Read Online The Salt Marsh by Clare Carson - Free Book Online

the seal, rubbed the skull, and I felt a presence.’
    She jumped; a tingle on her arm, a fingertip running over her skin. She looked for a spider, but there was nothing.
    â€˜Did you sense something?’ he asked. ‘Somebody touching you?’
    â€˜No.’ She rubbed her arm. ‘So the letters were from John Allin?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Did he live in Dungeness?’
    â€˜He lived near here. He was a dissenting priest in Rye during the Civil War, the years of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. This area was a hotbed of radicalism, power to the people. These things, they go hand in hand. Dissent, smuggling, sorcery, witchcraft – rebellion. When the monarchy was restored after the Civil War was over, Allin had to go on the run. He disappeared in London, Southwark.’
    His head was nodding to a silent beat, as if he had a Bob Dylan track playing in his brain, a hard rain’s a gonna fall.
    â€˜1665. That was when the plague hit town. People thought it was a curse, blowback from the attempted revolution. Punishment from an authoritarian divinity for daring to rebel.’
    â€˜The Empire Strikes Back.’
    He smiled. ‘Exactly.’ He toked, blew grey smoke slowly. ‘Allin worked as a physician, a plague doctor.’
    She pictured a caped figure in a black-beaked mask, a crow-man in a darkened street of red-cross-marked doors. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image, uncertain where it had come from.
    â€˜Allin concocted pills and medicines. But his real skills were on the mystical side. He had a gift for magic: seeing spirits, reading the signs, alchemy.’
    She coughed, the dense fug of the spliff too much, reached for the barn owl’s wing, fanned the air.
    He said, ‘That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below. Hermes Trismegistus, the
Emerald Tablet
, the source of all alchemical wisdom, the godfather of science.’
    She was finding it hard to follow his thread. ‘The godfather of science?’
    â€˜Newton had a translation of the
Emerald Tablet.
He knew its importance, understanding the rules, the patterns that shape and govern.’
    His drawl lulled her, his words washed around her brain.
    â€˜We are a microcosm of the universe. We are made of the same matter. Master ourselves, master the universe.’
    Her head drooped, the owl’s wing slipped, fell on the floor. She snapped back to her surroundings. He was still talking.
    â€˜Alchemy is the transformation to a higher plane. Purification.’
    She managed to formulate a sentence in her head and transfer it to her mouth. ‘I thought alchemists were interested in making gold.’
    â€˜Well, making gold from base metal was a means to an end. The real prize was spiritual growth, mastery of the supernatural powers governing ourselves and the universe. Allin was searching for spiritual cleansing and healing to soothe the pain of the failed revolution here on earth. Alchemy was the opposite of black magic, it was about purification, positive transformation.’
    His features tensed, he raised a dirt-scuffed warning finger. ‘Of course, alchemy is no different from any other of the occult arts. Once you unleash the powers, they can be flipped, used for malign purposes. What starts off as a blessing may become a curse.’
    The word
curse
stirred her. ‘Reverse alchemy,’ she said.
    He nodded. ‘The downward spiral. The sinistral spin. That’s when the spiritual becomes separated from the material, we lose control and become corrupted. The darkness takes over.’
    He lifted a glass test tube from the school science rack, chucked it in the air so it twisted, glinted in the flicker of the hurricane lamp, round and up, floated above the smoke cloud for a few seconds then flipped and plummeted, down and down. He didn’t move and she thought he was going to let it smash, but he stuck his