Who has never dreamed of owning so much gold, that a team of 100 horses would be unable to carry such a treasure? King James had such a desire. At night, he imagined stroking the philosopher’s stone and turning all the ironwork of his Stirling castle into the precious metal.
One day, when a mysterious visitor asked him for hospitality, the king felt his heart leap. The man claimed to be an alchemist, a real one! He promised the king, blinded by his greed, to make him a rich man. Richer than all the rulers put together!
Impressed, the king offered him everything he wanted: a roof, an honorary title, financial support, access to his own whisky reserves, and above all a place that a hidden place for work. With his new status, the man sank into the bowels of the palace. Every day, he was summoned by the king who questioned him: “Have you turned the metals of my castle into gold?” “Not yet Sir, tomorrow maybe.” Several years passed, to the point that the king began to doubt. Was he a powerful wizard or a shameless impostor? The thirst for gold was gnawing at him.
Feeling the wind turn, the man decided to escape. The long nights spent, trying to mutate the base metals into gold, had only managed to alter his mind. To tell the truth, he had gone mad. In his feverish mind, he imagined an escape, grandiose, he could fly away. Thus, the smart one started to make two wings, with feathers that he had collected. One evening, harnessed like a raptor, he darted from the top of the Stirling wall … before falling down miserably.
At the foot of the fortress, only a handful of feathers and a gold coin were found, and at the bottom of an inaccessible crevasse, there was a golden glow. The king tried to scratch the rock, to fit into the interstices, but impossible to get close to it. Impossible also to find in the mazes of the castle the laboratory of the alchemist. The king, too, lost his mind. And since then, at night, the ghost of the alchemist can be seen, wandering restlessly in the tunnels of Stirling Castle.
