Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

Softly, Vergil said, “Good… good…”

Stroking his huge beard with his huge hand, Clemens said, cheerfully, “I shall think the less of you if you do not check every item as carefully as if I had never seen to it, and you may think the less of me if you find anything not just as you would have it.”

Vergil nodded. His pain had now reached a level at which it almost acted as its own anesthetic. Even more softly, he asked, “Any other news?”

Clemens reflected. No. No, no other news. Cornelia had been poking about once or twice, with Tullio, the latter looking ready to order all hands flayed and flogged at the slightest excuse. But the fact that preparations were always and obviously going on helped allay her impatience and his wrath.

“Oh.” He suddenly looked blank. Vergil raised his eyebrows in inquiry. “You’re back. By Poseidon’s codpiece! How silly of me to have forgotten that you’d gone somewhere farther away than, say, Elba or Ischia. Welcome, then, Vergil, and praise be to the Fair White Matron and her Consort, the Ruddy Man, for having obviously protected you in your journeying.”

Something tugged at Vergil’s mind. Surely he knew well enough that phrase, expressive in the ornate symbology of alchemy of the Moon and the Sun, Silver and Gold, and of their supposed “wedding” in the alloy electrum and elsewhere; then why…

But Clemens was speaking again. “Forgive my babbling on, and begin to tell me of everything that happened.”

Vergil smiled faintly, “It is here, as in most tales, that I should say to you that I am tired, and that my account must wait upon tomorrow. It is true that I am somewhat tired, but tomorrow will not find me less so, and, besides, tomorrow must see the beginning of a long and intensely careful unceasing toil. I had better tell you now. Yes… let us have in some flask or two of that fifth essence of wine engendered in your alembic, and I shall tell you now.”

Old Tynus nodded his snowy head. “True, master, some have always said that Friday is unlucky, but I cannot either see that this would hold true of our work here… if it ever held true of anything. For Friday is the Day of Venus, and Venus is not only a benefic — as is Jupiter — but she rules copper, brass, and bronze. Therefore today is an auspicious day to begin the work. Moreover, and mayhap most significant of all, as you point out, the sign of Venus is the sign of her mirror…” He scratched it with his staff on the cleanly sanded floor:

“The sign of lesser fortune, yes, but the sign of fortune nonetheless. From lesser fortune, appropriate to the beginning of a work, we shall ascend to greater fortune as we progress. The sun can only be seen in its own light, ‘By light, light,’ therefore… and, by mirror, mirror.” He stroked his long white beard. “Venus ruling copper, brass, and bronze, Saturn ruling ‘form’ and timing, also lead, of which copper ore will contain somewhat, and Mars ruling molten things.… Yes, master, you have chosen well and rightly, with Mars, Venus, Saturn, and also the Moon, all making good aspect to each other in the Heavens. Because of the various rulerships involved here, the question then, of course, becomes one of which hour — Moon hours? Venus hours? Mars hours? Or even Saturn hours.… But your decision is a quite proper one, for in horary-electional astrology, reading the augury of a given moment, it is the Moon which is, as we say, Significator of Change, and thus a Moon hour is preferred. Mars and Saturn conjoined in the mystical sign Pisces, well-appointed by Venus in the magic sign of Scorpio, a most creative relationship indeed, and none retrograde in motion, but all well-disposed toward the Moon in her own demesne of Cancer, and she translating the light of Venus unto Mars and Saturn — thus favoring secrecy of workmanship and the power of prophecy.…”

His voice died down and he murmured of Planetary Hours, and of Day and Night hours and rulerships; then he fell quite silent. All present seemed to breathe more lightly. And in this silence the slow, measured drip… drip… drip of the water clock was heard, its seconds melting away into minutes. Vergil raised his white wand, everyone ceased to draw breath, the hollow ball in the basin of of the clepsydra touched bottom with a clear, faint chime; he whipped the wand downward in signal; a dull, heavy, thudding blow followed immediately, no less startling for having been quite expected. The work of crushing the copper ore in the mill had begun. Up and down the Street of the Horse-Jewelers the deliberate sound penetrated, and, as the recurrent sensation, felt as well as heard, drew their attention, the people paused and looked at one another. Many things might have been read in their expressions, but fear was not among them. The owner of the House of the Brazen Head gave them no cause for uneasiness.

The green copper stone was hard, but gradually it yielded to the importunities of the huge, pounding pestle, like a vertical battering ram. This first treatment was intended only to reduce the pieces of its mass in size. Stant quatuor lapides in modum crucis, four stones are set up in the form of a cross: So began the ancient direction for the construction of a furnace; this had been done during Vergil’s absence under Clemens’ direction, and on this foundation the work erected immediately afterward of iron rods crisscrossed in squares. Over these a hearth was laid of Babylonian clay well-kneaded with horse dung, three fingers thick, in a circle, punctured with holes by a round stick, and left to dry. Around and up from this hearth, of the same clay and of small stones, a wall was built up in modum ollae, in the form of a pot.

“Narrower from the middle upward, you will observe,” Clemens pointed out for perhaps the tenth time, “and higher than wide. So I have always built my furnaces, and so I built yours. The clay was macerated and triturated and washed and strained, believe me, fully an hundred times. The horses were all maiden mares, pure white in color, fed upon mallows and apples and grass plucked — plucked, mind you, not cut — from rocky hilltops such as we might be perfectly sure had never been tilled, for three days, after which we might be certain that they had thoroughly passed all gross fodder. As for the four iron bands binding the outside of the furnace, they were, needless to say, newly forged. For tempering them, I obtained an oxhorn from one of the sacrificial animals and burned it on a fire of lignum vitae, scraped it, mixed it with the purest salt I had in my elaboratory a third part, and ground them vigorously together. I put the irons in the same fire till they were white hot, sprinkled the preparations over it on every which side, opened out the coals and quickly blew all over, but seeing that the tempering did not fall off. Immediately I withdrew the bands and quenched them evenly in water, took them from there, and dried all gently over a fire.”

“As for the water, ha ha!” — he chuckled and he rubbed his hands together — “I did not use ordinary water, all corrupted with gross earths and impure salts and what-have-you, no. Instead, I procured a three-year-old goat and tied it up indoors for three days without food. On the fourth I gave it fern to eat and nothing else for two days. Then I enclosed it in a cask perforated underneath and under the holes I placed a separate water-tight container and for two days and three nights I collected its urine. With this same water I also tempered all the tools of steel and iron.”

Vergil said that this was well done. He hearkened a moment to the pounding of the mill, then added, gravely, “It is fortunate that there was fern.”

Promptly, Clemens said, “Had there not been, I should have tempered with the urine of a small boy.”