David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

“Of the ill?”

“Of the good,” said Mary. “Do you understand what these machines represent? Already we hear tales from all over the country of how coal smoke blackens the skies and soils the waters. There are those like your Mr. Olson who would take men and women who once labored of their own hands to produce their own goods in their own homes and remove them to mills where they labor for endless hours for little money in the most monotonous and tedious and unimaginative of work. They blacken nature and turn men into machines.”

“But there are only a few such places.”

“There will be more, more than we can imagine. Anything that can be made will be made by machine. Already some of these machines are powered by steam and coal, and someday they will all be. When that happens, there will be no more artisans and craftsmen, only mill workers ground down by their machine labor until they are sick or dead, and replaced by others equally nameless and faceless—one man or woman or child no better or worse than another. It is an end to our English way of life, an end to nature as we know it, and if nature is blighted, then so is magic as we know it.”

“Things in the world can shape the world,” Lucy said, thinking aloud. “Agrippa’s law of resonance. You mean that changing the landscape changes the nature of the world itself?”

“That is exactly what I mean. You have seen what transpires in Mr. Olson’s mill. Imagine that multiplied by a thousand, or a thousand thousand. Imagine forests destroyed for fuel to feed the mills, rivers blackened with their wastes. Generation after generation of children who know nothing of childhood, but only long hours of labor. Imagine men who are virtual slaves to mill owners, who dictate conditions and wages. I have seen these things, Lucy. The world is not merely going to change, it is going to be remade.”

“But why must I stand against it?” asked Lucy.

“I don’t know,” Mary said. “I cannot say why Ludd seeks you out, or why you can see the creatures of shadow that are invisible to nearly everyone else.”

“Can you see them?” asked Lucy.

“If I look for them,” Mary answered sadly. “They are part of the world, just as we are.”

“And Ludd? Is he part of the world too?”

“He is something else, I think. But he is drawn to you, just as the shadow creatures are. You have become some sort of magnet, Lucy, drawing things in. I do not know why, but I do know that you cannot ignore your centrality.”

Lucy said nothing for a long time. The idea that she had some power, some responsibility, to stand against mysterious forces and great changes seemed absurd, and yet her friend believed this.

“What must I do?” she asked.

“You will start by opening this book.” Mary held it out. The untied red ribbons dangled free.

Lucy took the book and knew at once she did something momentous and important. With a trembling hand, she leafed through the pages, few that they were, and saw the book contained a series of engraved prints, images of men, angels, animals, and all sorts of odd beings. Expressions were curious, often pained or amused or oddly lascivious, and often without cause. Men flew through the air on wings. Animals rode horses or baked bread in ovens. Activity of some sort abounded, though it was hard to tell precisely what these figures were attempting to achieve. They poured liquids in bowls, weighed substances, mixed and measured, and while all of the illustrations had clearly been done with the same hand, some seemed to Lucy silly and trivial, and some struck her as serious, even important. They demanded her attention.

“This is the Mutus Liber, ” Mary said, sitting at last across from her. “The wordless book. It was published in La Rochelle in the seventeenth century, and it is said to be the most precise book ever printed on the creation of the philosopher’s stone. Do you know what that is?”

“Is it not the key to alchemy?” Lucy asked. “I understand it to be a stone in name only, but I’ve seen it represented as the key both to transmuting base metals to gold and to achieving eternal life.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “The stone is not a stone at all, of course. It is sometimes said to be a powder, sometimes said to be a process with no physical shape—a spell or a set of actions, a state of being, or even the body or mind of the alchemist who understands the workings of these secrets. The Mutus Liber dared to set down processes never before committed to print, because it set them down metaphorically. Only someone who is attuned to the hidden arts could understand the instructions embedded within the pictures. And what is more, the pictures make themselves known to those who have the right of understanding. The book is said to favor the wise and the learned, particularly if someone wise and learned is the book’s rightful owner. It is always most powerful in the hands of the person to whom it belongs.”

“Do you mean to say that once I understand these images, I would have the secret?” asked Lucy as she turned the pages, noticing the particulars of each print. Some appeared pregnant with meaning, but others struck her as merely odd. “That I could, with enough study, make the philosopher’s stone, whatever that may be?”

“No,” she said. “Because this book, the one printed at La Rochelle, is not the true Mutus Liber . It is always thus, isn’t it? Secrets within secrets. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of copies of this book in circulation, but they are all false. The true book contains only twelve prints, not sixteen like this one. It is said that three of those found here are real, but no one is certain which three. That this edition is not the true Mutus Liber is a secret possessed by very few, and even those in possession of that secret cannot say which of these prints are genuine.”

“Prints five, ten, and thirteen are true,” Lucy said, not a little pleased with herself.

Mary stared at Lucy, her face unreadable. “How can you know that?”

“How did I know which spells were real in that book you gave me?” she asked. “It is the same. I cannot prove that I am right, but I know it.”

She did. Those prints felt different to her. It was as though they gave off heat, but it was not heat at all. It was as though they sang to her, but there was no sound. It was a kind of energy, almost like the feeling that someone’s eyes are upon you, even though you have not yet turned to see that it is so.

Mary smiled. “I doubt it is the same. What you have done here is far more impressive. These pages are designed to elude detection. And yet, I knew you could solve this riddle, even if I did not believe you could do so with such ease.”

Ease was not precisely the word Lucy would have chosen, for it had not been easy so much as it had been natural, like struggling to remember something long forgotten. But now that she saw these pages for what they were, she found she wanted to see more. Perhaps she would have done a great deal to see more. “Where is the true book?” she asked. “The complete one.”

Mary shook her head. “I can only tell you what is rumored. There was said to be a whole copy in this kingdom, perhaps the only one in the world, guarded by the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross—the Rosicrucians. You know who they are?”

“I have heard of them,” Lucy answered, afraid to say more.

“I have heard that the leader of a powerful Rosicrucian lodge had the book, but he believed dark forces would use the book against England, and so, to protect it, he had one of his agents take the book apart and hide its pages. If there is a true Mutus Liber left in the world, the pages are separated by great distances.”