Alchemy and Meggy Swann

by Karen Cushman

  Leaning heavily on her sticks, she pulled herself up off the floor. She found the chamber pot and, cursing this little house that had no privy such as the alehouse had, she managed, with a great deal of arranging and rearranging, to use it. Opening the door, she threw the contents into the stinking ditch that flowed past the house and placed the pot back in the corner. She found a bit of wood in the street and used that to clean up after Louise, who had done in the night what geese do, and that, too, Meggy threw into the street. Then she folded the straw mat and put it next to the chamber pot.

  Hunger and curiosity both poked at her, and she looked about. This seemed a poor, puny, paltry sort of house. There was but the one small room—no dining chamber, no kitchen, no pantry, no buttery for storage, no cupboard. Dust motes danced in the pale sunlight peeping through the window and settled on a lone wooden table and benches. The empty fireplace held no fire, no andirons, no pothooks or bellows or spit for meat. And nowhere was there aught to eat.

  She had missed her supper the night before, although the boy Roger, fie upon him, had gone home to his. What was she to do to quiet her grumbling belly?

  She longed for the alehouse where she had lived with her mother and her gran, poor and plain as it had been. She missed the scents of fresh ale and clean rushes and meat turning on the spit. This house stank of dust and mildew and, from somewhere, a foul reek like hen's eggs gone rotten. All in all it did not seem a place where people truly lived.

  Meggy sat down at the table and drew an M in the dust on the top. Would Master Peevish come downstairs? Did he even recall that she was there? Would the boy in the brown doublet come back? She had not used him very kindly. He had seemed a friendly sort, but she cared not about being friends. People do not favor me, she thought, nor I them. "I need no friend but you, Louise. You do not mind that sometimes I be Mistress Peevish," she said to the goose. "But what am I to do in this place? I have no food, no one to comfort or help or listen to me. Master Peevish would have an able-bodied son, not a crippled daughter. What am I to do?" Louise, of course, did not answer.

  If she could find sixpence for the carter, she could return to the village and the alehouse, perhaps, but she would receive a cold welcome there. As the carter had remarked, her mother—the village alewife, known for her good ale and her bad temper—had not been sorry to see the girl go. "My mother cannot stomach me," Meggy had often said to Louise. "I might as well have two heads, like the calf born on Roland Pigeon's farm."

  Once it was apparent that Meggy would be lame, she had been put in the care of her gran, who dwelt in rooms over the alehouse stable. Sweet Granny, with gnarled hands and a face like a pickle, had given her love and warmth and kept her mostly out of sight. It was her gran who had found likely sticks in the woods and showed the girl how to use them for walking. But Granny had died two winters past, and without her broad back and strong arms to carry the girl up and down the ladder in the stable, Meggy had to return to the alehouse and her mother.

  And then yestermorn, just afore dawn, "Your father, master at the Sign of the Sun in London, has bid you come to him," her mother had said. "You leave this morning."

  "Nay, 'tis not so," said Meggy. "I have no father." Certes she had a father; everyone has a father. But never in her thirteen years had Meggy heard her mother speak of him. Her gran had merely said, "You have a mother who feeds you and a gran who loves you. What need have you of a father?" Still, Meggy had at times wondered and imagined what and where this father was. Was he tall? Lean limbed or swag bellied? Did he smell of wood smoke and horses or of ink and musty books? Did he have black hair like hers? Was he, too, lame?

  "Why have you ne'er told me of him?" Meggy had asked her mother yestermorn. "Why has he been so long gone, and why am I to go to him now?"

  Her mother shrugged. "Belike you will find out soon enough."

  And so Meggy was in London, unwanted by father as well as mother. What was she to do? Ye toads and vipers.

  THREE

  Meggy lingered there, thinking and fretting, until, with a slam of the big wooden door, Roger bounced into the room.

  So he had come back. Meggy thought he looked ever more like a puppy, all friendliness and no brains. She was relieved and annoyed and mightily hungry, but all she said was "Ahh, methought I heard the door open and a mighty wind blow in. What will you, puppy?"

  "See what I have brought, fresh from the larder of Mistress Grimm." He unfolded a cloth from around a heel of bread and a hunk of yellow cheese and handed her a bit of each. "I had to draw a sword and fight a rat for the cheese, but I vanquished him, and here it be." Not knowing whether he jested or not, Meggy inspected her bit of cheese for marks of rat teeth.

  The boy fetched a mug from the windowsill. "You must drink from clay, I fear. The master has melted or sold all the metal in the house." That explained the lack of andirons, pots, and pothooks, Meggy thought, but why would he do so?

  The boy poured some of the ale from the tankard he carried into Meggy's mug. "Have you seen him this day?" he asked, sitting across from her at the table.

  She shook her head but said naught, her mouth full of bread.

  "In sooth 'tis a poor welcome he has given you," the boy said, "but you will grow accustomed to his ways in time. He can be forgetful, his head filled with philosophy and such, and sometimes he be frosty as a winter night, though he will not beat you or berate you overmuch." He stood up suddenly and smacked his head with his hand. "But I forget my manners. Roger Oldham, if it please you, mistress," he said with a small bow.

  "Old-dumb?"

  "No, Old-ham. O-L-D as in old, H-A-M as in, well, ham."

  "Or pork. Or pigmeat. Well, Roger Old-pigmeat, I am Margret Swann," said Meggy after swallowing. "And this is Louise," she added, gesturing toward the goose, who waddled up to Roger and nipped him on his knee.

  "Hellborn bird!" Roger shouted. "She has bitten me!" He sat down again and rubbed his leg as Louise, with a great fluff of her feathers, settled herself.

  "I think she simply be curious about how you taste," said Meggy.

  "If she does not leave off my leg, I will be knowing how she tastes," he responded.

  "I pray you, Master Oldmeat, no roast goose jests where Louise might hear." The girl took another great bite of bread and asked through a mouthful, "Are you servant here?"

  Still rubbing his leg, Roger shook his head. "Nay, no longer. I was two years setting fires and sweeping ashes, fetching food from the cookshop and water from the conduit, washing linen and airing clothes, shopping for beakers and bottles, powders and potions, and assisting the master in his work. Now I go elsewhere, so he summons you."

  "He wants me to be his servant? That is why he called for me?" Meggy trembled with anger and disappointment. "I cannot be a servant. My legs are crooked and my arms busy with my sticks. Walking pains me, and climbing, and standing. I go seldom among strangers, for they spit and curse at me, and this London makes my head ache." She struggled to her feet. "A pox on it. Go and tell your master that I have left his house and will trouble him no more. And he can make a hundred able-bodied sons to serve him—it matters not to me."

  "Whither go you?"

  "I know not."

  "How get you there?"

  "I care not." Meggy threw her arms into the air in a careless motion, and her sticks clattered to the floor. She sat down again. 'Twas bravely spoken, but in truth she was all unknowing and fearful about what would befall her outside this house at the Sign of the Sun.

  Roger handed her the sticks. Meggy frowned at him. "Why are you not afeared of me?" she asked. "Have you not the wit?"

  The boy scowled but spoke mildly. "My father was physician in Cambridge, where men look not to God and demons for explanations but rather to natural principles and bodily causes." He was silent a moment and then added, "In truth, I think you as friendly as a bag of weasels but too small to be dangerous."

  Meggy banged a stick against the floor again. "Be not daft, servant boy," she said. "I be mo
st dangerous, a fearsome cripple who delights in affrighting people."

  "I have no toddling babe to be marked or cattle to be cursed. I be not overfond of you but I am not afeared." Roger lifted his tankard from the table and raised it to Meggy. "Does that discomfit you?"

  It did. It also alarmed and pleased and confounded her. She sought a new topic. "You said you shopped for powders and potions. Be the master a physician?"

  "Nay, he deals not with humours and remedies but with matter, with metals, with liquids and vapors."

  "Is he a perfumer?"

  "Not at all. He is a learned man."

  "An apothecary?"

  Roger shook his head. "The master does seek to discover the secrets of the universe, of all matter, and how its essence can be changed."

  "Go to! He is a magician," Meggy said, and shivered at the thought. Abracadabra.

  "Nay, he is an alchemist," Roger said, "a master of the art of transformation."

  Meggy was relieved to hear there was no magic in the house. "I have heard of such men, who claim to change straw into gold," she told Roger. "Is he then rich? This does not look like a rich man's house."

  "'Tis metal, lead and such, that alchemists try to transform into gold, and no, he is not rich. He uses all he earns for his work." Roger put some pennies on the table. "Here is all that is left of the coins he gave me last for food. 'Tis meager indeed, and you will have much ado to get more from him. Easier to get soup from a stone than money from a philosopher."

  "Philosopher? You just now said he is an alchemist."

  The boy took a large bite of bread and washed it down with another mouthful of ale before speaking. "Alchemy is a hodgepodge enterprise, a good deal philosophy, with a bit of smelting, a little distilling, even boiling and brewing. Also calcination and percolation."

  "Enough, puppy. Just what does he do in the rooms upstairs?"

  "He searches for the aqua vitae, the elixir of life that can rid substances of their impurities and make all things perfect." Roger took another bite of bread. "Transformation, he says it is, changing things in their essence."

  "And that will turn metal into gold?"

  Roger nodded.

  "You have seen him do it?" Meggy asked.

  "Nay, he still has not the method, although he swears he is close to finding it."

  Picturing the man's long, peevish face and shabby gown, Meggy shook her head. "Belike 'tis but a pretty dream. I shall not believe until I see him with a handful of gold. And tell me, when shall I see him?"

  Roger shrugged. "The master labors at his Great Work from dawn until dark and from dark until dawn. He rests little and eats seldom. When he wants you, he will call."

  Meggy dipped a bit of bread in the mug of ale and threw it to Louise. The ale was cool and wet, but not nearly tasty enough to please the daughter of an alewife. "In sooth I cannot be his servant," she said to Roger, "so you must stay and serve us both."

  "Nay, not a moment longer than necessary," he said. "I go to a new life, and most glad I am of it."

  "That man upstairs does not want me. I will go with you."

  "You cannot. I go to be a player in the company of the esteemed Cuthbert Grimm and Dick Merryman."

  Meggy knew about players. They often stayed in the rooms above the alehouse. Her mother cursed their rowdiness and examined their coins carefully lest they try to cheat her. Why would Roger wish to be such a rogue? "I believe players are disreputable and dishonest and should be whipped from the town."

  "Nay, Mistress Margret, players are men most like gods. They comfort the sad, amuse the wealthy, inspire the common," he said, gesturing wildly. "We players put poetry onstage, telling stories about men great and ordinary, about their deeds and their misfortunes, revealing their very hearts and souls."

  "And you are paid wages for this?"

  "Certes we are," he said, looking pleased with himself.

  "Belike I could learn to be a player," Meggy said. "My legs are weak but my wits are not."

  Roger shook his head. "Nay, mistress."

  Her blood grew hot. "Because I am lame?"

  "Nay, because you are female. Females cannot be players."

  "Why say you that?"

  "Because 'tis so."

  "Go to! What stories have no females?"

  "We younger players take the women's parts. I myself will be Lady Emma when we play The Tragic Tale of King Ethel-red the Unready."

  Meggy snorted. "You, Roger Oldham, old ham, old meat, ancient pork, you play a woman? With your big feet and your knightly nose?"

  Roger smiled. "I do make a somewhat lordly woman." Meggy started to speak, but Roger shook his head again and said, "Nay, Mistress Margret, nay, you cannot come with me."

  Meggy felt her lip threaten to tremble. "But what will befall me here alone? Belike I will sink under my afflictions."

  Roger stood. "I board in the house of Cuthbert Grimm next to Peter Ragwort the butcher on Pudding Lane. It does stink a fair bit but keeps the rain off. If you have need of me, seek me there."

  He was leaving her! He had eaten supper but brought her only old bread and moldy cheese! Pigeon pie he ate, no doubt, and custard. She stiffened with anger. "Fie upon you, Roger Oldmeat! I will seek you when pigs grow wings! A pox on your players and your poetry and your Cuthbert Grimm!" She threw the last bit of her bread at his head, although she would regret its loss later. "Haste then away. Would that I ne'er see your silly grin again."

  And, by cock and pie, not saying another word, he left her alone in the house at the Sign of the Sun.

  Without Roger the room felt darker and cold. Meggy sought a candle or even a rushlight, hoping to dispel the gloom in the room and in her heart, but found none. The house at the Sign of the Sun indeed. More like the house at the sign of the gloom, she thought. "Why think you this dark house has the Sign of the Sun?" she asked Louise.

  Louise ignored her and began to groom her feathers, fluffy as thistledown and lily white.

  "Belike," Meggy continued, "someone wanted to bring a bit of light and heat into this dark dreariness."

  She went to the window and tried to see through the grime. Leaning close, she spat and rubbed the glass with the hem of her kirtle. There was gray gloom outside as well as in. Ye toads and vipers, it be summer, Meggy thought. Where were the billows of grain, thickets of berries and wild plums, the roses, poppies, and fields of daisies? This London was a poor place, and she longed to go home.

  Although it was but midday, she spread the pallet Roger had given her before the fireplace again and lay down. She'd get no warmth from an empty fireplace, she knew, but still it comforted her to be there.

  FOUR

  When Meggy woke, it was not yet evening. Roger's cheese was long gone and she was hungry again. She knew of no food in the house but for the dry and dirty lump of bread she had heaved at the boy. Ye toads and vipers, you could play my belly like a drum, she thought, 'tis that empty.

  She had not seen Master Peevish again, although she had heard whispering and footsteps coming and going in the night. Or had she been dreaming?

  A rumble from her belly finally sent Meggy reaching for her walking sticks. Might she do it? Could she wabble to a cookshop by the river to spend the pennies Roger had left her? Fie upon it, had he said down Crooked Lane or up? Exactly where was Gracechurch Street? And was she to go past the church of St. Magnus or turn a corner there?

  "Stay you here, Louise," she said. "If that man comes down, keep out of sight. I will return with supper. Mayhap I will find something we can share—fresh berries or pear tart or sweet apple cake with nuts." Her mouth watered at the thought.

  Meggy emptied her sack of her few belongings—comb, small knife for eating, clean smock, a kirtle of Bristol red, a pair of stockings with the toes mended into a bunch, and a bottle of onion, fig, and Venice treacle tonic against plague. Her gran had sewn handles on a grain sack so that Meggy could loop it over her arm, leaving her hands free for her sticks. She put the sack to her face and s
niffed deeply. Her eyes filled with tears. It smelled of home.

  Sighing, Meggy took the sack, tucked the coins into her bodice, and peeked out the door. The warmth of the day surprised her after the chill of the house, and streaks of sunshine found their way even to Crooked Lane. She would sooner have waited for dark, when she would be seen less easily, but she was hungry now.

  She looked up the lane and down. The old-cloaks man was arranging the boots and hose and doublets in the stall attached to his shop. Certes he would know where she could buy a sausage pie or baked apple. But he was a stranger. Dare she speak to him? She cleared her throat and called, "I give you good day, sir."

  He turned, looked at Meggy, and spat. "Hellfire and damnation, I say, to cursed cripples, evil and ugglesome, who defile the streets with their dark arts! Hellfire!" He spat again.

  She turned away from him and her eyes grew hot. Would that I were a tool of the Devil, she thought, for belike he could keep people from shouting and cursing at me in the streets.

  She wabbled slowly down the lane, passing the shop marked with a shoe. There was no sign of the cobbler. Meggy hoped he would permit Louise to feed on the grass and greens that grew in his garden. Worse than thunder, Meggy thought, worse than biting flies, worse than demons that howl in the night, is a hungry goose.

  Crooked Lane was well named. Horrid steep it was, and it curved and curved again. By the time she reached the bottom, Meggy's legs burned and her knees trembled. Oh woeful day, she thought, overflowing with pity for herself, I will ne'er find a food shop but belike will expire here on the street and be mourned by no one. Yet the scent of sizzling sausages from somewhere summoned her on.

  At its end, the lane met a large thoroughfare that Meggy recalled from yesterday. Fish Street Hill it was, cobbled instead of muddy but still wet and slick. She zigged and zagged to avoid the slops puddling in the street and at times raining down from the upper stories of houses on both sides.

  Every corner swarmed with people: peddlers and rat catchers, toy merchants and dung collectors, silken-cloaked ladies and children in ragged breeches, all going about their lives, laughing, shouting, arguing, jeering, and jostling. Carts and carriages thundered by, their wheels splashing her skirts.