Adrian was still just shaking his head. Nick wasn’t sure how to digest what Hailey was saying, but she seemed to be only getting started.

“And you’re right, at its most basic, alchemy is about changing lead into gold. But it’s much bigger than that. Alchemists believed that once you had the power to transform one metal to another, you had the secret to dominance over the material world. It was considered such a powerful science that alchemists were often arrested, and in medieval times, even killed. Which is why they became so secretive. Began using symbols to hide their work. Symbols like the one for sulfur, other symbols that made their way into the masonic traditions—”

“And Paul Revere?” Nick asked.

“Getting to that,” Hailey said. “Thomire had come to Boston because, according to the diary, Revere believed he had uncovered something significant. Thomire couldn’t get Revere to tell him what it was, but late one night, alone in Revere’s lab, Thomire had stumbled upon a sculpting mold. Except this mold was different; it was the result of many pages—books filled with pages—of mathematical calculations. The mold had been crafted to a mathematical precision Thomire had never seen before. He felt certain it had something to do with Revere’s alchemic discovery, so he copied the mold as best he could and took the copy back with him to France.”

She shifted around so that she could reach her backpack, and carefully withdrew the bronze eagle. Adrian’s eyes went round seeing the entire thing in her hands.

“Why an eagle?” Nick asked.

Adrian’s eyes never left the finial.

“The eagle as a symbol goes back a lot farther than Napoleon,” he said. “Even farther than the Roman legions, who carried it on their flags as a sign of their empire. Alchemists had been using a double-headed eagle as one of their prime, hidden symbols since before medieval times. That’s the real reason you see it as one of the symbols of Freemasonry as well. Many of the original Freemasons were alchemists. In the Revolutionary era, noted alchemists included Ben Franklin, John Hancock—”

“Revere?” Nick asked.

Adrian looked at him like he’d eaten something bitter, but then shrugged.

“Revere was a metalworker by trade. A Mechanic, as he called himself. So, it would not be much of a stretch that he shared such a passion with his colleagues.”

“So Thomire brought the mold back to France,” Nick said, continuing Hailey’s thread. “And then he cast it and used the design for the finial for Napoleon’s regiment.”