by Jane Jakeman
Henderson saw me looking at the illustration.
“The Green Lion is a symbol for mercury. Old Charnock persuaded the landlord of the inn to change his sign; it was the Golden Lion originally—quite a usual name. People would come here looking for Charnock, you see, wanting to consult the alchemist, and the Green Lion was a secret sign for them, that they had come to the right village. Then they would be directed to this house. But the present landlord is an innocent fool—he knows nothing of alchemy!”
He knew nothing of it, yet it had corrupted him, I thought. The power of riches, that one glimpse of fool’s gold when he lifted the cover on the cart, had made a thief out of an honest man. And possibly a murderer, too, for was this business in any way connected with the deaths of Kelsoe and young Cyriack Jesmond?
I looked again at the book. The words were jumbles, muddled Latin and Greek. “The Kerotakis,” I read. “The Litharge.”
“Good God man! What rubbish is this? Surely you cannot have been deceived by it!”
“You are in the right, Malfine, it is mere conjuration. Yet Charnock’s descendant was trying to puzzle it out. He could not decipher it—he could not read the Greek, for a start. There he was, having inherited all this wealth of learning, as he thought, and he could make nothing of it, country boy that he was.”
“So the older Charnock had not passed his knowledge on?”
“No. Thomas Charnock had been one of the most scholarly men of his generation, corrupt though that learning was. But it seems he chose not to teach his son, who was skeptical in all these matters, and though he intended to give instruction to his grandson, he died suddenly when the boy was still a child. So there was his family, buried in the depths of the countryside with this alchemist’s laboratory and these books, yet they could make nothing of it. Young Charnock could barely read and write when I came here.”
“And you taught him?”
“Yes, he was an apt pupil—and then it was he who conceived the idea that we might—”
“That you might try to revive the science of alchemy and gull some wealthy local fool into parting with his money.”
“Yes, that was the idea—just to ask him for a little money, at first, anyway. But Charnock did not want to go to Jesmond Place at first. He thought it was safer to stay here, because—”
“Because, if he were found out to be defrauding Sir Antony Jesmond, then it would be best to remain at a safe distance?”
“Exactly. But things did not turn out the way we planned.”
“I imagine not. Tell me about Kelsoe—he did not turn out as you planned, did he? Did he discover what you were up to?”
“No, he was supposed to be the one who actually conducted the experiments for Sir Antony. He was engaged to do so; Charnock and I were going to remain here and act as advisers in his work.”
“But Kelsoe refused?”
“Yes, when he knew what it was. He was asked to come as personal physician to Sir Antony, and then to work on the experiment—but he said he would not prostitute himself so! He said he had taken the Hippocratic oath of the physician not to misuse his knowledge and that alchemy was fraudulent, a false science. But in any case…”
“In any case, the unfortunate young fellow is as dead as a doornail!”
“Oh, I perceive your meaning—but we did nothing to harm poor Kelsoe. Why, I greatly regret his death. That I swear to you, Ambrose. Yes, Charnock and I took money from Sir Antony, promising him we could turn lead and iron into gold, but murder? Never! When Kelsoe died, Charnock took over and stepped into his shoes, tending the experiment for Sir Antony. It cannot be left to go out, you see, the alchemical furnace. That is what the books say: the process takes sixty days, and it must be tended constantly during that period.”
“But you do not believe this nonsense, Henderson! You were a man of reason, of science! How can you believe that this mumbo-jumbo will produce gold in sixty days? You must know that many have claimed to do so, yet no one has ever achieved it, and we know indubitably from the science of chemistry that it is impossible. Come, man, use your intelligence!”
The old man sagged in his chair. I saw a conflict in his face and understood that he might be the victim of his own deceptions: that he had perhaps come to believe the nonsense he had been promulgating.
“Malfine, I no longer know what I believe. But that was what I told Sir Antony—what I learned from the books. That to make gold the furnace must burn for twice thirty days. It was why Sir Antony wanted to have it at Jesmond Place, instead of here in my house, so that he could watch and wait. He wanted to be there at the exact moment it happened; that was what seemed to grasp his imagination. The moment when he would look into the vessel and see it. See the gold we had created.”
Henderson’s old eyes were fixed and staring: he seemed almost himself to see that magical moment after sixty days and nights of laboring over the stinking compounds of yellow sulfur and black and red salts, the bowl of mercury, the tiny fiery furnace, the smoky glass vessels, when the alchemist would lead his credulous victim to the crucible, and there, before the wondering gaze would be a glorious treasure, a heap of pure, gleaming gold, where before there had been a gray dirty mass.
Such was the “chymical art” described in these old books of demi-sorcery.
Such was the conjuring trick that Henderson and Charnock had prepared to play upon Sir Antony Jesmond.
I, Ambrose Malfine, thought that I had become hardened to this world, yet I gazed at Henderson with a mixture of pity and anger. What a brave and clever mind this had been! “What a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” A revolutionary, cleaving a brave new path in science as in politics, and yet he had deserted everything, broken his faith, betrayed his belief in reason. Not, surely, because he himself was fool enough to believe in this preposterous alchemical prancing, but because he had led others into folly.
Not just Sir Antony Jesmond, whom he had gulled for money. Henderson had done far worse: I thought of the young child, Charnock, growing up in this remote country village, thirsting to read, hungry for knowledge, looking for someone, anyone, who could teach him. And what had Henderson, the scholar, given that child? Had he taught him languages, sciences, passed on to him some true and rational knowledge? No, he had fed him on pap, rubbish, worthless incantations—a mish-mash of half-learning. I loathed the man, I confess, though I did not hate Charnock, the unfortunate child who had grown up under Henderson’s tutelage.
He sat there, his white hair flowing over the absurd and moth-eaten old fur cloak, and put his head in his hands. “Malfine, what will you do?”
I laughed out loud. “Do? Treat you as you deserve. You may be implicated in murder—how can one believe your protestations? Why should anyone take the word of a known fraud and deceiver? Why should anyone believe that you did not kill poor Kelsoe when he found out what you were involved in and refused to be a party to it? And having killed once, why not again? Perhaps Cyriack Jesmond discovered something of his father’s alchemical folly—and perhaps he resented his inheritance being thrown away upon such tricksters.”
“No, no, I heard about young Jesmond’s death, but it had nothing to do with us—with what we were engaged in! And neither did the death of Dr. Kelsoe, although he had nothing but contempt for us, that is true! We took money from Sir Antony; we took gold, telling him that some gold was needed for the experiment, as a crop needs to grow from seed. But murder, no! Do not think that of me, I beg you, Malfine.”
His face looked up, spittle clinging to his old lips, fear in his eyes. A fraud, a liar, a cheat. But a murderer? I looked round the study: there among the tubes and flasks, the evil-smelling paraphernalia of deceit, might lurk many strange poisons, poisons that could kill a man yet leave him lying as tranquil as if he had just fallen asleep. Henderson could not be allowed the chance of escape, perhaps to commit more murder, if his brilliant mind had descended into such an abyss.
But I had little time, I reflected, to act as village constable he
re. I needed to get back to Jesmond Place, not only to warn Sir Antony of the deceptions practiced upon him, but to ensure the safety of Clara Jesmond, in that house of greed and lunacy.
I looked out of the window. It was small, high up. Then I looked across to the door and saw an old iron key in the lock.
“The wrath of those who have been fooled by alchemists is terrible, when once they find they have been deceived. The world is full of cheated gulls and pig-widgeons, but beware of them when they discover the truth! It is not much more than a century since Gaetano was executed in Germany for promising some petty princeling he could make gold from lead. Do you know what they did there? When they found out he was a fraud, they hanged him on a gilded gallows! If Sir Antony finds out the truth, then I advise you to stay safely within your house, without venturing out. And to make sure you follow my advice, I’ll lock you in. Now I’ll leave you here, Henderson, and counsel you not to try to escape. How can you hope to hide in a country district such as this, where everyone will know you, and every mouth will mock you? Better stay here—locked safely in!”
Henderson shuddered; he said no more, pleaded no further, but bowed his head. I slammed the door of the alchemist’s lair, and the key grated in the iron lock, but there might well be another way out of the house.
It was my intention to send for a constable to keep guard over him, just in case there was another means of escape or the lock was as old and rusty as the rest of this decaying house, or at least to summon a stout villager armed with a cudgel or some other crude rustic skull-cracker, but at that moment someone came puffing along the village street, a personage I had last seen in the attics of Jesmond Place, or to be exact, bouncing arsy-varsy down the stairs away from the said attics.
It was the landlord of the Green Lion, slipping along as quietly as his bulk would allow, evidently suffering a conflict between his curiosity and his fear. I put him out of his misery.
“If you want to redeem yourself—you see that house at the end?”
He answered reluctantly, but from the way he looked sideways along the street, he evidently knew what I meant. “Dr. Henderson’s house, my lord?”
“Exactly. Now you are to stand outside it, and if Henderson tries to come out, you are to…to make him go back in.” I eyed the unarmed and quivering prospective agent of the law and, observing a long implement leaning against a garden wall, I seized it. “Here, take this…whatever it is.”
“Dibbler, my lord.”
“Quite. Now wave this at him if there’s any trouble.”
His face was white, though. The dibbler would not solve all his troubles. He muttered the next words, surely the strangest ever heard in an English village street.
“My lord, what if he…what if he…flies?”
Good God, what stories had been circulating in this quiet little English place? I suddenly got a glimpse into a world of village fears, of a tissue of stories and rumors that must have been resounding through the cottages and yards.
“Now listen to me. Henderson is just an old man. A man, d’you hear, like any other—like you or me. He cannot fly. He cannot change base metals into gold. He has no magic powers of any kind. Come with me.”
I pulled him, sweating as he was, back down the street, into the house, up the stairs and into the alchemist’s lair. The sun was shining into the room; the curtains lay where they had fallen. Henderson was still sitting in his chair, and in the sunshine now he looked exactly like any other rheumy-eyed old man, his mouth dribbling a little.
The landlord of the Green Lion cried out at the sight of the heads in the jar, but with one blow I smashed it to the floor and the waxy heads bounced about like nasty little dolls.
“See, it’s all trickery! Playthings for a mad old man. You have nothing at all to fear.”
And to Henderson: “This man will be outside the door if you try to escape.”
He looked up vacantly, and nodded. I don’t think he even really saw us then. My intention was to stiffen the resolve of his guardian.
It might not have worked. The “constable” was not of promising material. But he stared at the room, at the shabby hangings and the dusty books and the broken heap of wax and glass on the floor. Then he turned to me, and his plump body seemed to relax suddenly; the color came back to his face.
“So this is all it was? What them stories were all about? An old fellow and a pile of rubbish?”
“All it was,” said I.
CHAPTER 21
Jesmond Place seemed older and more rotten than ever, crepuscular even on a summer’s day. I repressed my instincts to leap from Zaraband’s back, stride up the steps and break open the battered silvery timbers of the door.
In Greece, when I had two or three times led a rescue mission to prize one of my lieutenants from the torturing grip of an enemy prison, I had discovered caution, unnatural though it is to my impetuous temperament. Impetuous, yes, but not idiotic.
So as we entered the drive I nudged Zaraband on to the grass at the verge, and her hoofs clipped silently along on the soft earth. I took the precaution, even, of wrapping a kerchief round the rings of the bit: probably, there would be no need of that, but when I revert to my capacity as silent and efficient assassin, I carry out all the steps of my training. Nothing must be overlooked, for the difference between slitting a man’s guts and having your own entrails kabobbed may be a matter of a hair’s breadth. Or of the tiny warning jingle of a horse’s bit heard through an open window.
And as I slid from Zaraband’s back before the entrance, my knife somehow slipped automatically into my left palm, so accustomed was I to its use: there I held it, the blade pointing upward. That is the sign of a trained killer, by the way: hold your blade point up, aim it in the right place, clasp the foe in a tight embrace, and the victim will do half your work for you by conveniently impaling his heart upon the knife.
In Greece I learned skills which I cannot now unlearn.
Nor would I. They are needed in England too.
There was the trace of a thick, greasy-looking smoke coming from one of the chimneys, so there was something alive in the house, even if it were only a fire.
Moving silently down to the kitchens: empty, silent. All left in good order by Mrs. Romey. The kitchen grate quite cold and even cleared of ashes. Still-rooms, butler’s pantry, doors yielding easily to a push from my boot. Nothing.
The great hall, scene of funeral feasts, empty. No fire had burned here for some months, I judged: there were even some recent twigs and feathers fallen into the fireplace from a nest somewhere up in the vast chimney above the fireplace.
My unease should have been soothed by these tokens of emptiness. Instead, it increased.
Up the stairs, taking three or four at a stride with my absurdly long legs, which minimized the creaking of the warped old stair-treads. Once, there was the sharp crack of protesting old wood, and I crouched on the step. No one appeared to challenge my intrusion. Someone should have done so. Sandys should have done so. I had left him on guard outside Clara Jesmond’s room.
In Lady Jesmond’s chamber her ladyship doubtless slumbered on; at least, there was no sound from the room. Nevertheless, I thought I should just confirm that all was well with her ladyship.
I rapped gently on her door, and called her name softly. There was no answer, and I knocked again and called that of Mrs. Romey, thinking that at this late hour in the morning she would be awake and in attendance on her mistress.
There was still no response. I turned away from the door and looked about me, and saw only the silent dark emptiness of Jesmond Place stretching away down the stairs into the black unlit pit of the hall. At that moment I felt that Jesmond Place had finished its time as a source of life and shelter, and that it now had to offer only hatred and death, which seemed to well up in the depths beneath me.
I turned the handle of Lady Jesmond’s door very cautiously, and found that the door opened beneath my hand. It had surely been locked before. I inched my way i
nto the room, fearing to disturb her ladyship if she still slumbered, yet with a sinking heart. My senses seemed to tell me the room was empty: I heard no quiet breathing, no gentle rustling sounds of life.
Nothing at all.
Was it possible that Lady Jesmond had fallen victim to murder? There was but a faint light coming from the landing, where I had left the door ajar, and a few rays of sunlight that slipped in through a narrow gap in the heavy curtains. I could just make out the massive bulk of the old furniture and some heaped and twisted linen upon the bed. Crossing to the window, I drew back the curtains; daylight streamed in.
Empty.
There was a door leading off one side of the room into the little alcove, her ladyship’s dressing-room. I flung it open, wide.
Still nothing. Beside an empty china cup and saucer, a little silver kettle stood on a tiny spirit stove. I touched it: the sides were still warm. Mrs. Romey, it seemed, had been about to make her ladyship a hot drink. But both women, Lady Clara Jesmond and her housekeeper, had effectively vanished, along with their protector, Murdoch Sandys.
Perhaps they were still somewhere in some part of this rambling old rabbit-warren. I feared for them, yet neither Kelsoe nor Cyriack Jesmond had been abducted; both had been killed exactly where they were, Kelsoe in his own bed, Cyriack on his horse. The hand of a poisoner surely did not need to drag its victims out of their beds: it had more effective ways of dispatching them.
Where to start? The obvious place. If my lady had fled for some reason, where else should she go but to her husband for protection.
I crossed the landing and turned the door handle of Sir Antony’s bedchamber as quietly as I could. The door swung open quite easily, and I was in Sir Antony’s sanctum.