The Alchemist's Daughter

by Mary Lawrence

  Bianca played to his better nature. “Slade, if you have any chance—no matter how slim—wouldn’t you try? Do you want your foot to fall off from rot?”

  “I hate to piss on your party, lass, but unless you have a pick or the actual key, you won’t get nowheres.”

  Bianca had neither. She sank to her haunches, leaning against the door.

  Surely John or Meddybemps would get her out. She wished she’d told John where to find her latest earnings or her silver filings to sell. Any turnkey could be had for a bribe—even one disposed to do Constable Patch’s bidding. All she needed was a little more time and the chance to prove her case without a doubt.

  After all, she’d confirmed it was rat poison that killed her friend. The purgative, if given in a large enough dose, might have killed her, but it didn’t tinge blood purple. Because of the press of time, she’d had to strangle those rats in order to kill them and check their blood.

  Bianca stared into the dark and concentrated. Both Wynders and Banes had bought rat poison from her. But Wynders bought his after Jolyn had died. She visualized Banes and ran through her observations. She had read his face when he first saw Jolyn dead. It wasn’t deceit on his face but bewilderment. She didn’t think Banes would poison Jolyn. But how did Banes feel toward Mrs. Beldam? He was cautious—she could see that. Did he fear losing his place at Barke House? Or was there something else? He might not like the woman, but he protected her.

  Bianca’s head throbbed. Her stomach growled with nerves and hunger. She fought exhaustion and forced herself to rehash her conversation with Meddybemps and Banes before Constable Patch had arrived to arrest her.

  Robert Wynders was a philanderer who had gotten his position by marrying the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Apparently, Mrs. Beldam’s daughter had a child with him out of wedlock—a threatening situation. If it were known, Wynders stood to lose his marriage and position. Humiliation and ruin are strong motivators.

  But why did Mrs. Beldam and Wynders both shower Jolyn with attention? The only thing Jolyn had besides her beauty was that ring. A ring that Bianca was sure they both wanted.

  Were they in league with each other? They both wanted the ring—but why?

  What was the ring to Mrs. Beldam? Had it something to do with Mrs. Beldam’s daughter? Bianca rubbed her neck and stared into the black. The ring had power for Mrs. Beldam. Power over Wynders.

  The sound of someone descending the stairs roused Bianca from her thoughts.

  “Mayhaps they’ve come to clap you in chains,” hissed Simon Slade.

  “Mayhaps they’ve come to beat you silent,” said Bianca.

  Slade snickered. “You got a black wit, lass. You better watch yourself if you get out of here. Though I’m thinkin’ you never will.”

  An orb of light advanced, illuminating the sneer of the gaoler stopping in front of Bianca’s cell. A guard accompanied him—a man specially bred to instill fear and loathing in those who were the unfortunate recipients of his skills.

  “Here she is,” said the gaoler. “The daughter of that alchemist who set about tryin’ to poison the king last year. Ye remember the likes of ’im—do ye?”

  “Aye, sir. Such treachery,” said the man, tsking. “It must run in the blood.”

  “Be not gentle. Constable Patch thinks there is more to learn.”

  The guard studied Bianca as he fingered the lash at his side.

  “Whats I told you, lass?” crowed Slade from his cell.

  The gaoler stepped away from Bianca’s cell to address her gloating neighbor. “See as ye stops your mouth, Slade, or we’ll ’ave another go at ye.” He then reappeared and gave a black look at Bianca. “Where’s ye bindings, girl?”

  Bianca shrugged. “They fell off.”

  The gaoler raised an eyebrow. “Dids they now?” He addressed his unappealing companion. “See’s ye teach her we don’t appreciate noncooperation.”

  CHAPTER 35

  A measure of guilt niggled Banes’s conscience as he headed back to Barke House. He should have told Bianca that Pandy had been murdered; then maybe she would have taken her chance to flee while she could. Once Constable Patch and his guards had entered her room, he had snuck back to the window to watch what transpired. As it was, Constable Patch gloried in Bianca’s ill-conceived account of Jolyn’s murder. Banes hated seeing Patch revel in smug satisfaction.

  He kept remembering Bianca’s look of puzzled dismay when Patch set his guards on her. To his credit, John had put up a good fight. His effort had left him with a nasty gash on his arm. Meddybemps did not intervene, but Banes did not suppose the sly streetseller would sit idly by while his business partner sat in the Clink. What the skinny knave was up to he did not presume to even guess.

  So Banes had left armed with information. Information he intended to use.

  His primary obstacle would be getting Wynders and Mrs. Beldam in the same place at the same time. He wanted to be able to see them both when he asked his questions. If he could confront them together, he could watch them squirm—actions being more telling than anything they would say, which would likely be lies anyway.

  As a thick mist settled in the lanes of Southwark and night began to fall, Banes grew more alert and conscious of his surroundings. London’s seedy sister was never a blithe stroll even on a sunny day. Soon winter’s final gasp would give leave to spring, but for now, winter’s spell would not relent.

  Banes slowed as he approached Barke House. He studied its exterior as if he might see through its walls to its inhabitants. Surely he would find Mrs. Beldam, and he might pose his questions to her regardless of Robert Wynders’s absence. The fear of being shut out of Barke House weighed on his mind. Where would he go? How would he survive? But more pressing and unpleasant was the notion of perpetuating a lie. To him, confrontation was worth that risk.

  Carefully, he lifted the latch and opened the door, spitting on the hinges to quiet them. The candle in the vestibule had not been lit. He stood in the dark, motionless, listening for the sounds of women, conversation, a clatter of crockery in the kitchen. But all was quiet. Almost eerily so.

  He felt the shelf above for a flint and lit the candle, the light warming the edges of his shadow as it sprang monstrous on the yellow walls. Then he heard it. A man’s voice. He moved from the vestibule and stepped cautiously toward the kitchen.

  Robert Wynders loomed over Mrs. Beldam. His sheer physical bulk filled the room so that he looked cramped within its four walls. “You have no grounds to prove anything. You have nothing.”

  Mrs. Beldam’s jaw was set in an air of defiance. A wave of revulsion washed over Banes. Was she? Could she be . . . ? He winced in disgust, unsure if he wanted the truth.

  “Banes,” she said, discovering him lurking in the shadows.

  Wynders looked over his shoulder. “Leave us.”

  A jumble of thoughts crowded Banes’s head. It was as if he were seeing the two of them for the first time. Look at her thin build and ruddy complexion. Were they not like his? And Wynders’s black eyes—did they not match his own in shape and color? He shook his head, trying to dislodge the awful thought from his mind. The realization was too raw, too painful.

  “Get out,” said Wynders, taking a step toward him.

  Banes had not come this far only to be dismissed. For once he believed his need was far greater than acquiescing. He had questions, and he had to know for sure. They both wanted what he had, and he would use it against them. It was the only thing the two of them cared about. “I know where the ring is,” he said.

  Mrs. Beldam and Wynders froze, as if doused in cold water. But neither spoke nor moved.

  “You both want a certain ring, and I know where to find it.”

  Mrs. Beldam and Wynders stared but offered not a word.

  “I can tell you where it is, but you must tell me why you both must have it.”

  Mrs. Beldam looked askance at Wynders and stepped beyond his reach, putting a table between them. “I will tell ye, s
o long as ye don’t tell him where it is.” Her eyes slid to Wynders, then back again.

  Wynders was twice the size of Mrs. Beldam—he could certainly manage to get the information out of her later. It didn’t matter to Banes which of them knew. He wanted the truth, and to hell with their personal dispute. Banes agreed.

  Mrs. Beldam slowly inched her back along a sideboard. Her eyes flicked toward Wynders. “It belongs to your mother,” she said to Banes.

  All these years she had told him he had been abandoned. “My mother? It belonged to my mother?”

  “She is lying. It belongs to me,” said Wynders.

  Banes remembered what Meddybemps had said, and deep within his soul he knew the awful truth. “You want the ring back because you gave it to my mother. And I am your son.”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Beldam. “Ye’s the bastard’s son.” She relished saying it.

  “The ring was not a gift. They stole it from me.”

  “Ye was dead drunk, ye fool,” said Mrs. Beldam. “We took it as payment. For getting her in a bad way with no intention of bein’ honorable about it.”

  “But you are my grandmother.” Banes stared at her incredulously. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me I was abandoned? That I was found in a basket along the river?”

  “I hads to keep his secret so’s not to humiliate him.”

  “Humiliate?”

  “Did ye think he’d want it known, with your arm as strange as feathers on a fish?”

  “I did not ask to be born with this arm.”

  Mrs. Beldam shook her head. “None of us ask to be born at all. But ye takes what ye gets, and ye learns to manage. He used your mother for his pleasure. And you is his perversion.”

  The words stung like a slap across his cheek. “But look on me. Am I not like him? Do I not have eyes as dark and a nose of similar shape? Is my hair not like his? The similarities cannot be denied. You don’t need a ring to prove it.”

  “I could haul ye out for all to see, but I’m not so sociable. Besides, why would I ruin our agreement when possession of the ring is proof enough? I don’t needs to embarrass anyones.”

  Banes stared at Wynders, his resentment filling him with abject bitterness. This was his father. And the man despised him. Wynders must have wondered how he could have created this—this aberration of a son. Wynders rejected him—he was an embarrassment. A person to loathe and despise.

  “Nows,” said Mrs. Beldam, suddenly seizing a knife off the sideboard and pointing it at Wynders. She carefully stepped toward Banes, keeping Wynders at arm’s length. “Suppose we leave now, and ye take me to the ring.”

  Banes no longer felt inclined to do Mrs. Beldam’s bidding. He was not finished asking questions, and he played his advantage. “Tell me what happened to my mother.”

  “She’s well taken care of,” said Mrs. Beldam, tugging Banes’s shirt and encouraging him toward the door.

  “Tell me where she is.” Banes jerked away from her touch.

  “She’s in the care of nuns,” answered Mrs. Beldam, exasperated.

  “Where?” insisted Banes.

  Mrs. Beldam considered using the knife on him instead. “There’s time for that later.”

  “She wouldn’t know you,” said Wynders.

  “A mother never forgets her son. She’ll know who I am.”

  “You’re as daft as she is,” muttered Wynders.

  “What do you mean? What did you do to her?” This was his family—his father and his grandmother—and they despised him. Even worse for him to imagine, they despised his mother. And for what? Because she gave birth to him? He could think of nothing but his anger and the mistreatment of his mother—in his mind, an innocent victim of Wynders’s wanton passion. His rage unleashed, Banes launched himself at Wynders.

  But Wynders had seen the boy tremble with mounting anger and expected Banes to lash out at him. He threw Banes against a wall, cracking his head and sending a shower of crockery crashing down on top of him. Wynders turned to face Mrs. Beldam.

  “Ye wouldn’t dare touch me,” she hissed, stepping backward. She swiped the air with her knife. “Not with the boy knowing who ye is now.”

  Wynders had waited years for this moment. He had never been angry or clever enough to scheme how to end their vile confederacy. He had stalked her and had imagined slipping a blade between her ribs. He had spent sleepless nights envisioning how it might feel to finally be finished with her. But he lacked the audacity. He was not, by nature, a malevolent man. However, years of marriage to Sarah and, by association, Chudderly Shipping had changed him. To Wynders, there was no reward for behaving with exemplary restraint. His dalliance with Mrs. Beldam’s daughter—a petulant retaliation for his ill treatment at Chudderly—had resulted in another “marriage,” even more noxious and regrettable.

  He swung his arm up and knocked the knife out of Mrs. Beldam’s hand. It skidded across the floor, coming to a stop near a bin of grain. Mrs. Beldam chased after it, and Wynders struck her jaw with his elbow and the full force of his weight. The blow knocked her cold. She fell—hitting her head on the bin of grain with a sickening thud. Wynders stared down, then rolled her over with the toe of his boot. Satisfaction warming him as if he’d just sipped a robust brandy.

  He stepped over Mrs. Beldam’s body to retrieve the knife. “Get up,” he said, pointing it at Banes.

  Banes had watched from behind the slim safety of a table leg and now clambered to his feet. He stood unsteadily, waiting for the humours in his body to level out. A glimpse at the threatening blade didn’t help.

  Wynders gripped him about the collar and pulled him within an inch of his face. “I want that ring, and you will take me to it.” He pushed Banes ahead of him, through Barke House toward the front door.

  At the vestibule, Wynders shoved Banes at the door, upsetting the small table next to it. Banes stumbled, reached for the table, and fell, pulling it down on top of him.

  “So where is the ring? Who has it?”

  Banes’s side ached, and he staggered to his feet with pained stiffness that he hoped would not be mistaken for stalling. “Bianca has it. I’m certain.”

  “Did you see the ring in her possession?”

  Banes rubbed his bruised side and met his stare. “I know she has it.”

  On the street, under the cover of darkness, Banes and Wynders joined others hurrying along, eager to reach home or some derelict establishment. Banes hobbled beside Wynders, wondering if anyone noticed his battered appearance. But then again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the streets of Southwark. When the two had gotten free of Barke House and Morgan’s Lane, Wynders stood at its intersection to take his bearings.

  “How best to Bianca’s room of Medicinals and Physickes?”

  Banes reluctantly answered for fear of another slam against something hard, this time a building being the most convenient surface. “I do not believe you will find the ring there.”

  “You said it was in her possession,” said Wynders. He pulled Banes up again by the scruff of his collar. “Do not deceive me, I warn you.”

  “Nay . . . sir,” he said, the sound of the formal address tasting cold on his tongue. “I do not purposely mislead you. I am certain Bianca is in possession of the ring, as I have said. But what she has done with it, I do not know.”

  Wynders drove him into the stone building.

  “I told you,” Banes gasped. “I do not know if it is on her person or whether she has hidden it.”

  “So, we shall go to her room of artifice and convince her to tell us.”

  The pain in Banes’s side reminded him of the transient nature of life. “I do not tell you this to enrage you,” he said. “But she is no longer there.”

  “Then tell me where she is.”

  “On promise that you will not strike me.”

  “Tell me!” Wynders’s patience was at an end.

  “Sir,” said Banes, blanching as he said it, “she is in the Clink.”

&
nbsp; CHAPTER 36

  “John, have you forgotten what sense there is in patience?”

  “Would you have me complacently watch a pot boil while she hangs for a murder she did not commit?”

  “My lad, you misunderstand me.” Meddybemps whisked a pan of boiling water off the furnace and dipped a square of linen into it. He cleaned the gash on John’s arm, then dabbed on a healing ointment from Bianca’s shelves. John had been wholly brave and, in Meddybemps’s opinion, too brash defending Bianca from arrest. “I do not expect you to stand idly by, but I do caution you to consider your choices rather than act with heedless abandon.”

  “What would you have me consider?”

  Meddybemps rinsed the linen cloth, then ripped it apart and wrapped it several times around John’s wound. “Firstly, consider the culture of said Clink.”

  “How so?”

  “You are but one lad. Granted, you are a strapping one by all counts. But one lad against a three-hundred-year-old citadel does not a successful venture make. Do not presume you should win against her stone walls.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You cannot enter into this with no forethought. Chiseling a hole or tunneling your way to Bianca’s cell will not work.”

  “I haven’t the time.”

  “Nor does blade or brute strength work unless you have an army behind you.” Meddybemps uncorked his wineskin and took a swig. “Bianca is kept by men much like me who care not a piss for public duty. These men speak the language of coin. Moral standard is mere pretense. But to play a bribe . . .” Meddybemps’s errant eye quivered with import. “To play is not only typical—it is expected.”

  “But I have nothing with which to bribe.”

  Meddybemps smiled, offering John his flask. “Do you not work for a silversmith?”

  John took a long drink and handed back the wine. “Are you asking me to filch coin from Boisvert?”

  Meddybemps looked disappointed. “Is Bianca not worth the risk?”

  “Meddy, if I should end in the Clink, who should come and rescue me?” He shooed the red cat off the table. “You?”