THE ALCHEMIST
Something heavy but kindly fell upon Joseph’s shoulders and something
light touched his cheek.
Looking up quickly from a survey of his garments, now more ragged and
dusty than ever, he perceived that the weight was the hand of the man in
black and that the lightness had been a kiss upon his cheek from the
man’s companion,—her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright and her
lips were still close to him. He was somewhat dazed from the shock of
going to earth so quickly with the dog, but he thrilled with pleasure
and happiness from the kindly touch and the kiss.
He stepped back to brush himself, and then gazed squarely at the man and
girl.
His cheeks grew rosy with that first meeting of eyes. For in the man’s
there was an ocean of gratitude and a suggestion of a tear, and the
girl’s eyes blazed forth frank admiration.
“You were so quick,” she exclaimed. “Would that I could spring like
that. It was brave of you——”
His tongue found no words. Boys of fifteen, even if aged by experience,
have little to say when praise is bestowed so freely.
Moreover the man gave him no opportunity. “Remarkable,” he said,
“remarkable. As swift a leap as I ever saw,” and then blinking with his
eyes as if the light hurt them, added, “or hope to see.”
“It was nothing,” Joseph stammered. “Often in the Ukraine I have
dispersed dogs in a fight.” And then thinking that this perhaps sounded
like boasting, said further, “As do many boys of my age in that
country.”
“From the Ukraine?” The man in black looked at him with interest. “How
do you happen to be so far from home?”
“Tartars or Cossacks burned our house. We have been traveling this day
more than two weeks in a cart only to find ourselves homeless here.
Father had kinsfolk in this city, but the head of the house is dead and
the others are away.”
“Where are your people now?”
“In the market place.”
“H’m,” the man muttered to himself, “homeless and in the market place.
And what will they do?”
The boy shook his head. “I think that my father will find us some
shelter,” he said finally. “He was thinking——” He hesitated for he had
been taught never to speak of troubles before strangers, though the girl
peered straight into his eyes with great kindness and sweetness.
“There is something curious here,” thought the man. “The boy’s face has
a high degree of intelligence and his speech is the speech of one who
has listened to good words. A noble action this—I think in good faith
that the whelp might have had his teeth in the child’s throat.” Looking
down upon the boy he said, “You have rendered us a noteworthy service,
you have saved my niece from much painful injury; will you not accompany
us to our home that we may hear your whole story and perhaps in our
turn——”
The boy’s face reddened. “Nay,” he said, “I wish no reward. What I
did——”
The girl caught him up. “Indeed you do my uncle wrong. He meant but
this: we live humbly, will you not come and rest for a moment until you
may join your people?”
“I ask pardon,” the boy said quickly.
Whereat the man laughed, for their speech and expression had been
over-serious for children, though it still was an age when children grew
to be men and women often over a single night. In some provinces girls
of fourteen or fifteen were considered grown women and even given in
marriage. Boys at that age had seen much of the rough side of life, of
war and battle and cruelty.
“I will go with you,” Joseph added, kissing the cuff of the gown of the
man in black as he had always been taught to do in his home.
They turned to the left past the Church of the Franciscans, to the right
through a short lane, and then to the left again into the most curious
street of the world of that day.
It was the Street of the Pigeons, famed throughout all Europe as the
dwelling place of scholars, astrologers, magicians, students, and
likewise doctors, brothers of the Church, and masters of the seven arts.
In the worst end of the street, the upper end near the city wall,
clustered the squalid dwelling places that were once the homes of Jewish
refugees, fleeing from persecution in all parts of the world. Terrible
poverty had existed there, and when the Jewish inhabitants finally moved
to their own city, Kazimierz, across the river, the buildings which they
left were scarcely fit for human beings to live in. They were, in the
first place, very old and out of repair—they were built for the most
part of wood, though the fronts on the street were sometimes of brick
covered with rough cement or mortar. The upper stories usually overhung,
and the roofs were covered with loose boards nailed in place, serving
instead of tiles or shingles. Rickety staircases on the outsides of
these buildings led from the street or from interior courts up to the
dwelling places on the third and fourth floors, where, at the time of
this story, lived family literally heaped upon family in terrible
disorder and poverty.
Thieves and murderers crouched there in hiding during the day, bands of
lawless men had their haunts there in cellar or attic or other den. A
fire in the year 1407 had swept through this street and through St.
Ann’s, clearing out many of these undesirable places, but unfortunately
not destroying all of them.
In the lower end of the street on the side toward the University of
Krakow there was more respectability since students and masters of the
university inhabited there. A large students’ _bursar_ or dormitory
stood near the corner where Jagiellonska now meets the Street of the
Pigeons. In this lived many students; others put up near by in groups or
with private families, since it was not until late in the 1490’s that
the authorities compelled the students to live in university buildings.
The prestige of the various colleges and the reputation of the men who
taught there had drawn to Krakow not only genuine students but also many
of the craft that live by their wits in all societies, in all
ages—fortune tellers and astrologers, magicians and palmists,
charlatans, necromancers, and fly-by-nights who were forever eluding the
authorities of the law. Here somewhere on the Street of the Pigeons they
all found lodging.
In the rooms above the street, in the kitchens beneath the street, these
men plied their trades. Self-termed astrologers read in the stars the
destinies of the gullible; they foretold happiness to trusting peasant
girls who came to them for advice in their love matters, they prophesied
disaster to merchants who, held by fear, might be induced to part with
much money; they cheated, they robbed, and often on provocation they
killed, until after many years they gave the street a certain unsavory
reputation. Against the machinations of these men the influence of the
university was ever working, and the first great blow that many of these
magic crafts and black arts received was struck by Nicholas Kopernik,
better known as Copernicus, many years later when Joseph Charnetski was
a very old man; Copernicus, working with rough implements, even before
the telescope had been invented, proved to men for the first time that
the heavenly bodies, stars and planets, move in the skies according to
well-fixed and definitely determined laws, subject only to the will of
the Creator of the universe, and that they have nothing to do with the
destinies of individuals.
All about them in the street flitted men dressed in long robes like that
of the guardian of the little girl, though all the robes were not alike.
Some were clerical with closed front and collar, others were open and
flowing with great sleeves like a bishop’s gown, some were of blue, some
were of red, some were of green. Joseph noticed one robe of ermine over
which was worn a chain of heavy gold, at the end of which hung suspended
a great amethyst cross.
They passed a house, part wood and part stone, where were gathered at
opened doors a great group of young men in plain black robes, much less
sumptuous than some others which they had seen, all the members of the
group engaged in a lively altercation, as the guardian informed the boy
and girl, concerning the movement of the stars. One was contending that
the firmament of stars moved for one hundred years to the west—another
(and this was backed by a written argument from the old Alphonsian
tables from Spain) that the stars moved constantly in one direction
without change.
Passing this group they came to a dwelling, the front of which was
stone. The door was set back from the street and flanked by short
projecting buttresses on either side, put there as if to caution the
emerging inhabitant to look carefully to right and left before
proceeding—a caution not unwise at night. The windows above were not
only crossed by wooden shutters that opened and closed like doors, but
also barred with iron. The man in black took from the folds of his gown
a huge brass key, which he fitted into the outside door, turned it in
the lock with some labor, and then threw the portal open.
They stepped over a small board which served as a threshold, and passed
through a dark passageway which led to an open court. At the end of the
court was the flat wall of a monastery, without windows or doors. On the
right was a low, one-story building, and on the left rose a ramshackle
structure of wood, four stories high. Outside this building, leading to
the apartments on the second and third floors, was a wooden staircase
hitched to the wall by wooden clutch supports and strengthened by a
single wooden upright. In the middle of the court was an old well with a
bucket on a rope attached to a wheel.
The staircase creaked as they ascended, and seemed to Joseph to swing
just a little. It gave him such a dizzy sensation that he clutched at
the wall, fearful lest the whole structure should become loose and
topple down. But the man only smiled as he saw the boy’s sudden movement
and assured him that the staircase was safe enough. They went up one
flight past the first landing, and then on to the second. Here they
stopped and the man reached into his gown for another key, a smaller one
this time.
Just as they were entering the apartment on the third floor opposite
this landing, Joseph noticed that there was still one more floor above
them even though the main staircase ended with the third floor. The
entrance to this top floor, which appeared to have been at one time a
loft or storeroom, was gained by climbing a crude, ladderlike staircase
with a single rail, which was fastened at a slight angle against the
wall. The door to which these steps led was directly above the farther
end of the landing, and to Joseph’s surprise appeared to be of metal.
From its shape and size the boy decided that it was a window that had
been changed into an entrance, while at its right a square aperture had
been cut in the wall probably for the purpose of giving light. In an
instant they were in the apartment where the man and girl lived, and
Joseph had no further chance to study the loft which in some
unexplainable manner had aroused his curiosity.
This apartment was stuffy and poorly lighted, but the furnishings were
not poor. There were tapestries and great oaken chairs, a heavy table in
the middle of the room, several huge chests, and a sideboard upon which
some silver glistened.
The girl ran quickly to a shutter and threw it open, whereupon the light
streamed in through a myriad of small glass panes set in lead. Quickly
she set before Joseph and the man in black, small goblets which she
filled with wine; a few pieces of broken bread were placed before them
on the table, and they all ate, Joseph rather voraciously, although
striving to disguise his hunger.
“Now tell us your story,” the man bade him.
Joseph related it briefly, emphasizing for the most part the arrival of
his father and mother and himself in the city that morning, and the
dilemma that faced them in procuring lodgings.
The man in the black robe listened attentively, and when the boy had
finished he struck the table a light blow. “I think I have it,” he said.
“Wait here for me and take what refreshment you will. I will be back in
a few moments.”
He went out through the door and hurried down the stairs to one of the
apartments below.
The girl pushed her chair closer to Joseph’s and looked up into his
eyes.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Joseph Charnetski.”
“Joseph,” she said. “I like the name much. Mine is Elzbietka.”
“My father is Andrew Charnetski,” continued Joseph, “and we lived in the
country of the black lands in the Ukraine. It was lonely in our
neighborhood, for the nearest neighbor was sixty staja away, yet we
never felt fear of Cossack or Tartar, though others did, for my father
always treated them well. We were therefore surprised not long ago when
there came to us a former servant, a friendly Tartar, who said that we
were in some danger, and although my father laughed, I know that he gave
the report some credence since he took the Tartar aside and talked with
him privately for a long time. He is not one to reveal his fear,
however, and we remained in our house as before with the warning all but
forgotten by my mother and me.
“Then one night before we went to bed, my mother, who was working upon
some sewing, saw a man’s face peeping in through the thatch at one
corner of our house. It was a face that she had never seen before; it
was not one of the servants of our place or any place next to ours; it
was a villainous face and it made such an impression on her that she
screamed aloud, alarming us all.”
“Yes?” the blue eyes were full of interest.
“That night my father came into the room where I was sleeping, bade me
dress quickly, and in a short time led me and my mother through a little
door in the rear of the house that I had never seen opened before, since
it had always been fastened with nails. Outside this door we found
ourselves in a passageway dug out of the earth like a cave, and through
this we crept until we emerged into a shed some distance from the other
dwellings where two of our best horses were hitched to a cart. That my
father had already taken such precautions unknown to us assured me that
he had feared something, the nature of which he had kept from us.”
“But you know now?”
“Nay—the most curious part is yet to come. My mother and I climbed into
the wagon where a goodly supply of food had been stored, while my
father, moving swiftly, wielded a forked stick with such effect, in one
corner of the shed, that he soon unearthed a pile of vegetables which
had been covered over with tree branches and leaves in order to preserve
them. I thought at the time that he was about to put some of them into
our wagon for food, but to my surprise he chose only one.”
“And that——”
“A pumpkin.”
“A _pumpkin_! But why——”
“I know no more about it than you. When everything else in our wagon had
been eaten, father refused to give it up—this was ten days later, of
course, when we were on the last stages of our journey; and once, indeed
this very morning, a man who had evidently pursued us from the Ukraine
offered my father the pumpkin’s weight in gold in exchange for it—but
my father refused.”
“Did you learn whose face your mother saw in the thatch?”
“That I did not, but what came later proved that my father had acted
wisely in leaving our house secretly and in a hurry. For when we stopped
in a village a few days later to rest our horses, we saw a neighbor who
had traveled from our part of the country on horseback. He had passed
our place on the day after we left. Every building had been burned to
the ground, he told us, and the land itself looked as if a battle had
raged there; the wheat was down and the crops were burnt, and holes had
been dug everywhere as if the invaders had hunted for hidden treasure.”
“Your father has the pumpkin now?”
“It is safe in his possession—though why he refused its weight in gold
I cannot see. But I think he would not be pleased that I have told all
this about it, although I know that the secret is safe with you. Now
tell me something of yourself. This man whom you called uncle—is he
your father’s brother?”
“That he is. My mother and father died in the plague that spread through
the town when I was small. He is a Master of Arts in the university and
a very great scholar,” she added proudly. “His name is Nicholas Kreutz
and among those most famed in the university in alchemy he is indeed the
greatest. He is not a servant of the Church, though a good Christian,
and he seeks, as do many others, the secrets of his craft.”
The scholar-alchemist appeared suddenly in the doorway and smiled at
them.
“I have just ascertained,” he said, seating himself at the table, “that
if it pleases your father there is a haven for you all here in this very
house. There is not much to pay, and a shelter, however lowly, is better
than the sky when night falls. Your father might sell his pair of
horses—horses bring a good price at present, I hear—and he could live
here until some suitable employment appears. Unless,” he added, “the
place is too humble——”
“Indeed that cannot be,” said the boy eagerly. “Gladly at this minute
will he welcome any roof for the sake of my mother who is somewhat tired
after the long journey from the Ukraine. I cannot go too swiftly to tell
him of this news. But only assure me that you are in sober earnest about
this matter.”
Elzbietka sprang up from her chair. “Did you but know him as well as I,
you would not doubt.”
At that the alchemist enveloped her with his long arms from which hung
the black sleeves of his gown, until she smiled out from the embrace at
Joseph like one caught between the wings of a great raven or crow.
“Hurry and tell your people,” she commanded him, “and bring them back
here. Indeed, I never knew what a mother was. If I but please her——”
“That you will,” shouted Joseph. “I will go as soon as Pan Kreutz
unlocks the door for me below.”
“Tell your people that it is the floor beneath us that is unoccupied,”
directed the alchemist as he let the boy out through the gate. “There
are only two rooms there, a large and a small one, but they will serve
your purposes for the time, I believe.”
Joseph thanked him with all his heart and set out on the run for the
market place. The Street of the Pigeons seemed to unwind before him as
he ran and he was soon in the street leading directly to the Cloth Hall.
Turning there, past one corner of the Town Hall, he ran directly by the
cloth markets and headed for the little church near which his father had
unloosed the horses. But no sooner had his eyes fallen upon the wagon
and his father and mother standing in it, than he stopped suddenly in
astonishment. Then like an arrow leaving a bow he darted forward, for
what he saw set his heart beating faster than it had beaten in all that
eventful day.
The stranger that they had left in the mud by the roadside that morning
stood by the side of the wagon with a crowd of ruffians at his heels
threatening and shouting at Pan Andrew and his wife. The stranger
carried a huge club, and the ruffians, of whom he appeared to be the
leader, were armed with staves and stones and were shouting angrily as
if intent on harming the man and woman above them. Pan Andrew, in facing
them, had stepped in front of his wife, to shield her if stones were
thrown; and the sight of the resistance, and the cries of the leader and
his attackers, soon brought a huge crowd surging about the wagon, for it
was now close on to noon, and the morning’s business of the market was
well-nigh finished and many citizens and farmers were eating or resting
in the shade of the trees about the square.
Joseph darted through the crowd and leaped up on the wagon, to stand by
his father’s side.
“Ha, we have the cub as well,” shouted the one who had boasted of the
name Ostrovski in the early morning. “He is a wizard like unto the
father, and a witch like the mother, for it was he who made my horse fly
straight up to heaven this morning with a blow upon the flank.”
At that a great skulk in the crowd let fly a stone at the three which
missed Pan Andrew but narrowly.
“Magicians, wizards, witches,” hooted the crowd.
“It is the man who is the worst,” shouted the self-named Ostrovski. “It
is he who hath bewitched my brother and cut off his head and changed the
head into a pumpkin. If he be honest, let him deliver that pumpkin over
to me in the sight of all, that I may give Christian burial to my
brother’s brains. . . . An’ he will not, let him face my charge. He is a
wizard, yea, and one condemned by church and court and precept. At him!
Kill him! But save me the pumpkin which is the head of my brother!”
Absurd as these accusations seem to-day, they did not seem so in the
fifteenth century. For men were then but beginning to see the folly of
many superstitions and cruelties that had been prevalent since the Dark
Ages; they believed that certain persons had malign powers such as could
transform others into strange animals; they thought that by magic men
could work out their spite upon others in horribly malicious ways; that
food could be poisoned by charms and milk made sour.
And to raise the cry of wizard against a man, no matter how peace-loving
and innocent he might be, was enough to start rough and brutal men, yes,
and women, too, into active persecution and unlawful deeds.
This was the method that the stranger had adopted in order to get his
revenge upon Pan Andrew, and not only revenge, but that which he sought
even more keenly, the possession of the pumpkin that the country
gentleman had refused to deliver to him early in the day. He had been
about the city seeking out certain friends or followers in order to
raise the cry of wizard, and then he had with them searched through the
city until they came upon Pan Andrew and his wife.
“The pumpkin, the pumpkin—it is my brother’s head,” he kept shouting.
Pan Andrew, on his side, only smiled back derisively upon him, and
gathered in the pumpkin where no man could seize it without taking as
well a blow from his heavy sword, and the attackers, being more cowards
than men, made no attempt to approach the wagon at the side that he was
facing. Some armed with large stones were, however, sneaking around to
get behind him, and others in front were preparing to send a volley of
missiles upon him, when there rushed into the turmoil a man of venerable
appearance, clad in a brown robe with large puffy sleeves and pointed
hood. He was of moderate stature, firm of gait, and bore himself like a
man in the prime of life.
A priest he might have been, a brother of some order he seemed, but a
scholar he was certainly, for there was that in his face and a droop to
the shoulders that proclaimed him a man of letters.
“Cease—cease—cowards all!” he shouted in a commanding tone of voice.
“What persecution goes on here?”
“The man and the woman and boy are workers in magic, wizards and a
witch,” said the leader roughly. “Keep your hands off, for we are
admonishing them.”
“Wizards and witches—fiddlesticks!” shouted the newcomer, pulling
himself up in the wagon until he stood beside Pan Andrew. “This is but
an excuse for some such deed of violence as this city has seen too much
of in the past twelve months. To attack an honest man—for to any but a
blind man he appears as honest—a weak woman, and a defenseless
boy—Cowards all, I say! Disperse, or I will call the King’s guards to
disperse you.”
“It is Jan Kanty himself,” said one of the rioters in a loud whisper
that all about him heard. “I’m off, for one.” And throwing his stick to
the ground he took to his heels.
If there had been no magic in Pan Andrew, his wife, or his boy, there
was magic in the name of Jan Kanty, and a very healthy magic, too, for
at once every hat in that crowd came off, and men began to look askance
at each other as if caught in some shameful thing.
“The good Jan Kanty,” was whispered on every side, and in the briefest
second imaginable the crowd had melted until there remained not one
person, not even the leader of the ruffians who had begun the attack.