Read Online DAEMONOMANIA: Book Three of the Aegypt Cycle by John Crowley - Free Book Online
Authors: John Crowley
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that had belonged to his uncle Sam, Dr. Sam Oliphant, now dead. It was
a rich garment, a gift from someone to the doctor, someone whose life he had saved (no surely not, Pierce forgot the actual
origin) which Sam himself had never worn. It was as heavy as an episcopal cope, of thick pin-wale corduroy on the outside
and purple satin inside. Pierce wore it always inside out, finding the touch of satin on his skin distastefully unctuous;
it was as highly finished on the inside as the out, every seam turned, the collar rolled high, the sleeves capacious. The
belt was lost, and Pierce belted it with a wide leather one. Rose had laughed to see that robe, belted with that belt; laughed
at first.
“This account,” he typed, “is extraordinary for a couple of reasons. First it is highly circumstantial; it has little of the
air of fable and romance these encounters with the Mysterious Master usually have. There is the fact that the alchemist left
Helvetius alone with the transmutative stuff he gave him, to try it for himself: the smokesellers and frauds who abounded
at the time always supervised experiments themselves, and had a lot of ways of seeming to have produced gold. Third and probably
most extraordinary, the stranger never asked for money—no investment, no ounces of gold demanded with the promise that they
would be returned tenfold. In fact he thereupon disappeared, never to be seen again.”
As he typed out this well-known anecdote, Pierce noticed for the first time, like a mystery-novel detective sorting his evidence,
a fact that had been in the story all along but that he had not considered; and he thought he saw an explanation for what
happened. But he continued anyway as he had meant to:
“It would seem, then, that we have two possible conclusions: either Helvetius lied about what happened, or Helvetius made
gold.
“We know now that gold is an element, and so is lead; therefore, one could never be transformed into the other by heating
it together with a third thing, whatever the third thing was. So we are left with Helvetius lying, spectacularly, convincingly,
and for no apparent reason (he never tried again to make gold).
“There is, though, one other possibility, least likely of all, indeed patently absurd: that Helvetius really could make gold
by the means he had, but we today no longer can, not by those means or any other. Not because we have forgotten how, though
we have, or lost faith that we can, though we have, but because gold is not the same as it once was, earth is not the same,
fire is not the same.”
He took his hands from the keys.
A snowy day in 1666. In Pierce’s imagination, each of the ten digits had a distinct color, a color it had had as far back
as he could remember, unchosen by him but there in his mind nonetheless: and the six is white. The snow on the Master’s boots;
the ivory box of glistening matter. Wife in white at the stair’s top: Husband what have you there.
That wife: that was what Pierce had noticed in retelling this tale. That wife skilled in the Art. What if she had been in
league with the supposed Nameless Master. Able to trick her husband, somehow produce the gold, expecting a further development
of some kind, she and the other guy, who knows what; a plot that never fruited. Guy skipped town. Wife kept quiet.
Pierce thought of writing a footnote; then decided not. He was on a quest, in these pages of his book, for evidence that once
the world was not as it is now; any little fact or tale, trivial but incontrovertible, that would fire the hearts of his readers
with wild certainty, or tease them at least with possibility. He hadn’t promised, hadn’t exactly promised, that any single
one he retailed might not vanish even as it was proffered, in fact it was implied in his philosophy that it must. But it was
not for him to underscore his own paradoxes.
Qui non intellegit, aut taceat aut discat
: if you don’t get
a rich garment, a gift from someone to the doctor, someone whose life he had saved (no surely not, Pierce forgot the actual
origin) which Sam himself had never worn. It was as heavy as an episcopal cope, of thick pin-wale corduroy on the outside
and purple satin inside. Pierce wore it always inside out, finding the touch of satin on his skin distastefully unctuous;
it was as highly finished on the inside as the out, every seam turned, the collar rolled high, the sleeves capacious. The
belt was lost, and Pierce belted it with a wide leather one. Rose had laughed to see that robe, belted with that belt; laughed
at first.
“This account,” he typed, “is extraordinary for a couple of reasons. First it is highly circumstantial; it has little of the
air of fable and romance these encounters with the Mysterious Master usually have. There is the fact that the alchemist left
Helvetius alone with the transmutative stuff he gave him, to try it for himself: the smokesellers and frauds who abounded
at the time always supervised experiments themselves, and had a lot of ways of seeming to have produced gold. Third and probably
most extraordinary, the stranger never asked for money—no investment, no ounces of gold demanded with the promise that they
would be returned tenfold. In fact he thereupon disappeared, never to be seen again.”
As he typed out this well-known anecdote, Pierce noticed for the first time, like a mystery-novel detective sorting his evidence,
a fact that had been in the story all along but that he had not considered; and he thought he saw an explanation for what
happened. But he continued anyway as he had meant to:
“It would seem, then, that we have two possible conclusions: either Helvetius lied about what happened, or Helvetius made
gold.
“We know now that gold is an element, and so is lead; therefore, one could never be transformed into the other by heating
it together with a third thing, whatever the third thing was. So we are left with Helvetius lying, spectacularly, convincingly,
and for no apparent reason (he never tried again to make gold).
“There is, though, one other possibility, least likely of all, indeed patently absurd: that Helvetius really could make gold
by the means he had, but we today no longer can, not by those means or any other. Not because we have forgotten how, though
we have, or lost faith that we can, though we have, but because gold is not the same as it once was, earth is not the same,
fire is not the same.”
He took his hands from the keys.
A snowy day in 1666. In Pierce’s imagination, each of the ten digits had a distinct color, a color it had had as far back
as he could remember, unchosen by him but there in his mind nonetheless: and the six is white. The snow on the Master’s boots;
the ivory box of glistening matter. Wife in white at the stair’s top: Husband what have you there.
That wife: that was what Pierce had noticed in retelling this tale. That wife skilled in the Art. What if she had been in
league with the supposed Nameless Master. Able to trick her husband, somehow produce the gold, expecting a further development
of some kind, she and the other guy, who knows what; a plot that never fruited. Guy skipped town. Wife kept quiet.
Pierce thought of writing a footnote; then decided not. He was on a quest, in these pages of his book, for evidence that once
the world was not as it is now; any little fact or tale, trivial but incontrovertible, that would fire the hearts of his readers
with wild certainty, or tease them at least with possibility. He hadn’t promised, hadn’t exactly promised, that any single
one he retailed might not vanish even as it was proffered, in fact it was implied in his philosophy that it must. But it was
not for him to underscore his own paradoxes.
Qui non intellegit, aut taceat aut discat
: if you don’t get
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