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CHAPTER 1

If a lot of cures are suggested for a disease, it means that the disease is incurable.

Chekhov

The stench of brimstone rose to meet Celia Albright from the depths below, but she had no intention of abandoning hope. It was not her style. Crossing herself, she began a cautious descent of the stairs, trying to recall which was the crumbling step. Ahead of her the reek of hot sulphur welled up, co-operating pungently with the following wind of garlic from her interrupted cooking. The house smelled like the Devil’s kitchen. Since it was the middle of the day, no candles were lit, and she had, in her anger, set off without preparation into the darkness of the basement stairs, overlooking the hazards of the journey into the bowels of the building.

At some time in the past the cellar had been a workshop, but was now used by an apothecary as a storage place – so he had said – for the apparatus and medicines of his calling. She had agreed to let for a generous rent. Generosity was a quality so rare among her tenants that she should have been suspicious. Why had she not asked more questions?

Devising in her mind unpleasant deaths for the apothecary, one of which was poisoning him slowly with his own malodorous vapours, almost accelerated her own extinction. The firmness of the ground to her heel was suddenly unmatched by the experience of her toes, and she pitched forward momentarily before managing, with the help of a vigorous push of her hand against the wall, to save herself. Instead of falling she accelerated, upright and on her feet but unbalanced and out of control, down the remaining steps. Arriving precipitately at the blank wall at the bottom of the stairs, she buffered herself with her hands, and then sat down heavily against the door that led into the room on the right.  Its hinges and catch were severely tested by the unexpected visit, but they – like her substantial frame – had been built to last. Celia Albright’s arrival was announced by a prolonged clatter followed by a crash. For some seconds she sat there, exploring the descriptive possibilities of the English language. Then she crossed herself again. It did little good.

‘I’ll serve his bollocks for supper,’ she muttered.

*     *     *     *     *

‘What is the Green Lion, father?’ asked the flaxen-haired boy.

At first the apothecary paid no attention to the question. He was deep in thought. His spirits were rising a little, but they had started the day lower than the dark basement in which he now stood. Concentration on practical matters he found was helpful to dispel such moods. Work was already in progress in this unsuitable cellar into which he had recently moved, but there was much sorting and setting-up still to be done. The words of Paracelsus came suddenly to his mind:

‘Their shops are nothing but foul sculleries, from which comes nothing but foul brews.’

Paracelsus had been referring, alas, to apothecaries. He looked around him guiltily. The great philosopher and healer was his guiding light. How could anyone fail to be great having been given the name Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim? The apothecary quoted him frequently – to himself and to others, but these words, which he had not known to be lodged in his memory, were neither comfortable nor supportive. He paused in his task of organising the workshop. Ideally this work should be done in the open air, well away from human habitation. Nothing could be said in favour of a basement. A few things could be said in favour of this particular basement – it was large and it had an old grate with a chimney, and had apparently been used for a commercial purpose at some time in the past. At least the greater part of the smoke from his furnaces could be vented in this way. At the first attempt he had wondered – when he had extinguished the flames and recovered from a choking fit – whether the chimney actually led anywhere. Subsequent exploration with the reverse end of a broom added to his treasures some disintegrating stonework, an amorphous conglomerate of unidentifiable material, an all too recognisable dead starling complete with nest; also the skeleton of a rat.

He turned over the letter that he had received yesterday from James Fisher, a friend who had a position in London where he was well-placed for news – or if not news, rumours – of new arrivals in the capital from foreign lands. So, Roche was in England – or might be. The hunt continued, and the apothecary had no doubt that he himself was the quarry. The list of the countries, from which he had been fugitive, grew as certainly as the hairs on his chin – France, Italy, Germany several times, Spain – there seemed to be no haven where he could settle and be free of the unfortunate legacy from his revered master, Michael.

Yesterday’s order from Dr Fortune contributed to his black mood. The physician had been called to the bedside of the young son of Sir Robert Pelham, who had been appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the Shire by King Charles a few years previously. The nobleman had heard somewhere of the efficacious properties of Oil of Swallows in such cases. The physician had bowed, praised the nobleman’s breadth of learning, matched only by his sharpness of perception, and promised to provide a medicine containing the Oil if possible, although it was hard to find, very expensive, even if obtainable from stock – and if not so obtainable it was certainly rather early in the season for collection and manufacture. The actual task of supply had of course fallen to the apothecary. There was none on his shelves. And he was sceptical of its efficacy against the boy’s illness – the swallow, with its swift flight and hectic activity, its mysterious appearances and departures, was presumably under the auspices of Mercury, and probably offered the worst possible treatment for a fever. Was Mercury retrograde at the moment? That would have an important influence. He must consult the tables.

The prospect of a day of long ladders and vertigo followed by the ritual murder and disgusting pulverisation in fresh herbs and butter of tiny creatures against whom he had no grudge, filled him with gloom. He might need to solve the problem with a vegetable oil of some kind, which he would disguise by an unusual colour and scent, and would dignify by a suitably elegant and equivocal label.

Deception! His life seemed full of it. He prayed frequently to the Lord God that this particular cup might be taken from him. But the circumstances of his birth and upbringing had determined otherwise. And one deception seemed always to lead to another, often with multiplication. He was painfully reminded of the predicament even in the simple act of signing his name – or rather signing whichever name he was currently using.

What he had told Celia Albright was indeed truthful, as far as it went. His room in the centre of the small town was small and overcrowded. He needed storage space for the herbs and medicines and the apparatus of his profession. The floors and shelving space available were lined with bottles, boxes and packages labelled by the supplier or his own neat handwriting. The physicians operated by attempting to clear out the patient’s system, and if bleeding was not considered sufficient, a whole arsenal of products was available. Disease must be expelled, violently if necessary, from the body. There were four routes for expulsion, and the contents of his shelves mapped these. Here were the vomitives. The purges came next – the gentle manna, tamarind and rhubarb, and the furious scammony, vigorous to the point of homicide, of which a young man, called Culpeper or some such name, whom he had met in Cambridge, wrote ‘it will gnaw their bodies as fast as doctors gnaw their purses.’  The need for careful use of purgatives was underlined by the sudden demise of a lady-in-waiting at Versailles who responded enthusiastically to her physician’s treatment with the expected expulsion together with several yards of intestine. Next on the apothecary’s shelves came a line of diuretics – extracts of clivers, butcher’s broom, horsetail, pimpernel... and then the diaphoretics. The body’s problems were to be sicked, shat, pissed, or sweated out.

He must also be ready to provide medicines against specific diseases. Guaiac from the Caribbean, sarsaparilla from Mexico, China root from the Orient, all considered effective against the pox. And garlic, useful against infections and one of the few hopes of protection, slender enough, against the plague (‘No danger in this house,’ he muttered to himself, sniffing the air). Theriac was considered effective but impossibly expensive. Luckily it was possible to make the latter in versions cheaper than those prepared by Galen.

Several jars of a dark brown substance, apparently indigestible, which appeared totally unlikely as a medicine, provided in fact one of the few cures in which he had some confidence. It looked suspiciously like wood and was in fact obtained from a tree. It was known as Peruvian Bark or Jesuits’ Bark from the name of one of its most enthusiastic importers, and was effective against the ague.

In London he might be asked to supply at short notice, vipers’ flesh or crushed deer antlers or goat urine. Sometimes the apothecary hated his work. He had not personally been required to provide rhinoceros or unicorn’s horn, nor Bezoar stone from the gut of a wild Persian goat, but other apothecaries of his acquaintance did so. They were men with a richer clientèle than he had ever been able to accumulate. The noble especially, presumed that their sickness demanded noble cures, and a few apothecaries might receive orders for medicines which included powdered pearl or red coral, ground emeralds or gold or silver.  The latter conferred a mystical but permanent blue colour to the skin. In this country practice the people were very poor. They could not afford expensive remedies and he was in little danger of having to stretch his mind as to where he could acquire lapis lazuli, raw silk, musk or oil of scorpions, nor indeed was he in danger of making a rich income from providing such cures.

The apothecary was a man of about thirty, not quite bulky enough for his height, with a slight boniness, which suggested that he might be uncomfortable to lie on, although this had not led to serious deprivation. His complexion revealed his trade, with its indoor situation and stuffy, often foetid, atmosphere. His profession, or rather his unofficial profession, was further indicated by what Michael had referred to as their badge or seal, in this case a scar near his left ear which was the only tangible result of an experiment which had ended abruptly and yielded no information other than the highly combustible nature of its products. Occasionally he would look in a mirror and reflect that a few fortunate individuals possessed faces that seemed to have been designed, while most – including himself – had to be content with an arbitrary selection of features. He had his father’s nose and his mother’s mouth but his chin and brow came from God knows where, and, although these features were in themselves unexceptionable, he had the impression, whenever he saw them, that they had just been introduced to each other for the first time.

Not all of the materials on his shelves were of plant or animal origin. Paracelsus had brought quicksilver to the aid of sufferers from the pox and, more generally, brought chymistry to the aid of medicine. In his youth the apothecary had used these remedies enthusiastically – too enthusiastically he now suspected. Quicksilver and antimony were the miraculous new treatments for many diseases, or judging by the dispensing habits of some physicians, for all diseases. One cause of his present disquiet was the growing conviction that Paracelsus, the hero of his youth and his continuing inspiration, had insufficient reason for the advocacy of some of his cures, and in particular that he had been ignorant of, or had ignored, the collateral damage to the patient. Quicksilver was administered sometimes in its own remarkable form as glistening globules which seemed to have a life of their own. More usually it was prescribed as Mercurius Dulcis, prepared with vitriol, in which according to Croll, ‘there may be killed the destructive spirit of vitriol and salt in mercury sublimate.’ This powder, tasteless, and innocuous enough in appearance, was not in the apothecary’s opinion as harmless as the physicians maintained, but they knew better than he – the law said so – and his task was to prepare and supply this substance which, among other effects, stimulated copious salivation, thus providing a fifth route for evacuation.

Mercury and antimony, the former in particular, were central to his interests. But not strictly to his medical interests. They were the gateway to the incorruptible and eternal city, and it was towards this place that he was this morning again turning his thoughts, as his predecessors had done for many centuries.

‘What is the Green Lion, Papa?’ asked the flaxen-haired boy again, this time more impatiently.

He glanced down. The boy’s question had been prompted by a much-travelled piece of paper decorated with chemical splashes of diverse colours, one of which had worn into a hole. The apothecary carried the paper over to the grating and, squinting in the slightly improved light, read again the text, which was headed Invitation to the Wedding.

Some have called him the Green Lion; to others he is the Babylonian Dragon. We speak no more of his person, for a Word to the Wise is as a Book to the Foolish. Confine him in his lair, but treat him not over-harshly, that it to say sufficient only for the fusion of Saturn. When he is cooled, add then an equal part of volatile Venus and a third part of argente vive, seven times washed with water from a font used for the Baptism of a female child. Grind carefully and heat in a crucible. This is the hope of Neptune and in it you may discern, as the days pass, the Beak of the Crow and the Doves of Diana…

The sentence would have done credit to the King’s Security Service. On another day, he might have expanded his chest and begun ‘Well, my boy. This is how it is.’ But he caught the look in the lad’s eye. He was in one of his awkward moods. He answered with caution.

‘I am defeated by “Neptune”. It suggests water of course but seems to refer to a mineral. The metals are named after the planets whose properties they share, which in turn reflect the glory of the gods. Mars is iron, for example, Jupiter tin. Saturn, to which he refers, is lead. Diana is associated with the moon, whose light is silvery, and which indeed is used as a symbol for silver. Diana’s Doves probably means silver in one of its forms. But there is no planet called Neptune. He cannot mean a metal. Venus I understand – that is cyprium or copper but which is the volatile Venus?’ The term diverted his mind into an unrelated channel bringing the first smile of the day to his face. To himself he muttered. ‘True. I was with a volatile Venus very recently – yesterday in fact, but the text can hardly be referring to her.’ He felt a familiar twitch from somewhere in his groin. ‘Down Nimrod,’ he muttered, ‘back to your kennel!’ To the boy he said, ‘Venus, in the author’s vocabulary, is copper. The Green Lion, I cannot identify.’

The flaxen-haired boy was not satisfied yet.

‘If Venus is copper, Father, why doesn’t he just say so?’

‘It is an ancient association. Alchemists have created a language for their own particular (but unofficial, not to mention illegal) Guild and it serves the same purpose as those of other professions and trades, that is, of course to ensure that its practitioners can be understood by others in the same occupation, while remaining incomprehensible to those outside it. To maintain an impressive obscurity is good business for any trade.’

‘But, Papa, you do the same job and still don’t know what he’s talking about.’

He glanced at the boy but did not see him. The boy became so real at times that he almost believed him to be by his side.

‘He wishes to impress of course. He wants to kidnap attention. It is a kind of violence. Colourful names of any sort will do. No, not of any sort – they must convey the atmosphere of learning, imply that the author is intimate with the classics, that he lives day and night with Aristotle, Plato and Hermes.’

He smiled suddenly to himself. The last thought was bizarre, presumptuous and possibly immoral. It reminded him also of his own characteristics, one of which had survived fifteen years of good resolutions – his habit of using resplendent language. It was part of his training. It was not without merit in his apothecary’s shop. He had cured all manner of ailments with a medicine and a resounding phrase. The medicine usually needed all the help it could get. And distaste towards the extravagances of the authors of the Green Lion and the Babylonian Dragon came ill from one who had extracted a shining white salt from pigs’ urine and named it Star of the East. He fell back on the usual expedient – quoting an Authority.

‘Albertus Magnus put it well: But I the least of philosophers, intend to describe to my associates and friends the true art easy and infallible; nevertheless so that seeing they shall not see, and hearing they shall not understand.’

The flaxen-haired boy would not let go.

‘I can see that he wants us to be impressed. I don’t mind that. That’s all right with me. Or it would be if we could understand. If we don’t, he might as well not bother and we could all play football instead.’

‘I keep telling you not to play that dangerous game, you scamp. Several hundred oafs kicking a pig skin about the street... But you are correct. Why, if the author is confident that he can do what he says he can do, does he offer his jewels in such impenetrable wrappings? Clearly he wishes to arrest our attention, to amaze us...’ His peroration was interrupted by a loud crack like musket shot issuing from a crucible which was heating on the sand bath. The solution which he was evaporating was dry, leaving a residue of crystals. There was no danger, no explosion, no imminent fire. The crystal structure in parts of the residue modified suddenly in the heat – a phenomenon which he called ‘crepitation’, and had sometimes referred to as the Guns of Calais. When the process was complete the crystals might form a regulus. They might. Was it likely? No. But Michael had told him 'creative work is for optimists only'. Nevertheless a regulus was more than he dared hope.

The sharp report reminded him that he had several ventures running simultaneously. This was a dangerous habit, he admitted, but life was short and many of the processes were of long duration. He must pack as much in as possible. If he did not remain alert, though, the policy could make life abruptly shorter. He walked across to a corner where another longer term project was heating, or rather, maturing. One way of exposing material to a moderate heat over a period of time, was to place it in a glass vessel and hang this in the steam of boiling water. This needed constant attention. Better was to use a mixture of brewer’s grain, wheat bran, sawdust, chopped hay or straw, moistened and pressed together. This was then packed around the vessel containing the substances and by some mysterious natural process produced heat. For really long periods of warming it was customary to enclose the mixture in an egg shell and victimise a broody and unsuspecting hen, under whose body it was placed. On this occasion, though, he had chosen a fourth method. This was called venter equinus and required the vessel to be packed in horse dung. The unique ambience of his laboratory owed most to hot sulphur but the venter equinus added an interesting frisson.

The boy was gazing around the room at the various pieces of apparatus, a collection of grotesque shapes that might have come from a painting by Bosch. Joseph loved not only his Art, but its apparatus also. Even the names of the furnaces and vessels – the athanor, cucurbit, ampulla, scutella, cassola, cincritium – were a kind of music.

‘Is it really possible to make gold from lead, Papa?’

‘Making gold is not our purpose.’

‘I know that’, said the boy. ‘At least that’s what you say. I just asked if it is possible.’

‘Many believe so. Many have tried. Some claim to have achieved it.’

‘I don’t believe them. They just say that they did.’

The boy was the lead actor in the dramatis personæ who occupied the apothecary’s imagination. At the head of the cast was the apothecary himself. He had been known to hesitate for a moment when asked for his name – not because of any memory defect but through having had too many names, too frequently changed. These tended to overlay the one – Joseph Skledowski – which his family had provided. He had been at other times Johannes Ledermann, Thomas Schmidt or Zdzislaw Drohobycz, the latter eventually failing the test of enunciation when he crossed borders. Once, very briefly – until he opened his mouth and everyone giggled at the brand of English that emerged – he had become Thomas Smithson. At present, in the village, he was known as Michael Muller although Michael Müller had been his intention.

The flaxen-haired boy was the imaginary son that the apothecary would have liked to have in real form, although he never admitted the desire. He was the creation of a lonely man who had been hunted from country to country. The lad provided him, in some measure, with a feeling of comfort and normality. Joseph had become accustomed to casting his thoughts into a kind of Socratic dialogue with the flaxen-haired boy as a sceptical opponent who expressed himself with an insouciance that a flesh-and-blood boy would not have dared, and that might have earned a clip around the ear rather than immortalization in a philosophical treatise. Preparing himself for further intermittent evidence of crepitation, he tried to answer the lad’s question.

‘Many claim to have made gold, but few have become rich. Mostly they try unsuccessfully to deceive us, or successfully to deceive themselves. But I believe with many others that it can be done. And that is because there exists a common ground to everything God has made. Empedocles realised that there are four elements only – a wisdom that was confirmed by Aristotle and Plato. Because these provide a common ground to everything that exists, it follows that interconversion of substances occurs by adjustment of their content of the four – earth, air, fire and water. Such mutability we see all around us, not only in Nature but also in those changes that result from our own promptings. In spite of their diverse appearance and behaviour it is only in the proportion of these elements that our metals, although of such diverse qualities, differ. Because of this they may be converted one to another, and indeed, their nature changes gradually as they lie in the darkness of the ground. Each metal may in time pass into another by a natural process of growth and renewal, seeking always its own ultimate perfection. We see this in many cases. For example the precious metal silver is always found with lead from which it has been transformed by a process of growth and differentiation, almost like a plant, a kind of quest for perfection and release, conducted deep within the earth. We do not wholly understand it. But this transmutation is a fundamental thing, created by God, which may perhaps be rediscovered and repeated.’

‘Why,’ he asked himself, ‘am I telling the lad all this again?’ The unease that he felt was becoming too familiar. Nor was it provoked by the footsteps descending the stairs, which were drowned by the intensity of his thoughts. Lecturing the boy on the rationale of transmutation was becoming a daily occurrence. More alarming still was the realisation that this was the second time this morning. Could it be that there was a doubt in his mind that he was trying to ignore or dispel? – a fear somewhere deep within him, not yet confronted? He had grown up with two faiths. One concerned the nature and purpose of man and his relationship with God, which was embodied in the Christian religion. The other related to the structure of the world and of the stuff from which it was made. The two faiths were not entirely separate. The structure of the world had been created by God. The Christian faith was beyond question. It had the authority of God’s Word, which he could – and did – read every day. But the Bible had little to say about the metals, elements, substances... There were other authorities for these, revered by countless generations. They were not God however. So far he had not gone beyond this point.

He sought reassurance by repeating to himself the opening words of the Fama fraternitatis, which carried the force and dignity of a movement, founded by Christian Rosenkreutz, already two hundred and fifty years old. He had read the Rosicrucian manifesto so many times that he knew much of it by heart:

Seeing the only wise and merciful God in these latter days hath poured out so richly his mercy and goodness to mankind, whereby we do attain more to the perfect knowledge of his son Jesus Christ and Nature, that justly we may boast of the happy time, wherein there is not only discovered unto us the half part of the world, which was heretofore unknown and hidden, but he hath also made manifest unto us many wonderful, and never heretofore seen, works and creatures of Nature, and moreover hath raised men, imbued with great wisdom, who might partly renew and reduce all arts (in this our age spotted and imperfect) to perfection; so that finally man might thereby understand his own nobleness and worth, and why he is called Microcosmus, and how far his knowledge extendeth into Nature.

This was the point – to understand and master the external world. And in mastering it, to improve or even to perfect it. The Stone was known also as the Medicine.

‘Very nice,’ said the boy. 'But what has it got to do with this?’ He indicated the crucible, which was making a creditable effort to simulate cannon fire.

‘We are attempting to make the Philosopher’s Stone. When this is done all things are possible, not merely the trivial transmutation of base metals. First we have to make the Universal Solvent. This we are preparing from the Volatile Salt and the Fixed Salt and Spirits of Nitre.’

A sudden clatter from the stairway outside was this time too dramatic to allow further explanation. There followed the sound of footsteps accelerating out of control down the last few steps of the staircase, then a muffled thump as of a soft but heavy object striking a wall and finally an ear-threatening crash from the door of the room. The door vibrated for several seconds as its catch was visibly under siege and for several seconds seemed likely to surrender. The percussive noises were succeeded by the cussive; a volley of vivid language was evidence that the victim of the accident was not seriously injured. Her bones and her powers of invention were still intact. Joseph recognised Celia Albright’s voice and vocabulary. A Christian mission was required, even if she was a closet-Catholic. Hastening across to the door, he pulled it open. The unfortunate woman, who had ended her adventure sitting on the floor with her back leaning against the door, was halfway through the process of heaving herself to her feet by pressing against it as a support. The apothecary’s well-meant mission ended with Celia Albright entering his domain by rolling in backwards.

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