When he came up to us he cried out in a loud voice, ‘God save you all! I have come all this way for your sake. I rode as fast as I could to catch up with you. Do you mind if I join you?’
His servant now rode up behind him. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I saw you leave the inn early this morning, and I told my master here all about you. You seemed such a jolly crowd. So he was determined to ride with you. He likes a bit of fun.’
‘I’m glad you told him,’ the Host replied to the boy. ‘It looks as if your master is a clever man. Witty, too. And I bet he has a few stories to keep us all amused. Am I right?’
‘Stories? He has got a million of them. He is very entertaining, if you know what I mean. I will tell you something else. He is skilled in many ways. He has many talents. He has undertaken work of great importance, too, which no one else could manage. Unless they learned from him how to do it. He may look ordinary enough, but it will profit you to get to know him. I bet you anything that you will gain from acquaintance with him. He is a very wise man. He is one of the best.’
‘Tell me this. Is he a priest or a scholar? What kind of man is he?’
‘He is more than just a priest, sir. I will tell you, in a few words, what kind of art he practises. I cannot let you know everything, even though I do work as his assistant. But I can tell you this about his business. He is a man of such subtlety and skill that he could turn all this ground on which we are riding – the whole route, from Southwark to Canterbury – into gold and silver. I am not exaggerating.’
‘Good God!’ Harry Bailey was astounded. ‘That is a marvel, to be sure. But since your master is such a wise man, and so worthy of honour, can you explain why he is wearing such a tatty old gown? It is dirty and full of holes. It isn’t worth a penny. Where is his self-respect? According to you, he is worth a lot of money. If he can turn this road to gold and silver, why does he not buy a better gown? Tell me the answer.’
‘Why are you asking me that, sir? As God is my witness, he will never prosper. Don’t mention this to anyone, by the way. It is a secret between you and me. The problem is that he is too clever for his own good. When you have too much of a good thing, you can overreach yourself. That is his case, I believe. My master has misused his great gifts. It is a cause of grief to me, I can assure you. God help him. That is all I can say.’
‘Never mind that,’ Harry replied. ‘Tell me more about this work of his. Since you know all about him, you must also know his secrets. I assume that he is shrewd as well as wily. So tell me everything. Where do you both live?’
‘We dwell beyond the walls of a town, in an area full of cellars and blind alleys. It is the haunt of thieves and robbers who must conceal themselves. It is a place for those who dare not show their face by day. That is where we live.’
‘Tell me another thing,’ our Host asked him. ‘Why is your face so discoloured?’
‘God has not favoured it, I admit. I am so used to blowing into the fire that the flames have changed my colour, I suppose. I am not one to preen myself in front of a mirror. I get on with my work, and try my hand at alchemy. But we are always making mistakes. We miscalculate the amount of heat, for example. We can never get to the end of the experiment, and fail somewhere along the way. But that’s no problem. There are plenty of gullible people who will give us a pound of gold – or ten pounds, or twelve pounds – on the understanding that we will be able to double the amount. I know that this may be a false promise, but we still have faith in the technique. We still have hope. The trouble is that the science is so difficult to master. Although we have sworn the contrary to our customers – our patrons, I should say – we never get it quite right. I would not be at all surprised if we became beggars.’
While this young Yeoman was talking, his master came close and listened carefully to everything he said. This Canon, dressed in black, was wary and distrustful of others. Cato has taught us that the guilty man always believes that he is the object of suspicion. That is why the master drew so close to the servant. He wanted to hear everything. Then he interrupted the boy. ‘Shut your mouth,’ he said. ‘Don’t say another word. Otherwise, you will regret it. How dare you slander me in the company of these strangers, and blab all my secrets?’
‘Carry on, young man,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him or his threats.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the boy replied, ‘I don’t intend to.’
When the Canon realized that all his threats were useless, he fled in sorrow and in shame.
‘Ah,’ his Yeoman said, ‘now we can have some fun. I will tell you everything I know. He has run away, has he? I hope he goes to the devil. I don’t want to have anything else to do with him, I can promise you that. Not for all the money in the world. He was the one who led me into the false game. Yet I never thought of it as a game. I was deadly serious, believe me, in its pursuit. I laboured. I sweated. I worried. I cried. Yet, for all that, I could never leave it alone. I wish to God that I had the brains to tell you everything there is to know about alchemy. I can only explain a small part of the art. Now that my master has gone, I will do my best. So…’
Heere endeth the Prologe of the Chanounes Yemannes Tale
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
Heere bigynneth the Chanouns Yeman his Tale
PART ONE
I have lived with this Canon for seven years, but I am nowhere near to understanding the secret. I have lost everything I owned, as have many others. Once upon a time I was clean, cheerful and well dressed. Can you believe it? I now use an old sock as my hat! I used to be plump and ruddy-cheeked. Now I am thin and sallow. I am losing my eyesight through all the hard work. Stay away from alchemy at all costs. Where is the benefit in trying to transmute metals? The sliding science has left me penniless and in despair. Nothing good has come of it. I have borrowed so much gold that I will never be able to repay my debts. Let me stand as a warning to everyone else, like a wolf’s head. If anyone were foolish enough to practise alchemy, it will prove to be his undoing. He will not succeed. He will empty his purse. He will addle his wits. But there is worse. As soon as he has lost all of his money, through his stupidity, he will try to persuade others to follow his example and try their hand at the black art. ‘Misery loves company.’ That is the proverb, is it not? Well, enough said. Now I will tell you all about our work.
When we practise in our laboratory we look very wise and learned; we use high terms and rarefied phrases to explain our mysterious labours. Then I blow upon the coals until there is no breath left in my body. Is there any need to explain the exact proportions of the dark materials that we use? There is always the silver, of course. We would normally put in five or six ounces of it. We compound this with arsenic, with burned bones and iron filings. Then we grind the mixture to a powder, and put it in a little earthenware pot. Add a little salt, and some paper. Place a sheet of glass over the pot, sealing glass and vessel with some clay so that no air will escape from it. We can change and moderate the fire at will. Then begins the hard labour, the watching and the calculating. We are supposed to purify, to blend and to disperse all of the ingredients. We use quicksilver, too, which is the name for unrefined mercury. But for all our tricks and devices we never got anywhere. We used lead and arsenic, ground together with a marble pestle in a marble mortar. It made no difference. There was no result. We boiled volatile spirits – again to no effect. We experimented with the residue left at the bottom of the flask. But it did no good. Our labour was in vain. All the money we spent was lost, too.