The Stone - The Alchemist's Quest for Modern Banking
A Summons:
I knew the moment the Prince summoned me that I faced the terminal trial. It was the great contest we all must come to eventually - Death looming over one shoulder, Salvation summoning us to rescue always beyond reach. I'd simply not expected to come to it so soon, so young. I was no soldier nor corsair... I admit now I'd never held a sword in my hand, nor a dagger - no, nothing more deadly than a knife to the roast! I've feared Death from my earliest memory, and taken great pains to avoid Him and the places he hunts us, the living. Perhaps it's my lack of faith - though I should not profess it, even to the privacy of my secret journal - but the prospect of cold, perpetual silence, my meat a feast for the slithering snakes and worms... surrounded forever by the dank, hideous clutch of mud and soil. I have always hated the dirt. I wash continuously, lest it impregnate my skin and enter the course of my humors. Oh, how I hate everything about the dirt and Death, and how I've always seen them as one thing! It was all these, my fears, that led me to monastic retirement as a lad, and to my studies - surrounded by clean stone, fresh wool, crisp new parchment and - finally - my chemicals, elixirs and potions; my books, my abacus and my calculations.
What a good man, my father's cousin, the Abbot, to accept me in and give me succor from the meanness and dirt of it all. A man of great love and patience. I suppose he felt he owed it to my father, and he may have, for something had happened when they were young men - something that had scarred my father and had led cousin Henri to hastily take the orders. It was whispered amongst the old caretakers at my father's house that a woman had been compromised somehow, and a man - a father or a brother - of great power had been killed. My father, unlike me, had known which end of the sword to hold! And famously so, to great renown. I know I was his catastrophe and his disappointment. He called me his penance and his punishment. Yet he'd loved me in his own way, clearly, but that was the name by which I was called - not my given name of Denis - and the name that still clings to me now. "Brother Penance - you are called to the court of his Benign Highness, the Prince. Make haste, he will not wait!"
So there I stood at the servant gate, waiting to be taken in, hearing the sweep of the Black Scythe coming nearer, nearer, nearer. The Prince had heard somehow of my studies, and heard that I could cure his illness. The illness of all Princes - poverty, debt and destitution. But he would not understand! He would think it a thing, not the thing it was, and he would hold me for Death to fetch me to the dirt! Oh, Father! Oh, God! Just send me back to the clean walls of my cell and let me work! It is great work, I must admit, and work that one day will change the world. It will lift many from the dirt and deprivation. So clear to me! So impossible to explain, and so impossible to actually do! His Benign Highness would never, could never, understand. No man bent on the accumulation of useless minerals - how much less worthy than lead and iron and copper and tin! - fit for nothing but baubles and decoration... I admit, I whimpered in my fear. The page who'd come for me stared at me without sympathy as we waited for the guard. He offered me no comfort, nor even acknowledged my obvious distress. They are all cruel, Princes and their pensioners. They all live alongside the rattle of bones, amidst the stench of fleshly corruption, already rotting in life as they finally would in death, so they cannot understand men like me. No one can. Save me, God, whose very existence I cannot help but question, but whose Love and Forgiveness I dearly, dearly covet - covet as the Prince covets his silver and his gold. The guard came. "Enter. His Highness awaits in the private audience chamber."
Death followed like a dog, gamboling merrily at my heels!
The Audience
The page jerked his head, motioning me to follow. The guard, a burly brutish animal of a man perfumed by onions and black flatulence, took station behind. His arms clanked menacingly like a toneless malformed tower bell, and his clothing made hissing noises like a serpent. As we climbed the first stair through the narrow aperture of the outer wall, I glanced over my shoulder. The guard stomped along dumbly like a cow, his eyes empty, his bewhiskered chin hanging slack such that his foul huffing breath poured out like a waterfall over my head and back. Distracted by my horror of the guard, I shuddered and stumbled into the back of the page. He'd come to a halt near a closed door at the apex of the stair.
:"Pay attention, brother monk!" the page snapped at me with a scowl. "Are you already drunk? That's what they say of the monks of the abbey, they drink wine and beer by the tun before every Hour."
"No, no. I stumbled. I beg your lordship's forgiveness," I protested, trying to smile humbly.
He snorted and pushed open the door. "Come, it's up one more flight." He repeated, "Pay attention! Our Lord demands the sharpest wit in his presence, and brooks no fools. You will enter by the side service door. The Prince will meet with you privately... for some reason." The page was clearly displeased at the supposed honor I was to be granted. I bowed my head, trying to look grateful when inside my heart pounded like a drum and my temples felt like they would explode like a pitchy pine brand on the kitchen fire.
We climbed one more stair under the sputtering hell-like gleam of wall sconces before reaching a broader landing and another, more ominous door flanked by two more bovine brutes, these in burnished plate and full livery. The page waved at the door. One of the guards opened it slowly, almost ceremoniously. The other guard entered ahead of the page, who entered ahead of me. The original guard turned and clanked back down the stairs, his duty done.
The chamber we entered was different than the dank, utilitarian stairway. There was a large, open window to the left letting in the westerning sun and a cleansing breeze off the river below. Lamps added more light in the corners, and the walls were bedecked by intricately woven tapestries depicting pastoral scenes and landscapes. Opposite the window to the right was a surprisingly modest grouping of chairs arranged around an unlit fireplace. I looked for a Prince's throne and dais, but there was none. In many respects the apartment reminded me of the Abbot's sitting room. The page directed me to stand in place next to the guard, while he moved across the room to a set of double doors opposite. He opened both doors wide and took station. In a moment, a very tall, white haired man dressed in simple jerkin and leggings without armor, flourish or weaponry entered. The man came towards me, and it was only as he approached I realized it was the Prince himself.
"Come, brother Denis, and sit with me. The rest of you may leave us. Henri, see to it we are provided with some food to nibble on and some wine to drink."
