The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [26]
‘Don t spill it, fool! The gold it cost me would buy your father’s farm. Aye, ten times over.’
The speaker, a large figure in a long robe, had the smooth waxen skin of one who had seen little daylight for some considerable time. He picked up a small spoon with a long handle and with slow deliberation took a measure of the contents of the earthenware jar. Sarah watched with fascination as he dripped the gleaming metallic liquid (surely it must be mercury, quicksilver) into a large mortar, whilst grinding with a heavy pestle. The gritty crunching smoothed to a dull scraping; the spoon was empty.
The room, which seemed to be some sort of workshop, was lit by the glow from a furnace at the back. While the master continued mixing his concoction, the friar, if that was what he was, started to pump the bellows of the furnace. A large retort was dripping a dirty yellow substance into a bowl; some sort of distillation, apparently.
With eager hands, already prepared quantities of other substances were added to the pestle – a green powder, a pinch of black seed, two spoonfuls of a pale milky liquid –
and ground into the paste. At last, after adding a careful 91
measure of the ochre distillate, he gave the whole a brisk stir and poured it into a waiting crystal goblet.
He held it up to the light of the candle and seemed to be murmuring some sort of prayer. Yet surely, thought Sarah, if this was fifteenth or sixteenth-century Italy, as the clothes seemed to indicate, he would have crossed himself if he really had been praying.
He thrust the glass towards his servant. ‘Drink!’ he said.
‘No, master, no!’
‘What? I offer you a potion to cure you of all human ills; the secret draught of Hermes Trismegistus; the elixir vitae itself? And you spurn it? Drink, I say.’
‘I – I am afraid.’
His master stood and held the goblet to the trembling lips. With his other hand he drew a needle-pointed poignard from his belt and held it to his servant’s neck.
‘Drink,’ he said quietly.
The shaking man took the crystal in both hands, paused for a long moment and downed the ruby-red liquid in one.
Silence. Not a sound could be heard, not even the ever-present sea.
With a crash and a tinkle the goblet fell to the floor. The drinker put his hands to his throat and with a dreadful bubbling cry stiffened in a spasm which hurled him to the ground.
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. With one last chocking gasp, the wretched man was still. His eyes were popping from his head and his tongue extruded from his mouth, blood streaming from it. His jaw, clamped tight, had bitten it nigh through.
He was, without a doubt, quite dead.
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Eight
When Sarah thought about it afterwards, she decided it was rather dim of her to be so surprised at what happened next.
After all, since both she and the Doctor were, for all practical purposes, ghosts themselves (though what practical purpose could you put a ghost to, for Pete’s sake?), it should have been obvious that she would see the ghost of the dead man float up from his body. Of course, she had been shaken to her core by the manner of his death. But that was no excuse.
At first, the figure was transparent; you could see through him in the traditional ghostly way. But as awareness came back into his face, like somebody waking up, so he appeared to become solid. For the first time, it crossed her mind that it was really rather curious that N-Bodies always seemed to appear fully dressed – including her own, thank goodness. But she seemed to hear the Doctor’s voice in the depths of her mind, ‘It’s all a matter of belief’ (A memory? Or was she starting to be telepathic too?) She glanced across to the other side of the doorway, where the Doctor was standing in the shadows, watching through the opening. But he was clearly intent on what was happening inside.
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The alchemist – and this was even more surprising to Sarah,