Doctor Illuminatus

  Text copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Martin Booth

  All rights reserved.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Time Warner Book Group

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  The “Warner Books” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-02549-2

  The text was set in Bembo, and the display type is Tagliente.

  Contents

  Doctor Lluminatus

  One: A Little Piece of History

  Two: Sebastian’s Story

  Three: Sub Terra

  Four: The Edge of Darkness

  Five: The Shout

  Six: Artifice and Artistry

  Seven: The Dead and the Undead

  Soul Stealer

  For Lucy

  The Alchemist’s Son

  DOCTOR LLUMINATUS

  Martin Booth says: All the magic in Dr. Illuminatus is real: the chants, the herbs, the potions, and the equipment. The colophon [] used in this book is an ancient alchemical symbol representing rebirth. It is also known as the crux dissimulata and was an early first-century Christian secret sign. The other [] is one of the many alchemical symbols for gold.

  Alchemy, a curious blend of magic and science, was the chemistry of the Middle Ages. People who studied alchemy were called alchemists and they devoted their lives to the quest for the elixir of life and the means to turn ordinary metal, like iron, into gold. The third dream of alchemists was to create a homunculus — an artificial man made from dead material.

  The Alchemist’s Son, set in contemporary England but inextricably linked to its ancient, bloody past, explores this dark side of alchemy.

  One

  A Little Piece of History

  Stuck to the heavy oak door was a fluorescent green Post-it Note upon which Pip’s mother had written Daughter’s Room with a broad blue felt-tip marker. Down the passageway, Pip could see other notes on other doors — Son’s Room, Master Bedroom, Guest Room 1 and Bathroom. Each one stood out in the semi-darkness, she thought, like a glowing, square green eye.

  Lifting the iron latch, Pip stepped into her new bedroom. Compared to her last, it was huge, at least four meters square, with ancient mullioned windows set in sandstone. Two of the walls were lined with dark oak panels, and the ceiling was held up by massive wooden beams as black as if they had been charred in a fire. The floorboards were each of different widths, according to where they had been cut from the trunk of the tree. As she walked to the windows, they creaked.

  “Well, what do you think of it so far?”

  Pip turned around. Her father was standing in the doorway.

  “It’s . . .” Momentarily, she was lost for words.

  “Is this a pretty spectacular house, or what?” her father said for her. “And this,” he looked around the empty room, “is a really stupendous bedroom.”

  Pip grinned. Spectacular was one of her father’s favorite adjectives. Stupendous was the other.

  “Your last one,” her father continued, “was a rabbit hutch by comparison.” He came to her side and gazed out of the window. “And to think that view’s hardly changed in the last five hundred years. There’s not a single tree out there that hasn’t got a preservation order on it. I can’t so much as prune a twig without local council permission.”

  Following his gaze, Pip took in the neat garden with its trim flowerbeds, smooth lawn and an ancient mulberry tree in the center, the curve of the gravel drive, down the center of which grew a strip of grass, and the pasture beyond with massive oak, elm and beech trees dotted about it. Farther off still was a river lined with pollarded willows.

  “Once, the house was moated,” her father went on. “See beyond the edge of the garden, where the ground dips? That was it. But in the eighteenth century, it was mostly filled in to make a ha-ha.”

  Pip, who was never quite sure when her father was being serious, gave him one of her disparaging looks and sarcastically replied, “Ha! Ha!”

  “Really,” he said, briefly pretending to be hurt. “It was a landscaping feature. A ha-ha is a grassy ditch, surrounding a house, that slopes down gently towards the building, but has a stone wall on the house side. The idea was to keep animals out of the gardens without a fence or hedge spoiling the view.” He turned from the window and walked over to the door. “Your mother’s put the kettle on. Tea and cake in ten minutes.”

  After he had gone, Pip unfolded the estate agent’s leaflet she had in her pocket and, not for the first time that day, read the blurb printed on the front page beneath a color photo of the front elevation of the house.

  Rawne Barton, she read, situated in beautiful countryside three miles from the pretty market town of Brampton, offers a rare opportunity to purchase a Grade I-listed, landed-gentleman’s country house set in thirty-two acres of pasture, formerly a deer park. Originally built in 1422, but extended over the following hundred years, the property comprises a spacious and superbly appointed six-bedroom family house with extensive period features including contemporary linen-fold paneling, beamed ceilings with carved features and magnificent fireplaces. Recent extensive modernization has been conducted to the highest standards and in complete keeping with the architectural and historical aspects of the house. A range of contemporary outbuildings includes a stable (restored and providing ample space for vehicles), a coach house and a malt-house (both in need of renovation: with planning permission).

  The photograph showed a building made partly of white wattle-and-daub and partly of brick with black timber beams built into the walls. Above the tiled roof stood two stacks of chimneys, added in the sixteenth century, made of the same sandstone as the window frames, but twisted in spirals like sticks of old-fashioned barley sugar.

  “Do you know what barton means?”

  Pip looked around to see her twin brother, Tim. The knees of his jeans were grimy, his T-shirt was smudged with dirt and his brown hair looked as if it had been lightly powdered with flour.

  “Try knocking,” she said sharply.

  “Door’s already open,” Tim responded, “and I’m not coming in.” He slid to the floor, leaning against the doorpost. “It means a cow shed,” he went on.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Pip corrected him. “It means a farm owned by a landowner, not given to tenants. I looked it up.” She ran her eye up and down her brother. “Why are you so grubby?”

  Tim ignored her question.

  “And you know what Grade I-listed means, don’t you?” he continued. “It means we can’t put up a satellite dish. Goodbye MTV and the Cartoon Channel.”

  “We can have one of those square ones in the attic,” Pip said. “Grade I only means you can’t alter the appearance of the house or destroy any historical features.”

  “They don’t get such a good signal,” Tim rejoined. “Besides, I’ve seen the attic. No chance. The rest of the house might have been modernized, but that hasn’t. The cobwebs are like table-tennis nets.”

  “You’ve been up there?”

  “There’s a door at the end of the passage,” Tim said. “I thought it was an airing cupboard, because it’s got shelves and a copper water cylinder in it, but at the back there’s an old paneled wall. One panel has a handle and slides sideways. It’s a bit of a squeeze, which is probably why the builders didn’t bother to go up there. Behind that, there’re steps. The attic floor’s boarded, but there aren’t any rooms or anything, just a big space with a little window at the end and a lot of
beams, crud and cobwebs. And a dried-up dead bat.”

  One of the removal men appeared at the door carrying a large cardboard box with yet another Post-it Note taped to it.

  “You the daughter?” he asked. “This your room?” He didn’t wait for an answer but, checking the Post-it Note on the door against that on the box, entered, stepping over Tim and looking around. “Nice. Very nice. Quite a place your mum and dad’ve bought.” He put the box down and glanced out of the window. “You know what you got here, don’t you? You got a real little piece of history, you have.”

  The garden was protected on two sides by stone walls about two meters high, with rambling roses and honeysuckle trained up them. The flowerbeds were thick with bushes and low shrubs, most of which were perennials. Some had thick trunks and were plainly very old, having been carefully pruned over the years. Quite a number were in bloom and one, a jasmine with tiny white flowers like thin stars, was giving off a heavenly scent. The grass of the lawn was ankle deep and even now, in the early afternoon, damp.

  Pip walked across the grass to the mulberry tree. It was positively ancient, leaning slightly to one side as if it were tired of supporting itself against the winds of time. Under the trunk was wedged a tough oak bar to hold it up. Like a mottled green umbrella, the tree spread its branches out from gnarled and twisting boughs; the bark was hard, scaly and old. They reminded her of her grandfather’s arthritic fingers.

  Leaving its cool shade, Pip went over to the edge of the ha-ha. It was just as her father had described it. The ditch was filled with grass in which tall ox-eye daisies and buttercups were growing. At one end, where the soil looked to be damp up against the loose stone wall retaining the garden, grew a clump of mugwort.

  Pip knew her plants. She had once toyed with the idea of going to horticultural college and becoming a famous gardener, laying out the properties of film stars, royalty and millionaires. Perhaps, she had dreamed, she might end up as the head gardener for a palace or grand stately home. She had never in her wildest imagination thought that she might one day live in a smaller equivalent of such a house.

  Making her way back towards the heavy oak door that led from the garden to the hall, Pip suddenly noticed a strange bush. She had never seen anything like it before. About two meters high and hidden against the wall behind other shrubs, it had large, dark leaves that looked as if they were made of velvet. Yet it was not the leaves that caught her attention, but the flowers. They were about fifteen centimeters long and hung down under their own weight. The color of old ivory, they were trumpet-shaped with frilled petals. The bush held only three flowers, although the remains of several more lay rotting on the ground beneath it. Five or six buds were waiting to open.

  Bending to a flower, Pip gently lifted it up. It was surprisingly heavy. Clearly, few insects had visited it, for the stamens were still covered in a green-tinged pollen. She sniffed at it to see if it had a perfume. Instantly she felt giddy and, letting the flower go, reeled several steps back, her head spinning. The sensation passed quickly, but it left her puzzled. Surely, she thought, the flower could not have had that effect upon her. Somewhat more cautiously, she sniffed the flower again. It had a strange scent, a sort of mixture of sour milk and apple juice. No sooner had it hit her nostrils than, once more, she felt dizzy.

  Determined to discover the identity of the plant, she continued on her way towards the house. Near the door, a buddleia was in full bloom, the tight spirals of deep mauve flowers attracting a small cloud of butterflies. Mixing with them were several honey- and bumblebees, dipping from flower to flower in their search for any nectar the butterflies had overlooked.

  As Pip passed the buddleia, a butterfly settled on her arm. It was small and nondescript and yet, as it landed, it felt somehow heavy. Uniformly dull brown with several whitish markings along the edge of its wings, the only bright color it displayed was a single chalky yellow spot on each of its rear wings, near the abdomen. No sooner had it alighted than it dipped its head to the fine hairs on her arm and gave her a vicious sting. It was worse than a wasp, the pain as sharp as a red-hot hypodermic needle piercing her skin.

  Instantly, Pip swept her hand down to swat it off, but the insect was too quick for her. With a speed she would never have expected from a delicate butterfly, it lifted off from her before she could squash it and, flying high, disappeared over the roof of the house.

  Where it had landed on her skin was a circular red weal the size of a coin, with a tiny pinprick of blood in the center.

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken, dear,” her mother said as she cleaned the bite with disinfectant and warm water. “It was probably a wasp or a hornet or something.”

  “It was a butterfly,” Pip insisted, desperately wanting to scratch her arm, which itched incessantly.

  “Perhaps,” her mother suggested, reaching into the bathroom cabinet for a tube of antiseptic cream, “it was a foreign butterfly. Maybe they bite. Blown here on the wind. It can happen, you know. Someone saw a hoopoe in Kent last year and that’s a bird that only lives in Africa. And they say, with global warming, we’ll soon have mosquitoes carrying malaria in England.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” Pip retorted. “That’s really comforting.”

  “Now leave it alone,” her mother ordered, “and let the air get at it.”

  Yet, within an hour, all sign of the bite had completely vanished.

  By dusk, Pip had more or less got her room sorted out: at least, her television and CD player were wired up and plugged in, her furniture was in the right position, her books were on her shelves in alphabetical order and the duvet was on her bed.

  Although she was exhausted after all her efforts, she did not go to bed immediately, but opened one of the windows, leaning out as night fell over the pasture and trees. It was strange, she thought, how the light gradually faded and how, even after she could not make out their exact outlines, she could still somehow see the trees, as if their dark shapes had engraved themselves upon her eyes.

  Yet there was something else even stranger. The whole landscape seemed utterly silent. The house the family had moved from had been in a large village and there was always some noise to be heard at night — the distant murmur of the pub and the far-off thunder of the wooden balls in the skittle alley at the back, a passing car or footsteps in the street. This house appeared to exist in a world without sound. Yet, the longer Pip stood still and listened, she began to pick up indistinct noises. The first was an unidentifiable, soft, persistent whisper, as if someone in the night were rubbing a piece of silk. The second, from the direction of the pasture, was a grunting cough, like an old man clearing his throat. The third, when it came, was close by and reminded her of the sound leaves make when they are burned.

  Glancing up, she saw something materialize from the eaves just over her head. It was small and black, and — in an instant — was gone, only to be replaced by another, then another, and another. As each disappeared, a tiny breath touched her cheek as if a ghost were kissing her. The hair on the nape of her neck prickled. It was only then she remembered what Tim had found in the attic. These were not ghosts but bats coming out of their roost in the roof to hunt for midges over the pasture and the river, and which, she now realized, were the source of the sound of rubbed silk.

  A few moments later, she saw something appear on the top of the ha-ha. It had no definable shape and once in view remained quite still for as long as she stared at it. Then, just as she was about to turn her attention from it, it made the coughing sound and moved stealthily off. From its movement, she knew exactly what it was — a fox on its nocturnal prowl.

  Closing the window, Pip crossed the room to her bed and slipped under the cover, lying on her back and staring at the beams of the ceiling. Even in the night, they cast lines of deeper darkness across the white plaster.

  Bit by bit, as she had come to hear the noises in the night outside, Pip listened to those of the house settling down. With all the ancient wood used in its construction, it
squeaked and clicked as the walls cooled after the hours of sunlight. It was, she thought, like a person going to sleep, easing their muscles after a day’s work, their flesh twitching as their nerves relaxed.

  Sometime in the early hours, just before dawn, Pip woke from a dream in which she was wandering through a strange house, getting lost in its labyrinth of long, twisting corridors and gloomy chambers where all the furniture stood about haphazardly. For a moment, she was afraid because she did not recognize her surroundings. It was as if her fantasy had become reality. Then, slowly, her fear subsided as she saw the tiny red light on her CD player, knew it for what it was and remembered she had, after months of being dragged with her brother from house viewing to house viewing by her parents, finally moved into one of them.

  However, it was not, Pip soon realized, the scary dream that had woken her, but a noise in the wall behind her bed. At first, it was a slight and irregular scratching that she put down either to the bats returning to their roost before daylight or to mice scurrying about behind the paneling. Old houses, she reasoned, must have centuries of mouse holes gnawed, nibbled and dug in their walls. Yet, after a short while, the scratching ceased, replaced by a persistent, almost gentle, knocking. Going over the possibilities and admitting that the mice were hardly likely to be wearing boots or pick-axing a new run through the wall cavity, Pip reckoned it was caused by the central heating pipes warming up. When she looked at her alarm clock, she saw dawn was less than half an hour off and she knew her parents always liked to get up to a warm house.

  The knocking soon became an irregular tapping and then, after about ten minutes, it stopped altogether. Pip gave it no further thought, pulled the cover up to her chin, turned over and went back to sleep.

  The school secretary, a prim woman bearing her name — Mrs. Rigg — upon a label pinned to her substantial bosom, her hair scraped severely back into a bun, opened the door.

  “Headmaster? I have Mr. and Mrs. Ledger here, with Philippa and Timothy.”