The Alchemist's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

supplied letters of reference, needless to say.”
    â€œAs did your last assistant but one,” Sidonie reminded him caustically. “The one who nearly set fire to the house.”
    Simon Quince said with a look of contrition, “Sidonie, I have only two hands, and there are only so many hours in the day. I cannot accomplish this great work by myself.”
    Sidonie dropped into her chair, put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and gave a sigh of defeat. “Have your assistant, then, Father. Though I mislike the man, for he has a peculiar look about him. And from now on I will send out the linen to be washed.”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    The scarlet red colour of the flying lion . . . resembles the pure and clear scarlet of pomegranate seeds . . . It is like a lion which devours all the purely metallic nature and transmutes it into its own substance, namely, into pure and true gold, finer than that from the best mines.
    â€” Nicholas Flamel, The Hieroglyphic Figures
    â€œKit, he is so foolish, my father — so sure of success, and so far from succeeding. The fault is mine. I have let him go on, with one ill-fated experiment after another, doing nothing to discourage him.”
    Kit plucked an apple from a low-hanging branch and tossed it into Sidonie’s lap. “What could you have done? It is hardly a daughter’s place, to chide her father for his faults.”
    â€œI should have smashed his flasks and alembics on the hearthstones,” said Sidonie fiercely. “But how could I have known where his foolishness would lead him?”
    â€œSidonie, are you so sure he will fail? Have not other alchemists succeeded?”
    â€œDr. Dee has succeeded, my father says. And Edward Kelley, Dee’s assistant. But they had a secret elixir, a red powder which is needed to complete the transformation from dross to gold.”
    â€œWhere does one find this elixir?”
    â€œI think you are supposed to make it, but that is the most difficult part of the process. Too difficult for my father, at any rate.” She bit absentmindedly into the apple. It was still green, and so sour it made her lips pucker. She grimaced and spat it out.
    Kit said, “My father sold a packet of sleeping powder to one of the servants from Whitehall Palace. It is all the talk of the court that Dr. Dee, who is living abroad at Trebonam, turned part of a warming pan into silver, and sent it to the Queen.”
    Sidonie looked up with sudden interest. “Yes, as proof of his experiments. That is the very warming pan my father talked about. The tale must be true, then.”
    â€œIf you can believe palace gossip. The Queen must believe it, because they say she has sent a great many letters to Dr. Dee, imploring him to return.”
    â€œSo he can turn more warming pans into precious metal.”
    â€œSo it would seem. In any event, there is more to the rumour.”
    â€œKit, do not torment me. Prithee, go on.”
    â€œDee and Kelley are said to have come into possession of a Powder of Projection. This must be the elixir — the red powder — of which your father spoke.”
    â€œAnd where did they find it?”
    â€œBuried in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, so the story goes.”
    â€œWhy ever there?”
    â€œWell, they do say it is the most magical place in England, because Joseph of Arimathea hid the Holy Grail in the Chalice Well.”
    â€œThen Kit, I must go to Glastonbury.”
    Kit stared at her. “What, on the strength of some muddled rumour whispered round the palace?”
    â€œPerhaps the rumour is not muddled. Palace servants overhear a great many secrets, and some of them are true. If my father can make gold for the Queen while Dee and Kelley are tarrying in foreign courts, then his fortune is assured.”
    â€œSidonie, this is utmost folly. I did not imagine you so imprudent.”
    â€œWhat is imprudent,” Sidonie said, “is to do