Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  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.

  4

  STARTLED, CRISPIN NEARLY FELL over the threshold. “Your grace!”

  Henry turned and smiled. His auburn beard had fleshed out from last year, curling across the line of his jaw, and his hair framed his face with just a hint of a curl under his chin. He wore a white-leopard fur cloak over his blue velvet houppelande as he sat before the fire. Crispin noted a bundle of fuel—sticks and real logs—sitting on the hearth. The sight was almost more joyful than his seeing Henry again. But he sobered quickly when he realized that Henry—his former charge—was seeing for himself his poor lodgings and meager existence. Heat crept up his collar.

  “My lord.” He bowed awkwardly.

  But Henry continued to smile. His gaze fell on the surprised Jack peering over Crispin’s shoulder. “Well, don’t leave the door open. It’s damnably cold in here.”

  Jack pushed Crispin the rest of the way through and barred the door after him. He unbuttoned Crispin’s cloak—since Crispin felt incapable of moving—shook it out, and hung it on one of the pegs beside the door.

  Henry turned again to the fire and rocked back on his chair. “Have you wine?”

  Crispin, terrified that there was none, stared at Jack. The boy hurried to the sill to fetch the jug and turned to the pantry to grab two bowls. After a pause, he put one of the bowls back and poured the cheap red wine within, and, with a shaky hand, he offered it to Henry.

  The young lord took it with a nod and sipped, pausing at the sharp taste.

  Crispin fretted at his wet sleeve, toying with a loosened button. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I know the wine is not what you are used to.…”

  “It doesn’t matter, Crispin. I am just glad to see you. Sit.”

  Slowly, Crispin lowered to the vacant stool and leaned heavily against the table between them.

  Henry continued to stare into the fire. “My lord father the duke must have come here many a time.”

  Crispin licked his lips. He would have been grateful for a little wine—fie on his apprentice!—but did see the sense in Jack’s hesitation. He steadied himself against the table. “Only once, your grace.”

  “Henry, Crispin. You used to call me Henry.”

  “Your grace,” he answered stubbornly.

  Henry sighed. “My father came here only once?”

  “It is not meet that he should be here, my lord.”

  “Meaning I shouldn’t be either, eh, Crispin?”

  Crispin lumbered to his feet. “No, you should not. Henry, I thought you would have more sense than this. You know what the king thinks of me!”

  His mild gaze sought out Crispin. A smirk stole across his face. “Indeed. Does not all England know what my lord cousin thinks of you? Convicted of treason, you were cast from his court. Was it ten years ago now? Eleven? Since my father urged him to spare your life, he th
ought you would die on the streets without your title and wealth. Proved him wrong, did you not?”

  “Not easily, my lord.”

  “And yet you did. So I do not worry overmuch what his grace the king thinks.”

  “Henry,” he warned.

  “Oh, very well.” He rose and turned his chair around, sliding it up to the table. “No more dangerous talk. I’m here for a reason.”

  “And that reason is?”

  “Crispin, sit. It sounds as if you would be rid of me. Surely that is not the case! You practically raised me.”

  Crispin lowered himself to the stool again. “The Lady Katherine was your governess, not I.”

  “But you and I spent many an hour riding and practicing with arms. And jesting, too. And laughing.”

  “Ha!” Jack threw his hand over his mouth. Clearly he had not meant to vocalize his astonishment. Though little wonder. How often had Jack seen him laugh over the last few years? Yet he used to laugh. Often. With the good company of young Henry and his siblings and with Lancaster and even with Geoffrey Chaucer, they were as a big family, laughing, dancing, hunting, dining. All the things families did. Until he was wrenched away from it all because of his own stupidity.

  Henry smiled at Jack’s gaffe. His eyes sparkled. “And so he did, my young apprentice. Your master played tricks and laughed quite a bit before he grew so dark and gloomy.”

  Crispin cleared his throat. “Well, that’s enough about me,” he grumbled, face red. “You were telling me why you felt it appropriate to visit me in person at my lodgings, a forbidden place for those at court.”

  “What did I tell you?” he said to Jack, raising his brows.

  “Henry!”

  Even as exasperated as he was, Crispin couldn’t help but gaze at his former charge. Henry was a man now. Broad of shoulder, thick arms, auburn hair that tended toward ginger when the firelight caught it. His beard and mustache were perfectly coiffed. At almost two and twenty, he was nearing the height of his power. And, Crispin remembered, he was also a new father, only since September.

  “I must offer my congratulations to you, Henry. You’re the father of a fine son, I hear.”

  Henry’s smile split his face with laugh lines. “Indeed! A very fine son. He is hale and hearty, God be praised. Another Henry. My wife insisted.”

  “I’m very pleased,” said Crispin. His heart ached to see the child, but he knew he never would. “And your lady wife? Well, I pray?”

  “Oh, yes. A strong lass. There will be many sons, I am certain of it.” He took up the bowl and slurped the wine, his gloved finger wiping the remnants from his mustache. “And you, Crispin? Still no wife?”

  He looked away. “I cannot bring a wife to this.”

  “But surely other men do as much.”

  “I am not like other men.”

  “Hmm. So you are not. The things you used to teach me. The things you could have taught my son. If only…” Derby sat back, appraising Crispin across the table. “Well.” He had the decency to look contrite, and Crispin’s heart ached all the more for the futility of the thought.

  Crispin stared at the flames dancing up from the chunks of wood Henry had brought. The fire should have cheered him, but he knew the rumors circulating all over London. Nothing had died down from the disquiet at court of last year. In fact, the only reason Henry was in London and not in Spain in his father’s army was that he’d been appointed to command an army made up of a group of noblemen and bishops gathered by Parliament to look into the excesses of Richard’s household, to investigate his favorites, to restore order, and to force Richard to fulfill his obligations as king.

  Trouble was definitely brewing. Trouble of the kind where good men took up arms and bad men gathered their own armies. Crispin smelled treason on the wind, but he wasn’t sure from which direction it blew.

  It made him all the more anxious to find Henry in his home. “Your grace, why are you here?”

  He seemed unaware of Crispin’s misgivings. “I’m interested in your vocation. This tracking you do. I’d like to help.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Crispin noted Jack stiffen at his place by the door.

  Henry noticed, too, and tilted his head. Crispin wasn’t being as subtle as he thought. “Shall I supplant your apprentice, Crispin? After all, I can be of valuable service to you, going where you cannot.”

  Jack pressed forward, his feet faltering across the plank floor. “My lord? Y-you don’t mean it? I mean, I’ve served Master Crispin for nigh on four years now.”

  “By the saints, the boy is troubled.”

  “No one is supplanting you, Jack. Lord Henry is jesting.”

  “Not a bit of it. I came to help. Consider me your new apprentice!”

  Jack’s face flushed and his hands curled into impotent fists held tight at his sides. He said nothing. What could he say against such a nobleman? Crispin didn’t find it funny. This was his livelihood, dammit. He’d be damned if it was made a point of ridicule.

  He leaned forward. “God’s blood, Henry! Stop it. Even if your generous offer was sincere, I would never give up my apprentice. I trust him. He is ever loyal to me, and I know he will continue to be so to my dying breath. I will not—we will not—be made sport of.”

  The young lord’s expression softened. “Ah, Crispin. You have shamed me. I did not mean to make sport of you. But I do find these things you do extremely intriguing. Who would ever have thought, eh? This private sheriffing you do. When I first heard of it, I thought it was something best left to the coroner’s jury. But you do prove to be successful time and again. And an asset to the sheriffs.”

  “They are not as enamored of me as you seem to be. Very often they get in my way.”

  “Do they? Well, it is a pity you are not an alderman, for you would make a very fine sheriff.”

  “Perish the thought. They do little to keep the peace and have nothing whatsoever to do with bringing miscreants to justice.”

  “Such savage criticism of the king’s sheriffs, Crispin. Were they not duly appointed?”

  Crispin clamped his lips shut. Never should he have an argument on such topics when he had been drinking. He shoved away from the table and stood unsteadily. “My lord, forgive me for speaking out of turn. But as you see, I am not entirely … myself.”

  The smirk was back as Henry rose. “Yes, I can see that,” he said into his shirt. “But I shall not be put off, Crispin. This tracking you do. How do you go about it?”

  “My lord?”

  “I mean, a weaver cards the wool and spins it into thread and then his thread is eased into the loom and he weaves. But you find, say, a dead man. How would you proceed? Further, from what I hear, many of your assignments seem to exclude anyone who has seen or heard anything of the crime. It is impossible, what you do. How is it done?”

  He couldn’t help but be flattered by Henry’s interest, and he felt his cheeks heat up. No one had ever asked him before. Even Jack seemed to learn it by example. “I … I observe. The area around the corpse. How long ago he was killed and by what means. I ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. I am an interpreter of lies.”

  “Just like the old days, eh, Crispin?”

  He chuckled in spite of himself. “Yes. I find that court politics was good practice for my current vocation. And just as deadly.”

  “But these questions you ask. How do you know whom to ask?”

  “Sometimes the answer to that presents itself. Sometimes I stumble upon it. And sometimes I ferret it out for myself after much digging. That is what makes it rewarding, after a fashion. The work that must be done is primarily in the mind.”

  Henry smiled. “I can see how that suits you. And how much…” He looked away. “How much righting wrongs suits you as well.”

  Crispin nodded. He caught only a glimpse of Jack’s fond gaze. “But surely there is another motive for your being here,” he said to Henry. “After all, you are a busy man and I am not deaf to the rumors circulat
ing throughout London. These are troubled times. And your father—”

  “My father is not here,” he said, losing something of his cheer.

  “And the king has said that those who oppose his … his decisions, are traitors. I know you have been appointed by these commissioners, Henry, to raise an army. If you oppose Richard, force him to do the will of Parliament, impede in any way his royal rights, then it shall be called treason. Indeed, he threatened that he was anointed by God and, as such, may dissolve Parliament.”

  Derby gritted his teeth. “Just so. And even invoking the name of his sovereign ancestor Edward II in these terms was construed to be an act of treason.”

  Little wonder, Crispin snorted, when Edward II was deposed for insisting on similar rights … and with fewer favorites than had Richard.

  “So you will forgive me,” he said, bowing to Derby, “if I seem skeptical at your personal interest in my welfare. If there is something you want of me, you should simply ask. I think it particularly imprudent of you to come to my lodgings at this time.” He leaned forward. “You do know you might be in danger,” he said quietly. “And you are most certainly being followed.”

  “Am I?” He turned toward the fire, but Crispin caught the edge of his smile. “Well, while it is true that I am occupied with curtailing the treasury and my cousin the king from imprudence, there is always time for leisure, to visit friends.” The sparkle in his eyes dimmed and he spoke confidentially, for Crispin’s ears. “But a word of caution is in order. Do take care, Crispin. Keep a sharp eye in the direction of Westminster. There’s a storm on the horizon. I do not trust Richard’s advisers. Especially those who were once loyal to my father.”

  “Suffolk,” Crispin breathed.

  Henry barely nodded. “Stay awake, Crispin.”

  He strode to the door, stopping in front of Jack. He tapped his knuckles none too gently to the boy’s chest, making him take a step back. His smile and sparkle had returned. “Take care, young apprentice, or you shall find your shoes filled by a better man.” He laughed and opened the door. “It is good to see you, Crispin. God keep you.” His laughter echoed all the way down the stairs.