Shadow of the Alchemist

9

Crispin heaved a frustrated sigh at the closed door of the alchemist’s shop. Avelyn waited beside him, bouncing on her heels. “This was a useless venture,” he told her. “He would not talk to me.”

She clenched her eyes and shook her head. She kicked the door and bent down, scooped up snow from the porch, and hurled uneven snowballs at it.

He took her arm and pulled her away. “There’s no use in doing that. Take us back to your master.”

With a lilt to her shoulders, she pointed at yet another set of symbols scrawled on a post, hastily scratched out.

He shook his head. “Take us back to your master.”

She kicked the mud with her damp shoe and stomped up the lane, furiously scuffing the dirty snow as she went.

He certainly empathized with her frustration. Perhaps Flamel could translate her petulance. Though he wondered why she had not taken him to Flamel in the first place. Was she trying to hide something from him? And what about Flamel’s supposed fame? Even this fellow, this alchemist, seemed to have heard of the Frenchman. Yet when it was mentioned, she had tried to silence him on the matter. Perhaps she had not wished the man to know she was the servant of Nicholas Flamel. If only he could ask her and get an answer.

They reached the Tun and were stopped by a procession. The three of them backed up against a wall out of the way. The procession took up the width of the road, and it was plainly that of a funeral. A young boy in clerical robes, no more than ten or eleven, swung a smoking censer back and forth before him, filling the street with the aroma of musky incense. He was followed by a priest in a dark cassock, reading aloud in Latin from a small Psalter clutched in his gloved hands. Behind him, a man led a horse pulling a cart decorated in black drapery on which lay a shrouded child, dried rose petals sprinkled on her chest. Behind it, people cried softly, and a man comforted a woman wailing openly, stumbling through the snowy lane. The parents.

Children died in London all the time, this he knew. Its streets were treacherous to the young. Women and children drowned in its waterways. A rushing horse might knock over a wayward child with nary a look back.

He couldn’t help but glance at Jack. The boy had survived against the odds. Orphaned at eight, so he had said, Jack had been on his own for three years before he’d forced his stubborn way into Crispin’s life. He could easily have been just another dead child in the city, another fallen to poverty, to starvation. Crispin shuddered at the thought that such a quick and nimble mind could have been snuffed out, lost to the despair of the streets.

The wail of the mother howled like a wind through the narrow lanes, rising and falling, even as they moved farther on. He supposed this child had succumbed to illness or accident. The occasional eruption of the plague caused panic and fear, though the plague was more likely in the spring, not the dead cold of winter. A terrible waste. A child was always needed to do the work of the household, to learn his father’s business, to be married off to cement alliances. But such was the whim of the Almighty. One never knew when He would send His Angel of Death to his task.

Crispin and Jack crossed themselves and lowered their heads, each offering a silent prayer for the soul rising to Heaven. They watched as the procession passed them.

“I hate death,” Jack whispered. He sounded more like the uncertain boy Crispin had first encountered nearly four years ago.

“Yes,” Crispin agreed. “And yet death is part of our peddler’s goods.”

“So it would seem. But I never get used to it.”

“I pray that you never do.”

Avelyn stood at the far crown of the road, clapping at them impatiently.

“Don’t she have no respect for the dead?” Jack grumbled.

Crispin set out again, folding his cloak over his chest as the last vestiges of the incense dispersed and the sharp smell of dung and cooking fires returned to fill the lane. “Perhaps she has seen too much of it herself. We all have our pasts.”

Jack said nothing more, and they continued on, even as the snowfall grew heavier. When they arrived at Flamel’s shop, Avelyn sprinted ahead and disappeared through the door. Crispin and Jack walked through just as Flamel was admonishing her to “slow down, fille. I cannot understand.”

“Master Flamel,” said Crispin. The man spun. His exasperation with his servant fled and he almost fell into Crispin’s arms.

“Where have you been? Have you word of my Perenelle?”

“No. I take it you have not heard from our abductor.”

“No. Alas.” He sank to a chair. Avelyn was nearly vibrating with the need to speak.

“Your servant seems to wish to convey information to us. I cannot understand her well. Not as well as you. Please. Could you translate?”

He beckoned the girl to him and she knelt at his feet, still a bundle of unspent energy. He signaled his question to her and she began to gesture furiously. Flamel took it all in. Crispin tried to follow with what little knowledge of her language he had acquired. He saw words hurl by: “apprentice,” “parchment,” “stone,” “signs,” and many more he could not assimilate.

Once or twice during her fluttering fingers, Flamel turned toward Crispin with a narrowed gaze, especially when she signed the word “kiss.” Crispin felt heat rise on his neck, before Avelyn gently touched the alchemist’s face to turn him back to her so she could continue with her tale.

At last she seemed to slow. Her movements looked more like questions than explanations, and Flamel waved them off, face turned away from her.

“Master Flamel. What did she say?”

“Mostly nonsense. She is like to say things that are meaningless. You’d best be aware of that, Maître, if you intend more congress with her.” A whisper of a warning flickered in his eyes. “It is not that she lies, but that the truth is … quelque peu différente pour elle … as you would say, not quite the same to her.”

“Indeed. Perhaps it is a trait of your vocation, for I do not think you value truth quite as I do either.”

He chewed his lip. “My English may not be as good as I thought it. Please forgive any errors.”

Crispin leaned down, pressing his hands to the chair arms and trapping Flamel in place. “Your English is perfectly serviceable. It is the content that is not. Why do you lie to me? Why do you leave out valuable information that I can use to find your wife? I have learned that you are well-known, Master Flamel, even here in England. Why is that so?”

He wriggled, flustered. “Absurd. I have heard how impetuous you are. It is why you are in your present circumstances, no?”

Crispin straightened. “My history is not important. You hired me to help you. Do you want it or not?”

“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes.”

“Then tell me what she said.”

The old man pressed his fingers to his eyes. “You mean well. But you must forget what you think you know. Beware of what you find.”

Crispin snapped his head up and stared at the man. “What did you say?” He grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “What did you say?”

“I … I…”

“Master Crispin!” cried Jack. “What are you doing?”

Flamel’s eyes were wide and frightened. There didn’t appear to be any deception there, but his words had sent a chill down Crispin’s spine. Were those not the exact words, the last words, that his old friend Abbot Nicholas uttered to him as he lay dying a year ago? The words that he used, trying to explain why relics and venerated objects came into Crispin’s hands?

Crispin spared a glance at Jack, poised between rising and sitting, hands outstretched, a stunned look upon his face.

Crispin looked down at himself, at his hands on Flamel’s gown. What was he doing?

Slowly, he unwound his fingers. He released Flamel and stepped back, breath gusting from his heaving chest. The alchemist surely meant no harm. He was fairly certain of that. But those words …

“Forgive me,” said Crispin, still breathless. “I … it is just…” He shook his head. “Perhaps … perhaps that is why your servant brought us to another alchemist, for you only wish to speak in riddles where I need facts.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Was he going mad? Had he heard what he thought he’d heard?

Flamel seemed to have forgotten Crispin’s outburst and straightened from this new revelation. “She took you to another alchemist?” He leapt forward and grabbed the girl’s arm. “You fool! Why did you do that? You know how dangerous it is!” He backed her against a table. She collided with it, knocking over retorts and horn beakers. “You must never do that again, Avelyn. Promise me! Ne me décevez pas!”

Crispin stepped closer and closed his hand over Flamel’s. It was foolish getting between a man and his servant, but Crispin was helpless to resist, helpless under the repentant eyes of Avelyn. “Master Flamel, I’m certain she meant well.”

“And you!” He turned his anger on Crispin, releasing his servant from his grasp. He pointed at Avelyn. “Why do you defile her? Surely she is beneath your notice. You, who were once a nobleman. Leave her alone!”

But Avelyn, obviously reading the movements of their mouths, pushed forward, hanging on Flamel’s arm and gesturing toward Crispin. Flamel shook her off and postured before her. “You are a servant, not a whore. Try to remember that!”

“Why are you afraid of another alchemist, Master Flamel? She obviously wanted to convey something to me that you would not.”

Flamel clenched his hands into fists and pulled at the disarrayed hair hanging below his cap. “My business is secret. Why do you think I traveled all the way from France to be in England? Do you think I want to be in England? It is very dangerous here for a Français. You toy with me, Maître, when I trusted you. I asked for your help, I paid for it, and so far you have failed me, you have dallied with my servant, and you threaten me when I cannot answer your questions. There is a very good reason I cannot answer as you wish. I am not paying you to wrest this information from me. I am paying you to accomplish your task!”

Opening his mouth to protest, Crispin decided otherwise and closed it again, pressing his lips tight. He bowed. “You are right, of course. I apologize for my rudeness, Master Flamel. My methods may seem unusual, but they get results.”

Flamel drew himself up, clutching his gown. “So do mine.”

They studied each other for some time before Flamel sighed, resigned. “We must try again, Maître. We must leave the ransom again. The false one. Please. Don’t ask why. Trust me that it must be done.” From the pouch at his side, he pulled out the velvet bag. “I will take it again to Saint Paul’s and leave it at the feet of the statue. He will come. He wants it. I can only hope he wants it more than he wants to harm Perenelle.”

Flamel seemed to sense Crispin’s unease with this tactic, but he raised his hand to silence any arguments. “I cannot be certain of the wisdom of this course, but let us try this little ruse to see, eh? To see if I am not completely mad.”

I already think you’re completely mad, thought Crispin, but he did not say it aloud.

Flamel shuffled to his feet, took the cloak Avelyn offered him, and, with one backward glance at Crispin, slouched out the door.

Crispin and Jack reluctantly returned to the Shambles and did not hear from Flamel for the remainder of the day.

Pacing restlessly, Crispin went from window to hearth over and over again, peering out the slightly open shutters to the street below. He saw nothing of the French alchemist. No word from Avelyn, nothing from Flamel. He had made himself into the biggest fool. Flamel was right. He had no business forgetting his task to play paramour to the man’s servant. It was base, even for him. His loneliness was not an excuse. Perhaps it might be best to practice some humility. Or celibacy, at the very least. Though the thought made him grimace.

Jack lay with his head on his arms, sitting at the table. Crispin thought he heard him snore.

Finally, Crispin could take it no more. He stalked to the door and pulled down his cloak, whipping it over his shoulders.

Jack jerked up, sputtering, “Master Crispin? Where are you going?”

“I’m going to talk to that alchemist.”

“What? Flamel?”

“No, the other. Avelyn took us there for a reason.”

Jack lumbered up from his chair and shuffled toward his cloak. He shrugged it on and buttoned it up. “But you heard Flamel, Master. He said she was mad.”

“There is far more to this than meets the eye, Jack. I will make that man talk to me.” He yanked open the door and stalked onto the landing.

“Now, Master Crispin. There’s no need to be getting into any trouble. Them sheriffs are none too fond of you.”

He trotted down the stairs with Jack behind him. “And I am none too fond of them.”

Crispin looked both ways down the lane. At least it had stopped snowing. The sky extended its pale wash of blue down to a blushing horizon. The naked trees in back courtyards stretched their spindly arms into the heavens, looking more like cracks against the dense flatness of the sky.

Crispin walked briskly, satisfied that he was at least doing something. He inhaled deeply of the heavy, cold air and warmed himself by swinging his limbs freely.

Jack’s long strides kept pace. The boy might argue, but he always complied. He knew in the end that he would at least learn something of value.

“What do you make of this Nicholas Flamel, Jack?”

The boy ran his sleeve under his reddened nose and exhaled a long white cloud. “He’s strange, sir. I reckon it’s all them compounds he works with. But why is he lying, you mean?”

Crispin nodded, kept moving.

“Why does a man lie?” said Jack, throwing back his head and blinking into the fading sunshine. He ticked it off on his fingers. “Well, he lies because he is dishonest; because he is hiding something he’d rather not anyone else know; he’s protecting someone else who is guilty … and … er … he’s just a whoreson and likes to lie?”

“Close. He may also lie to misdirect.”

“Oh, aye.”

“Or it could be a combination of many of those reasons.”

“Then what is his game, eh? Don’t he want his wife back?”

“By all indications, he does.”

“Then why not cooperate with us? We only mean well. Except … that you lied to him, too.”

“About Henry Bolingbroke.”

“Aye. I understand why … mostly. I think you are trying to protect Lord Derby. But from what, I know not.”

Crispin said nothing and stared straight ahead. Maybe he had taught the boy too well.

“Master, just because you used to know Lord Henry doesn’t mean he is the same man. You have been deceived before by that very family.”

“I don’t need to be reminded,” he bit out, voice low.

“I don’t mean naught by it, Master Crispin. I’m only doing what you told me. I’m walking my mind through the facts. The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. So says Aristotle.”

Crispin’s ire quickly fled and he tried to hide his gratified smile by looking away toward the icy buildings.

“And so as far as I am concerned, we must not rule out Lord Derby as having something to do with these same crimes,” Jack went on. “Even though it is well established that he is not in need of the money himself.”

His heart filled with pride at the boy’s logic, even if the cause of it still pained him. But his words were also slowly sinking in. He stopped, unmindful of the wet snow dampening his boots. “No, he doesn’t need the money. But what if he needed that broach?”

“Ah!” Jack stomped and patted his arms to keep warm. “A curious thought, Master. That broach. It came from the King of France. What might that mean? Something to do with treaties or other such nobleman’s vows? Or maybe it didn’t belong to Flamel at all. After all, we only have his word that it was given to him by King Charles.”

“God’s blood, Jack, but you might be right. I wonder how he fared with his ransom deposit today.”

“Would you like me to go see, sir?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Crispin spotted figures standing under the eaves of the frost-slickened buildings. He might not have noticed them if they were moving as everyone else did on the street, winding down their labors for the end of the day. But these lingered, moving ahead slowly and in step with Crispin and just behind his vision. Their hoods were drawn low over their faces and it was impossible to discern whether they were known to Crispin or not.

Crispin knelt down to pretend to adjust his boot and looked slyly over the leather cape of his chaperon hood bunched on his shoulder. There were four of them now, two on either side of the lane, and they were looking at one another and making vague and unsubtle gestures in communication.

“Jack,” he said quietly, “don’t look up, but our shadows are back. And one more has been added. Two each side.” He rose. “I think you should continue on with me. I’d rather we have two sets of eyes to track them.”

“Aye, Master.”

They hurried their pace and finally turned the corner to where the other alchemist was. Crispin glanced at the scratched-out signs scrawled on the post of the shop on the corner but kept moving. His shadowing men were still with them, but they hung back. He saw that Jack took note, too, and headed directly to the shop. He pushed open the door under the snow-covered sign of Mercury, and when Jack entered behind him and closed the door, they waited for the alchemist to appear.

No foul cauldron bubbled now, but three coneys hung from the beam near the curtained doorway and Crispin wondered if there was some deeper significance or whether they were merely more of the man’s supper.

He leaned toward Tucker. “Jack, you call out.”

He cleared his throat. “Oi! Master Alchemist!”

“Patience,” said that gruff voice from beyond the curtain. “I shall be there anon.”

They waited a moment more before the same man appeared, bulbous nose and small, squinting eyes. “I am Bartholomew of Oxford, at your humble service. How may I-” But when he beheld Crispin, he pointed toward the door. “Get out!”

Crispin didn’t hesitate. He darted over the plank separating them, grabbed the man by his tattered fur collar, and dragged him over the table. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The man sputtered and fluttered his lids, turning his face away from a possible blow. “P-please. Don’t hurt me!”

With a snort of disgust, Crispin let him go, even smoothed down where he’d wrinkled the man’s collar and gown. He helped the alchemist to his feet. His Adam’s apple bobbed as his widened eyes darted between Crispin and Jack.

“You have seen that woman before, the woman who brought me here earlier.”

“Yes. Too many times. I thought she was a beggar … or worse. She came sniffing around my shop and seemed far too familiar with my goods, as if she planned to steal them. Always touching, touching.” He wiped his hands down his gown from the memory.

“And yet once you discovered she was the servant of Nicholas Flamel…”

“Oh yes!” He seemed only now to remember that. “Well, then, of course, I … well. I would welcome her to, perhaps, talk. Though she does seem a bit strange, truth to tell.”

“She’s deaf and dumb.”

“Oh.” He wrinkled his brow and pulled down on his dark, greasy locks, stroking absently. “Pity. I should have liked to ask her … well.”

“Ask her what? Tell me, why is Flamel so well-known to you?”

He studied Crispin this time, looked him over with particular care. And when he was done with him, he turned to Jack with equal scrutiny. “We alchemists … we use ancient secrets to perfect our art. As old as Scripture. Sometimes our methods are judged badly by outsiders. The Church does not always approve of this science, and in truth, some alchemists are more sorcerers than craftsmen. I have known a few. Not myself, of course. I would never dabble to endanger my soul! No, not at all.” He touched his collar and adjusted it before he crossed himself. “It is just that there is much we have learned that cannot be understood by the simple laymen. And Nicholas Flamel has gained his own amount of fame through his skill and expertise … And one thing more.”

He motioned silence to Crispin before pushing him aside. He crept to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out to the street. Satisfied, he closed it again and threw the bolt. When he gestured for Crispin to draw closer, both Crispin and Jack stepped into the circle of his open arms.

“You see, Master Guest,” he said confidentially, “Nicholas Flamel has achieved the ultimate goal of all alchemists. He understands the transmutation of matter. He has worked out the science, he has transcended the planes of knowledge. In short, Master Guest…” He drew Crispin even closer. Stale wine breath gusted over Crispin’s cheek. “Master Flamel,” whispered the alchemist, “has discovered how to create the Philosopher’s Stone.”