like a 7 was Dee s personal mark. There is evidence to suggest that when
Shakespeare created the character of Prospero for
on Dee.
The series of books based on an alchemist had been growing in my head and in
piles of notebooks for some years, and it seemed perfectly natural that it
should be Dee s series. As I wrote other books, I kept coming back to the
idea, adding more material, weaving together all the world mythologies and
creating the huge and intricate background for the stories. I continued to
research the settings, visiting, revisiting and photographing every location
I intended to use in the series.
Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move that idea
forward. The characters of the twins came to me first. My story was always
about a brother and sister, and in mythological terms, twins are very
special. Just about every race and mythology has a twin story. As my story
progressed, the secondary characters, such as Scathach and the Morrigan, and
then later, Hekate and the Witch of Endor, appeared. But somehow I still
hadn't quite gotten the hero, the mentor, the teacher for the twins. Dr. John
Dee, despite being a wonderful character, was simply not the
Then, one day in the late fall of 2000, I was in Paris on business. It is
difficult to get lost in Paris, so long as you know where the river Seine
is you can usually see one or more of the great landmarks, such as the Eiffel
Tower, Sacre -Coeur or Notre Dame but somehow I d managed to do it. I had left
Notre Dame earlier, crossed the Seine on the Pont d Arcole, heading toward
the Centre Pompidou, and somewhere between the Boulevard de Sebastopol and
the Rue Beaubourg, I got lost. Not entirely lost; I knew vaguely where I was,
but night was beginning to fall. I turned off the Rue Beaubourg into the
narrow Rue du Montmorency and found myself looking up at a sign that said
AUBERGE NICOLAS FLAMEL: the Nicholas Flamel Hostel. And in front of the
building was a sign that said the house, where Flamel and his wife had once
lived, dated from 1407, which meant that this had to be one of the oldest
houses in Paris.
I went inside and found a charming restaurant, where I had a meal that night.
It was a strange experience, eating in the same room where the legendary
Nicholas Flamel would have lived and worked. The exposed beams in the ceiling
looked original, which meant they would have been the beams Nicholas Flamel
himself would have seen. In the cellar below my feet, Nicholas and Perenelle
would have stored their food and wine, and their bedchamber would have been
in the small room directly over my head.
I knew quite a bit about the famous Nicholas Flamel. Dee, who had one of the
largest libraries in England, had Flamel's books and would have studied his
works.
Nicholas Flamel was one of the most famous alchemists of his day. Alchemy is
a peculiar combination of chemistry, botany, medicine, astronomy and
astrology. It has a long and distinguished history and was studied in ancient
Greece and China, and there is an argument that it forms the basis for modern
chemistry. As with Dee, all of the details in
Flamel are true. We know quite a bit about him because not only do his own
writings exist, but also many people wrote about him during his own lifetime.
He was born in 1330 and scraped by on a living as a bookseller and a
scrivener, writing letters and copying books for clients. One day he bought a
very special book: the Book of Abraham. It, too, really existed, and Nicholas
Flamel left us with a very detailed description of the copper-bound book,
which was written on what looked like bark.
Accompanied by Perenelle, he spent more than twenty years traveling all over
Europe, trying to translate the strange language the book was written in.
No one knows what happened to Nicholas Flamel on that journey. What is
authenticated is that when he returned to Paris in the late fourteenth
century, he was extraordinarily wealthy. The rumor quickly went around that
he had discovered the two great secrets of alchemy in the Book of Abraham:
how to create a philosopher s stone, which changed ordinary metal into gold,
and how to achieve immortality. Neither Nicholas nor Perenelle would ever
confirm the rumors, and they never explained how they had become so rich.
Although Nicholas and Perenelle continued to live quiet, unassuming lives,
they gave a lot of their money to charity, and founded hospitals, churches
and orphanages.
The records show that Perenelle died first; not long after, in 1418, the
death of Nicholas Flamel was recorded. His house was sold and the buyers tore
the place apart looking for some of the Flamels great wealth. Nothing was
ever found.
Later, in the dead of night, the tomb of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel was
broken into and that was when it was discovered that the tomb was empty. Had
they been buried in secret graves, or had they never died in the first place?
Paris buzzed with rumors, and the legend of the immortal Flamels began almost
immediately.
In the years to follow, there were sightings of the Flamels across Europe.
When I came out of the Auberge Nicolas Flamel that evening, I looked back at
the ancient house. Six hundred years ago, one of the most famous alchemists
in the world lived and worked there a man dedicated to science, who had made
and given away a vast fortune and whose house was preserved by the grateful
people of Paris, who even have streets named after him and his wife (the Rue
Nicolas Flamel and the Rue Perenelle in the 4th Arrondissement).
An immortal.
And in that moment, I knew that the twins mentor was not Dee: Sophie and
Josh would be taught by Nicholas and Perenelle. As I stood outside Nicholas
and Perenelle s home on that wet fall evening, all the pieces of the book
came together, and the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel took shape.
Front entrance to the Auberge Nicolas Flamel (the Nicholas Flamel Hostel) on
Rue du Montmorency, Paris.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Only one name usually appears on the cover of a book, but behind that name
there are dozens of people involved in the creation of the work. Of equal
importance, but in no particular order, I must thank
Krista Marino, the most patient of editors, who said, A little more
perspective
Frank Weimann, at the Literary Group, who said, I can sell this. And did.
