Shadow of the Alchemist

16

Avelyn could not be persuaded to stay behind at the shop, no matter how many ways Flamel threatened her.

“You need to discipline your servant more thoroughly, Master Flamel,” said Crispin, taking the lead. “I suggest a good beating.”

“That will not curb her willful tendencies. She is a strong-willed girl. Obstinate. Perenelle fawns on her as if she were her own child. And Avelyn thrives on it. It is no use, she has always been this way. There is no schooling her.”

“Put her on bread and water for a week. That might help.”

Avelyn trotted up to him with a calculating smirk on her face. Surely she had not read their lips, for she had been behind them. She tried to take Crispin’s hand, but he shook her off. “Are you quite certain she’s deaf?”

“Quite, Maître. And quite mute. She would have a great deal to say if she were not. As it is, her fingers can talk rather quickly.”

Again, she tried to take Crispin’s hand and he shook her off with a flick of his wrist. He stopped in the middle of the street and wagged his finger in her face. “No! You must stop this at once. I am not some ploughman or stable boy.”

She shook her head and smiled. Her humoring him infuriated. But he said nothing more as he stalked ahead. He turned at Jack’s snort, only to catch her imitating Crispin’s furious stride and posture.

There was nothing to be done. It was best to ignore her.

Since they were already outside the city walls, they headed down the Ditch to Fleet Street, passed over the bridge spanning the pungent Fleet stream, and meandered down toward Ludgate. Upon reaching the stone archway, they separated and each scoured the structure, both on the west side, the inside, and the eastern side in London proper.

It was Jack who found it.

“Oi! Master Crispin! Over here!”

Crispin and Flamel came running. Avelyn looked up and soon followed. On the London side, Jack pointed upward to the arch and to the right. “When did they carve this, I wonder, and escape the guards’ wrath?”

It was a good question, thought Crispin, examining the carving of the alpha, the aleph, the sign of Aries. They had not seen this one before. Who knew how many more symbols were carved over the city?

Avelyn was suddenly at his shoulder, staring up at the markings in the stone. He studied her face, proving his desperation by trying to glean something from her furious scrutiny of the gate. Crispin turned from her and laid his hand over the markings. He felt the rough edges where a steel implement had etched deeply. If this was where to begin, then what now?

He slid his hand down the wall from the carvings, the wet stone slick under his hand. It was as solid as the city itself, as solid as its walls. Yet before he dropped his hand away, his fingers slipped into a niche, a mere crevice between two stones … where he felt the edge of a parchment.

“God’s blood,” he whispered. Reaching farther, he closed his fingers on it and then pulled it forth. A folded scrap of parchment. He unfolded it and examined the writing, which looked like Hebrew sigils. Jews? How could they be involved?

Jack nearly ripped it from his hands. “Master Crispin! What have you found? Blind me! Could they all have parchments hidden somewhere near them?”

He stared at his apprentice in the falling light as his words sank in. Was that the reason for the markings? To hide clues?

Flamel took it from him and studied it.

“More Kabbalah?” asked Crispin, cringing at the thought.

“Perhaps,” he said. But then he held it up to the light. More quill scratch writing between the lines. Crispin snatched it back and held it up to the pale yellow sun.

He read aloud, translating as he did, “‘A bow o’r reaches, grass, water, grass. Unless one is willing, he shall not pass. From here to there, o’r wavering glass.’” Crispin turned it this way and that in the sun. “Grass, water, grass?”

Jack edged forward. “Grass and water. A river’s edge?”

“Not a river. Something over a river. A bridge.”

“London Bridge?”

Crispin turned the parchment end over end. “If there is a riddle by each of these symbols all over London, then we must follow each one to find … what?”

“The answer,” said Flamel.

“The answer to what?”

He looked up. His face seemed more lined than before, his eyes sagging with weariness and worry. “To what to do next.”