Shadow of the Alchemist

15

“Arsenic,” declared the alchemist.

In the back of his mind, Crispin had not wanted to believe it, but to hear confirmation sent a deep shiver down his spine. “How … how bad is it?”

“A very weak concentration. Little wonder only those very feeble succumbed. But already I see that the solution is being diluted. More rain and snow and the problem will resolve itself.”

“But how long will that take?”

“It all depends on how much rain and snow is added. Days. Weeks. Hard to say.” They both looked toward the window and to the sun shining through.

“Should the cistern be closed?”

“I would advise it. And have a guard set on the others.”

“Will you come with me to the sheriffs to explain it? They won’t listen to me without proof.”

He wrung his hands and cast glances about his shop. “But who will await a message? How shall we ‘begin at the beginning’? My Perenelle. What has become of her?”

“When my apprentice returns we will know more. Have patience, Master Flamel. Please. You must come with me.”

“Patience is all I have. Very well.” He took the cloak offered by Avelyn and shrugged it on. “Quickly, now. We must hurry back.”

Crispin grabbed the bucket and Flamel’s arm and pushed him out the door. They traveled through the busy streets with all haste, stepping aside for a small contingent of armed soldiers marching down the lane. Crispin did not recognize their captain, but they wore the arms of the king and their presence was enough to remind all and sundry that Richard was still England’s ruler.

Crispin and Flamel moved on, the bucket knocking against Crispin’s leg as they hurried.

They arrived at Newgate and both serjeants were there. Wendell had a bandage wound tight around his hand and they both stood to attention when Crispin neared them.

“You have your nerve showing your face here again, Guest,” said Tom with a deep scowl.

“It is the only face I have, I’m afraid.”

Wendell clenched and unclenched his good hand over his spear shaft. “You broke my hand, you churl.”

“You broke it yourself. Have a care, Master, or your other will suffer the same fate.”

Tom jabbed his spear forward. “Get out, Guest.”

“The sheriffs are expecting me.” It was a little lie. “How would it go for you if they expected me and you would not allow us to pass? Not well, I should think. Losing one’s position in these troubled times? You wouldn’t want your families to starve, now, would you?”

Tom’s silent scowl said it all. He gestured with a jerk of the pike up the stairs, and Crispin wasted no time. He hauled Flamel after him, taking the steps two at once.

They emerged into the lantern light of the outer alcove. The clerk looked up and squinted at Crispin’s face. “Eh? Master Guest? Back so soon?”

“May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the archway into the sheriffs’ parlor.

“You might as well.” He turned away and wriggled back into his seat, positioning his quills before him.

Crispin entered and bowed to both sheriffs. Venour sat at the heavy table, while Fastolf stood by the arched window, looking down into the street below. They both turned at Crispin’s step. “My lords,” he said.

“Guest,” spat William Venour. “What are you doing here? I thought I told you-”

“You wanted proof, my lord. I brought you proof.”

He set the bucket down but pushed Flamel forward.

“Isn’t that the alchemist with the dead apprentice?” said Hugh Fastolf.

Flamel bowed. “Oui, mes seigneurs. But I come to you now by request of Maître Guest. I tested the poisoned water myself.”

Fastolf frowned. “What is this? Poisoned water? What’s he talking about?”

Venour propped his head on his hand. “Guest came in earlier spouting something about a poisoned cistern. Plainly it is rubbish, as are all his complaints, but now he would bring this Frenchman in on it.” Something seemed to fall into place in the sheriff’s mind, for his eyes narrowed. “Wait. Frenchman?”

Flamel cringed. Clearly he had seen the like before.

“He’s an alchemist,” Crispin explained. “He knows about poisons. Uses them in his work. There is nothing particularly sinister in that.”

“So you say,” said Venour. “Sounds terribly suspicious to me.”

The old alchemist looked at each sheriff, then back at Crispin for confirmation. Crispin urged him on.

“It seems, mon Shérif de Seigneur, that arsenic has been given into the water. Enough to kill the feeble and to make others sick.”

“Preposterous. Where’s your proof?”

“I did the tests. It is unmistakable.”

Crispin moved forward. “Will you close the cistern, my lords? Master Flamel here says that it will take only a few days of more rain and snow to dilute the solution so that it will do no further harm.”

“No, I will not! Close the cistern at the word of you and this Frenchman? Are you mad?”

“More people will die, Lord Sheriff. Is that what you want on your conscience?”

“Very thin ice, Guest,” said Sheriff William with a snarl.

Sheriff Hugh slapped his hand over his sword hilt and stepped forward. “And I don’t believe you either! What nonsense. Who says anyone has died?”

“I spoke to Father Edmund of St. Aelred’s parish and he attests to the strangeness of these deaths. I can bring him forth, if that will appease you. I accompanied him when he administered the last rites to a young girl. Only the day before a boy died in the same household.”

“A pestilence, then.”

“Only the weakest succumbed. Those that drank the water. The others were fine. Including babes in swaddling.”

“It proves nothing, Guest!”

Tight-lipped, Crispin snatched the goblet from the sheriff ’s table and tossed its contents out across the floor. He grasped the bucket he’d left nearly under the table and dipped the goblet in. He thrust the dripping cup toward Sheriff William. “If you think I am lying, then you will not fear to drink this.”

Venour shrank back. Crispin turned to Sheriff Hugh and stepped up to him, offering the cup. “And you, Lord Sheriff. Will you drink and call me a liar?”

Fastolf refused to touch it, to look at it. He skirted Crispin and glared at the alchemist. “I will do no such thing. You probably tampered with it yourself.”

“To what end? Blame me for closing the cistern, if you must. But you must close it! Take the credit yourselves when no more die.”

“Oh ho!” said Fastolf. “So you would have your name involved?”

Crispin lowered his head and shook it. “Do what you will with my name, my lords. But for God’s sake close the cistern.”

For the first time, the sheriffs looked uncomfortable. They exchanged mute glances and then stared at the same time at the goblet Crispin had set down on their table.

Venour scowled. “But if we close it, the people will rage. They will blame the king.”

“They will blame him with great cries and lamentation if he allows more innocents to die and could have prevented it. You stand for the king and his justice. Do this and be champions.”

“Do it and be thrown into the stocks!”

“Now wait, William,” said Fastolf. “A few days, did you say?” he said to Flamel.

Flamel shrugged. “When it rains or snows again.”

They all looked toward the window. Clouds had moved in and Crispin was never so glad to see their dark undersides, heavy with snow.

“For three days only, then.” Fastolf looked to Sheriff William for confirmation, and the man reluctantly nodded. “And a guard will be sent to the others. Will that suffice?”

“It will do very well, Lord Sheriff,” said Crispin with a bow.

“Oh, good. I’m so glad you’re pleased. Now, take this away.” Fastolf flapped his hand at the untouched goblet.

Crispin took the goblet and tossed its contents into the fire. The fire hissed and flamed blue for a moment before settling down. He bowed to the sheriffs again without another word, took Flamel’s arm, and left.

Escorting flamel back to his shop, Crispin couldn’t be certain if his shadows had returned. There were too many people on the streets, too many horses and carts, but he thought he saw men in the shadows pacing them, until he quickly turned at the last moment before they rounded a corner … No one there.

“Master Flamel,” he said quietly into the man’s collar, “do you suspect any connection between these poisonings and your missing wife?”

He shot Crispin an astonished look. “Mon Dieu! Do you believe that to be so?”

“I don’t know. But they coincide, and I have a mistrustful nature. Do you believe it? I’ll admit that alchemy and its practitioners are strange to me.”

Flamel lowered his brows in thought just as they came to the steps in front of his doorway. “I do not see any connection, Maître. Would that I could. If it would bring back my Perenelle…” He breathed a quivering sigh.

Crispin scowled. The weight of her disappearance lay heavy on his shoulders. He hated this helpless feeling, these dead ends where he had nowhere to turn, no one to ask. That damnably abstruse parchment! He hoped that Jack was back with some good news.

They passed over the threshold into the warmer lodgings. Avelyn was at the fire, tending it, rocking her head from side to side as if singing some silent song in her mind.

Jack rose from his seat. He looked distinctly uncomfortable beside her. “Jack!” Crispin rushed to the boy. “What have you learned?”

“Precious little, Master Crispin. But I did discover he is staying at an inn at Billingsgate.”

“An inn? Not with a local bishop or priest?”

“Seems not, Master.”

“Perhaps his preachings do not adhere to the current mood.”

Jack shrugged. “All I know is, I sat in that inn, the Cockerel’s Tail, all morning and saw naught of him.”

“We will return, Jack, and see what a coin or two can do that your diligence did not.”

The lad nodded. He sat at the table with the others. Before Crispin could ask if Flamel had ale, Avelyn pushed a metal cup toward him, full of amber wine. He signed “thank you” to her and she beamed, reaching up to kiss him on the cheek. Jack smirked and Flamel looked aghast. Crispin cleared his throat and ducked his head, hiding his face in the cup. After he drank a dose, he leaned toward Flamel. “We must make some sense of these symbols and of the parchment that urges us to start at the beginning. What beginning does he mean?”

Avelyn served the others, and the alchemist scratched his head over his cap. “What does it all mean, Maître? How can these symbols help?”

“I don’t think that someone would have gone to all this trouble simply to leave nonsense about the city. There is a purpose. Can you think of anything? You said that they were alchemical symbols.”

“And I also said that they were random, meaning nothing.” He laid his forehead in his hand. “I am so weary with anxiety. I cannot think any longer.”

“Childish games,” Crispin muttered.

Avelyn hovered behind Crispin, running a feather-light hand over his hair. He gave her an admonishing look, but he might as well try to make friends with the sheriffs as stop her from doing anything she was set on doing.

He did his best to ignore the caresses and Tucker’s impertinent chuckles.

They all fell silent. There was only the sound of the fire flickering in the hearth and Avelyn’s cooing sighs.

They all startled when Jack slammed his empty cup to the table. “It’s no use, sir. There’s no sense to any of it. If they were some sort of clue, then we can decipher it. There needs to be reason from disorder.”

“Indeed,” said Crispin, lulled by the gentle fingers running over his hair, the good wine at his elbow, and the few hours of sleep this morning. “Reason from disorder,” he murmured. He closed his eyes, sitting back. Oh, to sleep! To allow the peaceful respite from the chaos around him. At least the sheriffs finally acted to protect the city. The citizens who used that cistern would not like being inconvenienced, but it was surely better than the alternative. He doubted that the sheriffs’ guards would be informed as to why they closed the cisterns and guarded the others. No use in fostering panic, but discord, no doubt, there would be.

He sank lower on the chair, relaxing. Avelyn’s fingers softly caressed his neck and shoulders. If only he could figure out the meaning behind the symbols. He supposed the best direction would be to decipher them all. Though Flamel had said they meant nothing. A code, then, that the alchemist was unaware of? Crispin had come upon many such codes in his travels when he acted for the old king. Diplomacy was full of such secret messages. He’d just start at the beginning with the first one he found and-

He jerked upright, eyes wide. “God’s blood!” His exclamation had startled Jack, who blinked at him with mouth gaping. “We need to ‘begin at the beginning.’ To be able to find the pattern-if pattern there is-then we must find the first symbol.”

“But how do we know which the first one is?”

Flamel wiped the wine from his lips. “Might the answer be in the symbols themselves?”

“Yes,” said Crispin, scooting closer to the table. “These are alchemical symbols, so you said.”

“But from what I have seen,” said the alchemist, “nothing suggests a starting point.” He sat back, slumping. “What is the key?”

Jack scratched his head, making his messy curls messier. “We’re missing something vital. What did that parchment say, Master? You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning. If these symbols have aught to do with that note and they are meant to be clues, then that miscreant would have left us some way to reckon it.”

Something ticked in the back of Crispin’s mind like an annoyance, a half-remembered thought or dream. He closed his eyes and knocked his head back. Avelyn carded fingers through his hair, now hanging free over the back of the chair. “Stop it, you damnable woman,” he muttered. “I’m trying to think.” But she either had not read his lips or didn’t care to comply. She had been like this from the moment he’d met her, though he recalled very little from that night, as drunk as he was.

He opened his eyes slowly. He had been drunk, yet Avelyn had been playful but determined. She had done something that annoyed him. What was it?

He turned to look at her. She smiled and cast her eyes down to his scrip. Her eyes were bright with amusement.

He grabbed his scrip, still captured by her gaze, and fished around until his fingers lighted on a scrap of parchment. It wasn’t a dream, then. They had found a parchment that night that Flamel tried to claim was something of his. But it obviously had not been. It had been left by the abductor. And Flamel knew it.

He pulled it out and compared it with the other note. Yes, they looked to be from the same hand. The smaller fragment held Hebrew letters, Greek letters, Latin.

Flamel grabbed his hand. “What are you doing with that?” But then he stopped himself. He remembered, too.

“You knew this wasn’t something of yours. You knew this was from someone else. Why did you lie to me?”

“I was worried what it might be. And then you took it before I could assess. Sometimes, Maître,” he said, shaking a finger, “you are a very impetuous man!”

“So I’ve been told,” he said absently, studying the fragment. “This is very strange. There are only these letters, the same in succession, over and over.”

“Ah! Look here.” Flamel pointed with a finger with a broken, yellow nail. “You see, don’t you? The Greek letter alpha

and the symbol for the Hebrew letter aleph

And here. Do you see this symbol?

It is the astrological sign for Aries. It is the first of the signs. What does that suggest to you?”

“Beginnings. ‘Begin at the beginning.’ Then we must find these symbols among all the rest, to begin. This is the key.”

“Right, then,” said Jack, leaping to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, Tucker. Where?”

“Eh?”

“Where would you suggest we begin?”

Jack sagged back down to his seat. “Oh.”

“Would we find these symbols randomly around London, or would they begin at a specific location? The more I see of this fellow, the more he makes a certain sense to me. I do not believe he would start us just anywhere. Where should we look to find the first clue? Where would anyone begin?”

They sat quietly, thinking, until Jack perked up again. “Birth.”

“Too broad an idea. It could be a manger, a church of the Virgin, anything.”

“Well,” said Jack, scratching his chin and the few sprouting hairs there. “Scriptures?”

“‘In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. Forsooth, the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of the depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters. And God said, Light be made, and the light was made.’ Should we look for light, then? A sunrise? A candle?”

Jack frowned. “As you said. Too complicated.” He screwed his face up in thought. “Master, a journey is a beginning. And it begins on a road.”

“No,” said Crispin, thinking. “It begins at one’s front door.”

Jack rubbed his nose. “I’ve not seen any carvings at anyone’s front door. It would make the most sense to have it at this front door.”

“True. But there is none here.” He looked at Flamel, who was staring back at him with interest. “A front door. What is the front door of London?”

“The Tower?” said Jack, brow furrowed.

“The Tower is not a door. If anything, it is within doors.”

“The gates!” Jack said quickly.

“Better. Which is the right one?”

Jack ticked them off on his fingers. “Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishop’s Gate, Aldgate, Postern Gate. That’s too many front doors to choose from, Master.”

Crispin sat back, arms folded. “In days gone by, when I rode in and out of London, mostly toward Westminster, I often took Ludgate. Let us start there.”