2026-08-25
Heart and Stone: Read the Prologue

I started the novelization of my screenplay Heart and Stone, formerly known as project Cœur. Below, you can find the prologue I just wrote. I am aiming for January 1st, 2027, as the release date of the full book.

Prologue

Paris, 22 March 1418

You could hear the soldiers march through the streets before you saw them. Shutters closed ahead of their torches. No one wished to attract attention.

France was at war with England,^[1.] but that was no longer the worst of it. Frenchmen had become more dangerous to one another than the English. Armagnacs^[2.] and Burgundians^[3.] fought for power while the kingdom bled between them. A friend today could be your enemy tomorrow. The capital was a place of rumors and whispers, where every stranger might be a spy, and every knock on a door a threat.

Rain fell steadily from a sky without stars. Above the rooftops rose the dark silhouette of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie.^[4.] Not far away, hidden behind walls older than most of the houses around them, a dying man waited for a visitor.

Candles burned along the walls of his chamber, though most had nearly reached their ends. Pools of hardened wax marked how many nights had already been consumed in that room.

Nicolas Flamel^[5.] lay awake. Each breath required a little more effort than the one before. He feared his guest might come too late.

The room carried the smell of parchment, ink and dust. His life’s work surrounded him.

Shelves sagged beneath manuscripts acquired over decades. Astrolabes^[6.] from distant cities gleamed faintly in the candlelight. Instruments only understood by their owner rested on tables crowded with books and papers.

At the age of eighty, he had designed his own tombstone,^[7.] carved with the images of Jesus Christ, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul. Eight years later, death had finally arrived to inspect his work.

Eighty-eight years of searching, and he could not escape the feeling that he had failed. His body was exhausted. His hands trembled against the blanket. Only his eyes remained unchanged. They were still sharp. Still searching.

A faint noise reached him from beyond the door. At last, footsteps he recognized, a voice he trusted. The latch lifted. The door opened.

A woman entered. She removed a rain-soaked cloak and handed it to a servant before the door closed again. The guards remained outside. They were loyal men, but they were not meant to hear what would be said tonight.

One glance told her how little time remained. “You sent for me.”

Flamel barely moved his head as he spoke. “Thank you for coming.” If there was one person in this world he trusted, it was Yolande of Aragon,^[8.] Duchess of Anjou, Queen of Four Kingdoms, mother, diplomat, survivor. Even kings listened to what she had to say.

“The messenger said it was urgent.” Her gaze fell on Flamel. She understood the urgency, but she wasn’t going to mention why.

A trace of amusement appeared in the old man’s eyes. “Everything becomes urgent when death arrives.”

Rain tapped softly against the window. For an instant neither spoke, although both knew that whatever remained to be said had to be said quickly.

Yolande pulled a chair beside the bed. “Then tell me what could not wait.”

Flamel closed his eyes. “My life has been devoted to two quests.”

That was no secret to Yolande, but she didn’t want to interrupt the dying man.

“The Holy Grail,”^[9.] he said, “and the Philosopher’s Stone.”^[10] The words would have sounded absurd when spoken by anyone but Nicolas Flamel. Two legends. Two impossible dreams. Yet the old man had spent most of his life pursuing them.

A shadow crossed his face. “I failed to find the first.”

“Perhaps it never existed,” Yolande wondered aloud, something she wouldn’t have done if Flamel hadn’t been a life-long friend.

“Oh, it exists.”

The conviction in his voice surprised her. Slowly, painfully, Flamel attempted to sit up. Yolande reached out to help him.

He accepted the assistance without protest. “I am certain of it,” he said. “I simply reached the end of my road before finding it.” He met her eyes. “But I discovered something else.”

Now she leaned forward. The old man had held the attention of scholars, princes, and bishops for decades. Yet in all the years she had known him, she had rarely seen him speak with such certainty.

“What?”

His next words were barely louder than the rain. “The Philosopher’s Stone is not an object.”

Yolande raised an eyebrow.

Flamel continued. “It’s not a stone. It’s not a formula. It’s not a recipe hidden in some forgotten manuscript.”

He paused to catch his breath.

“Then what is it?” she asked.

Flamel looked around the room. At the books. The instruments. The evidence of a lifetime’s obsession.

“All these years,” he said, “I searched for a thing.” He shook his head. “But I was wrong.”

The tremor in his hands worsened. “Only recently did I begin to understand.”

His breathing faltered. Still, he forced the words out. “The Stone is a person.”

Outside, rain continued its patient assault on Paris. Yolande studied him carefully. Once vigorous and brilliant, now dying, possibly both wise and delirious at once. “A person?”

“It’s the only explanation,” he said.

She looked around the chamber again. At the shelves filled with mysteries, a testament to a life spent chasing secrets.

“And this realization comes to you now?” she asked. “At the end?”

Flamel smiled sadly. “Truth often arrives after the opportunity to use it.”

Yolande felt a chill unrelated to the weather outside. The old man truly believed he had finally solved the mystery.

Flamel’s gaze drifted toward the ceiling. The certainty that had animated him moments earlier seemed suddenly diminished. For the first time that night, Yolande saw fear in his eyes. “I am afraid.”

The confession surprised her. Of all the men she had known, Nicolas Flamel seemed among the least likely to fear death. “For what awaits you after you die?”

He shook his head and let it sink back into the pillow. “I do not worry for myself.”

Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the city walls. Flamel listened to it in silence. “I worry for France.”

A shadow crossed Yolande’s face. No one needed to tell her how desperate the situation had become. She lived it every day. The kingdom was being torn apart by its own people while England watched with patient ambition.

“The kingdom bleeds,” Flamel continued. “Brother fights brother while England waits to profit. The Dauphin,^{^[11.]} your future son-in-law, is young.”

He paused to breathe. “Without resources. Without hope. How can he prevail?”

Yolande lowered her eyes. Five years earlier, she had arranged the betrothal between her daughter Marie and the young Dauphin Charles. Since then, she had devoted herself to protecting the boy’s future.

“If France falls,” Flamel said, “everything falls with her.”

The old man lifted a trembling hand and pointed toward a small drawer. “Open that.”

Yolande rose from her chair and crossed the room.

Inside the drawer she found an object wrapped in faded cloth. Carefully she lifted it out and unfolded the fabric, unveiling a compass.

Or at least something that resembled a compass.

It wasn’t a sailor’s instrument, nor anything she had ever seen aboard a ship. The metal was dark with age and engraved with symbols she did not recognize.

Its craftsmanship seemed older than the century itself. Its needle moved restlessly.

“What is it?”

Flamel watched the object with an expression that was difficult to read. “The nearest thing I have ever found to a map.”

Yolande looked up. “To the Grail?”

“To the Stone.”

She studied the wandering needle. “If it could lead you there, why did you never use it?”

A weary smile crossed Flamel’s face. “I did.”

Yolande frowned.

His eyes settled on the compass. “So did others before me,” he said. “We all made the same mistake. We searched for a stone, a book, a hidden treasure buried somewhere beneath the earth.”

His fingers tightened slightly against the blanket. “The compass passed through many hands,” he said. “It misled all of them.”

“And now you know why?”

Flamel nodded. At that moment he seemed less an old man than a scholar standing before the final line of a difficult text. “You cannot search for a person as though they were an object.”

The words lingered in the candlelit room. Outside, rain struck the window. “The Stone lives,” he said softly. “It moves. It chooses its own path. It escapes.”

Yolande looked down at the instrument. Its needle turned slowly before settling once more. “Is that your theory?” She closed her fingers around it. “Or your certainty?”

The answer came without hesitation. “It is my certainty. The compass follows a living person.”

Suddenly Flamel began to cough. The fit bent his frail body violently. For a terrible moment he seemed unable to draw breath at all. Yolande hurried back to his side and steadied him until the attack passed.

When he finally spoke again, his voice had grown weaker. “The wealth of the Stone could save France.”

His eyes remained fixed on hers. “It could fund armies and feed cities,” he said. “It could change the course of this war.”

Yolande did not answer immediately. She turned toward the window. Beyond the glass lay rain, darkness, and a kingdom collapsing under the weight of its own divisions. Then she looked back at the old man. “Money can win wars.” Her fingers tightened around the compass. “But not hearts.”

Flamel closed his eyes. “No,” he whispered. “Not hearts.” His last words were little more than a sigh. “I knew you would understand.” Another breath never came.

For a long moment Yolande remained beside him, watching the face of a man who had spent decades pursuing mysteries greater than himself. In her hand, the compass remained still.

Somewhere beyond the walls of the house, church bells began to ring, calling the faithful to prayer, or perhaps calling the dead to rest.

Topics: boeken / books