“We’ll figure it out,” said Nicolas, taking Perenelle’s hand in his. “Together.”
He didn’t say he’d protect her, which would have angered her more than the break-in. Perenelle and Nicolas were equal partners, and had been since a time centuries ago when such a thing was virtually unheard-of. Their unique strengths perfectly complemented one another—but in a most unusual way.
In alchemy, the final stage of the long alchemical process of transformation brings together the symbolic Red King and the White Queen, an alchemical marriage representing the dual nature of every step of alchemy that leads opposing forces to perfection. But in alchemy—as with the Flamels—nothing is quite as it seems.
The Red King is associated with a masculine energy, the sun, and the element of sulfur. The White Queen is the feminine principal, associated with the moon and the element of mercury.
Nicolas and Perenelle perfectly represent this duality, but they flipped around expectations. Red-headed Perenelle has a fiery energy that has propelled her around the world as a masterful painter who paints in the sunlight and can harness the elements into her artwork. Fair-haired Nicolas’s mercurial curiosity led him to discover alchemy, and he devoured knowledge late into the night, reading by moonlight.
They are one and yet they are two. They are alchemy embodied and yet they are unique.
The third element, beyond sulfur and mercury, that’s key to alchemy, is salt. I’m salt. It’s the product of an alchemical union. It represents the body, and is made from the calculated ashes of plants. Salt represents me both because I’m a plant alchemist, and also because I’m the alchemical child of the Flamels. I’m not their child in the biological sense, but I’m their offspring in terms of how I came to alchemy.
“I’m not worried,” said Perenelle as she picked up a single marigold from the basket at her feet. “Not about myself. I’m angry.”
She plucked one of the bright petals. “You both know I never cared about receiving credit for my work. I only wanted the freedom of accessing the materials I needed to transform natural colors into pigments. I wanted to have the paintings shown publicly so people ready to understand alchemy could learn about it, not hidden away in a cellar as my first husband’s family saw fit for the paintings of a woman.”
She continued plucking petals, quicker and more forcefully now. “I don’t want the world to know it’s me, but it’s infuriated me to learn that centuries later, while I was imprisoned and unaware of what was going on in the world, women artists were still being written out of history. Their work was still being attributed to the men around them—and that was only if they were fortunate enough to have the freedom to paint in the first place. I don’t deny I wish it was possible for the world to know that Hayden was a woman, without revealing it’s me. But I know that’s a fantasy.”
She shook her head as she squeezed the barren stem in her hand. She gasped as a fingernail broke the skin of her palm and a drop of blood appeared.
The physical pain shook her out of her revery, and she seemed stunned to be surrounded by a halo of golden marigold petals. I was already at her side with a clean cloth and a healing salve from my bag for the wound.
“I wish the world could know the truth as well,” I said as I cleaned the cut. “I wish that was possible.”
Perenelle waved aside the assistance for the trivial wound and took my hands in hers. “I shouldn’t have worried you with my anger. It’s you I’m concerned about. If he sees you with the painting…” She trailed off.
“He’ll know,” I said, “that I’m the woman in the painting.”
Were they after Perenelle’s secret, or mine? Which one of us was Arthur Finder after?
I groaned as the answer hit me.
“Arthur Finder.” I looked from Perenelle to Nicolas. Both of their faces were blank. “Don’t you see? Arthur Finder. Art Finder. A man who finds art. An art finder.”
“An alias!” cried Nicolas as Perenelle cursed under her breath. “How did I not see this before?”
“We did look him up,” I said. “Whoever he is, he was thorough in setting up a law firm website.” Arthur Finder didn’t have an online presence beyond the site that oozed respectability. I’d assumed he was a cautious man, which made sense for someone representing the wealthy clients.
“His website must be fraudulent,” said Perenelle.
“It’s a good fake,” I agreed, “just like he is. He’s not a rich English lawyer like he claims.”
And more importantly, now we had no idea who we were dealing with.
“Why does our fake Arthur Finder, whoever he really is, want the painting at all?” I asked. “It’s not valuable monetarily, so does he want to expose us?”
The Flamels’ old adversary, infamous alchemist Edward Kelley, was safely out of the way. He couldn’t contact anyone from where he was imprisoned, so it couldn’t be him seeking revenge.
“The world never believes what it’s not ready to believe,” Perenelle said. “I don’t think this is about exposing us as alchemists. It’s something else. Something we’re not seeing.”
She was right, of course. People only hear the stories they’re ready for. Everything else is rationalized away. If I were to tell the people I meet that I’m nearly 350 years old, chances are they wouldn’t believe me.
I wish that the world was ready to accept alchemy. Then, I wouldn’t have to structure my life around hiding the truth about myself. Things have ended quite badly for alchemists who were believed. Held captive in dungeons to make gold for cruel monarchs or killed painfully for heresy. Most alchemists, however, aren’t believed. They’re either dismissed as eccentrics or find themselves subjected to psychiatric treatment.
I also occasionally wish that alchemy was truly magic. If that were true, I could simply touch my finger to the painting and hide the fact that I was the subject of a centuries-old painting and hide clues to its origins. Maybe I’d need a touch of brimstone and quicksilver on my fingertip, but sulfur and mercury were easy enough to obtain.
But alchemy isn’t magic. It’s simply a branch of science that’s misunderstood: the art of transforming the impure into the pure.
That transformation can apply to the body, as seen in the Elixir of Life that stops the body from aging as well as the subtler transformations that turn plants into healing concoctions. It can also apply to the material world, as alchemy is known for transforming impure metals like lead into pure gold. Lesser-known areas of alchemy include mental and spiritual transformations, which is what most modern-day alchemists focus on.
Whatever the transformation, it takes time, effort, and intent. Years of practice, which can still result in nothing if your intent isn’t pure. That’s the part that modern science disagrees with: intent as an essential ingredient.
But neither of those fantasies is true. In present-day Portland, Oregon, I had to deal with reality. How did we deal with the reality of our disingenuous Arthur Finder? What was he ready to hear?
People only accepting what they’re ready to hear is the reason famous Renaissance artist known to the world as Philippe Hayden is an enigma. There’s no grand coverup, yet a conspiracy is easier to believe than the truth of alchemy existing.
Many art historians have theorized that Hayden was practicing alchemy, because of the subject matter of his paintings and the fact that he became a painter at the court of Rudolf II in Prague. Those historians have also postulated that Philippe’s powerful contemporaries destroyed records of his life to hide his alchemical experiments. They lament that in the process of destroying his records of unsuccessful alchemical science, his unique paint recipes were also lost. Nobody believed that Hayden was a true alchemist who’d been alive for centuries. Until recently, people would have been even less likely to believe another truth about Hayden: the Renaissance painter who’d created such masterpieces was actually a woman.
Perenelle Flamel painted the Brother and Sister portrait when I was Nicolas’s apprentice and Thomas and I lived with the Flamels in the French countryside. That was after she’d given up her public persona of Hayden. She’d realized the power she’d unleashed in the Court of Rudolf II in Bohemia—her ability to paint people themselves into canvas—was far too powerful for anyone to wield. Like the dangers of any combustible element, Perenelle’s process of working with alchemical paint had great power, but also great risk. It had led to their imprisonment due to angry alchemist Edward Kelley seeking revenge. Edward was now safely locked away, but he’d escaped justice for centuries before we caught him.
After the Flamels were imprisoned, so much of the artwork at their home had been lost. We didn’t know if the paintings had been destroyed or were sitting in dusty attics. But the painting of me and Thomas had ended up with a wealthy family in France who’d opened a small museum after the family fortunes began to fall.
“Maybe the world is ready,” I said as my gaze fell to a powerful new painting hanging on the wall. One of Perenelle’s new pieces. The still life of flowers was far more than it seemed. If you stood off to one side and looked closely at the petals, you would see arrows pointing to certain parts of the painting that contained alchemical secrets. Brushstrokes that swirled with proper proportions of sulfur and mercury.
“The world isn’t ready for everyone to know about alchemy,” Perenelle insisted. “Only those with purity of intent, and who are ready, will understand how to read my paintings.”
“I don’t mean the world is ready to know about alchemy.” I pried my eyes from the painting. “Or that the artist the world knows as Philippe Hayden is alive today. But people are finally ready to believe that the paintings attributed to Hayden were created by a woman.”
“Zoe is right,” Nicolas chimed in. “There are now historians and organizations devoted to correctly attributing historical paintings to the women who were written out of history.”
He led the way out of Perenelle’s studio and back to the living room, to one precarious stack of art history books. With a whip of his wrist, he pulled out a book created for a museum exhibit on the subject of Florentine artwork that had previously been misattributed but was now being properly recognized.
I took the book and put it back on the top of the stack. “We’re getting off track. Why is our Arthur Finder interested in the portrait of me and Thomas?”
My phone binged. I don’t usually have notifications on, but I’d turned it on during my spy-craft today.
It was only a new message for my online shop, Elixir, so I was about to turn off notifications and slip it back into my bag, but before I could do so I glimpsed the subject line.
“There’s another collector interested in the painting.” I looked up from the screen, aware of the quiver in my voice.
There was no way anyone should have known I had the Brother and Sister painting. It was hanging on my bedroom wall, because I knew I couldn’t display it, no matter how much I wanted to.
“This one,” I said, “knows I have the painting.”