The Alchemist's Daughter (4 page)

Still half in a temper, she slashed at a clump of buttercups that had sprung up where they had no business to be.

“Sidonie, Sidonie, what has prompted this unseemly attack on those defenceless posies?”

Kit Aubrey, the apothecary's son, sat grinning on the low wall that separated their two cottages.

“Better the buttercups,” said Sidonie, “than Mistress Platt.”

“Ah,” said Kit. “And what has the goodwife said to so enrage you?”

“Only that I am a flibbertigibbet who will never find a husband.”

“And were you looking for one?” asked Kit, all innocence.

“Most certainly not. But she has no right to say such things.”

“Indeed. But I would marry you in a minute . . . ”

Sidonie looked up in alarm.

“ . . . if for your dowry you would offer me your father's library.”

Sidonie laughed. “And what have you come to borrow? I will go and ask him.”

“Mr. Turner's
Herbal
, if I may. I have a mind to go botanizing on the heath.”

Sidonie much preferred the smells of old calfskin and ancient dust in her father's library to the chemical stink of the workroom.

In the tall oak cases that lined the walls, old oft-consulted books — Agrippa's
Three Books on Occult Philosophy
, Roger Bacon's
Mirror of Alchymy
, works by Paracelsus, Albert Magnus and Nicolas Flamel, shared the crowded shelves with newer volumes, some with pages still uncut. More books — the latest acquisitions — were stacked on tables, benches or the floor. Kit read off some of the titles, his glance skimming the shelves and lighting now and again on some rare edition.

“Those cannot leave the library,” cautioned Sidonie. “Nor can I take them down from the shelf, save with Father's special permission.”

“And does he give you that permission?”

“For most. Not all. He says there are some that must never be opened, for fear of unleashing magical forces that even he can not control.”

Kit lifted an eyebrow. “Even he?”

Sidonie smiled at that. “So he says. You know my father, Kit — apprentice of all magics . . . ”

“ . . . And master of none?”

“Just so,” said Sidonie, thinking ruefully of the homunculus, and all the failed experiments that had come before. “But the herbals — you may help yourself to any of those, and keep them as long as need be. You will be wanting to take them with you to the university, I expect.”

“Nay, Sidonie, I have not told you — I will not be going to the university after all.”

“But Kit, you were to study medicine, you were meant to go to Oxford and become a physician.”

“Too far away, alas, and much too costly. It is seven years to a Master's degree before one can begin the study of medicine. Remember, my father is only a poor apothecary, and the business has not prospered these last few years. I am not the son of a Lord of Parliament, who can pay a few shillings to shorten his term of study. “

“There are fellowships . . . ”

“And nowadays even those go by favour. I dare say I could attend the Inns of Court, and learn about quiddits and quillets and recognizances, whatever those might be. But the law is a narrow kind of study. Better to be of some actual use to people.”

He ran his hand lightly over the shelf of natural philosophy, pulled down Turner's
Herbal
, and held it up so that Sidonie could see the spine. “No, it is decided — I will follow my father's craft. Better that than becoming a barber-surgeon or a pettifogging lawyer. I will study the proper use of medicinal herbs, and as for the rest, I can read Hippocrates and Aristotle as well here as at Oxford.”

“I wish I could attend the university,” Sidonie said. “But I am doubly disappointed, being not only poor but a woman.”

“And what would you study, Sidonie, had you been born a rich man's son?”

“Why mathematics, of course.”

“A gentleman's subject, if ever there was one.”

“That may be. But the Queen knows mathematics.”

“And I'll wager you know more now, than those rich men's sons at Oxford, who waste their all time in drinking and dicing.”

“I would not go to Oxford,” Sidonie said. “I would travel abroad, to one of the great universities like Padua. Or perhaps if there were still nunneries in England, I would hide myself away from the world, devoting my life to scholarly pursuits.”

Kit gave her a sharp look. “Promise me that you will not speak of nunneries where there is anyone to hear.”

“I know,” sighed Sidonie. “For such sympathies, I could lose my head. And besides, I doubt I would find a nun's life congenial. But all the same . . . ”

Kit, who had been thumbing through another herbal, looked up inquiringly. “All the same?”

“To be safe within stone walls, dedicated to study and the service of God, not having to see what is meant to be hidden . . . ”

“For that you would rise at three o' the clock, and kneel on cold stone floors.”

“Yes,” said Sidonie, soberly. “I do believe I would.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

That you should hatch gold in a furnace, sir,
As they do eggs, in Egypt!

— Ben Jonson,
The Alchemist

Sidonie came home from the market one late August morning to the smell of smouldering charcoal. Glancing into the laboratory, she saw her father at his work table, setting out an array of flasks and retorts. Hearing her step, he called out, “Sidonie, come and look, I am about to begin the process.” She set down her basket and went into the workroom. Her father's face was flushed and damp from the heat of the crucible, his eyes alight with excitement.

He said, without preamble, “Have I explained to you, Sidonie, how all things in nature strive to perfect themselves?”

“More than once,” said Sidonie. She settled herself on a bench, preparing to be lectured.

“You understand then, that as the worm becomes a butterfly, as the egg becomes a chicken, so does base metal strive to become gold. Our task is to assist the metal in its metamorphosis from the imperfect to the perfect.”

“Why, then,” asked Sidonie, who was in a contrary mood, “does the soup kettle insist on remaining pot-metal, when it could turn itself to gold and have a whole new career at court?”

“We speak of the Great Work, daughter. It is no subject for levity.” Simon Quince's voice was gently reproving. Still, he chose to reply as though Sidonie had asked a serious question.

“The difficulty is this — that in order to accomplish the transmutation, an agent of change, an elixir, is needed. When this elixir touches any substance, no matter how base, it permeates it, and transforms it into its own golden nature.”

“And what is this magical elixir?”

“Ah, but that is the great mystery, daughter. It is said to be made of fire and water; it is a stone but not a stone; it is unknown yet known to everyone; it is worthless and yet valuable beyond price. The alchemist Lully said that with this elixir, he could turn the very seas to gold.”

“Then,” remarked Sidonie, “the Spanish could walk all the way to Plymouth, to the great confusion of Her Majesty's navy.”

She was sorry, as soon as the flippant words were out, but her father seemed not to have heard them.

He said, “I have found, in the writings of the adepts, a formula for producing this elixir. Though the processes are cloaked in symbolism, I have managed to decipher them. Thus it is no longer a matter of trial and error, but a progression of steps one may follow to achieve one's end.”

Just what you said about the homunculus
, thought Sidonie. But she wisely held her tongue.

“Remember, daughter, these are secrets men have died for. I would not think to share them with any but my own flesh and blood. Do you take my meaning?”

“I do,” said Sidonie, chastened.

“So then. One must first reduce one's material to the
prima materia
, the First Matter, which is matter without properties, the possibility of all things. And then by means of many exacting processes, one releases from this First Matter the divine spark, the quintessence, which animates all things. Whoever can free this fifth element from the matter it inhabits, holds in his hands the secret of transformation.”

“And has anyone succeeded in doing this?” asked Sidonie .

“Why daughter, there have been notable successes. Paracelsus himself possessed the elixir of transmutation. It is said that he heated a pound of mercury, and then dropped into the crucible a few grains of powder, which he called ‘the red lion' because of its dark red colour. In half an hour he asked his assistant to look into the crucible and say what he saw there.‘I see a yellow substance,' said the assistant. ‘It looks like gold'. ‘Yes,' said Paracelsus. ‘That is what it is supposed to be.'”

“I have heard,” said Sidonie, straight-faced, “that breathing mercury fumes can give one peculiar visions.”

“That may well be. But let me finish my story. Then Paracelsus said, ‘Take this gold and sell it to the goldsmith who lives above the pharmacy.' And the goldsmith attested that it was pure gold, weighing a pound minus half an ounce. There is a rumour also that Dr. Dee and his assistant Edward Kelley have obtained a supply of this same powder; and that with a single grain, no bigger than the finest grain of sand, they turned an ounce of mercury into an ounce of pure gold. Moreover, they cut a piece out of a warming pan, and turned it into silver. Even now they are practising their alchemical arts in the courts of Poland and Bohemia. Can we offer to do less for our own Queen?”

“And what substance do you mean to transmute?”

“Unfortunately, the adepts do not tell us what is to be used for raw material. Some have experimented with grass or mandrake roots, with honey, or wax, or wine, or eggs, or all manner of unlikely materials. None of them had succeeded, as far as I can tell. I have decided to use copper, which has more in common with gold than any of those. See, I am about to begin the work, the black stage, the
nigredo
, by heating the copper with sulphur.”

“Then I'd best throw open all the doors and windows,” Sidonie sighed, “for whatever else you may produce, we can depend on a terrible stink.”

Sidonie was hanging linen to dry in the garden when she saw the stranger at the gate. She pushed back her hair, lank from the steam of the laundry vat, and hastily tied a kerchief over it.

At first glance she took the tall, stooped figure with its limping gait for some elderly scholar, come to consult her father's library or while away the afternoon in metaphysical discussion. But as she came to greet him, she saw that she had been deceived by the drab black gown and ungainly walk, and in fact the visitor was little older than herself. He was bareheaded, dark-haired, with a narrow, thin-lipped face. His eyes, a pale intense silver-grey, seemed to look straight past her. He said, “I have an appointment with Dr. Quince.”

“He is in the library, I believe,” said Sidonie, more than a little flustered. “I will show you the way.”

He followed her inside, with no thanks and no attempt at conversation. His long black sleeves drooped limply, the hem of his gown swept the floor like a seventy-year-old's.
He mistakes me for the serving-woman
, thought Sidonie, and this, together with his odd dress and uncivil manner, disposed her less than kindly towards him.

She showed him into the library, closed the door, and went out to deal with the rest of the laundry.

“Who was it came to see you today?” Sidonie asked her father as they sat down to supper. “I don't believe I recognized him.”

“Ah, did I not tell you, daughter?” Simon Quince broke off a generous chunk of yesterday's bread. “I have decided to hire an assistant.”

“Father!” Sidonie banged a dish of boiled cabbage down on the table, hard enough to make the ale dance in the beakers.