A SNOW-BEARDED, ELDERLY MAN IS SEATED AT THE HEAD OF A REFECTORY table, close to a fire, with his head bowed. He grasps a dark, shiny object in the slender fingers of his right hand. Blooms of Rosa Mundi—white petals streaked pink-red—carpet the table in front of him. Thus, all those who are seated at the trestle know that what will unfold here is secret, a marriage of the spirit and the soul of everyone present, and the birth of something unique, which they await: the Philosopher’s Child. Against the bubbling din of other inn patrons behind closed doors in adjacent rooms, they are hushed, waiting for his words. A door softly opens and closes, then a sudden shuffle of feet around him intrudes into the silence. A note from a servant, who has entered largely unobserved, is put into his fine hands. This he reads slowly; his high forehead—surprisingly smooth for a man of his years—creases into a dark frown. After a long moment, he looks at every face in turn, gathered around the long table. Finally he speaks, his voice hardly more than a vesper.

“Some little time ago, in the month of lights, Signor Bruno was burned at the stake in the Campo de’ Fiori. He had been given forty days to recant his heresies: that the earth was not the center of this world, that there were many such suns and planets beyond our own, and that the Savior’s divinity was not a literal truth. Monks offered him a crucifix to kiss in repentance of his errors, but he turned his head from them. As a demonstration of mercy, the clerical authorities placed a necklace of gunpowder around his head before they set the fire—to hasten his end. They also nailed his tongue fast to his jaw to stop him from talking.” He raises his eyes to each of his dinner companions, and takes some moments to speak again.

“For some of us, then, the thread now begins to unravel, and another journey starts here.” His eyes now rest on one man, sitting hunched over a tankard just to the left of the head of the table at the opposite end. His neighbor is nudging him, whispering to him, alerting him to the gaze of the speaker, which has settled on him alone. Both men stare, quite locked together, until the younger allows a half-smile to soften his features, prompting further quiet words from the senior man.

“Is there a way,” he asks, in a stronger cadence now, “to use all the fierce endeavors of our wit, to keep his thoughts of love, and universal harmony, as fresh as dew? May it ever be that Love’s Lost Labors can be Won?”

1

A BLACKBIRD’S SONG BROKE INTO HIS UNEASY DREAMS, BUT THE SHUTTERS on the cottage windows were still tightly closed.