46

Rue Saint Jacques de la Boucherie

March 21, 1355

Flamel knocked twice on the double wooden doors. He perked his ears. After a moment of silence, he heard a shuffling, and the door opened.

The torturer didn’t show any surprise and let him in. There was only one chair in the room. Arthus sat on the edge of the hearth.

“You’re an early bird, Master Flamel. Is something on your mind?”

Flamel took a deep breath, readying for battle.

“I’m having nightmares.”

Arthus was strangely calm, as if the situation didn’t concern him. He stood up and walked over to a window. Dawn was creeping down the street. “We all have them. Yet none of my dreams have ever caused me to cross the street and talk to my neighbor.”

“I doubt that you dream about your neighbor.”

Arthus looked at him. “Who’s haunting your nights? Would I be in your nightmares, Master Flamel?”

Flamel was still afraid, but he pressed on. “Think hard.”

Arthus took his time to answer. “Does the girl’s fate preoccupy you that much?”

“Please. You’re a man of God, and my mind is prey to confusion. I’m afraid of having sinned in—”

“In helping me? But you are not responsible. You were but an ear and a hand.”

“And a conscience. A conscience that keeps reminding me that it exists.”

Arthus returned to the hearth and picked up a handful of cold ashes. He let them fall through his fingers.

“A conscience. What is it that you know about having a conscience, when your sole responsibility in this world is taking down words?”

“I didn’t just copy, milord. I also heard. And the poor woman’s cries echo in my mind and trouble my soul.”

“What exactly did you hear?” Arthus was speaking more slowly now.

Suddenly Flamel understood what was going through the torturer’s mind. The man wasn’t concerned about his crises of conscience, but instead of what he might do.

Arthus continued. “Are you sure that it’s only the poor woman’s fate that torments you? Perhaps material desires are revealing themselves in your dreams. Many things were said during that interrogation.”

Flamel didn’t dare answer. He listened to the fire crackle and hiss in the fireplace.

“What do you think the man burned at the stake was seeking?” the torturer finally asked. “What cost him his life?”

“If you mean the secret of gold, it may have interested that man, but not me. Fortune in this world doesn’t open the gates of heaven.”

“Master Flamel, gold corrupts. And that’s why it must remain rare. If there were more of it, man would live only for it, and not the kingdom of God. We’re hunting down gold-makers, the so-called alchemists, to preserve mankind’s hope for a future life that’s better than the one on this earth.”

Flamel thought about the forbidden books hidden in his cellar while Arthus continued, as if speaking for his own benefit.

“We don’t know where they came from, from what race of heretics they descend. For nearly a century, they’ve appeared and disappeared. Sometimes they’re in Spain, where they recruit and train disciples. Other times, a disciple will perform miracles in the princely courts of Germany and then vanish. But all promise the same power, the same illusion: to make gold at will.”

“The only gold I seek is what I need to illustrate my books.”

Arthus turned away from the fireplace. He glanced at the wooden chest before looking the scribe in the eye.

“You, Master Flamel, are a famed scribe and manuscript seller. Have you never been asked to reproduce books with strange figures, written in a language you don’t know? A book like this one?”

Arthus took the illuminated manuscript from the chest and put it on the table. Flamel started to reach for the book, but thought better of it.

“Once again, milord, saving my soul is my only preoccupation. And therefore I seek to know what became of the woman, so that I’m not damned to hell for the sin of her death. When I woke up after fainting she was no longer in that room.”

Arthus shook his head.

“She’s still alive. She is on her way back to her family.”

“Why, then, does she haunt my nights?”