Alchemy and Meggy Swann

by Karen Cushman

  "Our fortunes have taken a goodly turn," Mistress Grimm said. "I will let Merryman tell you, for he was there." They pushed through the crowded and noisy room to where Master Merryman leaned against the fireplace, smiling his sad smile.

  "Mistress Swann," he said, "well met. You are just in time for our festive gathering."

  "What and why do you celebrate?" Meggy asked. "No one yet has said."

  "It appears that Sir Mortimer Blunt, the baron Eastmoreland, has commanded a performance of us. He had his fellows call on us this very day. If we please him, belike he will give us his patronage and a license to play." He smiled his sad smile at the girl.

  "Mistress, have you heard?" Master Grimm shouted over the noise. "We are to be Sir Mortimer's Men, for I am sure we will please him. Our future will be assured and our fortune made!"

  So the baron had done as she had asked! "'Tis good news indeed, Master Grimm, Master Merryman, and well deserved." Meggy remembered how swept up she had been in the play she had seen. If the baron was moved as much, the company would be Sir Mortimer's Men without fail.

  She felt warm with the knowledge that she had been of such assistance to people who had been kind to her. But she had something more on her mind. "Where is Roger?" she asked. "I do not see him."

  Mistress Grimm gestured to the door. "The pigeon-livered boy went into the kitchen when he saw you come. He says you two are angry."

  Meggy hurried to the kitchen. There was Roger sitting at the table, piercing an apple over and over with his knife.

  "Leave off torturing that apple, Oldmeat," Meggy said. "It has done you no wrong. It was I."

  He looked up. "Go away," he said.

  "I have come to say I am sorry. Pray pardon me for—"

  "Get you gone."

  "But, Roger, I beg you to—"

  "Leave me!"

  "Will you not even listen and give me—"

  Roger stuck the knife deep into the heart of the apple. "Go away, Meggy Swann. I wish to hold on to my anger yet for a time before I forgive you."

  Relief flooded Meggy like warm soup. He would forgive her. They would be friends again. "You were right, Roger, to say what you did. I am indeed a selfish, ungrateful girl, and I cry your mercy. I will try to improve. After all, you are my only friend who is not a goose."

  "Only friend?" Roger gestured toward the other room. "Are you not now among friends? You no longer be the solitary, sorrowful girl who first came, although your bad temper remains, as I can attest."

  Meggy considered his words. Was she so changed? Just when had that happened, and how?

  Roger led her back to the parlor. "Mistress Grimm," cried Master Grimm, "this good fortune has made me hungry. My empty belly rumbles like a cart. Bring us beer and bread, apples and nuts." He put his arm around Master Merryman's shoulder. "My good friend and fellow player Dick Merryman will stand treat, will you not, Dick?"

  Master Merryman winked at Mistress Grimm. "Indeed, Cuthbert, indeed," he replied, and she turned for the kitchen.

  The company resumed their rejoicing. The little Grimm girls danced about the room like spinning toys. The apprentices slapped one another's backs and punched one another's shoulders. One of them began to sing a wordless song with a tootling tune.

  And Meggy, caught up in the joyous spirit, began to sing a celebration song she had learned of her gran:

  Good fellows must go learn to dance

  Thy bride-ale's full near-a.

  There is a dance come out of France

  The first ye heard this year-a.

  Master Grimm swung Ivory Silk (or was it Silver Damask?) around, Master Merryman led Violet Velvet in a stately dance, and Roger leapt and twirled with Russet Wool in his arms. The apprentices laughed and whooped, "By my faith, a fine song!" and "More, Mistress Meggy, more!" so Meggy gave them more:

  For I must leap and thou must hop

  And we must turn all three-a

  The fourth must bounce like a top,

  And so we shall agree-a.

  I pray thee, minstrel, make no stop

  For we will merry be-a.

  Roger put the baby down and clapped excitedly. "Who else has a song? Who else?" he called.

  "You sing for us, my dear," said Master Grimm to his wife, who was returning with great mugs of ale. "Let us have 'The Fair Maid of Islington,' as you sang it when first I wooed you."

  Mistress Grimm protested but finally said, "For you, Cuthbert, on this happy day." She began to sing:

  There was a youth, a well-beloved youth,

  And he was a squire's son.

  He loved the bailiff's daughter dear

  That lived in Islington.

  In truth she twittered and twangled and wheezed, but it was enough like singing that the others clapped and danced.

  Meggy was happy for them, but she felt suddenly alone, knowing that her own father had discarded her like an outworn shoe.

  Russet Wool, crawling on the floor, had found Meggy's sack and busily pulled out the broadsides. At the bottom he found Meggy's scorched and ragged kirtle, wadded into a ball, and he shook it about until it opened out and, with a thud, hit his head. He began to cry.

  Thud? Meggy wondered as Mistress Grimm picked Russet up and comforted him. How is it my kirtle thuds?

  Meggy sat down on a bench, the kirtle in her lap. Something was knotted in the hem. When she untied the knot, a small parcel fell onto the floor, a parcel wrapped in a page torn from a book, and on that page was written Margret.

  She tore off the paper to find a large gold coin. A sovereign. One of the two sovereigns her father had been paid by the assassins. The Tudor rose on its surface winked at her, and her belly filled with both joy and sadness.

  Her father had not left her without a thought. Selfish he might be, and remote, and consumed by his work, even a fraud and a murderer, but he was not indifferent to her. He had not much to give, but he had shared it with her. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she clutched the coin tightly. "Naught matters but my work," he had said. "Naught." But he had left a coin for her. And he had, after all, known her name.

  Farewell, sir, she thought. And then, Farewell, Father. And Godspeed.

  She slipped the coin into her sack. She would not spend it, she decided, not be enriched from gains so ill-gotten, but would keep it as a remembrance. It was all she had of him. No, not quite all. A coin and her black eyes and, she admitted, her curiosity, stubbornness, and persistence.

  While Violet Velvet sang "Bonny Sweet Robin," Mistress Grimm danced with Russet Wool, the bump on his head forgotten. Meggy looked on in envy. Had she ever had such warmth and care from her own mother? No, all warmth, all kindness, all gentleness had come from her gran. She had naught from her cold, ungenerous mother. Well, mayhap her sharp tongue ... her suspicious nature ... a skill at bargaining, and—she smiled—a great many words of insult. Even Louise had given the girl something, the knowledge that one did not have to be perfect to be beauteous. All these—and, in sooth, her own cleverness and fierce determination—had led to this day, she realized. She had friends, a place of her own choosing, the promise of plenty to eat. She was rich indeed.

  "Meggy, Meggy, come dance with us," the twins shouted, pulling at her. While Violet Velvet sang on, Meggy spread her arms wide and leaned on her new sticks, and the girls threaded themselves under and around and under again, laughing and singing along, My Robin loves me, aye, he does. She lifted one leg and twirled round on the other, and back again. She swayed and bobbled and joggled.

  There she was, Meggy Swann, dancing! Her linen cap flew off, and her hair spun and tangled and found its way into her eyes and her mouth. She looked around as she twirled, part of a scene of joy and friendship and gaiety. Ye toads and vipers, here was transformation indeed! Master Merryman nodded his approval of her dance, and Roger winked. Meggy laughed. She, Meggy Swann, the formerly ugglesome crookleg, the foul-featured cripple, she was dancing!

  * * *

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

 
; Queen Elizabeth I of England has lent her name to an extraordinary period in Western history. The Elizabethan era, from her accession to the throne in 1558 until her death in 1603, was a proud time for England. The land was united and mostly at peace. It was the age of the Renaissance, of new ideas and new thinking, artistic brilliance and daring exploration. European wars brought continental refugees into England, exposing the English to new cultures and understandings. Advances in printing made books more available to both scholars and ordinary people. Poets, playwrights, and musicians produced works of enduring beauty and power.

  Laboratory experiments resulted in advances in natural philosophy, which would later be called science, although such pursuits as astrology and alchemy were still taken seriously by educated people. Alchemy was not an Elizabethan, or even European, invention; people over the globe and over the centuries searched for the secrets of the universe. Alchemy had roots in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, Japan, Korea, and China, in classical Greece and Rome, and in the empires of Islam. Much of the existing material about alchemy reflects a mixture of scientific experimentation with the supernatural. These writings are often deliberately obscure, as alchemists balanced the need to communicate with their desire to protect alchemical secrets.

  Alchemy is based on the idea that the world is composed of four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. The eighth-century Islamic alchemist Geber analyzed each element in terms of four basic qualities: hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. Fire was hot and dry, earth cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air hot and moist. Geber theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles and so reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be effected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. To do this, one would need the help of the philosopher's stone.

  The illusory philosopher's stone was thought to be a magical substance capable of turning lumps of inexpensive metals into gold. It was also believed to be an elixir of life, or panacea, useful for healing, for rejuvenation, and possibly for achieving immortality. It is said that many alchemists tested their discoveries on themselves and died of mercury, silver, or lead poisoning. Master Ambrose's beliefs and the experiments that he carries out in his laboratorium are all based on what I could understand from ancient and modern writings about alchemy.

  Alchemists, of course, never turned base metal to gold. They did, however, invent procedures, processes, and equipment that showed later generations how to analyze minerals and metals and make medicines from them, how to distill essences, how chemical changes follow from combining different substances, how to use balances and weights, and how to build and use a variety of laboratory vessels. Alchemy's significant advances laid the basis for the science of chemistry.

  ***

  In the centuries before there were newspapers and news channels, the general public had to rely on news from the street to find out what was happening. The most popular news medium in England from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century was the broadside. Sold by street vendors and sometimes pinned up on walls in shops and alehouses, these single sheets carried public notices, news, speeches, and songs that could be read or sung aloud. The first broadsides were printed to inform the public of royal proclamations, acts, and official notices. Later they covered themes ranging from politics to current events.

  Broadsides were mainly pages of text, but occasionally illustrations were added. Generally the illustrations were crude woodcuts and, in many cases, bore little or no relation to the text.

  Some broadsides offered accounts of murders and descriptions of executions, including a supposed confession by the guilty party and his or her last words. Many, if not all, of these scaffold speeches and confessions were purely fictional descriptions of how the condemned fell into a life of crime. They'd end with a plea for forgiveness and an appeal to the reader to live an upright life.

  Broadsides about storms, shipwrecks, floods, and fires were as popular as newspaper stories about such disasters are today. So too were accounts of "monstrous" children and sightings of mermaids, cannibals, and sea monsters, which included dates, names, and places to give the impression that these were true events.

  The most common form of the broadside was the ballad. Ballads were poems or songs, meant to be sung, about romance, historical persons and events, the private lives of politicians and royalty, new legislation, unpopular taxes, the supernatural, and even sports. Among the earliest ballad broadsides was "A Lytel Geste of Robyne Hood," printed in 1506. Famous writers such as Robert Burns produced ballads, but generally the words appeared anonymously. The tunes were usually old favorites with new words. New tunes were merely suggested on the sheets, for only a small number of broadsides printed had musical notation. Street balladry was a popular form of entertainment, as well as a method for providing the latest news. Most of the ballads were sung by hawkers who sold the printed version for a halfpenny or a penny.

  Many of the printers who produced broadsides would also have printed chapbooks, hornbooks, sermons, and playbills. Sometimes the printers distributed their own wares, but they usually relied on ballad sellers—peddlers who would sing and shout on the streets about the latest publication or carry newly printed materials to markets and fairs throughout England.

  The ballads and broadsides in Alchemy and Meggy Swann, with the exception of Meggy's own ballad and Roger's silly song, are quoted from or based upon actual broadsides from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of these can be seen as facsimiles on various sites on the Internet, a situation that would surely astonish the ballad singers and sellers of the past.

  Meggy Swann lives at a time when many medieval ideas and prejudices are disappearing, including certain attitudes toward the ill, infirm, or disabled. Although opinions were diverse, most people believed that such afflictions had supernatural or demonological causes. Ill or disabled persons might be suffering possession or intervention by the Devil or perhaps God's punishment for some unspecified sin. But the times were changing. The Fourth Lateran Council of the Church in 1215 had found that illness or impairment was only sometimes caused by sin. The birth of the modern era and the development of scientific and medical theories saw more advocates for belief in natural causes.

  Seriously ill or disabled people were mainly taken care of in hospitals and infirmaries operated by the Catholic Church. But after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and dispersed the priests in the mid-sixteenth century, the ill and infirm often found themselves on the streets, forced to beg. In 1601 England passed a so-called Poor Law to codify care for the needy. Those unable to work—the lame, elderly, and blind and very young children—were to be cared for in almshouses, or poorhouses. The able-bodied poor were to be set to work in a workhouse, called a house of industry. Vagrants or the idle poor could be sent to a house of corrections or even prison. Even so, beggars swarmed the streets.

  Before I could tell Meggy's story, I needed to know exactly what her disability was, how it affected her, and how it looked to other people. I decided she suffered from what is now called bilateral hip dysplasia, an abnormal formation of both hip joints at birth in which the ball at the top of each thighbone is not stable in the socket. Unless this is corrected soon after birth, abnormal stresses cause malformation of the developing bone, and the child will have difficulty walking, a characteristic limp or waddling gait, and, if untreated, lifelong pain. The condition can be inherited or caused by the baby being carried in an unsuitable position in the womb or being born in the breech position (especially with feet up by the shoulders).

  In Meggy's time, little was known about how to identify hip dysplasia and even less how to treat it. Children now are routinely examined for it at birth. The condition can be treated with physical therapy and medications, braces and splints, or surgery.

  Louise's slipped wing, also known as angel wing, crooked wing, or drooped wing, is a condition of ducks and geese where the last joint of the wing is twisted so that the wing feathers point
outward rather than lying smooth against the body. The birds that develop the problem are perfectly healthy, but, according to one Internet site, "they are just not as beautiful." I'm certain that Nicholas would disagree.

  In Elizabethan as in medieval England, the words thee and thou were used as well as you. Thee and thou were familiar or informal forms of you. One used them to address children, servants, family, and closest friends. Many people today think that thou is the more formal word because it is used in the King James Version of the Bible when someone is speaking to God. However, the translators of the King James Version wanted the reader to know that one's relationship to God is personal and familiar, and so they used thou.

  The more formal you was used to address strangers and anyone above one in rank. It was also used as a sign of respect to one's parents or elders. The plural of you was ye— completely different from the ye meaning the, which is pronounced the.

  By the end of the sixteenth century, those grammatical rules were breaking down. Most people, including Shakespeare, used you and thou interchangeably. I decided that the language in Alchemy and Meggy Swann was complicated enough without the additional pronouns, so I have used only you, as we do now.

  * * *

  If you want to know more about the historical setting of Meggy's story, here are some places to look:

  Davis, William Stearns. Life in Elizabethan Days: A Picture of a Typical English Community at the End of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Harper & Bros., 1930.

  Emerson, Kathy Lynn. The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1996.

  Moran, Bruce T. Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.

  Picard, Liza. Elizabeth's London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004.