by Chris James
Jacob wore the same brave face, whatever the excuse, every night, quietly kissing her goodnight, closing the door behind him and going off to his own, deserted, soulless room where, more often than not, he would lay for hours with tears in his eyes. She meant everything to him. She was the only reason he had for living. Every night, before drifting off to sleep, he vowed to try harder to be a better person and fulfil Emily’s every wish, bring her comfort, bring her security, and earn her respect – because he loved her so.
The following morning the professor declined to confirm whether or not The Institute and The Worshipful Society were one and the same. He had thrown a tantrum and forbade Jacob to make enquiries there – against all reason, in Jacob’s view.
Having run out of other options, Jacob chose to ignore him and ventured into the grand entrance of The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries at Apothecaries Hall, with the baffling riddle written on a sheet of paper. Jacob lied to a clerk, explaining that he had a dilemma with a test question from a university syllabus on historic medicine that he was studying, and wondered if somebody there could assist him. He gave his name and sat on a hard bench in a marble reception hall that resembled a mausoleum.
‘Jacob Silver. Jacob Silver,’ a very tall and painfully thin official was repeating, as he followed the clerk out to meet Jacob. He held a finger to his high forehead and asked, ‘Jacob Silver? Jacob Silver, son of Stanley and Ethel Silver, Victoria Embankment, Blackfriars?’
Jacob was startled that they knew his name. The Institute’s director, Dr Joseph Jensen, shook hands vigorously and introduced himself. He towered over Jacob, constantly pushing half-moon spectacles back up his nose. ‘Winner of our 1886 Scholarship. Of course I would remember you. Yours was the highest score ever achieved in the first examination. But you didn’t return? Didn’t take up your dear father’s profession?’
‘I. . . Well, I found another calling, sir, but–’
‘Ah, yes! The artist. I clear forgot. We lost a great student. The world gained a great artist. My congratulations.’ He bade Jacob follow him deep into the bowels of that place, down stone steps which led into cavernous cellars, leading the way with a lantern. ‘I notice a Miss Pollock is licensed for your father’s old business now,’ the doctor said. Jacob nodded.
‘You said I won a scholarship, sir?’ Jacob asked as they proceeded below ground.
‘Of course. To Greenwold College. Were you not aware?’
‘Ah, of course. I didn’t recall it was Apothecaries Hall, that’s all. I thought it was from the Institute.’
Dr Jensen stopped dead. ‘The Institute!’ he said, alarmed. ‘What do you know of this Institute?’
‘I wondered if the two organisations were connected, sir. Apothecaries Hall and the Institute.’
‘No. Definitely not. The Ancient Institute of Apothecaries and Alchemists were a scandalous and anonymous bunch who brought our trade into disrepute. Be proud, young man, that no such institute sent you to Greenwold. That was our honour, young sir. I assure you. Although, I must confess, the Institute did make a small contribution towards your expenditure, clothing and such. But that was all. A tiny contribution when compared to the total sum involved.’
‘Well, I’ve not completely given up on medicine, sir. I’m studying ancient remedies, since it was my first love.’
‘Ah, yes. A problem with a formula of some kind?’ he asked, putting out his hand. Jacob passed him the note, the five lines from Alchemy. The director held up his arms and led Jacob into dark dungeons within the cellars. ‘The answer, if there is one, is likely to be in here.’
Jacob stared with incredulity at dusty, cobwebbed shelves lining every nook and cranny, piled high with ancient tomes. Here were thousands of books like Alchemy, arranged into subject then date order. Dr Jensen lit a second lantern for Jacob.
‘Do you have any idea when this might have been written?’ Dr Jensen asked. ‘Within a century or two?’
‘1350 to say, 1400, I would imagine.’
‘And in what context?’ asked the director.
‘Medical. . .’ Jacob hesitated, ‘concoction or potion.’
‘Cure or curse?’
Jacob laughed. ‘There were such things?’
‘My boy, the medical world survived on such things. Quacks and charlatans benefitting from the patients’ own healing powers made a good living during those times of plague and pestilence.’
‘Mind over matter,’ Jacob offered.
‘Exactly. And many a sugar pill is still being palmed off, as we speak,’ he kept walking, ‘I’m sure with the best of intentions, by educated physicians with many letters after their names.’
The director stopped at a gap in the shelves. A whole line of books were missing; a note sat on the shelf, which the director unfolded and read.
‘1350 to 1400 you say?’
Jacob agreed.
‘Odd. Very odd. What, pray, is the work you are studying?’ he asked, placing the note back on the empty shelf.
Jacob became nervous, felt cold sweat on his neck. ‘It’s a compendium of formulae, Latin, Turkish and Greek,’ he lied, fearing any clue as to the subject matter could give rise to a thousand questions.
The director gave Jacob a piercing look. ‘Latin, Turkish and Greek. I see. The volumes that once occupied this particular shelf were on French and Italian alchemy – for the same period. Coincidence, mmm?’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Stolen. One after the other.’ The director walked on into another section where a heavy antique table stood in the middle of the room. In its centre was a fixed wooden surround with a hinged glass top. But the case itself was empty.
‘You lose many books, sir?’ asked Jacob.
‘Not for hundreds of years. Then those on that shelf, and. . .’ tapping on the glass of the empty case, ‘the one that was locked inside this, disappeared without trace.’
‘Oh,’ Jacob said, curiously. ‘Was it valuable?’
‘Priceless, in the right hands. Some of the world’s greatest scholars have claimed it held life’s most profound secrets, Mr Silver.’
Jacob calculated immediately that Alchemy, opened, would fit snugly inside that case. He feared his next words could have him dashing out through the front door with the Worshipful Society’s staff snapping at his heels. He changed the subject.
‘So, where else might we look, Dr Jensen?’
‘Was the answer in there, I wonder?’ Dr Jensen asked, pointedly, his eyes rapidly moving back and forth between Jacob and the vacant case.
‘I wonder,’ added Jacob, looking for a distraction and stepping into a Greek section in the next bay. ‘But perhaps among these?’ he asked, taking down a crumbling book.
‘No.’ The director took the book, placed it back on the shelf and led Jacob deeper into the cellars. ‘I think you need to study the earliest works on Hindu-Arabic numerals – mathematicians of the twelfth century. Get back to the source and build from there. All kinds of cryptology derived from those patterns. And another thing you need to ask yourself is: Why? What was the point of a code? Why was it so necessary? Who cared? Who would benefit if it were unravelled?’
‘I’m thinking that it might have been secret ingredients, so that competitors couldn’t imitate the potion, even if they found the recipe,’ Jacob offered.
‘Like this American and his little liver pills?’
‘Samuel Carter? Yes, that’s what I had in mind,’ Jacob said, knowing he could not drop the smallest of clues as to what his riddle really protected. ‘Any apothecary could sell the same formula profitably for a penny, but folk’d rather pay a tanner for Carter’s because his had a secret ingredient. That’s it, precisely.’
Dr Jensen laid Jacob’s note on the table.
‘The power of advertising. God help us if any more businessmen learn how to promote their wares as forcefully.’ The director pulled out a gold pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped open the lid. ‘I have to attend to other
matters, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you wish. Call again, if it helps.’ He turned to leave. ‘If all else fails, jump into the next section. Fibonacci. Extraordinary character and a great code maker. Ignore Da Vinci, and Nostradamus, both cryptologists, but they came after – although both often referred to Fibonacci as a guiding light for four centuries or so.’ And as the director disappeared into the shadows, ‘Huh! Plenty there to keep you busy, young man.’
‘Where exactly did our manual on alchemy come from, Professor?’ Jacob asked innocently over dinner that night.
‘Been in my family for centuries, Master Jacob,’ the old man replied, after regaining his composure from having choked on a mouthful of pea soup.
‘But I thought it was The Institute that sent it for my fifteenth birthday?’
The professor put down his soup spoon. The conversation appeared to have affected his appetite.
‘They did. My family loaned it to them.’
‘Bequeathed it, you mean? Gifted it?’ Jacob offered.
‘Not exactly. The story my grandfather told me, and his grandfather told him, was that The Ancient Institute of Alchemists was awarded the work for a period of one hundred years, or, until it solved this same puzzle with which we are currently struggling – whichever should come first – after which the Institute would have to return it.’
‘When were they loaned Alchemy?’ Jacob asked, hoping this run around the mulberry bush might end before daybreak and the professor would simply admit that he had stolen it.
‘1522.’
‘That long ago?’ Jacob exclaimed, genuinely surprised. ‘So what happened?’
‘The Institute was considered a secret society. Its members met in the great cloister of a former Dominican friars’ monastery, close to here.’
‘Blackfriars Monastery, a victim of Henry VIII’s Dissolution, in 1538,’ Jacob threw in. ‘My school was built on the same site, hundreds of years later, of course.’
‘Interesting. The Grand Master of the Ancient Institute, rumoured to have been the fugitive abbot, was finally doomed after being recognised by Catherine Parr, later to become Henry VIII’s sixth wife. She was born and raised close to the monastery. The king wanted the abbot’s head but he fled to France – apparently taking the book with him.’
‘Back to its birthplace. So, it was lost to your family?’
‘After dear Henry persecuted and murdered most of the remaining members, survivors joined The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries who miraculously had enough funding to acquire premises on the very same site.’
‘Without paying a brass farthing, one surmises. So what looked like a merger of interests was in fact a change of name, perhaps? Monks disguised as alchemists and magicians, no doubt. Could cure or curse anyone they chose. I learned that from the archives under St Paul’s Cathedral,’ Jacob said, but the professor didn’t answer. ‘But how did they, the new society, acquire the book – if it was in France?’
‘You don’t know that they did.’
Jacob thought quickly, remembering the specific instructions not to go near Apothecaries Hall. ‘I extrapolated that this was to where this was all leading.’
‘Extrapolated correctly, Master Jacob,’ the professor said, a glint of suspicion in his eye. ‘My family, I’m told, satisfied they would never see the book again, forgot about it. Until,’ the professor leapt up, ‘following a little fire that burned down the whole of London–’
‘The Great Fire? 1666?’ Jacob interrupted.
‘Indeed. The leather-bound book was raked from the ashes, entirely intact.’
‘So it didn’t go back to France? They lied?’
‘Yes. And yes again, Master Jacob. I had searched for the book, and my forefathers had, too, to no avail. Until a fellow alchemist invited me to join the new Institute, recently.’
‘New Institute. Another secret society?’
‘More secret than even the last.’
‘A secret, secret society. And who are the members?’
‘Nobody knows. Or it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?’
Jacob laughed. ‘That’s absurd, Professor. You had to know who you were dealing with.’
‘Not at all. Why was it necessary to know who had found the cure for the Black Death? It was a cure.’
‘Black Death? You said you joined recently,’ Jacob asked.
‘That was just an example.’
‘Give me another?’
‘Turned silver to gold.’
‘Impossible,’ Jacob snapped.
‘Oh, yes? I’ll show you one day, I promise.’
‘Anyway, back to Alchemy, sitting in the Worshipful Whatnot under lock and key,’ Jacob urged.
‘You know that?’ the professor enquired, leaning into Jacob’s face.
‘I guessed. It was considered a valuable book, after all.’
‘Then I stole it.’
‘What?’
‘Can you blame me? It was my property.’
‘Did they prosecute you?’
‘No.’
‘Did they know it was you who took it?’
‘Probably.’
‘You mean they didn’t know?’
‘They noticed it gone along with my absence; so must have deduced something of the kind.’
‘And the full shelf of other books along with it?’
‘What?’
‘Simple enough. Did you or did you not take all the similarly dated books on alchemy along with it?’
‘I. . . I did not.’
‘You don’t seem so sure.’
‘I’m not a liar.’
‘A thief but not a liar. Such high morals have you.’
‘I did not take them, Jacob,’ he said, hand on heart. Then, ‘I only took what was rightfully mine. But I know who did.’
‘Really?’
‘Students of mine.’
‘You would need to explain that.’
‘Students set exactly the same task as yourself. Searching for that key to mankind’s dream. The elusive formula.’
Jacob placed the slip of paper on which the puzzle was written in the middle of the table. ‘For immortality?’
‘Yes. What else is there? Nothing has eluded man as much.’
‘And so, the answer wasn’t there.’
‘Obviously.’
‘So, no point in tracking down the missing volumes?’
‘Unless. . .’ the professor hesitated. ‘They might be grateful to get them back and reward the finder with further access to their archives.’
‘You have the stolen books?’ Jacob asked.
‘I was. . . looking after them.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Greenwold.’
‘I’ll mention it to the director, tomorrow.’
‘You can’t go there. They’ll throw you in prison.’
‘Throw you in prison, Professor. I haven’t put a foot wrong.’
‘You wouldn’t. . .’
Jacob stood, threw down his napkin and turned to the door. ‘I wonder what they would offer for the return of Alchemy, together with the current abode of the man who stole it?’
Banging his fists on the table, the professor shouted as he watched Jacob leave, ‘I did not steal it!’
Installing himself early the next morning in the archives at Apothecaries Hall, Jacob decided to take the director’s advice and closely examine the revered work of mathematician, Fibonacci. The works astounded Jacob, considering they were recorded before the mid-thirteenth century, but applying anything he read to his unsolved five lines of gobbledygook brought nothing new. Until. . .
Late-afternoon, a clerk delivered Jacob a glass of lemonade, standing the glass by his scribbled extract from Alchemy. He warned Jacob that the hall would close shortly.
Starting afresh, Jacob numbered every character. Then, playing with prime number sequences, for which Fibonacci was most noted, he selected letters or symbols from the coded message, according to prime numbers: the first, se
cond, third, fifth, seventh and so on, writing the result, a line of thirty-three characters on a fresh sheet of paper. But these results, although looking almost like words, made no sense in any language he knew, and according to his research, in any language the Flamels knew. Or so he thought.
Reaching for the lemonade he saw something odd. Something astounding. He moved his scribbled extract in closer to the front of the glass.
This wasn’t just anything; it was revelatory.
‘Eureka!’ he yelled, leaping up and running through the cavernous cellars, up the stone steps and barging through the door into the marble reception hall. ‘Eureka!’ he yelled at the startled clerk who had delivered the lemonade. ‘I could kiss you!’
The clerk scrambled to his feet and raised his chair between himself and his attacker – ready to fend off any amorous approach. A kiss would not be appropriate. His embarrassment was spared by the appearance of the lofty Dr Jensen.
‘I have it!’ yelled Jacob. ‘Thanks to your man here.’
‘Fothergill?’ the director looked puzzled.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ Jacob yelled as he ran out of the front doors.
‘Well, Fothergill, it seems you have helped solve the mystery of more than just a liver pill, I trust. Well done.’
Fothergill, looking perplexed, sat back down at his desk and loosened his collar, before picking up the empty lemonade glass and scrutinising every inch, inside and out, searching for the wondrous solution it held.
Back in the laboratory, the professor was tutting over a pan of smoking ingredients as it shot up in flames, singeing his eyebrows for the third time that day. It was getting dark outside.
Jacob screaming ‘Eureka!’ as he rushed down the stairs towards the laboratory, sounded promising. Perhaps the boy had something. At last.
‘Eurekaaaa!’ Jacob burst into the smoky laboratory, grinning. ‘We have it, Professor! We have it!’ and was promptly overcome by the smoke, coughing violently.
‘I’ll open some windows,’ said the professor, flustered and hoping he hadn’t killed his student before he revealed a five-hundred-year-old secret.
Forcing Jacob to sit down, he brought him a beaker of water and patted him on the back. After a couple of sips from the beaker, Jacob placed it on the bench and placed a lantern nearby, moving it from side to side until he was content it was precisely where it needed to be. Then he unfolded his copy of the riddle taken from Alchemy and placed it in front of the beaker, before picking up a pen and fresh sheet of paper.