The Alchemist's Secret (42 page)

Villiers came at him again, hacking the sword from side to side. Ben backed away, but his foot came down on the gold chalice that Fairfax had thrown to the floor. It rolled, and he slipped and fell, hitting his head against the leg of the dining-table.

The sword came down again, hissing towards him. Stunned from the fall, he moved to the side just in time and the blade crashed into the table next to him. Dishes and cutlery fell to the floor around him. Something glinted at him out of the corner of his eye and he reached for it with groping fingers.

The black smoke was thickening as the blaze spread across the room, uncontrollable now as everything in its path burst alight. Fairfax’s body was burning from head to toe, his clothes little more than curling tatters of carbon, the flesh inside roasting.

Villiers’ figure loomed against the flames as he raised the heavy sword for the final strike. Fire glittered down the blade. His eyes were filled with a kind of animal triumph.

Ben twisted himself half-upright. His arm flicked in an arc. Something blurred through the smoke between them.

Villiers stopped. His fingers slackened their grip on the sword. The heavy blade clattered to the floor. He teetered, one step backwards, then another. His eyes rolled upwards in his head and then his body fell backwards into the flames. Three inches of steel and the ebony handle of the carving knife protruded from the centre of his forehead.

Ben staggered to his feet. The whole room was on fire around him. He could feel his skin shrivelling from the heat. He grabbed a dining chair and hurled it at one of the tall windows. The eight-foot pane shattered. Air rushed into the room and the fire became an inferno. He saw a gap through the flames and dashed at it for all he was worth. Threw himself wildly through the splintered hole in the window and felt a sliver of glass slice his forearm. He hit the grass and rolled to his feet.

Half blinded from the smoke and clutching his bleeding arm, he staggered away from the house and down the garden towards the acres of parkland. He leaned against a tree, coughing and spluttering.

Flames were pouring from the windows of the Fairfax residence and a huge column of smoke rose upwards into the sky like a black tower. He watched for a few minutes as the unstoppable blaze ripped through the whole house. Then, as the distant sirens drew nearer, he turned and disappeared into the trees.

Ottawa, December 2007

The plane touched down at Ottawa’s small airport with a squeal of tyres. Some time later, Ben walked out into the cold, crisp air. A flurry of snow swept over him as he climbed into a waiting taxicab. The Sinatra version of
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
was playing on the radio, and a silvery length of tinsel dangled from the rear-view mirror.

‘Where to, buddy?’ the driver asked, turning his head round to look at him.

‘Carleton University campus,’ Ben said.

‘Here for Christmas?’ the driver asked as the car glided smoothly round the city’s broad, snowy-banked circular road.

‘Just passing through.’

The lecture theatre at Carleton’s science block was full when Ben arrived. He found a seat in the back row of the sloping auditorium, near the central exit. He and the 300 or so students had come to hear a biology lecture by Drs D. Wright and R. Kaminski. Its subject was
Effects of Weak Electromagnetic Fields on Cell Respiration.

There was a low murmur of conversation in the theatre. The students all had pads and pens at the ready to make notes. Down below the auditorium was a small stage with a podium and two chairs, a couple of microphone stands, a slide projector and screen. The lecturers hadn’t yet appeared on the stage.

Ben hadn’t the least bit of interest in the subject of the lecture. But he did have an interest in Dr R. Kaminski.

The theatre went quiet and there was a discreet round of applause as the two lecturers, a man and a woman, walked on to the stage. They took their positions on either side of the podium. They introduced themselves to the audience, their voices coming through the PA system, and the lecture began.

Roberta was blonde now, her hair pulled back in a pony-tail. She looked every bit the serious scientist, just as she had when he’d first met her. Ben was pleased that she’d taken his advice and changed her name. She’d taken quite a bit of finding-that was a good sign.

Around him, the attentive students were deep in concentration and scribbling notes. He sank a little in his seat, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. He couldn’t understand the words she was saying, but over the speakers the tone of her voice, the warm soft sound of her breath, felt so close that he could almost feel her touching him.

It wasn’t until that moment that he fully realized how much he’d longed to see her again, and how badly he was going to miss her.

He’d known, even as he was setting out for Canada, that this was going to be the last time he would see her. He didn’t plan to hang around long. He’d just wanted to check that she was safe and well, and to say a private goodbye. Before coming into the lecture, he’d left an envelope for her at the main reception desk. In it was her red address book, and a brief note from him to let her know he’d got back all right from France.

He watched her co-lecturer Dan Wright. He could see from the man’s body language-the way he seemed to want to stay close to her on the stage, the way he nodded and smiled when she was talking, the way his eyes followed her as she moved between the lecture podium and the screen-that he liked her. Maybe he liked her a lot. He seemed like a decent kind of guy, Ben thought. The kind that Roberta really deserved. Steady, dependable, a scientist like her, a family kind of man who would make a good husband, and a good father one day.

Ben sighed. He’d done what he planned to do, finished what he came for. Now he waited for his cue to leave. As soon as she turned her back for a few seconds, he would slip away.

It wasn’t easy. He’d run through this moment a million times in his mind over the last couple of days. But now, being in her presence with the sound of her voice washing over him through the PA system, it seemed unthinkable to him that he was about to walk out of here, take the next flight back home and never see her again.

But does it have to be like this?
he thought. What if he didn’t leave? What if he stayed? Could they make a go of it, have a life together? Did it really have to end this way?

Yes, this is the best way. Think of her. If you love her, you have to walk away.

‘...And the biological effect of this EM waveform can be illustrated by this diagram here,’ Roberta was saying. With a smile at Dr Wright she picked up a laser pointer from the lecture podium and turned round to aim the red beam at the image that flashed up on the big screen behind her.

Her back was turned for a few seconds.
This is it
, Ben thought. He took a deep breath, made his decision, tore himself out of his seat and made his way quickly towards the centre aisle.

Just as he’d started up the aisle, a ginger-haired girl in the back row put her hand up to ask a question. ‘Dr Kaminski?’

Roberta spun round from the screen. ‘Yes?’ she said, scanning the audience for a raised hand.

‘I wondered if you could please explain the connection between rising endorphin levels and shifting T-lymphocyte cell cycles?’

Ben disappeared through the door and made for the outer exit. The cold hit him as he stepped outside.

‘Dr Kaminski…?’ the ginger-haired girl repeated quizzically.

But Dr Kaminski hadn’t heard the question. She was staring up at the exit where she’d just seen someone walk out.

‘I-I’m sorry,’ she murmured absently into the microphone, and cupped her hand over it with a thump that jolted the PA speakers. ‘Dan, you take over from here,’ she whispered urgently to an astonished Dr Wright.

Then, as the lecture theatre erupted into a frantic buzz of chatter and confusion, Roberta jumped off the stage and ran up the centre aisle. Students twisted in their seats and craned their necks to watch her as she sprinted past. On the stage, Dan Wright’s mouth was hanging open.

Ben hurried down the steps of the glass-fronted science building and walked briskly away across the snow-covered university campus with a heavy heart. Drifting flakes spiralled down around him from the steely grey sky. He pulled his coat collar up around his neck. Through a gap in the squat buildings that formed a wide square around the edges of the campus he could see the road in the distance, and the university parking lot and taxi-rank. A couple of taxis were standing by, their roofs and windows dusted with snow.

He breathed a deep sigh and headed that way. A plane roared deafeningly overhead, taking off from the nearby airport. He’d be there in ten minutes, killing time before his flight out of here.

She burst out of the double doors and into the falling snow, and looked across the campus from the top of the steps. Her eyes settled on a figure in the distance, and she instantly knew it was him. He was almost at the taxi-rank. The driver was out of the car, opening the rear door for him. She knew that if he got into that car, she’d never see him again.

She yelled his name, but her voice was drowned out by the sudden thunder of a 747 flying low over Carleton, the red maple-leaf Air Canada symbol on its tailplane.

He hadn’t heard her.

She ran, slipping in the snow in her indoor shoes. She felt the icy wind cooling the hot tears on her face. She yelled his name again, and in the distance the tiny figure tensed and froze.

‘Ben! Don’t go!
‘He heard her shout, far away behind him, and shut his eyes. There was a note of something like desperation, almost a scream of pain, in her voice that made his throat tighten. He slowly turned to see her running towards him across the empty square, her arms open wide, footprints tracing a weaving line behind her in the snow.

‘You coming, mister?’ asked the taxi driver.

Ben didn’t reply. His hand was resting on the edge of the car door. He sighed and pushed the door shut. ‘Looks like I’m staying a while longer.’

The taxi driver grinned, following Ben’s gaze. ‘Looks like you are, mister.’

With a flood of emotions, Ben turned and walked towards the approaching figure. His walk quickened into a trot and then a run. He had tears in his eyes as he called her name.

They came together at the edge of the square, and she flew into his arms.

He spun her round and round. There were snowflakes in her hair.

THE
END

References to alchemy, alchemical science and history in this book are based upon fact. The mysterious Fulcanelli is a real-life figure, believed to have been one of the greatest alchemists of all time and the guardian of important knowledge. Various theories over the years have speculated as to his real identity, but this remains as mysterious now as it ever was. The enigma of Fulcanelli has captivated the imagination of artists as diverse as the Italian horror film maestro Dario Argento-who featured a Fulcanelli-based alchemist character in his 1980 movie
Inferno-
and Frank Zappa, who wrote a song titled
But Who Was Fulcanelli?
More recently, a character who may or may not have been Fulcanelli appeared in the
BBC
television series
Sea of Souls.

The scientific community of the last three centuries or so has refused to take seriously any of the teachings of alchemy. However, this may be set to change. In 2004 a collection of alchemical research papers by Isaac Newton, the father of classical physics, was rediscovered after being lost for eighty years. Scientists at Imperial College, London, believe that Newton’s alchemical work may have inspired some of his later pioneering discoveries in physics and cosmology. As modern science continues to push back the boundaries of human ignorance, it is becoming increasingly clearer that the ancient alchemists may really have been, in the words of Dr Roberta Ryder, the original quantum physicists.

The historical details of the acts of genocide committed by the Catholic Church and Inquisition are accurate and, if anything, understated. The Albigensian Crusade of the 13
^th
century is undoubtedly one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Catholic Church, a period of brutal bloodshed and cruelty that spread all through southern France and whose aim was ostensibly to exterminate the peaceful and widespread Christian movement known as Catharism on the express orders of Pope Innocent
III
. The Pope’s real motives may, of course, have had less to do with religious zeal than with the acquisition of land and, especially, the fabled lost treasure of the Cathars. As historian Anna Manzini writes in
The Alchemist’s Secret
, to this day nobody knows what treasure the Cathars were guarding or, for that matter, what might have become of it.

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, more famously known as Le Corbusier or simply Corbu, was one of the most inventive and pioneering architects of the twentieth century. While the ‘House of the Raven’ and its hidden treasure were created for the purposes of the novel, it is a fact that Le Corbusier was believed to have been one of the last descendants of the Cathars. Fascinated all his life by esoteric philosophy, he made active use in his architectural designs of the geometric phenomenon known throughout history as ‘the Golden Ratio’ and to mathematicians as Phi. This fascinating principle of nature, believed by some scientists to govern the structure of all things, was also precious to the alchemists of ancient times. Le Corbusier’s death by drowning in 1963 is somewhat shrouded in mystery.

The incredible geometric designs carved on the landscape around Rennes-le-Château in southern France really exist, and can be traced on a map to create the same bizarre twin-circle and star design featured in this novel. Nobody knows who created it, or when. This novel draws speculatively on the amazing true-life phenomenon to suggest that it could have been used as a secret marker to pinpoint the location of a hidden treasure. To this day, Rennes-le-Château remains an important centre for treasure-hunters!