Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  “Oh. Well. Perhaps. But if not him, then who?”

  “I don’t know. They want this precious stone. And yet Flamel exchanged the ransom for one of no value. He told me it was to buy time, but that is a very unsatisfactory answer.”

  “Wait,” said Jack, eyes pinging back and forth between Avelyn’s still frantic movements and Crispin’s stillness. “Why would Lord Henry have need for a valuable commodity such as that broach? He has his own wealth, almost as rich as the duke.”

  “I know. I did wonder that, too. Which makes me all the more convinced that Henry had little to do with it.”

  “A coincidence his being there, then?”

  “No, not a coincidence. I don’t believe in those.”

  “What, then?”

  “I haven’t worked it out yet, Jack. What of this Robert Pickthorn? He left about the time the ransom was to be collected.”

  “Did you see him at the cathedral, sir?”

  He slammed his fist to the table. “I must admit, once I laid eyes upon Henry I did not look anywhere else. He could have been there and I missed it. But once I left, I took the ransom with me. The false ransom, that is.”

  “‘Buy him time.’ What could that mean?”

  “I don’t know. Best to— Will you stop that, you insufferable woman!”

  But of course, Avelyn could not hear him as she continued her strange dramatics. Finally, she threw herself at his feet, hiked up her skirts, and lay on the floor.

  Jack backed away. “What is she doing now? Is it a fit?”

  But Crispin finally looked. She had positioned herself upside down, head at his feet, with one leg crooked behind the other … just as the dead apprentice had looked. “Jack, she’s showing us Thomas Cornhill.”

  “The dead man?”

  “Yes.”

  Once she saw that Crispin understood, she jerked her head in a nod, jumped to her feet, and began to repeat her wall drawing in the corners.

  “Wait. Jack, those drawings. She is trying to show us something of those symbols. I have seen them in several spots throughout London.” Two strides took him across the room. He grabbed her arms and spun her to face him. To her eyes he said carefully, “Avelyn, what is it you wish to show me?”

  She made a huffing noise and nodded, satisfied at last. Grabbing her cloak from the peg, she cast open the door, and headed quickly down the stairs.

  Crispin looked at Jack, and as one, they both grabbed their cloaks and bolted after her.

  * * *

  SHE RAN THROUGH THE gently falling snow, her footsteps disappearing as she fled over the whitened streets. They ran after her, and when she stopped at a corner, pointing at the carvings in the wood, Crispin knew he had been right. It was possible she had tried to get him to understand her last night, tried to make him go out to show him, but she had distracted him, as a pretty face was wont to do. Careless, to be so distracted when a woman’s life was at stake.

  When the preacher Robert Pickthorn pointed out the sigils as the Devil’s work and looked directly at Crispin and described a man hanging by his heel, that’s when he had made the tenuous leap that the symbols might be related to the apprentice’s death and to Madam Flamel’s disappearance. But was it warranted?

  Avelyn kept prodding the carvings with her finger until he drew nearer, examining them. They did not look like any writing he understood. How many of these were there? And what did they mean?

  Before he had a chance to speculate, she grabbed his hand and ran with him down the lane, with Jack close on their heels.

  Down lane after lane they trotted, until finally she pointed ahead to a stone archway and pulled Crispin up to it. His fingers traced the etchings. Different from the ones before. And someone had tried to scratch these out.

  She tried to grab him and pull him again, but Crispin stopped her, turned her to him. “Avelyn, do you know what these mean? Do they have to do with Madam Perenelle?”

  She didn’t seem certain but insisted he follow. “Wait, wait, Avelyn. Please.” She stopped and looked at him questioningly, blinking the snow from her pale lashes. “I need a way to decipher these. Can you help me?”

  She thought a moment, gnawing on one of her red-chapped knuckles. Her eyes brightened and she grabbed his sleeve again, pulling him along. He took her hand from his sleeve and smiled. “I can follow, you know.”

  She laughed that rough, alien laugh and hurried forward, looking back from time to time to make certain that he was there.

  Jack came up beside him, eyes on Avelyn. “She’s a ball of fire, isn’t she?”

  “Indeed,” he said with more passion than he meant to reveal.

  Tucker laughed. “You do find them, don’t you, Master? Or they manage to find you. Ah me. You expend your energies teaching me languages and how to read and write. But surely you can spare the time to tutor me in this, sir.”

  “You’re a knave, Tucker. I have no wish to be your whoremaster.”

  Jack laughed again. Avelyn frowned when she turned back to look at them. Impatiently, she tapped her foot.

  She proceeded on and they grew quiet as they moved through the streets full of citizens at their daily tasks. A man moved his oxcart by tapping the beasts with a stick on the oxen’s rumps. Under an ale stake jutting into the street, servants shouted the praises of their master’s alehouse. A pelt merchant held aloft his wares hanging from racks on poles and he walked up and down the avenue, carrying it like a banner into battle. The food merchants, the water carriers, the servants hauling fuel upon braces on their backs. Through all of that, Crispin still noticed them. The shadowy figures trailing along the edges, slipping into the alleys, standing in the closes. Shadows that followed them no matter what street they turned down. He elbowed Jack and gave a flick of his head. The boy was quick to get his meaning and take notice. Surreptitiously, they both watched the figures follow. Crispin counted three and opened that number of fingers in his hand at his flank on the side facing Jack, tapping them until the boy saw and barely nodded.

  Three, then. Crispin allowed Avelyn to lead him. He hoped it wasn’t to a trap.

  * * *

  THEY WOVE THROUGH THE people down a narrow lane, and Avelyn finally stopped before a door. Above the lintel hung a wooden sign covered with snow. A symbol was painted on both sides of its worn surface:

  Crispin moved toward the door, but Jack held him back. “Master Crispin,” he whispered. He eyed the sign fearfully, almost afraid to take his eyes from it. “You’re not going in there, are you? That … that’s the Devil’s sign.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Tucker. That is the symbol for Mercury, a well-known alchemical sign. She has brought us to another alchemist.”

  He stepped forward under the creaking wooden sign, feeling a chill as he passed under it, and pushed open the door. A small shop. A curtain covered another doorway. Barring the way stood a sturdy table. More small tables and shelves lined the walls, with canisters and ceramic pots on shelves. A tripod was pushed as far into the hearth as it could go next to the blackened plaster of the wall. On the tripod hung a cauldron on a chain. The contents bubbled with chunks of unidentifiable objects roiling to the surface, only to sink below the shivering liquid. The stench coming from it made him wince. A crucible with dried yellowish matter that smelled of rotten eggs sat on a trivet near a raised hearth that looked more like a forge. Crispin knew it was called an alchemist’s athanor, and beside it, a ceramic retort sat on another trivet.

  “Is anyone here?” he asked, standing as far from the fire as possible. Jack stood beside him, eyes wide as they scanned the shelves.

  Avelyn seemed at home and poked around at the canisters, opening lids or pulling off their canvas drapes to peer inside, sniffing experimentally.

  There was a rustle at the curtained doorway. Steps scraped across the floor. The drapes parted and a man, older than Crispin, peered at them. His dark, greasy hair was covered by a felt cap with ear flaps. A dark beard hung from his jaw, and his nose was noticeably
uneven and enlarged by carbuncles. His heavy robes were stained and seemed to weigh him down, or perhaps his stooped shoulders and dragging shuffle came from years bent over a workbench, devising his alchemy.

  “Yes?” He eyed them with tiny brown eyes set close together under bushy black brows. He never raised his chin fully, perhaps more interested in his compounds than in faces, and clutched the table, which served as a barrier between him and his customers. “What is it you want?” Then his gaze fell on Avelyn. “You! What are you doing here?” He cast about for something and found it in a corner: a broom. He took it up and brandished it. “Get out before I chase you out.”

  Crispin stepped in front of her and frowned down at the crooked man. “There’s no call for that. She led me here to you. For information.”

  He scowled at Crispin and rumbled in his gruff voice, “If you know her, then I can scarce trust you.”

  “Come, man. If you know her, then you must know her master, Nicholas Flamel.”

  “Nicholas Flamel? That is her master?” He stared at her anew. Admiration bloomed on his features, and the broom lowered.

  Alarmed, Avelyn looked from one man to the other and rushed to Crispin, covering his lips with her fingers.

  “No, Avelyn. Stop. Yes, you’ve heard of Master Flamel, then?”

  “Of course! What alchemist of any worth will not have heard of Nicholas Flamel! But I did not know he was in England.” He almost smiled at Avelyn, though it seemed as if his mouth were unused to such an expression. Avelyn was beside herself, trying to get their attention. She banged on the man’s table with the flat of her hand.

  Crispin grabbed her and handed her off to Jack. The boy wrapped his large freckled hands around her arms, and though she tried to flail in his grip, he held firm.

  “Quit fighting me,” he cried. “Or I shall throw you into that foul pot!”

  “Foul pot?” said the alchemist.

  “Aye, sir,” said Jack, motioning to the bubbling cauldron with his head. “That. What manner of alchemy are you making there?”

  The alchemist raised his bulbous nose indignantly. “My dinner!”

  “Oh. Beg pardon.” Jack looked contrite for only a moment … right before Avelyn kicked him in the shin.

  He swore and let her loose. Hopping about, he grabbed his leg. “Sarding woman!”

  “Yes, I should have warned you,” said Crispin. He gave her a stern look and she quieted immediately, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned a glare on Tucker, daring him to approach. He wisely kept his distance.

  “Pray, sir,” said the alchemist, while frowning at Avelyn, “what brings you here? How can I help you?”

  “I am assisting Master Flamel with a … well, a discreet task.”

  The alchemist’s smug smile seemed to indicate that this was expected.

  “I am Crispin Guest. And this servant led me here to—”

  “Crispin Guest? No! No, no, no. You must leave at once, do you hear? Leave my property!” He raised the broom once more, but this time he looked reluctant to approach.

  “But sir!”

  “Out with you! Or I shall call in the law.”

  Irritated, Crispin stiffened. “Very well. There will be no need for that.” Though many in London had heard of him and were anxious to assist his course, he knew there were many more that were wary of having anything to do with a traitor to the crown.

  He swung toward the door and cast it open, minding not at all as it slammed against the wall. He heard glass breaking behind him with a satisfied smirk.

  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?”
<
br />   “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?”