I couldn’t argue with that. I had no plan to hide him beyond getting away from Oxford and throwing him into Will’s hands. I didn’t know if Will could hide him, really. What if I hadn’t saved Dominic at all, but only made it worse? My stomach turned over at the thought.
“I’m no criminal,” Dominic said, finally opening his eyes. Only a few inches from mine. “I don’t know how to hide.”
I swallowed hard and summoned my resolve.
“Leave that to me.”
“You’re no criminal, either,” said Dominic. “How do you know how to hide?”
“I don’t,” I admitted. “But I know someone who does.”
It was the middle of the night when we arrived at the staging post in London. All I could see of the city were glimpses of the wide river and dark, tall buildings on narrow streets. The staging post was on a crowded street outside a church whose shadowy spires sliced into the night sky. Dominic looked up at it. Small hackney cabs were parked on the street, and a young man came toward us almost the moment we disembarked, offering his services.
I knew Will’s address by heart, but hesitated to give it to the cabdriver. Up to this point, we had left an easy trail to follow.
Dominic, standing beside me, spoke into my ear, too quietly for the cabdriver to hear. “I need to see a priest.”
“We can find one tomorrow,” I said.
“No,” said Dominic. “Now.”
I decided not to argue.
“Do you know of any Roman Catholic chapels hereabouts?” I asked the cabdriver.
It was dark, but I could see his eyebrows shoot up. I suddenly realized what an unusual request this must be here in the heart of the Anglican religion. I had forgotten, in my exhaustion, that England was not France, where a priest could be found on every street corner even in these enlightened times.
“There’s one on Warwick Street. The one they tore up in the riot,” he said after a moment. “But it’ll be locked up tight at this hour.”
“It’s almost morning, in any case,” I said, though morning was several hours off. I knew I couldn’t give this cabdriver Will’s address. He’d be sure to remember us now, when the law came looking. “How much to take us there?”
I counted out the amount, and despite the lightness of my coin purse I tipped him lavishly, hoping to buy some small portion of loyalty.
We climbed onto the open bench and drove west, to a well-tended section of the city with tidy paved streets and tall, dignified buildings surrounded by high iron gates and walls. It was a respectable neighborhood. But even here the night air was heavy with a sooty fog. Will’s address was well to the east of here, which was good. When the constabulary showed up at the staging post, they might follow us here, but I would make sure they could not follow us farther.
We stopped outside a row of unassuming brick buildings.
“This is it,” said the cabdriver.
“This? Which one?” I asked. There were no markers, no crucifix or statues or even a sign.
“This is the Bavarian house, what has a chapel,” said the coachman with a shrug. “I’d try around the side if I was you. Want me to wait?”
“No, thank you,” I said. From now on, we would have to walk.
Dominic had already leapt from the coach and knocked on the front entrance. When there was no answer, he hurried around the side street. I followed him.
The cabdriver seemed to have the right idea. A small cross hung over the side door. Heartened by this, Dominic pounded on the door, paused a few moments, and pounded again. I looked around the alley, wincing at the noise. Despite the presence of the Roman chapel, this looked like the sort of street whose inhabitants might not take kindly to being woken well before dawn.
Dominic took a few steps back, peering up at the window on the second floor.
“Dominic, maybe we should go,” I said. “No one seems to be waking. The priest might not even live here.”
But Dominic picked up a handful of gravel from the street and starting flinging it at the window. It was quieter, at least, than his pounding on the door had been. And in a moment it proved more effective as well. Light glowed through the window. Someone had lit a lamp.
In another minute, the door opened. A bald, middle-aged man in a dressing gown peered out.
“Are you a priest?” asked Dominic.
“I am,” said the man. He was bleary-eyed and half awake but did not seem irritated to have been woken.
“I need to confess, Father.”
The priest nodded and beckoned him inside. Dominic went in without a backward glance, and then the priest noticed me.
“Come in, my dear. Are you also in need of a confessor?”
“No, thank you—Father.”
My tongue tripped on the title, enough for the priest to smile slightly and understand that I was not one of his flock.
I followed him in, and I noticed with gratitude that he locked the door behind us. I looked around in the uncertain light.
It was not a big chapel, but that much I knew from the outside. There were a dozen or so rows of pews facing a set of stairs and an altar. Nothing burned but the light the priest carried and a red lamp hanging in front of a screen beside the altar. The close air was thick with the smell of stale incense. Dominic knelt and crossed himself, facing the altar, and then didn’t get up. The priest hung back a moment. I heard a muffled, wet sound. Dominic was crying.
The priest put a hand on Dominic’s shoulder and murmured something in a low voice. Dominic got up and followed the priest into a dark, curtained box. I knew enough to recognize it as a confessional, though I had never been inside one. My experience with church was limited to a few solitary forays, fueled by curiosity. My mother had no religion but her own, and that was alchemy. Her patrons had been men of liberal religious sentiment, believing it a beneficial practice for a certain sort of person—though naturally not enlightened, rational men such as themselves. Even Will, who was so different from those men in so many other ways, was just like them in this.
I wondered what any of them would do if they unexpectedly found themselves a killer. I wondered what I would do.
Inside the confessional, Dominic’s voice had turned to sobs. My own throat started to feel tight.
I sat in the pew farthest from the confessional. I heard Dominic, but the words were indistinct, as were the priest’s murmured replies. A wave of exhaustion hit me. Just across the room from me, Dominic was laying down a burden, giving it to someone else who was sworn to take it, and to tell him he was free of it. There was no one like that for me. If alchemy was our religion, then we were its priests. We held the power, and we would reap the rewards, but the burdens were ours alone. No one could take them from us. If my mother had been judged unworthy by some god of alchemy, then there was no priest who could make her better. I simply had to be good enough to pass the test, to make the Stone and save her.
But good enough at what? There were no Ten Commandments of alchemy. Adepts had brought their own moralities and religions to the practice and claimed they were essential, but my mother and I had never given credit to any of that. Perhaps I should ask Dominic to teach me. He seemed to be well versed in the practice of being good. If I couldn’t learn from him, then I would have to count on my natural moral instincts, because the only virtues I had been trained in were those of diligence and honesty. The latter, not because an adept should not lie, but because my mother refused to be lied to.
Gone was the exhilaration I had felt at the thought of making the Stone myself, proving myself to my mother and the world. I had seen the path to success, steep and treacherous. I had seen a man fall from it to his death. The cost was too great. Now all I felt was its weight, pressing down on me so heavily that I considered lying down on the bench to escape it in sleep. But I knew I couldn’t. We had to leave as soon as Dominic had his absolution. I glanced at the door and tried to estimate how quickly the police might have found out where we went. Surely the coach station would ha
ve been one of the first places they went after they didn’t find us at the laboratory. And the station master would have told them we took a coach to London. From there, all it would take was for our London cabdriver to tell them we had gone to the chapel. We had taken the last coach of the day out of Oxford, but the police could surely have commandeered one. It was possible they were only an hour or two behind us. Not enough time.
I fidgeted. I watched the confessional, expecting Dominic to emerge at any moment. I should have told him to hurry. I should have told him how little time we might have. He was intelligent enough to work it out himself, surely, but his mind was clearly not fixed on escape. All he cared about right now was making things right with his God. It occurred to me that he might very well emerge from the dark wooden box and declare his intention to turn himself in. Perhaps the priest would insist on it. That seemed to me like the sort of thing a priest might do.
Well, if that happened I would simply have to talk Dominic out of it, as I had before. The thought of him swinging from a rope for this made my stomach turn and my knuckles whiten on the pew in front of me. And that wasn’t counting the trouble I would find myself in. I didn’t know what the penalty for abetting a fugitive was. Not death, probably, but perhaps quite a long time in prison. I swallowed, and my throat felt very dry.
Dominic’s question came back to me. Why was I helping him? He had been very kind to me, but we had not known each other long. My father clearly hadn’t considered that I might have done something as foolish as this, or he would not have left me alone with Dominic while he went to the authorities. But at the thought of my father, I found my answer. He had not hesitated to throw his innocent apprentice to the gallows, because he cared for no one but himself. I was not like him, no matter what my mother had sometimes said. Surely this proved it. My resolve hardened again.
Dominic emerged, the priest behind him. I jumped to my feet and went to them.
“We have to go,” I said. “They might not be far behind.”
The priest looked steadily at me for a moment, then to my surprise, he nodded.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” he asked.
“We do,” I said.
“I will not ask you where,” he said. “And I cannot promise you that it will be safe for you to return here. But I can give you a little money, and I will pray for you both.”
Dominic’s eyes were red and his face blotchy, but he was calmer now. He took the coins the priest offered and slid them into his pocket.
“Thank you, Father,” he said. “I hope this doesn’t bring you trouble.”
“It won’t,” the priest replied. “If they come, I will tell them the truth: that you came, that you left, and that I do not know where you went. Go now. God be with you.”
9
I took Dominic’s hand and pulled him from the chapel, but once we were in the street, he didn’t need any more prodding.
“What now?” he whispered. “Where is this friend of yours who knows how to hide?”
“I only have the address,” I said. “Twelve Sharp’s Alley, St. Giles.”
“St. Giles?” Dominic’s face flashed alarm.
“Is something wrong with St. Giles?” I asked.
“It’s a slum. Everything’s wrong with it,” he said. “Though I reckon a slum is what we need. It’s not so far.”
We ran at first, eastward, until I was too dizzy and breathless to run any longer. Dominic took my arm, and we walked. The smell of the streets started to thicken unpleasantly, and the paved roads gave way to dirt, then mud. As the hazy sky lightened with the dawn, we came into a large intersection with a tall pillar in the center. The sun peeked past the buildings that faced the road. The one across from us was clearly a public house of some kind. The one next to us was as well, I realized, when a drunk man stumbled out of it and nearly tripped over another passed out at the foot of the stairs.
“Seven Dials,” said Dominic. “Seven streets meet here, a gin shop on each.”
Squinting at each of the intersections, I realized he wasn’t exaggerating. The sun was coming up on more inebriated men than I had ever seen at once, even in Paris. A loud, drawn-out retching noise came from behind me. I stopped myself from turning to look. I was beginning to understand where the terrible smells were coming from.
We skirted the edge of the circle, and I pulled my shawl over my bonnet. There was nothing I could do to hide my dress, which was much too fine for the neighborhood, but at least it was dusty and rumpled. In any case, the only people out of doors seemed too bleary-eyed to care. The only exception was a woman in a ragged, low-cut dress, whose drunken exhaustion didn’t prevent her from seizing Dominic’s arm and attempting to pull him inside a dilapidated doorway.
“Been a long night, hasn’ it, lovely?” she cooed at him with a ghastly, forced smile.
Dominic jerked away, cheeks aflame. The woman made another grab for him, but he threw her off.
“Don’t touch me,” he spat. The woman made an obscene gesture and stepped toward him again, this time with her fists up. I pulled Dominic behind me.
“He didn’t mean any offense,” I said.
The woman bared her teeth at me like a dog, and for a moment I thought she might actually bite me. Then she laughed. I had never heard a sound with less amusement in it.
“Best o’ luck to you, dearie,” she said. “They’re never much fun on their first time.”
We hurried away. Three blocks later, Dominic’s face was still burning. The neighborhood didn’t grow any more pleasant as we went farther. Dingy laundry hung across the narrow streets, which were little more than a muddy slush of excrement. The smell was horrible, piss and vomit and other waste I tried not to identify. We passed more gin shops, more drunks, more ragged prostitutes, and a shop that seemed to be selling rats and birds out of cages. For what purpose, I shuddered to imagine.
No one paid us any further attention. We turned, at last, down a particularly narrow alley. Sharp’s Alley. Advertisements for syphilis cures plastered the walls. They were all mercury based, and therefore all poison. My mother had made sure I was aware there were no cures for syphilis that didn’t kill you nearly as quick as the disease itself.
Twelve Sharp’s Alley was a tenement building with sagging eaves and ill-fitting windows. The front entrance was unlocked, and inside we found a set of steep stairs, one going down and one going up. The smell in the hallway was more damp than the alley, but little different otherwise.
“So does he live up in the fire trap or down in the plague hole?” asked Dominic.
I laughed nervously, but Dominic remained stone-faced.
“You do not like it here at all, do you?” I said.
“Do you?” He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets.
“Of course not, but you seem to hate it more—” The word that occurred to me was intimately, but I hesitated to use it. “More,” I finished.
Dominic shrugged, seeming to shrink into his coat as he did so. “My father died in a place like this.”
“Not here, though?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “In St. Giles?”
“Yes, in St. Giles,” he said. I opened my mouth to say something sympathetic, but he cut me off. “Up or down, Thea?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But I couldn’t picture Will going down the stairs into that dark, dank cellar every day, so I allowed my optimism to guide me. “Up. Let’s try up.”
Dominic didn’t question it. We climbed the stairs, which creaked so noisily I was afraid they might not support our combined weight. A low doorway, no taller than me, perched at the top of the steps. My hand trembled as I knocked.
There was no answer. I knocked again.
Several conflicting fears warred within me. The first was that he was not here, that he would not open the door because he had moved on, and that we would not be able to find him. But almost as bad was the idea that he would open it. I had pictured this address, 12 Sharp’s Alley, a hundred times. I had not
pictured it like this. I knew he had fled from Germany and was hiding without much money left, but I had never imagined Will living in poverty so ugly, so abject. This was not a place where people lived, it was a place where they died. I needed to find Will here. But, oh God, I didn’t want to.
I knocked again, and heard a movement inside—something hitting the ground.
“Will?”
I put my ear to the door and heard a slow, quiet footstep. Someone was hovering behind the door, hesitating.
“Will, it’s Thea,” I said. “Thea Hope.”
“Bee?” came a quiet, incredulous voice, followed by a low cough. The door cracked open, and I caught a glimpse of his face in the semidarkness behind. “What are you—” He opened the door a touch farther, then saw Dominic. “Who is with you?”
I didn’t like the way his voice sounded from behind the door, strained and sharp with suspicion.
“He is a friend of mine. His name is Dominic. We need help, Will. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
There was quiet a moment. I could hear his breathing. It sounded wrong. It was too labored, and at the same time too shallow, as though he had been running. But he hadn’t. There was no room to run here.
“Is it really you?” he asked.
“It is,” I said. “I swear.”
He finally opened the door fully. “You’d better come in then.”
We went in and paused while our eyes adjusted to the dim light from the fire. I was relieved to find that there was one, at least, with the familiar brazier standing over it. A chest sat open a few feet away, with base metals and a crucible inside. I glanced at Dominic, who was staring at it.
“An alchemist?” Dominic asked in a low voice. “You didn’t say he was an alchemist, too.”
“Everyone I know is an alchemist,” I replied.
“I’m not,” said Dominic.
“Then you are the only exception,” I said. “And not much of one.”
Will had turned his back on us and gone toward the fire. I stared at him, trying to make out what had changed. Disappointment was uncurling inside me like a waking animal. He didn’t want me here. Even Will didn’t want me.
A Golden Fury Page 10