The Book of Secrets

XX

Paris, 1433

The cloaked man stood in the churchyard, glancing between the arch above him and the book in his hand. To anyone watching – anyone but me – it must have seemed some sort of piety, the book perhaps a Bible or a book of hours. I knew better.

I had spent half the night copying the book by candlelight, thrilling to the phrases that flowed through my pen. I should have abandoned it to another scribe – told Olivier I did not have time and forfeited the fee. But I could not. The words crept into me, seizing me the same way they had that night in Cologne. I had found out the customer’s name from Olivier: Tristan d’Amboise. When he came to collect his manuscript I lingered on the stairs at the back of the shop, and the moment he left I followed, all the way to the churchyard.

I stood behind a gravestone and watched. The sun setting behind the spire of St Innocent’s flung a long shadow across his shoulders. Above him, seven painted panels adorned the great arch over the churchyard gate, set there by Nicholas Flamel, the magician who crossed Mercury with the Red Stone and produced half a pound of pure gold. The pictures returned to me like a long-forgotten dream: the king with the sword, the cross and the serpent, a lonely flower on the high mountain guarded by griffins. Flanking the arch, painted on the walls, two lines of women in coloured dresses processed solemnly towards the gate.

I looked back down. Tristan d’Amboise had gone. Before I could blink, a rough hand reached around my shoulders and pinned my arms; a knife pressed against my neck. Stubble scraped my cheek as he put his mouth to my ear. ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’

‘Pr… praying,’ I whispered, terrified that if I so much as swallowed he would slit my throat.

‘You followed me all the way from the bookseller’s shop. Why?’

‘The book,’ I gasped. My eyes swivelled in their sockets, desperate for some sexton or curate to rescue me. The churchyard was empty.

‘What about the book?’

‘I know what you seek. I – I want to help.’

He pulled the knife away and spun me around, holding me at arm’s length. The knife lingered between us.

‘How?’

It was the first time I had seen much more than his back. He was beautiful, with a head of dark curls and creamy skin that flushed easily. His eyes burned with the fire of youth. Despite the situation, I felt the long-dormant demon stir in my loins.

‘I trained as a goldsmith. I know how to alloy metals and how to purify them with quicksilver. I can fire them with powders, hammer them thin as air or carve them with mystic symbols. And I know the ways of gold.’

The knife wavered. He hushed his voice, though there was no one to hear us but the dead.

‘Do you know the secret of the Stone?’

‘No,’ I admitted. I fixed my gaze on his and stepped towards him, daring him to either drop the knife or impale me. He lowered the blade. ‘Let me help you.’

‘After long errors of three years or thereabouts – during which time I did nothing but study and labour – finally I found that which I desired.’

So wrote Flamel in his book. I did not persevere for three years, but after six months all I had discovered were his errors. The further I delved into the secrets of the Art the further I seemed from it. Yet I could not abandon the quest. At first I assisted Tristan one or two evenings in the week, but in those early, heady days our progress seemed rapid, success imminent. Evenings gave way to long nights spent sweating over the forge, both stripped to the waist, until dawn came and I slunk back to Olivier’s house. With so little sleep my eyes became unreliable. My scripts grew ragged and irregular, feeble imitations of the proud specimens by the door. Olivier, proofreading, spilled so much red ink on my manuscripts it became an embarrassment.

Inevitably, he soon realised how little I went to my bed. The first time he caught me trying to creep in just after sunrise he warned me not to repeat it; the second time he threatened to expel me from his house; the third he pleaded with me not to ruin my livelihood. I resented his kindness even more than his anger. Deep in my soul I knew he spoke the truth.

I left the next day. Tristan gave me a room in his house, and there I devoted my every hour to breaking Flamel’s secret. I slept only when exhaustion compelled me, ate little and left the house so rarely his neighbours must have taken me for a ghost. After six weeks I realised I was, to all effects, a prisoner.