The Alchemist's Gift

by Martin Rua

  We all turned to look at Michele, who seemed to hesitate.

  “Michele, please, do as he says,” I pleaded. “You have the ruby with you, right?”

  Michele, glaring fixedly at Riccardo and trembling with tension and anger at being forced to give in like this, pulled the alchemical ruby I had created with my brothers from his jacket pocket.

  “Quickly, on the slab!” ordered Riccardo, pressing the gun harder into Àrtemis’s temple.

  Michele put the jewel on the small metal tenon. It seemed to hang miraculously poised, a few centimetres from the disk of sunlight that was now nearby.

  We held our breaths for the next forty-five interminable seconds until the beam touched the ruby and a reddish glow began to spread from it while an image of increasing intensity appeared on the marble slab. Lines, curves, short segments, all exact and clearly defined. After a moment, it became very clear, and I remembered Matteo’s photograph.

  “It’s the floor plan of the cathedral…” I murmured.

  In the upper left corner of the plan, somewhere between the north transept and the choir, a circle of nine small points appeared.

  “There it is! It’s there!” exulted Riccardo.

  Mesmerised by the plan which had appeared from nowhere, even the policemen were struggling to believe their eyes.

  “The Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors…” whispered Michele. “So it does exist.”

  Riccardo gave us a crazed look, then stared at me. “You come with me, and the rest of you get out! You hear me? Out! Otherwise I kill the Greek.”

  The men looked at their commander and Thomas had no choice but to point to the exit. “Come on, come on, let’s go! Everyone out!”

  The policemen dragged Michele away, and I caught the worried eye of Andrea as she followed with Oscar and smiled at me, attempting to give me strength that I did not possess.

  “Come on, Lorenzo, let’s get moving,” said Riccardo, nodding toward the north transept.

  Moving slowly, I walked past him. “Calm down, Riccardo, I’m doing what you want, why don’t you lower the gun?”

  “Shut up, Lorenzo. Shut up and walk!”

  We crossed the now deserted aisle, me in front and Riccardo with Àrtemis behind. There was a funereal echo to our footsteps.

  “Your company, Montechiaro… What an idiot I am – Jerôme Clairmont… Chiaromonte… Montechiaro. There was a Jerôme Clairmont among the users of the Alquimia forum too. You wanted to show how good you were with the phonetic cabal? You’re the watch thief too, aren’t you?”

  “You’re not the only esoteric expert in the world!” said the Sicilian contemptuously. “Girolamo Chiaramonte, the alchemist of Lentini – it was from him that I took the inspiration for my pseudonym. The watch is part of this mystery and neither you nor that old idiot realised it. Hašek got what he deserved. He kept it all hidden from me, the old fool, and even let those idiots of the Egyptian Brotherhood steal the manuscript. What was I supposed to do? I was forced to intervene.” Riccardo paused and laughed, and the sinister sound echoed around the vaults and the pillars of the cathedral. “What an incredible show I put on, eh, Lorenzo?”

  “You’re insane, Riccardo,” I murmured, as we reached the other side of the transept.

  “Shut up! What do you know?”

  At the point indicated by the map we found nothing unusual.

  “What does it mean? Where’s the entrance?” said Riccardo furiously, his gun in Àrtemis’s back.

  Desperate, I held up my hands. “Riccardo, there is no entrance, don’t you understand? The Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors doesn’t exist – it is a symbol, a literary invention…”

  His blazing eyes, incongruous above the priest’s cassock, glowed as though with unholy light. “Invention, pah! I know where it is! It’s in the crypt! That’s where we have to go! Toward the main entrance, hurry!”

  Passing over the labyrinth, we retraced our steps and headed to the right, where we took one of the entrances descending to the crypt housing the remains of religious buildings built before the construction of the cathedral in the thirteenth century. A sign informed us that we were entering the eleventh century crypt of St Fulbert, and ahead of us loomed a gallery with chapels opening off to the sides. We walked along it swiftly, realizing that it mirrored the Cathedral above exactly.

  At the end of the tunnel we found ourselves in front of the replica of Our Lady of the Underground, the famous wooden statue venerated for centuries in Chartres, set behind an altar before which were several chairs. It was the Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.

  Riccardo looked around excitedly, dragging my poor Àrtemis right and left, shouting “Where is it? Where is it?!”

  “Calm down,” I said, trying to stay cool, “clearly we haven’t reached the place shown on the map yet.”

  He glowered at me then gestured with his head for me to carry on. We passed the partition that separated the chapel from the rest of the crypt. Just behind it, in a recess in the wall on the right, was the famous Well of the Strong Saints, from which it was said that the Gauls drew water for their sacred ablutions.

  “Maybe it’s here,” I stalled. “Maybe it’s one of those chapels up there.”

  “Ok, you lead the way.”

  I walked a few yards forward and stopped at an opening in the wall to my right. There was a sign that said ‘la crypte Saint Lubin, IXeme siècle’.

  I looked at Riccardo. “Perhaps it’s here. This part seems very ancient.”

  Riccardo nodded his head. “You first.”

  We went down one more level. The light which illuminated those underground spaces was barely sufficient to enable us to tread safely. After a few steps we found ourselves in front of a massive pillar at the centre of a circular room. A sign explained what it was. I read aloud.

  Carolingian crypt of Saint Lubin.

  Built in the ninth century after the Viking attack, it is accessed via an eighteenth century staircase. Part of the Carolingian church of Bishop Gislebertus, which contains part of an ancient Gallo-Roman wall, perhaps the remains of the walls of the pagan sanctuary, it is located under the choir of the present day cathedral in correspondence with the main altar. The crypt only took the name of Saint Lubin in 1857. Leaning against the ancient wall is a huge pillar made using recycled materials from previous buildings, probably the former Gallo-Roman temple, which rests upon a limestone slab. For many, it is the true heart of the cathedral…

  We stood looking at the massive pillar which rested about a metre below us, as though we were a step away from the place’s secret.

  “The centre of the earth…” muttered Riccardo, “the pillar of the world.”

  “This might be it,” I nodded, hoping that he would lower the gun. “Yes, the telluric serpent’s head crushed by the foundation pillar – it makes sense.”

  “Yes, but where is it? Where is the Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors?” he asked again, in exasperation, as he waved the gun around.

  “Wait, calm down, let me finish reading the sign…”

  According to some scholars, behind the pillar is concealed a dolmen chamber composed of twelve standing stones and corresponding to a megalithic solar calendar. This theory remains unproven, as the archaeological excavations begun in the 1920s by René Merlet are still ongoing.

  In fact, to the right of the semi-circle containing the pillar, there was a gap in the rock, closed by a chain with a sign saying ‘no entry to unauthorised people’.

  René Merlet’s excavations.

  Riccardo and I exchanged a look. Before climbing over the chain and entering the narrow, dark space of the excavations, the Sicilian took out a flashlight from under his priest’s cassock and threw it at my feet. I switched it on, lighting up a dilapidated wooden staircase which led even deeper, but the passage broke off abruptly, after about three metres. It was a dead end.

  I shook my head, exhausted, turned to Riccardo and opened my arms. “What shall we do? If it’s back there, there’s no way
for us to get to it.”

  Riccardo’s face was growing increasingly manic, and foam was forming at the corners of his mouth. “If Saint-Germain saw it, that means we can get to it!” he hissed.

  “What do you want me to do? I—”

  “Lorenzo…” whispered Àrtemis, staring at the limestone floor.

  I turned around and saw it. A small disc made up of nine points was flashing imperceptibly in the dark, amid the dust and debris.

  I shone the torch around me, and saw that there were some tools propped up against the wall of the tunnel. I grabbed a shovel and began to move a little soil aside. Now a rough square slab was visible, at the centre of which was flashing, almost imperceptibly, the circle.

  “How can the archaeologists possibly not have seen it?” I asked, kneeling to look more closely.

  Riccardo smirked. “Because they didn’t have the catalyst of the Prince of Sansevero. It is clear now – the slab only appears when you place the gem on the tenon on the day of the summer solstice. Quick, get that crowbar and lift it.”

  I did as he told me and with great effort managed to pry open the slab, then shone the torch down into the opening and saw a crudely carved staircase in the rock.

  “After you, Master Aragona.”

  We descended even further into the bowels of the earth and, breathing heavily, crossed the threshold of the most incredible place I had ever seen. In the light of the torch appeared a room with eight massive pillars – eight menhirs or piers, four on each side, topped by huge lintels, which stood before a small circular cave. The Gallic druids’ dolmenic hall actually did exist.

  From each of the piers hung what looked like a concave circular disk like a shield. I approached the nearest one to take a better look and saw that they were made of metal. A ninth shield, facing slightly upward, hung on an isolated menhir at the centre of the circular part of the room.

  “My God…” I murmured.

  Riccardo started to laugh. “Here, Lorenzo – here it is!”

  Albeit in a distorted way, those ancient shields reflected.

  Like mirrors.

  Nine mirrors. The Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors was actually an ancient place of worship for the Druids, whose knowledge – which was linked, perhaps via the Romans, to that of the Egyptians – was contained in that place. I advanced a few steps, shining the torch beam around the secret temple, and after a few metres placed my foot on a circular stone. I pointed the torch at it and realised that was an exact replica of the labyrinth in the upper cathedral. Or perhaps it was the prototype.

  Riccardo came over and handed me something.

  “Use it.”

  It was the alchemical watch. I looked at him blankly.

  “What did you imagine, that I hadn’t managed to study the manuscript before that idiot Hašek let them steal it from him? If I came to Charles Bridge that evening to give you the remaining parts and the vial it was only because I had come to a dead end. Time was running out, and I knew you could speed up my research. I was right, and at the end of the day so was the old man. In the manuscript there is a passing reference to the ‘instrument’ invented by the prince.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I remember that part now that I think about it.”

  “That’s what the watch is. Come on, set the hands at nine minutes to noon and place it on the labyrinth.”

  I did as he wanted. The watch chimes began to produce the melody I had heard in Prague. We waited a few seconds, but nothing happened.

  At first enraged, Riccardo began gradually to look lost.

  “Why? Why?” he repeated, as he pressed his gun into Àrtemis’s ribs, making her writhe in pain.

  “Wait, calm down! I think I understand!” I said, picking up the watch from the ground. Riccardo seemed to regain control of himself and began to follow what I was doing. “The melody we need to use isn’t this one, it’s the Mozart composition.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps because it was composed in a special way so as to create the right frequencies.”

  Non hoc totum.

  That ‘this is not all’ engraved on the small scroll which emerged from the case when the watch’s mechanism began to move must be a very precise message.

  I noticed that the watch’s case could be opened, and with a little click I revealed the delicate mechanisms of that piece of engineering jewellery. On a series of twenty small discs, barely visible to the naked eye, were marked musical notes.

  I raised my eyes and Riccardo stared at me intensely, still clutching Àrtemis, whose face was even more ashen.

  “Can I put my hand in my jacket?” I asked, keeping my eyes on him. “I have the sequence of notes on my phone.”

  Riccardo nodded slowly.

  “But try anything smart and I’ll kill her first and then you.”

  “Take it easy,” I said, getting my smartphone, where I actually had recorded the opening sequence of the Mozart sonata.

  I moved the disks in the mechanisms of the watch, and when I had finished I closed the case. I set the hands at nine minutes to twelve, wound it up and placed it upon the labyrinth engraved into the stone floor, then stood up and, together with Riccardo, retraced my steps to the entrance to the dolmen chamber.

  The music of Mozart produced by the sophisticated chimes of the alchemical watch began to reverberate between the piers and echo off the suspended mirrors. The more the sequence of notes was repeated, the more the mirrors amplified the sound which increased in frequency, growing louder and louder.

  “They’re like amplifiers…” I murmured. “The whole room is a huge amplifier… There’s no fountain of youth – this is the secret.”

  The eight mirrors began to vibrate like a vast tuning fork, and at a certain point even the ninth one, set at the back of the chamber and more isolated than the others, began to vibrate intensely too. The volume increased again and, though on one hand the perfection of Mozart’s melody invoked calm, on the other there was the risk of being deafened by the incredible acoustic effect.

  I turned to Riccardo. “We have to get out of here… It’ll burst our eardrums,” I said, raising my voice over the din.

  Riccardo looked at me, both bewildered and entranced by what was happening.

  “Riccardo, please, let’s get out of here!”

  The Sicilian seemed to recover for a moment only to fall back into delirium. “This is it, don’t you see?” he cried. “This is what the Comte de Saint-Germain feared – an uncontrollable power!”

  We could wait no longer, the noise was becoming deafening, and I started to fear that the whole room might collapse in on us. Riccardo seemed lost in his own madness, so I glanced at Àrtemis and then to the flashlight in my hand. My wife seemed to understand. I gave her a slight nod and turned off the torch.

  “Lorenzo, what the hell are you d— Argh!”

  Plunged into total darkness and surrounded by the deafening sound which filled the chamber, I hit Riccardo in the face with the torch as hard as I could, trusting my instinct.

  “Lorenzo, run!” shouted Àrtemis, who had managed to grope her way towards the stone staircase.

  I followed her voice and rushed towards it, but before reaching the steps carved into the rock I heard a gunshot and immediately felt a sharp pain in my left arm. The son of a bitch had got me! Gritting my teeth, I started racing up the steps, right behind Àrtemis.

  “Oh God, you’re hurt!” cried my wife in terror when she saw me.

  “Don’t stop, keep running!”

  Meanwhile, the sound coming from the dolmenic chamber seemed to be weakening and the ear-splitting effect was growing less intense. We raced back through the crypt of Fulbert, running at breakneck speed. Behind us, we heard gunshots.

  “That bastard!” I said, holding my bleeding arm. “Don’t stop Àrtemis, the door is there in front of you!”

  We climbed the stairs that separated us from the cathedral and emerged into the northern aisle.

  Chapter 46

  Cha
rtres, 21st of June, 14:30

  Summer solstice

  The scene which met our eyes was surreal. Policemen, tourists, priests, the staff of the gift shop, tour guides, ordinary people: all had returned inside the cathedral and were watching us with a dreamy look in their eyes.

  “What the…?” I murmured as I leant on Àrtemis.

  After a while the melody reached our ears. The whole cathedral was resonating with the sound of Mozart’s composition, the pillars and vaults themselves vibrating in harmony.

  Its melody enveloped my mind and my heart, erasing all negative thoughts. I looked over at Àrtemis and knew she was feeling the same thing. Peace. The state of grace. The secret of the Gothic cathedrals.

  I felt neither hatred nor resentment, nor pain. And when I became aware of a man emerging furiously from the bowels of the cathedral, I simply stood immobile, smiling at him. So did everyone present. No one moved, no one took out a weapon.

  The man with the gun looked at us and his face, at first so full of hatred, began to soften. The arm that held the weapon dropped slowly to his side and his eyes filled with tears. He stared at the policemen, who watched with infinite compassion as he put down his instrument of death.

  He walked over to a man with salt and pepper hair, and his tears, timid at first and then with increasing intensity, turned into liberating sobs.

  “I’m sorry…” he whispered, while Thomas, smiling at him paternally, embraced him and led him away, followed by his men.

  Àrtemis and I looked at one another for a long time. We didn’t need to say anything. It was all absolutely perfect. I kissed her there, under the rose window which spread its colours upon us.

  Epilogue

  Naples, 3rd of July, 23:30

  I walked away slowly along Via Nilo, enjoying the coolness that had somehow crept its way into the alleys of the city centre, not entirely sure what I was about to do.

  The wound in my arm still hurt, but luckily the bullet had only grazed me. I would have a scar, fortunate hero of an ‘esoteric war’ which, unfortunately, had also produced real victims. Like poor Hašek, deceived by his own student, or the Bulgarian who had killed the old Bohemian, or even Professor Ricciardi, who had died of a heart attack. What madness.