“Of all the black-hearted, bilge-drinking, puss-filled, wench-rubbing, life-snubbing, corn-cobbling, horse-hobbling, SONS of a GOAT!” The Alchemist was in a foul humour (all four of them at once, in point of fact).
Isabella regarded her father as he sat brooding in his favourite chair, a mass of vines carved around what he claimed was the true Scone of Stone. The chair was ridged, full of splinters and deeply uncomfortable: Isabella feared it did little to improve her sire’s mood. But then, the Alchemist of Nonsuch House had elevated brooding to something of an art form: Isabella suspected he rather enjoyed it.
They were both wringing wet. Despite home being barely a hundred metres away up the Bridge from the Duck, her father had insisted on them returning to Nonsuch aboard his personal galliot, moored up a ways to the East. Isabella hated the galliot: she always had to row. The boat had a sail, but her father would never let her use it upriver: apparently a westerly wind foretold the death of a loved one. The galliot necessitated Nonsuch’s flumenary entrance, sliding the boat between the beak-like hidden doors in the starling below the house. Nonsuch had several concealed entrances (indeed, there were no entrances that were not concealed), but the flumenary was by far Isabella’s least favourite. The door mechanism had not worked correctly in years, and she and her father routinely had to forcibly pull the beak doors closed behind them while balancing on the narrow vessel. Capsizing was not a matter of if, just how many times before the doors were finally sealed.
Thus, her exasperation needed a good vent: “Father! Why didn’t you say any of that during the duel? Those are much better insults than the rubbish you came out with!”
Her father’s eyes steepled up towards her. “How dare you, stripling! Insult duelling is an ancient and delicate art, steeped in tradition, resurrected by the pirates of the Alacalabian Ocean, ripped from the scrolls of the Nipidits of Mont’ai Pythland! NOT to be soiled by a woman’s tongue!”
“But why do you always use the same insults? Every time you use the same list and every time the Undertaker comes out with more!”
The Alchemist stabbed a triumphant finger at Isabella. “Ha! You are just showing how little you know of my fiendish strategy! Using the same insults, as I have ALWAYS done, is the very LAST thing that old fool will expect!”
“But he does expect it, Dad! That’s why he beats you every bloody time!”
“How DARE you lecture ME! I was losing to the Undertaker before you were even born!”
“I know!” Something child-like cracked in Isabella’s voice. “And you wouldn’t stop... not even... not even when mum got ill! Perhaps if you’d been there…”
Suddenly, the Alchemist was on his feet: “How DARE you mention her name! How DARE you blame ME for her death! I, who cared for you when you were but child! I who fed you, housed you, taught you how to turn rats yellow! Ungrateful, unfeeling child! This is how you repay me after all these long years?”
Isabella tried one more desperate plea: “But Dad…”
The Alchemist silenced her with a gesture. “Enough! Get out! Never darken my towels again! Begone!”
He creased into the chair again, back to her, arms folded.
Isabella’s fists clenched. Her mother’s blood ran deep in her veins – the steely thrawn of the Scotch locked in a helixing death-spiral around the molten mutability of the Romani: a seamount of fire and ice bound in mutually immolating paradox; and her Dutch bespreekbaarheid, her father’s blunt gift for directness, the unholy cauldron that gave it sonor.
“Fine!” said she. With a stomp of petulanteous foot, she swung to leave...
...and then stopped. Her shoulders sagged. She turned, tears threatening, her tone softer: “You blame Phil for burying mother, but he was not the cause of her death. Death was. You’re a brilliant man, Dad. I mean it. If you used your time to actually benefit humanity... what wonders could you achieve? Perhaps you could even stop people from dying? Who would Anbury bury then? Think about it...” and then, quieter, under her breath, to herself, “and if you won’t end this feud with the Undertaker, I jolly well will!”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
And then she was gone, and the Alchemist was truly alone...
...with himself! For the Alchemist never truly went solo: he had long ago mastered the ancient Socration technique of the dialogos, the creation of two personas with which to haggle over any dilemma.
In vulgar parlance: he talked to himself.
“That cursed undertaker has a lot to answer for: the death of my wife... and now the loss of my daughter!”
He rose and began the long pace down the gallery to the laboratory. Inspiration was curdling: he knew not from whence it came, only that it would move the very bowels of the Earth. Such was the curse of true genius, to be swept by the river, and never once know the source.
The gallery was so long that the speck of light at the far end seemed fixed like a star. There were many rumours about Nonsuch: it was widely believed that the inside was larger than the outside; some said the Alchemist had imprisoned the Dragon of Scholomance within the starling beneath his house; others that, on the blackest nights when none were about, the house would rotate upon its z and submerge its windows beneath the river to observe the aquatic world without. Of these, only the first was true, the tangible of a dark compact with the demon Mulciber: former architect to heaven’s domes and subsequent engineer of pandemonium. The others were merely to-dos.
Intermittent exhibits along the way were lit by moteless beams of daylight from cleverly placed holes along the cornices. Which exhibits were lit and which in darkness depended upon the parabola of the sun’s diurnal motion, and the display was therefore both temporal as well as seasonal. At length, the Alchemist stopped before a rubbing from the Mesopotonian tombs of Ur: Gilgamesh cradling his dying friend Enkidu; the inscription below in translation:
There is no permanence.
Next along, a Joseon ink: the moon hare upon its hind legs, pounding a mochi in a mortar and pestle. The piece was one of the Alchemist’s favourites: there was something oddly endearing, familiar even, about the eager lean of the white rabbit’s composition.
Further, upon a plinth, a detailed replica of Xu Fu’s lacquered red barque from the Chinaman’s first unsuccessful expedition to Mount Penglai to seek out the secret of immortality: a gift for Isabella upon her seventh year of ageing. He recalled how they had built it together, piece by painstaking piece; that might have been the last they had spent so much time in each other’s company. The Alchemist sniffed (the air) and moved on.
Finally, he came to rest before a glass case: within sat a golden bottle of 200-year-old Irish uskey (Clonmacnoise, 1405) and an exquisite crystal tumbler. The label, Gaelic, said uisce beatha (water of life: aqua vitae). The Alchemist only partook on the most portentous occasions: this being such. Carefully removing the case, he poured himself a small sixth finger, and knocked it back with a wince.
“Al Iksir!” breathed the Alchemist, swapping into nuanced Arabic.
“The Elixir of Life!” he translated aloud to himself.
He looked down to the terracotta tiles beneath his feet and the gallery-spanning ancient symbol inset upon the floor in raised blackest oryx banded with white: a circle within a square within a triangle. The sun’s last fading rays were just crossing the focus.
The Alchemist had of course observed carefully the recent advent of not one, but two fiery comets streaking the skies, clear portents of his certain victory over the thrice-cursed Anbury. Yet... why had there been two, when one was usually quite enough? Clearly, the powers that be were trying to tell him something...
If at first you don’t succeed, try try—?
No! Twin victories!
A double coup!
Could it be his sole focus on Anbury alone all these years had been misplaced? That he had failed to see the wood for the forest fire? Perhaps, in order to lay low the foe, he needed to aim a little... higher? Two birds with one scone... so to speak.
And, for the first time in a long time, he recalled a younger more idealistic self, before his wife, before the Undertaker: a mind for things greater than gold or vengeance, with a schema to rescue all mankind from its most existential terror.
All was becoming clear: his youth and his dotage were finally moving into perfect alignment. A smile crackled across his visage, a crystallising mask of boundless ḥuṣpâ above the dark waters of insanity.
“The time for duelling is over and the time for revenge is at hand! If we can’t beat the Undertaker, then we will bury him! And, in order to bury the Undertaker, we must bury his business!”
The Alchemist resumed his journey: there was pen and parchment in the study next to the lab.
“Time to pen a letter! Let’s hope Isabella remembered to feed the pigeons! The flight to Stonehenge is so very, very taxing...”