The Alchemist's Daughter

by Mary Lawrence

  Bianca looked in the direction of the noise. “I’d like to speak with Mrs. Beldam.”

  Banes cleared his throat. “She won’t be back for a while,” he announced.

  Bianca looked past him toward the dim kitchen. She could make out the outline of storage bins. “Perhaps I could wait for her.”

  “She’s likely out for a while. Can I tell her you called?” Banes showed her toward the vestibule door, steering her in its direction. He opened it and blocked her passage back into the house.

  Bianca stopped and looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen. She had grown weary of Barke House’s contentious residents. “Tell her I’d like to speak with her,” she said, loudly.

  “Certainly.” Banes’s cool stare gave nothing away. “I shall be sure to tell her.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Perhaps she should have marched into the kitchen. The matron must have been there, listening to every word. Bianca kicked a stone in frustration. Barke House was rife with deceit. Banes was obviously protecting Mrs. Beldam.

  She plunged her hands deep in her pockets and turned the corner of Bermondsey. It was getting late in the day, but if she hurried, she might find Meddybemps still selling his wares at market. She thought vaguely of stopping to see John at Boisvert’s but decided to think on that a bit more before deciding.

  Beyond the rents and the river Thames, the White Tower and its fortress walls loomed in the distance, squatting on London’s eastern border, leering over its pitiable subjects. She would not like to end there. More likely Patch would throw her in Newgate for a public hanging later at Tyburn Hill. Her stomach knotted to think on it. With the sun dropping beyond the horizon, another day had passed and she was no closer to finding Jolyn’s murderer.

  On London Bridge, she peered up at the tar-dipped heads of criminals skewered on iron pikes. They decorated the rim of the tower gate, and though she knew better than to look on their final grimaces, she couldn’t deny herself the thought of how she might look among them. A shudder coursed down her spine, and she forced herself on with her head down, determined to stare at the cobblestones instead.

  For all its gory trimmings, London Bridge was a handsome structure, the only bridge spanning the river and joining London with its wanton sister to the south. Covered and lined with the residences of successful merchants and tradesmen, it was the cheaper way to get to London, which could cost nearly a sixpence by raft. Those without fare could cross its length for free, but risk the price of a cutpurse lurking in the shadows, forcing pedestrians to part with what little they had or had wished to save on fare. But no matter to Bianca, she moved swiftly down its center, and having spent a few years as a thief herself, she knew their tricks and habits and was confident she could avoid them.

  Bianca emerged at the other end into a twilight that afforded only slightly more light than there had been on the bridge. No doubt Eastcheap had thinned, and if she was lucky, she might find Meddybemps still crooning for a final penny before heading to a boozing ken. She avoided picking through the heaps of refuse choking the narrow alleys and stayed to the main thoroughfares, preferring to dodge carts and dogs instead.

  She passed her old neighborhood, where her parents lived, and felt a pang of regret. She hadn’t visited her mother in several months. Bianca still held a grudge against her father for nearly getting the two of them hanged, but more so for his treatment of her mother. She’d urged her to leave and come live with her in her meager rent in Southwark, but her mother had refused.

  “He’s a changed man since all that business,” her mother had said. But Bianca doubted this. Her father had involved himself with dissidents, some associated with the king’s court. These were men who sought to turn back time to before the king’s Reformation and marriage to Anne Boleyn. They resented the king proclaiming himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. That was a privilege reserved for the pope. They had been staunch supporters of Catherine of Aragon and believed King Henry was a heretic to have divorced her. The dissolution of the monasteries had further incensed Bianca’s father, as he saw it as a way to suppress the citizenry and increase their taxes.

  Bianca understood these grievances and did not necessarily disagree with them. She’d seen the increased numbers of starving and destitute on the streets of London, the result of fewer religious houses that worked with the sick and poor.

  In the end, her familial duty and concern for her mother’s safety had prompted her to act. She scrambled to see her father absolved of the most egregious crime of trying to poison the king. They had both escaped, but just barely, and while she hoped her father had abandoned his subversive machinations, she could never be certain.

  Try as she might, she could not convince her mother to leave him. Her mother had accepted her adopted country’s treatment of women. Perhaps she saw it as an improvement compared to the old country from which she came. Bianca had witnessed her father’s brutality toward her mother, his scathing criticisms, his self-indulgent pursuit of alchemy to the exclusion of feeding and providing for his family. But her mother accepted this and sold her herbals and old-world remedies to feed and provide for Bianca in spite of him. It grieved Bianca that her father did not give her mother the respect and love she deserved. It deeply troubled her every time she visited.

  So she visited less and less often. And it certainly would not do for her mother to learn that she had been accused of murder. She could not bear to see her mother’s face when she learned that unwelcome news. Bianca braced herself and trudged on. Perhaps when this was over and done, she would make amends, but she could not waste precious time now.

  The butcher stalls of Eastcheap had cleared for the day, so if she hurried, she might make it to Cheapside before it grew too dark. A few residents had set a lamp to glow at their window to aid pedestrians still foolish enough to be out. But the guttering candles against horn panes did little more than waste that family’s resources. Still, Bianca hoped to find her poetic streetseller.

  Eventually she turned up Bread Street, the smell of yeast and rising dough momentarily masking the putrid smell of a decomposing rat. Passing Bow Church, Bianca emerged at Cheapside and helped herself to a drink of water at the standard conduit. Her nerves and brisk pace had left her mouth as dry as an August day. She looked up the street, then down it.

  A few sellers carried cages of poultry back to their shops, abandoning their stalls for the night and leaving them to beggars, who slept on top or below, depending on the weather. Chopped chicken feet and plucked feathers littered the ground while dogs vied for rotting fruits dotting the mud. She saw no sign of Meddybemps and so turned toward Newgate Market.

  She passed Eleanor’s Cross and glanced at the towering token of love King Edward Longshanks had erected in honor of his dead wife. How lucky to be so remembered and loved. The only thing she’d be remembered by was a pile of peculiar crockery and a smelly rent.

  A full moon rose and illuminated the road ahead, revealing two figures talking outside a residence. She slowed as she neared. One was dressed in the startling attire of a physician dressed for contagion. In profile, a mammoth beak shaped like that of a grackle and stuffed with rosemary and rue was strapped against a linen hood that covered his face so that he looked ready to play a monstrous bird at a theater in Southwark. Slits had been cut for his eyes, and he wore thick leather gloves and a robe that swept the ground. The other man had finished securing the door with an iron chain and padlock and dipped a reed brush into a pail of red. Bianca could hear the moans and pleas from within as the laborer painted a cross, the sign of quarantine, across the door.

  She pulled her scarf over her ears, trying to muffle their cries. The inmates would be locked inside for forty days, and she wondered if it was the beginning of widespread sickness. She hoped not. There were always small outbreaks; hardly a year passed without the air rife with rumors of the Great Death. She well recalled a year of her childhood when corpses, piled neck high, littered the kennels of streets, and ignoran
t of consequence, she had danced behind the death carts without a care, spurred by the excitement the carts attracted. Why she never fell ill from the plague was a mystery to her. She didn’t believe in luck and suspected something else, though what that something might be, she did not know.

  She shook her head as if dislodging those thoughts and looked ahead to the market at Newgate. The few remaining sellers haggled among themselves, their clientele having left long before. In the middle stood Meddybemps. His long-winded stories and desire to deal had delayed him yet again.

  “Nay, I’d not enter a game of dice with the likes of you, Branford, nor with any other of you cozen cheats. I am not so studied at the art of counterfeit die, and I’d hazard a guess you spend your nights slurring the roll to perfection. I haven’t the notion to learn or perfect it, no matter how clever you’ve scored the die.”

  A willowy man threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Meddybemps, you old hound, my die is foolproof—even an ass like you could profit with not much practice.”

  “I’ll save my earnings for sack and a little yank.” Meddybemps winked and was met with a round of guffaws. “ ’Tis a profit more to me liking.”

  Disappointed he’d not convinced the wizened streetseller of a career change, Branford slapped him on the back with good cheer. “Ah, Meddy, my good man, not even the grave will stop your dealin’. Why, even the devil dreads the day you die. He’ll have no peace with you around.”

  “No peace and no pence.”

  By then, Bianca stood within sight of her friend and caught his notice.

  “Bianca, my turtle. What brings you about? The market is done, and another few minutes you’d have had to search the Turncoat Tavern to find me.”

  The men eyed Bianca, then, sensing she was of serious intent, dispersed with their carts but continued shouting insults at one another.

  “Meddy, I’ve been to Barke House. I was hoping to speak to Mrs. Beldam, but Banes and one of the girls, named Pandy, said she wasn’t in. I believe they’re lying.”

  Meddybemps took a swig from a wine flask he had lashed across his chest. He offered the stained wineskin to Bianca.

  “It’ll make me sleepy. I can’t.”

  “Some sleep might benefit you.”

  “Answers would serve me better.” Bianca fell into step with Meddybemps as he pushed his cart forward. “I want you to try to find out about Mrs. Beldam and Barke House.”

  “And how am I to separate truth from hearsay?”

  “Meddybemps, no one smells a lie better than you. Wheedle your way in or around. Go there if you must. But find out what you can.”

  Meddybemps stopped long enough to scratch under his cap. “Methinks you should make yourself small until a more notable murder distracts this Constable Patch. I’ve seen it happen before, and that donkey isn’t so well paid to pursue anything longer than a month. He hasn’t the teeth to care about a lowly muckraker.”

  “He seems to have teeth to see me swing.”

  “That shall pass.”

  “And what if it doesn’t? I can’t take the chance that he’ll forget.” Bianca kicked a rock and sighed.

  “My turnip, there are so many misdeeds in Southwark in any given week, the parish needs twenty constables—not one.”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  Meddybemps stopped and faced her. He hated seeing Bianca in such a dismal predicament. He owed his good health to the young chemiste. She’d developed a salve that had cured him of the French pox. For such a strange pair, the two depended on each other. A certain amount of his wealth and fame came from selling her salves and balms. What would he do if she wasn’t around to supply him with her cures? For that matter, what would she do without him to sell them? He couldn’t imagine Bianca pushing a cart to market and having the patience or temperament to survive. Each of them would suffer immeasurably if they were to part.

  “I’ll see what I can learn of the taciturn Beldam and her Bar-keth Houseth,” he said. If he couldn’t tease her into a smile, at least he could try to lighten the mood.

  The cart creaked down Cheapside, and as they approached the quarantined house, Bianca saw that the physician and painter had both departed, leaving behind the condemning mark of a red cross. Meddybemps followed her gaze.

  “I don’t fancy seeing that,” he said.

  “They were painting it just now.”

  Meddybemps leaned his weight into his cart and picked up his pace. “Perhaps you need to work on a remedy for the Black Death.”

  Bianca did not answer one way or the other. She’d always kept it in mind when working on her tinctures and medicinals. Her palliative for the French pox was one of the strongest balms she’d concocted. She had taken liquid silver, a known restorative used in alchemy, and combined it with a mix of herbals in a waxy base. If it didn’t cure the buboes of the French pox, it did calm them enough to give some measure of relief. But the salve did not work on the buboes of the Black Death, and of late she’d had no reason to devote undue time and effort toward the feared plague. For some reason it had been kept in check, and whatever caused the ravage was not at issue. But the cross on the door could be a sign of things to come.

  They hurried past the marked building, and Meddybemps eagerly put the matter out of mind and chided Bianca for not staying with John. “You could easily stay there tonight instead of venturing back to Southwark. It would give you a chance to make amends.”

  “Why should I make amends to him? I’m the one being accused of murder. He hasn’t done anything to help me.”

  “Have you asked?”

  Bianca made out the shape of an apple and reared back, kicking it free of a rut and sending it careening down the lane. “No,” she protested, “but he should have offered.”

  “And he should be able to read your mind,” added Meddybemps.

  “He should have offered.”

  Meddybemps glanced sidelong at his young friend. How she could be so intuitive with medicinals and herbs and yet so dense when it came to people was baffling. He squelched the urge to further lecture her. She had a palpable aversion to that, and it was the one sure way to send her off, mad as a wasp. What she needed now was understanding and sympathy and someone who’d help. What was one day of lost sales? Meddybemps adjusted his codpiece. No carnal revelry—that’s what.

  “I’ll find out what I can about Barke House, but you must promise me you won’t forsake John. The poor lout loves you so. Of that I’m sure.”

  Bianca scowled moodily. The two of them turned south in silence, heading toward London Bridge. They were nearing Meddybemps’s favorite tavern. His eye rolled in anticipation of a filling meal of kidney pie and the attentions of a certain randy maid who served it.

  “You must heed my advice and not venture back across the river tonight,” said Meddybemps, his eye drawn by the hunched silhouette of a well-fed rat as it skulked along a building’s wall and ducked into a gap in the foundation. “And you need to concoct more rat poison, my dear. I’ve sold all that you’ve given me.”

  CHAPTER 20

  If Meddybemps’s words had any effect on Bianca, it was that she allowed herself to slow when she neared Boisvert’s neighborhood. She turned down Foster Lane, shivering a little from the damp and hating being plunged into near black. The Queen Moon hid behind the peaks of thatch roofs and offered scant light in the narrow lane.

  As Bianca neared the dimly lit window of Boisvert’s, she actually thought she might call on John. She paused to peek inside. Making out no more than the blurred glow of a wall sconce, she turned her ear to the window. No sounds ranged within; no conversation or clank of iron tongs leaked through the oilcloth. She rapped on the wood and waited, growing skittish as the city churches chimed the hour and a night watchman croaked, “Six of night and to all a good night.” Time was wasting. And she had precious little of it.

  She turned from the door. Her only thought now was to get home. The wind was coming up, and clouds raced across th
e sky. Pulling her hem above her ankles, she kept as near to the center of each road as she could. Her thin boots collected clay from the streets, weighing her down and oozing through holes in the leather. Despite the aggravation, she picked through the twisting, whispering streets, but unease seeped into her psyche. At one point she stopped and spun on her heel, suspicious she was being followed. After scrutinizing the shadows and finding no reason for alarm, she chided herself—fear had twined its way into her imagination. She quickened her pace and began to count her steps in an effort to control her apprehension. It worked, for soon she was back at her rent, standing before her calcination furnace, stirring the embers into a blaze.

  She stood back, warming her hands, and thought about the inmates at Barke House. Banes was an odd fellow. But everyone had his peculiarities. Just because his left arm was half the length of the other was not reason enough to think him strange. It was his manner that troubled Bianca. He could be both secretive and forthcoming. She suspected he’d seen and heard more at Barke House than he was willing to tell.

  Jolyn had said Mrs. Beldam was sympathetic to those in need. Instead of using young women, she now tried to help them. At least that was what Jolyn believed, but Bianca wondered what had caused her change of heart. And how could Mrs. Beldam keep the residence from falling into debt? She only requested the women earn a small pittance to help feed and house them. And the earnings did not come from carnal exchange. Though Banes had alluded to just that. Was he playing with her?

  Bianca took an empty pot from the stove and stepped into the alley for water. A bank of clouds had moved in, obscuring the moon and stars. As she replaced the cover on the cistern, a flash of lightning needled across the sky, illuminating the alley. A rat skirted the stone foundation of the opposite building. Yet in that quick flash, Bianca glimpsed movement of something larger disappearing around a corner. She stared into the black, wondering if it was a dog or a man, when a clap of shuddering thunder sent her scurrying back inside. She slid the bolt and cursed the rusty hasp securing her door. For good measure, she moved a crate in front of it.