The Alchemy of Fire

by Gillian Bradshaw

First published 2004

Amazon

4.0(2)

In Constantinople in 672 CE, Anna supports herself and her daughter Theodosia by making perfume while hiding the girl’s connection to the imperial family. Their precarious independence is disturbed when Kallinikos, an alchemist developing an incendiary weapon for the empire, rents space in Anna’s workshop.

As an Arab attack threatens the capital, Kallinikos’s experiments with Greek fire attract military and court attention. Theodosia’s parentage is exposed at the worst possible moment, forcing Anna to protect her daughter through siege and political upheaval while reconsidering both her refusal of dependence and her feelings for Kallinikos.

The threatened siege gives Kallinikos’s invention strategic importance. Byzantine survival depends on controlling the approaches to Constantinople and on weapons capable of disrupting attacking fleets, while the exact composition of Greek fire remains unknown to later historians. The novel uses that uncertainty to combine documented military innovation with a fictional household whose private secrets become dangerous at the same moment the city itself is under pressure.