Unstable Alchemy Pt. 2
Albedo
Mr. Lantham had been wandering about town as he was known to do when an intense white light pierced the midnight sky. It had been sudden, like the flash of magnesium, yet it lingered for nigh on a minute or two. It was a blinding, blistering white light, but Lantham felt drawn to it. He traced his way through the crooked closes and streets of Edinburgh to find the light’s source.
Before the light ultimately fluttered in intensity, Lantham stopped outside an elegant row house with a glowing second-story awash in an ungodly bright light. He knew the home very well, he had dined there a multitude of times - it was the home of his fellow alchemist and colleague: Orrin Caraday.
At once, Lantham knocked on the door to Caraday’s home and was greeted by Mr. McGregor, Caraday’s butler.
Unfazed by the extravagant blast of light and the late hour, McGregor greeted Lantham with his normal cool, arrogant candor, “Good evening, Mr. Lantham. You look rather frantic, can I help you with something?”
Exasperated from his run through the evening and off-balance from McGregor’s slight, Lantham puffed out, “May I see Oren, good man?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lantham, Mr. Caraday isn’t receiving visitors this evening. If you’d like you could come by in the morning and have breakfast; I know how much he enjoys your company.”
Perplexed, Lantham explained the strange light that had poured from the second floor, yet McGregor cooly dismissed him, explaining Caraday had gone to bed early. Having been defeated in his aims to see Caraday, Lantham gave in, but agreed to breakfast.
Arriving home, Lantham immediately sent word to Mr. MacGuinness, a fellow alchemist and colleague, to meet at Caraday’s home the following day for breakfast, hinting that Caraday may have had a breakthrough in the night.
Several hours later, promptly at 10am, Lantham and MacGuinness alighted from their coaches and stood side by side in Mr. Caraday’s doorway. They knocked and, just as he had previously, McGregor appeared, proper and lofty. Led in through the foyer, their coats and hats managed by McGregor, they entered the study where tea was waiting for them.
“My apologies, gentlemen. Mr. Caraday has not rang yet, so please excuse the delay while I check in on him. He had spent the night in his laboratory.” And with that, McGregor was gone. His inconsistency about the previous night was not overlooked by Lantham. Then a pale-faced footman appeared, and, once MacGuinness and Lantham were seated, shakily served them their tea.
They lingered in Caraday’s large and well-appointed study, gazing with envy at his massive library collection. Caraday was a collector, mostly of works in his field of astronomy, but he was well-read and kept abreast of most social texts: sensational novels and periodical science journals alike. Most of his alchemy texts remained in the laboratory where he used them, however a few were laid out on a desk nearby.
Lantham stood and meandered, lifting books to see their covers, scoffing at their obscurity, and gazing out the long series of windows looking out on the street. MacGuinness remained seated, sipping his tea, begrudgingly enjoying it.
MacGuinness had introduced the strange principles of alchemy to Caraday and Lantham, though they had all been familiar with the story. For each of them, the promises of alchemical discovery meant something different; Lantham, fame; MacGuinness, wealth; Caraday, the thrill of the challenge.
Their perusal of Caraday’s study was cut short by a shriek from elsewhere in the house followed by the muffled sound of dishes breaking. They rose quickly, MacGuinness bumping the small side-table and toppling the serving tray of tea, and moved through the house to the upper levels.
On the floor, exasperated and unnaturally perspiring was McGregor; he wore the countenance of a man close to death. A tea pot and cup lay shattered on the floor in front of the opened doorway into Caraday’s laboratory. The same pale-faced footman tended to McGregor, his hands shaking more intensely than before. Other members of the household gathered around McGregor while some of the younger boys kept the maids from peering into the laboratory.
Lantham, being a physician at the Royal Infirmary, rushed to the horrorstricken McGregor’s aid. Without shifting his gaze, McGregor lifted his hand and pointed through the doorway of Caraday’s laboratory and then fainted. Ensuring that McGregor had not suffered any severe trauma, Lantham, MacGuinness and the pale footman followed his hand and saw the warm glow of gold twinkling in the early morning sunlight.
A stillness hung over the group - a horrible, shocking stillness. The footman barring the door from the maids stopped resisting and the maids stood aghast. The pale footman’s hands shook. Lantham and MacGuinness exhaled slowly in awe.
Arrayed in ordered chaos was a vast collection of odd scientific apparatus. There were beakers and test tubes, but the pieces that should have commanded most of their attention were several pieces made of an unknown metal finely crafted into complex geometric shapes. Books were splayed across the tables and small hand tools littered the workbenches and floor. However, Lantham and MacGuinness picked up these detail in their periphery or upon later investigation because what drew their attention was incredibly more simple and wildly more complex than the rest of the scene before them.
It was gold. At first sight there appeared to be a massive heap of gold as if it had been heated, then poured on the floor between two workbenches. It was gold, although it was significantly more than that. The solid gold heap was Orren Caraday.
Orren’s body was slumped against the workbench as if he had been flung backward by an immense force. As Lantham, then MacGuinness entered the lab, stepping over papers and broken glass, Orren’s features came into sharper relief. Lantham began to check over Orren, hoping to find a sign of life. He found none. Orren had not been simply coated in gold, from what Lantham could distinguish, Orren’s skin was actually gold. When he pressed two fingers to Orren’s throat, the skin did not move, was cold to the touch, and had no feeling of muscle below. MacGuinness attempted to lift Orren’s and turn it over, yet the gold would not budge; it was solid.
His clothes, his hair, his skin, even his eyes were all solid gold. The likeness was uncanny - too startlingly accurate to be sculpture. He was dead, that was sure, however, in his current state it would impossible to prove Orren’s death.
MacGuinness stood and browsed the selection of disheveled volumes on the workbench. He flipped a page back and forth and wiped more broken glass off an etching of some infernal contraption. MacGuinness ordered the place footman, “Call the constable.” Then, hushed so only Lantham could hear him, “after everything we did - he managed it.”
There was nothing that they could do to save Orren - each alchemist knew that the science involved was intense and dangerous, especially when it slipped from grounded science to become alchemy. The night prior, Lantham had seen just a glimmer of history being made and Caraday had, like usual, left his colleagues out. Lantham was bitter, MacGuinness was jealous and both needed what Orren had discovered.
With their backs to the staff hustling about in the background, MacGuinness ripped the etched diagram from the book in front of him and pocketed the Tetrahedron nestled on the real-life counterpart to the etching. Lantham grabbed an empty small bottle from a shelf and used his pen knife to scrape shavings from the bottom of the golden Orren’s shoe into the bottle.
It was hours before MacGuinness and Lantham were able to leave Caraday’s estate and, when they finally left the constables and physicians behind, they found themselves in The Deacon Burress, a dingy pub off a main avenue. They inched their way to a back table, away from prying eyes and snooping ears. Then they drank: to Orren, to gold, to success. They drank to the money - oh the money - they’ll have once they replicate Orren’s experiment - money Orren never needed or wanted.
In a lull, as Lantham was drunkenly donning his heavy coat, MacGuinness, eyes swimming, turned to him and nearly incomprehensibly said, “Ahr we poohr excuses uh mehn?”
To which Lantham replied: “My man, we’re rich.” And with a victorious chuckle, he left.
MacGuinness drank a bit more, the guilt, like the whisky, burned in his gullet, burned in his soul.
Part 3 is coming soon!