A Darker Place (48 page)

“Cults,” she said promptly.

“I suppose,” he said, and led her out-of-doors.

They walked again, out into the jungle that had once been the formal gardens of an estate. Twice they went through green walls that she would have considered impenetrable, but Jonas knew just where to push his way, and they continued.

And he talked. She was well on her way to establishing herself as his
soror mystica
, she thought, but she had begun to feel a deep sympathy for Sami Dooley. When she got caught on a branch as he was telling her about the life of Arnold of Villanova, he merely reached back and hauled her bodily through the gouging, scraping branches. She tried to raise her spirits by the thought of what a fascinating study she would someday write of this
whole episode, but the humor was halfhearted and the pain too sharp, and more immediate was the knowledge that she was being led off into the lonely woods by a man who made her feel as if she were carrying a rattlesnake in her coat pocket.

Focus! she ordered fiercely. Think, you stupid woman. Listen to what he’s saying, this modern alchemist who believes, with all the power of his stunted emotions and considerable intellect, that the very nature of matter can be transformed by the application of a precise set of changes, forces, circumstances. Listen to his words, pick out his key images and the central ideas that drive him; use them to nudge him toward where you want him to be. Yes, he’s a goddamn genius, but even the brightest minds have their blind spots, and you are about to become his. You can do this. You have to.

The path had cleared somewhat, and Ana walked just behind Jonas, her hands clasped behind her back, her head bent to catch his words, the perfect disciple. He was talking again about the stages of transformation that the
prima materia
goes through on its path to perfection into gold. She waited until he came to a resting point, and then she asked him a question.

“
I do see that is like the rising of the Kundalini through the chakras
. Don’t the Chinese call them
chis?”

That set him off on the topic of nerve centers and the rising of energies, sexual and otherwise, and the Indian, Chinese ties throughout history. Ana walked quietly, listening to his remarkably explicit descriptions of the frankly erotic discipline of
Tantra
, and then asked him, struggling to keep the question matter-of-fact, “To what extent do you think the alchemists saw the
Kundalini
as a metaphorical idea rather than actual, physical
Tantra
yoga?”

She might have been asking about rocks for all the overtones his answer held. “The alchemist always speaks
on several levels at once: literal, then metaphorical, and then on the plane where the literal and the metaphorical are one. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” He then went on to speak about the role of the
soror mystica
, the mystical sister, during the course of which he left Ana in no doubt about the distinctly non-sisterly actions that Sami had performed for him, and in great doubt about why she had possibly thought of him as an asexual being. He seemed unconscious that she might be feeling any discomfort, but she was distinctly relieved when he finally abandoned the topic of the metaphysical energies aroused by various sexual positions and wandered on to discuss the nature of the “pure dew” that some medieval recipes specified was to be gathered for the process—was it actual on-the-leaves morning dew or, rather, a virgin’s urine?—and then shifted into the esoteric objects used in various alchemical recipes. That kept him busy for a while, but eventually he mentioned, for the third time since they had met, the problem he was having with the current Work, and Ana knew she had to seize her opportunity. She summoned every scrap of sincerity and innocence that she could find and put it into her voice.

“Um, Jonas? When you talk about the need of the alchemist to be in balance, both with the external universe and with the microcosm within the alembic, and also about the duality of the Stone, I just wondered if you’d ever considered pairing up for your Work with one of the high-ranking women initiates in Change, to give you the balance of duality? It’s just a thought.”

There it was, presented to him by the tentative, always helpful, never threatening Ana Wakefield. With any luck, he would soon believe that he had thought of the solution himself.

Just then, however, he had something else on his mind. They had been walking in a rough circle and were now headed back toward the house and into the sunset,
when the thick growth abruptly stopped, as it had that morning at the grotto. This open space, though, seemed somehow less restored than it did reserved, as if nothing but green grass had ever grown in a wide rectangular space around the low, crumbling walls of what had once been a sizable building. It was quiet there, but it was not the utter silence of lifelessness and strangulation; what she heard was the hush of content and respect.

“Abby,” said Jonas, to Ana’s confusion and shock. When she did not answer, he turned and saw her strange expression, and frowned.

“The abbey,” he repeated. “This was a Benedictine abbey until the Dissolution of Henry the Eighth. This particular part of the estate is a historical preserve, or else I might have been tempted to do more restoration work. I’m glad I didn’t: It took me years to discover that this is the energy center of the land around, and a line drawn from here to the house precisely bisects, at right angles, the line between Stonehenge and Glastonbury. Can’t you feel the energy?”

Ana nodded obediently, a bit too distracted to feel the subtle ley lines under her feet. It was, however, a very lovely spot, and she felt that she would like to return there under different circumstances.

She walked forward into the cruciform ruins, entering at what had been the front doors of the building. In some places the stones of the nave walls were missing completely, and in others the grass and wildflowers grew up over the tumbled stonework to waist height. The remnants of the walls were taller at the end of the building where the altar had been; they rose past Ana’s head, and the base of one of the windows could be seen, its decorative carving long weathered into soft shapelessness. Small ferns and wallflowers had rooted themselves among the cracks.

Once away from the walls, the entire floor of the
abbey was a smooth carpet of green turf set with tiny white wildflowers, but for one massive rectangular stone which, judging by its location, marked where the altar had stood. Someone had taken care to keep its surface clear of grass, trimming the edges back—in fact, the entire stone looked renewed, as if it had been lifted and relaid to keep it from sinking into the earth and disappearing entirely. It did not even have much moss on it. Jonas may have decided that this point marked his ley line, which would be an ironic variation on the ancient Christian tradition of building a church on the holy ground of its predecessors: The New Age reclaims a Christian site for its primal energy potentials. Ana stood with her toes nearly touching the revealed stone, looking up, trying to conjure up the ghostly outlines of the church that had once formed the center of this lively monastic community.

When Jonas’s hands came down on her shoulders she nearly leapt out of her skin. He heard her gasp and slid his grip down to her upper arms. He squeezed once, and then moved around to the other side of the altar stone, taking care not to step on the stone itself. She lifted her eyes to his, and could not pull them away as he began to speak.

“The Philosopher’s Stone, the object of alchemical labors that provides immortality and turns base metal to gold, is also called The Hermaphrodite. It is the union of all opposites. Male and female, hot and cool,” he said, his words like a chant. “The dry and the wet, the wise and the innocent, the red of the sulfur and the silver of mercury, the generative power of the sun and the reflective forces of the moon. Alchemical drawings depict this union as a king and a queen lying together in the coffin of their alembic. The Absolute, the Brahman, the Stone, the Tincture, is a union of Shiva and Shakti, destruction and nurturing, the seed and the blood, the male and the
female. It is the stage beyond the gold, and it renders the participants immortal.

“Since the first blacksmith discovered iron, man has been applying fire to dull stone and creating miracles. The unrefined human being, rocklike and dumb, is no different from gold-bearing ore. It takes only the right technique—the right knowledge—the proper manipulation of forces, to transmute a mere man into something greater, something miraculous. My Parsi master took me to meet immortals, men who could pierce themselves and not bleed, be bitten by cobras and not die. My teacher himself is three hundred and twelve years old, and looks to be sixty. Immortality and the power to heal, those are the characteristics of the human Philosopher’s Stones I have met.

“It is also what my entire life has been leading to. I learned to walk on burning coals without feeling pain, that I might become a Master of Fire. That was one of the titles the alchemists used of themselves, did you know that, Ana? Master of Fire. The next step, my transmutation into a human Philosopher’s Stone, a walking tincture, also involves, as you yourself interpreted from my vision, a walk not over fire, but through it. Amusing to think that I have spent twelve years of my life studying the patterns of transformation in this laboratory of mine, and you should come here and tell me something that is plain before my eyes. Your hidden talent, indeed, to see what is needed. I must remember to thank Steven.” He chuckled, a rumble deep in his chest that reminded Ana of a waking bear.

His gaze held her, locked her to the turf, quaking to her bones. The most terrifying thing was the man’s complete rationality, the impression he gave that what he believed and what he proposed—whatever it was he was proposing—was utterly reasonable. Ana tried to speak, cleared her throat, and tried again in a strangled voice.

“What do you want me to do?”

He smiled at her engagingly, even sweetly, and with complete patience and confidence in her. “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t need to do anything, not until the very last part of the process. You just need to be yourself, the cool, wet, innocent moon-woman, as male and female join together in the furnace and conjoin into immortality.”

If Jonas had moved so much as a muscle in her direction, Ana would have broken and fled shrieking into the green woods. Instead, he looked down at the altar stone at their feet, studying its roughness as if deciphering some secret text carved into its surface. He dropped to his heels and tickled his blunt fingertips delicately back and forth over the scrubbed stone, a thoughtful, sensuous gesture that Ana felt as a caress up her spine. She flushed at the disturbing ghostly sensation, and Jonas smiled to himself, patted the stone as if it were an old friend, and then in an abrupt and characteristic return to the prosaic, he stood up, glanced at the lowering sun, and said, “We’re going to miss dinner if we don’t hurry.” He clambered over a low place in the wall, dislodging several stones in the process, and made off in the direction of the house.

She was sorely tempted to let him go, even if it meant spending the night on the altar stone. She might easily have remained behind, frozen there among the abbey ruins, had it not been for the knowledge that Jonas was moving back toward the house where Jason and Dulcie were sheltering. She could not leave them alone with him. With infinite reluctance she took a step in the direction he had gone, and then another.

She who has ears to hear, let her hear.

And Ana heard. Another woman might have picked up the nuances of spirituality in his words and been pleased with her understanding, but Ana had seen, had
literally been witness to, the extreme behavior that people were capable of in the pursuit of religious truth, and her ears told her that this was no metaphor. Whatever it was Jonas did in his alchemical laboratory, he had convinced himself and Steven and all the others that he and they could change matter into gold. But it did not stop with the walls of the actual laboratory, not for a man with Jonas Seraph’s massive intellect and self-absorption. The estate itself, bought with his inheritance, had become in his mind his laboratory, from the grotto where his curiosity about fire’s purification had been thwarted to the current inhabitants and their peculiarities and characteristics. Jonas thought of this place as his workroom, where he might observe the principles of Change functioning. Which made Ana and everyone else here, in effect, his personal
prima materia
.

That kind of godlike vision of the world, ironically, depends on the adoration of others, to bring the venerated one food and carry out his wishes. Samantha Dooley had gotten tired of it and passed on, only to have her shoes filled by a born personal assistant to this small universe’s CEO. Marc Bennett could strut and crow and order people about to his heart’s desire, and Jonas would continue to treat him as a piece of furniture, because in Jonas’s mind, that was what all people were.

Ana pulled her coat around her, feeling the cold as the sun went down and as the sudden thought hit her that perhaps Sami Dooley had not tired of her role; perhaps she had been pushed too far.

When was that large amount of nitrate fertilizer bought? She couldn’t remember, but she was certain it had been for Britain, not Boston. Was it purchased shortly before the arguments started between Jonas and Sami? The two things might have nothing to do with each other, but she could feel the disquieting possibility
of that fertilizer’s purpose nibbling at the edges of her mind.

She knew Jonas had to have a human-sized alembic in the cellars, behind one of those three locked doors. What else could he use as his “power nexus” for the conjoining with his moon-woman? What concerned her more, though, was the question of how he intended to apply the necessary heat. Would it be from six small brick furnaces such as those that had kept Jason warm during his solitary trial under Steven? Or was Jonas insane enough to think of something bigger, something more suited to the dramatic transformation of a man into a Philosopher’s Stone? Something as explosive on the outside of the alembic as what was due to go on in the inside?