The Chemickal Marriage

amended or destroyed.

He stepped into the Fluister niche. Father Locarno sat, as he ever had in Chang’s experience, at a table covered with books and ledgers. His grey hair was bound with a cord, and his spectacles, because of the nose, were held tight by steel loops around each ear. The exposed nasal cavity was unpleasantly moist.

‘Esoteric ritual,’ said Chang. ‘I have questions and very little time.’

Father Locarno looked up with a keen expression, as if correcting others was a special pleasure. ‘There is no knowledge without time.’ The Jesuit’s voice was strangely pitched, vaguely porcine.

Chang pulled off his gloves, dropping them one at a time on the table. ‘It would be more truthful to say there is no knowledge without commerce – so, churchman, I will give you this. The Bishop of Baax-Sonk has not been in his senses since visiting Harschmort House some two months past. Many others share the Bishop’s condition – Henry Xonck perhaps the most notable. It has been ascribed to blood fever. This is a lie.’

Father Locarno studied Chang closely. They had never done business, though surely the priest had heard rumours from the staff.

‘Do you offer His Lordship’s recovery?’

‘No. His Lordship’s memories have been harvested into an alchemical receptacle.’

Father Locarno considered this. ‘When you say receptacle –’

‘A glass book. Whatever he knew, any treasured secret he kept, will be known to those who made the book.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘I would assume the worst. But I should think this much information will allow your superiors to take some useful precautions.’

Father Locarno frowned in thought, then nodded, as if to approve at least this much of their transaction. ‘I am told you are a criminal.’

‘And you are a spy.’

Locarno sniffed with disapproval – an instinctive gesture that flared the open passages on his face. ‘I serve only the greater peace. What is your question?’

‘What is a chemical marriage?’

‘My goodness.’ Locarno chuckled. ‘Not what I expected … not a common topic.’

‘Not uncommon in your field of expertise.’

Locarno shrugged. Chang knew the man was now rethinking the Bishop’s fate – and every other recent change in the city – in respect to alchemy.

‘This blood fever – now Lord Vandaariff has recovered, perhaps His Lordship the Bishop –’

Chang cut in sharply, ‘There is no cure. The Bishop is gone. This chemical marriage. What does it mean? Is it real?’

‘Real?’ Locarno settled back in his chair, the better to expound. ‘Your formulation is naive. It is an esoteric treatise. The Chemickal Marriage of Johann Valentin Andre? is the third of the great Rosicrucian manifestos, dating from 1614 in Wurttemberg.’

‘A manifesto to what purpose?’

‘Purpose? What is enlightenment without faith? Power without government? Resurrection without redemption?’

Chang interrupted again. ‘I promise you, my interest in this ridiculous treatise is immediate and concrete. Lives depend upon it.’

‘Whose life?’

Chang resisted the urge to snatch up his penknife and rumble ‘Yours’. Instead he placed both hands on the table and leant forward. ‘If I had the time to read the thing, I would. The explosions. The riots. The paralysis of the Ministries. One man is behind it all.’

‘What man?’

‘The Comte d’Orkancz. You may also know him as the painter Oskar Veilandt.’

‘I have never heard either name.’

‘He is an alchemist.’

Locarno released a puff of disdain through the hole in his face. ‘What has he written?’

‘He has made paintings – a painting named for this treatise. I need to know what he intends by it.’

‘But that is absurd!’ Locarno shook his head. ‘These works are all inference and code precisely because such secrets can be perceived only by those who deserve the knowledge. Such a treatise may indeed tell a story, but its sense is more akin to symbolic mathematics.’

Chang nodded, recalling Veilandt’s paintings in which shadows and lines were actually densely rendered signs and equations.

‘For example, in such works, if one refers to a man, one also means the number 1. The Adept will further understand that the author also refers to what makes a man.’

‘I’m sorry –’

‘For what is man but spirit, body and mind? Which, of course, make the number 3 –’

‘So the number 1 and the number 3 are the same –’

‘Well, they can be. But the triune –’

‘What?’

‘Triune.’

‘What in all hell –’

‘Three-parted, for heaven’s sake! Body, spirit, mind. That triune constitution of Man will equally stand for the Nation and the three estates that form it: Church, aristocracy, citizenry. In today’s parlance one might substitute government for aristocracy, but the comparison holds. Moreover, the three estates – as every man carries the shadow of sin – necessarily contain their opposite, fallen aspects: the bigotry of the Church, the tyranny of the state and the ignorance of the mob. This duality is precisely why secrecy is of paramount importance in communicating any –’

‘This is exactly the nonsense I had hoped to avoid.’

‘Then your errand is hopeless.’

‘Can you not simply relate the thing as a tale?’

‘But it is no tale. I do not know how else to put it. Events occur, but without narrative. In its place comes only detail, description. If there is a bird, one must know what colour and what species. If there is a palace, how many rooms? If the seventh room, what colour are the walls? If the Executioner’s head is placed in a box, what kind of wood –’

‘Nevertheless, father, please.’

Father Locarno gave a querulous snort. ‘A saintly hermit attends a royal wedding, along with other guests. The guests undergo several trials, and a worthy few are admitted to the mysteries of the wedding. But before the young king and queen can be married, they and the royal party are executed. Then, by way of more rituals and sacrifices, they are miraculously reborn. This journey – the Chemickal Marriage – is emblematic of the joining of intelligence and love through the divine. The Bridegroom is reality, and the Bride – being a woman – is his opposite, the empty vessel who attains perfection through union with that purified essence.’

‘What essence?’

‘What do you think?’

Chang snorted. ‘Is it an instruction book for madmen or for a brothel?’

‘Those outside the veil rarely perceive –’

‘Again, the Bride and Groom. He is also reality and she –’

‘Is possibility, fecundity, emptiness. Woman.’

‘How bracingly original – fecundity and emptiness at the same time. And this king and queen – the Bride and Groom – are executed?’