The Alchemist's Daughter

by Mary Lawrence

  Accustomed to being shooed off, Banes was often given chores to distract him or was led away by the ear when he lingered at closed doors, listening to the strange sounds emanating from within. The clandestine nature of what went on intrigued him. He was inquisitive and took exception to being chased away. So he learned at an early age that stealth could satisfy his curiosity.

  Jolyn’s death had disrupted the routine at Barke House, and he was as much affected by it as he was baffled. Mrs. Beldam was her usual curt and efficient self, and while she did not openly mourn Jolyn, he sensed she was troubled by the girl’s absence. She seemed more distracted, more irritable than sad.

  As for Kara, the girl was more sedate when she arrived for morning porridge, but she left to go about her day without much fanfare and kept her disparaging remarks about Pandy to herself.

  If Kara seemed quietly troubled by Jolyn’s absence, Pandy was practically delirious with jubilation. She had bounced out of Barke House last night in spite of her tearful encounter with Wynders earlier in the day. If there was one thing that fascinated Banes about women, it was their unmitigated spirit to sally on. In fact, Pandy was a study in dogged pursuit of unrequited love. Perhaps she had sought to soothe her bruised ego last night and had had a rowdy time of it, for she had not yet risen to eat. Banes cheered. If she did not show her face soon, she would suffer a good lashing from the missus’s tongue—a comeuppance to look forward to.

  Banes finished dipping the last of the dirty bowls in a bucket of water and set them to dry. Having finished his chores, he returned to his room and sat cross-legged on his little tuffet of straw, leaning his head against the wall. His eyelids grew heavy from lack of sleep, and he closed them, hoping Mrs. Beldam might be tired, too, and leave him be for a while.

  He was still chilled from last night. The storm had soaked through to his skin, and Mrs. Beldam had shown little sympathy to his grumblings. He rubbed his sore arm. His whole body ached.

  It had been an unusual request. When Mrs. Beldam told him to dress in dark clothing and handed him a ramrod of wood, he accepted both without question. He was inclined to covert activity; he was comfortable with such. But where would they be going? He had a feeling he might know.

  The lowering sky had borne down as they made their way through the back alleys of Southwark. If not for the lightning, he would have had to navigate by running his fingers along the buildings. He did not question the missus but somberly followed her in silence, listening only to Southwark and the sound of their breathing in the hollows of its streets.

  When they turned onto the familiar, quiet lane, his curiosity was piqued and his presumption was confirmed. Perhaps he would soon learn why the missus had a sudden, unshakable interest in Bianca Goddard.

  To their benefit, the sky had cooperated. It billowed and belched, blew and bayed. And under its bluster they made entrance to Bianca’s room of Medicinals and Physickes.

  The two of them had heaved a chest out of the way, and when a crash from the front conveniently distracted the young chemiste, he had watched in astonishment as Mrs. Beldam bludgeoned the girl in the back of the head.

  As Bianca slumped to the floor, the blood seeping through her black hair, he wondered if Mrs. Beldam had killed her. He opened his mouth to object but thought better of it since Mrs. Beldam still held the ramrod and had a wild look in her eye.

  He bent down to see if Bianca was breathing and saw her chest shallowly rise and fall. Her face looked so appealing in the dim light of the furnace. He glanced up at Mrs. Beldam, who’d dropped the wood and was busy running her hands along the shelves as if feeling for something. Cautiously, Banes reached toward Bianca’s lips and traced their curve with his fingertips. What would it feel like to press his lips against hers? They looked so warm and inviting—she wouldn’t even know.

  Mrs. Beldam grabbed a candle and stool and clambered onto the wobbly thing to have a better look at the upper shelves. Banes saw his opportunity. One kiss could never hurt anybody. He leaned over and lowered his mouth to hers.

  “Banes!” screeched Mrs. Beldam. “Help me!”

  Banes jolted upright. He scrambled to his feet and smoothed down his shirt to collect himself.

  “Search the table. Look through every crock and bowl.”

  “It might help if I knew what I was seeking.” He had yet to learn what this late-night foray was about. Surely she did not expect him to read her mind, too.

  “A ring,” said Mrs. Beldam, pulling down a jar and peering into it.

  “A ring one might wear on a finger?”

  “Aye!” She shoved the jar back on the shelf and pulled down another.

  “Why would you think Bianca has it?”

  Mrs. Beldam turned an exasperated eye on Banes. “Because this is where Jolyn died. She may have stripped her of her possessions.”

  The day of Jolyn’s death, when he had arrived to buy purgative, Bianca had appeared in a state of shock. Her face was splotched and puffy from crying. She was too bewildered to be interested in any jewelry her friend might have owned. But he kept his opinion to himself and made a feeble attempt to search the surface of the table. He inched along, admiring the intricate copper sculpture Bianca had erected. He found its twists and turns intriguing and imagined the path a liquid would take from the beginning of its process to the final spout suspended over a beaker. He wished he could ask the young chemiste what the elaborate contrivance was for, but alas, she lay crumpled by the stove.

  Mrs. Beldam shoved the last jar back onto the shelf. “It has to be here,” she said, scouring the room with her eyes. She kicked aside some rush on the floor in frustration.

  Banes poked his finger into a jar of sweet-smelling powder and cautiously tasted it. “Why is this ring so important?” he asked.

  Mrs. Beldam bristled. “Survival. And if ye want to keep on at Barke House, we’d better finds it.”

  Banes studied the missus through the twists of copper. He observed her grim expression and the deep creasing of her forehead. He couldn’t remember a time not knowing her, but she was not his mother. She had always made that insufferably clear. When asked how he’d come to live at Barke House, Mrs. Beldam responded with a fantastic tale—an almost mythic one, so that for years he had thought he was destined for greatness. But age and time had trampled that notion.

  She said he was found floating in a basket on the river Thames, hidden in a patch of reeds. A girl had brought him back to Barke House. If not for Mrs. Beldam’s generosity, he’d have certainly perished. Despite his deformity and the urgings of others, she had resisted drowning him and cared for him like he was her own.

  A Jew who frequented Barke House compared his story to that of Moses, so Banes fancied himself akin to the heroic prophet. Like Moses, he had been found on a river and his life had been spared, but unlike Moses, he had not heard the voice of God through a burning bush. At least not yet.

  For years, Banes was content until one of the men frequenting Barke House noticed him. He had Banes hold out his arm so he could examine it. He turned Banes’s hand over carefully, as if it had been made of butterfly wings. “Make a fist,” he demanded. And so Banes did.

  “Press your palms together.” But that was more difficult. All the time the man’s eyebrows lifted with interest and studious consideration. Then, pressing his fingers into the withered flesh of Banes’s limb, the man announced he was missing a bone. He showed Banes his own arm by comparison.

  Until then, Banes had not shied from his grotesque appearance, but the man’s intense examination drew the attention of the women of Barke House, and they had gathered round. At first they watched with polite curiosity. The man did seem to know something of a person’s anatomy. Then one of them had tittered and another had quipped, and as he looked from face to lovely face, it was not acceptance that he saw in their expressions. It was something akin to distaste. It was revulsion. He no longer felt special. His deformity had made him unique, and his realization of people’s true feelings wound
ed him. Banes had learned to feel shame.

  Being surrounded by desirable women did not result in a growing comfort or ease with the opposite sex. That women were beautiful only heightened his feelings of ugliness and self-loathing. He began to shy away from people, preferring to make himself scarce. He would recede into the shadows, as if to make himself invisible, rather than elicit someone’s notice and hurtful comment. But Banes never abandoned his ability to meet a person’s gaze once he drew it. He did not shrink from appraising stares if they were offered one-on-one. It was as if he dared that person to look on him. His level stare was his armor. He could meet those eyes with the coal-black gaze of his own.

  Bianca had been different. When he first arrived at her room of Medicinals and Physickes, she had welcomed him as any other. She watched as he accepted her philter and clutched it to his chest as he paid with his good hand.

  “You make do as well as any man with two,” she had said. There was no mistaking to what she was referring. “We all have defects, some more evident than others. I imagine your worst difficulty is overcoming people’s ignorance.” She had treated him no more and no less than any other, and thereafter, he looked forward to fetching whatever Mrs. Beldam needed from her.

  Bianca’s words had stirred him. He began to take his place in life and not avoid it. He still retained some of his insular inclinations, but that was changing, and he regressed only when he was feeling insecure. So it was with some anguish that he was party to Mrs. Beldam’s ill treatment of her.

  “By ‘survival’ what do you mean?” Banes had circled around the table and was standing near Bianca, keeping a worried eye on the girl, who still hadn’t moved. “How can a ring serve our well-being?”

  “Ye have a roof aboves your head and foods to eat,” said Mrs. Beldam, brushing off her hands and straightening her bodice with a smart tug. “It doesn’t come without cost.”

  Banes knew better than to expect a forthright answer. Hadn’t their whole survival depended on lies? Barke House was no longer a house of ill repute—but what was it? Men no longer frequented its halls as they had done when he was younger. But men did come round. And one man in particular.

  “Has this something to do with Robert Wynders?”

  Mrs. Beldam abruptly turned away so he could not read her face.

  Banes thought back to the strange confrontation between Wynders and Beldam in the kitchen. He wondered if the ring was the missing link between the two. What did it signify? What possible value could a ring have for the two of them? He dropped his gaze to Bianca and was surprised to see her stir.

  “She’s coming to!”

  Mrs. Beldam pushed past him. She glowered at Bianca and was about to nudge her with the toe of her boot when Banes put out his hand to stop her.

  “Shh!” he hissed.

  A soft groan escaped Bianca’s lips.

  Mrs. Beldam looked about in panic, her eyes finding the rod lying on the floor. Banes watched in horror as she started to lunge for it, but he got there before her and grabbed it. “Are you mad? You’ll kill her! Do you want to be hanged for murder?”

  Mrs. Beldam tried to snatch it away, but Banes stepped back and held out his misshapen arm to stop her. She recoiled from his touch, as if his fingers had scorched her chest. Her eyes dropped to his deformed arm. The contempt she felt for him was evident on her face.

  “I suggest we leave,” said Banes, trying to sound reasonable and hoping Mrs. Beldam would relent.

  Mrs. Beldam looked down at Bianca motionless on the floor, then turned on her heel and marched toward the door. She stopped as if she’d had one last thought. A bowl on a table next to the door had caught her eye. She brought it to her face and studied its label, then peered inside. Unhappy with its contents, she cursed and hurled it at the wall.

  Now Banes pondered. He sat in his room, wondering why Mrs. Beldam let him stay at Barke House if she hated him so. Other than to fetch her potions and clean—what purpose did he serve?

  He scratched a fleabite on his calf. For some reason, the missus wanted Jolyn’s ring. Perhaps it explained why Wynders had favored the girl. Why he lavished gifts and attention on her. But if Jolyn had a ring they both wanted, why didn’t one of them just steal it? Mrs. Beldam could be an expert conniver—he’d witnessed that plenty of times. But why hadn’t she succeeded? She could have gotten Pandy to steal it. Or, for that matter, why hadn’t she enlisted him?

  Banes lay on his pallet of scratchy hay and closed his eyes. His troubled thoughts kept him from drifting to sleep. If it was true that Jolyn had died of poisoning, who, then, had poisoned her? A rising feeling of unease roiled in his gut. More than one person had wished ill for Jolyn. More than one person had wanted what she had.

  But more worrisome was that more than once he had fetched powders for Mrs. Beldam—the last being purgative. Had he unwittingly procured a poison that had killed Jolyn? His eyes blinked wide as he stared at the ceiling above him. A grip of nausea turned his stomach. He rolled to his side and retched into the rush.

  His squeamish stomach would not be calmed. He lay back, staring at the ceiling, sweat trickling down his temples. His head pounded, growing louder and more insistent, until he realized it was not of his own making but came from the front door. Mrs. Beldam called for him to answer it. Banes staggered to his feet and grudgingly made his way to the front vestibule. He took a breath to steady himself before unlatching the lock and pulling it open.

  The queasiness in his gut took a turn for the worse.

  “Aw. I sees someone is home at the ignoble Barke House.” Constable Patch peered in at him. “If you woulds be so kind as to summon Mrs. Beldam.”

  CHAPTER 25

  If a shadow could be cast on a foggy night, her silhouette would have resembled a hunchback’s. Bianca gripped a bulging satchel slung over her shoulder and solemnly crossed London Bridge toward Wool’s Key.

  Despite the threat of arrest, she had spent the day in her room of Medicinals and Physickes fashioning traps made of woven reeds and vines. She had secured her doors and worked by the light of a wheezing tallow, mindful to appear “not at home” to any who called. Twice she had escaped through the alley and circled back in a wide arc, spying her door from a safe distance. Two women had separately knocked, and she recognized each of them as customers but did not chance engaging them for fear that Constable Patch might suddenly appear.

  Her fingers expertly wound the strips into pliable but sturdy cylinders, each the perfect size to contain and subdue her prey without them snarling and biting their neighbors. She’d made seven cages, a sufficient number. Any more, and the serrated blades of sedge would have sliced her fingers raw.

  Was this the best way to proceed? A mental picture of Pandy kept her company while she weaved the cages, as did the red cat sleeping on an overhead beam. Questions whirled in a jumble of unanswered theories. At least testing the purgative might be a start and an end she could finish. If the purgative tinged blood purple, she would have cause to believe someone at Barke House had slipped Jolyn enough of it to have killed her.

  She kept a wary eye out for loobies and miscreants, difficult since the smoke from chimneys hung low about her, trapped in the dense fog off the Thames. The two blended into a thick, putrid brew difficult to breathe and see through.

  Emerging from the bridge, she cut through a short alley onto Thames Street and skulked toward the Tower. She disliked going near its walls and did her best to avoid looking at the sinister edifice even when safely on the other side of the river in Southwark. The Tower was the scene of Anne Boleyn’s and Catherine Howard’s executions and nearly that of her own. But that was over a year ago, and she was better served to focus on what lay ahead.

  The water stretched before her, and as she neared its banks, the prows of moored merchant ships appeared, then disappeared in the gloaming mist. She was at Wool’s Key, with its winches and abandoned pulleys. The damp had coated the steps of the pier, making them slippery, so she gingerly descended to
the river’s edge.

  Still bearing the unwieldy satchel, she paused to peer into the murk. This was as good a place as any for catching her prey.

  She dropped the satchel and withdrew a net she’d filched from behind a fisherman’s rent. She spread it out and worked the tangles loose, picking out clumps of mussels and mud until it lay smooth. Bianca sat back on her heels and slipped her fingers beneath her scarf to warm them against her neck. They felt drained of blood, cold as twigs in November, but against the heat of her skin, they burned like she had just plunged them into a stove.

  Soon the noses of curious rats poked from under the steps, catching a whiff of rank mussels piled next to her. Bianca hadn’t expected such a quick response. She slowly gathered up the net and crouched, waiting motionless for the rats to move closer.

  They seemed to come from everywhere. Before long, a dozen swarmed over the mussels. They fought and rasped, and she nearly lost her nerve. Bianca almost abandoned the idea, but with a clipped yelp, she threw the net over the feeding rats.

  Cursing and muttering, she gathered its ends, sweeping the vermin into a neat bundle and cinching it closed. She held them up, a teeming, roiling mass of fur and teeth. The thought of reaching in and pulling them out to drop in their respective cages seemed a delicate matter, not to mention wildly disagreeable. Then she noticed a bollard of dense wood. She wound her arm like a windmill, then whacked the bundle hard against it.

  Unfortunately, one whack was not enough. She had neither stunned nor silenced the awful brood, so she smacked them again.

  Improvement.

  Bianca repeatedly beat the rats against the bollard and pier, anything that offered resistance. At last she rendered them senseless and dropped the sack on the pier to catch her breath.