Alchemy and Meggy Swann (11 page)

"And playing pleases you?" she asked him.

"Aye, certes, it pleases me well. How else am I to hide this foul countenance of mine that shrivels flowers and sours milk? Still, I play but monsters and villains. No face paint could make me a hero."

Meggy's face grew warm with pity for Master Merryman and shame that she had not seen the man behind the scar. "You and I, Master Merryman," she said, "wear masks we cannot take off."

"Aye, Mistress Swann, well said." He gave a sneer that might have been a smile.

They approached the river, where half of London looked to be gathered. And where folk gather, so too do hucksters and cutpurses. Meggy took no interest in the cutpurses, as she had no purse to cut, but she inspected closely those peddlers selling ginger cakes, meat pies, baked apples. Sniffing deeply cost nothing.

Master Merryman bought a sack of sugared almonds, which he shared with Meggy and the Grimm children when they met once more. She sucked the sugar off each one slowly afore crushing the nut in her teeth and letting it all, the sweet and the crunchy, slide together down her rapturous throat.

The sound of music heralded the queen's approach. First came a barge holding a troupe of musicians playing loudly on lutes and flutes, sackbuts and viols and tambourines. Behind the barge, wherries darted to and fro, hired by folks who wished to get a closer look. Finally Meggy saw the queen's barge, painted red and yellow, adorned with flower garlands and gaily colored pennants. A dozen rowers in dazzling cream livery pulled in rhythm. Beneath a green silk canopy embroidered in gold, a lute player, strumming and singing, sat at the feet of a gilded chair. And on that chair was the queen. The queen! Such a day, Meggy thought, that offered sugared almonds and the queen! Her hair flamed red and gold, and her dress was ivory satin covered with pearls and emeralds. She looked, Meggy thought—how best might she state it?—she looked in sooth like a queen.

Church bells rang. Londoners called out, "God save your majesty!" and "Bless our Bess!" and, as Londoners often did, "A pox upon the cursed Spanish!" The queen smiled and waved.

"She saw us!" one of the twins shouted. "She knows us!" added the other. Roger took Violet Velvet by the hand, and they pushed their way through the crowd, hoping to make the queen look at them, too.

"Behold," shouted Ivory Silk, "the swans!" In the wake of the queen's barge, a flock floated silently by.

"Such graceful birds," said Mistress Grimm.

Gesturing toward the birds, Master Merryman said, "You are well named, Meggy Swann."

"Not so," said Meggy. "I have no grace. I wabble, I stumble, and I cannot dance."

"And these swans, their wings clipped to keep them near, cannot fly," said Master Merryman, "nor are they graceful on land, but they give us great pleasure nonetheless."

Meggy blushed as Roger, rejoining them, called out, "In sooth! 'Tis true!" and Mistress Grimm added, "Well said, Master Merryman, well said."

Master Grimm called his family to him. "Make haste," he said, "for I wish us safe home ere dark."

At the turning for Crooked Lane, Meggy bade farewell to Roger and the Grimms. To Master Merryman she said, "I hope you and Master Grimm may resolve your troubles soon. And I do humbly thank you for your kindness and the sugared almonds."

He winked at her with his good eye. "God save you, Mistress Swann," he said.

By the faint light of the moon, Meggy glimpsed several men wrapped in dark cloaks hurrying into the house at the Sign of the Sun. She followed quietly behind them and saw them start up the stairs. Meggy did not wish to follow farther, but curiosity and worry each took one of her hands and dragged her to the staircase. Fearing her sticks would make too much noise, she left them below and crept up the stairs on her hands and knees like a babe.

She sat on the topmost step and pushed the door open a crack. "All is in readiness," she heard someone say.

And the alchemist responded, "Then let him begin the doses now."

"To show our gratitude, Master Ambrose," said another someone.

Meggy heard the clink of coins and then her father saying, "Two gold sovereigns? But we agreed upon six."

"A mighty sum, which you shall have," the first someone said, "when I am required to announce the tragic death of Sir Mortimer Blunt, our beloved Baron Eastmoreland." There was laughter and then footsteps moving toward the door.

It was past time for Meggy to haste away. In a panic she pushed herself down the stairs, sliding like a small boy on a snowy hill. It made her bum sting a bit but proved a useful way of escaping. By the time the men had bid their farewells and descended, the girl was curled up on her pallet, making soft snoring noises. She opened one eye and watched as the redheaded lout and his gorbellied companion stole out the door.

Her heart beat fast but silently, and her thoughts betumbled round and round. So she had not misunderstood. Master Peevish, Master Ambrose, her father, was indeed involved in something deadly. In murder. In payment he received the coins to pursue this Great Work of his. What was she to do? If she told no one, he would have his money and his work would proceed. But at what cost? He would be murderer, damned to Hell. Meggy also, belike, she thought with a shiver, for knowing but doing nothing. If she revealed what she had heard to someone who could stop him, her father might be seized. Burned at the stake or shorter by a head.

The specter of the Devil invaded her thoughts. She pulled her cloak over her head and wished for morning. Finally falling asleep, she dreamed that the queen had come to visit and Louise bit her and was sent to the gallows at Wapping in the Woze.

When Meggy climbed to the laboratorium the morning next, she had made a decision. Fearful and reluctant though she was, she would face the alchemist with what she had heard.

Master Ambrose was seated at the table, fingering two gold coins. He spun them and stacked them and spun them again. "As you see," he said, "I have of late come by a measure of gold, and there will be more anon. My Great Work shall continue."

"I heard the men who gave you the coins," Meggy said. "They wish you to dispatch someone." He did not deny it. "Are you not afeared? In sooth, would you see the world from atop a stick on London Bridge?"

Master Ambrose shrugged. "This gold enables my work and provides you with candles and a chicken pie now and again." He continued stacking and unstacking the coins. He said naught more but dropped them into the copper pot, where they fell with satisfying clinks.

"Even for your Great Work," Meggy asked, "will you really do murder?"

"You wrong me. I kill no one," said the alchemist. "I but supply a solution of white arsenic. What others do with it is their affair. Mayhap they want to kill rats or rabid dogs. Why, I hear there are places where women mix arsenic in face cream to whiten their complexions." He stood and pointed to a shelf. "Give me the tall flask."

She put it into his hands. "Why did they come to you?"

"For my expertise and my silence. They know my reputation."

He had a reputation as a poisoner, Meggy thought. He was her father and he murdered people. What did this mean about her?

"I need funds," he said, "if I am to continue my work. For a more powerful furnace so that I may experiment with other kinds of metals. For larger retorts and alembics." He swept his arm around the room, pointing with the flask. "For dishes, beakers, jars and vials, filters, strainers, and stirring rods. For mercury, sulfur, alum, vitriol, and borax. For copper and silver, pelicans and alembics and crucibles." He set the flask on the table. "If I could unlock the secret of transformation, if I could turn base metals into gold, I would not have to sell my soul. But until then, I do what I must do. And I am close, so close. This very morning from a calamine and copper solution I saw come forth a metal that is neither calamine nor copper but is changed in its very essence. I have transformed metal! It can be done."

His pale face shone, and Meggy thought she could see a shadow of the passionate Oxford student. She shook her head. "No matter the value of your Great Work," Meggy said, "I do not believe it right to do murder for it."

"You need not murder anyone. You must just do as you are told until I have succeeded. Naught matters but my work. Naught."

"But I—"

He slammed his hand on the table. "Naught else matters, do you understand me, or have you not the wit?" He took some coins from the money pot. "Take these shillings and go to the bookshop at the sign of the White Hart at St. Paul's. Tell them you have come for
The Book of the Secrets of Alchemy,
composed by Galid, son of Jaziche. The bookseller will know the one. And return with haste. I must consult Galid at once."

Overnight the weather had turned cool and damp, chilling Meggy's bones and making her legs throb with pain. Her heart was as heavy as the dank air. She found the shop at the sign of the White Hart near the west gate of St. Paul's and bargained so sharply with the bookseller that she had sixpence left, which she would use to buy supper. Although Master Peevish never thought of his belly, hers argued with her fiercely if she did not eat somewhat regularly.

As she headed for home, the book in her sack, her thoughts became worries. What should she do? Her father believed his Great Work important enough to do murder. But was finding what he sought even possible? Would he risk his soul in pursuit of a foolish dream?

Meggy turned and headed down Paul's Chain and into the alley to Master Allyn's printing house. Master Allyn was attempting to work the great hand press with Gilly pulling at his leg and baby Robert asleep in one arm. "You find me somewhat discommoded," Master Allyn said. "Mistress Allyn is at the paper seller's haggling over the price, and I am nursery maid as well as printer."

"Belike you need help, Master Printer," Meggy said.

"Help wants pay," the printer responded.

Meggy sat on the stool and took Gilly onto her lap. The child put one hand in her mouth and twirled Meggy's hair with the other. Taking a deep breath, Meggy asked the question she had come to ask. "Master Allyn, what think you of the idea of transformation?"

"Transformation? Caterpillar to butterfly? Egg to chicken?" He grasped the lever on the press and pushed it forward.

"Transformation through alchemy," Meggy said. "Making gold. Finding the secrets of immortality and eternal youth."

"Wherefore," asked the printer, "do you ask these questions?"

"My father," she said. "Think you that he, with his alchemical learning, his minerals and metals, beakers and books, can find an elixir that will make all things perfect? He says he is close to success. What think you? Do you believe it possible?"

Master Allyn lifted the top of the press and pulled out a printed sheet. "In truth I know not," he said to Meggy, "but men with more learning than I have believe it." He held up the printed sheet. "I myself know only printing, changing speech to inky marks, capturing words and thoughts on paper for anyone to read. There are those who thought such a thing not possible, but here it is."

"Finding this elixir ... what might a man rightly do to succeed at such a task? Could he break laws of God and man and be forgiven?"

The printer ceased what he was doing and looked at Meggy. "Mistress Swann, just what is it you are asking me?"

Meggy shook her head. "Naught, Master Printer. I was but wondering." She bade farewell to those at the printer's shop and made for Crooked Lane.

As she reached the end of Budge Row, Meggy heard faint music, lively and gay. She followed the sound to a large, brightly painted house whence came the sounds of horns and drums and a tinkling like water over the stones in Millford brook. Meggy leaned against the house and pulled herself as tall as she might in order to see in a window.

There was dancing inside. And what dancing! Not skipping round a maypole nor stamping in a Morris dance. As the music swirled around them, ladies dressed in the colors of the sunrise leapt and fluttered as they were twirled and tossed by gentlemen in bright doublets and silk hose. Meggy pressed her face against the window. If I had sound legs, she thought, I would dress in such colors and wear silk hose and dance everywhere instead of walking, I would.

"Pardon, sir," she said to a gentleman in padded yellow doublet and grass green shoes who approached the house. "What is this place?"

"Ahh, Mistress Crookleg, naught to interest you here," he said. "It is a dancing house where people who are sound of body come to learn the fashionable dances." He pulled a silken handkerchief from his sleeve and waved it. "Take your tottery self away."

Another young man joined him and, with a twirl and a jump, cried, "Let us haste, Robert, to the frisks and flyings, galliards and galops!"

The young men slapped each other's backs and, laughing, entered the dancing house.

Fie on them, Meggy thought as she wabbled toward Crooked Lane once more. Fie on them, with their strong legs that could leap and dance. Fie on them who had no care for those who could not, those who would need magic to—ye toads and vipers! Suppose her father indeed found the elixir he sought, and it could transform her. Make her legs straight so she could walk without wabbling and without pain. So she could dance! Would that not be wondrous?