Forty-Eight

england, 1925

The flames crackled and burned brightly.

The cloudy mixture bubbled in its glass vessel. The gray bubbles turned to white. The alchemist smiled to himself. He loved watching his transformations take form. He gained a deep satisfaction that his patience and pure intent could transform impure natural substances into something greater than the sum of their parts.

Ambrose looked up from his experiment as footsteps sounded on the stairs leading down to his alchemy lab. The thick wood sagged under the weight of the hefty man entering the secret laboratory.

“Father?” the petulant voice called out. It would have been excusable in a boy, but the boy was now fifty.

“Percival!” Ambrose stood to greet his son. “Good to see you, my boy. I wasn’t expecting you until Saturday.”

“It is Saturday, Father.”

“Is it true?” Ambrose extinguished the flame underneath his alchemical creation. All the time and energy he had poured into that vessel, now abandoned at the appearance of his son.

“You forgot about me,” Percival said without humor. “I suppose that means you haven’t prepared any food for dinner.”

“Zoe is gone for a few weeks, and I’m afraid the vegetables miss her touch. I’ve been eating bread and beer. But we can walk down to the pub for something more substantial.”

Percival nodded with approval, his ample chin jiggling as he did so. Even in the dim light from the glowing athanor furnace, the streaks of gray in Percival’s hair were apparent. The two men no longer passed as father and son. Percival was now five years older than the age Ambrose appeared to be. In a few years’ time, it would look as if Percival were Ambrose’s father.

As Nicolas Flamel had warned Zoe Faust many years before, it wasn’t possible for one alchemist to transfer their personal Philosopher’s Stone to another. Knowledge could be transferred, but transformations themselves were personal. Yet like Zoe before him, Ambrose refused to believe it. He was convinced he could help his son achieve the immortality he craved.

The father and son who now looked like brothers climbed the stairs, then replaced the trap door and rug that hid the laboratory. On the cool autumn day, the cabin was warm with the heat of the burning stove that masked the smoke from the secret athanor furnace of their lab. It was only a short walk from the warm cabin to the local pub.
Ambrose had spent many years in France—and he was thankful he had, for it was there that he had met the love of his life—yet he was happy to be back in England. The friendly people in his native land supported each other, and ubiquitous public houses were their gathering spot. He mused that there must have been one pub for every thirty men. He was happy that he and Zoe could live in this welcoming community for at least a few more years before people began to notice they weren’t aging like the rest of them.

In a far corner of the dim pub, Percival shoveled mutton into his mouth while Ambrose drank beer and told his son of his latest alchemical discoveries, which he hoped Percival would try. Ambrose did not believe the longer lifespan granted by the Elixir of Life was essential to have a fulfilling life. Yet he considered the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, the penultimate step to the Elixir, to be rewarding for what it could tell a man about the world, and about himself.

“It’s useless, Father. I can’t do it without your help—”

“We already tried that,” Ambrose said, the sharpness in his voice surprising himself as much as Percival. “You know how it turned out.”

“You’re giving up on me?”

“Of course not, my boy. This very month I found you a new book. An obscure treatise by Roger Bacon. It may help—”

“A book?” the no-longer-young man scoffed. “You think a book can help me, Father? Only the apocryphal book you once mentioned could help me. Yet in the same breath you told me it was an unnatural abomination.”

“But Percy, surely it’s worth a try—”

“If you really wanted to help me,” Percival hissed, “you’d find that book created by the sect of alchemists who worked at Notre Dame.”

Neither man spoke for a few moments. In their darkened corner, they listened to the boisterous laughter surrounding them, but escaped the attention of the other men.

Ambrose lowered his voice. “I never meant for you to cling to those ideas of backward alchemy. I only mentioned it as part of your education—”

“Then why mention it at all?” Percival straightened his shirt, the buttons straining under his corpulence.

“I found the Elixir by immersing myself in every aspect of alchemy.”

“I don’t believe you. When you told me of backward alchemy, it was only when that woman was away. You didn’t want her to know.”

“Zoe is a pure soul.” Ambrose’s voice was barely above a whisper now. “She wouldn’t have understood.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“It’s not about trust. Zoe didn’t need to be burdened with this dark knowledge I learned of. She had already discovered alchemy’s secrets when I met her.”

“Which she didn’t share with us.”

“You know she couldn’t.”

“Do I? If you choose to believe that … ”

“You’d fare better if you believed it too. Then you would be free to gain your own understanding. You could write your own translation of the Emerald Tablet, as every alchemist must—”

“I disappoint you because I’m not a scholar.”

Ambrose knew his son had never possessed the temperament to be a scholar, yet he refused to give up on him. If Percival gave up on his futile quest for the Elixir of Life, Ambrose believed his son could enjoy his remaining years on earth by gaining a greater understanding of this miraculous, interconnected world. But if Percival insisted on seeking out immortality, his father wouldn’t deny him. He would simply guide him in the right direction. Wasn’t that what a parent was for?

“Knowledge is never a bad thing,” Ambrose said. “It gives you the tools to choose what’s right.”

“More knowledge doesn’t always work out for the best. It led to you choosing that foul woman. She ruined our lives the day she forced her way in.”

“That’s enough,” Ambrose snapped.

Percival hefted himself up from his seat. “I need another pint of ale.”

Ambrose wondered where he had gone wrong with Percival. The boy’s mother had died in childbirth, so he lacked a mother’s love. Ambrose had tried to make up for that, but had he gone too far and spoiled him? When Percival was a child, Ambrose hadn’t denied his son any comfort he could supply. And as an adult, Percival’s indulgent lifestyle was only made possible with alchemical gold from his father.

That was all in the past. Ambrose had to decide what to do about Percival in the present. He knew more of the dangerous backward alchemy book than he’d spoken of. A book created in France, many centuries before, that told of death and resurrection not through the true alchemical process of natural rebirth, but through an unnatural fire that ignored the world around it and quickly created artificial ashes.

Unnatural fire and ash went against everything true alchemy stood for. But it was knowledge nonetheless.

Percival returned to the table.

“My son,” Ambrose said. “I have something to tell you.”