Alchemist's Apprentice (18 page)

As he increased the distance between them, Jack knew that the horse would be found again, sooner or later. But this time, he was certain, the reward would not be a duke's daughter.

I
T WAS LATE SUMMER
and the fruit in Jonathan Barnstable's garden was beginning to ripen, watched over by a new generation of straw people and animals. Chickens scratched beneath the trees and made dust baths for themselves in the shade. The alchemist sat beside his front door, soaking up the evening sun. A stray breeze ran like silky fingers through his grey hair and he straightened up, looking around him.

A young man appeared on the track and stood for a long time at the wicket gate, as though undecided. Barnstable stroked the small tabby cat which lay curled up on his lap and waited. Finally, the young man looked up in his direction and, seeing him, kicked the gate open and advanced up the path. The alchemist stayed quite still, watching. The youth's approach was energetic and belligerent. He did not stop until he was on the doorstep, looming over the older man.

‘Good evening, Jack.' The cat poured out through the alchemist's hands like mottled sand and disappeared around the corner of the house.

‘Good evening to you, too.' Jack shoved aside the straggling hair which flopped over his face, revealing a pair of hard, blue eyes.

‘Welcome.' Barnstable stood up and extended a rough, square hand, but Jack declined to take it. Instead he glanced voraciously around the garden, fixing upon a sleepy chicken here, a plump cabbage there.

‘Still doing well for yourself, I see.'

‘Of course,' said the alchemist. ‘Why should you expect otherwise?'

‘Because it's better than you deserve,' said Jack. His tone was snide as he continued. ‘I wonder how many innocent young lads you sent off on fools' errands like me. Hm? To break their hearts searching for something that doesn't exist?'

Barnstable laughed and Jack's eyes blazed with sudden anger. ‘I suppose the country is littered with them, is it? Digging and poking and getting themselves covered with muck. And all for nothing.'

At the corner of the house the cat had reappeared and was glaring at Jack pugnaciously. Its keeper, however, was quite calm.

‘No, no, Jack,' he said. ‘You are quite wrong. I have only taken on one apprentice, and that is you.'

Jack laughed derisively. ‘You really are mad, old man. I am not your apprentice, nor was I. I was a poor, gullible boy, deluded by the promise of gold. But never, I'm glad to say, as deluded as you are.'

Barnstable smiled to himself and gazed for a few moments into the middle distance. Then he sighed and stood up, looking searchingly at Jack.

‘Tell me about delusion,' he said.

Jack took an involuntary step backwards. The alchemist's eyes held such brilliant intensity that he couldn't look at them, and his antagonism evaporated despite his determination to hold on to it.

‘You have come a long way, Jack,' Barnstable went on. ‘Great changes have taken place in you since we last met.

You seem to have found rather a good tailor, though your clothes have clearly seen better days. Even your voice has changed. You have become quite the young gentleman, and I imagine that you have received a substantial education somewhere or other. Am I right?'

Jack nodded sulkily. He felt like a child again beneath the powerful gaze. The cat relaxed its aggressive stance and began to lick its belly.

‘So tell me about delusion,' said the alchemist.

Someone must have drugged him at the inn in Shipley where he put up for the night. He remembered nothing beyond the meal and the drink downstairs. He didn't know whether he ever made it to bed, or whether he wandered, or was led, out into the night, through the narrow streets and out into the countryside beyond. That was where he had woken, lying by the side of the road with an excruciating headache.

It was some time before he understood what had happened. When he succeeded in getting to his feet, his pockets felt as heavy as they had since he left Musgrave Hall. But he hadn't gone a hundred paces down the road before he knew, with gut-wrenching certainty, that it wasn't his money that was weighing him down.

Every bag, every pocket in his clothes was filled with stones. Jack sat down in the road, too numb even to weep. A light breeze rustled the leaves above his head, and in it he began to hear a familiar voice; feel a familiar presence. Hermes was back, and would not be ignored. Long before Jack got up and set out again, he knew that there was only one place now that he could go.

As he walked along the leafy lanes, he left an irregular line of stones in his wake, like a trail for the despairing to follow.

‘Tell me about delusion.'

It wasn't the wealth that had been a delusion. That had been real enough and the power that went with it. It was his thinking that had been wrong; the belief that he could have whatever he wanted, and that having whatever he wanted would make him happy. He had experienced pleasures of the mind and body at Musgrave Hall, but none of them had satisfied his soul.

The alchemist waited, and then, since Jack seemed unable to summon a response, he went on. ‘Never mind. We have plenty of time to discuss these things. What matters is that you are back.'

Jack's anger returned like a rush of blood. ‘Back! I'm not back! Why should I want to come back? To poison myself with mercury fumes like you? So that I can end up as mad as you are?'

Barnstable laughed so forcibly that the chickens paused in their scratching and looked around in alarm. He laughed so long and so hard that he had to sit down again and wipe the tears from his eyes. Jack's fury seemed to rise in direct proportion to the other's mirth.

‘That proves it!' he shouted. ‘Look at you. Look at you. You're a lunatic. You should be locked up!'

The alchemist recovered himself at last and looked up. ‘Dear Jack,' he said. ‘You are back, you know, and I am very glad to see you.'

Jack felt his heart rising to meet the affection which sparkled in Barnstable's gaze. He fought it down again. ‘I'm not back!'

‘Then why are you here?'

‘I'm here because … because …' He found he couldn't remember, though he was sure that there had been some sane and valid reason. ‘I'm here to get some of that gold you claim to have made,' he finished lamely. ‘You owe me that at least, after all the trouble you've caused me.'

‘You shall have it, of course. But I'm afraid you will have to make it yourself this time.'

Jack shook his head furiously. ‘There you are. You're already trying to trick me again.'

The alchemist stifled another laugh. ‘I have no intention of tricking you, none at all. But you have returned to me, Jack. What's more, unless I am mistaken, you have achieved what you set out to do.'

Jack was flabbergasted. ‘What? Found your stupid old black stuff? You must be joking.'

‘I'm not joking. And you do have the stupid old black stuff. I can see it in your face.'

‘You really are mad,' said Jack. ‘I have nothing, can't you see that? Nothing at all. And I don't want to hear any more of your nonsense.' He turned and began to walk away down the path.

‘Empty out your pockets, Jack.'

Something in Barnstable's tone made him stop and turn back.

‘They're empty.'

‘Turn them out, anyway.'

Jack gritted his teeth and dragged the linings out of his trouser pockets. ‘Satisfied now? Nothing but holes.'

‘Your waistcoat.'

With a disdainful expression Jack thrust his thumb and forefinger into his small breast pocket. He stopped, staring, at the alchemist with disbelief. There was, after all, something there. He had known it was there. It had been there for weeks, a small bulge in his pocket, familiar as a part of himself. He pulled it out and laid it on the palm of his hand. One last stone, left by the person or people who had robbed him. One that he had missed when he emptied the rest out of his pockets.

‘See? It's nothing. Just an old stone.' But even as he spoke, remembering how it had got there, he was anticipating Barnstable's response.

‘That's it, though, isn't it? The
prima materia
. Matter born of darkness, all that is left of your dreams and aspirations.' The words touched off nerves in Jack's spine and sent tingles through his limbs. ‘You forgot, perhaps, but your soul did not. You were searching whether you knew it or not, and eventually you found what you were looking for.'

‘Are you trying to tell me I was looking for this? That I wanted to lose everything I had? That I had some choice in the matter?'

‘Didn't you?'

While Jack struggled to find an answer, the alchemist went on, ‘What matters isn't the choices we made or didn't make, Jack. What matters is the one that faces us now, and then the next one, and the next. Don't live in regret. Live in enthusiasm.'

‘Enthusiasm?'

‘Every day is a new adventure. And for you, the greatest adventure is waiting. If you choose to embark upon it.'

Jack stared at the plain little stone in his hand. What he couldn't understand was how he had carried it for so long without ever thinking about it. If he had, he would certainly have thrown it away. It was just a stone and yet, as Jack continued to stare at it, he knew that it wasn't. Like the alchemist himself, it possessed an extra quality that could not be defined. Something augmented it. It was more than itself.

Jack was trembling. His voice shook. ‘There's no adventure. It's just a stone. A wretched little stone.'

‘Throw it away, then. Continue along your way.'

The sun descended below the horizon and the chickens, with one mind, began to wander towards their perches. In the orchard, an apple dropped with a gentle thump into the dusty hollow that one of them had just vacated. The cat entwined herself around the alchemist's feet, describing the symbol of eternity.

Jack looked back the way he had come, then up into the alchemist's face. Slowly, still trembling slightly, he replaced the stone in his pocket.

S
O, STILL NOT QUITE
sure how it came about, Jack found himself living in the little cottage on the banks of the Thames with the alchemist. They shared the gardening and the cooking and the care of the chickens, but these things took up relatively little of their time. The bulk of it was given over to the study, both practical and theoretical, of alchemy.

Jack submitted to the tortuous routine of chemistry and reading without any clear sense of why he was doing it. In conversation with the alchemist he remained entirely sceptical; questioning everything he was taught and scoffing at the notion that it was possible to make gold in a bottle. In the quiet of his own thoughts he consistently told himself the same thing, but he could not dislodge the grain of hope that accompanied him, like that last little stone, in everything he did. It was all that kept him going; a small but significant counterweight to the bitterness that lay waiting to consume him during every lull in his routine. No matter how hard he tried he could not forget Eleanor, or put the humiliation of her rejection of him into the past.

The hours of daylight were largely spent in the laboratory. The first and most frequently repeated lessons concerned the treatment of the fires, with much attention being given to the art of draught control. The ovens and flues were fitted with an assortment of screws and dampers which regulated the amount of air reaching the fire and being pulled up the chimneys. Jack had to learn the uses of these down to the minutest detail, and the alchemist was ruthless in his demand for perfection.

Jack concentrated hard, and when Barnstable began to be satisfied with his development he allowed him to progress to the chemical side of the work. Gradually, over the months which followed, he learnt how to conduct simple chemical processes. He learnt how to refine and separate, distil and purify, combine and smelt and concentrate. He became familiar with vitriols and chlorides and alum, with phosphorous and sulphur, arsenic and ammonia, with tin and copper and lead and finally, reverentially, with the dangerous and elusive mercury.

‘Mercury can indeed drive you mad,' Barnstable told him, ‘but he will not if you learn to treat him with respect.' He showed Jack the large, permanent crucible where the liquid metal was refined from its ore, cinnabar. ‘Once this is closed and sealed, no fumes can leak out into the room. They go straight up into the sky, do you see?'

Jack nodded, studying the broad flue that disappeared into the rafters.

‘Only puffers need have fear of him,' Barnstable went on, ‘and I do not think you are a puffer, Jack. I do not think there is any danger that you will go mad.'

Indeed, the more he saw of the alchemist, the harder it was to entertain the slightest possibility that he was insane, but nevertheless, Jack refused to relinquish the idea. He kept a close watch on his own behaviour in case some subtle manifestations of madness should begin to appear, and kept a journal in which he recorded his progress and his impressions, reading it back to himself from time to time, just to be safe. But for all his systematic logic, there were things that he could neither explain nor deny.

Like the time, one morning, when Jack saw the alchemist catch an apple falling from one of the trees in the orchard. Afterwards, he couldn't work out whether Barnstable had put out his hand before the apple began to drop or whether he had somehow sensed that it was falling and reached out in time to catch it. In either event, it was an extraordinary achievement; but although Jack was left staring in astonishment, the alchemist seemed to think nothing of it. He simply carried on strolling through the orchard, eating the apple as he went.

That occurrence, and others like it, brought the image of the divine child; the reborn Hermes, into Jack's mind. Although Barnstable rarely mentioned it, his words returned to Jack with regularity. ‘But which matters more? Gold in the hand or gold in the spirit?'.