The Alchemist's Gift

by Martin Rua

  “You tell me.”

  “Notre-Dame de Chartres.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what else you have already discovered? It could save us a lot of time.”

  Asar made a sound like a snort of amusement.

  “You continue to amaze me, Dr Aragona. Is the journey of initiation not perhaps more important than the goal one wishes to achieve? If I tell you what you must understand, the finer details may escape you. Find out what tools must be used in Chartres to find the Sevenfold Solar Mirror, the fountain of youth. We need this information, and to understand it you must read all the letters. Waste no more time asking me pointless questions. Study instead.”

  The line went dead and, without saying a word, the hooded man sat down again by the window.

  “The bastard,” I muttered, lowering my head.

  Carlo put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t lose heart, Lorenzo – we’ll help you, we’ll make it.”

  I looked at him and smiled, relieved.

  Carlo returned my smile and, in a fatherly fashion, put the Peregrino Neapolitano in front of me. “Look here, for example. I doubt that it’s difficult to interpret the route which you have identified in this thing. True, there are no names of the places and monuments which the prince indicates, but we are Neapolitans and many of us are scholars of historical materials, art and architecture. It’ll be no problem for us to understand what Raimondo de Sangro is referring to.”

  “It's very comforting to hear you say that. But we have very little time.”

  “Very true, and that’s why as well as working on interpreting the documents we should still keep a few holy images in our pockets.”

  “Come on Carlo, don’t joke about it – you know I don’t believe in such things.”

  Carlo raised his eyebrows and squinted, assuming the air of a country priest preparing a sermon. “You will make an exception this time, Venerable Master. We will need all the help we can get.”

  Carlo had always been much more of a believer than myself, and whenever he happened to meet up with my father he loved teasing him about the interpretation of the Gospels. I sighed.

  “All right… Father Carlo!”

  “Now you’re the one who’s joking. Meanwhile, I think I understand at least the mechanism utilised by the prince – the route that you had already identified.”

  “Good.”

  Carlo began to slowly browse the Peregrino Neapolitano, pausing at each chapter. “The guide, so to speak, is divided into days – seven to be exact.”

  “Yes, exactly. Do you think that it’s a reference to the sevenfold?”

  “Why not? I mean, it’s Raimondo de Sangro. This little book of his was not meant to be circulated freely, and, with all due caution, he has more or less placed his cards on the table and made it clear that it’s a text with an esoteric meaning.”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Well, each day covers a small route where the monuments of Naples are illustrated. It seems to have used Celano’s seventeenth century guide as a basis, updated to the 1770s. What interests us, however, is the brief introduction – no more than about ten lines – with which the prince prefaces each chapter or day. I realised that each of these introductions in turn refers to a place but, unlike the rest of the corresponding chapter, where the monuments are called by their name, the introductory texts are allegorical… in short, you have to interpret them to understand what they refer to.”

  “And the esoteric route that I had identified?”

  “At the end of the seven days, the prince added a very short chapter which groups together all the short symbolic introductions to the previous chapters. That’s the itinerary which you had noticed. I believe, however, that they do not all contain messages – only three do, while the remaining four serve simply to muddy the waters.”

  I stood staring at him thoughtfully for a moment.

  “Excellent work!”

  Carlo smirked. “This is nothing, Worshipful Master. I think I’ve even understood where the starting point is.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Really?”

  Carlo pointed to a passage in the Peregrino Neapolitano.

  “Read this.”

  Partirai dal punto in cui Nostra Signora Immacolata, la nostra Terra Vergine, si muta per nigredo nella Morte oscura. Ne seguirai lo sguardo d’ombra e gelo che dall’alto ci fissa con occhi vuoti. Non tremi però l’animo tuo, o Peregrino, che proprio indove la Signora nera guarda, si cela il prossimo tuo indizio. E partirai dal secondo diamante che non brilla ma è pretioso più d’ogni altra pietra e una parte dei quattro ingredienti indicati prenderai. Uniscili su un fuoco vivo a una pasta vitrea incolore, aggiungi la nostra Rugiada Cotta che avrai già a disposizione in parti due, e otterrai in poche ore il rubino più pretioso. Conservalo che esso è la chiave che ti aprirà le porte alla fine del tuo viaggio.9

  The method for identifying the ingredients was a kind of wedge-shaped glyph. An idea was forming in my mind.

  I looked at Carlo, surprised, then smiled.

  “What was it you just said? That we are Neapolitans and that it’ll be no problem for us to interpret the riddles of Raimondo de Sangro?”

  Carlo nodded.

  “You’ve understood what it’s talking about, haven’t you?”

  I looked at my watch: it was half past six in the evening, we still had an hour before the meeting with the lodge in the temple.

  “It’s only a few minutes from here – let’s get moving.”

  9Begin from where Our Immaculate Lady, our Virgin Earth, is transformed into blackness by the darkness of Death. Follow the gaze of shadow and frost which stares at us from above with empty eyes. Let not your soul tremble, oh Pilgrim, however, as there where the Black Lady looks hides your next clue. Depart from the second diamond which does not shine but which is more precious than any other stone, and a part of the four ingredients you will obtain. Mix them over heat into a colourless glassy paste, add our boiled dew, which you already have in two separate parts, and in a few hours you will have a most precious ruby. Keep it, as it is the key which will open the doors at the end of your trip.

  Chapter 26

  Naples, June 17, 18:30

  Four days to the summer solstice

  We walked quickly up to Spaccanapoli and turned left at the intersection with Via San Sebastiano, skirting the massive base of the bell tower of Santa Chiara. Arriving in Piazza del Gesù Nuovo we stopped under the beautiful eighteenth century obelisk. The late afternoon light helped create the effect we had expected.

  “It would seem that they were already aware of the disturbing side of the statue atop the spire in the 1770s,” said Carlo, his nose in the air and his eyes fixed on the back of the statue.

  I walked a few metres closer, staring at the sculpture. “Well, you said it yourself – we are talking about Raimondo de Sangro – not exactly an ordinary person. There! You see?”

  Carlo nodded. “I shouldn’t say it… I mean, it’s the Virgin Mary… but it makes me cringe every time I walk past here.”

  The front part of the statue, on top of the spire of the same name, shows the Virgin Mary standing on a crescent moon and crushing the biblical serpent. But seen from the rear, the side facing the church of the Gesù Nuovo, the flowing mantle of the Virgin becomes the black cape of death, complete with hood and scythe. Neapolitans, who are always very attentive to hidden messages, have often wondered whether that effect was intentional or simply an accidental optical illusion. The Prince of Sansevero seems to have taken the matter very seriously.

  “‘Our Virgin Earth, is transformed into blackness by the darkness of Death,’” I muttered. “That part seems to have been taken from a text on alchemy.”

  “The reference to the three stages of the Great Work is also repeated in the other two introductions I picked out,” confirmed Carlo.

  “Well let’s get started, then. ‘Depart from the second diamond which does not shine but whi
ch is more precious than any other stone, and a part of the four ingredients you will obtain. Mix them over heat into a colourless glassy paste, add our boiled dew, which you already have in two separate parts, and in a few hours you will have a most precious ruby. Keep it, as it is the key which will open the doors at the end of your trip.’ Depart from the second diamond…”

  We turned at once to the church of the Gesù Nuovo behind us. The beautiful facade, which predated the Jesuit temple and had been built for the Renaissance Palazzo Sanseverino before it was transformed into a church, was covered with projecting pyramid-shaped bosses. Pyramids – or diamonds. Hard blocks of trachyte upon which the stonemasons had carved mysterious symbols.

  “Here they are – the prince’s diamonds,” I said, pointing to the second central panel from the left.

  “Yes, no doubt about it,” admitted Carlo, “so the hypothesis we have repeatedly discussed, that the signs carved by the stonemasons are actually alchemical symbols…”

  “Is confirmed, and by an authoritative voice, too.”

  We took note of the symbols as reported in the Peregrino Neapolitano, each corresponding to a specific substance. Convinced that there was an alchemical meaning in those strange marks, in fact, we had studied the sequence carved onto the facade of the church many times before and traced them back to the various materials, metals or other substances which the signs made reference to. It wouldn’t be difficult to follow the prince’s directions.

  I looked at the list that I had put together and shook my head doubtfully.

  “What’s the matter? Something that doesn’t convince you?” asked Carlo.

  “The ‘boiled dew’ mentioned by the prince…”

  “Don’t you think it’s that dew? The one we have always used in our experiments?”

  “Hmm, yes, maybe… but if by chance it isn’t, we might be wasting valuable time standing here trying to figure it out.”

  Carlo said nothing, but stared at the facade with its mysterious bosses then looked at his watch. “Talking of time, the brothers will be arriving.”

  “Right, let’s get going.”

  Chapter 27

  Naples, 17th of June, 20:00

  Four days before the summer solstice

  “To the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe, I declare this meeting of the respectable lodge of the name Silver Shadow open. Brothers, take your places!”

  Our little Masonic temple – soberly decorated with images of the signs of the zodiac, two columns at the western entrance and a small altar with the Jewish menorah – was housed in a suitably small apartment in Palazzo Sansevero. The three gavel strokes which opened the meeting sounded, and there was the faint sound of the brothers taking their seats along the two longer walls of the room. Twelve brothers of the Silver Shadow Lodge had answered my call and were now waiting to hear how they might be of assistance in my hour of need. Carlo Sangiacomo, who sat before me in the place of the Senior Warden, was ready to back me up, while Oscar, who had come directly from police headquarters and was sitting to my right, would be able to fill in some gaps in his role as Orator.

  “Brothers, thank you for coming despite such short notice,” he began. “I know of your commitments, both professional and to your families, and I would never have dreamed of disturbing you without a good reason.”

  A hand rose immediately in the row of chairs to my left, the so-called South Column. Memmo Capogrosso, one of the masters of the lodge, was asking to speak.

  “Please, brother Memmo.”

  Memmo, his nearly two metres tall frame crowned with jet black hair, stood up. “Worshipful Master, first of all allow me to present the justifications of the other eight brothers who were unable to come. Half of them are out of Naples for work and the other four were unable to free themselves from prior commitments, but all are anxious for you and your wife and ready to help. The second thing I wish to say is that there is no need for you to justify yourself. I have spoken.”

  We all smiled. Despite the desperately serious reason for my having called the meeting, Memmo had managed to ease the tension slightly. That was important – it put us in the right frame of mind.

  “Thank you, Memmo. Thank you all, present and absent, from the bottom of my heart. But now let me tell you about the situation in more detail and explain how you can be helpful to Oscar and myself.”

  I quickly ran through the events which, from their beginnings in Prague, had brought me to that unexpected meeting in our small but beautiful temple, where our lodge – independent and therefore not linked to any national Masonic organisation – welcomed any brother mason who wished to take part in our work as a visitor. In a small apartment which we had first rented more than fifteen years ago, along with the late Maestro Matteo Rinaldi, we had also set up an alchemical laboratory – small but certainly better equipped than the one I had at home. There he had created the ruby of which Sansevero had spoken in the letters.

  When I had finished, and answered a few questions from the brothers to clarify obscure points of the story, Memmo spoke once again.

  “Brother Worshipful Master, I am at your complete disposal in so far as I can be useful. Tonight I will light the oven and get to work in the lab.”

  Memmo was a chemist in charge of the quality control department of a large solvents and paints manufacturer. For him, the study of alchemy had been almost a natural progression.

  Another hand went up – that of Luca Bellinfante. Luca was an advertising executive and often collaborated with my brother Alex’s events agency.

  “I volunteer to help Memmo – like him I have also I taken a few days off,” were his encouraging words. At the end of the meeting I had at my disposal two small working groups: taking it in shifts and supervised by myself, Memmo and Luca would attempt to recreate the Sansevero artificial gem while Massimiliano Lupo and Vito di Gennaro would help Carlo and I with the documents. To the first, I also revealed what the four ingredients which Carlo and I had discovered on the facade of the church of Gesù Nuovo were and explained the prince’s instructions for creating the gem. The rest of the lodge was still ready to intervene if necessary.

  “I am so lucky to have brothers like you – our Master Rinaldi would be proud,” I said in an emotional voice at the end of the meeting. The memory of Matteo was still alive in all of us and whenever we did anything important, our thoughts flew immediately to him.

  After making arrangements with Oscar to meet the next morning at his office, I wished them all farewell in front of Picchiatti’s spectacular door for Saint Caterina a Formiello and headed for the garage in one of the alleys between Via dei Tribunali and the Sant’Aniello CapoNaples area where I had left the car. As I headed off down Via Nilo, deserted at that late hour, I saw a child a few yards ahead of me. Small and thin and clad in dark shorts and a white T-shirt, he looked to be about seven or eight and had every appearance of being one of those sly street urchins common in the poorer parts of Naples. He was standing there, staring at me as though awaiting me.

  When I was only a few metres away from him he began walking towards me. I was all too familiar with the habits of the street children and if that little rascal was still staring at me intensely it didn’t bode well. I was wary, and when he blocked my way I made an inquiring gesture with my head.

  “So? What d’you want, child?”

  There was an ominous, almost magnetic look in his eyes, as though he was trying to peer right through me. No, this was not just some street child – there was definitely something odd about him.

  “You’ve to go to the Janara,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice, before slowly retracing his steps towards Via dei Tribunali.

  “Excuse me?”

  He stopped and turned round. “To the Janara. The professor always went.”

  “What professor?”

  “Professor Rinaldi.”

  Hearing that name startled me. It couldn’t be. Who was this child who had appeared out of nowhere and spoke of my old
teacher who had died ten years ago? And who was this Janara? Matteo had never spoken to me of visiting a witch.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to the Janara.”

  What could I do? Even though it seemed insane, I followed him. We took Via dei Tribunali, still busy despite the hour, then Via Atri, which, on the contrary, was dark and empty. My little Virgil continued for another hundred yards and then stopped at the door of a seventeenth century palazzo that must once have been beautiful. The boy turned to me and, with the same blank look, gestured with one of his skinny little arms at the interior of the building.

  “The Janara’s in there.”

  I looked in at the dark courtyard dominated by a huge and unexpected ‘falcon wing’ staircase, typical of buildings designed by Ferdinando Sanfelice and his followers. All around the courtyard there were the doors of rooms used as storerooms or warehouses. There was, however, one that looked for all the world like the entrance to a basso – those little proletarian ground floor dwellings which dotted the palazzos in the centre of Naples.

  “In that door?” I asked the boy, still looking around the yard. I received no reply and turned round. There was no one there – my little guide had disappeared into thin air.

  I looked towards the end of Via Atri and towards Via dei Tribunali, where the evening crowds still walked, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. He had disappeared.

  Like a munaciello, the infant monk of Neapolitan legend.

  I shook my head and went into the courtyard. What had I to lose?

  Following my instinct I headed for what I had identified as the basso. On the door was a faded brass plate which bore only one name: Sofia. As there was no bell, I knocked.

  “What am I doing?” I thought, regretting having done it instantly. “It’s already late and whoever it is might be sleeping.”

  “It’s open,” intoned a voice from within, inviting me inside.

  When I crossed the threshold I found myself in another world. A world of legend and myth, of love potions and curses, the evil eye and of the remedy for the evil eye. The room that loomed up before me was shrouded in gloom, numerous candles set here and there provided the only source of light. The most disturbing things were the objects dangling from the ceiling: crow’s feet tied to chilli pepper twigs, headless rag dolls, mummified black roosters, five-pointed stars, Allah’s eye, a myriad of crosses. On the walls were shelves overflowing with glass or clay jars, piles of herbs, figurines of every possible deity from the Virgin Mary and Buddha to Shiva and Manitou, and old tomes eaten by bookworms. And the whole thing was drenched with a powerful smell of incense.