by Jane Jakeman
It was an old-fashioned room, even by my own unfashionable standards. The curtains were open, so presumably Sir Antony had risen, and sunshine warmed the old mahogany furniture, massive pieces in a dark wine color. A turkey carpet with a faded pattern lay on the floor, black-framed steel engravings of some classical temple hung over the mantel. Sir Antony seemed to have imposed no particular taste at all upon his room. There was no desk, no books, no papers: no signs of study here.
I moved on, round the other side of the vast bed. A small room stood beyond, with a wash-stand, razor-strop and so forth, the mere necessities. Some old and anonymous-looking clothes were hanging in a wardrobe.
Nothing here. I slipped out of the room and paused on the stairs before ascending to the attic floors.
The door to Kelsoe’s room, where the landlord of the Green Lion had been discovered hiding, stood wide-open still. I pushed it back cautiously against the wall: no one was concealed behind it this time, and no one awaited me in the dead man’s room.
I glanced toward the other attic door; the padlock upon it was now hanging loose. The door pushed easily open, without a sound. The carpenter had oiled the hinges well, no doubt under careful instruction and the wood moved slowly but silently under my hand.
I had a view of the whole length of a long room, the most extraordinary I had ever seen, under the eaves of the house. It was fitted up almost like a laboratory, with a long bench on one side covered with vials and flasks. At the far end, under the chimney-breast, was built a small furnace of a strange design, almost like an oven, or the kiln I once saw in a glassblower’s workplace in Bristol. I could see the live charcoal which supplied the heat, burning with a dark-red glow beneath a black metal grill, and from time to time came a hissing and spitting of the coals, which mingled with the sounds of bubbling merging from various beakers and tubes. There was an unpleasant smell in the air, a dry, chemical odor. I had to stifle a cough.
Halfway along one of the benches sat two people. Their backs were turned, but I recognized Sir Antony Jesmond and his assistant, Mr. Charnock; they were deeply absorbed in something.
On the other side of the room, on a common wooden bench, lay a substance whose reflections dazzled across floor and ceiling, a golden glistening lump of matter, a glittering miniature yellow mountain of magical tiny rocks and caves.
Sir Antony was saying to Charnock: “But surely it must be ready by now! Thirty days, that was what you promised!”
Pieces of glass from some broken tube or beaker lay on the floor at their feet. Plainly, there had been some argument.
Charnock was wringing his hands; I could see that his eyes were watery, with reddened rims, as if his face had been exposed to smoke or fiery heat. “Sir Antony, we cannot hasten the process! The gross work, the preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone, is complete, yet there is most of the subtle work still to undergo. I must explain that to you: the gross work is to make the Stone, the litharge, from sulfur and quicksilver—with other secret minerals which I have supplied—and that first step we have achieved. And the subtle work, which will actually make the gold itself by means of the Stone, has already produced this wonder that we have here upon the bench. But we must have another thirty days!”
“I was hoping for more.” Sir Antony’s voice was thin and quavery, like his shanks, yet had a reedy and horrible determination in it, like the strength of a piano wire.
Charnock’s reply came swift and smooth.
“We cannot expect results quite so soon. Old Jabir, the Arab alchemist, said that to produce major results must require a further thirty moons. But consider what we have already achieved!”
And here Charnock, who looked to my medical eye as though he had been a rheumaticky child, his chest narrow, his spine concave, swung round and gestured in the direction of the gleaming substance lying on the bench behind them and uttered his single word of incantatory magic.
“Gold!”
At which Sir Antony, too, turned around. He reached out and caressed the pale yellow shiny mass, which was about a foot high, and then stepped up close, his face staring down upon it. I have never seen a man touch unfeeling, bloodless matter in such a way: I could see quite plainly that he was in love with the stuff, wanted to adore it, to treat it like a woman for whom he had a terrible passion.
That the man should let himself become such a fool! I could stand it no longer. Stepping forth into the room, I cried out: “Do you think that is gold, Sir Antony? How on earth have you been deceived into such idiocy? Why, the simplest schoolboy could not be taken in!”
Charnock gave a shout of alarm, and backed away from me toward the furnace at the far end of the room. Sir Antony spun round, away from the gleaming mass.
“Lord Ambrose! What are you doing here—and how dare you creep around my house in this fashion!”
“I dare, Sir Antony, because someone has to tell you the truth, and you should be grateful! Oh, I can see what this fellow has been doing. Alchemy—is that not it? He has convinced you he can turn base metal into gold, you poor fool.”
“He has done it, I tell you! Look here! This is the gold he made from a mass of lead!”
“Gold? You would find more valuable stuff in a midden!”
Sir Antony’s face was contorted now with a terrible rage, the anger of a man who knows he is about to be cheated of his dream. He almost screamed at me: “Get out, get out of here! What do you know of these matters? You’re just a damned ignoramus who can’t believe the evidence of your own eyes!”
I walked across to the bench.
“Evidence, Sir Antony? You call this evidence?”
He caught me by the arm, speaking passionately now.
“Yes, can’t you see what it is, Malfine? Gold—pure gold! And he can make more. He is making more even now—there it is, hanging above the furnace!”
And he waved with a hand that held something sharp and gleaming, toward a blackened substance suspended within an iron contrivance over the charcoal which burned at the far end of the room. As I advanced the length of the room, I saw that beside it lay something which filled me with utter horror. Trussed and lashed down, gagged so that the faintest of its frantic sounds were quite lost beside the crackling and hissing of the furnace, was a human form. Next to it the blackened mass was glowing red in places, streaked with an acid green in others.
“That is lead which will turn to gold! It must be treated thus, bathed in Roman vitriol, and heated for thirty days and nights. At any moment now, it will change, and we shall find a golden mass! And as for your companion here—we shall dispose of him!”
It was Sandys, his eyes turning desperately toward me.
“It must have blood!” Sir Antony was mumbling. “The work must have blood to seal the gold—Charnock says so. A cockerel or a cat would have done, but human blood is better, you see, Malfine. Charnock, just give me the word; all is ready if the moment is right.”
Not the least horrible thing about this statement was that it was delivered in a flat, soft voice, with no trace of feeling left in it. Sir Antony, I perceived, was now truly insane, turned into something not human by the hunt for gold.
My instinct of course was to leap forward and cut my friend free, but I could not afford to indulge that impulse, because the bright object which Sir Antony held was a cutthroat razor, ready to slice through the artery with the slightest pressure of the crazy hand that held it. Of course, I could overcome both the aged Sir Antony and the feeble form of Charnock, but Sir Antony would reach his intended victim sooner. I cursed myself that I had not brought my pistol. Damnable pride, thought I. Ambrose Malfine, you believed you needed no aid! Well, see now, your friend will pay for it!
Perhaps I could talk some sense into Jesmond. “Oh, you poor idiot!” I called aloud. “Charnock and Henderson have really made a fool of you. Gold? This is mere iron, my dear sir, a form of iron which is almost as worthless as stone! It looks like gold, it gleams and glitters—and it is worth nothing. Nothing at all. That
is what you have on this bench, believe me. Have you never heard of pyrite? Why, it can be dug up like potatoes, even in Devonshire! Fool’s gold, Jesmond—fool’s gold!”
I was advancing as I spoke, trying to observe their reactions. Charnock, I perceived, was not so far down the path of insane greed as Sir Antony. I could see by his face that he realized the murderous situation in which his alchemical web of deceit had trapped him.
“Charnock!” I urged. “For God’s sake, tell him to throw away that razor! Jesmond will obey you—he will do anything you tell him is needed to get gold. Explain that blood is not needed—or that you can get it some other way. Think, man! If he kills Sandys, it will be at your urging, and you will both be guilty of murder. Call him off!”
Charnock stood irresolute for a few moments, his pale face turned toward the scene at the end of the attic, where poor Sandys could but plead for his life with his eyes alone. The razor glinted in the reddish light of the furnace. Sir Antony’s feverish eyes were fixed on Charnock’s face, waiting for a signal.
I had never really thought of Charnock as a full human being; he had been just a shadow trailing through the house behind his master, Antony Jesmond. Did he have a conscience, a heart? What had his early training at the hands of that strange creature, Henderson, done to him, this country fellow with his strange heritage of corrupted learning? I saw a young face there, sunken and white, yet the face of a boy still, rather than a grown man. “You should not overlook anyone, Malfine,” I chided myself. “You thought he was an insignificant wretch, a weakling, yet here he has the power of life or death. And you have learned nothing about him, except the barest bones of his life! Perhaps he is as mad as his master.”
That pause haunts me yet. It was a mere second or two, yet it seemed to stretch out for eternity, so that ahead lay death, grief, and the horrible physical reality of the bright spurting arterial blood, the slackening body, the life of a friend vanishing before my eyes. All these I had seen before, in my other life, and thought to see them now again, yes, and the widow’s tears also.
Charnock spoke, very quietly and carefully.
“No, Sir Antony. We do not need blood now. You will have your gold without it. Put down the razor. Put it down on the bench.”
Sir Antony looked down at the razor in his hand, as if trying to understand a secret sign that lay upon it.
The hand holding the razor did not move. It gripped it still. Then Sir Antony raised it and said, “No, Charnock. You are afraid. What a coward you are!”
And he moved toward Sandys, whose eyes were pleading in desperation.
For a moment, I did not comprehend what happened next, though my eyes took in the extraordinary sight of Sir Antony spinning back against the wall, of the razor flying through the air and landing harmlessly on the floor, of delicate glass objects shattering and leaping from the benches. And my ears suffered the sound of a deafening explosion which hurtled all around the walls of that confined space.
Someone had fired a shot from the far end of the room.
I spun round.
Charnock was gaping at something behind me.
She was still gripping the weapon, though her arm had dropped to her side. The frothing lace of her sleeve was blackened with powder.
She came across the room, her buckled riding-boots crunching on the broken glass, and held out the pistol.
“Your weapon, I believe. You left it behind at Malfine, Ambrose. Please remember it in future. I cannot always guarantee to get you out of a scrape.”
Elisabeth Anstruther laughed and her yellow eyes were looking up into mine, with an exhilarated defiance.
When I turned again to the scene behind us, I saw that blood had welled up on Sir Antony’s jacket, but he was not mortally wounded. We did not attempt to stop him from leaving, nor did Charnock hinder me as with my own knife I cut Sandys free. But as my friend struggled clear, the crucible on the furnace overturned, and the substance therein shot up in a mighty sheet of flame as it fell on the charcoal, barring our way to the attic door beyond.
Sandys was the quickest thinker, in spite of his ordeal.
“There’s another way out, Miss Anstruther, Malfine! That’s how I got up here!”
And he dragged us through the smoke to a narrow door at the other end of the attic; within moments we were stumbling down a narrow twisting staircase cut within the old walls of the house.
I heard a terrible scream behind us. Charnock was following us, but his master had plunged back into the flame-filled attic room and was trying to seize something in his arms, something that glittered responsively in the leaping red light.
It was the miniature mountain of gold, reflecting the flames with a fiery copper-color dancing over its enticing surface.
“Yes, iron pyrites,” said Sandys. “One of the commonest of ores—found everywhere. A beautiful golden color, lustrous, but quite worthless. Charnock and Henderson brought Sir Antony some, and pretended they had made gold, so that he would believe the experiment was progressing. He has come back to save it.”
Almost as soon as he’d finished saying those words, we were out on the drive of Jesmond Place, Zaraband whinnying as the timbers of the old mansion cracked and flamed, the fire spreading from the attic beams with terrifying speed. There was no time for philosophical meditation on human greed. God help anyone still in the house; there would be no saving them.
“I’ll go to the stables,” I called. “There are horses there, and a groom who has quarters over the stalls.”
But already we saw the fellow running round the side of the house to safety, holding the reins of two horses. One was the big animal from whose back the dying Cyriack had fallen. The other, to my surprise, I also recognized. A stumping, clumping old fellow, tagging along gallantly, his dappled coat almost white with age.
“Why, Dobbie!”
It was an animal from the Malfine stables, Belos’s pony, whom I had once purchased from Lilian Westmorland’s flinty-hearted uncle.
“Yes, I borrowed him,” said Elisabeth, “and a snail-slow ride he was! I thought I should never get here.”
“Never mind, you did get here in time.” I squeezed her shoulder under the black silk cloak. “What a fool I was, to try to keep you at home out of danger!”
“Oh, you realize that now, do you?” There was a mocking look in her eyes. “Some women, Ambrose, are very disinclined to obey orders.”
“And I shall never again attempt to issue them to you! Mind you, that was a difficult shot—between Charnock and myself I didn’t know you had such an excellent aim.”
“I used to practice with my brothers in France,” she called, as we all hastened out of range of the sparks and heat from the funeral pyre of Sir Antony’s greed.
“But where are Clara Jesmond and Mrs. Romey?” I had to shout now, above the sound of the cracking beams, and the heat of the fire was burning my throat as I spoke, yet I could not but think of those two women, perhaps trapped and terrified in that inferno.
“No, Ambrose, no!” exclaimed Elisabeth. “They are safe. I have taken them to the inn.” And she pulled me away as I turned to run toward the house.
Already I could see the massive tie-beams exposed and blackening as flames leaped along the roof. Jesmond Place would not survive much longer, and already there were small tongues of flame leaping through the air toward the stables. The groom had acted quickly, but nevertheless only just in time.
“There was naphtha in the crucible,” said Charnock. “That was part of the…part of what Dr. Henderson taught me; one of the things I added. But there was more in a flask on the bench.” As if to confirm his words, an almighty bang exploded from the upper windows of the house, and a great shower of sparks rained through the air.
What fools! Meddling with substances so dangerous, as if they were toys.
“We can do nothing to stop the fire now,” said Sandys. “And Antony Jesmond’s life is utterly lost.”
“It was lost long before,” said Cha
rnock, with a shaft of insight I had not expected from him.
CHAPTER 22
A small procession was ready to make its way along the village street, one which no doubt was observed by many secret gawpers. The advance guard consisted of myself, Charnock, and a stout fellow with a cudgel, the groom from Jesmond Place, to reinforce the landlord of the Green Lion in his watch. I wanted to spare Elisabeth any further alarms, but she was running along close behind me and Sandys followed the party.
My purpose was to ensure that Henderson and Charnock were held responsible for their part in the fearful story. If they had not fanned the flames of Sir Antony’s greed, he would not have neglected his wife, nor tried to suborn Kelsoe into working for him. Murder, they might not be directly guilty of: fraud, they had certainly committed. I intended to make sure they were both kept under guard till Sir Edward Knellys should arrive and deal with them. I looked forward to explaining Lady Jesmond’s innocence to that sour dignitary.
But as we approached, I saw a strange sight. Something was glittering in the distance, at the end of the street. There was a kind of gilded flickering in the sunshine, as if something live and golden were fluttering in the wind, outside the dull gray stones of the alchemist’s house. The plump landlord of the Green Lion, whom I had left on guard outside, was struggling with the rusty padlock on the door of Henderson’s house.
Charnock gave an exclamation, and began running. I quickened my long-legged pace, my mind trying to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. The groom was lagging behind.
Hanging on the outside of the house was something white covered with flowing golden streamers, with tangles and knots of gold. This absurdly heavenly vision overlooked the glistening muddy creek, now full with the incoming tide, and seemed almost to have a dancing reflection in the mercury-colored water.
As I got closer, I saw what it was. An old man, with a white beard, covered in a great white feathered cloak, hanging from the bars of a window high above the ground. And the cloak was sewn all over with golden ribbons and trimmings that moved and rustled in the breeze. They gave an impression of life, but I looked up at the face, at the bulging eyes, and I knew the truth.