sixteen

1597, Prague, Bohemia

His face pressed to the rough, cold stone, Edward Kelley could barely believe his eyes. It was his ears that had been sliced for fraud, and his hands broken for disloyalty, but there was nothing wrong with his vision. And he wasn’t intoxicated. Was he? He thought back. No, he was certain he wasn’t intoxicated.

Edward knew the castle grounds better than most. He’d found many of its hidden secrets, including the purposefully loose stones that enabled him to secretly look into many alchemists’ rooms. This was one of the ways in which he was able to ensure favor with patrons: by gaining a breadth of knowledge about alchemy, which he’d always believed was a fraud—until today.

Through the narrow opening, Edward watched as Philippe lifted a glass vial from a flame and twirled the container in a rhythmic, clockwise motion. The liquid bubbled, and changed from a dull gray to bright yellow.

Philippe tilted the liquid vial over the table, but instead of the wet mess Edward expected to see splash across the wooden surface, flakes of gold appeared.

Edward gasped, then quickly covered his mouth. His heart beat furiously. He’d never been discovered while spying before. He needn’t have worried. Philippe was far too focused on his work to pay any attention to the faint sounds of the man spying on him. Edward had suspected the painter was hiding a big secret. But this? He had not expected this.

Philippe Hayden wasn’t only an artist who painted alchemical scenes. The man was a true alchemist. Alchemy was real.

Philippe grinned as the flakes of gold appeared. With art and alchemy comingling so easily now, each process became more natural. Other artists at Prague Castle painted only what they imagined alchemy to look like, not alchemy as it truly was.

To be fair, the challenge for artists was not only their ignorance of alchemical processes, but also their dependence on patrons. And those patrons had specific ideas about what they wanted hanging on their walls.

Whatever negative opinions could be formed about Rudolf II’s birthright or his moods, it was indisputably true that he was a great patron of science and the arts. He brought natural philosophers to his court to practice astronomy, alchemists to make gold for his kingdom, and artists to celebrate his reign. His curated Kunstkammer collection was one of the greatest libraries in the world.

As much as Philippe wished to return home to France, there was an important task to complete under Rudolf’s roof. And it was so close …