demons and fraudulent alchemists and women who bathed in blood.

  But what if the demon wasn’t the only one who had guided his steps? What if he was here for a purpose—to stop the demon, to close the door, to find the thirty-sixth?

  He joined Loew and Magdalena and ordered mutton stew and some beer. Loew shook his head; he would not eat anything not prepared according to his dietary laws, Dee remembered. Magdalena declined food as well, but Dee understood in time that this was because she had no money to pay for it, and he ordered another stew for her. “Was that Marie?” she asked.

  “Yes. She seems to have found friends here in Prague, for which God be thanked.”

  When their meals came she ate quickly, like a starving child. God knows when she had eaten last, Dee thought; it might not have been since they left Trebona. He would have to remember to ask her where she planned to stay the night.

  “So,” Magdalena said when she had finished. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”

  “Well, for one thing Izak’s been kidnapped,” Dee said.

  He was unprepared for her reaction. She put a hand to her mouth, an anxious look in her eyes. Now he remembered seeing her and Izak in the Jewish Quarter, and he wondered again about their unlikely friendship.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “What happened to him?”

  He told her about the notes Kelley had sent and their visit to his house with the golem. By the time he finished she had regained her usual blunt confidence. “Well, then, we’ll have to look around Master Kelley’s house ourselves,” she said.

  “What!”

  “No one else will do it. Even Yossel is afraid of him.”

  “We will not go into his house. You of all people should understand how dangerous it is to visit a
sorcerer. Don’t you remember Erzsébet?”

  “I survived Erzsébet, didn’t I?”

  “With my help. And you can’t count on that this time—I’m not going with you. I have no wish to meet whatever it was that frightened a golem.”

  “Fine. I’ll go alone, then.”

  “No, you won’t. I can’t let you do that.”

  “How will you stop me?”

  Loew stared at them, his brows raised, the proscription against looking at another woman forgotten. “Who’s Erzsébet? What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Erzsébet Báthory,” Magdalena said, pronouncing the syllables with relish.

  Loew’s amazement deepened. “I—I’ve heard of her, of course,” he said. He listened as they recounted their tale, taking turns: Erzsébet’s rooms, Magdalena’s transformation, the dead body.

  “So you’re twenty years old,” he said to Magdalena when they had finished. “I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

  She grinned, showing her few teeth, sharp and discolored as pebbles. “I’m glad,” she said. “If you can’t penetrate my disguise then it must be good indeed.”

  “But Erzsébet did,” Dee said.

  “Yes,” said Loew. “That worries me too. What powers is she allied with?”

  “Not godly ones, that’s for certain,” Dee said. “She told me she summons them by her bloodletting.”

  “I wonder—” Magdalena said. “Well, you both divide the world into two camps, God’s and the demons’. But I wonder if there might be more than that. There are a good many powers that we know nothing about.”

  “Nonsense,” Loew said. “There is God, and there are those opposing him.”

  “Every religion tells us that,” Dee said. He remembered how exotic Loew’s religion had once seemed to him. Now, allied with him against Magdalena’s lunatic ideas, he realized that they were closer than he thought. “Whatever the differences between Loew and me, we both believe in a God that created heaven and earth.”

  “Every religion? Really?” She looked at each of them in turn, and he caught a glimpse of the forthright young woman hidden behind the blurred form of the crone. He could see that she was about to make one of her dreadful pronouncements, something blasphemous or obscene or both. “You’ve never asked how I perform the magic that transforms me into an old woman.”

  “Very well, how do you?” Dee asked.

  “I pray.”

  “There, you see—”

  “I pray to a woman. She’s something like my mother, the way I remember her, and something like a statue I saw once in a Roman ruin.”

  “Well, of course the pagans believed in all sorts of errors—”

  “Did they? How can you be sure they were errors? How can you know, absolutely know, that what you believe is true? So many things exist that we can have no knowledge of—perhaps your gods are out there, somewhere, and mine too.”

  “Enough of this,” Loew said. “What are we going to do about Izak?”

  The discussion was making him uneasy, Dee saw; he had probably learned to tread carefully in matters of religion. And yet no one at the neighboring tables was paying them the slightest attention. In England people having these sorts of conversations had to look over their shoulders constantly; there were always spies eager to report heresies to the authorities for pay. Magdalena, at least, might have been arrested as a witch and possibly tortured. He felt a little shocked at the amount of freedom he seemed to have here.

  “I told you,” Magdalena said. “I’ll get him from Kelley’s house. We can do it tomorrow—I was at the alchemists’ tavern earlier today, and they said he has an audience with Rudolf then.”

  “And I told you you’re not going in there,” Dee said.

  “And I asked you how you were going to stop me.”

  Dee sat back in his chair, frustrated. She had become his responsibility, almost his daughter, he saw. Still, it was far better to think of her as a daughter than to remember her as the beautiful young woman she truly was. “The only way I know,” he said. “I’ll have to talk you out of it—show you just how foolish this idea of yours is.” He turned to Loew. “Come, help me here. Even the golem was frightened by what he saw in Kelley’s house.”

  “That’s true,” Loew said. “And Yossel is far stronger than all of us together. How could we survive something like that?”

  Magdalena was silent a moment. Then she said, “When I was fourteen I became a prisoner of a man who used me very badly.”

  She did not seem to want to continue. Dee said, hoping to prompt her, “Did he—did he take liberties with you?”

  Magdalena laughed harshly. “Oh, it was far worse than that. You are a wise man, Doctor Dee, but you know very little about some things. He raped me, and then he shared me with his friends. And after a while he gave me to strangers. At the end of the night he would tie me up and leave me in my room, and I would try to sleep. And then in the evening he would come back and give me supper—the only food I ate all day—and then his customers would arrive again.”

  Loew had gone very pale. “How did you get away?” he asked.

  “One night he was drunk and didn’t tie the ropes tightly enough. I worked my way loose, and when he came into the room I broke a chair over his head. I may have killed him—I didn’t stay to find out. So you see, I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of someone stronger than you, someone who wants to use you for his own ends. I’m going to find out what happened to Izak.”

  “But you don’t even know him,” Loew said.

  “I know him better than you do.”

  “What? How?”

  She laughed. “I know a good many people here in Prague. Not much goes on that I don’t hear about.”

  “Very well,” Dee said. “If I can’t stop you, I’ll have to go with you.”

  “And I,” Loew said.

  To Dee’s surprise she began to laugh. “Wonderful,” she said. “Two ancient men, tottering around after me as I try to move silently through Kelley’s house.”

  “You can’t go in there alone,” Dee began, and Loew said, “You have no idea—”

  She laughed again. “I need a protector, do I? You men could not have survived half the things I did.”

  “But you know very little magic,” Dee said. “You said so yourself.”

  “That’s true.” She looked at each of them in turn. “You come with me, then, Doctor Dee. I won’t need both of you.”

  “But—” Dee said. But he knew less magic than Loew. And he had been opposed to going into Kelley’s house to begin with. But he couldn’t say anything; he would sound the worst sort of coward if he did. “Very well. I’ll meet you at the Cattle Market tomorrow at ten. Do you know where that is?”

  “Of course.”

  Loew thanked them for the trouble they were taking for Izak, and the three of them separated. Dee walked toward the inn where he had left his worn and stained travel bags; he had decided not to stay with Doctor Hageck, who would doubtless attempt to talk him out of visiting Loew.

  He climbed the steps to his room and opened the door. The heat of the day had not dissipated; the room was stuffy and close. It was only when he had unpacked and settled in that he realized he had never asked Magdalena where she planned to spend the night; he had been too shocked by her story to think of it.

  He understood that what she said was true: he would probably not have survived the things she had had to endure.

  12

  DEE HAD HALF HOPED MAGDALENA WOULD change her mind, but as he neared the market he recognized her now-familiar shape; she looked like a bundle of rags propped up against a statue. As he came closer he saw that the statue was the one Kelley had mentioned in his letter, and he grimaced at the coincidence. The market was closed today; it seemed eerily silent, like a city hit by plague. Dung and hay and scraps of leather littered the ground, skittering in the mild wind. The sun had just started to burn off the clouds, promising another hot day.

  She stood and they
headed for Kelley’s house, walking without discussion around to the back. The path brought them to a large courtyard. Dee studied the house closely, looking for the servant’s entrance, and beside him he noticed Magdalena doing the same. Dee felt as if they were working in tandem, as if they had planned everything out beforehand. Well, that’s not surprising, he thought. I should know her fairly well by this time.

  He found a door; it opened when he turned the knob. Why wasn’t it locked? What protection did Kelley have that he considered stronger than locks and bolts?

  They went inside. Dee watched Magdalena carefully but she did not change shape. So Kelley’s magic was of a different sort than Erzsébet’s. Either that or it was weaker, but Dee did not think that was the case.

  He looked around and saw that they had entered through the kitchen. The room was cold, a shock after the heat outside. Dim watery light came in through the unwashed windows. He smelled sour milk and cabbage. No doubt all Kelley’s servants had fled long ago—that is, if he had managed to hire any in the first place.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw that the kitchen was huge, as big as a cathedral nave. An open hearth lined with bricks gaped at one end. Tables stood against the walls, piled high with pots and plates and cooking knives. Ropes of old dried herbs hung from the ceiling, their scent making little headway against the stale kitchen smells.

  They left the kitchen and came to a dining room furnished with a large oak table surrounded by at least a dozen chairs. He thought of Kelley sitting at the table, eating all alone in that vast space. Or would he be alone? Perhaps a different demon sat at each of the chairs, a hellish parliament.

  He shook his head. He was allowing his imagination to paint terrifying pictures, to do Kelley’s work of frightening for him. But so far, he reminded himself, they had seen nothing to be afraid of.

  They walked on. The next rooms were empty, or had at most one piece of furniture in them, a stool or table or tapestry. Dee had brought a candle with him and he lit it at a guttering fire in one of the hearths, stopping longer than he should to warm his chilled bones.

  Suddenly he heard Magdalena cry aloud behind him. He turned quickly. “Nothing,” she said. “It was nothing. I thought I saw—”