Shadow of the Alchemist

19

Crispin and his entourage arrived at Thames Street, where the Lion’s Head Inn overlooked the river. Merchants with heavy cloaks milled in the courtyard, watching as young boys stabled their horses. They passed bored glances over Crispin and his fellow travelers before they entered the inn.

Crispin looked up at the sign hanging over the street. A painted lion’s head, mouth opened in a silent roar. “Everyone search,” he admonished them, and Jack went with Crispin while Avelyn followed Flamel. They searched the walls with their fingers and eyes, by the stone foundation and up into the lime-washed plaster of the walls.

Avelyn clapped her hands for their attention. Crispin trotted over and looked where she pointed. A niche above the lintel had a small carving of an alchemical symbol. “Give me a boost, Jack,” said Crispin. The boy steadied his back against the wall and made a step with his interlaced fingers. Up Crispin went, stepping as lightly as he could into his apprentice’s hands. He eyed the sigil and then poked his fingers into the niche. They touched parchment and his heart flared with excitement. He pulled it out at the same time he jumped down.

But once he’d unfolded it, his heart, which had so leapt with anticipation, suddenly chilled.

Alas. So close, but wrong. Choose again.

Crispin had been forming a plan before they had reached the inn. If the clues were always by the symbols, why not simply search all of them? But now he saw the futility of that. For not all of them were clues to the next venture; some were warnings and taunts such as this. They had made the wrong decision. He crumpled the parchment in his fist and let it fall to the mud.

“Bastard,” he muttered. “It was a good guess, Jack. But it was wrong. Now what?”

“He wants to be clever,” said Jack, pacing. “He don’t want it that simple.”

“No, he doesn’t. But it does have to do with a lion. What do we know of lions?”

“I still say the Lion Tower where the king’s menagerie is. There are lions kept there, so they say.”

“Possibly. But still. We cannot enter there. Does that mean he can?” That brought him back to thinking about Henry … no. Suffolk, perhaps. But if the abductor was playing fair, then he would know that Flamel could not enter the Tower precincts. “Lion, lion. Lion … el. Lionel of Antwerp. The duke of Clarence. Richard’s uncle.”

“But he’s dead, sir.”

“And buried at Canterbury. Too far. Lion … heart. King Richard I.”

Flamel shook his head. “But he is buried at Anjou, at Abbaye de Fontevraud.”

“Yes,” Crispin agreed. “Much too far.”

“I still say it’s the Tower,” muttered Jack, kicking at the crumpled parchment in the dirty snow.

“The lion is the symbol of the monarchy. It is on the king’s arms. A lion passant. What else is it the symbol for?”

Flamel shrugged. “Strength. Courage. Kingship.”

Jack toed the parchment. “Daniel in the lion’s den.”

“Biblical,” Crispin said with a nod. “Very well. Lion’s den. Lion skin. ‘And lo! a swarm of bees was in the lion’s mouth, and an honeycomb.’ Bees? No, foolish. It is winter now. No bees. Samson, perhaps?” And then he smacked his forehead with his hand. “Saint Mark! His symbol is a lion.”

Flamel edged forward, hope in his eyes. “Is there a St. Mark’s church in London?”

“No,” said Crispin, sagging. But he perked up immediately. “But there is a Mark Lane.” Without another word, he turned and hurried down the road to Tower Street and headed north until they reached it.

“Jack, you go that way, and I’ll go this way.” Flamel followed Jack while Avelyn grabbed Crispin’s cloak and held on. He took care to scour each post and lintel on every shop and house but found nothing. He looked once or twice at Avelyn’s concentrated face as her eyes tracked over plaster and wood.

By the end of the street where it changed names, they had searched all the structures. Crispin turned to survey Jack and Flamel, but they had disappeared beyond the curve of the road. Crossing his arms under his cloak, he’d just begun to wonder if he should look again when a stone post caught his eye. An iron ring hung there to tie off a horse, but there was a raised carved surface where the ring met the stone.

He allowed a heavy cart burdened with winter fuel to lumber by in front of him before he ventured into the street to cross the lane and stand over the granite post. Now that he was upon it, he could clearly see that there was the carving of a lion’s face with the iron ring protruding from either side of its mouth. He reached around it, beneath it, where the iron ring pierced the stone … and touched parchment.

After withdrawing the tightly rolled piece, he unfurled it and held it up to the fading light.

You are clever and shall be rewarded for your diligence:

We’re those who reach toward heaven, scale the heights, an assembly which one bond unites. As he who clings to us, through us on high alights.

Thinking a moment, Crispin read the words again. “An assembly. One bond uniting. Scale the heights. Ah. A flight of steps,” he said aloud. “Avelyn, go get your master and my apprentice.”

Off she went, moving quickly over the snowy street until she, too, disappeared around the bend.

Crispin worked on the problem of what staircase could be meant by the riddle while he waited, and it wasn’t long until she returned with Jack on her heels and Flamel picking up the rear, breathing hard.

“You found something?” The alchemist huffed, swallowed.

“We need to find a staircase.”

“A staircase?” He looked around. The light was falling quickly now, and the street lay almost in darkness, mostly because of the tall buildings shadowing the lane. “Where?”

Crispin racked his brain for an idea as to where he could find a prominent staircase in the city. Had to be St. Paul’s. Not only did it have the widest, grandest stair, but, as the riddle said, it would reach toward heaven.

“I think St. Paul’s cathedral,” he said. “It sits on a hill and is therefore the highest church with the highest staircase in the city.”

No one would gainsay him, whether through weariness or because they thought him right. Together they moved through the darkening streets, as windows became shuttered and storefront doors were bolted. Candle and lamplight from windows and open doorways painted the snowy ground with gold, even as the snow itself tinted blue from the falling darkness.

“We will soon need a lantern,” said Jack as they turned up Budge Row.

Avelyn tapped the boy’s shoulder and Jack turned to her. She motioned to herself, made a nod to Crispin, before she lifted her skirts and ran like the wind toward the Ditch. She’d have to be fast to get out of the gate and back through before the guards closed it up. He doubted she would make it.

“I suppose she will meet us at the church,” said Crispin.

They hurried, not wishing to be stopped and told to go home by soldiers or the Watch. They threaded over Watling Street and then dropped down to Carter Lane before going up Old Dean’s Lane to the west door of the cathedral.

Clerks were hurrying down the steps, eager to get home to their meager suppers after an unsuccessful day of soliciting work within Paul’s Walk. Crispin bumped a few shoulders, and the men looked back at him with scowls. He tried to bow, to be polite, but his mind was on other things, on finding more symbols and more parchment.

Jack made it to the top step first and waited with an impatient jiggling leg for Crispin and Flamel. When they arrived to the top of the stairs, they all spread out across the porch, searching for symbols.

This is damnable, thought Crispin as his eyes scanned anything and everything. How many more clues would they be required to find? Flamel must be going mad. But of course, because of the cruelty of it all, this might very well have been the plan all along.

Yet after many minutes of fruitless searching, Crispin swore under his breath.

“I don’t see anything here,” said Jack, voicing all their concerns.

“No,” Flamel agreed. “Should we look around the rest of the building?”

Crispin gave the church door one more glance. “It makes more sense that he should have led us inside. There are steps up to the quire as well.”

In they went, entering through the smaller door cut from the large double doors. Crispin’s steps echoed in the quiet church. Long shadows fell diagonally across his path down Paul’s Walk, a busy thoroughfare during the day, but dark and ominous once night had fallen.

Crispin could see monks in the arcades beside the nave. Their cowled heads turned warily toward his little group as Crispin led them up to the quire’s wide steps. He motioned for Jack and Flamel to search while he went off to do the same.

Each carving and floret suddenly looked different. He had seen them hundreds of times before, but now he doubted his own senses. Had he seen them before? Were they new to his eyes? He felt the weight of the lion tile in his scrip. Were any of these recently added?

Flamel made a shout, which echoed throughout the long nave. Whirling, Crispin saw him point and he trotted through the arcade to halt beside him. The carving was not an alchemist’s sign, but the rudimentary drawing of a fox.

Crispin frowned. “How do you know this is it?”

“Renard. What you call … a fox. This is the protector, the cultivator, of the Elixir of Life.”

Nodding, Crispin searched. Yes, it was plainly not of the mason’s art, for it was carved on the stone with a metal instrument, quickly and crudely … and recently.

His hands felt along the pilier cantonné, higher, higher, around the wide, irregular column. Fingers dipped between the stone shafts flying up the pillar. The mortar was solid nearly all the way up … until his fingers found where it had been scraped away. A fingernail passed over the parchment, but his fingers were too big to grasp it.

He turned to Jack. “You have nimble fingers. Come.” The boy complied and stood before Crispin in the darkening nave.

Jack stepped up and balanced against the stone. With two fingers, he reached it and snatched the parchment, waving it to show he had done it. He jumped down and immediately surrendered it to his master.

Crispin opened the parchment as Jack and Flamel crowded around him, peering over his arm. Jack translated and read aloud:

“‘I congratulate you. You play the game well. Your reward: I perch in silence on my peak. A tongue have I, but do not speak. Until I’m moved I must be meek.’”

They looked at one another.

“Perched. Does he mean a bird, like a crow?”

“No,” said Crispin. “Listen to the words. A tongue have I, but do not speak. Until I’m moved I must be meek. Perched on a peak,” he muttered. “Has a silent tongue … until moved. What has a tongue but is silent until it is moved?”

“People have tongues,” said Jack. “And animals. A donkey? They will not move and then bray when forced.”

Crispin shook his head. “Too literal.”

“Something with a tongue that speaks when moved,” Jack muttered. “But not a true tongue … Ah!” His face brightened. “A bell, of course.”

As one, their gaze rose directly above their heads into the darkened tower with its set of bells.

“Do we have to go up there?” wailed Jack.

Crispin sighed. “It would seem so.”

Jack stared up into the gloom of the tower and whistled. “I hope you haven’t seen fit to offend the bishop of London, Master Crispin. We might need his help.”

Crispin tried to think. He could not recall ever offending Bishop Braybrooke. At least not lately. In fact, he might even be on the bishop’s good side for helping him stop some boys from using bows and arrows to take down the pigeons that had gotten inside and roosted in the vaulted arches above Paul’s Walk. But it was just as likely that the bishop would choose not to remember him.

“We must wait, at any rate, for Avelyn’s return.” Avelyn. Her name slipped so easily off his tongue. His face warmed as he thought of her. She had certainly gotten under his skin.

They decided to wait outside under the shelter of the porch, even as the last of the light dimmed from the pink-streaked sky. The church’s arched doorway gleamed gold and then gray as clouds covered the retreating sun. The cathedral loured above the nearby lanes already set in the gloom of their own chasm of shadows. As the night fell, the city drew quiet, as if drawing a blanket over itself, ready for sleep. Candlelight flickered behind shutters and cooking smells fluttered over the rooftops, and there was, perhaps, the gentle murmur from behind closed doors and little else but the occasional barking dog or mewl from a stray cat.

Crispin spied a light jogging along between the houses on Bowyers Row, and soon the figure of Avelyn appeared in the gloom, carrying her dented lantern. She marched up the steps right up to Crispin and smiled her devilish grin before looking to her master, whom she should have greeted first. Crispin was beginning to wonder how he was to tell her that theirs was a brief affair and that nothing whatever would come of it. Surely she did not expect anything. He had told her the truth about himself.

Still, her unbridled cheer and boldness did appeal to him. He wouldn’t mind another night in her company.

After exchanging their finger language, she pushed past Flamel and led the way through the arch and inside to Paul’s Walk. A few cressets burned within, lighting the path, but the columns threw the long nave into inky gloom. Avelyn’s little lantern helped, but it was a small circle of light, and the four of them clung to it like moths around a flame.

They arrived at the crossing and looked up high into the dark bell tower again.

“Maybe it’s not up there,” Jack said hopefully. “Maybe it’s somewhere directly below the bell?” He looked around on the tiled floor, directing Avelyn’s arm with the lantern to shine where he searched. She didn’t seem happy about it and tried to snatch the lantern away. “Master Crispin, make her help!” he cried.

“Avelyn,” he said, voice stern, though surely she could not tell the tenor of his voice. Nonetheless, she seemed chastened, at least as chastened as she ever looked.

Whatever accomplished it, Avelyn assisted Jack, but by the sighing sounds from the lad, Crispin could tell they had no luck.

Avelyn handed over the lantern to Jack without any fuss. “So now you give it to me,” he muttered. He looked up once at Crispin. “I’ll go up into the tower, sir. Which way?”

Crispin pointed toward a door. “Mind that no one sees you.” He directed the others to wait alongside a column. If the monks should come through after Vespers, it might serve as a good hiding place while at the same time offering a position to keep an eye on the bell tower’s stairs. And just as he thought it, he spotted the little light slowly climbing within the tower, making its careful way upward. He knew Jack would be checking the walls all along the stairwell, but if Crispin knew this abductor, the message would be situated as close to the bell as possible, for that would be the most out of the way, the most troublesome to get to, and wasn’t that what this abductor was hoping for?

But what was this leading to? This hunt was all well and good, but what was its ultimate purpose? Crispin kept his eyes on Jack, or at least on the little light. He feared that Perenelle might be in graver danger than he had originally thought. Murder was not foremost on the mind of most abductors. Their goal was the ransom. In this case, it was the Stone. But what if he wanted something else? For this was more than a simple ransom for a hostage. If that had been the case, he would have instructed Flamel to leave the Stone someplace else. No, instead he sent them on this insane chase all over London. And Crispin feared that they would find Madam Perenelle’s lifeless body at the end of it. Maybe he should tell the sheriffs of this crime … but he rejected the notion almost the moment he thought it. They would do nothing. Nothing would be accomplished by bringing them into it, and wisely, Flamel had seen that from the start. Not only would they be useless, but they would most likely get in the way. And if Perenelle was not in danger now-though Crispin was fairly certain that she was-the sheriffs, through their bumbling course, would make certain that she did fall into danger’s path.

No, there was no help from the king’s anointed. It was up to him and Jack. As usual.

He looked up again and found the little light had climbed higher, almost as high as it could go … and stopped. It seemed to sway for a moment, seemed unsteady, when all at once, it fell. The light streaked downward through the widest part of the tower, never touching the stair. It lit the walls as it went, until it crashed to the floor.

Crispin stifled his cry and ran. His heart beat a triple measure as he arrived at the crossing of the transepts. He raced up the quire steps and slammed into the locked gate. But instead of the lifeless form he expected to see lying on the floor, a crumpled bit of metal lay there. The extinguished candle from the ruined lantern sent up a wisp of smoke.

Crispin looked up.

“Master!” hissed the distant voice of his apprentice from above, and never had he been so relieved to hear it. “I found it. But I dropped the lantern.”

“Forget the lantern. Just get down here, you knave.”

He heard Jack’s hurried steps along the stairwell and waited, his breath and heartbeat returning to normal. The fool and his slippery fingers. The boy could cut a purse as nimble as you pleased, but he could not keep hold of a simple lantern?

Jack jumped through the stairwell door and landed on the tiled floor. He ran up to Crispin and looked up at his face. “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a winding sheet,” he said.

Crispin straightened. “Never mind me. Where’s the parchment?”

“I was reaching up and I slipped. It was almost me going over the side, and no mistaking.” Jack looked back at the ruined lantern. “Blind me.”

“Where is the parchment?” Crispin asked again. He took Jack by the arm and steered him over to the column where Flamel and Avelyn awaited them.

“What is it, Maître Guest? What is the riddle this time?”

“Jack,” Crispin said impatiently, “for the last time, where is the damned parchment?”

“There was no parchment,” he said, looking from face to face. “It was the bell.”

“What was the bell?”

“There was an inscription on the bell. In Latin. It said, ‘It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins.’”

“This is a foolish waste of time!” cried Flamel.

A noise. Perhaps a step. They all fell silent as they listened.

“Monks,” Crispin whispered to them. “Let us go.”

They hurried together out of the arch and down the steps. A burning brazier stood in the cathedral’s courtyard and the four of them surrounded it, warming their hands over the flames.

Flamel rubbed his eyes. “Where are these riddles taking us? Is he not laughing at our antics? What does it mean, Maître Guest?”

“We are set on this course now, Master Flamel. Unfortunately, he holds the reins. We must do as he bids. At some point, he will tell us to leave the ransom, and so we must be accurate as to which riddle we find and in what order. When we are wrong, he tells us.”

“And so what is the meaning of this riddle?” Flamel asked again.

“I know!” said Jack. His face was bright with the excitement of discovery. But Crispin saw his features change as he realized the gravity of the situation. “I mean … I sorted it out on my way back down the stairs. It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins. The answer is … death.”

Flamel gasped and Jack immediately saw the lack of grace in his pronouncement. The boy still had far to go in learning when to keep silent.

Crispin touched Flamel’s sleeve. “It is merely another riddle, good Master.” I hope. “The clue is ‘death.’ And so. What are we to conclude? He means a churchyard, gravestones.”

Jack’s contrition was evident by the set of his brow. “But Master,” he said softly, as if his tone could erase the harshness of his earlier declaration, “there are many graves in the city. How are we to know which one it is? Should we look here at St. Paul’s?”

“Two clues we have found here already,” Flamel offered anxiously. “And here is where he would have had me leave the ransom.”

“True.” Crispin pondered. But something about it did not sit well. “Since we are here, we might as well look.”

They would have to go back inside, for those of high stature were buried within the cathedral itself. Again they wandered separately. Crispin wished he had the broken lantern, for he could not seem to adjust to the dark as easily as young Jack did or Avelyn.

Crispin found one of the older tombs, erected before the fire in Norman times. The stone seemed to be crumbling from age, and even though it remained indoors, time had not been kind to its worn effigies. Still aware that a wayward porter or servant might be about, Crispin moved carefully around the tomb, studying the carvings and raised patterns. A skull with crossed bones caught his eye and he knelt, running his fingers over the cold, uneven stone. Another parchment in a niche. Hurriedly, he removed it and read:

Close. But not here beneath the vaulted ceilings. Beneath another greater vault you must look.

“Dammit!” He caught Tucker’s attention by waving the parchment. Jack, in turn, tapped Avelyn’s arm. They trotted over, collecting Flamel along the way.

“This is not the place.” He handed it to Jack, who read it slowly, mouthing the words.

“Where, then, Master Crispin?”

“A ‘greater vault’ would be the sky. But I do not think it another churchyard or plague pit. Something out of doors, certainly. Something that reeks of death.”

“Tower Hill,” whispered Jack. His face was in shadow, but his eyes glistened from the distant cressets.

“Yes,” Crispin agreed. That sounded right.

“It’s late. Surely the Watch is patrolling,” said Jack.

He set his jaw. “When has that ever stopped us before?”

They made their way to Candlewick Street and headed for the Postern Gate. Crispin let Flamel fall behind with Avelyn. He got in close to Jack and said to him quietly, “I do not like this game, Jack. He is setting us up for a purpose, and that purpose may very well be a diabolical one.”

“Do you mean to say that Madam Flamel might already be … be…”

“It’s possible. The cruelness of leading us on this chase without the possibility of renewing his bid for a ransom seems out of proportion.”

“He knows Master Flamel.”

“I would say so. Knows him well and has a grievance.”

“So he don’t want the Stone.”

“I think he does, but he obviously feels he has time to savor the getting of it.”

Jack looked back over his shoulder at the alchemist. “You said that you thought Master Flamel knew the abductor.”

“He might. What vexes me is the time it has taken to plant these clues, to invent these riddles. This was thought out very carefully, Jack, over a long period of time. What sort of grievance would he have? How did he know that Flamel was coming to England? It was supposed to be a secret.” He lifted his head and listened to the darkening city.

When they turned at Tower Street, they all stopped, listening. Crispin plucked the small noises of night from the chill air: a dog barking down the lane, a sign creaking in the wind, the restless whisper of leafless trees scratching against a garden wall, a rat rustling in the underbrush, the soft voices like a hum coming from the houses. Crispin felt like a thief, creeping through the streets, trying to avoid capture. Especially now that they had lost their lantern. It was difficult to see their way.

Ahead were the high curtain walls of the Tower of London and, above that, Tower Hill, where the gibbet awaited its next victim.

They turned up the rutted lane, climbing toward the lonely hill. Jack fell silent and pale beside him. It wasn’t all that long ago when the boy was in danger of ending up there, and well he knew it. Crispin, too, approached with trepidation. Here was the place that the other conspirators in the Plot were dispatched: hanged, drawn, quartered. A particularly nasty and lingering death for daring to venture into treason. And well Crispin knew, too, that he was damned fortunate to have escaped it. His pride often made him wish he had been executed with the others instead of living in his humiliation, but he had grown accustomed to life, and the notion of giving it up had become harder and harder. Not that he particularly relished his existence on the Shambles, but it had its advantages. And with a curt glance to Avelyn, he recognized one of them.

As they neared, they could see that the gibbet stood empty, and for that Crispin was grateful. He had no liking for the idea of searching underneath the body of a dead man, and a man bound for Hell at that.

The wood of the post and jutting beam glistened from damp under the starlight. A well-used rope hung from its beam and swayed with the night wind. It reminded Crispin of the rope back at Flamel’s shop hanging from its own beam. Thomas Cornhill met his death swiftly and was hung by his heel on it. But Perenelle Flamel lingered. Who knew what peril she was in at this very moment?

Standing below the gibbet’s platform, he heard Jack swallow and breathe, even above the constant wind. The boy was murmuring prayers, and Crispin decided to spare him. “You look here below, Jack. I … I will go up.”

He trudged farther up the hill to the gibbet’s steps. He hesitated only a heartbeat before he put his foot to the first step and slowly climbed. God’s blood, but it felt as if he were going to his doom. What a fearful place, full of ghosts and evil spirits. No matter how many prayers a priest chanted, no blessing ever seemed to permeate its dark wood.

He stood on the platform at last and looked down. Yes, he knew how very lucky he was. Perhaps when next he met the duke, he could be civil again.

Get to work, Crispin, he told himself. It helped to assuage his choking fear of the place.

He began to search. And it didn’t take long. The carving was on the post of the hanging tree. A crude drawing of a raven. Crispin didn’t need an alchemist to tell him what it meant.

He felt around it and found the parchment in a gouged-out niche.

You are a worthy opponent. The game is soon over. Stand and enjoy the view before you continue.

Your reward: Eyes bold, skin cold, silver-armored, breath hold. Multiplying, fortifying, never thirsting, shore shying.

The references to death should not have disconcerted him so, yet he thought of little but Perenelle’s jeopardy. Ever mindful that he should not discount anything the abductor said, Crispin stood on the gibbet and looked out over London, trying to discern what he was supposed to see.

London lay before him. Its many slanted roofs, covered in clay tile and lead sheeting, gleamed with damp. Smoke rambled over the rooftops like sheep in a meadow. Small lights from braziers or candles in windows sparkled, jewels on black velvet. In the distance, the dark Thames glittered when a wave caught the starlight. But he saw little else, for the night had closed in, and with it the mist from the Thames laying all under a blanket of gray fleece.

He descended the steps again and adjusted his leather hood over his head.

“It is late,” he announced to them. “It grows colder by the minute. We should return you to your shop, Master Flamel, and resume this search on the morrow.”

“What … what did you find?” asked the man, his eyes fearful.

“Another riddle, Master Flamel. But … we are close to the end. He has said so.”

He looked up at Crispin with a concentrated stare. “The end, Maître Guest?”

“Let us talk back at your lodgings.”

Weary, the four of them returned to the darkened shop. Flamel used a very ordinary key to unlock the door, but he had taken only a step inside when his foot scuffed upon something that was out of place.

“Avelyn,” Flamel muttered. “Foolish girl…” His voice died on his lips. There wasn’t much light, except for that thrown out by the banked hearth, but as Crispin’s eyes adjusted, he could see, too, what Flamel was seeing: that the place had been ransacked yet again.

“Avelyn!” cried the alchemist. He grabbed her arms when she came up beside him. “Go look!”

Her eyes were wide with concern. She bounded like a doe over the ramshackle debris and minced over an overturned table to the ambry. She released the secret door where the Philosopher’s Stone was kept and reached inside. A strange cry, like a dying dove, made Crispin wince. He realized it came from her. She looked up at her master, a sorrowful expression on her grimacing face.