The Alchemist

High up, on the grassy mountain top, whose sides are forested at the bottom with ancient trees, there is the old castle of my ancestors. For centuries its high walls have frowned down on the wild countryside, acting as a home and defender for the proud family which is even older than the castle walls. Its towers, stained by the storms of generations, built hundreds of years ago, guard one of the most feared castles in all France. In all its history, no invader's footsteps have ever been heard in its halls.

But since those years, everything has changed. Poverty - although not yet absolute starvation - together with pride in the name that forbids its involvement in business have prevented the heads of the family from keeping their land in good condition. The falling stones of the walls, the overgrown trees and bushes in the parks, the empty and dusty lake and the falling towers outside all tell a gloomy story of fallen magnificence. As the ages passed, first one, then another of the four great towers was left to ruin, until at last only a single tower housed the once powerful lords of the family.

It was in one of the vast but miserable rooms of this single tower that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy Lords de C-, was born ninety long years ago. Inside these walls and among the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and valleys of the hillside below, the first years of my troubled life were spent. I never knew my parents. My father had been killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born, by a stone falling from one of the deserted towers of the castle. And my mother died during my birth. So, my care and education became the responsibility of one remaining servant, an old and trusted man of some intelligence, whose name was Pierre.

I was an only child and the lack of friends was made worse by the strange treatment of my elderly guardian, who would not let me mix with the farmers' children living here and there at the bottom of the hill. At that time, Pierre said that he did this because my family made me better than the other children. Now I know his real aim was to keep me away from stories about the dreadful curse on our family that were told and exaggerated every night by the farmers as they talked in the light of their cottage fires.

Isolated, I spent my childhood hours reading the old books that filled the shadowy library, and wandering without direction through the forest on the hill. The effect of these surroundings was that I was always sad and I became interested in those studies into the dark side of human nature.

I was not allowed to learn much about my family, but even the little knowledge I got depressed me. Perhaps it was at first only my old guardian's reluctance to discuss my family that made me afraid of it, but as I grew out of childhood, I was able to link disconnected bits of conversation about something which I had always thought strange, but which now became terrible. This was the early age at which all the Lords had died. I had considered this natural before but I later thought for a long time about these premature deaths, and began to connect them with the old man's conversation, which often included a curse which for centuries had prevented my family living longer than thirty-two years. On my twenty-first birthday, Pierre gave me a family document which he said had been handed down for many generations from father to son. It was startling and made me believe my worst fears. At this time, I had a deep belief in the supernatural or I would never have believed the story.

The document took me back to the days of the thirteenth century, when the old castle where I sat was unconquerable. It told the story of an old man who had once lived on our land, a person with many skills, though no influence, called Michel, usually given the surname of Mauvais, the Evil. He had studied more deeply than most boys of his class, and was wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy. Michel Mauvais had one son, named Charles, a youth as talented as himself in the black arts, also known as the Wizard. This pair, avoided by all honest people, were suspected of the worst crimes. Old Michel burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice to the Devil and the unexplained disappearance of many small children was said to be the work of these two. But in the dark natures of the father and son, there was still humanity. The evil old man loved his child, while the young man had great affection for his father.

One night the castle on the hill was wild with panic about the disappearance of young Godfrey, son of Henri, the Lord. A search party, headed by the frantic father, entered the cottage of the wizards and there found Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge, boiling pot. Without any proof, in the ungoverned madness of his despair, the Lord grabbed the wizard, and before he let go, his victim was dead. Meanwhile, happy servants had found young Godfrey in an unused room of the great castle, showing too late that Michel had been killed for no reason. As the Lord and his followers turned away from the poor home of the alchemist, Charles appeared through the trees. The excited chatter told him what had happened, but he seemed at first unemotional about his father's death. Then, slowly walking to meet the Lord, he said in a quiet yet terrible voice, the curse that always afterwards haunted the C- family.

"May no Lord of your murderous family survive to reach a greater age than yours!"

Then, suddenly jumping backwards into the black woods, he took from his clothes a bottle of colourless liquid which he threw into the face of his father's killer and disappeared behind the black curtain of the night. The Count died without speaking and was buried the next day, little more than thirty-two years from the hour of his birth. No sign of the assassin could be found, although the woods and fields around the hill were searched.

Time made many forget the curse on the family and so when Godfrey, innocent cause of the tragedy and now the Lord, was killed by an arrow while hunting at the age of thirty-two, there were no suspicions. But when, years afterwards, the next young Lord, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field for no reason, the farmers whispered that their lord had only just reached his thirty-second birthday. Louis, son of Robert, was found drowned in a lake at the same age, and so through the centuries it continued.

The words I had read made me sure that I had at most eleven years of life left. Previously I had given my life no great value but now it became dearer to me each day, as I looked deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Because I was isolated, modern science had made no effect on me, and I worked to learn the same dark secrets as Michel and Charles centuries before. Yet, no matter how much I read, I could not explain the curse on my family. In unusually rational moments I would even seek a natural explanation, explaining the early deaths of my ancestors through the sinister Charles the Wizard and his heirs. However, after careful inquiry, I realised there were no known descendants of the alchemist. I would then return to black magic and once more try to find something that could release me from this terrible burden. I was absolutely decided about one thing though. I would never marry, because then I would end the curse with myself.

As my thirtieth birthday approached, old Pierre died. I buried him alone beneath the stones in front of the house, where he had loved to wander in life. So, I was left alone and my mind began to stop fighting against the fate which so many of my ancestors had met. Much of my time was now spent in the exploration of the ruined halls and towers of the old castle, some of which Pierre once told me had not been visited for over four centuries.

I kept a careful record of my exact age, even down to days and hours, because each movement of the clock in the library marked a minute less of my existence. At last, that time which I had awaited with so great a fear was on me. Because most of my ancestors had died a little while before they reached the exact age of Lord Henri, I was on the lookout for the coming of my unknown death at every moment. I did not know how I would die but I decided at least that I would not be a coward or a passive victim. With new energy, I examined the old castle and its contents.

It was on one of my longest journeys of discovery in the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour which would be my last on earth, that I experienced the most important event of my whole life. I had spent most of the morning climbing up and down half ruined staircases in one of the ancient towers. As the afternoon wore on, I went into the lower levels, going down into what appeared to be a medieval prison. As I slowly walked along the passageway at the bottom of the last staircase, the path became very damp, and soon I saw by the light of my torch that a blank, water-stained wall prevented me from going further. Turning back, I noticed a small trapdoor with a ring, which lay directly beneath my foot. I succeeded with difficulty in raising it and saw a black hole and the top of some stone steps.

I began to walk down them. They led to a narrow passage far underground. This was a very long hall that ended with a huge wooden door, which I could not open, no matter how hard I pushed. I then went back towards the steps when I suddenly experienced one of the worst shocks of my life. Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me slowly open. When I turned towards the sound, I could not believe my eyes.

There in the doorway stood a human figure. It was a man clothed in a dark medieval cloak. His long hair and beard were of deep black. His forehead, unusually broad and high; his cheeks, deeply sunken and heavily lined with wrinkles; and his hands, long and claw-like, were of a deadly marble-like whiteness that I had never seen on a man before. His figure, as thin as a skeleton, was bent and almost lost inside his cloak. But strangest of all were his eyes, twin caves of terrible blackness, deep in understanding, yet inhumanly wicked. These were now fixed on me, wounding my soul with their hatred, and causing me to stand motionless on the spot.

At last the figure spoke in a voice that chilled me with its dull hollowness and spite. He spoke in the kind of Latin in use among educated men of the Middle Ages, and familiar to me because of my research into the works of the old alchemists. This vision spoke of the curse over my house, told me of my coming end and of the wrong done by my ancestor against old Michel Mauvais, and boasted of the revenge of Charles the Wizard.

He told how young Charles had escaped into the night, returning in later years to kill Godfrey with an arrow just as he was the age which his father had been at his assassination; how he had secretly returned and lived in the deserted underground room whose doorway the speaker was now standing in, and how he had caught Robert, son of Godfrey, in a field, forced poison down his throat and left him to die at the age of thirty-two. At this point I was left to imagine the solution of the greatest mystery of all, how the curse had continued since that time when Charles the Wizard must have died, because the man started speaking about Charles' research into the elixir which gave eternal life and youth.

His enthusiasm seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible eyes the black spite that had first haunted me, but suddenly the devilish look returned and, with a shocking sound like a snake, the stranger raised a glass bottle with the intention of ending my life just like Charles the Wizard, six hundred years before, ended the life of my ancestor. Pushed into action by an instinct of self-defense, I threw my torch at the figure who threatened my life. I heard the bottle break - safely - against the stones in the hall as the strange man's clothes caught fire and lit the room with a ghostly glow. The scream of fright and - now powerless - spite were too much for me and I fainted.

When, at last, I woke up, everything was dark. Who, I asked myself, was this man of evil, and how had he arrived inside the castle walls? Why should he want to take revenge for the death of Michel Mauvais so long ago, and how had the curse been continued for so many centuries since the time of Charles the Wizard? The fear of death was lifted from me because I knew now that I was free, I had to learn more about the sinister thing which had haunted my family for centuries and made my own youth one long-continued nightmare. I decided to carry on looking. I felt in my pockets for matches and lit the unused torch I had with me.

First of all, new light revealed the blackened shape of the mysterious stranger. The hideous eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and entered the room after the old door where he had stood. Here I found an alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was a huge pile of shining yellow metal. It may have been gold, but I did not stop to examine it. At the other end of the room was an opening leading into the dark hillside forest. Realising now how the man got into access the castle, I returned. I had planned to pass by the body of the stranger with my face turned the other way but, as I got near the body, I heard a faint sound, as though it was still alive. Shocked, I turned to examine the burnt figure on the floor.

At once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the burnt face, opened wide with an expression I could not understand. The lips tried to make words but I did not know what they meant. Once I caught the name of Charles the Wizard and I imagined the words 'years' and 'curse'. But I could not get any meaning from his disconnected speech. When he realised I could not understand, his eyes once more flashed at me, until, even though he was helpless, my body shook as I watched him.

Suddenly he lifted his head from the ground. Then, as I remained paralysed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed those words which have ever since haunted my days and nights.

"Fool! Can't you guess my secret? Have you no brain to recognise the determination which has for six long centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse on your family? Haven't I told you of the great elixir of eternal life? Don't you know how the secret of alchemy was solved? I'll tell you, it was me! I who have lived for six hundred years for my revenge because I am Charles the Wizard!"