Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  Avelyn handed over the lantern to Jack without any fuss. “So now you give it to me,” he muttered. He looked up once at Crispin. “I’ll go up into the tower, sir. Which way?”

  Crispin pointed toward a door. “Mind that no one sees you.” He directed the others to wait alongside a column. If the monks should come through after Vespers, it might serve as a good hiding place while at the same time offering a position to keep an eye on the bell tower’s stairs. And just as he thought it, he spotted the little light slowly climbing within the tower, making its careful way upward. He knew Jack would be checking the walls all along the stairwell, but if Crispin knew this abductor, the message would be situated as close to the bell as possible, for that would be the most out of the way, the most troublesome to get to, and wasn’t that what this abductor was hoping for?

  But what was this leading to? This hunt was all well and good, but what was its ultimate purpose? Crispin kept his eyes on Jack, or at least on the little light. He feared that Perenelle might be in graver danger than he had originally thought. Murder was not foremost on the mind of most abductors. Their goal was the ransom. In this case, it was the Stone. But what if he wanted something else? For this was more than a simple ransom for a hostage. If that had been the case, he would have instructed Flamel to leave the Stone someplace else. No, instead he sent them on this insane chase all over London. And Crispin feared that they would find Madam Perenelle’s lifeless body at the end of it. Maybe he should tell the sheriffs of this crime … but he rejected the notion almost the moment he thought it. They would do nothing. Nothing would be accomplished by bringing them into it, and wisely, Flamel had seen that from the start. Not only would they be useless, but they would most likely get in the way. And if Perenelle was not in danger now—though Crispin was fairly certain that she was—the sheriffs, through their bumbling course, would make certain that she did fall into danger’s path.

  No, there was no help from the king’s anointed. It was up to him and Jack. As usual.

  He looked up again and found the little light had climbed higher, almost as high as it could go … and stopped. It seemed to sway for a moment, seemed unsteady, when all at once, it fell. The light streaked downward through the widest part of the tower, never touching the stair. It lit the walls as it went, until it crashed to the floor.

  Crispin stifled his cry and ran. His heart beat a triple measure as he arrived at the crossing of the transepts. He raced up the quire steps and slammed into the locked gate. But instead of the lifeless form he expected to see lying on the floor, a crumpled bit of metal lay there. The extinguished candle from the ruined lantern sent up a wisp of smoke.

  Crispin looked up.

  “Master!” hissed the distant voice of his apprentice from above, and never had he been so relieved to hear it. “I found it. But I dropped the lantern.”

  “Forget the lantern. Just get down here, you knave.”

  He heard Jack’s hurried steps along the stairwell and waited, his breath and heartbeat returning to normal. The fool and his slippery fingers. The boy could cut a purse as nimble as you pleased, but he could not keep hold of a simple lantern?

  Jack jumped through the stairwell door and landed on the tiled floor. He ran up to Crispin and looked up at his face. “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a winding sheet,” he said.

  Crispin straightened. “Never mind me. Where’s the parchment?”

  “I was reaching up and I slipped. It was almost me going over the side, and no mistaking.” Jack looked back at the ruined lantern. “Blind me.”

  “Where is the parchment?” Crispin asked again. He took Jack by the arm and steered him over to the column where Flamel and Avelyn awaited them.

  “What is it, Maître Guest? What is the riddle this time?”

  “Jack,” Crispin said impatiently, “for the last time, where is the damned parchment?”

  “There was no parchment,” he said, looking from face to face. “It was the bell.”

  “What was the bell?”

  “There was an inscription on the bell. In Latin. It said, ‘It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins.’”

  “This is a foolish waste of time!” cried Flamel.

  A noise. Perhaps a step. They all fell silent as they listened.

  “Monks,” Crispin whispered to them. “Let us go.”

  They hurried together out of the arch and down the steps. A burning brazier stood in the cathedral’s courtyard and the four of them surrounded it, warming their hands over the flames.

  Flamel rubbed his eyes. “Where are these riddles taking us? Is he not laughing at our antics? What does it mean, Maître Guest?”

  “We are set on this course now, Master Flamel. Unfortunately, he holds the reins. We must do as he bids. At some point, he will tell us to leave the ransom, and so we must be accurate as to which riddle we find and in what order. When we are wrong, he tells us.”

  “And so what is the meaning of this riddle?” Flamel asked again.

  “I know!” said Jack. His face was bright with the excitement of discovery. But Crispin saw his features change as he realized the gravity of the situation. “I mean … I sorted it out on my way back down the stairs. It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins. The answer is … death.”

  Flamel gasped and Jack immediately saw the lack of grace in his pronouncement. The boy still had far to go in learning when to keep silent.

  Crispin touched Flamel’s sleeve. “It is merely another riddle, good Master.” I hope. “The clue is ‘death.’ And so. What are we to conclude? He means a churchyard, gravestones.”

  Jack’s contrition was evident by the set of his brow. “But Master,” he said softly, as if his tone could erase the harshness of his earlier declaration, “there are many graves in the city. How are we to know which one it is? Should we look here at St. Paul’s?”

  “Two clues we have found here already,” Flamel offered anxiously. “And here is where he would have had me leave the ransom.”

  “True.” Crispin pondered. But something about it did not sit well. “Since we are here, we might as well look.”

  They would have to go back inside, for those of high stature were buried within the cathedral itself. Again they wandered separately. Crispin wished he had the broken lantern, for he could not seem to adjust to the dark as easily as young Jack did or Avelyn.

  Crispin found one of the older tombs, erected before the fire in Norman times. The stone seemed to be crumbling from age, and even though it remained indoors, time had not been kind to its worn effigies. Still aware that a wayward porter or servant might be about, Crispin moved carefully around the tomb, studying the carvings and raised patterns. A skull with crossed bones caught his eye and he knelt, running his fingers over the cold, uneven stone. Another parchment in a niche. Hurriedly, he removed it and read:

  Close. But not here beneath the vaulted ceilings. Beneath another greater vault you must look.

  “Dammit!” He caught Tucker’s attention by waving the parchment. Jack, in turn, tapped Avelyn’s arm. They trotted over, collecting Flamel along the way.

  “This is not the place.” He handed it to Jack, who read it slowly, mouthing the words.

  “Where, then, Master Crispin?”

  “A ‘greater vault’ would be the sky. But I do not think it another churchyard or plague pit. Something out of doors, certainly. Something that reeks of death.”

  “Tower Hill,” whispered Jack. His face was in shadow, but his eyes glistened from the distant cressets.

  “Yes,” Crispin agreed. That sounded right.

  “It’s late. Surely the Watch is patrolling,” said Jack.

  He set his jaw. “When has that ever stopped us before?”

  * * *

  THEY MADE THEIR WAY to Candlewick Street and headed for the Postern Gate. Crispin let Flamel fall behind with Avelyn. He got in close to Jack and said to him quietly, “I do not like this game, Jack. He is set
ting us up for a purpose, and that purpose may very well be a diabolical one.”

  “Do you mean to say that Madam Flamel might already be … be…”

  “It’s possible. The cruelness of leading us on this chase without the possibility of renewing his bid for a ransom seems out of proportion.”

  “He knows Master Flamel.”

  “I would say so. Knows him well and has a grievance.”

  “So he don’t want the Stone.”

  “I think he does, but he obviously feels he has time to savor the getting of it.”

  Jack looked back over his shoulder at the alchemist. “You said that you thought Master Flamel knew the abductor.”

  “He might. What vexes me is the time it has taken to plant these clues, to invent these riddles. This was thought out very carefully, Jack, over a long period of time. What sort of grievance would he have? How did he know that Flamel was coming to England? It was supposed to be a secret.” He lifted his head and listened to the darkening city.

  When they turned at Tower Street, they all stopped, listening. Crispin plucked the small noises of night from the chill air: a dog barking down the lane, a sign creaking in the wind, the restless whisper of leafless trees scratching against a garden wall, a rat rustling in the underbrush, the soft voices like a hum coming from the houses. Crispin felt like a thief, creeping through the streets, trying to avoid capture. Especially now that they had lost their lantern. It was difficult to see their way.

  Ahead were the high curtain walls of the Tower of London and, above that, Tower Hill, where the gibbet awaited its next victim.

  They turned up the rutted lane, climbing toward the lonely hill. Jack fell silent and pale beside him. It wasn’t all that long ago when the boy was in danger of ending up there, and well he knew it. Crispin, too, approached with trepidation. Here was the place that the other conspirators in the Plot were dispatched: hanged, drawn, quartered. A particularly nasty and lingering death for daring to venture into treason. And well Crispin knew, too, that he was damned fortunate to have escaped it. His pride often made him wish he had been executed with the others instead of living in his humiliation, but he had grown accustomed to life, and the notion of giving it up had become harder and harder. Not that he particularly relished his existence on the Shambles, but it had its advantages. And with a curt glance to Avelyn, he recognized one of them.

  As they neared, they could see that the gibbet stood empty, and for that Crispin was grateful. He had no liking for the idea of searching underneath the body of a dead man, and a man bound for Hell at that.

  The wood of the post and jutting beam glistened from damp under the starlight. A well-used rope hung from its beam and swayed with the night wind. It reminded Crispin of the rope back at Flamel’s shop hanging from its own beam. Thomas Cornhill met his death swiftly and was hung by his heel on it. But Perenelle Flamel lingered. Who knew what peril she was in at this very moment?

  Standing below the gibbet’s platform, he heard Jack swallow and breathe, even above the constant wind. The boy was murmuring prayers, and Crispin decided to spare him. “You look here below, Jack. I … I will go up.”

  He trudged farther up the hill to the gibbet’s steps. He hesitated only a heartbeat before he put his foot to the first step and slowly climbed. God’s blood, but it felt as if he were going to his doom. What a fearful place, full of ghosts and evil spirits. No matter how many prayers a priest chanted, no blessing ever seemed to permeate its dark wood.

  He stood on the platform at last and looked down. Yes, he knew how very lucky he was. Perhaps when next he met the duke, he could be civil again.

  Get to work, Crispin, he told himself. It helped to assuage his choking fear of the place.

  He began to search. And it didn’t take long. The carving was on the post of the hanging tree. A crude drawing of a raven. Crispin didn’t need an alchemist to tell him what it meant.

  He felt around it and found the parchment in a gouged-out niche.

  You are a worthy opponent. The game is soon over. Stand and enjoy the view before you continue.

  Your reward: Eyes bold, skin cold, silver-armored, breath hold. Multiplying, fortifying, never thirsting, shore shying.

  The references to death should not have disconcerted him so, yet he thought of little but Perenelle’s jeopardy. Ever mindful that he should not discount anything the abductor said, Crispin stood on the gibbet and looked out over London, trying to discern what he was supposed to see.

  London lay before him. Its many slanted roofs, covered in clay tile and lead sheeting, gleamed with damp. Smoke rambled over the rooftops like sheep in a meadow. Small lights from braziers or candles in windows sparkled, jewels on black velvet. In the distance, the dark Thames glittered when a wave caught the starlight. But he saw little else, for the night had closed in, and with it the mist from the Thames laying all under a blanket of gray fleece.

  He descended the steps again and adjusted his leather hood over his head.

  “It is late,” he announced to them. “It grows colder by the minute. We should return you to your shop, Master Flamel, and resume this search on the morrow.”

  “What … what did you find?” asked the man, his eyes fearful.

  “Another riddle, Master Flamel. But … we are close to the end. He has said so.”

  He looked up at Crispin with a concentrated stare. “The end, Maître Guest?”

  “Let us talk back at your lodgings.”

  * * *

  WEARY, THE FOUR OF them returned to the darkened shop. Flamel used a very ordinary key to unlock the door, but he had taken only a step inside when his foot scuffed upon something that was out of place.

  “Avelyn,” Flamel muttered. “Foolish girl…” His voice died on his lips. There wasn’t much light, except for that thrown out by the banked hearth, but as Crispin’s eyes adjusted, he could see, too, what Flamel was seeing: that the place had been ransacked yet again.

  “Avelyn!” cried the alchemist. He grabbed her arms when she came up beside him. “Go look!”

  Her eyes were wide with concern. She bounded like a doe over the ramshackle debris and minced over an overturned table to the ambry. She released the secret door where the Philosopher’s Stone was kept and reached inside. A strange cry, like a dying dove, made Crispin wince. He realized it came from her. She looked up at her master, a sorrowful expression on her grimacing face.

  20

  “NO!” GASPED FLAMEL. HE tried to scramble over the debris, but Crispin held him back.

  “I’ll go,” he told the man, and climbed carefully over the broken chairs and pots. Once he made it over, he stood beside Avelyn and looked into the empty drawer. She opened the other one, just to make certain, and reached for the velvet bag that held the river stone. That remained untouched. She threw it down with such ferocity, it broke a jar. Clutching her head, she shook it from side to side.

  Had she not locked the door when she fetched the lantern? No, Flamel had to unlock the door to enter. Worse, had this hunt been all a ruse to get them out of the way so that the malefactor could do his will at his leisure?

  “We’ve been fools.”

  Flamel sobbed against a broken table, covering his eyes. “My wife! My dear wife! What will become of her?”

  Crispin sagged. He felt as forlorn as Flamel looked. And then anger swept over him. “This isn’t over, Master Flamel. I will get to the bottom of this. And I will make whoever is responsible pay. Jack, come with me.”

  Without a word, Jack followed Crispin out the door. Suddenly, a hand was pulling on Crispin’s coat, and he turned to face Avelyn’s wide eyes. “I’m going to end this,” he told her.

  She pointed back into the shop. He resisted, but she pulled on his coat harshly and pointed again. With an exasperated breath, Crispin poked his head in and looked where she was pointing: to the bit of rope still tied to the roof beam, the rope that had held the dead apprentice. Then she lifted her skirt and crossed her foot behind her knee, just
as the apprentice was positioned. She dragged Crispin farther into the room and showed him the only upright table. After spitting on its surface, she used her spittle to draw a symbol.

  It could have been just her gibberish, as Flamel had said she could not read or write, but it looked to him like one of the many symbols they had already seen.

  “Master Flamel,” he said.

  The alchemist wiped his face of tears. He looked older than he had when they had met three days ago.

  Crispin pointed to the wet sigil on the table. “What is this sign?”

  Wearily, the man rose and lumbered over to them. He looked. “That is the symbol for the planet Jupiter. It is also the sign for the higher, finer work of alchemy.”

  “And that would be?”

  The man leaned against the table, seemingly unable to hold himself up anymore. “The Greater Arcana … that of the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  Crispin looked at the symbol again and then up to the snippet of rope that remained. Yes, the shape that the hanging man had taken could be construed as this sigil. Was it a message, too?

  “Your servant seems to think that Thomas Cornhill was placed here in the shape of this sign. Would that indicate the man’s intention?”

  The alchemist did not even rise to it this time. “Of course. I should have seen it myself. He was making plain what he wanted.” He finally looked up. Saw the rope fragment above him and with a small wince lowered his eyes to gaze at Crispin’s. “The work. The work is so important. That is why we came here, to get away. How did they find me? How did they know?”

  “Master Flamel, this murder and abduction, this hunt all over London, speaks of a grievance that is very deep. It took planning to accomplish all of this. Someone who was intimately acquainted with London. Can you think of someone—anyone—with such a great complaint against you?”

  “No. No one alive, at any rate. True, there have been many men jealous of my successes, but I cannot fathom anyone that would hate me as much as this scoundrel surely does.”