Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  “True. But I am not often to go at my leisure where I am clearly unwelcomed.”

  “Did I leave you with that impression?” He looked Crispin up and down. They were of similar height. “Not at all.” Crispin itched to leave, but the abbot suddenly seemed reluctant to allow him to do so. “I asked to see you,” said the abbot, “because Brother Nicholas bequeathed something to you.”

  Crispin stiffened. The thought was painful and at the same time warmed a spot in his chest. Abbot William motioned to Brother John, who had entered from a rear door, and whispered something into the monk’s ear. Brother John nodded and trotted off. The abbot didn’t move. His stoic posture spoke of his years as the abbey’s emissary. No doubt there were many such instances where he was forced to wait in the halls of Bruges, Paris, or Rome, and he had learned how to do so with patience and calm.

  When Brother John returned, he was carrying a small coffer wrapped in a silky cloth. He handed it to Crispin.

  It was heavy. He looked to the abbot, puzzled.

  “It is a chess set. Brother Nicholas mentioned spending many a pleasant afternoon with you playing games of strategy. He often spoke of you fondly.” His expression took on one of bewilderment, as if he could not fathom the like.

  Crispin looked around the room, searching for that familiar chess set, but did not find it. Apparently, it was now under his arm.

  “At any rate,” continued the abbot, “we did not know how to get it to you, but Brother Eric was certain that you would somehow … appear.”

  Bollocks. Who was easier to find than Crispin? How would he get clients if they could not find him? Bah! It mattered little in the end. Crispin clutched the box tightly. It was a fine remembrance of the man.

  “I thank you, my Lord Abbot. I bid you God’s grace.”

  The abbot signed the cross over Crispin, but even as he passed over the threshold, the abbot called out one last time, “Discretion, Master Guest.” As if he needed reminding.

  He tucked the heavy box under his arm as he made the long walk home in the falling light. He wondered about the man he had just met, wondered how he would receive the news of Henry’s lords forcing the king to bend to their will. Would he be an ally to Richard or would he prefer to stay clear of politics? In Crispin’s experience, clerics seldom stayed on the fence.

  * * *

  HE WAS BACK ON the Shambles just as the church bells struck Compline. He trudged up the stairs and opened the door, pleased to find Jack there.

  “We had another visit from Lord Henry?” asked the boy, gesturing toward the wood and the meat, cooling off to the side of the hearth.

  “Yes. I will tell you of that later.” He set the box on the table and unwrapped the cloth from it.

  Jack approached the table and looked it over. “What’s that?”

  “A bequest from Abbot Nicholas.”

  “Oh.” It was part sigh, part exclamation.

  Crispin opened the coffer and took out the chessboard. The pieces lay snugly in their own velvet-lined niches. He set up the board. “It’s a chessboard, Jack.”

  “It’s beautiful, Master Crispin. Is it worth a lot?”

  “Probably.” He examined one ivory pawn before placing it on its square. “But worth far more in memories.”

  “I remembered it from the abbot’s lodgings, sir. You played often with Abbot Nicholas, didn’t you?”

  “As often as time permitted. It never seemed like enough time.”

  The abbot favored the white men, and Crispin automatically set up the board so that black was on his side. He looked up at Jack. “Would you like to learn to play?”

  Jack’s eyes brightened. “Oh yes, sir! Indeed, sir!” He scrambled for the stool and pulled it up to the table, sitting and waiting.

  “First,” said Crispin. “What did you learn from the priest about those symbols?”

  Jack picked up a knight, examining the intricate detail of the carving. “They was all over, sir. He pointed them out on our way back to his church, but I found a few more when returning home. Most were scratched out. What do they mean?”

  He shook his head, toying with the king. “I don’t know. We must find that preacher again.”

  “I hear of him, that is for certain. He should not be difficult to find. I’ll begin my search again first thing in the morning. But in the meantime…” He placed the knight back on its square. “Can you not tell me of this game, Master?”

  He smiled. “And so, each piece has its own rules. Each moves differently, can achieve different ends. But the object of the game is to capture the king. When the king can move no more, when he has nowhere to go, then he is lost.”

  Jack gave him a significant look.

  “Yes, well. It does have its parallels in our current political circumstances. It is a game of strategy. Of thinking far ahead of the current state of the board. Of being able to adjust your thinking depending on what is presented to you.”

  “Blind me, sir. It’s like what we do all the time.”

  “Indeed. As I said, it’s a fine metaphor for the games of court and politics. But unlike politics, the outcome can sometimes be predicted. Even directed.”

  Crispin grasped his pawn and moved it two squares forward, but just as he placed it on the square, a knock sounded on the door.

  They both straightened, hands on their knife hilts. At a signal from Crispin, Jack went to the door and opened it.

  Avelyn stood there, hands behind her back, rocking from side to side. When she spied Crispin, her smile widened impossibly.

  She rushed past Jack, nearly toppling him. “Oi! Watch it!”

  She stopped right in front of Crispin, looking up at him with her chin high. It bared her throat, and a long, lovely throat it is, he mused, though it was slightly marred by his love bites. His eyes could not help but travel downward to the shadow of her bosom, where he remembered proffering a few more gentle nibbles.

  They looked at each other for a while before Jack loudly let out a gust of exasperation. “I’ll be outside, I reckon,” he grumbled, grabbing his cloak, and he slammed the door behind him.

  Crispin didn’t even wait for the last click of the lock. His hands reached up and grasped her shoulders and slid up to her neck. He ran his fingers over her hair, but it was tightly braided again into one long plait. “I do prefer your hair loose,” he said softly.

  She moved her face into his hand, nuzzling. She lifted her arms, running her hands up his chest until she reached his neck and tugged him down. He bent obligingly and their lips touched. He opened his mouth over hers, clutched her small frame, and lifted her off the floor. Her feet dangled just below his knees. She weighed nothing at all.

  Their tongues tangled slowly, slick and wet, and one hand traveled down her back, lower, until he was able to cup one arsecheek and squeeze it.

  They kissed for a long time, until he drew his mouth away mere inches from hers. “Have you come with a message from your master?” he asked breathlessly, thinking that he should at least ask the question. Her mistress was, after all, still in peril.

  But he wasn’t far enough away for her to see his lips and he quickly forgot the question and molded his mouth to hers again. They kissed another few moments before she tore away and landed on her feet. Swallowing hard, he shook his head to clear it. “Avelyn?” He didn’t even realize he was still reaching for her when she pushed him back. With determination she shook her head and then started to gesture.

  “You know I can’t understand.” He slipped his hands around her petite waist and pulled. When she was flush against him, his hands cupped her jaw and he bent over and found her mouth again. She kissed back, but with far less enthusiasm and pushed him away again.

  He looked down at her in puzzlement and she continued to sign.

  “Clearly you are trying to tell me something.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You are right, of course. Something must be done about Madam Flamel.” What did he know of abductions? For the most par
t, he knew of instances where knights were captured on the battlefield and they would be kept until a ransom was paid. They lived at ease, for the most part, for courtesy demanded they be treated with care, only they were unable to leave the precincts of whatever castle or manor house kept them. Even Richard Lionheart was kept for years until his brother, Prince John, collected enough ransom in taxes to set him free.

  And on the streets of London, a woman might be captured by her rival’s family until her own family agreed to marry her off to the abductor’s son. Such things were not entirely legal but were well-known.

  But an abduction for a ransom alone, and one involving murder, was not oft heard of. Would she be safe? Would the abductor exercise patience? God’s blood! He had been careless and selfish, getting distracted by the likes of Henry and this seductress, who was even now trying desperately to tell him something. He had dismissed her in favor of asking her master the questions he needed to ask, but he had been a fool.

  “Avelyn,” he said, sobered, “tell me. Try.”

  She looked around the darkening room when her gaze landed on the chess set. She grabbed a knight and showed it to him. He shrugged, taking it from her hand.

  With a breath of vexation, she gestured to the corners of the room. But still he did not know her meaning. She ran to the bucket, dipped in her hand, and wrote with her wet finger on the wall. She made one of those symbols he had seen on the streets of London.

  He hurried over to her. “Do you know what they mean?”

  She gave a tentative nod. Crispin grabbed his cloak, and when he opened the door, he beckoned a sleepy Jack to come along.

  13

  THE MUDDIED SNOW WAS tinged blue in the dark. People had retreated to their homes, as they were obligated to do. The curfew was in place and shutters were closed and locked. Horses were stabled and suppers consumed.

  And it was cold. Night crept in like a thief in the house, and Crispin, Jack, and Avelyn made their careful way over the streets, keeping an eye skinned for a slippery patch of ice as well as for the Watch.

  With her hand clutched around the hem of his cloak, she pulled Crispin to a corner and showed him the symbol. “Yes, I see it, but I don’t know what it means. Master Bartholomew, the other alchemist, seemed afraid of them.”

  She nodded but kept pointing to it.

  He looked at Jack for help. Jack tapped her shoulder, and keeping his voice low, he enunciated, “HE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.”

  Scowling at him, she winced away from Jack’s touch.

  “We must return to Flamel,” said Crispin. It was a long night ahead for all of them, he decided. They needed to decipher once and for all what these symbols might mean.

  They hurried as the darkness enveloped them. Only a slice of moon lit their way now. Occasional sparks swirled up from a chimney but quickly died in the cold and gloom. The smell of cooking fires on the wind took them all the way to Fleet Ditch, and Avelyn led the way directly into the alchemist’s shop.

  Instead of worrying at a rosary or pacing the floor, the alchemist was busy at his crucibles. A leather-bound book lay open to the side, and on its parchment pages were many of the same symbols Crispin had seen all over London. More symbols, written in chalk, decorated the alchemist’s table, floor, and walls, connected by long straight lines. Strange smells issued from his bubbling retorts, and the fire beneath each beaker lit the man’s determined face with dancing shadows. In fact, more shadows flickered wildly against a far wall in shapes that Crispin dared not look at.

  Directly in front of the alchemist was a shallow basin filled with dark water that did not move. He appeared to be staring into it with great concentration, leaning farther and farther toward its unnatural plane.

  And above it all came the creak and groan of the metal planets circling endlessly, fire rippling over their brass faces.

  Crispin drew back, alarmed. This was sorcery!

  “Master Flamel! What are you doing?”

  The alchemist startled and jerked up. “Maître Guest!” He cast his glance across his work. “I am doing what I can, what I must, in order to find my dear wife. Alchemy is much more than using the simple elements of the earth.”

  “It looks very much like witchcraft to me.”

  Flamel scowled. “Oh? And you are very much acquainted with witchcraft, are you?” He raised his hand before Crispin could speak. “As acquainted as you are with alchemy, no doubt. I assure you, Maître, it is not sorcery or witchcraft! It has been a full day and I have received no more messages and no one has ever approached the statue of Saint Paul.”

  “We must put our heads together and think on it, Master Flamel. Not delve into these … dubious methods.” He interrupted what were to be the alchemist’s indignant protests. “No more distractions. No more detours.” He sat and settled beside the alchemist. “There are symbols etched on the walls of the city,” Crispin explained. He pointed to the chalked sigils on the table. “And they look like these. What do they mean? A preacher called them the work of the Devil, for indeed, they are mysterious and strange.” He eyed Flamel’s glyphs with suspicion. “But he also seemed to know about your dead apprentice, and he looked directly at me when he said it, thinking that I was an alchemist. I have reason to believe they are connected with these crimes, and I want you, Master Flamel, to come with us.”

  “Now? It is the fall of night and my work—”

  “Night is better. We will go unnoticed. Fetch a lantern.”

  Avelyn fixed a small candle in a conical metal lantern and held it aloft by its ring.

  “We must be cautious of the Watch,” he told them.

  Quietly, they filtered out of the shop. Under the small glow of Avelyn’s lantern, they moved quickly through the street. She showed the alchemist the signs and he made a small gasp. “Oh! Alchemical symbols.”

  “If these are signs an alchemist would recognize, then why would an alchemist fear them?”

  “We do not leave our marks for just anyone to see them. They are easily misconstrued as a sorcerer’s writings.” He narrowed his eyes at Crispin.

  “Then is it safe to say that the person who made these marks is an alchemist?”

  “That very well may be true,” Flamel said reluctantly. “On the other hand, these symbols mean nothing. They are random, as if merely using the symbols, like a child who makes letters but cannot read them.”

  “Then what you are saying is that this miscreant may not be an alchemist?”

  Flamel shrugged. “They are … very random.”

  Crispin pointed to the strange glyphs. “There is Hebrew there. Perhaps a Jew wrote this.”

  Flamel gave Crispin a measuring gaze. “How did you know it is Hebrew?”

  “Another investigation from some years ago.”

  He nodded. “As it happens, I do have an acquaintance with the language of the Old Testament. Alchemy has close ties to the Jewish scriptures and to their magical writings, as well as numerology. Are you familiar with the Kabbalah?”

  A shiver passed up his spine. “Intimately.”

  “Well … the Hebrew glyphs are used along with the sigils found in the Kabbalah for our special writings on alchemy. Alchemists have used this language since ancient times, even before Christianity. They are considered suspicious by the Church, and so we must be cautious … but why are they here? What does this have to do with Perenelle?”

  “Your servant seems to think they are important.”

  He looked at Avelyn and she looked back at her master earnestly. “Take us to the next one,” he told her.

  By lantern light, they moved deeper into London.

  * * *

  THE FOUR OF THEM spent hours traipsing through the icy lanes. On two occasions they nearly ran into the Watch, but Crispin carefully directed them down what looked like a dead end but what he knew better to be merely a narrow close.

  Crispin watched the old alchemist squint at the symbols, whether scratched out or not, but each time the man shook his head.
They were random, he told him. They made no sense and offered no further clues. Crispin was beginning to think that someone was playing an elaborate prank. But why would they take the time?

  With Flamel weary and distracted, Crispin called a halt to their investigation and they all returned to the alchemist’s shop in the early hours of the morning.

  It was still dark when they turned the corner and the little candle in Avelyn’s lantern was nearly spent, but she suddenly sprinted for the door without them, leaving them alone in the dense gloom.

  “Sarding woman,” grunted Jack.

  Crispin was about to mouth the same sentiments when he saw it. Her lantern’s light glinted off the dagger stuck into the wood, and Crispin ran forward. He heard Jack’s steps behind him and they both stopped in front of the door.

  The dagger held a parchment fragment in place. Crispin grasped the dagger just as Flamel jogged forward, huffing and wheezing. “What is it? What is it? My Perenelle!”

  “Hush, man. Do you wish to wake the whole parish?” As it was, Crispin spied a shutter across the way open and a curious shadow move across the candlelight within.

  Crispin quickly pulled out the dagger, grabbed the note, and ushered the others inside.

  He crossed to the fire beside Avelyn, who stoked it roughly with an iron poker. They crowded round him. In Latin again. He translated it aloud:

  “‘You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning.’”

  Flamel tore the cap from his head and heaved it to the floor. “What are we to do? What is it he is doing to us, to her!”

  “Calm yourself, Master Flamel. This is a good sign. It proves he is still interested, still in the game.”

  “It is not a game!” he insisted. Spittle flecked his beard.

  “It is to him. What does he mean by ‘begin at the beginning’?”

  Jack shrugged. “Sunrise? Matins? Should we be at a church?”

  “At St. Paul’s,” offered the alchemist. “Should I leave the ransom there again?”

  “He was more straightforward before about placing the ransom where and when. Why not simply pick another place and tell us so? What has changed?”