Alchemy and Meggy Swann (9 page)

The morning was cool and dewy, and the fire soon slowed into steaming and smoldering. The walls still stood, the room above was still covered by the roof, but inside the shop all was ash, scraps, and debris.

The cooper crossed to where his son waited. "Charger was sleeping down here. Where is he?" the boy asked.

His father took his hand. "Gone, boy. Your horse, the finished barrels, my stock of wood, most of the staircase ... gone." His voice dwindled as the boy broke into sobs he tried to muffle but could not.

Master Old Cloaks watched from the shadows. After a moment he crossed over to the cooper and, pointing to Meggy, said, "It be that one, her, the Devil's spawn, the cursed cripple, who fired your shop, Master Cooper. It be that one, the daughter of the adept of the black arts. See how her house was spared. Next it will be my shop afire and then yours," he said to the neighborers standing by, "if we do not stop her." Shivers prickled Meggy's spine like icy water dripping from the eaves, and she began to back slowly toward her door.

Everyone fell silent. There was no sound but for the crackling of sparks and hissing of embers. The cooper looked at Master Old Cloaks and then at Meggy. The watchmen and the neighborers watched them both, and then the cooper spoke. "Nay," he said, "the fire had naught to do with her. My son but dropped a candle in the night, and the shavings quickly caught."

"I say it was her doing," Master Old Cloaks said. "See her affliction. See how she is marked by the Devil."

Meggy's heart thumped with fright, but the taller watchman grabbed Master Old Cloaks and said, "You are ever a troublemaker, with your annoyous curses and your accusations, your gripes and grouses. Begone from here afore I take you in for spreading slander."

Grumbling, Master Old Cloaks retreated, still casting spiteful glances at Meggy. The watchman nodded to her. In the growing light of day, she saw his cheek, disfigured by a large red birthmark of the kind that is called a witch's mark. Belike he too had been shouted at and spat upon in the streets, Meggy thought. She smiled her thanks.

The watchman nodded again as he picked up his lantern, bell, and staff and followed his partner down Crooked Lane. The tipsy gentlemen returned to their drink, and the others, grateful that their homes were spared, drifted away to break the night's fast with warm bread and cool ale.

The cooper's shop still smoked and smoldered. "When it has cooled a bit," Meggy heard the cooper say to his son, "we will search for what remains."

"And we will find Charger?" asked the boy again.

"No, belike Charger is gone."

Meggy returned to the house at the Sign of the Sun. The day was growing lighter. She sat herself at the table and chewed a piece of yesterday's bread. Her heart finally slowed its thumping, but her thoughts raced. When she heard Master Peevish's footsteps above, she climbed the stairs to the laboratorium, carrying a piece of bread for him.

"Ah, mistress ... err, mistress, well met," he said. "I have a task for—"

"Sir, there was a fire in the cooper's shop," she said as she handed him the bread, "and all the neighborers came to help. Did you not hear the hubbub or smell the smoke?"

"I was at my work," he said. "Come hither—I require your assistance. Pour this solution into—"

"Soft, sir, soft. First I require yours," Meggy said. "The man at the old cloak shop next us curses and spits at me in the street."

"What care I what the man does?"

"He wishes me ill. This very morning he did accuse me of setting the fire in the cooper's shop. I pray you speak to him ere he—"

"Fie upon it!" Master Ambrose shouted, waving his bread. "Do not bother me with trifles. Now take this—"

Meggy's cheeks flamed. "Anon, sir," she said. "I do think this matter no trifle and must attend to it without delay." She picked up her walking sticks, wabbled to the door, and started down the stairs. A cold selfish man, he was, she thought. A mean, small, petty, and ungenerous man who could not stir himself to help her—or anyone. It appears I must strain the curdle from this custard myself, she thought.

She sat down at the table, chin in her hand. If only, she thought, she could drive Old Cloaks off with threats of the Devil and the evil eye as she had the children in her village. She opened her eyes wider. Aye, she thought, aye, that might serve. And she left the house, her hands trembling on the walking sticks in anger and fear and excitement, as she wabbled to the shop of Master Old Cloaks.

He frowned when he saw her and might have spat, but she spoke first. "I wish to strike a bargain with you," she said. "If you cease shouting and spitting and hurling accusations at me, I will not fire your shop."

He looked about at the piles of old cloaks and doublets and shoes, and his face grew pale. Even so he took a step toward her and said, "I do not bargain with detestable crook-legs and Devil's spawn."

"As you will," said Meggy. "I shall call upon my legion of demons to assist me in my dark work. Belike we will begin by burning this row of fine leather boots." She motioned to him. "It were best you stand apart, lest you be scorched by the flames."

The man's mouth gaped and his eyes bulged. "Nay, nay!" he shouted. "I will do as you wish. Avaunt! Aroint, you witch! Leave my shop and take your fiends, demons, and hobgoblins with you."

Thundering toads, the lean-witted old goat truly believes I can do it, Meggy thought. He was more gullible and more craven than even the youngest villager! Never had her affliction served her so well. "We will leave you in peace," she said, "all of us, so long as you remember our bargain. You, little imp, hiding in the corner. Pick up your tail and come along. Yes, that is right."

Staring at the corner, Master Old Cloaks flattened himself against the wall. "We give you good morrow, sir," Meggy called over her shoulder as she left the shop.

Once safely back in the house at the Sign of the Sun, Meggy let her breath out with a whoosh. She dropped onto the bench and rested her head on the table. Belike it was dangerous, her pretending to be a witch, but she thought the watchman's threats would keep Master Old Cloaks silent. And Roger should have seen me, she thought. He would doubt not what a fine player I would be. Relief, pride, and amazement at what she had done with her poor pennyworth of courage filled her.

Master Peevish hastened down the stairs and through the room. Meggy sat up. "Sir, I am returned," she began, but he waved her off.

"I must away," he said, and he hastened out the door and up Crooked Lane.

Meggy was hungry. She climbed to the laboratorium and looked for coins in the copper pot. There were not many, and none were gold. Meggy snorted as she fished them out. Great Work indeed. Immortality, hmph. Better he should seek to change metal into sausages so she could eat.

In a cookshop on Thames Street Meggy bought a rabbit pie and a berry tart. On arriving back at the house at the Sign of the Sun, she climbed again to the laboratorium, where she left half the pie for her father. She tucked one penny into her bodice, for she knew she would be hungry again anon, and put the remaining coins back into the copper pot.

She ate a bit of the rabbit pie but finished every crumb of the berry tart, sitting on her pallet before the empty fireplace, delighting in the juicy sweetness that ran down her chin.

When he returned, Master Peevish spurned her help, so Meggy went to see how the cooper fared. His shop smoked but still stood. Inside, the cooper was sifting through the soggy ashes of his planks and barrels.

"Right sorry I am for your trouble, Master Cooper," Meggy said from the doorway.

He smiled a weak smile and said, "I thank you for your kind thoughts, Mistress Meggy, but the fire has burned out, my stock can be replaced, and, God grant us mercy, my son is safe. Our troubles be trifling indeed."

The cooper's son came to her side, wiping tears from his soot-streaked face. "My horse is gone," he said to her, "and I like not all these reeky ashes."

The cooper pulled at his hair until it stood up on his head like tufts of red grass. "I told you, boy, you must—"

In the smoky air Meggy saw her granny's face. What Gran would do is what I shall do, she thought, and she took the boy's hand. "He must come and listen to a ballad, that is what he must. It be a right good story, and I am eager to share it."

The girl sat on the doorstep in the only spot of sunshine that found its way into Crooked Lane. Nicholas sat beside her and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"So, listen with patient ears, young Master Nicholas," Meggy said, "and I will begin the tale of the strange wedding of a frog and a mouse."

"What kind of mouse?" he asked, wiping his nose on his other sleeve.

"An ordinary mouse. Gray and small. With a tail. Runs about in the meadow."

"What kind of meadow?"

"A meadow, a green meadow, a brown meadow, any meadow. Now hearken." And she began to sing, as her gran had, not so many years ago:

A frog he would a-wooing go,
A-too-re-lal, a-too-re-lal,
He went into Miss Mousie's hall,
A-too-re-lal, a-too-re-lal

"What means
a-too-re—
"

Meggy pinched the boy's lips together gently. "Hush. You tire out your tongue and my ears, Master Gibble Gabble." Nicholas sat at Meggy's side and listened until she arrived at,
The frog came swimming cross the lake, and there got swallowed by a snake, a-too, ad-diddle-de-day.

"Why did the snake eat him?"

"Belike frogs look all good and juicy to a snake, as joints of beef and legs of chicken and roasted pork ribs look to us." Meggy's belly rumbled at the picture.

"Why?" Nicholas squeaked.

Meggy sighed a great sigh and leaned back against the front of the building, where the wood was warm from the sun. "Enough of your annoyous prattle. You have more questions than I have answers."

"Sing me a story about a horse," Nicholas said.

Before she could respond, the cooper came out with bread and a bit of cold sausage, which he gave to Meggy. "Nicholas and I must to Cooper's Hall to discover what aid the guild might offer. My thanks to you for attending the boy. Since his mother died, he lacks a woman's care."

Meggy had enjoyed the sun, the singing, and the warm, small-child smell of Nicholas. Now, as she finished her sausage, she thought again of her promise to take a ginger cake to Gilly, the printer's girl.

Meggy stood, brushed crumbs from her bodice, and climbed to Eastcheap, where she spent her penny on two ginger cakes. One she ate right there in the food shop, licking her fingers so as to savor every crumb. The other she carried across London to the printer's.

The printer was standing in the doorway of his shop when Meggy arrived. "What lack you, mistress? See a new broadside come forth. Buy a new ballad for—" He stopped when he recognized her. "A good morrow to you, little mistress," he said.

"Good day, Master Printer. I be Margret Swann, but you may call me Meggy, as my gran did."

"Well met, Meggy Swann. And I be John Allyn, impoverished printer," he said with a little bow.

Meggy looked past him into the shop, at the great levered contraption he had called a hand press, the compartmented boxes, sticks, racks, and mysterious stuffed leather bags. "Are all these objects used for printing?" she asked.

"Indeed. Come inside and I will show you."

"I have brought a ginger cake for Gilly," she said.

"Nay," said the printer, pulling up a stool for her, "you should not have come all this way for that. You are not strong enough nor hearty—"

Frowning, Meggy waved away his pity and his stool. "I will stand, Master Printer. I am not breakable, and I be stronger than I look." And to her surprise she realized she was.

"Ah, here is my Gillyflower, who should be napping," said the printer as the little girl toddled out. Meggy wabbled toward her, but Gilly, affrighted, ran to her father and held tightly to the hem of his jerkin.

"Do not be afraid, Gilly," Meggy said. "I may be crooked, but I come with the freshest, sweetest ginger cake in all of London." She held out the cake, and slowly Gilly let go her father, took the cake from Meggy with a small smile, and scampered off to the back of the shop.

"Deftly done, mistress," said Master Allyn to Meggy, who found she took pleasure in making children smile. "Now you shall see how ballads come forth." The printer moved to the press, laid a piece of paper over the tray, grasped the lever, and leaned forward, so that the screw pushed the whole top of the press down against the paper. When he pulled the handle up and removed the paper, there were letters on the page. Nay, words. An entire page of words!

Meggy could hardly breathe with the wonder of it. Here was true abracadabra. "Is it magic?" she asked.

"Not a bit. Printing, it is," Master Allyn said, "writing by means of a machine."

"Wondrous," Meggy said, "'tis a wondrous machine."

"Aye. But 'tis wasteful that I use it only to print ballad sheets and broadsides for impecunious poets."

"Might you not print other things?"

"The queen has given preference to so many printers—John Day may print ABCs and catechisms; Jugge prints Bibles; Tottle, law books; Roberts and Watkins, almanacs and prognostications, and so forth—that there is not much left for the rest of us."