Nicholas Flamel and the Codex, page 1
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Michael Scott
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Cover design by Regina Flath
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About the Author
I am old now, so very, very old.
I was born in the year of Our Lord 1330. The world was very different then: dark, dangerous, indescribably smelly, a time of superstition and fear. People believed that demons wandered the earth. They feared the monsters in the forests and the creatures under the bridges. They prayed to countless saints but left offerings to forest sprites. They kept holy the church holidays but also honored the ancient festivals of Midsummer and Midwinter. The supernatural, the otherworld, was very close indeed.
I had no idea just how close. I believed myself a scientist, and had little regard for superstition. I did not realize that at the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth.
It was a time when life was short and even the simplest ailment—a toothache, a splinter, a burst appendix—could be fatal. But I was lucky. I always enjoyed a robust constitution, and I have all my original teeth, except for the one the Yeti knocked out in 1700. I grew up in an age of simple food: fruits and vegetables, cheese, eggs, wine, and newly baked bread. We drank wine because it was safer than drinking the water. We rarely had meat, and after I became immortal, I lost the taste for it entirely. These habits continue to the present day and have no doubt contributed to my overall good health.
Well, those habits and the formula for immortality that I brew afresh every month. The recipe is in the Codex, the Book of Abraham the Mage, that most extraordinary collection of knowledge, the most dangerous book in the world.
The ancients believed that over the course of one’s life, there were a few—a very few—life-changing instances. Some Western cultures believe that these number no more than five, while the Eastern sages maintain that there are seven. These are the moments when the direction of one’s life shifts in an entirely new direction. Looking back over my own years, I find it easy to pinpoint some of those life-changing incidents. Meeting Perenelle, the woman who would become my wife, changed my existence immeasurably. Discovering the Twins of Legend was another.
But if there is one event that not only altered the direction of my life but also transformed the history of the world, it was the moment when I bought a slender metal-bound book from a mysterious one-handed man.
From the Day Booke of Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst
1
The river stank.
The winter of 1354 had been particularly hard, and the Seine, clotted and sluggish with filth and refuse, froze solid in early December, a thick skin of ice growing from the east and west banks. As the year turned, only a narrow channel in the middle of the river remained open, and the ice on either bank was said to be as thick as a child was tall. But an unexpectedly mild spring brought on a rapid thaw, and suddenly the Parisian air was foul with a hundred noxious odors that had been locked in the ice.
The smells—of rot and decay, of bloated fish and other, less identifiable carcasses, of stinking mud and human waste—tainted everything. Bakers discovered that it polluted the flour, butchers grumbled that it was impossible to remove from their meats, fish were inedible, and the flower sellers around the newly completed Notre-Dame cathedral complained that even the sweetest-smelling rose reeked of the Seine.
This year it was so bad that the king himself, John the Good, threatened to leave the capital and establish his court elsewhere,
But in the back room of a tiny shop off the Rue du Montmorency, one man was delighted. Nicholas Flamel—tall, thin, beardless, hair unfashionably short and eyes sunk deep in an unhealthily pale face—was passing out small cloth-wrapped bundles to ten barefoot urchins standing before him. The air in the tiny room was heavy with the rich scents of roses, herbs, and a suggestion of spices from faraway lands.
“Now, repeat after me….” Flamel’s accent betrayed just a hint of his country upbringing, but he was working hard to mimic the more cultured Parisian intonation. “This nosegay is a concoction of the finest herbs and spices from the mysterious lands of Cathay.”
“This nosegay is the finest…”
“This concoction…”
“What’s a nosegay?”
“What’s a Cathay?”
Nicholas sighed. The urchins—six boys and four girls—were the latest recruits to sell the small perfumed bags, each with the letters NF burned into the cloth. At the moment he had thirty children, ranging in age from six to twelve, on the streets, hawking the bags to Parisians. Business, especially close to the river and outside the alehouses and theaters, was brisk. On a good day, his troupe could sell around two hundred bags. The crisp, cleansing scent lasted about forty-eight hours before it faded, and most of the customers came back for more.
“You do not have to know what it means. You just have to remember and repeat it. Now, let’s try again.” He held up a sachet. “Each of you will have one of these. This is your special bag. It’s a little bit bigger than the ones you will sell, and it has this sign burned into the cloth.” Tilting the pouch, he revealed a large X. “You do not sell this bag. You wave it under your customer’s nose and you say, ‘Smell this.’ ” Flamel brought the bag to his own nose and the ten children mimicked him. The mixture of peppermint, licorice, spices, and rose petals was almost overpowering. Two of the children sneezed. “Then you say, ‘This nosegay is a concoction of the finest herbs and spices from the mysterious lands of Cathay, blended here in Paris, by the most wonderful apothecary Nicholas Flamel.’ ”
“By who?”
“Apoca-what?”
“By me. I am Nicholas Flamel.” He sighed again. “Let us take a moment. Go into the kitchen. Madame Perenelle has some hot soup and bread for you. Perhaps the food will improve your memory. In the meantime, I will prepare more sachets.”
* * *
—
Flamel descended the steps to the basement in total darkness. There were candles set into niches in the wall, but he was reluctant to light them: candles were expensive, and the last time he’d lit one, he’d almost set his sleeve on fire.
The square room at the bottom of the stairs was bathed in the dull red glow from a low fire in the center of the room. Balanced over the fire on a tripod was a fat-bellied pot. The lid was rattling precariously, leaking a sweet citrus odor into the air.
“Just in time,” Flamel muttered, wrapping a cloth around his hand and raising the lid. He was immediately engulfed in scented smoke, which made his eyes water uncontrollably. “This was not how I saw my life.” He coughed as he poured the perfumed water into a series of smaller pots. He was twenty-five now, and in the past few years he’d struggled to make a living in Paris. He’d found work as a scrivener, writing letters for people, and copying manuscripts and books. Shortly after he married, and with Perenelle’s encouragement, he’d begun the study of alchemy, a mixture of several sciences along with a dash of superstition. Alchemy was the science of the future, the science of invention and discovery, and it was said to hold the answers to two great mysteries: how to turn ordinary metal into gold, and how to attain eternal life. While eternal life sounded good, right now Nicholas would be satisfied with just being able to turn metal into gold. Or silver. Even copper would do. For the past couple of years, they had been living off Perenelle’s money, but that would not last forever.
He’d not yet turned fifteen when he’d run away from home in search of adventure. He had such dreams: he was going to be rich and famous, travel the world and discover its secrets, become an advisor to kings and princes. He spent nearly five years wandering across Europe, but the lure of home was too strong and he’d eventually returned to his hometown of Pontoise. But there was nothing there for him. Both his parents were dead, his sisters married with families of their own, and his brothers had divided the small family farm between them. He stayed two nights, paid his respects at his parents’ grave, and struck out for Paris, seeking his fortune, still following his dreams.
Which had led him to a back street brewing cheap perfume.
Growing up, he never thought he would marry, but he’d been wrong about that too. And for that he was truly grateful. He was the first to admit that Perenelle Delamere had changed his life for the better. On the surface, it appeared that they had little in common: ten years his senior, she was wealthy and a widow, and came from a family who could trace their history back to the first Norse Viking invaders. Flamel had no idea where his family came from. His father and grandfather were farmers; they never spoke of the past, though his father’s mother had the dark olive skin and raven hair of those from southern Spain. He’d fallen in love with Perenelle Delamere the first time he’d seen her. He would never forget that moment. He was renting a little stall huddled between the columns of the Cathedral of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie. There, he wrote letters for those who could not write, copied pages from manuscripts and books, and went hungry every day, and still barely made enough to pay his rent.
Four years ago, on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve, he had looked up and watched a tall, slender, raven-haired women sweep across the courtyard, heading toward the church. Almost as if she felt his eyes on her, she’d stopped, turned, and looked at him. Through the gloom and fading light he was conscious of her startlingly green eyes. She strode across the courtyard toward him and stopped before the stall.
“I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, holding them. “Do you know what that means?”
He nodded, though he was unsure how to answer.
“My touch can heal—not always, but often. I can see the shades of the dead and talk to them. Sometimes they answer. When I was six years old, my grandmother, who also possessed the Sight, took me to see the Hooded Man, who lived in a crystal-studded cave on the shores of the Bay of Douarnenez, close to my home. He told me that I would marry and become a widow. He told me that my life would be filled with books and writing. And that I would know my true love the moment I set eyes on him. My name is Perenelle Delamere.”
“I am Nicholas Flamel.”
They married six months later, on the eighteenth day of August.
Theirs was not a conventional relationship. She supported his studies, paid the rent on the Montmorency house, bought him books, and encouraged his research into alchemy. Perenelle had even suggested the nosegay, found the herbs and spices, and brewed the first batch from a recipe she remembered from her childhood. Right now, the cotton bags, stitched by Perenelle and filled with dried paste, were bringing in more money than they’d earned in the past year. Nicholas knew that the market would not last forever. The Seine was still frozen in many places, but once it was flowing swiftly, it would carry all the floating filth and the accompanying stench out to sea. There were perhaps another ten days of sales left before the air cleared. The money they’d earned from the sachets would last them a month, maybe five weeks, and he had no idea what they were going to do then. He pushed the thought from his mind; he’d learned a long time ago that a lot of the things he worried about never actually came to pass. And right now he needed to focus without distraction. The last time he’d gotten distracted, he’d allowed a batch of herbs to burn and cost them an entire day’s takings.
He wrapped a leather apron around his waist, pulled a cotton mask over his mouth and nose, and then set about distilling and decanting the bubbling water. When this was all over, he promised himself, he was never going to wear perfume again, and if he was ever wealthy enough to have a garden, he’d make sure there were no roses. He sneezed. And no peppermint either!
* * *
—
The church bells were tolling eight o’clock when Flamel finally climbed out of the cellar. The perfume had given him a pounding headache, and his clothes and hair stank of peppermint and rose.
Perenelle was waiting at the top of the stairs, a single candle held high above her head, illuminating her sharp features and silver-streaked black hair. “I was just coming down to get you.” She pressed her knuckle under her nose and blinked away a sneeze. “You stink.”
“You should smell it from here.” His voice was hoarse, throat raw from the cloying smells. “I brewed up another batch. I added more rose petals, as you suggested. You were right,” he added with a smile. “As usual.”
“I told you: licorice and citrus are masculine; women prefer florals, and more women buy scent. Now, I have left some hot water in your room. Go and wash, change into your best clothes. There is someone waiting for you in the shop. A man.”
“At this hour?”
“He came late because he wanted to speak to you in private.”
“I can see him now….”
Perenelle shook her head firmly. “Wash, change. There is something about this person…something odd. I think this is someone we treat with respect.”
“A nobleman?”
“No…neither noble nor merchant. But powerful.”
Nicholas reached out and caught his wife’s hand. “Is that fear I hear in your voice?”
Perenelle stiffened. “Not fear. Excitement. You know I possess a little foresight. But strangely, Nicholas, I can tell nothing about this visitor.” She paused and drew in a deep breath. “Nor can I see a future for us beyond this night.”
Nicholas licked suddenly dry lips, rose and peppermint sour on his tongue. In the past four years, he’d seen countless examples of his wife’s extraordinary gifts. And he’d never known her to be wrong. “No future? What does that mean?”
“It means that whatever decision we make tonight changes the entire direction of our lives. But that decision is as yet unmade, and so our future is undecided.”
“And you believe it is connected to this mysterious man?”
“I do.”
* * *
—
Thirty minutes later, Nicholas stepped into the small front room. Perenelle had drawn the heavy black curtains, and the only illumination came from a thick beeswax candle set on a polished metal plate in the center of the table. In the gloomy, shadow-thick room, it took Nicholas a few moments to distinguish the figure standing against the far wall. The man was wearing a hooded black cloak, and the oily material seemed to absorb the wan light.
“I do apologize…,” Flamel began.
The figure half turned, and candlelight washed over deeply tanned skin and a pair of bright blue eyes beneath the hood. In the flickering light, it was hard to make out his features, but while his skin was smooth and unlined, with no trace of a beard, Flamel immediately knew that this was not a young man.
“Please do not trouble yourself,” the man said. “I was admiring your library.”
“Why, thank you. It’s one of the larger collections in private hands,” Nicholas admitted proudly, nodding toward the thirty-six books of various shapes and sizes on the shelves behind the hooded man. “You are a collector?”
“Of sorts.” The stranger stepped forward and pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of blond hair. “I have an ever-growing library, and am always looking for something interesting.”
“Ah, then let me recommend the Chrétien de Troyes on the top shelf,” Flamel began, “a masterful tale of Perceval, a knight at the court of the English king Arthur.”
“I looked at it. I’m afraid that it is a forgery,” the stranger said with a wry smile, revealing astonishingly white teeth.
“Oh, surely not…”
“Chrétien de Troyes died before completing this work.”
