Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  “But how do we know which the first one is?”

  Flamel wiped the wine from his lips. “Might the answer be in the symbols themselves?”

  “Yes,” said Crispin, scooting closer to the table. “These are alchemical symbols, so you said.”

  “But from what I have seen,” said the alchemist, “nothing suggests a starting point.” He sat back, slumping. “What is the key?”

  Jack scratched his head, making his messy curls messier. “We’re missing something vital. What did that parchment say, Master? You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning. If these symbols have aught to do with that note and they are meant to be clues, then that miscreant would have left us some way to reckon it.”

  Something ticked in the back of Crispin’s mind like an annoyance, a half-remembered thought or dream. He closed his eyes and knocked his head back. Avelyn carded fingers through his hair, now hanging free over the back of the chair. “Stop it, you damnable woman,” he muttered. “I’m trying to think.” But she either had not read his lips or didn’t care to comply. She had been like this from the moment he’d met her, though he recalled very little from that night, as drunk as he was.

  He opened his eyes slowly. He had been drunk, yet Avelyn had been playful but determined. She had done something that annoyed him. What was it?

  He turned to look at her. She smiled and cast her eyes down to his scrip. Her eyes were bright with amusement.

  He grabbed his scrip, still captured by her gaze, and fished around until his fingers lighted on a scrap of parchment. It wasn’t a dream, then. They had found a parchment that night that Flamel tried to claim was something of his. But it obviously had not been. It had been left by the abductor. And Flamel knew it.

  He pulled it out and compared it with the other note. Yes, they looked to be from the same hand. The smaller fragment held Hebrew letters, Greek letters, Latin.

  Flamel grabbed his hand. “What are you doing with that?” But then he stopped himself. He remembered, too.

  “You knew this wasn’t something of yours. You knew this was from someone else. Why did you lie to me?”

  “I was worried what it might be. And then you took it before I could assess. Sometimes, Maître,” he said, shaking a finger, “you are a very impetuous man!”

  “So I’ve been told,” he said absently, studying the fragment. “This is very strange. There are only these letters, the same in succession, over and over.”

  “Ah! Look here.” Flamel pointed with a finger with a broken, yellow nail. “You see, don’t you? The Greek letter alpha and the symbol for the Hebrew letter aleph . And here. Do you see this symbol? It is the astrological sign for Aries. It is the first of the signs. What does that suggest to you?”

  “Beginnings. ‘Begin at the beginning.’ Then we must find these symbols among all the rest, to begin. This is the key.”

  “Right, then,” said Jack, leaping to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait, Tucker. Where?”

  “Eh?”

  “Where would you suggest we begin?”

  Jack sagged back down to his seat. “Oh.”

  “Would we find these symbols randomly around London, or would they begin at a specific location? The more I see of this fellow, the more he makes a certain sense to me. I do not believe he would start us just anywhere. Where should we look to find the first clue? Where would anyone begin?”

  They sat quietly, thinking, until Jack perked up again. “Birth.”

  “Too broad an idea. It could be a manger, a church of the Virgin, anything.”

  “Well,” said Jack, scratching his chin and the few sprouting hairs there. “Scriptures?”

  “‘In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. Forsooth, the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of the depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters. And God said, Light be made, and the light was made.’ Should we look for light, then? A sunrise? A candle?”

  Jack frowned. “As you said. Too complicated.” He screwed his face up in thought. “Master, a journey is a beginning. And it begins on a road.”

  “No,” said Crispin, thinking. “It begins at one’s front door.”

  Jack rubbed his nose. “I’ve not seen any carvings at anyone’s front door. It would make the most sense to have it at this front door.”

  “True. But there is none here.” He looked at Flamel, who was staring back at him with interest. “A front door. What is the front door of London?”

  “The Tower?” said Jack, brow furrowed.

  “The Tower is not a door. If anything, it is within doors.”

  “The gates!” Jack said quickly.

  “Better. Which is the right one?”

  Jack ticked them off on his fingers. “Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishop’s Gate, Aldgate, Postern Gate. That’s too many front doors to choose from, Master.”

  Crispin sat back, arms folded. “In days gone by, when I rode in and out of London, mostly toward Westminster, I often took Ludgate. Let us start there.”

  16

  AVELYN COULD NOT BE persuaded to stay behind at the shop, no matter how many ways Flamel threatened her.

  “You need to discipline your servant more thoroughly, Master Flamel,” said Crispin, taking the lead. “I suggest a good beating.”

  “That will not curb her willful tendencies. She is a strong-willed girl. Obstinate. Perenelle fawns on her as if she were her own child. And Avelyn thrives on it. It is no use, she has always been this way. There is no schooling her.”

  “Put her on bread and water for a week. That might help.”

  Avelyn trotted up to him with a calculating smirk on her face. Surely she had not read their lips, for she had been behind them. She tried to take Crispin’s hand, but he shook her off. “Are you quite certain she’s deaf?”

  “Quite, Maître. And quite mute. She would have a great deal to say if she were not. As it is, her fingers can talk rather quickly.”

  Again, she tried to take Crispin’s hand and he shook her off with a flick of his wrist. He stopped in the middle of the street and wagged his finger in her face. “No! You must stop this at once. I am not some ploughman or stable boy.”

  She shook her head and smiled. Her humoring him infuriated. But he said nothing more as he stalked ahead. He turned at Jack’s snort, only to catch her imitating Crispin’s furious stride and posture.

  There was nothing to be done. It was best to ignore her.

  Since they were already outside the city walls, they headed down the Ditch to Fleet Street, passed over the bridge spanning the pungent Fleet stream, and meandered down toward Ludgate. Upon reaching the stone archway, they separated and each scoured the structure, both on the west side, the inside, and the eastern side in London proper.

  It was Jack who found it.

  “Oi! Master Crispin! Over here!”

  Crispin and Flamel came running. Avelyn looked up and soon followed. On the London side, Jack pointed upward to the arch and to the right. “When did they carve this, I wonder, and escape the guards’ wrath?”

  It was a good question, thought Crispin, examining the carving of the alpha, the aleph, the sign of Aries. They had not seen this one before. Who knew how many more symbols were carved over the city?

  Avelyn was suddenly at his shoulder, staring up at the markings in the stone. He studied her face, proving his desperation by trying to glean something from her furious scrutiny of the gate. Crispin turned from her and laid his hand over the markings. He felt the rough edges where a steel implement had etched deeply. If this was where to begin, then what now?

  He slid his hand down the wall from the carvings, the wet stone slick under his hand. It was as solid as the city itself, as solid as its walls. Yet before he dropped his hand away, his fingers slipped into a niche, a mere crevice between two stones … where he felt the edge of a parchment.

  “God’s blood,” he whispered. Reachin
g farther, he closed his fingers on it and then pulled it forth. A folded scrap of parchment. He unfolded it and examined the writing, which looked like Hebrew sigils. Jews? How could they be involved?

  Jack nearly ripped it from his hands. “Master Crispin! What have you found? Blind me! Could they all have parchments hidden somewhere near them?”

  He stared at his apprentice in the falling light as his words sank in. Was that the reason for the markings? To hide clues?

  Flamel took it from him and studied it.

  “More Kabbalah?” asked Crispin, cringing at the thought.

  “Perhaps,” he said. But then he held it up to the light. More quill scratch writing between the lines. Crispin snatched it back and held it up to the pale yellow sun.

  He read aloud, translating as he did, “‘A bow o’r reaches, grass, water, grass. Unless one is willing, he shall not pass. From here to there, o’r wavering glass.’” Crispin turned it this way and that in the sun. “Grass, water, grass?”

  Jack edged forward. “Grass and water. A river’s edge?”

  “Not a river. Something over a river. A bridge.”

  “London Bridge?”

  Crispin turned the parchment end over end. “If there is a riddle by each of these symbols all over London, then we must follow each one to find … what?”

  “The answer,” said Flamel.

  “The answer to what?”

  He looked up. His face seemed more lined than before, his eyes sagging with weariness and worry. “To what to do next.”

  17

  THE BELLS RUNG FOR Vespers. She slumped on her chair. She had managed to get a little wine and bread at last later that morning, but now there would be no more. She had lost the toss of the dice and he had ticked his head with regret.

  She knew what he wanted. He was a fool if he thought he would get it. But why treat her in this way unless he was mad? Yes, he was most likely mad. Circumstances had made him so, from those long-ago days. From the many things he’d said, all in that falsely cheerful way of his, she had pieced together the simple message that it had been this Lancaster’s fault. He blamed him. She tried to reckon it but could not come up with the logic and so kept silent. Better that way. For now, he played these games for her food and relief. But there was no way of knowing if he would become more violent.

  “Your husband seems not to care for you.”

  She stiffened at the sound of his voice in the doorway. His shadow approached, stretching across the floor. She had won herself a fire in yet another game of tables, so at least she was warmer and there was light, for there were no windows deep in this strange room. Was she even in England anymore? Her head was light from lack of food and the bit of wine she had consumed. But at least he had removed the blindfold and hadn’t even mentioned putting it back on her again.

  She said nothing as he approached. He was trying to goad her.

  “Did you hear me, Madame? He does not care for you as you had thought. For there is no rescue.”

  “He will not give it to you.”

  “Will he not? I think, then, that you are a poor bargaining chit. It might be best, then, to…” Suddenly his lips were against her ear, and she shrank back. “Dispose of you,” he whispered.

  She tried not to shudder, to show her fear. He wanted that. She was no fool. But it was hard, so hard, when she was so tired and hungry, and her arms and shoulders ached from the position in which they had been tied for so long.

  “I disposed of your apprentice when he got in the way, Madame. He was useless to me, in the end. Do you know what I did?”

  She shook her head, unable to stop herself. She wanted to cover her ears but couldn’t. She recited the rosary instead, but it didn’t block out his voice, especially as close to her ear as it was.

  “I put my hands around his slim white throat and slowly squeezed. Squeezed, until his choking breath began to slow. His eyes bugged. I was curious to see if they would pop out of his head.”

  She sobbed, turning her face as far away from him as she could.

  “Alas. They did not. His tongue protruded, though, with my thumb pushing hard on his windpipe. He stopped breathing. His eyes remained open, wide, seeing less and less. His lips became pale. And then … he was quite dead. And finally, I hung him up in your shop by his heel to confuse and confound. I wonder what your precious husband said to that.”

  He dragged a stool from the table and set it before her. Sitting, he pondered her face, cocking his head one way, then the other. Reaching forward, he ran a finger down her cheek. “Still beautiful after all these years. Will he discard you as he had so many others? You mustn’t trust him, you know.”

  “I trust him. It is you I do not trust.”

  “Me? But Madame! You say this to me, of all people. No, never fear. I will not so easily dispose of you. I have a greater plan. A better one.” He caressed her cheek once more, a smile teasing his mouth. “Would you like to wash? I’m certain you would. It’s been days.”

  She angled her head away from his touch. “No more games.”

  “But they are such fun, don’t you agree? It’s different when so much is assigned to the winning or losing. When so much is at stake. I learned that lesson years ago. I’m certain that Nicholas never told you that.”

  “Release me.”

  “Not yet. Perhaps … not ever.”

  “Oh, God! O merciful Father! Help your poor child!”

  He jerked to his feet, kicking the stool aside. “That’s right. Pray! Pray, for all the good it will do you. We won’t play any more games tonight … and so you shall not wash.”

  He grabbed his dagger and pulled it from its sheath. Breathing hard, he looked at her.

  A strange calm overcame her. Was it to be over, then? “What will you do with that?” she said quietly.

  He strode toward her until he was standing directly over her, still breathing hard, still brandishing the knife. The blade gleamed dully in the candlelight. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled back her head with a jerk. She wasn’t prepared for it and gave a little shriek before quieting. Her exposed throat rolled with expectation.

  “What are you waiting for?” she whispered. She glared at him at first with anger in her eyes, anger at the waste of it all. But her emotions soon changed to regret. Prayers, not anger, were more apropos now. She would not go to her death with the sin of anger on her soul. Her thoughts were full of forgiveness. “Blessed Jesu deliver me,” she sighed up at him, before the blade swept down.

  18

  THE FOUR OF THEM made their way down to Thames Street, passed the Vintry and the Ropery, and finally arrived to Bridge Street. There was a queue to pay the toll to cross the bridge—which seemed to be held up by a man with an oxcart who had lost his cargo halfway through the gate.

  Jack pushed his way through, jumping above the crowd to get a look at the archway. He turned back to Crispin and shook his head.

  “Perhaps it isn’t on the arch,” he muttered to Flamel. Avelyn stayed at Crispin’s side like a dog with his master. It annoyed him, but she had proved observant before. After all, she seemed to have led him to the parchment in the niche. Had she seen it … or had she put it there for him to find?

  He turned to watch her as she stumbled down the embankment, falling on her bum and sliding a little on the way down. How had she known it was there?

  He went after her and grabbed her arm when they both slipped and rolled the rest of the way over the rough stones. He cursed and brushed himself off. She got to her feet, rubbing her temple. He grabbed her again and said to her face so she could read his mouth, “How did you know that parchment was there?”

  She only smiled softly and shook her head. He tightened his grip and she looked down at his hand in puzzlement. “No, that’s not good enough. Did you put it there?”

  Her mouth opened in an “O” and she shook her head slowly. Her long braid swayed from side to side like a donkey’s tail.

  “If I find you are lying to me, you s
hall regret it.”

  She shook her head again and signed to him.

  “Master Flamel!” he called. “Come translate what this bitch of a servant has to say.”

  Flamel clutched his gown and hiked it up, making his way slowly down to the shore. Jack came up beside him and anchored him.

  They both reached the stony shore together, and Flamel turned the girl to face him. “What are you saying, child?”

  Her hands flew and Flamel nodded, saying only occasionally, “Lentement, lentement.” At last she seemed to have finished, and Flamel turned to Crispin. “She says she is hurt that you should accuse her. She says she trusts you like none other—and insists that she is not a whore or a she-bitch. She says that she is more observant than you, who are more taken by the sounds of the wind and the people and the carts and the birds calling in the sky, and that all these things serve as a distraction to what is truly important. And she says also … that you must apologize to her or … or she will not … er … lay with you again.”

  Mute, Crispin stared at her and her jutting chin. He saw now the hurt written on her face and deep in her wounded eyes.

  “I trust her, Maître,” said the alchemist. His voice was as soft as the water of the rushing Thames. “I have known her too long not to.”

  Crispin swallowed and cleared his throat. Flamel stared at him expectantly, as did Jack. Perhaps it was not a good precedent to apologize to a pretentious servant, but of course, he had already lost that battle long ago with Jack.

  He took her hand, ignoring the men beside him. “Avelyn, I do apologize most humbly. I … spoke before thinking. Can you forgive me? And not because … because we lay together. But because I was wrong in accusing you.”

  She lowered her eyes for a long time before she brought his hand up to her cheek and used it to caress its smoothness. She kissed his scarred knuckles and fingertips before lowering his captured hand, swinging it in her own. When she looked up again, her mouth had spread into a wide smile.