Shadow of the Alchemist

29

The men looked up just as Crispin landed on their chests. They all tumbled backward, scattered and disoriented. He took advantage of it to grab Piers by his throat and hauled him to his feet. His dagger was at the man’s cheek.

“The games are over,” Crispin growled.

Piers glared at him, his bruised face long and open. And then his blood-cracked lips curved into a smile. That gray tooth gave him away again. “You are a clever man, Crispin Guest,” he got out before the others clambered to their feet.

They were swathed in dark cloaks and dark hoods. Their shadowed faces were not ones Crispin recognized, but they did not run as he’d expected. Instead, they dove forward, drawing their swords.

Crispin glared back at Piers. “It appears they want you dead. As dead as I want you.”

“So popular,” he grunted, before freeing himself from Crispin’s grasp with one jerk of his shoulders. He ducked Crispin’s swinging arm and head-butted one approaching assailant.

They hollered and the one fell into the other, but both recovered quickly, brandishing their blades. Catching a glance at Piers, Crispin saw that he did not seem as much concerned as excited. He, too, had a dagger in hand. He cocked his head at Crispin.

“Fight together, then fight one another?”

There was no other option. One man went for Piers and the other for Crispin.

Crispin blocked the sword blade with his dagger hilt and tried to shove it away, but the man forced his dagger hand down. Crispin twisted, releasing their locked blades with one swift arc of his arm. The sword whooshed toward him. He ducked, smiting the man’s back with his fist. The man grunted and lurched forward, off balance. Crispin took advantage and kicked at the back of the man’s knee. A crunch and he howled, going down. Crispin flipped the dagger in his hand and used the hilt in his fist to deal a punishing uppercut to the man’s jaw. A fan of blood swept across the floor as he dropped.

Rubbing his fist, Crispin swiveled toward the other two clinched in mortal combat.

Piers landed a blow to the man’s belly, knocking him backward right into Crispin. They both struggled to keep their feet. When they righted, retreating footsteps told Crispin that Piers had bolted. The door swinging freely made it a certainty.

Crispin went after him, but someone yanking on his hood wrenched him to a halt. He turned. The assassin gripped his hood and tugged it down, exposing Crispin’s neck. The sword swung down to behead him.

With all his might, Crispin rolled to the side, pulling the man with him. The man let go of the hood and Crispin twisted away, rolling on the floor away from the assailant, but the man pursued. His sword clanged down against the floor near Crispin’s head, once, twice.

Still on the floor, Crispin grabbed a chair with his legs and shoved it at the man, right into his belly. The man staggered back and with gritted teeth chopped down with the blade again. The chair splintered.

Crispin jumped to his feet and rushed him, closing him in a bear hug. His dagger plunged deep into the assailant’s neck before slashing it outward.

Blood shot forth, spurting with each heartbeat. The man fell back, gurgling on his own blood. The metallic smell of it filled the air. He slipped in the gore and writhed and rattled on the floor. Crispin stepped back out of the way and watched dispassionately as the man’s eyes rolled back, his thrashing ceased, and the blood pooled.

He wiped his blade and his hands on the man’s cloak and turned his eyes on the other, still unconscious on the floor beside him. Crispin didn’t know how long he had. Piers was gone. But what of Perenelle?

“Madam Flamel! Are you here?”

A muffled cry sounded from the room beyond the archway. He stepped over the dead man and tried the door. Locked. With the flat of his foot, he kicked hard at the feeble lock and it caved in as the door slammed open.

The room was dark and cold. A figure seated on a chair moaned and moved its head from side to side, blowing out a cloud of breath. Crispin approached and saw a woman, hair disheveled, face weary and dirty, and mouth stretched taut with a gag. He grabbed the gag first and stripped it away from her. She spit on the floor, away from him.

“Madam Flamel?”

She nodded, tears glistening in her eyes. “And you must be Crispin Guest,” she said in a dry voice. He was surprised she knew of him. Her mouth was cracked and chapped. She laid her head back and licked her lips as Crispin worked his dagger through her bindings.

He tried to lift her, but she resisted, shaking her head. “Please. I thirst.”

He hurried back into the outer room and found an untouched flagon of wine. He sniffed it, making sure it was what he thought it was, and then found a goblet on the floor. He returned, pouring it for her.

Her trembling hands came up to hold it, but he could see she had no strength. He cradled her head and fed the goblet to her lips. She drank greedily, slurping it. It dribbled down her chin to her dirty gown.

She breathed when the empty cup was taken away. “I am weak. I haven’t used my legs in days. They are feeble. Please help me up.”

He took her by the shoulders and lifted her, and she cried out. Had she been tied to the chair all this time, for five days?

“I’ve got you,” he said. “But we must leave. It isn’t safe.”

“Have you killed him?”

“No.”

She said nothing to that. He helped her cross the threshold of the room. Her gown was soiled and she stank of urine. His anger boiled and he wished he had killed him, killed him slowly.

They headed toward the door when she stopped him. “The Stone. You must find it.”

“We haven’t time.”

“He mustn’t keep it. He mustn’t make the Elixir.”

“It won’t do him any good when I kill him.”

“You don’t understand. He won’t be able to be killed.”

“I don’t believe in that nonsense. I must get you out of here.”

But when he tried to pull her through the front door, her clawed hands held on to the jamb. “I won’t leave without the Stone!”

“God’s blood, woman! Bah! Very well.” He propped her against the door and she leaned down and kneaded her legs through her soiled gown.

Crispin looked about the room. In their fight, tables had overturned and chairs had been smashed. The detritus of broken crockery and instruments were everywhere. “Malemeyns might have kept it on his person,” he said to her as he looked. “He might not have-”

“No, he couldn’t. He had to … had to keep it in a crucible in order to make the Elixir. If he knew even that much, it will be here.”

“If he knew that much?”

She looked down at the bodies on the floor, one that would move no more, covered in his own blood, and the other that still breathed shallowly, though through a gurgle of red. His jaw might be broken or dislocated. He might die anyway. Crispin didn’t mourn it.

“Piers was skilled in the alchemical sciences,” she went on, unmoved by the plight of the bodies lying at her feet. “But he could not master the Stone. And if one could not master that, then he could not master the Elixir. But it has been a long time. He had time to learn. And if he had notions to bring Nicholas here to help him, he hadn’t realized that it was me instead, all along.”

He said nothing as he searched.

Slowly, using the jamb, she straightened, wincing. “Do you think women are only for softness and bearing children? We have many other skills. And mine was in alchemy. It’s what drew Nicholas to me and, I am afraid, Piers. Can we stop him?”

“We will. This I vow to you. But first we must flee this place.”

“Not without the Stone.”

“Women are also considerably more stubborn,” he muttered. Yet he admired her. For she had truly suffered much in the past week, and even as safety was nigh, she would not turn her course. He envied Flamel.

With his dagger, he carefully turned over broken beakers, their contents hissing and bubbling on the wooden floor. What at first he thought was a shard of glass, he recognized as the Stone Flamel had shown him before. Crouching, he pushed it with his blade out of the mess and tipped it into the stained tablecloth lying on the floor. He wiped it off and straightened. Returning to her, he handed her the crystallized Stone.

“You knew what it looked like,” she said, her voice, even as scratchy as it was, filled with awe. She clasped it tight in her hand. “Nicholas showed you.”

“Yes. I made him show me once we discerned what Malemeyns wanted.” He unbuttoned his cloak, took it off, and threw it over her quivering shoulders.

“He wanted more than that,” she said, leaning into him as he led her out the door. “He told me the terrible things he was doing, Maître. He was brought over from France in order to poison the cisterns, and make it look as if it were a French plot, turning against his own people.”

“I see.”

“But more. He was also to discredit the duke of Lancaster in the process. When he discovered the duke was in Spain, he turned his attention to his son.”

“So I also suspected.”

“Did you? Nicholas was wise to find you. But what this English lord who hired him did not know was Piers’s great hatred for Lancaster. For killing his son. He wanted to do his own justice and kill Lancaster’s son in return. But when he found Nicholas here…”

“He hatched many plots indeed. But tell me. Did he tell you which English lord hired him?”

“Oxford was the name he used. I do not know if it is a name or a place.”

“Oxford?” Not Suffolk. “It is both,” he said absently. So. Robert de Vere was playing his hand. And was he not recently appointed the justice of Chester, in direct control of Henry’s lands? Did Richard know about all this? He’d like to know the answer to that.

They moved through the streets. Crispin kept the pace slow for Perenelle’s sake. He kept looking back over his shoulder, but no one pursued them.

“The many plots seemed to have collapsed,” he said. “For one, those men were sent to dispatch Malemeyns. Perhaps Oxford’s patronage had expired.”

“Assassins,” she said. “But they did not get him.”

“I’m afraid I arrived at an inopportune moment.”

They shouldered past a man burdened with bundled sticks over his back. “A pity you could not have been delayed a few moments more.”

“I fear if I had, they might have gotten to you.”

“Me? How could I be a threat?”

“You were a witness. You knew it was Oxford. And even if you did not, they could not take that chance. They would certainly have killed you.”

She snorted. “I had the protection of the Holy Virgin. She kept me safe and I am alive and unhurt.”

“So you are.”

“And she sent you. I am most grateful. I will light many candles for you, Maître.”

He felt his cheeks warming, even in the cold and without his cloak. He said nothing.

“Piers discovered that Nicholas and I were here. And he changed his strategies. You see, when his house burned and took the life of his son, it also destroyed his work. He claims he was close to creating the Stone. But that, I doubt.”

“Yet it seems as if Master Flamel is famed for creating the Stone, at least among alchemists. How did Malemeyns dare steal it and call it his own invention?”

“He is mad. Mad with vengeance and envy. And hatred. It was an accident, but long ago, Nicholas was responsible for his wife’s death. He mixed a potion to heal her, but she reacted very badly to it. She died, painfully. I am certain that was part of the reason he stole me and treated me so abominably.”

“A man will have his revenge,” he said, thinking now that he’d like to take his own revenge on Piers. “He seemed also to take on many guises. Another alchemist, a preacher. He sounded like a Londoner to me.”

“He was from London as a child and often returned. Though once he was married he traveled less often. He made a name for himself in England, but that was not what he wanted. He wanted to be the prima alchemist of France, to have the king bestow honors on him as he had upon Nicholas. He felt in his heart he was a Frenchman, and to use the English in this plot was his greatest jest.”

“Do you have a clue as to where he is now?”

“No. He told me much, but he was also careful. I got the impression he had many hiding places within the city.”

“So he did, even to using the house of a man away on travels and pretending to be him.”

“So clever. So unafraid. So without scruples.” She bundled the cloak tightly about her. “A man like that can feel he can do anything, that he is entitled to do so. A man like that is the most dangerous of all.”

They said no more and moved up Fleet at last to the shop. Even as she leaned upon him, he felt her urge him forward. Crispin knocked on the door and he spied Jack for only a moment before Avelyn threw him aside. Perenelle seemed to lose the control she had carefully kept. “Ma chère! Je suis si contente de vous voir!”

Avelyn cried out and took her elbow, and Flamel was instantly at her side, enclosing her in his arms. The two of them rocked together, soft sobs escaping both of them.

“It was Piers,” she murmured, and he drew back, staring at her. “But your gallant Maître Guest saved me … and this.” She opened her hand to reveal the Stone.

“Ah!” he cried, folding his hand over hers, and the both of them clutched each other again, as well as the Stone. “Maître, Maître!” He looked with a tear-streaked face up at Crispin over the top of his wife’s head. “How … how can I ever thank you? What shall ever be enough?”

“It isn’t over, Master Flamel. He escaped me and I fear he may still do harm.”

“But you will find him. I know you will. And Thomas can now rest in peace. Come, Avelyn,” he said, signaling the girl. Avelyn was looking adoringly at Crispin when Flamel finally caught her attention. “Take your mistress and bathe and clothe her. See that she is comfortable.”

Avelyn nodded and took Perenelle’s hand, kissing it before she led the drooping woman away. Perenelle stopped, straightened, and removed Crispin’s cloak from her shoulders. She handed it to him and he took it, crushing it to his chest. “May our Lady bless you, Maître. May she bless all who hold you dear.”

He bowed low as she was led away. Jack looked on with stoic admiration. Flamel’s hands on Crispin’s sleeve brought him back to his attention. “You did it! You did it! You are a miracle.”

Crispin moved away from the man’s embrace to spin his cloak over his shoulders and step closer to the fire. He didn’t feel much like a miracle. He felt like a failure. He hadn’t captured Piers yet, let him escape. Though he supposed he was busy at the time.

But that also meant that Henry was still in danger.

Jack nudged Crispin’s elbow, offering ale, and sat beside Crispin, sipping his own. Crispin related to him how Piers was not only Bartholomew, but Robert Pickthorn.

“No! That cannot be,” he said with a snarl. “How could he have deceived us so!”

“He is a master at it. At disguise and guile. Perhaps he even uses his sorcery to do it. A false nose, wigs, false beards.”

“But all them people. How did he ever get away with it?”

“I’ve told you before, Jack. People see only what you force them to see. We saw him only in an alchemist’s shop as Bartholomew, and when we saw him as Pickthorn, he was fiery and bombastic, just as we expected to see. Change the voice a bit and add an accent, a stooped shoulder, and none will be the wiser. I’ve done it myself.”

“You never!”

“I have.”

Jack let out a breath. “He’s laughing at us.”

“Let him. He won’t be laughing when my dagger goes through him.”

“So what now? He’s still after Lord Derby.”

“Yes. That worries me. Henry is wise enough now not to follow any more anonymous missives, but what if Malemeyns put my name to it?”

Jack shot to his feet. “God’s blood, sir! He can’t do that!”

He stared at Jack anew and tried mightily not to smile at his apprentice’s use of Crispin’s favorite oath. “No, he certainly cannot be allowed to. But I don’t know where Henry lodges.”

“And just how is it the Tracker finds that out?”

“Right.” He got up and headed for the door. Abruptly, he stopped. “Jack, I want you to stay here.”

Jack slumped. “What! Again?”

“They need guarding, Jack. I fear that Malemeyns may try to return. And remember, he can disguise himself.”

Jack looked disappointed for only a moment before he pushed his shoulders back. “Aye, Master Crispin. I’ll stay. I’ll do my best. I’ll make you proud.”

“You already do.”