Chantress Alchemy

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  “Just in case they are tempted to peek,” he said, answering my look of surprise. “In their place, I would find it hard to resist, but an interruption at the wrong moment could be fatal for the enterprise.”

  He crossed back over to me and gazed into the crucible. “Ah, I see something is happening—excellent!”

  Something was indeed happening—and I could not only see it, but also feel it as well. The weight of the crucible lightened ever so slightly, and inside its bowl, the liquid began to swirl and then give off a very light steam, like mist.

  “It looks like the ocean,” I said, for beneath the mist, the liquid had turned a deep blue-green.

  “Indeed.” Sir Isaac seemed enraptured by the sight.

  “But wasn’t it supposed to turn red?” The more I stared at the liquid, the dizzier I felt.

  “Give it time,” Sir Isaac murmured. “Give it time.”

  I nodded, but the dizzy feeling was growing worse by the moment. Was it the smell of the mist that was doing this to me? Or the power of the Great Work itself? Or was it just exhaustion?

  Whatever you do, don’t let go of the crucible, I told myself. But then the dizziness worsened into outright nausea, and I lurched forward.

  “Don’t drop it!” Sir Isaac shouted. His hands shot out to cover mine, pressing them against the crucible.

  Perhaps they heard his shout outside, for there was some commotion behind the door. I could not make out exactly what it was, though; it was too muffled for that, and I was too sick. My head was spinning, and the crucible would have fallen if Sir Isaac hadn’t been standing across from me, supporting my hands with his own.

  “Not much longer now.” As Sir Isaac spoke, a tremor ran through him, but his fingers remained strong as wire against mine. “The change has begun.”

  Could I hold out till the Great Work was done? Through the high windows above us, the sky was dimming from black to deep blue; dawn was near. I looked down into the bowl, hoping to see at least a touch of crimson this time. But the liquid was still the same blue-green, and the steam above it was thickening, like a sea mist on a stormy day . . .

  . . . and then all at once the steam swirled like the sea itself, and I was falling down into it with my mind, deeper and deeper, the fall I now associated with scrying. I tried to pull back, but I couldn’t. Indeed, the dizziness only made me fall faster and harder.

  What’s wrong?

  I didn’t ask the question out loud, but it resounded inside me like a tolling bell: What’s wrong?

  As if in answer, a picture formed in the shimmering liquid. I almost groaned to see it, for it was the same one I’d seen twice before: the bloodthirsty king and queen, choking each other in all their finery. Only this time, as I stared at them, their blue faces shifted into something horribly recognizable: the king had Sir Isaac’s face, and the queen, my own. As I watched in sick shock, the tiny Sir Isaac quenched the life out of me and hacked off my coronet with a knife. My blood spurted over his pearl-bedecked hand.

  The liquid sloshed in the crucible.

  “Take care!” Sir Isaac shouted.

  My head snapped up. “You,” I said, still in the grip of what I’d seen. “You’re what’s wrong. You’re doing something to me. Something awful.”

  Sir Isaac’s face was all puzzlement. “My dear Chantress, you’re not making any sense.”

  A small snake of doubt crept through me. But the picture had been so clear. I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. “I want to stop.”

  The moment I tried to pull away, Sir Isaac’s mask of puzzlement vanished. For that’s all it had been—a mask. Beneath it, he had the blood-maddened look of the murderous king of my visions.

  “Oh no.” He tightened his hands like a vise, flattening my fingers against the crucible. “You’re not stopping now. Not until we’re done. There, look! It’s changing now. We’ve done it!”

  The liquid had indeed changed: it was now a bright, pure blue.

  “It’s not red,” I said. “It’s not the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  “No,” Sir Isaac said. “It’s something far more precious: a Chantress Elixir.”

  “What?”

  As I stared at him, dumbfounded, he seized the crucible for himself. Cradling it in one arm, he pulled an astonishingly luminous pearl out of his coat. Before I could duck away, he touched my hand with it. My head swam, and my muscles flagged. I sank toward the floor.

  “You have done such an excellent job convincing everyone that you can still do magic,” Sir Isaac said softly. “But I know the truth. This talisman makes it impossible for you to hear music clearly; it confuses your senses. And when I hold it to your skin, it weakens you fatally. You cannot oppose me.”

  Horrified, I tried to roll away from him. Waves of nausea pulsed through me.

  “Look at you, cowering there on the floor.” He nestled the crucible closer to his chest. “You did not know the talisman existed, did you? Wrexham had the stone for years, you know; he told no one about it, but eventually I recognized it for what it was. A very rare object, indeed, though he did not know a tenth of what it could do.”

  “You and Wrexham?” I gasped. “You plotted against me?”

  “I, plot with that clod?” Sir Isaac spoke with disdain. “I should think not. I gave him a sleeping draught a fortnight ago and took the stone. He believes the talisman is still on his finger; I put an ordinary pearl in its place, and he never noticed the difference. And he never guessed that his talisman’s powers could be augmented through alchemy. Solely by a true adept, of course—and even then I only achieved my end a week ago.” He loomed over me with a superior smile, holding the pearl high. “And you were ignorant all the while. You never even heard the drone.”

  The drone? The sound I’d heard by the sea in Norfolk, and in the river by the King’s hunting lodge—that was the talisman?

  “I heard it,” I choked out.

  “You did?” He looked faintly surprised. “Well, well. The process of creating the talisman is long and arduous, and it greatly disturbs the elements; the effects can ripple out for hundreds of miles. When the process is done, a Chantress will be deafened to it, but while it is happening, she may occasionally hear a drone, as you did. If so, it ought to serve as a warning to her.”

  I wish it had, I thought groggily, trying to push myself up from the floor.

  He leered down at me. “But you didn’t know what to do about it, did you? Clear proof that a foolish girl like you does not deserve magic. Much better that it should be in the hands of a man like me, a man with judgment and discernment and wisdom. After all, I am the genius of my age; men everywhere acknowledge it.” He gave me a manic smile. “Genius and magic—what a combination it will be!”

  Was he mad? I hoped so. But dimly, I remembered something Sybil had said once, about there being a way of transferring Chantress powers to a man. The way had been lost, she had said. . . .

  “You know how to do it,” I said, feeling sick again. “How to claim a Chantress’s magic.”

  “I do,” Sir Isaac acknowledged, with a touch of boastfulness. “The papers put me on to it. There were several pages that made no sense, at least not at first. But gradually I began to piece it together, step by step. It was so obscure I doubt anyone else could have decoded it; yet everything was there. Of course, the transfer of powers cannot succeed unless the man in question has Chantress blood, however faint. But fortunately, I do.”

  He did? “You never said so.”

  He shrugged. “What was the point, when I had no power to show for it? A terrible injustice, I always thought, that the male line was excluded from magic. But I shall redress that soon enough.”

  Lying on the floor, my head by my knees, I remembered something else that Sybil had said. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I have to give the power willingly, that’s what the old lore says. And that I will never do.”

  “But you already have.” His eyes glowed in triumph. “
You helped make the elixir of your own free will. Your moments of struggle came too late; the transformation was already taking place. The proof lies before you: the elixir exists. It need only ripen for another minute, and then I will claim your magic for myself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE ELIXIR

  Sir Isaac circled my prone body, the sharp tips of his boots coming within inches of my face. When he held the talisman before me, it multiplied before my eyes.

  “It is an effective little ball, you must admit,” he mused. “Yet even with it, my success was far from assured. I thought I would never be able to lure you down here, or near any laboratory good enough to do the necessary work. Despite all the Council’s arguments, the King insisted you must be allowed to remain in Norfolk if you wished, that he had granted you safe haven there. And I feared that if I told him you were crucial to the Great Work, he might insist on seeing the papers for himself—and then Nat and Penebrygg and the others would begin to ask awkward questions.” He gave me another one of his manic smiles. “But finally I hit on the idea of stealing the crucible, and that worked like a charm. The King had to bring you here then—and it meant, too, that he would not let you leave, even when you wanted to.”

  I stared up at him in dizzy disbelief. “You stole the crucible?”

  “I did. And I spoiled the moonbriar seeds, too, although I did that much earlier, in case you came to Court before I was ready for you.” He spoke with evident pride in his own ingenuity. “Later I planted the crucible in Nat’s room. You all thought I was sleeping off the poison. But I’d done the poisoning myself—a much smaller dose than it looked. Once everyone left me, I took my chance to rid myself of Nat. Too clever, that boy.”

  “And the King?”

  Sir Isaac shrugged. “He got in my way. But never mind that now. The time has come.” Hugging the crucible close, he leaned over me, reaching for my hand. “The elixir is ready. All that remains is for us both to dip our fingers into it, and then your magic will flow to me.”

  “That will never happen.” With a strength born of panic, I surged up from the floor.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” He lashed out with the talisman. It glinted across my skin, and the world heaved under my feet again. I fell back, gasping, against the table. As the sickness washed over me, bottles smashed against the floor.

  Bottles . . . tiny bottles . . .

  He lunged for me just as my fingers found the right one: aqua fortis.

  “Don’t you dare!” he shouted.

  I hurled the bottle at him. It broke against the crucible, spurting acid onto Sir Isaac’s hand, the hand that held the talisman. Sir Isaac screamed—as much from rage as pain, it seemed, for when the acid hit the talisman, it vanished into smoke.

  The moment it was gone, music flooded the world. With joy and relief and awe, I heard Wild Magic swirling around me, every note luminous and clear: the busy melodies of the potions in their bottles, the crackling cadence of the fire, the hypnotic canticle of the blue elixir itself. And wrapping around all these songs, running under them and over them and through them, I heard the toll of the River Thames outside the open windows—old London River, now at high tide.

  Yet even as I opened myself up to the music, Sir Isaac’s hand locked around my wrist. He was bigger than I, and stronger than I, and half-mad with the desire for power. Even without the talisman, he could win, and he knew it.

  But I knew my own strength now. I drew on the power that pulsed in the Wild Magic around me; I drew on the power I’d found in myself. And I sang.

  Back in Norfolk, I hadn’t fully trusted myself. I’d usually gone for what was safe and easy. Now I trusted my deepest instincts, and the song I chose was the most powerful I could hear: a song that called upon the great river to defend me from my enemies.

  It was a wild and fathomless music, as ancient as the river itself. As it surged through me, the river and I gained strength from each other.

  But Sir Isaac, too, had found a new strength: the strength of desperation. Even as I sang, he forced my hand down toward the elixir. Our locked fingers neared the surface.

  I gathered everything I had, calling the river to me . . .

  . . . and it came, slamming through the walls and ceiling, gushing through the broken stone. Mighty and purposeful, it cleaved together like a living thing, a towering wave of water that barreled straight for Sir Isaac and me.

  Wood splintered, stones rumbled, pots smashed on the floor. Then there was only the roar of the river itself—the roar and the splash and the muck and the brine—as the wave closed over us.

  I thought at first it would drown us both, but it sluiced between our joined hands, knocking me aside. It wanted only one of us. As I held on to an iron ring in the wall, the wave washed over Sir Isaac, crucible and all, and dragged him back to the riverbed.

  Choking and spluttering, my garments drenched, I rushed to the broken walls and saw the Thames sink back between its banks in the pale light of dawn. The whole river shuddered, as if thrashing in its sleep. And then the Thames was itself again, flowing strong to the sea, with only the broken walls and the wet trails on the floor to show it had ever done anything else.

  † † †

  It felt like an age, but might merely have been a minute, before I heard my name.

  “Lucy!”

  “Nat?” Still in shock, I turned and saw a crack in the door, and Nat’s aghast face above it. Behind him crowded the King, Penebrygg, Sir Samuel, Gabriel, and the guard named Potts, all gazing at me and the shattered wall in stunned silence.

  I straightened my spine. “You saw?” I said.

  “We saw.” Reaching through the broken wood, Nat threw the deadbolt, lifted the bar, and shoved the battered door open. There was a small cut on his cheek, and a yellowing bruise on his jaw, but otherwise, he had no injuries. “Are you all right? I thought—”

  He stopped short, a pained look in his eyes. The others filed out behind him, still watching me in silence. They were all keeping their distance. And why not? They had just seen me call up a wall of water and destroy one of their own.

  “I had to do it,” I said. “He wasn’t making the Philosopher’s Stone—”

  “We know,” the King said. “Nat showed us the book. We were already growing anxious by then. We could not hear what you were saying, but you sounded distressed.”

  I turned to Nat with a questioning look. “The book?”

  “It’s all in here.” Nat held up a palm-size volume. “In Gabriel’s writing.”

  “Gabriel?” I was instantly on my guard. Was he part of the plot too?

  “I didn’t know.” Gabriel’s brown eyes pleaded with me to believe him. “I merely copied what I saw. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I promise.”

  I heard the ring of truth in his voice, and what’s more, a note of fear. He’s afraid of me, I realized. They were all at least a little afraid.

  Except, perhaps, for Nat. He gave Gabriel a hard look. “Yes. We’ve had it out with him, and it seems he was only copying from Sir Isaac’s papers. And from what I’ve seen of his attempts at translation, he didn’t understand a word of it.”

  Gabriel looked as if he wanted to knock Nat down. But he checked himself.

  “A spy?” I repeated, startled. “For the Queen of Sweden?”

  “For himself,” Nat said.

  Gabriel flushed, but he did not deny it. “And why not?” he said with a pale imitation of his old swagger. “If you stood to lose your entire fortune, your lands, your home, you would act too.”

  Nat ignored this. “He wanted to make his own Philosopher’s Stone. That’s what his own notes say. And when he found where Sir Isaac hid his metal box at night, and worked out the combination, he thought he’d found the way to do it. But it turned out he couldn’t read the papers inside, or at least not well enough to glean what he needed.”

  “They were in the most devilish code ever devised,” Gabriel said bitterly. “All I could do was copy them.” He
pointed an accusing finger at Nat. “And then you stole my book.”

  “I saw him hide it,” Nat said to me. “After we, well . . . on that last night, just before I was found with the crucible.”

  My cheeks went hot, remembering what we had said to each other then: how I’d refused to go with him, and he had left me because he thought I didn’t care for him.

  “I thought I’d better find out what was so interesting to him,” Nat said, “so I took the book out to look—but the next thing I knew, the whole palace was chasing after me. You know how that ended.”

  “I know some of it,” I said. “You managed to escape?”

  “I did. I got the book and myself to a hideaway in the Greenwich cellars.”

  “You’ve been here all the time?” I was amazed. “How did you keep hidden?”

  “I have a friend or two in the kitchens. And a few in the guards.” He and Potts exchanged the ghost of a smile. “That helped a lot.”

  I nodded. It made sense that Nat would have allies in unusual places. Rank didn’t matter to him. He’d as soon strike up a friendship with a servant as a king—a trait I loved in him.

  “After I went into hiding, I worked on cracking the cipher,” Nat said. “And when I finally figured it out, I discovered that Sir Isaac wasn’t making the Philosopher’s Stone, but an elixir to steal away Chantress powers.”

  “I didn’t know,” Gabriel said again. He opened his hands to me, as if to plead that he’d meant no harm.

  “I came up from the cellars then,” Nat said to me. “It was almost dawn, and I was afraid I was going to be too late. My only chance was to come straight here. Because everything was in an uproar, I had no real trouble till I approached the stairs. There was a bit of a scuffle then, but fortunately, Sergeant Potts here was on duty, so I got through to the King. And thanks be, he listened.”

  The King took up the tale. “When he showed us the book, we could hardly believe it. But we thought it odd, the way Sir Isaac had barred the door, and then we heard the sound of shouting. And then Nat appeared with an explanation that made sense of it all.”