A Golden Fury

scents filled me with assurance. Dominic was there, standing at a large table in the center and carefully measuring mercury into a glass vial. Against the wall was a large fireplace where another man stood over a brass brazier, which emitted the white smoke. The man was tall and broad, and he snapped bad-tempered instructions at Dominic in heavily accented English. Bookcases lined the farthest wall from the hearth, and several books lay open on the table. Dominic looked from one of them to his task, and back. Mr. Vellacott cleared his throat, and the alchemists looked up at me.
I met Dominic’s gaze, and he smiled for half a second before dropping his eyes to his work again. The man by the brazier, however, scowled. I made a quick and careful study of him. He was middle aged, older than my father, also larger and less handsome. His eyes were a beady black and his strong-featured face had an unhealthily pale cast to it. His velvet waistcoat and feathered black hat were too fine for the laboratory, though he certainly moved and spoke like one who knew his business. As I watched him, his hand moved to a talisman that hung around his neck, a serpent staff of Hermes Trismegistus. My mother never wore talismans, nor let me wear one. It was the sort of thing that encouraged people to see alchemy as nothing more than an occult religion, a perception her sort of alchemists constantly fought. She scorned the whole legend of Hermes the Thrice-Great: the first alchemist, an Egyptian priest who became a god. But it never seemed contemptible to me. After all, it was the most honest account of the Great Work, no matter how we alchemists chose to describe it. The Philosopher’s Stone offered endless wealth, perfect health, and immortality, and we dared to seek it. Didn’t that mean we wanted to become gods, just as Hermes had?
“Professore Bentivoglio, this is Miss Theosebeia Hope,” said Vellacott. “She is my niece, and has come to stay with me for a time until her mother arrives from France. She has extensive training in alchemy, and I believe she might be of help to us.”
My father showed no discomfort at these lies, and I added this to my growing list of his unfavorable character traits.
“Miss Hope,” continued my father, “may I introduce Professore Ludovico Bentivoglio. He has come at my invitation from the University of Bologna, where he is head of their recently established department of alchemy.”
Ludovico did not bow, but continued to finger his talisman in an agitated manner. His sleeve dropped down as he did so, revealing scars on his forearms that could almost match mine. He stared at me with hostility.
“A pleasure,” I murmured. I sank into a curtsy without lowering my gaze. Ludovico did not respond. “Bologna is in the Papal States, is it not?”
“Yes.” The professor looked, if possible, even more peevish at this reminder.
“And yet yours is the only department of alchemy in any university in Europe,” I said. “How was His Holiness the pope convinced to allow it?”
Professore Bentivoglio tossed his head, and his mouth curled into something like a smile.
“The Holy Father has many troubles,” he said in his thick accent. “Your assurdo Revolution especially. Spies and traitors are everywhere, even in the Vatican. If alchemy can make help for him, then…” He held out his hands, flourishing his fingers as he did so.
“Complimenti, Professore,” I said. As much as I might want to return his hostility with some of my own, there was nothing to be gained that way. “Your department is a great thing for alchemy.”
The professor’s beady eyes softened, and I seized this moment of lessened ill will to cross the room and examine the contents of the brazier. Closer up, I could see that the smoke had a faint tinge of silver to it. This had happened to me several times in my first failed attempts to prepare the elixir. I knew exactly what was needed next, and that the window to add it was small. I could feel the men’s eyes on me, expectation in my father’s gaze and suspicion in Bentivoglio’s. I suppressed a smile. I was about to show them just what kind of alchemist I was.
I turned to Dominic. “Are you preparing the tincture of mercury to add next?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yes.”
“It won’t work on its own,” I said. “There is still too much sulfur in the composition. You will need to purify it with stibnite.”
“The text says nothing of stibnite,” said Bentivoglio.
I glanced at the book that lay open on the table. It was Brother Basil’s Twelve Keys, the same we and Jābir had used as our starting place. Brother Basil was supposedly a sixteenth-century monk, though even that was shrouded in mystery. Even by the standards of alchemists, Basilius Valentinus was notorious for misdirection and secrecy. He was also famous for giving away immense amounts of silver to the poor. It made his works the most promising, and the most baffling to approach. It had also made me entirely determined to conquer them.
“Not in the receipt, but it is in the Decknamen,” I said. Decknamen were figurative illustrations, useful for alchemists who wanted to keep their secrets, and extremely irritating to those of us who wanted to discover them. Sometimes the Decknamen were mere ornaments, but more often they were a code. Brother Basil’s were the latter, and I had deciphered it.
“The Decknamen are a distraction,” growled Ludovico. “They are like what fortune-tellers say—they can mean whatever you wish.”
I shook my head. The Decknamen were frustrating, certainly. Some authors even put misdirection in them, to throw off unworthy adepts. But all of alchemy was frustrating. A true adept could not afford to dismiss any sources of knowledge because they were difficult to decode. But I left this aside.
“I have followed the instructions as written myself several times, and always reached this point—” I gestured to the brazier. “Before the composition