“‘And so,’” Henry continued, “‘after many years of failed attempts have I at last this Elixir of Life perfected, and herewith have transcribed it, in the manner of Paracelsus, for all the ages.’”
I lunged across the table and snatched the book from Henry. “Elixir of Life! This is just the thing we seek. Where is the recipe?”
I had the book before me now, my eyes trying to find the right place. I saw the Latin text, found the words “ Vita Elixir,” but afterward came such a language that I had never set eyes upon.
“What is this?” I demanded, jabbing at the vellum page.
Henry stood and leaned over the tome. “If you hadn’t snatched it away, I might have had a better look. As it is, I do not know.”
“Elizabeth?” I said. “Can you make sense of this?”
She moved her stool closer. “It is not Aramaic,” she said. “Nor Sanskrit.”
It was a strange-looking thing, to be sure, all curves and angles and sudden flourishes. It went on for ten pages.
“Gibberish,” I muttered, and flipped ahead, trying to find some kind of glossary or key to its translation.
“You are too hasty, Victor,” said Elizabeth. “As always.”
She sounded just like Konrad then, and I shot her a resentful scowl.
“Go back,” she said. “Is there not a clue in what came before?”
“What do you mean?”
Carefully she turned back the pages. “Here. He wrote, ‘I have transcribed it in the manner of Paracelsus.’ What is Paracelsus?”
“Or who?” I said.
I was almost sure I’d seen that word on the spine of a book. I stood and hurried back to the shelves, my eyes scouring the bindings.
If not for the sharp shadow cast by my candle, I would have missed it, for the gold of the tooled letters had flaked away altogether, leaving only a series of indentations.
Paracelsus.
And then, farther down on the spine, again almost without color, the title in German, The Archidoxes of Magic.
“Paracelsus,” I said, dragging the volume from the shelf and giving it a triumphant shake above my head. Immediately I wished I hadn’t, for a shower of sooty fragments rained down upon me.
“Carefully, Victor!” Elizabeth said, rushing over and taking the book in her own hands. Sheepishly, I let her have it.
She carried it back to the table, and now I could see that this book had obviously been burned. A big triangular section of the cover was charred and crumbling.
“You think Agrippa’s strange letters were invented by Paracelsus?” I asked Elizabeth.
“Let us hope,” she said.
“Why would it be burned?” Henry asked.
“Father said it was all thought witchcraft,” I said. “No doubt it was gathered up by the Church or the townspeople and thrown into a bonfire.”
“But Wilhelm Frankenstein rescued it,” said Elizabeth.
“You Frankensteins are so enlightened,” said Henry with a nervous chuckle, and we glanced about, as though that long-dead person might still be here in the Dark Library with us, watching.
Very gently Elizabeth opened the cover. The frontispiece was a portrait of a man, but his features were hard to make out, for the page was half burned. Only a skeletal trace of his stout face remained. Either he was wearing a strange, angled hat, or his skull was of a most bizarre and deformed shape. His eyes, strangely, were still clear. They were shrewd and confiding, and seemed to be looking out at us, intensely.
I watched Elizabeth, and could see that the disturbing image had the same effect on her, for her lips trembled a bit.
“It’s like a man who’s been terribly burned, and only a ghost of his former self survives,” she whispered.
“It is Paracelsus, though, no question,” said Henry, pointing to the bottom of the portrait, where, like words painted upon a wooden sign, it read:
FAMOSO DOCTOR PARACELSVS
The doctor’s body had not been so damaged by the fire. With a shudder I saw that one of Paracelsus’s hands rested over the edge of his own portrait, his fingers curled over the top of the little sign bearing his name. It was just part of the painting, of course, but it made it seem like he could simply step out of the picture.
If he so wanted.
I swallowed back my unease.
“He was a German physician,” said Elizabeth, reading the tiny print beneath the portrait. “Also an astrologer and alchemist.”
I began, with great care, turning pages. It was an agonizing, heartbreaking business, for many of them had been fused together by the flames, and just the action of turning them tore them free and sent silky bits of ash floating up.
On many pages it was really only the lower half, near the binding, that was even legible.
“We are destroying the book even as we examine it,” said Henry miserably.
Again and again I carefully turned pages.
Until I found it.
“Is that it?” I asked excitedly. At the very bottom of the page was one of the strange characters we’d seen in Agrippa’s Occulta Philosophia.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, nodding back at me. “It’s very distinctive.”
“We will have our translation, then!” I said. “Surely if Dr. Paracelsus invented this language, he must lay out its translation in the common alphabet.”
But when I tried to turn the page, I could not. It had been completely fused by fire into a thick papery clump.
“Stop, stop!” said Elizabeth. “You’ll tear it!”
It was all I could do to keep myself from hurling the book across the chamber. As if sensing my rage, Elizabeth took hold of my hand and pointed at the open book.
“Look there,” she said.
Above the strange character was written something in Greek. I squinted but could not make sense of it.”
“The Alphabet of the Magi,” Elizabeth translated.
“But its key is lost to us,” I moaned. “The book is unreadable!”
“We know the alphabet’s name at least,” Elizabeth said.
I nodded and took a breath. “And now we must find someone who can translate it for us. We must find ourselves an alchemist.”
I slept but a few hours and, after breakfast, went downstairs to the servants’ quarters. I waited in the hallway outside the kitchen until Maria turned the corner and saw me. Her face lit up.
“Konrad?” she said, with such joy that I felt guilty to disappoint her-and then disgruntled, too, for Konrad had always been her favorite when we were little.
“It is Victor, Maria,” I said, coming more into the light.
“Victor, forgive me. You gave me a start. For a moment I thought it was your brother, up and about-” She stopped herself. “Is everything all right upstairs? Does your mother need me?”
“No, no, all is well,” I said. “I am sorry to bother you, Maria, but there is something I wanted to ask you.” I waited as Sasha, one of the kitchen staff, passed by in the hall, giving us a curious look. In a lowered voice I said, “Of a rather confidential nature.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Come into my office.”
As housekeeper she had a comfortable suite of rooms, some of which looked out toward the lake. She led me into her small office, where all the business accounts of the household were carefully maintained. She was a meticulous woman, and I’d often heard my mother say that we would all be utterly helpless without her.
“What is it you wanted to speak to me about, Victor?” she asked, closing the door. She should have called me
