Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  At last feeling my head begin to sink towards the trestle I staggered to my feet, bowed to my lady and left the hall as if going to piss. Unsure of finding my way to the jakes, I went out into the frosty night under the Great Bear hanging above, and hid myself behind a bush to lower my slops, hoping that no other would come out with the same intention and find me half squatting with my slops around my ankles. I had thought the cold air would clear my head but it had an effect quite otherwise. I feared but longed to lie down in the snow and sleep, yet forced myself back into the house where I found my own straw pallet, lay down and at once fell into a kind of swoon.

  The next morning I found myself suited as I had lain down with much relief that none had tried to undress me. My head still swam, but after a manchet of bread and some ale I was able to go to my lady who was still in her bed. I was afraid that she would be angry with me but instead she laughed and held out her hand for me to kiss.

  ‘Well child, there were those who wished to wake you for some sport but I saved you from them, for I thought you slept so sweetly with your mouth open. They would have thrown you into the horse trough.’

  ‘My lady is very kind.’ I had put on a clean shirt and hose and was relieved that I had not soiled my slops while I slept or rather lay in my drunken swoon.

  I had seen no more of Dr Gilbert since our first meeting. He was gone again to Devon to lie with his friends there, being of those parts. Now however when the feast was over he returned to the countess. I had determined not to quarrel with him but to keep my counsel if he should ask me anything. Only in matters touching my father I knew I could not be silent so I heard of his return with some trepidation.

  My lady had let it be known that the next day she would take up her care of the sick again that morning. There came a great press of poor persons to be cured, the weather being foul and winter sickness about. Some had fallen in the snow and gashed themselves. Others wanted for potions and medicines to take back to those too sick to go abroad themselves.

  All morning we were viewing and anointing and binding up, and after they were sent by my lady to the kitchen for bread, ale, broth and broken meats from her own table for many ailed more from hunger than any other sickness. My head cleared as I was kept running, fetching and carrying, grinding and mixing for the poor wretches who sought our help.

  At length when we had but one man more to cure that had slipped and broken his head, to which my lady laid self-heal as an unguent and bound it with a clean rag, came in Dr Gilbert to us.

  ‘You are too good madam in treating these wastrels. No doubt the man was drunk when he fell and came here in search of more ale to mend his head.’

  ‘I do not doubt it Dr Gilbert. Yet it must be mended or he cannot work and he and his family will fall as a charge upon the parish which we must all bear.’

  He had no answer to this except to bow his head in acceptance of her reasoning.

  ‘Amyntas,’ she went on, ‘fetch here the book that was sent to your father. I would have Dr Gilbert’s opinion on it.’

  Most unwillingly I went for it but yet I dare not disobey her.

  ‘This is scarcely new,’ he said when he had opened it. ‘This was out a year almost before your lord’s death.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she answered. ‘Matters do not reach us here so swiftly as in London. And it has lain in a neighbour’s house for some months, she not knowing where to send it. But this William Gilbert is he not of your family?’

  ‘Indeed no madam for he comes from the eastern parts, Suffolk or Essex as I believe though I have seen him often at court.’

  ‘But the matter of the book?’

  ‘I have spoken of it with Mr Francis Bacon. He believes there may be some use in it to find out latitude in navigation but he thinks little of such theories when they do not tend to the practical. He believes that only experiment or chance can discover useful truths, not idle speculation upon causes.’

  ‘What do you think Amyntas?’

  I saw that I trod on dangerous ground. ‘I have not yet had the chance to read it madam so can have no opinion.’

  ‘Come you must do better than that.’

  ‘If the world is a magnet madam and as some say, and my father believed, in perpetual motion about the sun, would we not be flung off among the other planets if there were not some force to bind us to the earth, as a lodestone draws and holds metal? And since knowledge gives rise to more and we can sometimes build as an arch from one part of knowledge to another by taking thought, then I think theory may be of good use when purified in the fire of practice.’

  ‘Ingenious boy. What do you to that Dr Gilbert?’

  ‘I think I may stick upon the wisdom of her majesty’s counsel rather than a mere boy. When were you at the university Master Boston?’

  ‘Never sir. My tutoring was all from my father. He too believed in the virtues of experiment, like Mr Bacon, as you say sir.’

  ‘And how came he to know her majesty’s physician?’

  ‘I believe they met sir at the Royal College of Physicians when my father had gone there about some business while Dr Gilbard, as he often writ his name, was treasurer. And he was often also wont to seek my father’s opinion, saying that he was uncorrupted by the court or the quest for money or position.’

  ‘Yet he looked to turn base metal into gold.’

  ‘He looked only for the truth sir not for private gain. He would have made his knowledge available to all the world had he come by it, and not hoarded it like a miser.’

  ‘So he may have said but we do not know how his resolution would have kept.’

  I was silent then for I knew from my father that Dr Gilbert’s pursuit of truth had been often directed towards gain and the filling of his own pockets as in his brother’s settling of Newfoundland and quest for the Northwest Passage, in which Dr Gilbert was a mover but not to the hazarding his own person.

  When he had left us the countess said: ‘Now child I must to Cardiff to see to my affairs there and I shall take my ladies with me, and in special Mistress Griffiths to visit her friends but you will return to Ramsbury where you will be safe until my return. Meanwhile you will not be idle for I shall give all my works in the laboratory and the curing the sick into your hands.’

  Joel rings to say he has post for me and he will drop it in on his way to see a client. I offer him a cup of coffee but he declines ‘your instant filth’. The traffic’s all snarled up and he’s running late. We make a date to meet in Finch’s, one of the last unmade-over pubs in London. I settle back when he’s gone and open the info pack for Wessex: glossy brochures, application forms, CD-ROM, courses, credentials, fees, minimum qualifications for enrolment in the various subjects. I see that whereas they’re obviously keen to attract as many students as possible with all kinds of subjects including Open University home study-type options, the theology department is a closed shop. You have to be studying for acceptance into the Temple for an ordinary diploma course and be already received for the full-blown degree. It looks as if they’re teaching a very selective kind of theology here.

  How do I get in without revealing something of my hand? Assume a completely false identity? A birth certificate would do. And some fake academic documents. By the time they got round to checking them, if they did, it should be all over. University exam verification offices are notoriously slow. Now I come to think of it I’ve already got an alternative birth certificate from a previous job. An Aussie girl about my age who needed to prove her nationality, or at least her parents’, for a work permit. I had two copies made in case one went astray. The second should still be in my file. Her name, let’s see, was Lucinda Jane Cowell, Lucy to her mates. I could become her. Her parents had emigrated when she was one year old and had become naturalised Roos but none of that showed on her birth certificate.

  Suppose they tracked her down wherever she is now? But that was eighteen months ago. She’s probably long gone backpacking round the world, enjoying Thailand on her way home. ‘Noth
ing venture, Jade,’ Mam would say. It’s strange that Wessex doesn’t encourage its would-be students to go through UCAS. Is that another sign that we’re dealing with something different here?

  I can’t see myself signing up to the Temple just to get on the theology course. Who knows what you might be letting yourself in for? Maybe though I can show an interest enough to suss it out. Or rather Lucy Cowell can show an interest. Nobody is what they seem. Dr Adrian Gilbert turns out to be Dr Alastair Galton, if that really is his name, Amyntas is Amaryllis and I’m becoming Lucy. It’s a kind of virtual shapechanging. These days everything is ephemeral, smoke drifting into different forms, gone in a minute while we long for stability, certainty and look back to what seems a more solid world of truly visceral pain and passion, Mam and Dad’s world. But who’d really go back if they could? No. Yet if only we could carry the best on with us. Some sense of belonging, even of being. Maybe that’s what the Temple of the Latent Christ offers believers: the passion we’ve lost. Or is it just you, Jade, who’s fallen into limbo?

  Even my love for Helen Chalmers that seemed so searing at the time became, after that first flood of anger, betrayal and absence, a dull ache, a long drawn-out mourning. ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them but not for love.’ You don’t die, not as a rule, but something dies in you. ‘I die daily,’ as the man said. The body goes on, the cells rejuvenate until even they get tired of it and only mad cancer cells go on and on, endlessly multiplying until they consume their host like a parasitic wasp.

  Gloomy thoughts, Jade. Click on delete. They’ll still be there though, the spectral texts that a clever anorak can always flush out again. Nothing need ever die that we create now except the creators. But then that’s not new. Our best has outlived us for thousands of years. Now the worst can outlive us too. Only the means to get at it may be lost with the built-in obsolescence of our technologies. Secrets, works of genius even, locked up on hard disks in landfill sites all over the world. What would Marlowe have done with email and the internet? Sat in his office like me or pulled on his hat and raincoat and gone out into the mist?

  I make myself get up and go to the filing cabinet. Find Lucy Cowell’s file neatly under ‘C’. Something a bit anal in the way you keep your files, Jade. Still it works, so don’t knock it. Now a little desktop publishing to produce some convincing qualifications. ‘A’ levels and a BA so that Lucy can get into an MA or PHD course. She needs a subject and a title for a thesis. The psychology of cross-dressing in Elizabethan theatre. Amyntas should come in handy there. Back to my first love before I decided to make a living out of the law’s delays.

  I make perfect digital copies of my own certificates, white out my name, recopy. Fill in with Lucinda Jane Cowell. There: Jade Green’s deleted. ‘Do you really want to delete Jade Green?’ Only for now. ‘If you select “Yes” this file will be deleted.’ Death by a thousand clicks. Death by a mouse byte. But I have the original. I am the original. ‘Prick us. Do we not bleed?’ Fill in the forms. Joel’s address. My mobile phone number. My second email address, the one that’s only a number I use for anonymity. Availability for interview. ‘When do you wish your course to start?’ As soon as possible. A handy US-style summer school where you can knock up some points. Only Lucy Cowell will never finish her thesis; never kneel down for her master’s hood to be draped around her shoulders. I pin the false evidence to the application form with a paper clip, fold the documents in three and put them into a self-sealing envelope I’ve already addressed, go down my iron and concrete staircase and open the door.

  I stand there blinking like a bat that’s got up too early, struck a blow by the sunlight and the din and stink of the city. Astronauts must feel like this, stepping out of their space capsule after wheeling in silence through time above the earth, with the stars for company and the moon rising and setting its several cycles a day. The escalator carries me up into the station where I can do or buy everything I want or don’t, post my letter, get a Guardian and egg salad baguette in a paper sleeve for my lunch, queue for the cash point, pick up a bottle of wine, a pack of new floppies for the computer, drink a cup of cappuccino. The only thing I don’t do is buy a ticket and travel. Get away from it all. Instead I turn back, squirrelling away with my hoard to my silent lair. That’s enough of the world for now.

  Living and working alone you become a hermit: Simeon Stylites on the top of his pillar in the desert; Diogenes in his tub, or follow the rule for anchoresses. ‘The nuns may keep no beast but a cat. They may make pleasing gestures from the window but not speak.’ You could say I chose this solitude out of pique.

  After that first meeting my charmer let two days pass before she rang me on the internal phone. Just when I’d reconciled myself to her having been a bit pissed and saying things she either regretted or didn’t remember, alternating with wondering whether it would be totally uncool to ring her, there was her voice, slightly husky and posh, as I remembered it, saying, ‘So you do exist. I didn’t invent you. Was I going to call you or you me? I couldn’t remember what we’d said.’

  ‘I couldn’t either,’ I lied, feeling myself flush like Pavlov’s dogs at the sound of the dinner bell. Don’t be too laid-back, Jade, or she might ring off. ‘I think we said something about lunch but maybe you’re too busy lunching with clients.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve got one free day. What about you? Do they let you out for a civilised eat sometimes?’

  ‘We could always say you wanted to brief me about something. That should be good for an extra hour.’

  ‘Actually you could do some research for me. I’ll speak to Drewpad. Would Tuesday suit?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Do you have wheels? We could go out somewhere.’

  ‘Only two I’m afraid. ‘Then I added quickly in case she thought I was a pedal pusher, ‘A motor bike. You could cling on behind but that would be very undignified and you’d need the space suit.’

  ‘How exotic. Maybe when we know each other better. I’ll book a table at the Garden. It’s usually fairly empty at lunchtime. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready to leave.’

  ‘The bosses have blown for you.’ Drew had called me into his office. ‘Mrs Boss wants you to do some work for her. Have you got the time?’

  ‘I’d better find it, hadn’t I?’ I always joined in his conspiracy that we were both living out the last days of the Raj where the partners were concerned.

  ‘Anyway you’ll get a decent lunch out of it. Helen always lunches the juniors when they first arrive, to suss them out.’ This was to let me know that I wasn’t the first, so not to let it go to my head. ‘She asked if you were free on Tuesday. I said I’d ask you and let her know. I refuse to take umbrage at being used as a go-between.’

  ‘You should charge commission.’

  ‘Your lunch with the boss-lady is all fixed,’ he told me later when we were leaving the building together. ‘She’ll let you know when she’s ready to leave.’

  ‘My, we’re smart today,’ he said when I appeared on Tuesday morning.

  ‘Got to make a good impression on the Begum. She wouldn’t want to be seen with anything manky.’

  That unmistakable voice called me at twelve-thirty. She would meet me in the foyer. My legs were trembling too much for the stairs. I took the lift, trying not to tweak my hair in its mirror wall.

  She looked me up and down as I stepped out towards her, forcing a smile. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘We’ll take a taxi. Can you get one?’

  We stepped out into Fetter Lane. I would find a cab or perish in the attempt. I would be efficient, authoritative. I lost the first to another lawyer, judging by his dark suit, but the next came along behind and I stepped off the pavement determined he should stop.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The Garden,’ I said as if I knew where it was.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Portugal Wharf,’ she said, her elegant high heels stepping up into the darkness of the cab. I caught a draught of her scent as I sank d
own beside her, careful not to let any part of our bodies connect by accident. I just hoped that when the time came I should be able to swallow whatever I’d chosen to try to eat, something I couldn’t choke on for preference. Careful, Jade, I was warning myself, don’t assume she knows, or that this is anything more than curiosity about a junior. After all she can’t have it off with them all, of both sexes. Or does she? I hadn’t been able to ask Drew without seeming to show an uncommon interest and losing my reputation for cool.

  The Garden, Portugal Wharf, was an evening place, Helen explained, which was why it was quiet at lunchtime. You could sit out under a glass awning and look across the river where each passing pleasure boat set up a sparkling wash, to the green and silver ziggurats of new riverside apartments beached beside the Thames.

  ‘It was where the Portuguese wines came ashore,’ she said as we studied our menus with their riverine design of fishtailed Nereides and Tritons on sea horses blowing horns, ‘in this part of Vintry Ward. Most of the port houses were owned by the British, like Blandy’s you know.’

  I didn’t know but wasn’t going to say so. I simply nodded in agreement.

  ‘I thought we should continue our association with water.’

  Was I wrong or was she flirting with me? Had I been wrong before? Perhaps it was just her style. ‘Now what will you have? A starter? The goat’s cheese and rocket isn’t bad as that goes. Or the fritto misto.’

  I opted for the insalata tricolore and a poached sea bass steak to follow. Helen took her own advice on the fritto misto and a filet mignon. ‘What would you like to drink?’