Alchemy and Meggy Swann (5 page)

Just what did the man here? What was mixed in those bowls and cooked in that furnace? She could see nothing perfect and certainly no gold. Meggy longed to curl up near the warmth of the furnace, but the smellsome air burned her nose.

She found naught in the room to eat and so she turned to go, near colliding with a man looming in the doorway. "What do you in my laboratorium?" Master Ambrose asked in a voice that thundered in the small room. "I do not believe I gave you leave to enter, err, mistress."

Startled, Meggy stumbled into a shelf of glass implements. Before she could steady it, a beaker tipped and fell toward the floor. The alchemist reached out one long arm and caught it. "Clumsy girl, this glass be fragile and most costly."

Meggy's heart thumped. The man was so tall and his eyes so fierce that all sense left her. "I ... I ... I..." she stammered.

He put the glass beaker back on the shelf. "God save me," he murmured, "she is crippled, clumsy, and mute."

Meggy bristled. "Praying your pardon, sir," she said, "I am hardly mute. You but frighted me."

The man leaned closer. "Do you meddle in my things?"

She might have come uninvited, but she did not meddle. "Nay, sir, I was but curious. Never have I known someone engaged in a Great Work."

The man pulled at his earlobe, once, twice, three times, and then said, "So you be neither mute nor addlewitted. Mayhap I—"

Just then, with a great squawk, Louise climbed the last of the stairs and burst into the room, not around but over the books and flasks and bottles on the floor. She stepped into a basket, which fastened itself to her foot, and flapped noisily about, the basket slapping against the floor with each step.

"Louise!" Meggy called. "Come hither to me!" But the goose tripped and plunged her head into one of the precious glass vessels, and there was yet more flapping and flopping as Meggy frantically called, "Have done, Louise, have done! Put it down!"

Louise could not put it down but, bemaddened by her head being stuck in the beaker, stumbled about the room, knocking into another stack of books, the chair, and assorted devices of strange design, Master Ambrose lumbering after her. He finally penned the goose into a corner but could not pull her head out of the beaker. Shouting "A pox on you, you beetle-brained fowl!" he grabbed one of Meggy's walking sticks and swung it sharply at the goose's head, breaking the beaker and freeing her. Shards of glass sprayed like drops of dew. Louise honked again and flapped her great wings mightily.

"What creature is this?" Master Ambrose shouted. "What does it here?"

"That be Louise," Meggy said. "She is not accustomed to being a house goose."

Master Ambrose tore the cap from his head and threw it on the floor. "I wish not to see that bird," he shouted, "until it be roasted on a platter with onions and parsley!"

"Nay, sir, nay." Meggy shook her head fiercely. "Louise be not supper. She is my—"

"I care not. Hie it to a butcher," Master Ambrose said, "or I will dispatch it mine own self. Now leave my laboratorium."

Laboratorium? More likely stinkatorium, Meggy thought. She took her stick from the man and, shooing Louise before her, left the attic room. As she made her slow and painful way down the stairs, she told the goose, "You have made no little trouble for yourself, Louise. And for me." Louise, indifferent to the tumult she had provoked, merely flapped her wings and honked as she followed Meggy down.

Meggy peeped out the window onto Crooked Lane. She was sore afraid to venture back out into that London where she had been menaced by tradesmen, affrighted most grievously, and nearly dispatched by barbarous villains. But she could not ignore her father's threat to butcher Louise. What was she to do?

As the goose searched through her feathers for a bug or a flea or some other treat, the girl watched her and smiled. Louise had been her true friend since Meggy had saved her from the ax long ago, when it was discovered that her wings were slipped. Louise had followed Meggy about the inn yard, listened to her stories and songs, shared berries in the summer and apples in the fall. The girl and the goose were companions in their aloneness, their lameness, and their bad temper.

Meggy would save Louise if she could, but she feared disobeying Master Peevish. She would have to go back into the dust, mud, soot, slime, and smut of London. Roger had spoken of a butcher next to his lodgings on Pudding Lane. That was where they would go.

"Louise," Meggy said, "you are a flap-mouthed nuisance, but what shall I do without you?" Ripping a strip of cloth from her undersmock, Meggy tied it around Louise's neck for a leash. She put on her cloak, took up her walking sticks, slipped her sack over one arm, and pulled Louise from the house. The goose honked in irritation.

Could Meggy surrender Louise? She thought again of Master Peevish's anger. "Pray forgive me, Louise," Meggy told her. "It must be, but by my faith, I will miss you most fiercely."

The rain had lessened, but still the afternoon was wet, with mist rising off the river. Shop signs swung and banged in the wind as Meggy and Louise turned from Crooked Lane to Fish Street Hill. The girl and the goose stood in the fragrant steam rising from an inn. Meggy sniffed deeply for a moment. But might it be the aroma of roast goose she enjoyed? Her shoulders slumped.

"Pork pie, mistress," said a voice at her side. "Sweet with cinnamon and still hot from the baking." It was a girl, no bigger than Meggy, which meant she was very small indeed. And in the basket she carried were pies, brown of crust and fragrant. Meggy yet had the pennies Roger had given her, so she bought two pies. She ate one right there. The crust crumbled deliciously against her teeth, and meaty juices bespattered her chin.

The peddler nodded toward Meggy's sticks. "My old gran had such. For whipping me as much as for walking." The girl grinned a friendly grin.

While putting the other pie in her sack for later, Meggy asked, "Know you Pudding Lane where there be a butcher?"

The girl nodded. "Down the hill here to St. Magnus Church at Thames Street and then east to Pudding Lane. Likely you will smell it afore you see it." The two girls nodded to each other and walked on, the peddler in search of another penny and Meggy toward the butcher on Pudding Lane.

Louise hissed and spat and tried to pull away, but Meggy pulled harder. A pack of dogs wrangling over a bit of refuse left off their tussling to follow them, barking and nipping at Louise and at Meggy's walking sticks. They attracted several onlookers, cheering and calling, "Is there to be a show?" and "I wager tuppence on the goose!" It seemed that even more of an entertainment than a crippled girl was a crippled girl leading an angry goose.

Finally they turned onto Thames Street, where the crowds were more interested in their arguing, drinking, buying, and selling than in following a girl and her goose. Louise, tired of tuggling about London, sat herself down, her mighty wings trembling with outrage. "Come, Louise, cease your drumbling," Meggy said, pulling on the leash. But the goose only sat and squawked.

"Fie upon you, Louise Goose. 'Pon my honor, you are a true-bred nuisance," the girl said, leaning against a wall to rest.

A shepherd hurried past with his dogs and a herd of sheep, followed by a woman with a crowd of quarreling children. The woman could use a dog or two to manage that herd of hers, Meggy thought.

"Come buy a ballad newly made," a passing ballad seller called. "Mayhap 'The Ballad of Good Wives' or 'The Lover and the Bird.' Or come to me for the tale of a monstrous child born this very month to a weaver in Derbyshire. A child with one head but four arms and four legs. Printed at the Sign of the Jolly Lion this morn. Here to me. Come and buy." He waved the broadside about as he moved on. "Or buy a ballad newly writ.
God send me a wife that will do as I say,
" he sang. "Come buy a ballad. Ha'penny, only a ha'penny." A sack holding a great number of the printed ballads hung down his back, and the man's arms passed through two handles, leaving his hands free to grab at passersby.

Meggy watched the ballad singer go and an idea blossomed. She took the second pork pie from the sack, shared it with Louise, and wiped her hands on her kirtle. Then, while Louise was distracted by the taste of pie, Meggy put the goose into the empty sack and tied the leash around the sack and the goose as if it were a package. Once she understood her predicament, the goose began to wiggle and hiss and try to free herself, but Meggy crouched down, placed the sack on her back over her shoulders, put her arms through the handles, just as the ballad seller had done, and carefully stood up, taking the weight on her shoulders. If she leaned heavily on her sticks and ignored the grumbling of her legs and Louise's frantic
hwonk-hwonk-hwonk,
she would be able to walk carrying the goose.

A blue-capped apprentice called out as he passed, "By my master's brick oven, I have never seen an uglier sight than a two-headed—"

"Cease your bibble-babble, you gleeking goat's bladder!" Meggy shouted at him as she turned onto Pudding Lane.

Pudding Lane was reeky, sticky with blood that ran red in the rain, and clamorous with the cries of animals on the way to becoming chops and sausages. In front of shop after shop, carcasses of headless beasts hung from great metal hooks through their necks. Treading carefully, Meggy wabbled past the great gobs of pigs' innards that apprentices were heaving into the street. Pudding indeed, she thought.

Near halfway up Pudding Lane was a nasty, foul, and odorous shed with the simple sign
RAGWORT, BUTCHER.
A butcher—perhaps Ragwort himself, perhaps not—lolled in the doorway of the shop, flicking flies from his apron all beslubbered with blood. He eyed Louise greedily.

Louise hissed as if she were aware of the horrors within. "It's right sorry I am, Louise," Meggy told her, "and I shall miss you sorely.

"Good sir," Meggy called to the butcher, "I am told that the house next your shop is that of the player Cuthbert Grimm." The butcher nodded.

Roger lodged there, he had told her. Belike he would know how to save Louise. Despite Master Peevish, Meggy would not see her turned into roast goose.

Master Grimm's house leaned into the street, supported by half-rotted timbers and crumbling plaster. Broken windows were patched with oiled paper, and gargoyles grinned from rusted drainpipes. Players might be paid wages for pretending, Meggy thought, but it was plain they were not paid much.

She lifted the door knocker, shaped like the paw of a great iron bear, and let it drop. The door opened with a creak that startled Louise into a clamorous honking. She struggled against her restraints once more, loosed her wings from the sack, and flapped them in triumph.

"Master Grimm, Master Grimm!" shouted the woman who opened the door. "Come hither and see. There be an angel here!" Footsteps thundered, and faces popped up behind her. The woman peered closely at Meggy. "Nay, 'tis but a girl with the face of an angel, and a goose."

Meggy was surprised by the remark. Face of an angel? Had she such? No one had remarked upon it ere now. The idea pleased her, and she felt a little more assured, but still she hid her sticks in the folds of her skirt. "Is this where I might find Roger Oldham?" she asked.

"Indeed you might. You be Mistress Swann, I do expect. Come in from the rain." The faces moved back, and Meggy moved forward.

The house was crowded with people and things, sweet and sour from the smells of stewing meat, baking bread, babies' nappies, and herbs strewn on the floor.

The woman cuffed a boy aside his head. "Make haste, you, and fetch Roger," she ordered. Another boy came and helped Meggy untie Louise and put her down. A horde of children gathered and clamored about the goose.

"I be Mistress Grimm," the woman said. She was small and round, dressed in black with sleeves slashed in yellow. Her face was brown and plain as a pot but open and warm. "And here be Master Grimm and Master Merryman."

Two gentlemen stood either side of a blazing fireplace. One was round and roly-poly with a merry-looking face and several chins. The other was the bent and bony scar-faced man who had rescued Meggy in the alley. Her heart stopped its beating for a moment, alarmed again by his grotesque appearance.

The man's eyebrows rose in recognition, but he said naught about the encounter in the alley, nor did Meggy. She nodded to him and said, "Pleased to meet you, Master Grimm," for he looked grim indeed.

"Nay, nay," said Mistress Grimm. "He is Master Merryman.
This
gentleman be Master Grimm."

The smiling and nodding Master Grimm was stuffed into a doublet so tight that Meggy thought his belly might burst forth and fire buttons like cannon-shot about the room. Sparse yellow hair peeped from beneath his cap. "'Tis Dick's 'Grimm' face that has deceived you," the man said. He barked a harsh and jangly sort of laugh at his own jest and poked the other man with his elbow. "I be Cuthbert Grimm, master player. You will come to know me. All of London knows me." He pulled at his hair again and smiled a smile of self-satisfaction. Master Merryman sneered a sad sort of sneer—if, Meggy thought, a sneer might be called sad.

"Ah, Mistress Margret," Roger said, appearing at her side. "You have come to see me. Did I just see a pig fly by?"

"No nonsense, Oldmeat," Meggy said. "I am not in a sportive humor. I have come for your assistance. My father demands my goose roasted for dinner—"