by M C Dulac
Elise took a deep breath. She had done all she could. She had tried her hardest. She had let down Albert Price, Anne Milton and Mr. Jasper. And Ed. But she would keep fighting, no matter what lay ahead.
Then the police separated, one on either side.
“Excuse me, Miss,” the older man said, cheerfully.
They passed around her and entered the sitting room.
“Why don’t you come when I summon you? And who were you talking to?” Wyatt barked.
“The young lady, sir.”
“The maid?”
“No, sir, not a maid. The young lady in the pale blue dress.”
“There is no young lady here.”
“The young lady with the fair hair? She was carrying a green book.”
Elise ran to the open door and down the steps.
Behind her, Wyatt’s roar turned to a howl.
Elise began to run. She reached the end of the square and tore around to the mews. She raced toward the park, aware that Ed was running beside her.
The street hawkers stood back, carriages paused, urchins and chimney sweeps watched with open mouths. The rooftops of London flickered by.
They ran on and on and did not stop running for a long time.
Chapter Twenty Four
The young lady who walked by Somerset House that afternoon may have been the most wanted woman in London, but her calm expression did not betray it.
The police were looking for a woman in a midnight blue dress, slightly tattered, who had been seen that morning in a rundown coffee house, or a young woman in an old-fashioned black dress, who was the infamous forger of Cramley Court, or a woman in a pale blue dress who had been seen in the hallway of Mr. Barnabas Wyatt’s house in Mayfair that day, wanted on account of a missing book.
But no one was looking for a lady in a blue striped dress, newly purchased from Madame Valerie’s, with an elegant hat, carrying a new tapestry bag in her gloved hands. A bag containing a very valuable secret.
Elise stopped on the terrace and gazed over the smoky sprawl of London. Today something most unusual had occurred. A patch of blue sky had appeared behind the clouds, and the sun was almost strong enough to cast a shadow.
She had returned to Madame Valerie’s, once she and Ed were sure they had not been followed. Now the police had seen her, she had to change clothes and hairstyle again. Madame Valerie was most obliging. Her mother had saved many French aristocrats after the Revolution, and Madame Valerie was raised not to ask questions.
“It is the colour of the sky at midday,” Elise said, as she swished her skirt.
She had begun that year wearing black mourning, made it through the midnight blue hours of the night, through the pale blue of early morning, and now reached a new day.
“Elle est belle - she is beautiful,” Madame Valerie observed to Ed, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.
Madame Valerie rearranged Elise’s hair into a low bun. Elise stayed in Madame Valerie’s parlour until late afternoon, while Ed went to arrange the tickets for the passage out of England.
And so now she stood on the terrace, their arranged meeting place. She broke into a smile as Ed appeared through the crowds.
“Your ticket for the steamer, Miss. Jack will take you down to the port this evening. Shall he meet you at Madame Valerie’s?”
“No, I don’t want to cause Madame Valerie more problems. I’ll be,” she paused as she considered the best place to wait. Somewhere where carriages often went by, but not as busy as the City. “at St. James.”
“Near the assembly rooms?”
“That’s right.”
“Right-o. What time?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Jack often takes his carriage that way. I’ll tell him. But if you are not there, Miss, he might have to be on his way.”
“I shall be there.”
“There’s been ever such a commotion at Wyatt’s house,” Ed added. “I saw Samuel at the pub. Poor lad was downing pints. He got a terrible time from Wyatt after you escaped with the book. He says Wyatt has every policeman looking for you and is trying to get new warrants for your arrest. But the police aren’t helping because apparently he struck one of them.”
“Struck him?”
“Hurled one of his law books at the peeler, once he heard they let you escape. Wyatt’s always been volatile, but this alchemy business has pushed him over the edge. The police almost arrested him for assault and battery.”
“Oh dear.”
“And something has gone wrong with the gold in the basement.”
“That’s because he was trying to add mercury. But if he read the book last night, he should know what to do.”
“It isn’t working Miss. Samuel said the mixture’s growing then shrinking and turning brown.”
Elise tapped her lip. “What is Wyatt doing?”
“Samuel said Wyatt’s locked himself in the cellar now and won’t let anyone in.”
“But it is easy to make gold.”
“Maybe for you, Miss, because you are an alchemist.”
Ed lowered his head and gazed at her with his soft brown eyes. When she had first seen him, she had thought him arrogant. But he was only a young man, proud to work for a rich and respectable master. She wondered why she had ever feared him.
Ed gazed at her for a moment and then looked at the Thames.
“I’m leaving today too. Coach to Wales then the boat to Dublin. I’ll be seeing the Liffey again soon.”
“Then you will be going home at last.”
“Yes, it will be good to be home. And your home, Miss?”
“That is a long way away. And a long time ago,” Elise reflected. “It’s time to find a new home.”
“So you won’t ever return to Little Bingham?”
“No. I had stayed there too long.”
Time was such a strange thing. Immortality could stretch for long empty decades, but it was the small moments that mattered most. Moments like this one.
“I always thought you were a good person, Miss,” Ed added quickly, as if aware time was slipping away. “But I didn’t like the sound of alchemy. I thought it was magic and that’s why Wyatt wanted to stop it. I didn’t think a young lady could do these things. But maybe there’s a reason why some people become alchemists. The way you cured Rosie’s mother was wonderful and then you risked your freedom for theirs. You must deserve to be an alchemist.”
Elise felt her cheeks redden. Praise was so unfamiliar. “I still have a long way to go.”
They fell silent and watched a steamboat sail toward Chelsea.
“You have a friend in Ireland,” Ed said bashfully. “If you should ever need me.”
Elise nodded quickly. She wished her heart would not flutter.
She remembered long ago, speaking with Albert Price. Could an alchemist ever find happiness? Or was it their fate to wander the world alone?
“Goodbye, Ed.”
“Goodbye Elise,” Ed leaned down and kissed her hand. He rose to his full height and took a deep breath. Elise watched him walk away and the clouds covered the patch of blue sky.
* * * * *
In a city of a thousand lanes, passages, squares, gardens, and inns, Elise hid herself for the remainder of the day. She had her ticket and a pouch of gold coins. In the late afternoon, she took tea in tearooms near the park. She wondered where Champillon was and what was happening in Paris. She would write to him when she reached America. But it was time to be independent. She had lived in his house in Little Bingham for too long. She had to make her own way in the world now.
The sun set and the gas lamps glowed. Her steps brought her back to Somerset House.
The green book weighed heavily in her bag. Could she take it with her?
There may be other men or women like Barnabas Wyatt in the New World. What if she had to move often and lost the book again? It contained all of alchemy’s secrets.
Perhaps she should return it to nature - to the flames or the water,
letting the paper curl or the ink wash away. Let the secrets free on the wind.
She should throw it into the river now. There was a good current that night and the Thames would take it out to the ocean. The water was deep here. She should toss it away and watch it fly, before the water claimed it.
But another part of her could not destroy it. Was it fear of her own ignorance? Or respect for the book’s knowledge?
She found herself walking away from the river towards St. James. Her heartbeat echoed against the cover.
She turned the corner. And it was then she saw the black railings and the gold plaque of the scientific library.
The best place to hide a wild rose was in a meadow, and the best place to hide a tree was in a forest.
Maybe there was another choice - to hide the book in a place where no one would ever find it.
On that night, like the night of Wyatt’s speech, the door was fortuitously open. The hall was empty, as servants rattled dinner trays in the passage.
She entered the library and quietly crossed the carpet. A man snoozed in an armchair. She climbed a ladder and opened the glass door of a cabinet. She slid the green book onto the shelf. It fitted perfectly as though the library had been waiting all along and the book had found its home.
And then she walked across the marble floor, gazing up at the high ceiling of this esteemed London establishment.
“Ted! Where is that boy, he’s left the front door open again!”
The harried manservant was carrying a pile of napkins. He propped open the door to the dining room with his shoulder. He frowned and sighed as if debating whether to close the door or finish his task.
“Ted, you’re meant to be guarding the front door,” she heard him saying. “Put these napkins on the sideboard first.”
She quietly ran down the steps to the street.
Outside, the night had fallen sharply. A lantern glowed at the side of an approaching carriage.
“Miss Elise,” an old driver tipped his hat.
She climbed inside, and the carriage spirited her away through the teeming streets of rich and poor. The grand domes of churches rose above the leaning tenements. She passed inns full of workers and clerks, and saw posters plastered on walls, advertising the Chartists’ next march. Warehouses glowed on the river, as steamers plodded along the turgid waters.
Narrow streets gave way to houses then houses to open countryside. The air cleared. The great city receded in the distance. A bright moon shone down on the fields. Hours later, a great sea glimmered in the distance.
It was only in the carriage that she had a doubt. It was a doubt that stayed with her as she crossed the ocean, and came to her sometimes in the middle of the nights to come.
Had she done the right thing?
What had become of the book?
Chelsea, London, England, Present Day
A bright blue sky hung over London on the day of the auction.
Ellie stepped out of the house on Cheyne Walk and crossed the road, walking briskly along the riverside. The Thames slid by beneath the steep stone walls of the Chelsea Embankment. No longer was London the Venetian-style city that faced the riverbank in 1848, with long shorelines and riverside terraces. In the 1840s and 1850s, the problems of sewage and pollution had become so bad, Westminster had been forced to embark on an ambitious program of public works, laying the foundations for modern London.
Ellie had spent the last two days trying to find out what had happened to Barnabas Wyatt, a mystery equal to what had happened to the green book. Wyatt was not famous enough to have his own page on the internet. He had been mentioned in footnotes to the Chartist movement as a fiery opponent of the ordinary man’s rights and once in a list of eminent barristers.
A search at the London archives had uncovered a death certificate. The cause of death was not specified and despite his family residence in Mayfair, his place of death was listed in the East End.
How had Barnabas Wyatt died and how did the green book come to be in his possession?
All had remained an impossible mystery until she received an email the night before. A librarian she had spoken to at the British Library had found reference to a book that might shed light on Wyatt’s end. The librarian had checked the stacks and found the book had been sent away to be mended. As Ellie still had her research credentials, the librarian had made a call to the bookbinders. It was possible for Ellie to see the book that morning.
The bookbinder occupied a small house off the Kings Road, Chelsea. In the courtyard outside, a woman was arranging bottles in the window of an apothecary. A sign stating ‘Rare Books - Sold and Repaired’ hung over an eighteenth century doorway.
Ellie pushed open the door and entered a wood-paneled room. A young woman looked up from behind a pile of books.
“Ellie Forrest,” she greeted her. “Indira said you’d be coming. The book is upstairs. I’ll ask you to put on these gloves, please.”
“Of course,” Ellie said.
Ellie followed the young woman up a wooden staircase. She sat down at a table and the young woman placed the book before her.
“We haven’t actually started work yet, but you can see the spine needs mending.”
“I’ll be very careful, thank you.”
The young woman disappeared down the rickety staircase.
Ellie took a deep breath.
In an hour the green book would go to auction. Now she may be about to learn Barnabas Wyatt’s fate.
The book had been on the shelves for so long, the pages were hard to open. It contained short biographies of two hundred and five famous Victorians. Ellie traced her finger down the table of contents, until she found famous Victorian number 166, Barnabas Josiah Wyatt.
She turned the pages quickly.
There was a sketch of Wyatt, proud, certain and determined, with fire in his eyes, just as she remembered.
His life took up two pages of the book. He was born the second son of a lawyer in Dorset and went to the Bar early. Although not a nobleman, he was a passionate defender of their class, taking up campaigns against universal voting, minimum wages and improvements to factory conditions.
A man of fire and firmness, Wyatt spent his career as a brutally effective advocate against the tide of change.
In his early career he assisted in the successful prosecution and transportation to Australia of the Methodist reformer Mr. George Loveless and other Tolpuddle Martyrs, despite much popular outcry.
In late 1848, Wyatt retired from legal practice, taking an interest in the more esoteric aspects of science. He began purchasing the contents of private libraries and assembled one of the largest collections of chemistry books in England.
Ellie sighed. So that was how he obtained the book. He had purchased the library of the Scientific Institute. Had he noticed the green book among the others?
In 1850, he suffered mercury poisoning and it was discovered he was conducting experiments beneath his townhouse in Grosvenor Square.
After recovering from his illness, Wyatt became reclusive, pursuing research which he rarely shared.
His debts mounted and he was briefly detained in the sponging house, among the working class whom he so often prosecuted.
Although saved from debtor’s prison by his wife’s family, his mind deteriorated and he ended his days in an insane asylum in Spitalfields, a grim end for such an eminent man.
That was why Wyatt had died impoverished in the East End. He had gone to an insane asylum. And the gold had never settled. It was a curious substance, apparently obeying one master - or mistress. Despite all Wyatt had done, Ellie felt a moment of pity. If only he had not been consumed by greed.
“Did you find what you needed?” the earnest young woman appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Yes,” Ellie closed the cover.
Alchemy had claimed Wyatt’s fortune and sanity. Upon his death, the green book must have remained in the library, unread and forgotten. Until now, in a new world of greed,
when alchemy attracted a fresh generation of fortune hunters.
Ellie stepped out onto the Kings Road. It was half an hour before the auction began.
On the Tube from Sloane Square, she moved aside a discarded newspaper.
On the back page was a large advertisement for Cramley Court, listing its many attractions.
Fully renovated luxury apartments. Walking distance to the City of London and Thames. Close to vibrant dining scene. Original Victorian brickwork and touches. Top floor penthouse offers glimpses of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Ellie raised her eyebrows.
The next station was Bond Street. She folded the newspaper and got up.
The shop fronts in the West End were as enticing as they had been in the Victorian era and the constant, swishing traffic just as distracting. A security guard stood at the auction house doors, greeting each guest as they passed over a short red carpet. Gleaming cars pulled up and a stream of wealthy men, many accompanied by bodyguards, filed inside.
The guard ticked Ellie’s name off a list and she entered the gallery.
The auction room was full of people. Along one wall, young people stood with phones ready, taking instructions. Ellie gazed at the catalogue, seeing there were fifteen lots under the hammer that day.
She took a seat near the back row.
The crowd murmured with barely contained friendly competition. Shortly before eleven, a man climbed onto the podium, casting a smile over the audience.
Ellie sensed someone beside her. It was Jean-Louis Champillon.
“Jean-Louis!” she whispered.
“Here I am Sebastian Worth,” Champillon reminded her. “Interesting bidders today. The Russians are here in person. The woman over there acts for a man in Singapore. And that man is the agent for a tech billionaire.”
“All these people here for Albert Price’s book,” Ellie’s head ached.
“The elixir of life and the formula for gold never cease their hold over people.”
“What shall you bid?”