Alchemy. Maureen Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ at this and consider what you’ve told me and be in touch. I may make some enquiries of my own.’

      ‘Thank you, Ms Green. I am most grateful. How much do I owe you so far?’ He’s taking out his cheque-book.

      I hesitate. But the rent is due at the end of the month.

      ‘The Law Society recommends standard minimum fees. I think we should stick to those.’

      ‘Of course.’

      I tell him the rate per hour for a practising solicitor of four years’ standing. He writes the cheque without a quibble. Now he has me signed up, he thinks. We’ll see.

      As soon as he’s out of the door, I open the typed document and read: The Memorial of Amyntas Boston.

      This is the true memorial of Amyntas Boston now confined to Salisbury gaol for witchcraft, the which I deny, and writ in cipher as my father used for his own receipts, which is the common practice among those who call themselves the Sons of Hermes. Some would say that I am a witch by birth since they allege my father practised necromancy. He was a learned man, a magus and a chemist but no cheat or cozener or in league with the evil one. The countess would have had him live in her house as others did, the better to consult with him in her own laboratory, but he would not, for he valued his freedom too much and his pursuit of the philosopher’s stone. So he brought me up to labour alongside him, not at the furnace or the bellows, for which he had his laborant Hugh Harnham, for he said the heat of it would blacken my skin and the fumes cause me to faint, but in wiping his brow and limbs, and bringing him food and drink as he sweat much. For in seeking the stone that is the in principia of transmutation, he said only heat would do the trick of turning base metal into gold, and all things into each other, according to the laws of mutability. As the poet Spenser has it that ‘e’en the earth Great Mother of us all’ does change in some sort even though she be not in thrall to mutability, and if the earth why not all things else. It wants only the key to unlock and enter the innermost mystery. For this work I was clad only in my shirt and britches with wooden sandals to raise my feet above the hot cinders of the floor.

      As there are those who keep watch for comets all night so my father laboured many hours together, for they who seek the stone, the adepts, are possessed by this search and nothing is for them beyond it, except that they must gain their bread as others do. And for this, which was the preparation of unguents, plaisters, syrups, and draughts to summon Morpheus, I took my full share to free him for the Great Work.

      I therefore learned all that he could teach me of these mysteries so that when he died and the countess summoned me and demanded of me what skill I had, I could answer truthfully that, except for that art of transmutation which he kept secret even from me, aside from what I could see with my own eyes as he laboured at the furnace, I could do all those things she desired which was to assist her in her own concoctions. My father had been dead but a fortnight when she sent her servant to find me out and bid me come to Ivychurch, her house, where she then was in mourning, the earl himself being dead only three months.

      I was led into her chamber where she was seated against the window so that when I looked at her I was dazzled by her beauty, for the light beaming through the lace of her ruff she was as it were haloed, and at every point winked sparklets of crystal from the pearls and precious stones that adorned it.

      ‘Come here child,’ she said. ‘I could not have your father. Shall I have you instead?’

      ‘As my lady pleases,’ I answered.

      ‘My lady does please then. I shall keep you here or Dr Gilbert may be jealous to have you underfoot at Wilton. Do you know Dr Gilbert child?’

      ‘My father spoke of him madam. And sometimes they would meet at the Pheasant to talk of chemical matters.’ I did not say my father had called him very sarcastic and a great buffoon but that his relation to Sir Walter Raleigh, he was his half-brother by the same mother, gave him the licence of speaking his mind to all, both great and little.

      ‘What do they call you child Boston?’ I hung my head and did not answer. ‘Come now child, you must have a name. What did your father call you?’

      ‘Sometimes one thing madam, sometimes another.’

      ‘Shall I lose patience with you? What things?’

      ‘Sometimes Amyntas madam and sometimes…’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Amaryllis.’

      ‘He was not such a great philosopher as I supposed then, since he did not know the sex of his own child.’

      ‘When he was engaged in the Great Work madam, he was forgetful of all else.’

      ‘Come closer and let me look at you.’

      I did as she commanded and as soon as I was near enough she took my chin in her white hand and turned my head first to the right and then to the left. I could smell her scent which I recognised as a distillation of roses with some other sweetness such as jasmine admixed. ‘How old are you?’

      ‘Near sixteen madam.’

      ‘And yet there is no sign of hair upon your lip or chin. What is the mystery of these names? What did your mother call you?’

      ‘Nothing madam. She died in giving birth to me, and my twin brother who died with her.’ I paused.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘He was christened Amyntas.’

      ‘And you are Amaryllis? Yet you dress as your brother were he alive. Do you always so?’

      ‘No madam. When visitors came to see my father’s house I dressed in female attire to attend my father.’

      ‘But were not the neighbours and his friends puzzled?’

      ‘He had no family madam. And the neighbours believed there were still two of us.’

      ‘And you, what do you believe?’

      ‘Sometimes when I look in the glass I do not know who looks back at me. Whichever I am carries the other inside.’

      ‘Such confusion we find in dreams or in the fancies of the play, where boy plays girl playing boy. Which would you choose?’

      ‘I cannot say madam.’

      ‘One day the choice will be forced on you. For now we will continue with the game. Do you bleed child?’

      ‘No my lady.’

      ‘Strange. I bled at thirteen. Well you shall be Amyntas, my page and assistant, when we are alone here at Ivychurch, or even in Ramsbury, but at Wilton, the great house, or in London if we should go there, you shall put on your woman’s clothes and not be noticed among the press of other maids. Shall you like this game child Boston?’

      ‘If my lady pleases.’

      ‘As she does. Can you read aloud child?’

      ‘Yes madam. I read often to my father, both in our own tongue and from the Latin works of the chemical masters as Paracelsus and Nicholas Flammel.’

      ‘Then СКАЧАТЬ