Shadow of the Alchemist

3

Deaf, mute, and no doubt simple, thought Crispin. “She does not know or does not know how to say?”

Flamel clutched at the lapels of his gown, spotted hands tensing over the dark material. “She can express herself very well, Maître. She simply does not know what has transpired.”

Crispin frowned. “Ask her if she saw anyone or anything. Are your wife’s clothes gone? Jewelry? And ask her where she was during this mayhem.”

Crispin watched as Flamel began his finger dance, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. Her eyes lingered on Crispin and she even moved Flamel aside to walk forward, striding right up to him. She stood almost toe to toe with Crispin and looked up at his face searchingly. She was the height of a child, the top of her head coming only up to his chest. And though not a child, she was perhaps little older than Jack. She studied his face and even raised a tentative finger to touch it. He shied away and glared at the alchemist. “What is she doing?”

“Learning. About you, I suspect. She has a way about her unlike any other.”

“Tell her to stop.” His hand captured her wrist before her fingers could reach his face and squeezed it once, hard, before pushing her hand away and letting it go.

She raised a silken brow at him but didn’t seem at all perturbed, blinking white-tipped lashes. At last, she turned back to Flamel. He spoke in the finger language and she responded in kind. When she was finished, she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed her unnerving gaze on Crispin.

“Well?” he asked.

Flamel shook his head. “She had only just returned and found it this way. There is nothing missing. Our money is still here. Now do you see that something is amiss?”

“Why would your wife ransack your rooms and then take nothing? It makes no sense.”

“I … I do not know.” He grasped his hair again and shook his head. Avelyn swooped forward, picked up an upended stool, and shoved it nearly beneath him. He slumped into it without looking behind him. It looked to be a well-practiced gesture. “I do not know what to make of it.”

“Mind if I look around?” asked Crispin, already moving toward the far wall.

Flamel waved his hand and Crispin examined the disorder. Jack was suddenly at his shoulder.

“It’s a mess, right enough,” he murmured. He kept glancing up nervously at the slowly turning brass planets.

“Yes. But why?”

“Aye,” Jack said quietly, so only Crispin could hear. He looked back at Flamel and sent a long gaze raking over the silent assistant. “If the apprentice ran off with his master’s wife-and no man deserves a whipping more if he done it-then why did they leave their goods behind?”

Crispin cast his gaze about the room. And though it was in complete disarray, he couldn’t help noticing the finery. The carved tables and benches; the dark walnut ambry; bolts of fine cloth unwound and snaking across the floor. Above beside the brass planetary display perched a loft open to the floor below. He made out the shape of a bed in the gloom. Bedding lay over the railing, dipping into the space below like a frozen waterfall.

Clearly Flamel wasn’t lying about his status. But the missing wife was another matter.

He swiveled a little too sharply and nearly lost his footing, forgetting that he was still in his cups. “Just when was it again that you felt your wife was gone too long?”

“It must have been about midafternoon, around None. I was working all morning and had sent Avelyn out on an errand. When I heard the church bells, I remember being startled that it was so late. And that Perenelle hadn’t returned. And my apprentice, Thomas Cornhill, was not here at all. It was Avelyn who stoked the fire and prepared my flasks and jars early this morning.”

“Cornhill? Is he English?”

“Yes. He came highly recommended and has a head for alchemy.”

“So this servant-” He waved a hand at Avelyn. “She stoked the fire and did the apprentice’s tasks. And you thought nothing of this inconsistency?”

“Well, sometimes Thomas is … away.”

“Away?”

Flamel passed a hand over his face. His hair was wild, sticking up out of his cap. “The lad is-how you say-beau. Comely. He catches the eye of many a maid.” Pointedly, he looked at Avelyn, but she was unaware of what he was saying and was busy sweeping the broken crockery into a corner with the noisy upstroke of her broom.

Crispin followed his gaze, but Flamel shook his head. “Oh no, Maître. Avelyn is very particular. She does not allow liberties. I think she has cuffed Thomas rather well a time or two. But…” He sank again. “My wife … she might not be above his charms. She is … older than I, but handsome.”

“Any idea where they might have gone? Does your apprentice, this Thomas Cornhill, does he have other lodgings, family?”

“Family, yes.”

“Then we must go there first.”

“Avelyn will take you. I cannot leave my shop. I mustn’t. I have much work to do.”

Crispin turned to the girl again and watched as Flamel gestured to her. Before he was halfway done, she looked up at Crispin with a smile. He sneered back. He didn’t like the idea of her, this deaf-mute leading him about.

She made quickly for the door and waited under the lintel, staring at him.

“She’s a right comely lass, Master,” said Jack at his elbow. The boy was grinning. “Wouldn’t mind too much following her about, if you know my meaning.”

“All too well. Might I suggest you keep your cod laced and your eyes open?”

Looking back at Flamel, he could see the man was already busily sweeping parchments into his arms. He bent and retrieved a small folded piece under a jar and his eyes widened in shock.

“Master Flamel?” Crispin approached. The alchemist straightened and hid it behind his back. Rocking on his heels, Crispin waited. “Did you find something?”

“Oh, no. No, I-”

Though his reflexes were slowed by drink, Crispin was still able to feint in one direction and lean in the other, plucking the parchment from the man’s hand. He raised it to the cloudy sunlight from a narrow casement window. It fell across its buff surface. The inked lines were a string of several letters, nothing more.

“What is this?” asked Crispin.

“I-it is nothing,” Flamel insisted, and tried to grasp the parchment from Crispin’s hand. Crispin pulled it away.

“Nothing? Then why does it vex you so?”

“It is possibly part of one of my important papers.”

“It is merely a fragment.”

Suddenly the parchment was yanked from his fingers and Avelyn was there beside him, examining it, turning it this way and that. Damn the woman!

“Give that back,” he snarled, and grabbed it, but she wrestled with him and managed to tear it away, holding it close to her body as one holds a candle to protect its flame.

Frustrated, he turned to Flamel. “Did she write that?”

“No.” Flamel tried to peer over her shoulder, even dancing on the balls of his feet. “She cannot read or write. More’s the pity, for we have never quite understood each other.”

“Then what the hell is she-”

She stopped examining it and waved it frantically at Flamel, who tried to snatch it back from her fingers.

Crispin plucked it from her at last, and she didn’t seem disposed to grab it back. She merely watched him and waited. “She doesn’t appear to think this is yours.”

“Nonsense!” And he tried unsuccessfully to snatch it again.

“Do you know the meaning of this?”

Flamel sucked in his lips, his mustache drawing down over them both. “I- No.”

“Then it is a cypher of some kind. I will examine it later. It might help. You are certain this means nothing to you?” Flamel seemed to school his face into bland regard and shrugged. Crispin didn’t believe it. He stuffed the parchment fragment into his scrip, measuring Flamel’s eyes as he watched its progress. “In the meantime,” he went on, “I suppose I’d best allow your assistant to lead me to the Cornhill house.” He strode to the door. When Avelyn noticed, she scrambled forward and edged him out of the way. She put her hood up as she stepped into the street and motioned for him to follow.

He and Jack threw their hoods up over their heads. Snow had begun to fall in thick, lacy sheets. Her footsteps nearly disappeared the moment she made them. Crispin shivered. He could scarce recall a November so cold, and the month had barely begun. He drew his hood low over his face and tried to hide his chin in the folds of the leather cape at his throat, but it didn’t help. Neither did his drunkenness help. It lingered just at the edges of his senses. The cold to his cheeks served to sober him, but the snow was making it difficult to even see the street.

Avelyn hurried ahead, heedless of them. In fact, she was moving too fast for Crispin’s slower gait. “Wait,” he called, and then remembered she couldn’t hear him. He trotted ahead and grabbed her shoulder.

Instantly, she whirled around, a dagger in her hand. “Hold, damosel!” He took several steps back, bumping into Jack.

“Not a good idea to startle her,” said the boy.

“I can see that.” He placated with a gesture, and she gave him a smirk and sheathed her weapon before she turned and hurried up the avenue just as fast as before.

Crispin shrugged. “Best keep up,” he said to Tucker.

She turned down lane after lane, until she finally stopped. She pointed to a house in front of her.

“I think she means this is it,” said Jack.

Crispin gave his apprentice a withering look. “Yes, Jack. I’ve made that out for myself.”

He approached the door and knocked. A man with a red chaperon hood framing his round face opened the door. “Who is it?” he said.

Crispin bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, good Master. My name is Crispin Guest, and I am looking for your son, Thomas Cornhill. Is he at home?”

The man glanced at Avelyn, who curtseyed to him. He smiled. “Ah. Have you come from Master Flamel?”

“Yes. He was wondering if your son, Thomas, was here.”

The man scratched his head over his hood. “Master Flamel knows well that Thomas wouldn’t be here. He is apprenticing with Master Flamel. He lives there now. One less mouth to feed here, I daresay.”

“And you have not seen him?”

“Eh? Is he missing?”

“Well … er … Master Flamel merely needed his assistance forthwith. Perhaps he is attending to Madam Flamel. Shopping.”

“Cold day for it, isn’t it?” He peered out the door past Crispin. The snow filled the lane, and none of the broken cobblestones were visible. Other passersby hurried into doorways and there were few on the road. “He’s a good boy, is Thomas. That’s it, no doubt. Shopping. He gets sent for the oddest ingredients, or so he tells me. Alchemy. It’s mysterious, isn’t it? Beyond my ken, I can tell you. Thomas has the knack, so they say. Master Flamel is good to him, but he is a strange one. French, you know.”

“Yes.” Crispin assessed the man, his red nose and open face, and bowed. “Sorry to have disturbed you, sir.”

“God’s blessings on you, Master Guest. Give my good opinion to Master Flamel.” He gestured to Avelyn and enunciated loudly, “AND GOOD DAY TO YOU!”

Avelyn laughed and bowed to him. Her laughter was strange, like a braying mule. She gazed at Crispin expectantly. Dark hood peppered with snowflakes, it kept her face in shadow.

He watched the door close again and frowned. “He is not here,” he said to her. She cocked her head at him like a dog, and very like a dog she could understand only little. He cast up his arms in exasperation. “Go home,” he said, gesturing.

Affronted, or so she looked, she folded her arms over her chest and raised her chin insolently at him. But she did not move.

“Here now,” tried Jack. “Go on. WE HAVE NO FURTHER NEED FOR YOU!”

“She isn’t hard of hearing, Jack. She can’t hear you at all. There’s little use in shouting.”

“Oh.” He sagged and stared at the stubborn servant. He gestured again. “Shoo! Begone!” He beseeched helplessly to Crispin, but Crispin merely turned on his heel and began walking back toward the Shambles.

Side by side, he and Jack proceeded through the streets. After a few paces, Jack looked over his shoulder. “She’s following us,” he whispered.

Crispin rolled his eyes and nearly stumbled into Jack. “You don’t have to whisper. She’ll understand in a moment. Just keep walking.”

But even as they trudged through the deepening snow in street after street, Avelyn continued to track them a few paces behind.

“She’s still following, Master.”

“Ignore her.”

Several streets later, they turned the corner at the Shambles and made their way up the avenue toward the tinker shop ahead, and when they finally stopped at the bottom of the staircase leading up to their lodgings, she stopped as well.

Crispin turned to glare at her.

“What does she want, Master?” asked Jack, still whispering. “Maybe if we give her a coin?”

Crispin reached into his scrip and pulled out his money pouch. He plucked a precious farthing from the bag and stretched out his hand, offering it. Her face, speckled and damp from snowflakes, glowed with a sudden bright smile. She snatched the coin from his hand, turned it over and over in her fingers, and finally closed it in her reddened fist. Turning her face up toward Crispin, she continued her enigmatic smile but didn’t move.

Jack sighed. “Now what?”

“Now we leave her to her own devices.” He spun toward the stairs, steadied himself by clutching the railing, and started up. Jack followed … but so did the woman.

“Master!”

“I know, Jack. Just ignore her.”

They reached the landing and Crispin fitted his key in the lock. He gave her a glance and a nod, and she seemed to finally take note. She bowed to him once and bounded down the treacherously icy steps like a nimble-footed goat.

Crispin blew a cloud of breath. He hadn’t realized how uncomfortable she had made him until her departure. Why Flamel kept a simple-minded servant was beyond his ken.

Concentrating on the key in the lock, he discovered that the door was not locked. He shot an accusatory glance at the oblivious Tucker before pushing the door open … and stopped in his tracks.

Leaning back on Crispin’s chair before the fire-a fire burning unusually bright and hot with oak logs-sat Henry of Derby, the son of the duke of Lancaster.