The Cabinet of Curiosities (11 page)

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Chapter Nineteen

Anselmus Declercq sat at the back of an upstairs room in a respectable tavern in the centre of the city. It was a warm afternoon and the room was already uncomfortably full. Anselmus recognised one or two faces from the Castle, but most of the audience were wealthy merchants from the Old Town. Ruzicka had not appeared, nor any of the other eminent natural philosophers or physicians of the court. Anselmus felt a little foolish to have come but told himself he was doing his duty.

At the front of the room a space had been cleared. Behind it was a door to the landing beyond, where Lukas crouched to peer in through a crack in the frame. He spotted his uncle and was relieved to see he was not sitting near the front. That was good, at least.

Neither Strom nor Etienne had turned up. Hlava just shrugged. ‘More spoils for the rest of us,’ he said. Lukas wished he’d had the courage to stick with his instincts and turn this venture down, but now it was too late.

The others stood around the landing, biding their time. Hlava was delighted that he had managed to attract such a large crowd. He was wearing a magnificent purple robe with gold and silver stitching. A large white turban hid his missing ear, a thick black beard covered his face. They had all looked astonished when they saw the costume earlier in the day. ‘Lesson one, my friends,’ said Hlava. ‘If you want people to think you have the means to create great wealth, you have to look the part.’

He stood between Radek and Dusan and slapped their broad backs. ‘Wait behind the door. Stay hidden. I will call if I need to frighten anybody.’ He chuckled. ‘Now let us proceed!’ He opened the door and the crowd immediately fell silent.

Peering over the heads of the audience Anselmus thought there was something familiar about the man. But when, speaking in a barely decipherable Russian accent, he introduced himself as Doktor Novakovich, he decided he did not.

‘I have demonstration for you. I learn from the ancients to turn your lead, your tin, your zinc . . . to gold.’

He clapped his hands and Oldrich and Karel staggered into the room via a door at the back with a heavy, iron-bound chest laden with crucibles, tongs, bellows and other laboratory equipment. Built into it was a brick-lined charcoal brazier. Hlava’s assistants were also dressed as visitors from the far reaches of the Muscovite dominions, and they too sported sumptuous beards.

‘My gift is one that is much abused,’ said Hlava. ‘There are many trickeries, many . . .’ he paused, as if grasping for a difficult word, ‘charl . . . atans. So I ask for one of you –’ he smiled broadly at the audience – ‘to do my experiment.’

Anselmus saw one of the alchemists step forward. Hlava recognised his type at once. ‘You, sir, are learned man. But I want man who know nothing of our calling. A man who has no knowledge of natural world.’

A suspicious murmur rumbled around the room as the alchemist started to return to his chair. But Hlava surprised them all by asking him to stay.

‘You, sir – you watch. You watch careful, for tricks.’

This seemed to please his audience. Then he picked a finely dressed fellow sitting in the front row of the audience. ‘And what is your profession, sir?’

The man declared himself to be an importer of wines.

‘And will you help?’

He stood up to an appreciative murmur. The audience was getting excited.

Hlava settled them down with an upheld hand.

‘Now, I tell you what I do. We mix litharge –’ he held up a small glass jar of powdered dark ore – ‘and orpiment.’ A jar of glittering crystals. Then he gestured to two other containers: ‘Then borax, and salt.’ All were handed to the alchemist to examine. He sniffed, tasted or shook each jar and nodded his approval.

Hlava turned to the merchant and handed him a small measuring vessel.

‘You must mix one-third each for borax and salt, then half each for litharge and orpiment. Place here,’ he said, pointing to the stout iron crucible atop his apparatus.

As he spoke, Oldrich and Karel began to light the small charcoal brazier built into the chest. Hlava announced he had other assistants too. ‘I have a gift,’ he said solemnly, ‘for I can speak with angels.’

The atmosphere in the room changed at once. The alchemists began to scoff and the merchants laughed.

‘I understand your disbelief,’ said Hlava, who was completely unruffled by their contempt. ‘All I ask is that you continue to watch my demonstration.’

The audience settled again. Hlava raised his hands and eyes to the ceiling and began to speak in an unknown tongue. Some wondered if this might be Enochian, the language of angels.

When he had finished his angelic discourse, Hlava turned his gaze to his audience.

‘Now we must leave the room so our heavenly accomplices can do their work undisturbed.’

There was an outcry. Angry voices shouted, ‘Impostor!’, ‘Fraud!’ Hlava settled them again. ‘We will all leave. And I will seal the room.’ This seemed to reassure the crowd.

As he spoke, Oldrich and Karel set about marking the door behind them with wax seals. Then they proceeded to the two window handles. Hlava gestured to his audience, inviting them all to leave by the other door. He asked the merchant and alchemist to be the last to go and ensure no one was in the room. Out in the corridor Oldrich and Karel sealed that door too. ‘Who will watch the windows?’ asked Hlava. Two men volunteered.

‘How long will it take?’ said one of the audience.

‘Ten minute,’ Hlava assured them. ‘Is very delicate procedure,’ he explained. ‘Vibration in the air, or noise . . . anything at all disturb the peace of room, and process not work.’

It seemed a reasonable enough explanation and the audience were happy to wait outside the tavern.

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Inside the chest, Lukas was drenched in sweat from the heat of the fire. He could feel it burning his back and was desperate to emerge from his hiding place. He tried to stifle the cough that rose in his throat and cursed himself for being stupid enough to agree to this stunt. If anything went wrong, Anselmus would be there to witness his humiliation and collusion. At best, Lukas would be sent back to Ghent. But Hlava had managed to convince him that he was the only choice for the job. ‘Karel is not heavy,’ he had confided, ‘but he is stupid. You will not let me down.’

He listened for the shuffle of feet as the crowd left the room, and counted, as he had been instructed, to one hundred. Then, once he was sure he was alone, he slipped the catch in the back of the chest and tumbled out. When he tried to stand up a terrible pain shot up his back. His legs, which had gone completely numb, collapsed beneath him. He lay on the floor praying for the strength to stand, although he realised how absurd it was to ask God to help him in his mischief.

After a short while, sensation returned to his legs and he carefully stood upright. In his pocket was a small leather bag containing gold filings, and he scattered the flakes in among the smouldering chemicals in the crucible. That was all he needed to do. He took a deep breath and folded his body back inside the chest. His shoulder, which had been pressed against the burning brazier, began to hurt terribly. He realised he had to change his position and shuffled out again. There was a commotion at the door. Hlava was announcing in a loud voice, ‘I shall now break the seals and we may all re-enter the room.’

Lukas was barely back in the box when the door opened. Fortunately the audience, in their dash to view the crucible, and their excited chattering, was making enough noise to enable him to click the lock back in place before they arrived at the chest.

Hlava called for quiet. He lifted the lid off the crucible and a great gasp rose from the crowd. There among the ore and crystals were melted flecks of gold. Hlava picked them out with a small metal implement, separating them on a silver plate.

Seizing on their enthusiasm, he called for silence and then spoke again. ‘This process of producing gold works in many ways, and with many different concoctions, but the most effective is by including a little gold in the original mixture. I ask you gentlemen, those among you who have gold crowns to give, to contribute to my next experiment. I promise you I will return your donation four-fold.’

Immediately the crowd began to reach into their purses and pockets, anxious to profit from this miraculous process.

Oldrich and Karel stepped forward to record the donations. Karel, who could not write, placed the crowns in a leather bag. Oldrich recorded the names in his childlike hand.

By the time they had finished, they had collected more than one hundred gold crowns. Hlava instructed his audience to be seated. There would be no assistants or observers this time. As Oldrich and Karel fussed around the furnace he waited for his moment, and with a magician’s sleight of hand he replaced the coins with brass forgeries concealed in a compartment in the chest. These he quickly covered with salt, lead, eggshell and dung. Then he ostentatiously tossed in two of his own coins to help maintain his audience’s faith in him.

As the audience watched, entranced, Hlava mixed a strong acid and mercury in a crucible. It produced a hideous stench. The room filled with smoke and the audience began to cough and splutter. Hlava slipped a glass tube of gunpowder into the fire. The sides of the chest were reinforced with heavy iron plates, protecting Hlava, his assistants and Lukas. But the front of the brazier wasn’t. There was a loud explosion and red-hot coals shot out into the room.

Some of the audience were burned, others were choking so hard they were gasping for breath. There was a crush at the door as people tried to escape.

Inside the chest, Lukas was close to panic. Hlava had not told him about this. The explosion followed by the shrieking and cries of the crowd were frightening him half to death. Was the chest itself on fire? If he came out, Anselmus would see him. Had his uncle been hurt? What should he do?

He heard the catch click and strong arms hauled him from his hiding place. Oldrich and Karel dragged him away. Dusan and Radek, waiting behind the landing door, picked him up and all of them escaped down the back stairs and into the maze of streets and alleys that made up the Jewish Quarter.

In Lukas’s mind the whole escape was a blur. He only began to think clearly when they arrived breathless at a house near the tavern. Hlava knew the occupant, who was pleased with the gold crown he received for his troubles.

As they removed their outfits and beards and changed into the street clothes they had left there beforehand, Hlava, Oldrich and Karel were in high spirits. The scam had worked. Lukas felt too stunned to trust himself to say the right thing. ‘Weren’t you worried about hurting anyone?’ he wanted to say. But looking at the elated faces around him, he thought better of it.

Hlava gave Dusan and Radek a gold crown each and sent them on their way. When they were gone he counted out another ten gold crowns and told Oldrich to divide it between the rest of them as he thought fit. He and Karel kept four crowns each and gave Lukas two. ‘But mine was the most difficult job,’ Lukas protested. Karel fingered his knife and asked what he was going to do about it.

Lukas looked at Hlava, expecting him to agree. But Hlava just shrugged. ‘You were hidden away, my boy,’ he said. ‘Oldrich and Karel were exposed to public view. They took the greater risk.’

Lukas headed for home in a foul mood. As he walked, his blistered back rubbed painfully against his shirt.

The closer he got to the Castle, the more he worried about what he would find when he got there. Had Anselmus seen him make his escape? Had he been hurt in the explosion? If his uncle was all right, he wondered if he should confess, and promise he would never do anything like that again.

Discovering the door unlocked, he opened it gingerly and peered in. Anselmus was sitting by the window, immersed in a book. He barely acknowledged Lukas’s arrival.

When he got to his room and lay down on the bed, Lukas felt light-headed with relief and decided he would not tell his uncle anything about the day. The coins felt heavy in his pocket. Two gold crowns was more than he would earn in two months as Anselmus’s apprentice.

When they talked over supper, Anselmus mentioned that he had gone to an alchemy demonstration in the Old Town but had left before the climax. ‘The man was obviously a crook,’ he said dismissively. ‘I couldn’t be bothered to discover what happened next. No one ever made gold from litharge and orpiment.’

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Chapter Twenty

Two days later, a parcel for Lukas Declercq was waiting on the doorstep when he returned from delivering food to his Aunt Elfriede. It was the blue tunic Celestina had promised to make him and it was magnificent. As he unwrapped it, he looked for a note from her. It fluttered out from the folds of the material and he eagerly opened it. There was just one word.

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Cabinet?

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Lukas had hoped she might forget. It had been very foolish of him to even tell her about it. He had to play this very carefully.

But that week everything fell into place. At breakfast one morning Anselmus announced he was taking his sister to buy supplies for her medicines and would return that evening. And, as far as Lukas knew, the Emperor was away at Brandys nad Labem, his favourite country estate. He wrote a little note to Celestina, sealed it with wax and slipped it under her door. She invited him round at once.

His knocking at the door brought the usual flurry of barking. This time Celestina opened it. ‘My father has business in the city,’ she whispered, ‘but we must divert Perpetua!’ She giggled. Lukas was thrilled to find her in such high spirits.

‘I’ll give her the day off,’ said Celestina. ‘I’ll say I have a slight fever – ask her to go into town and get me some herbs and treat herself to some fabric. She’s always saying she needs some velvet for a dress. That’ll take her most of the day. Meet me back here in an hour.’

Lukas had prepared the ground. The Cabinet was rarely directly guarded because there was only one entrance and it required a key to open it. Only a handful of people possessed that key. The palace entrance was guarded, of course, but those who came and went with regularity were allowed in without a second glance. Fortunately Celestina’s quarters were close to the great door that led to the Cabinet. All that was needed were the keys – and Lukas knew exactly where Anselmus kept them. They were behind a medical encyclopedia on a lofty bookshelf that ran across the top of one of the windows. It required a set of steps to get up there. Anselmus had never exactly shown Lukas, but he made no attempt to hide what he was doing when he retrieved or returned the keys.

The hour came. Otka was out. Lukas was alone. It took a couple of attempts to find the right volume, but the keys were there, up against the wall.

Lukas walked past the Emperor’s palace entrance. He deliberately did not speak to the guard. He didn’t want him to remember even seeing him. Then he sprinted up to the Doranteses’ apartment.

Celestina opened the door and came straight out. They crept down the stairs, trying not to giggle in their daring. As they reached the corridor that led to the great door of the Cabinet she grabbed hold of his arm in her excitement. She would never do such a thing with Perpetua keeping an eye on them. Lukas liked the touch of her hand.

It was now mid-morning, and everyone else who lived in that part of the Castle was out and about on imperial business. Warm sunlight flooded the corridors and there was a pleasing sleepy silence about the place.

Lukas produced the keys as a stage magician produces a magic wand. He quickly slid one into the lock and turned the mechanism. The door creaked alarmingly as it opened a fraction. They both panicked. Lukas snatched the key out and they ran as quietly as they could back down the corridor. The guard at the palace entrance was only one floor below. What if he came up to investigate? Surely the noise they had made would travel down the stone staircase.

They stopped in an alcove, Celestina still holding tightly to his arm, and waited for their breathing to steady. ‘There is a delivery late every morning,’ she said. ‘A donkey and cart come by with vegetables for the kitchens. He’ll be here very soon. Let’s wait.’

Just moments later they heard a distant clatter.

‘He’s coming,’ she said.

With a rattle and clop, the cart clattered past the open door of the palace. The sound was so loud on the stairs Lukas thought he could have battered down the door with an axe and the guard would not hear him.

Within seconds they were inside, with the door locked behind them, while the donkey and his cart were still within smelling distance of the guard on the door. The inner door swung open with barely a squeak.

Celestina stared open-mouthed at the paintings on the walls.

‘There’s so much here,’ she said. She was giggling in the way people do when they’re embarrassed.

‘Let’s go to the next gallery,’ whispered Lukas. Being with her and these lurid paintings was making him feel uncomfortable. ‘There are many other things to look at.’

They tiptoed down the central gallery, looking neither left nor right at the extraordinary cornucopia of treasures that surrounded them. In the next room – off at a right angle – was the Emperor’s collection of relics. Lukas guessed this would interest Celestina.

‘Look at this,’ he said in a suitably respectful whisper. ‘It’s a nail from Noah’s Ark!’

She dropped to her knees in reverent awe. ‘What else is there?’ she said, barely believing what she was seeing.

Lukas tried to remember what else Anselmus had shown him and walked over to the table opposite. He pointed to a long piece of ivory. ‘This is a unicorn horn,’ he whispered, ‘and this is a feather from a phoenix.’

‘How amazing,’ said Celestina. ‘But how do we know these things are really what they say they are?’

Lukas shrugged. He wasn’t expecting to have to defend the veracity of these objects. ‘I suppose the Emperor has experts who tell him if something is real or not. Look – here’s a demon trapped inside a glass jar. Would you like to open it, to see if he’s really in there?’

She shook her head fearfully. ‘Let’s get away from it.’

She picked up a beautiful silver lattice sphere enclosing a roughly-textured lump of something. ‘Euuurgh!’ she exclaimed. ‘How odd – to surround something so ugly in such a beautiful casing. What is it?’

Anselmus had told Lukas and he was keen to show off his knowledge. ‘It’s a bezoar from a unicorn. That’s a stone that forms in the gut of an animal. Humans have them too. They’re used as a cure for poisons.’

She started looking further afield. It was then that Lukas’s eyes fell on a timepiece, placed randomly between a tortoiseshell and a string of lustrous amber beads. It was an extraordinary thing. The octagonal case would fit in the palm of his hand and was full of wondrous detail. The dial was decorated with a geometric pattern and held a single hand in the shape of a mermaid’s tail, to point to the hours. Gold-plated beading surrounded the face in a floral design like a raspberry thicket. At the top was a little key for winding the mechanism, and a gold ring and silk ribbon so that the watch could be hung around the neck like a pendant.

Lukas had never seen anything quite so exquisite. He thought of Etienne’s proposal. In one mad, impulsive moment he picked up the timepiece and slipped it into his tunic pocket.

Celestina had her back to him, but she soon turned and whispered, ‘Look at this lovely drawing of a hare.’ It was fantastically lifelike. Lukas peered at the signature at the bottom: ‘A. Dürer’.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘I wish I could draw like that.’

‘All of this . . .’ She gestured at the room. ‘I have never seen anything so strange. What would anyone want with such a bizarre collection?’

‘Uncle Anselmus says the Emperor is trying to fathom the meaning of creation. He thinks if he can gather up every extraordinary thing he can lay his hands on, it will all fall into place.’

They reached the end of the hall and turned into another long room. Here, away from direct sunlight, were portraits of Rudolph and his family. One of them caught Lukas’s eye. It was someone from the Emperor’s family – the likeness was obvious. But when he looked again, the portrait had changed to one of Rudolph and his brother.

Lukas shuddered with fear. At once he was keenly aware that their trespassing was a grave transgression and wondered whether Rudolph might, by some magical means, be spying on them from afar. He suddenly felt so frightened it was all he could do to still his trembling hands.

‘You’re white as a ghost,’ said Celestina.

‘That picture changes,’ said Lukas. ‘You look at it and it’s one of Rudolph’s brothers. You look at it again, and it’s Rudolph and another brother. What sort of sorcery is that?’

She looked, then walked down the room and looked again. She giggled impishly. ‘I’ve seen one of these in Madrid. It’s clever, isn’t it?’

She took his hand and led him up to the picture. ‘Look,’ she said, as if explaining something to a five-year-old. ‘The surface is made of three-cornered wooden strips. Like triangles.’

It was. The closer he got, the clearer he could see the sharp angle of the strips. ‘One side lies flat. Then you paint one picture on the left-hand side and the other picture on the right. It appears to change when you look at it from different places in the room.’

Lukas began to blush. But before he could say anything they were startled to hear the sound of a bell, a long melancholy chime that hung in the air and slowly shimmered into silence. ‘It must be a clock,’ whispered Lukas. ‘It’s chiming the hour too early.’ But the chimes carried on, without the regularity of a timepiece. Lukas was desperate to leave. The watch sat there in his tunic, weighing heavily on his chest and his conscience. He wondered if it showed among the folds of clothing.

Before he could stop her Celestina was walking towards the source of the noise. ‘Come back,’ he whispered, but she was too far ahead to hear him. The long room turned again at a right angle. He caught up with her as she was looking around the corner into the next chamber. She quickly pulled back and began to breathe deeply, as if in shock. Lukas gingerly peered around the corner.

Close to the far wall, sitting on a plush red chair, was a familiar figure. He was half turned away from them, but Lukas recognised him at once. It was Rudolph. In one hand was a large golden bell. In the other hand he held an ivory pole as long as a man. As he rang the bell he muttered incantations to himself. Lukas could hear snatches of Latin. From what he understood, he thought the Emperor was trying to talk to the dead. Placed on the floor in front of him was the delicate agate bowl that Anselmus had told him was supposed to be the Holy Grail.

Celestina was terrified. ‘We must go,’ she hissed. They both hurried back to the entrance, expecting to see one of the Emperor’s courtiers at any moment. But no one else was there. Rudolph, it seemed, had gone there alone. ‘The donkey should be back soon,’ whispered Celestina. ‘We can leave then.’

They crouched down close to the door by one of the larger cases. Standing upright made them both feel too vulnerable, too conspicuous.

‘Who was
that
?’ she asked.

Lukas told her.

‘You told me he was away from the Castle,’ she said.

Lukas shrugged helplessly. That was what he had heard.

‘And what was he doing?’

‘I think he was trying to talk to the dead,’ Lukas explained. ‘My father was burned at the stake for far less,’ he said, suddenly indignant.

She looked aghast. Lukas realised too late he had told her something best kept secret.

They stood by the entrance, ears straining, not catching each other’s eye. When the donkey cart passed they made a swift escape, and she ran down the corridor away from him without another word.

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‘It is a peculiar collection, Father,’ said Celestina later that day. ‘Full of lewdness and the infatuations of a disordered mind. There are beautiful things and repellent things too.’

She felt haunted by her visit and had already begun to ask herself whether everything she had seen and heard had actually happened.

‘And the boy,’ said Dorantes. ‘Can we expect him to help us?’

‘Not directly,’ said Celestina. ‘His mind is corrupted by heretical thoughts.’

She wondered whether or not to tell him about Lukas’s father, but something held her back.

Dorantes’s face wrinkled in distaste. ‘Just like his uncle. It is this city that poisons men’s minds. I have no doubt if we stay much longer we too will fall prey to this freethinking malady.’

Already, when he was alone, in the dead of night, Dorantes had begun to doubt the wisdom of his own country’s expulsion of its Jews by the Inquisition. He could see how the Jews lived here without baleful consequence and how they benefited the city. He fought to crush such feelings and convince himself that his uncertainties would be quelled as soon as he returned to Spain.

Celestina was staring at him, wondering what he was thinking. He smiled. ‘I can’t believe you have grown up so quickly,’ he said. ‘I still think of you as the little girl I left in the Low Countries. But you are a shrewd young woman with wisdom beyond your years. And you are proving to be invaluable in my mission.’

These parental intimacies embarrassed her. ‘I don’t think we will ever enlist the boy to our cause,’ she said, ‘but perhaps we can still make use of him.

‘He thinks me pretty,’ she smirked, ‘and will do anything I ask of him.’

Dorantes’s voice took on a stern edge. ‘Beware of vanity, my child. It is the Devil’s playground.
When pride cometh, then cometh shame
. . . You know the words of Proverbs chapter eleven, verse two.’