The Witch of Babylon

handshake. Laurel received a frosty smile. She and the guard escorted us through the display of impressionist paintings from the permanent collection. We passed by Starry Night. The actual painting resonated all the more in the face of its many inferior reproductions. Van Gogh’s trademark style was on full display: violent brush strokes, turbulent spirals, strident ultramarines and apocalyptic blues. His moon stood out in vivid yellow, the sun, visible in the same sky, a pale and watery contrast. The dark image of his cypress pointed into the sky like an ancient obelisk.

“There’s always a crowd around Starry Night,” Claire said. “No one ever seems to tire of his work. Imagine how many posters and prints must be scattered around the globe. All those sunflowers!” She gave a little trill of a laugh. “This period is not my specialty, as you know, love.” She lightly brushed her fingers on my jacket sleeve. I caught Laurel picking up on that.

Claire had an intriguing look—alabaster skin; a mass of wiry copper hair just brushing her shoulders; hazel eyes; long, artistic fingers; and a body aesthetically thin. She loved wearing artsy, bold-patterned clothes and eye-catching handmade jewelry. I remember her wearing a dress made from fabric that was a direct copy of a Mondrian painting. After she broke up with Phillip our paths crossed many times at receptions and launches, where she’d go out of her way to shower me with compliments. I took the bait, once, until it became clear that her real goal was to steal one of my top clients.

To people she judged her equals, Claire was a panther. Seductive and velvety smooth. And she didn’t hold grudges. “You never know,” she once told me, “when people can come in handy. It’s no use making enemies out of them.” This calculated social advice apparently did not apply to her staff. With them, her temper tantrums and diva-inspired put-downs were legendary. Mercurial. Hot one moment and cool when it suited her.

Once in her office she settled us in chairs of shiny plastic in white, citron, and black. I showed her a print of the Senate Seal. She scrutinized it for ten long minutes, went to her computer and tapped on the keyboard, then sat back and smiled.

“I haven’t forgotten everything I learned at Daddy’s knee. See the conical hat above the thirteen stars? It’s called a Phrygian cap. The Phrygians came from Thrace, primarily from the area known today as Bulgaria. Around 1000 B.C. Thracians migrated to the region of Anatolia in Turkey. That became the kingdom of Phrygia.”

I sneaked a look at Tomas. Last night he’d suggested the treasure stolen by King Ashurbanipal came from Anatolia, home to the Phrygian kingdom. This gave us another link.

“The Phrygian cap proved to be enduring,” Claire continued. “You can trace its history through art. It’s on a second-century Greek bust of Attis, the lover of the goddess Cybele, and you often see the Persian god Mithras wearing it. Mithras evolved into a Roman warrior god, so for Roman freedmen the cap symbolized liberty.”

Laurel said it reminded her of the hats worn by French revolutionaries.

“Of course,” Claire responded, with a touch of condescension, I thought. “Because of the association with freedom. As I’ve already explained.”

“Is this getting us anywhere?” I addressed this to the rest of our little group.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. Ari sighed. “It is complicated for me.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” Claire asked.

“We’re after a word associated with alchemy, specifically the concept of changing lead into gold. But I don’t see the relevance of a Phrygian cap.”

“I thought you told me it had something to do with Durer.” “Phillip helped us work that out. Tomas is writing a paper on Mesopotamian origins of Hermetic thought. He came across the Senate Seal image in the course of his research.”

“How is my ex, anyway?” I was sitting closest to her. She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “Bet he charged you for his time,” she said.

Everyone laughed but Laurel. She clearly wasn’t impressed by Claire’s witticisms, nor by her pointed attention to the males.

“Well, you were on the right track.” Claire now threw a glittering smile in Tomas’s direction. “There’s a strong connection. Just a sec.”

She searched through more sites, then invited us to look at the screen.

“This comes from a seventeenth-century manuscript called Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier. The section of the book this image appears in is a guide to transmutation. The oddly shaped funnel over the alchemist’s head is part of the distillation apparatus where the lead is deposited to be purified. Finished gold coins lie in a basket on the stump. Descriptions of alchemical processes were common in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.”

From Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier, 1617

“He’s wearing a Phrygian cap,” Laurel remarked.

“That’s right. The cap was strongly associated with alchemy.”

Claire ran a hand through her wiry curls, the light bouncing off her hair so that it too seemed spun of copper and gold. “The Greek myth of Jason’s golden fleece originated in Phrygia, where legendary gold deposits were found. The myth arose because sheepskins washed in the gold-rich river Pactolus became saturated with tiny nuggets that adhered to the wool.”

She browsed for another page and pointed to a new image. “Here’s another famous folio from the same time period called Mutus Liber—The Silent Book. It’s French. With the exception of a few lines at the beginning, the book has no script, only pictures. Like a textbook, a manual on turning base metals into gold. Goodness knows how many poor souls paid dearly for those experiments. They ended up dying from chemical poisons, hideous burns, or worse. The Russian czar Fyodor I Ivanovich once forced two alchemists to drink mercury after they failed in their promise to make gold.”

I thought of Shim, who’d chased the same daydream and suffered horribly as a result.

“European heads of state feared alchemists because if they succeeded, large volumes of manufactured gold would devalue their currency. At the same time, they coveted that power for themselves.”

“You mean they opposed it only if the formula fell into someone else’s hands?” I broke in.

Claire smiled. “Yes. Nothing ever really changes, does it? You probably think alchemy was no more than a huge scam, but is it actually possible? The short answer is yes. Russian scientists turned lead panels into gold at a secret research facility near Lake Baikal in 1972, and ten years later an American, Glenn Seaborg, converted bismuth atoms into gold. Doing it on a large scale, though, would be outrageously expensive.” Claire was right. Looking back on those experiments from the perspective of modern science, the early chemical explorations seemed almost laughable. And no doubt a significant number of alchemists who promised an easy way to create gold or elixirs of immortality were no better than snake-oil salesmen. And yet I found myself beginning to wonder again whether some of those early practitioners really had found a formula. Many respected scholars in those times thought it possible.

Claire tapped the image on the screen. “Hermeticists believed all matter was composed of the same elements; they needed only to find the right key to shift the balance and make the change from one material form to another. My father thought alchemy was really an allegory for stages of spiritual purification.”

“Who wrote Mutus Liber?” Ari asked.

“A Huguenot,” Claire said. “The French Protestant Huguenots endured severe persecution, so the author had to hide his name. The book’s title page listed a line in Latin: ‘Cuius nomen est Altaus.’ The author’s name, Altaus, had been anagrammed to conceal his true identity. His real surname was Saulot.”

Twenty-one

After saying goodbye to Claire we headed back to Manhattan, where we found a Thai restaurant near Jacob Ward’s residence. Laurel looked up at the sky before we entered. “I wish it would just rain,” she said. “This is what my mother calls a soggy day. It’s so oppressive.”

We got a table. The waiter took our order and returned with our drinks. Tomas nursed a coffee. The rest of us had asked for ice-cold Sing Tao beers that slid beautifully down our throats. I plugged the words Phrygian cap into the spaces. A new page greeted us.

Laurel sighed. “There seems to be no end to this.”