Alchemy and Meggy Swann

by Karen Cushman

  Alchemy and Meggy Swann

  Karen Cushman

  * * *

  CLARION BOOKS

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Boston • New York

  2010

  * * *

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

  Text copyright © 2010 by Karen Cushman

  The text was set in Fairfield 45 Light.

  Map by Kayley LeFaiver.

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cushman, Karen.

  Alchemy and Meggy Swann / by Karen Cushman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1573, the crippled, scorned, and destitute Meggy Swann goes to

  London, where she meets her father, an impoverished alchemist, and eventually

  discovers that although her legs are bent and weak, she has many other strengths.

  ISBN 978-0-547-23184-6

  [1. People with disabilities—Fiction. 2. Alchemy—Fiction. 3. Poverty—Fiction.

  4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. London (England)—History—16th century

  —Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C962A1 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009016387

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500215780

  * * *

  For Leah,

  for her gentle courage

  and her tender heart

  * * *

  The meeting of two personalities is like

  the contact of two chemical substances;

  if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

  —Carl Jung

  * * *

  * * *

  1573

  After the accession of Elizabeth I

  to the throne of England

  but afore London's first theater

  and Shakespeare

  ONE

  "Ye toads and vipers," the girl said, as her granny often had, "ye toads and vipers," and she snuffled a great snuffle that echoed in the empty room. She was alone in the strange, dark, cold, skinny house. The carter who had trundled her to London between baskets of cabbages and sacks of flour had gone home to his porridge and his beer. The flop-haired boy in the brown doublet who had shown her a straw-stuffed pallet to sleep on had left for his own lodgings. And the tall, peevish-looking man who had called her to London but did not want her had wrapped his disappointment around him like a cloak and disappeared up the dark stairway, fie upon him!

  Fie upon them all!

  She was alone, with no one to sustain and support her. Not even Louise, her true and only friend, who had fallen asleep in the back of the cart and been overlooked. Belike Louise was on her way back out of the town with the carter, leaving the girl here frightened and hungry and alone. Ye toads and vipers, what was she to do? She sat shivering on a stool as unsteady as her humor, and tears left shining tracks like spider threads on her cheeks.

  Her name was Margret Swann, but her gran had called her Meggy, and she was newly arrived from Millford village, a day's ride away. The bit of London she had seen was all soot and slime, noise and stink, and its streets were narrow and dark. Now she was imprisoned in this strange little house on Crooked Lane. Crooked Lane. How the carter had laughed when he learned their destination.

  Darkness comes late in high summer, but come it does. Meggy could see little of the room she sat in. Was there food here? A cooking pot? Wood for a fire? Would the peevish-looking man—Master Peevish, she decided to call him—would he come down and give her a better welcome?

  Startled by a sudden banging at the door and in truth a bit fearful, Meggy stood up quickly, grabbed her walking sticks, and made her way into the farthest corner of the room. She moved in a sort of clumsy jig: reach one stick ahead, swing leg wide and drag it forward, move other stick ahead, swing other leg wide and drag it forward, over and over again, stick, swing, drag, stick, swing, drag. Her legs did not sit right in her hips—she had been born so—and as a result she walked with this awkward swinging gait. Wabbling, Meggy called it, and it did get her from one place to another, albeit slowly and with not a little bit of pain.

  The banging came again, and then the door swung open and slammed against the wall, revealing the carter who had fetched her to London.

  He was not gone! Meggy's spirits rose like yeasty bread, and she wabbled toward the doorway. "Well met, carter," she said. "I wish to go home."

  "I were paid sixpence to bring you hither," he said. "Have you another six for the ride back?"

  "Nay, but my mother—"

  He shook his head. "Your mother was right pleased to see the back of you." He turned, took two steps, and lifted something from the bed of the wagon. Something that wriggled and hissed. Something that leapt from his arms. Something that showed itself to be a large white goose, her wings spread out like an angel's as she made her waddling way over to the girl. Louise. Meggy's goose and friend.

  Meggy exhaled in relief and gladness. She bent down and looked into the goose's deep black eyes. "Pray be not angry with me, Louise. In all the hurly-burly of arriving, I grew forgetful." Louise honked loudly and shook herself with such a shake that there was a snowfall of feathers.

  When Meggy stood up again, the carter and the wagon had gone. Her eyes filled, but her hands held tightly to her walking sticks, so she could not dash the tears away. They felt sticky on her lips, and salty.

  She sat down on the stool again and put one arm around the goose, who stretched her neck and placed her head on Meggy's lap. "You may observe, goosie," the girl said, stroking the soft, white head, "that I be most lumpish, dampnified, and right bestraught. This London is a horrid place, and I know not what will befall us here."

  Meggy and Louise rocked for a moment, and Meggy softly sang a misery song she had learned from her gran. I wail in woe, I plunge in pain, with sorrowing eyes I do complain, she sang, but the sound of her trembly voice in the empty room was so mournful that she stopped and sat silent while darkness grew.

  Meggy and the carter had arrived in London earlier that day while the summer evening was yet light. Even so, the streets were gloomy, with tall houses looming on either side, rank with the smell of fish and the sewage in the gutter, slippery with horse droppings, clamorous with church bells and the clatter of cart wheels rumbling on cobbles. London was a gallimaufry of people and carts, horses and coaches, dogs and pigs, and such noise that made Meggy's head, accustomed to the gentle stillness of a country village, ache.

  "Good even', mistress," the carter had called to a hairy-chinned woman with a tray of fish hanging from her neck. "Know you where we might find the house at the Sign of the Sun?"

  "I cannot seem to recall," the fishwife said, "but belike I'd remember if my palm were crossed with a penny." She stuck out a hand, knobby and begrimed. The carter frowned and grunted but finally took a penny from the purse tied at his waist and flicked it at her.

  She plucked it from the air and flashed a gummy smile. "Up Fish Street Hill but a little ways is Crooked Lane," she said. "You will see the Sign of the Sun six or more houses up the lane."

  Crooked Lane. Meggy had pulled her skirts tighter around her legs, and the carter had laughed.

  As the fishwife had said, six houses up Croo
ked Lane, below a faded sign of, indeed, the sun, was the narrowest house Meggy had ever seen, hardly wider than a middling-tall man lying edge to edge, and three stories high. Its timbers were black with age, and the yellow plaster faded to a soft cream. A bay window on each floor was fitted with small panes of glass, dusty and spotted and, here and there, cracked. The upper floors hung over the street, as was true of all the houses in Crooked Lane, so the street was shadowy and damp. To one side of the house was a shop, shuttered and dark, with a large shoe hanging in front, betokening a cobbler's shop, Meggy thought. There was a bit of garden next to it, although what would grow in that damp gloom Meggy could not say. On the other side was a purveyor of old clothes. "Old cloaks? Have you an old cloak to sell?" the merchant called from the door of his shop. "Or mayhap—"

  "Away, fellow," the carter said. "We have business with the master here."

  The clothes seller snorted. "Business? With him? Abracadabra more like." And he spat.

  Abracadabra? Meggy shivered now, remembering. "What could he have meant?" she asked Louise. But the goose, busily grooming her feathers, did not answer.

  "And hearken to me, Louise," Meggy went on. "On London Bridge I beheld heads, people's heads, heads black with rot and mounted on sticks, hair blowing in the summer wind like flags at a fair. Traitors, the carter said, a lesson and a warning." The girl shivered again. Heads. What sort of place was this London?

  As darkness grew, Meggy lay down carefully and with some difficulty and undertook to make herself comfortable on the straw pallet, she who had slept on Granny's goose-feather mattress. She did not know what hurt her most—her aching legs or her empty belly or her troubled heart. Pulling her cloak over her and nestling Louise beside her, she breathed in the familiar smell of goose and grew sleepy.

  Mayhap this was but a bad dream, she thought. The dark, the cold, the strange noises, and the unfriendly man who had judged her, found her wanting, and left her alone—perhaps these were but part of a dream, and she would wake again in the kitchen of the alehouse. "Sleep well, Louise," said Meggy to her goose, "for tomorrow, I pray, we be home."

  TWO

  The heads on the bridge were the stuff of nightmares. Here was Louise's head, her black eyes cold and empty. And there Granny's gray hair blew in the wind. And this was Meggy's head, mouth open in a hopeless wail...

  Meggy woke with a cry. The night had the quiet stillness of the hours after midnight but before dawn. Over the pounding of her heart, she could hear voices and footsteps upstairs. Was Master Peevish coming down? Was he sorry he had given her so poor a welcome?

  He did not appear. Meggy tried to fall asleep again, but her mind returned to her encounter with the man when she had arrived. "I do not allow beggars at my house" was the first thing he said to her. "Begone and clear my doorstep."

  "Pray pardon, sir, we are not beggars," the carter had told him. "If you be Master Ambrose, this be your daughter, come at your bidding."

  The black-gowned man, tall and narrow like his house, peered down at the girl through eyes as dark as her own, nearly hidden by bushy black eyebrows as if two caterpillars slumbered on his brow. "Daughter?" he asked, frowning. The caterpillars woke and collided over his nose. "I expected a son."

  A son. Not her. No more did she want him, this ill-favored, ill-mannered old man in a shabby black gown. Ye toads and vipers, what did she need with a father?

  She turned to go, anxious to be otherwhere, but the carter held her arm. "I were told I would be paid sixpence for this delivery," he said, sticking out his hand. "Sixpence."

  Master Ambrose pulled pennies from inside his gown and gave them to the carter, who turned for his wagon. Still frowning, Master Ambrose studied Meggy. "What are you called?"

  A sudden breeze tugged at the hair that tumbled like storm clouds from her linen cap and tangled in her eyes and mouth. She said naught but only frowned back at the man's long face, the long nose, and those great bushy eyebrows. Her gran had admonished her often, "Do not greet the world with your fists up, sweeting. Give folk a chance." But her gran was dead, and Meggy was here, and her hands on her sticks clenched into fists.

  The man and the girl stood in silence until he called to the carter, "God's wounds, is she mute? Or brain cracked?"

  The carter shrugged once more as he climbed onto the wagon and tossed Meggy's sack over the side.

  "Hold, fellow!" Master Ambrose shouted. "Hold. What use is a daughter to me?" But the carter merely clucked to his horse, which pulled the wagon up the street and away.

  They stood for a long moment, the man in the doorway and Meggy on the step. Finally he turned and entered the house, leaving her to follow.

  Brain cracked, he had called her. A daughter, not a son. Ye toads and vipers, he would have more disappointments to deal with this day, Meggy thought. She leaned on her walking sticks and, dipping and lurching, moved herself into the house—stick, swing, drag, stick, swing, drag—pain accompanying her every step.

  The man turned and watched her, one caterpillar arching on his brow. Shoving past her, he strode back to the door and shouted after the wagon, "Good sir, hold, I said! The girl be ... she cannot ... I want..." But the wagon was disappearing up the darkening lane.

  Master Ambrose sighed and closed the door. "I know not what I am to do with you. A son would be of use to me, but a daughter, and such a daughter..." He did not look at her but walked to the staircase in a corner of the room. "Roger," he called. "Roger, come down."

  A young fellow a year or two older than Meggy, wearing brown doublet and hose of strawberry red, pounded down the stairs. He grinned at Meggy and his hair flopped into his eyes. "Roger," said Master Ambrose, "this be ... err, my ... err, daughter. See to her. I must return to my work."

  The boy called Roger nodded as the man started up the stairs. Then the boy picked up Meggy's sack from the doorstep and said, "Go to! So the master has a daughter. I bid you welcome." But his grin faded as he gestured toward her walking sticks. "What means those?"

  Meggy had had a long day. She had left her home and been bounced in a wagon over bumpy roads, assailed by smells and mud and noise, and then insulted by a man said to be her father. She was not in the best of humors. And now this boy was vexing her with his big eyes and his annoyous prattle. She pulled her face into a scowl and shook one of her walking sticks at him. "Beware the ugglesome crookleg, the foul-featured cripple, the fearful, misshapen creature," she growled, "marked by the Devil himself."

  The boy backed up against the wall, but he did not run. In the village where Meggy was born, the children ran. Meggy seldom went among the villagers, but when she did, they jeered or shunned her, cursed and spat, and mothers pulled their toddlers behind their skirts for fear she would bewitch them with the evil eye. This boy did not run or spit or curse.

  She narrowed her eyes. "Be you not afeared?" she asked him.

  He stared at her solemnly but said nothing. He would come to fear her or taunt her or avoid her, Meggy knew. Everyone did. Everyone but Louise.

  "My mother held that my crooked legs are the judgment of God upon me for my sins," Meggy said. "She bade me stay out of sight lest I curse our patrons and make the ale sour. Now be you afeared?"

  He cocked his head, and his brown hair fell forward like the long ears of a spaniel pup. "Indeed I know not what to think of you," he said. "But you be my master's daughter, so take some comfort and rest." He moved a stool closer to where Meggy stood. "I cannot offer you a fire. The master will not spare the wood. But for the room at the top of the stairs, the rest of this house is cold as January all the year round."

  He pointed to a straw pallet folded into a corner. "You can sleep on that. I found it lumpy and dusty, but it serves. The water bearer will come each sevennight, for it is clear you cannot fetch water yourself. And there is this." He gestured to the chamber pot beside the pallet and turned for the door.

  "Nay, hold!" Meggy called. "You cannot abandon me. What am I to do here? Who will tend to me? And fetch me thin
gs to eat?"

  "Belike you will fetch it yourself," Roger said. "Up Crooked Lane to Eastcheap you will find taverns, fruit-mongers, and bakers. Where Fish Street Hill changes to Gracechurch there be grocers and butchers. But closest are the cookshops and brewers on Thames Street, down Crooked Lane instead of up and toward the river to where Fish Street Hill meets the church of St. Magnus and—"

  "Can you not see, rude sir, that I could ne'er walk all that way?" She waved her walking sticks at him. Because her legs often tormented her, she had to measure the gain of each journey against the pain—would the reward be worth it? Roger, the lack-witted woodsnape, could not understand that.

  "Did you not walk and work and such in that village you came from?" he asked.

  "I stayed out of the way, is what I did there. And there was ever bread in the alehouse kitchen when I grew hungry." She sighed loudly. "You will have to fetch me food."

  The boy laughed. "I will see you anon," he said, "but now I must be off to supper and bed in my new lodgings." Sweeping his hat onto his head, he bade her a good even. He was laughing again as he left.

  Now Meggy was alone, hungry and thirsty and frightened in the dark house in the middle of the night. Despair settled over her like the wings of a great dark bird. She pulled her cloak over her head and settled back into her nightmares.

  Morning came at last, as it ever does. Ere Meggy opened her eyes, she listened for the familiar sounds of home—cock crow, breezes singing in the tall grass, cows lowing to be milked, the greetings and fare-thee-wells of travelers—but there were none such. Instead she heard church bells clanging, men arguing, the calls of peddlers and the screeching of gulls.

  It had not been a dream. She was still in London, in the house of Master Peevish. She frowned. If he was her father, did that then make her Mistress Peevish? It suits me, I fear, she thought, and moved her lips in what might have been a tiny smile.