With Flamel weary and distracted, Crispin called a halt to their investigation and they all returned to the alchemist’s shop in the early hours of the morning.
It was still dark when they turned the corner and the little candle in Avelyn’s lantern was nearly spent, but she suddenly sprinted for the door without them, leaving them alone in the dense gloom.
“Sarding woman,” grunted Jack.
Crispin was about to mouth the same sentiments when he saw it. Her lantern’s light glinted off the dagger stuck into the wood, and Crispin ran forward. He heard Jack’s steps behind him and they both stopped in front of the door.
The dagger held a parchment fragment in place. Crispin grasped the dagger just as Flamel jogged forward, huffing and wheezing. “What is it? What is it? My Perenelle!”
“Hush, man. Do you wish to wake the whole parish?” As it was, Crispin spied a shutter across the way open and a curious shadow move across the candlelight within.
Crispin quickly pulled out the dagger, grabbed the note, and ushered the others inside.
He crossed to the fire beside Avelyn, who stoked it roughly with an iron poker. They crowded round him. In Latin again. He translated it aloud:
“‘You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning.’”
Flamel tore the cap from his head and heaved it to the floor. “What are we to do? What is it he is doing to us, to her!”
“Calm yourself, Master Flamel. This is a good sign. It proves he is still interested, still in the game.”
“It is not a game!” he insisted. Spittle flecked his beard.
“It is to him. What does he mean by ‘begin at the beginning’?”
Jack shrugged. “Sunrise? Matins? Should we be at a church?”
“At St. Paul’s,” offered the alchemist. “Should I leave the ransom there again?”
“He was more straightforward before about placing the ransom where and when. Why not simply pick another place and tell us so? What has changed?”
“He saw us trying to deceive him,” said Jack.
Crispin nodded. “He must be watching us as much as we are watching for him.” And he suddenly remembered the men in the shadows following him and Jack. Should he see them again, he would leave little left for subtlety.
“So what does it mean, sir?”
“Jack, I wish I knew.”
Exhausted, Flamel moved to a chair before the hearth. Crispin followed suit, the momentary excitement from the discovery of the new parchment fading, making him feel how tired he was. He edged his chair away from the chalked symbols and settled. No one spoke. Flamel stared into the flames. Crispin clutched the parchment and followed his example, hoping to find enlightenment within the leaping fire, while Avelyn scrambled about, seemingly as energetic as ever, heating wine and serving them hunks of bread and cheese on a wooden platter.
Crispin ate absently, just to fill the hollowness in his belly. The wine warmed him and the fire thawed his cold feet. He picked up the parchment from time to time, just to feel that it was real. After their night of scrambling after these alchemical symbols, Crispin wondered for the hundredth time if the abductor was referring to those signs. With a shake of his head, he realized he was becoming more and more obsessed with the symbols. They couldn’t be random, as Flamel suggested. They had to mean something. “It’s as if he’s playing some sort of game with us,” he murmured.
Crispin folded his arms over his chest. But then again, why did they have to mean anything at all? Flamel said as much, said that the symbols meant nothing. Was he relying too much on the ramblings of this preacher, whom neither he nor Jack had been able to confront?
“I still do not see how you think these things have truck with my Perenelle?” The alchemist’s sudden words in the relative peace and calm jarred Crispin’s senses.
Crispin rubbed his chin. The stubble was as pronounced as when he woke in the morning. But of course, it was nearly morning again. He realized if he wished for truth from Flamel, it was time to share some of his own. “On the day we left the ransom,” he said quietly, “the earl of Derby was there. He seemed to know of the exchange. Do you know Henry Bolingbroke?”
Flamel’s eyes were haunted, but there was no deception there. Only bewilderment. “No. I do not know this Henry Bolingbroke. Why did you not say anything of this before?”
Crispin did not look at Jack, but he felt the boy stir, sit up taller. “He is the duke of Lancaster’s son. And … I am acquainted with him and his family.”
Flamel staggered to his feet, his horn beaker falling to the floor in a splash of wine across the hearth. “Lancaster,” he breathed.
“Master Flamel?”
“These names,” he said. The effort it took to control his outburst was written on his face in strained lines and pronounced veins at his temples. Slowly he sat again, stroking his gown in a futile gesture of calm and looking for his wine. Avelyn fetched the cup from the floor and filled it again. She pressed it into his hand. “I … get them confused sometimes. There are similar lords in the court of France.”
Crispin drank a dose of wine while studying the man over the rim of his cup. He set the wine aside and licked his lips. “Can you tell me, then, of the Philosopher’s Stone? May I see it?”
The alchemist froze. Only his eyes moved, darting from here to there, terrified. Slowly he recovered, even tried to chuckle. “Silly. You misunderstand. The Stone is not a real object, Maître Guest. It is the alchemist’s quest to attain purity of the soul.”
Crispin cocked a brow. “Is it? And have you found it? Purity of soul, that is?”
“It is an endless search. A lifetime’s worth.”
Crispin set the parchment down and rose. He sauntered toward him and looked down at the shorter man with his thumbs fitted in his belt. “Harken to me, sir. There is no use in denying it. I know you have it, or think you do. Show it to me. Or I shall walk out that door.”
Flamel stammered and tried to look away, but in the end he raised his face to Crispin with a mixture of fear and a good dose of amazement. “How … how did you know?”
Crispin threw back his shoulders with a haughty tilt. “I am the Tracker, sir. I am paid to discover the truth.”
The man inhaled a shaky breath and slowly got to his feet. “Very well. You have earned the right to see it.”
Jack canted forward, looking at Crispin with wonderment.
Flamel shuffled to that same ambry that held the broach. But as his hand slid along the side, another hidden drawer popped open. Shadows surrounded him and Crispin could not see clearly what he was doing, but he brought forth a small glass phial and held it gingerly, walking with care when he returned to the fire. He held it up. The phial was no more than two fingers wide and was made of crystal or clear glass, like a reliquary. Inside was what looked like another piece of amber glass, but as Crispin drew forward and peered more carefully, he saw that the amber lozenge was rough on one side, like something hewn from a rock, but the rest was like a crystaclass="underline" clear, smooth, and unblemished. It was only the size of a small parsnip and shaped very like one, too.
“This,” said Flamel with a hint of awe in his voice, “is the Philosopher’s Stone. I was able to re-create it from my grandfather’s notes and from the papers given to me by an old Jew I met once in the Holy Land.” He turned it and the firelight caught its facets, shooting bright pinpricks of light outward to dazzle Crispin’s eyes. The man smiled, gazing at it. “From this small stone, I have been able to transmute simple metals into gold. Mere playthings.”
Crispin suddenly remembered the odd collection of gold objects with which Flamel had paid his fee, objects that still sat in his scrip.
No, this is not possible. “You … made this?” His hand came near it, whether to touch the phial or to snatch it, he did not know.
But Flamel pulled it away, his fingers covering the small object. “I did. Years ago. And it works. It is the crowning achievement of my life.”