Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Raisins and Almonds 101
not so much that he can make Gold and Silver, or the Divells
to become Subject to him, as that he sees the Heavens open, the
Angells of God Ascending and Descending, and that his own
name is fairely written in the Book of Life.’ He would live forever
in his dark robes, wrapped in his ecstatic visions, and his lamp
would never go out, for it would be fuelled by Oil of Eternity.
Phryne closed her books and glanced out the window. It was
darkening towards dusk. She heard the tree branches scrape the
glass. The wind must have changed. I am getting uncommonly
jumpy, she told herself.
Surely no one was really trying to make a philosopher’s
stone in 1928? It sounded both ridiculous and impossible. The
instructions and recipes were all vague and where, exceptionally,
they weren’t vague, they were all different. If Ashmole said that
one used mercury, bole ammoniack and saltpeter and Robert
Fludd said that the same operation was achieved using slaked
lime, verdigris and oil of tartare, then how could the chemical
result be the same?
Phryne, in common with all girls at her school, had learned a
little chemistry, known with a jolly laugh as ‘stinks’. She recalled
watching as the teacher poured mercury into a chamber and
heated it. Phryne had seen it oxidize into a red powder, then
she had watched in amazement as the powder had been heated
again and little beads of silvery metal had popped up out of the
oxide. That was alchemy, Phryne thought.
She got up and washed her face. She was losing her sense of
proportion.
But if he wasn’t trying to make a philosopher’s stone, why
did Simon Michaels have those parchments in his pocket, and
why did an honest shoemaker like Yossi Liebermann burn his
landlady’s table with chemical experiments?
It promised to be an interesting evening.